5 ms·

That should naturally happen in every democratic, rich society unless it's population plummets right? How do you fix it without "fixing" "rich" or "democratic"?

That should naturally happen in every democratic, rich society unless it's population plummets right? How do you fix it without "fixing" "rich" or "democratic"? If you remove "rich", larger proportion of people's income will go to pay for foodstuffs, clothing etc basics, and they will have much less left to pay for mortgages, and housing prices will fall. Problem "solved". If you remove "democratic", there will be no NIMBYsm because no one will give a damn what people living in the area want - developers will built as much housing as people will be willing to buy, flooding the market, and prices will fall. Problem "solved". What are other solutions? I can't think of any. What are rich, democratic countries that do not have that problem? Only one i can think of is Japan, but they largely fixed "rich" (their GDP is stagnant over 30+ years while it more than doubled in both US and Australia. They are also dying out very quickly and have no immigration to replace dying out people. They are also only nominally democratic. This is certainly not the outcome anyone in their sane mind would like to replicate.

jlmorton 3y ago
Note that NIMBYism has little to do with democracy, and it is mostly the opposite. NIMBYism is about a small, concentrated group of people wielding large amounts of veto power granted to them in various ways by local government. Democracy is the solution to NIMBYism, not the cause.
- eru 3y ago
  Democracy is such an unwieldy, overladen term that it's hard to use in a technical discussion. It means all kinds of different things to all kinds of different people. Sometimes even at the same time.
- mahkeiro 3y ago
  I'm not sure of that. In Switzerland people vote against their own good by refusing new neighborhoods, high rise building, and constricting constructions to the current extent (and this at all levels city/state/federation). Cost of living is not the main driver as all the projects are refused for quality of life reason, Most people think that the only solution is downsizing the population (good luck with that). I have few hope for an improvement.
AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> How do you fix it without "fixing" "rich" or "democratic"? "Democratic" is only a problem under a given set of structural incentives. The problem is those incentives are prevalent. An example of how to fix this would be to classify zoning restrictions as a taking under the 5th Amendment in the US. So if the government wants to institute a zoning restriction (e.g. on building height), they'd have to pay you the fair market value of the expected rental profits from the extra floors you're not allowed to build but could have if they hadn't taken your right to build them. A democratic government could still enact the restriction, but it would be expensive and therefore rare. (And it should be expensive because the economic cost is actually that high.)
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  I'm not sure that anything you've said describes something resembling a solution, except in the very narrow circumstances of the sort of people who insist on living in cities where the cheapest apartments rent out for $4000+/month. Yes, if the developers were allowed to come in and put up some high density something somewhere, those prices would ease back down under $3000/month (if only a little below), and the sort that's well into the six figures in six figure incomes would rejoice. But we wouldn't see any difference anywhere else in the US (or, for those of you in other high cost of living countries, I dunno, London maybe?). No one living in Terra Haute, Indiana would be better off. No one in Boise, no one in Richmond, Virginia. Nor is some nationwide laissez-faire policy going to do the trick. The flip-side of "housing costs too much" is "oh shit, the builders built way too much" and then the economy craters when that does more than just cool, but freezes over for a decade. If you wanted the blue collar folk to howl in agony, just wait til that happens. Or, just maybe, you think you have some special insight where you could perfectly regulate just how much construction occurs, so that there's no excess at all. What if we've somehow gotten ourselves into a mess where there are no solutions at all? Like, mathematically. Like, if we had an extra century to work out the problem, we could prove there is no solution? What if there are too many people who need goods (homes, of course, but other things too), but who can't ever have viable livelihoods no matter how much low-quality education we stamp on their foreheads with C+ grades? What if UBI doesn't work, because in the part of the economy that is actually worthwhile, there's just not enough excess to tax away and send to them as welfare? What if we're still 150 years away from the technology that would give you your Star Trek post-scarcity utopia? What would that look like? Could it look something like this? Like some really bad imbalances that, with a naive-enough outlook, seem as if they might still be re-balanced if someone were brave enough to make the hard decision? A long time ago, before even some of you reading this comment were born (and for the rest, we were all still in school), someone decided that the United States was not going to make things anymore. We'd all be manicurists and day traders and lawyers and hip-hop recording artists. This is the result. Nor was it a good thing for places like China, where that's all they do, they're about to hit a wall too, and it's no longer clear Winnie can postpone that either. I don't think cannibalism will be widespread, but a few years from now you may wake up to realize that you haven't heard a dog barking for several summers at that point.
lmm 3y ago
