6 ms·

Okay, what is the safety reason my barber can’t operate out of a room in his house?

richiebful1 3y ago
No reason. Countries like Japan have reasonable zoning, meaning industrial uses are separate, but commercial and residential is largely interspersed. Which is great!
shiroiuma 3y ago
That's easy: your barber operating a business out of his house will result in customers coming to your neighborhood, and that might bring "those people" around, and we can't have that.
- u32480932048 3y ago
  That's ridiculous. Those people can't get even get to the neighborhood because the residents have gone out of their way to eliminate public transit (which is for poors).
  - shiroiuma 3y ago
    It's all relative. Plenty of poorer people have cars, but instead of $150k cars, they have cheap-o $25k cars. We can't have those kind of people in our neighborhood.
    - eru 3y ago
      Here in Singapore, we only have about 1 million licenses for cars total. They are auctioned off to the highest bidder. So there are no cheap-o $25k cars. (The car itself might be cheap, but you need the license to run it.) My description in this context is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but this is actually a great system given the limited road space we have here. And auctioning off the licenses is about the most economically efficient way to allocate them.
      - shiroiuma 3y ago
        Here in Tokyo, they do things a little differently (and pretty sensibly I think): you simply can't own and register a car in the city unless you have a place to park it. So you have to get some kind of proof from the police showing they've certified you have a parking space that will fit the car, and they come out with a measuring tape to check too, based on the car's actual dimensions. So if you can afford a parking place, you can own a car. Otherwise, no. So car prices are subject to market forces and not artificially constrained; the constraint is the actual land area available for parking, and that's subject to market forces too, since it could be used for something else like a building, so parking tends to be expensive.
zo1 3y ago
Side answer. This kind of regulation lifts GDP by mandating some sort of economic activity. A barber in a room in his house means less rental, less money for commercial real estate company, less money spent buying "commercial" chairs and commercial chemicals. And thousands of other things I can't even fathom as the scope of this problem is huge and so intertwined with all other economic activity.
- JackFr 3y ago
  That’s nonsense. It does not lift GDP any more than breaking windows does. It redirects labor and capital from one use to another.
- pertymcpert 3y ago
  What are you on about? It does the exact opposite. I can’t believe I’m seeing this on HN.
  - zo1 3y ago
    What do you mean? This is a perfectly possible / valid theory, you're welcome to try poke at it if you're open to debate instead of dismissing me.
    - pertymcpert 3y ago
      It's the broken window fallacy. There's literally a fallacy named after the very thing you're espousing.

No reason. Countries like Japan have reasonable zoning, meaning industrial uses are separate, but commercial and residential is largely interspersed. Which is great!

shiroiuma 3y ago

That's easy: your barber operating a business out of his house will result in customers coming to your neighborhood, and that might bring "those people" around, and we can't have that.

u32480932048 3y ago
That's ridiculous. Those people can't get even get to the neighborhood because the residents have gone out of their way to eliminate public transit (which is for poors).
- shiroiuma 3y ago
  It's all relative. Plenty of poorer people have cars, but instead of $150k cars, they have cheap-o $25k cars. We can't have those kind of people in our neighborhood.
  - eru 3y ago
    Here in Singapore, we only have about 1 million licenses for cars total. They are auctioned off to the highest bidder. So there are no cheap-o $25k cars. (The car itself might be cheap, but you need the license to run it.) My description in this context is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but this is actually a great system given the limited road space we have here. And auctioning off the licenses is about the most economically efficient way to allocate them.
    - shiroiuma 3y ago
      Here in Tokyo, they do things a little differently (and pretty sensibly I think): you simply can't own and register a car in the city unless you have a place to park it. So you have to get some kind of proof from the police showing they've certified you have a parking space that will fit the car, and they come out with a measuring tape to check too, based on the car's actual dimensions. So if you can afford a parking place, you can own a car. Otherwise, no. So car prices are subject to market forces and not artificially constrained; the constraint is the actual land area available for parking, and that's subject to market forces too, since it could be used for something else like a building, so parking tends to be expensive.

zo1 3y ago

Side answer. This kind of regulation lifts GDP by mandating some sort of economic activity. A barber in a room in his house means less rental, less money for commercial real estate company, less money spent buying "commercial" chairs and commercial chemicals. And thousands of other things I can't even fathom as the scope of this problem is huge and so intertwined with all other economic activity.

JackFr 3y ago
That’s nonsense. It does not lift GDP any more than breaking windows does. It redirects labor and capital from one use to another.
pertymcpert 3y ago
What are you on about? It does the exact opposite. I can’t believe I’m seeing this on HN.
- zo1 3y ago
  What do you mean? This is a perfectly possible / valid theory, you're welcome to try poke at it if you're open to debate instead of dismissing me.
  - pertymcpert 3y ago
    It's the broken window fallacy. There's literally a fallacy named after the very thing you're espousing.