> That should naturally happen in every democratic, rich society unless it's population plummets right? How do you fix it without "fixing" "rich" or "democratic"? It will hopefully self-correct as we reach a stage where more than 50% of the voting population can't afford to own a home, which is happening now in the UK. Going to be unpleasant for the people holding the bag when the bubble pops though. > If you remove "democratic", there will be no NIMBYsm because no one will give a damn what people living in the area want - developers will built as much housing as people will be willing to buy, flooding the market, and prices will fall. Problem "solved". I don't see NIMBYism as a truly democratic result - rather it's an artifact of our imperfect democracy where only those who can afford to have a registered address in a particular region get to vote there, regardless of how much time they spend there or how much tax they're paying that's spent in that region. There have got to be better ways to get accountability than local vetoes.
- kmlevitt 3y ago
  In practice, the people that block new housing in the neighbourhood are a handful of crotchety retirees that go to the community meeting and raise a fuss. Most people can’t do that because they have more important things to do all day. But we know the very vocal opposers don’t represent the true majority because of polling on the issue. For example most people in the Bay Area want to see more construction. And the younger people are and the more they rent, the more in favor they are of it.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > the people that block new housing in the neighbourhood are a a handful of crotchety retirees that go to the community meeting In suburbs, yes. In cities, it's often misinformed tenants.
- anovikov 3y ago
  Why won't they afford to own a home? Is the population skyrocketing suddenly anywhere in the Western nations apart from Israel? They already own one. They could pass houses down to their children. And yes, zoning and NIMBYsm exists only as long as (slightly) more than 50% of people are satisfied with their housing situation (and thus want prices to grow to fund their retirement), as slightly less than 50% are not (and thus want prices to fall to be able to afford to buy). This equilibrium will of course, self-preserve because zoning rules are not national but change based on locality, so there won't be a single nationwide crash anywhere.
kmlevitt 3y ago
Japan is a pointless comparison. Their reluctance to expand immigration has nothing to do with their reasonable zoning policies. People try to bash something they got right by bringing up irrelevant things they get wrong. Your first proposed solution will do the trick just fine. For a long time, NIMBYS pretended that increases in supply of housing would have no effect on rising prices (or worse, somehow raise them!) by labeling it “gentrification”. Now that that argument is defeated, they warn of a crash. But realistically aggressive zoning would probably just slow the rise of prices and modestly decrease them rather than cause a dramatic crash. We know this from the examples of Auckland, New Zealand and Minneapolis.
syndicatedjelly 3y ago
I'm not replying because I have a solution, but I think what will have to happen at this point is something so catastrophic that we all have to take a collective step back and decide if greed-based economics is right. Lockdowns during Covid enabled us to step back and decide that commuting to a dungeon of an office isn't worth it anymore, and companies are fighting this change tooth and nail. And that's just one tiny aspect of how we live in the West. For us to get off this mindless hamster wheel of greed, some sort of climate catastrophe has to happen. Something like The Day After Tomorrow will have to affect the world for people to finally sit up and say, wow we let greedy corporations destroy the world we live in. Let's not live like this anymore. I hate how cynical this sounds but I agree with you - I don't see a positive way out of this anymore.
- zo1 3y ago
  The positive way out of this is to slowly pull back regulations, one tiny bit at a time. Slowly enough so we can be comfortable and if it causes any bad effects we can correct in time. This should allow tensions to ease off and for everyone's incentives to align. The biggest problem is that we're doubling down and adding more and more, and optimizing and squeezing everything to a limit. Of course it'll be catastrophic when it breaks. It'll be hell and war and chopping blocks, unfortunately. And at that point the army will come out and people will just sadly die; democracy my ass.
  - syndicatedjelly 3y ago
    De-regulate what, exactly? The housing market? How does that reduce speculation?
Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago
>They are also dying out very quickly and have no immigration to replace dying out people. I think I get what you mean but keep in mind that Japanese cities are severely overpopulated. Their country is returning to a more normal population level. It's ok to not have Bangladesh levels of overpopulation, and they don't need to be "replaced" by immigration in order to maintain the current population density. Also housing in Japan is not cheap outside of the cities (where no one lives) so your point doesn't really begin in the first place.
0xfaded 3y ago
The argument this article makes is that Australians as a whole are not richer thanks to higher home prices, which is natural if houses a viewed as non-productive capital. Therefore "rich" can't be the problem to solve for, it's fairness and equality. Culturally "a fair go" used to be the equivalent of the American Dream, and I think it's fair to say both are dead to most of the unlanded classes. I've also spent a lot of time in Japan, and in many ways culturally they at 10-20 years ahead. For many life became unfordable there for different reasons, and I buy into that this contributed to the plummeting birthrates. Societies come under evolutionary pressure, just as life does. It's entirely possible that unsustainable societies will simply die a quiet death while others take over.
starfallg 3y ago
Japan has a fundamentally different take on housing due to several reasons. Essentially, the way society view housing is different - buildings are more akin to consumer goods like cars. Housing value is tied to the standards of the steucture and the cost of maintenance in addition to its location, etc. As building codes improve and new buildings become more robust to earthquakes and other natural disasters, older buildings drop in value. In some cases the house would have no value beyond the value of the land. In large population centres like Tokyo, the effect is not as drastic but it's still evident as housing prices in Tokyo is pretty affordable for an Alpha+ global city.

jlmorton 3y ago

Note that NIMBYism has little to do with democracy, and it is mostly the opposite. NIMBYism is about a small, concentrated group of people wielding large amounts of veto power granted to them in various ways by local government. Democracy is the solution to NIMBYism, not the cause.

eru 3y ago
Democracy is such an unwieldy, overladen term that it's hard to use in a technical discussion. It means all kinds of different things to all kinds of different people. Sometimes even at the same time.
mahkeiro 3y ago
I'm not sure of that. In Switzerland people vote against their own good by refusing new neighborhoods, high rise building, and constricting constructions to the current extent (and this at all levels city/state/federation). Cost of living is not the main driver as all the projects are refused for quality of life reason, Most people think that the only solution is downsizing the population (good luck with that). I have few hope for an improvement.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

> How do you fix it without "fixing" "rich" or "democratic"? "Democratic" is only a problem under a given set of structural incentives. The problem is those incentives are prevalent. An example of how to fix this would be to classify zoning restrictions as a taking under the 5th Amendment in the US. So if the government wants to institute a zoning restriction (e.g. on building height), they'd have to pay you the fair market value of the expected rental profits from the extra floors you're not allowed to build but could have if they hadn't taken your right to build them. A democratic government could still enact the restriction, but it would be expensive and therefore rare. (And it should be expensive because the economic cost is actually that high.)

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
I'm not sure that anything you've said describes something resembling a solution, except in the very narrow circumstances of the sort of people who insist on living in cities where the cheapest apartments rent out for $4000+/month. Yes, if the developers were allowed to come in and put up some high density something somewhere, those prices would ease back down under $3000/month (if only a little below), and the sort that's well into the six figures in six figure incomes would rejoice. But we wouldn't see any difference anywhere else in the US (or, for those of you in other high cost of living countries, I dunno, London maybe?). No one living in Terra Haute, Indiana would be better off. No one in Boise, no one in Richmond, Virginia. Nor is some nationwide laissez-faire policy going to do the trick. The flip-side of "housing costs too much" is "oh shit, the builders built way too much" and then the economy craters when that does more than just cool, but freezes over for a decade. If you wanted the blue collar folk to howl in agony, just wait til that happens. Or, just maybe, you think you have some special insight where you could perfectly regulate just how much construction occurs, so that there's no excess at all. What if we've somehow gotten ourselves into a mess where there are no solutions at all? Like, mathematically. Like, if we had an extra century to work out the problem, we could prove there is no solution? What if there are too many people who need goods (homes, of course, but other things too), but who can't ever have viable livelihoods no matter how much low-quality education we stamp on their foreheads with C+ grades? What if UBI doesn't work, because in the part of the economy that is actually worthwhile, there's just not enough excess to tax away and send to them as welfare? What if we're still 150 years away from the technology that would give you your Star Trek post-scarcity utopia? What would that look like? Could it look something like this? Like some really bad imbalances that, with a naive-enough outlook, seem as if they might still be re-balanced if someone were brave enough to make the hard decision? A long time ago, before even some of you reading this comment were born (and for the rest, we were all still in school), someone decided that the United States was not going to make things anymore. We'd all be manicurists and day traders and lawyers and hip-hop recording artists. This is the result. Nor was it a good thing for places like China, where that's all they do, they're about to hit a wall too, and it's no longer clear Winnie can postpone that either. I don't think cannibalism will be widespread, but a few years from now you may wake up to realize that you haven't heard a dog barking for several summers at that point.

lmm 3y ago

> That should naturally happen in every democratic, rich society unless it's population plummets right? How do you fix it without "fixing" "rich" or "democratic"? It will hopefully self-correct as we reach a stage where more than 50% of the voting population can't afford to own a home, which is happening now in the UK. Going to be unpleasant for the people holding the bag when the bubble pops though. > If you remove "democratic", there will be no NIMBYsm because no one will give a damn what people living in the area want - developers will built as much housing as people will be willing to buy, flooding the market, and prices will fall. Problem "solved". I don't see NIMBYism as a truly democratic result - rather it's an artifact of our imperfect democracy where only those who can afford to have a registered address in a particular region get to vote there, regardless of how much time they spend there or how much tax they're paying that's spent in that region. There have got to be better ways to get accountability than local vetoes.

kmlevitt 3y ago
In practice, the people that block new housing in the neighbourhood are a handful of crotchety retirees that go to the community meeting and raise a fuss. Most people can’t do that because they have more important things to do all day. But we know the very vocal opposers don’t represent the true majority because of polling on the issue. For example most people in the Bay Area want to see more construction. And the younger people are and the more they rent, the more in favor they are of it.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > the people that block new housing in the neighbourhood are a a handful of crotchety retirees that go to the community meeting In suburbs, yes. In cities, it's often misinformed tenants.
anovikov 3y ago
Why won't they afford to own a home? Is the population skyrocketing suddenly anywhere in the Western nations apart from Israel? They already own one. They could pass houses down to their children. And yes, zoning and NIMBYsm exists only as long as (slightly) more than 50% of people are satisfied with their housing situation (and thus want prices to grow to fund their retirement), as slightly less than 50% are not (and thus want prices to fall to be able to afford to buy). This equilibrium will of course, self-preserve because zoning rules are not national but change based on locality, so there won't be a single nationwide crash anywhere.

kmlevitt 3y ago

Japan is a pointless comparison. Their reluctance to expand immigration has nothing to do with their reasonable zoning policies. People try to bash something they got right by bringing up irrelevant things they get wrong. Your first proposed solution will do the trick just fine. For a long time, NIMBYS pretended that increases in supply of housing would have no effect on rising prices (or worse, somehow raise them!) by labeling it “gentrification”. Now that that argument is defeated, they warn of a crash. But realistically aggressive zoning would probably just slow the rise of prices and modestly decrease them rather than cause a dramatic crash. We know this from the examples of Auckland, New Zealand and Minneapolis.

syndicatedjelly 3y ago

I'm not replying because I have a solution, but I think what will have to happen at this point is something so catastrophic that we all have to take a collective step back and decide if greed-based economics is right. Lockdowns during Covid enabled us to step back and decide that commuting to a dungeon of an office isn't worth it anymore, and companies are fighting this change tooth and nail. And that's just one tiny aspect of how we live in the West. For us to get off this mindless hamster wheel of greed, some sort of climate catastrophe has to happen. Something like The Day After Tomorrow will have to affect the world for people to finally sit up and say, wow we let greedy corporations destroy the world we live in. Let's not live like this anymore. I hate how cynical this sounds but I agree with you - I don't see a positive way out of this anymore.

zo1 3y ago
The positive way out of this is to slowly pull back regulations, one tiny bit at a time. Slowly enough so we can be comfortable and if it causes any bad effects we can correct in time. This should allow tensions to ease off and for everyone's incentives to align. The biggest problem is that we're doubling down and adding more and more, and optimizing and squeezing everything to a limit. Of course it'll be catastrophic when it breaks. It'll be hell and war and chopping blocks, unfortunately. And at that point the army will come out and people will just sadly die; democracy my ass.
- syndicatedjelly 3y ago
  De-regulate what, exactly? The housing market? How does that reduce speculation?

Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago

>They are also dying out very quickly and have no immigration to replace dying out people. I think I get what you mean but keep in mind that Japanese cities are severely overpopulated. Their country is returning to a more normal population level. It's ok to not have Bangladesh levels of overpopulation, and they don't need to be "replaced" by immigration in order to maintain the current population density. Also housing in Japan is not cheap outside of the cities (where no one lives) so your point doesn't really begin in the first place.

0xfaded 3y ago

The argument this article makes is that Australians as a whole are not richer thanks to higher home prices, which is natural if houses a viewed as non-productive capital. Therefore "rich" can't be the problem to solve for, it's fairness and equality. Culturally "a fair go" used to be the equivalent of the American Dream, and I think it's fair to say both are dead to most of the unlanded classes. I've also spent a lot of time in Japan, and in many ways culturally they at 10-20 years ahead. For many life became unfordable there for different reasons, and I buy into that this contributed to the plummeting birthrates. Societies come under evolutionary pressure, just as life does. It's entirely possible that unsustainable societies will simply die a quiet death while others take over.

starfallg 3y ago

Japan has a fundamentally different take on housing due to several reasons. Essentially, the way society view housing is different - buildings are more akin to consumer goods like cars. Housing value is tied to the standards of the steucture and the cost of maintenance in addition to its location, etc. As building codes improve and new buildings become more robust to earthquakes and other natural disasters, older buildings drop in value. In some cases the house would have no value beyond the value of the land. In large population centres like Tokyo, the effect is not as drastic but it's still evident as housing prices in Tokyo is pretty affordable for an Alpha+ global city.