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Transpose the problem into a Taylor Swift concert and the problem becomes clearer: Everyone* wants to go see Taylor Swift. She comes to a stadium and the sell

Transpose the problem into a Taylor Swift concert and the problem becomes clearer: Everyone* wants to go see Taylor Swift. She comes to a stadium and the sell out is instant, the aftermarket is bloody and ruthless. The stadium has 90,000 seats, 2,000 floor spots, and they are gone before you can reload the ticket page. Taylor Swift is the embodiment of "good jobs". The stadium is the local housing market. Those VIP booths side stage with room to move around? The mega mansions. The lower tier seats? Upper-middle class. Nose bleeds? Upper lower class/bottom middle class. Now solve the problem of the true value of these seats being so expensive. You can add more seats (this stadium happens to be extremely modular) but the experience for everyone becomes worse in a multitude of ways. You can add seats above the nosebleed, but it doesn't really do much to affect the closer seats. So how do you solve this? How do you handle people who want to sell their ticket? Is it even possible to give people who can hardly afford nosebleed a shot at mid tier seats? *Yes, I know you have no interest in seeing Taylor Swift.

mcv 1y ago
The real problem driving up prices, both in housing and concerts, is scalpers. They create artificial scarcity. If you want to fix these sort of problems, you have to do something about scalpers.
baggy_trough 1y ago
There is nothing to solve; this is the best overall outcome.
postflopclarity 1y ago
> the experience for everyone becomes worse in a multitude of ways. your analogy requires the assumption that the stadium is already "at capacity" for the maximum comfortable number of seats 99% of American municipalities are nowhere even close to this capacity.
- Workaccount2 1y ago
  Taylor Swift (and other super stars) don't play shows in 99% of American municipalities. Companies want top talent for their workforce. They naturally will set up shop where they have easiest access to this talent (hence why you get industry hubs in different locales). The companies move to the spots for workers, and the works move to those spots for the jobs.
  - s1artibartfast 1y ago
    Yep, and these changes take place for reasons. For example, California and the Bay area have had 40 years of opportunity to make it easier to build, and ample people willing to pay. There's an alternative world where SF and San Jose look like Singapore or Hong Kong, and policy is one of the big differences
- bethekidyouwant 1y ago
  Analogies are always bad, but in this case, I would say that if I wanted to walk to see Taylor Swift within 15 minutes, then most municipalities are at this capacity.
- have-a-break 1y ago
  Even worse, a lot of municipalities are losing population. But no-one wants to drop everything in their lives and move to a dying city, specially not high intelligence individuals who tend to gather causing home prices to skyrocket. Worse, those individuals tend not to buy into the types of housing typically seen by large developers building "relief" housing.
foobarian 1y ago
Nice analogy. So it seems the solution would be to create more Taylor Swifts then, by investing in music schools and programs, talent shows, scouting, etc., where the analogous thing would be to create more "nice places to live" with all the desirable attributes like walkability, jobs, public transport, etc. It's a tall order since land and climate are the ultimate scarce resources, but there are probably some underutilized spots that could support it. The rest would also be difficult due to property rights.
- bluGill 1y ago
  You cannot do that. Taylor Swift is what she is not because she it better at music, dancing, or looking sexy, or sleeping with the record label executives (I don't know anything about her: the above list are the common things done to get positions like her, but not necessarily what she has done). What Taylor Swift is that is special is that nearly everybody knows about her (I'm a rare exception) - you can talk about her to strangers and have something in common because you know her music. If you want great live music you can find that in a 1 in 10 bars around the country. (less if you want original music instead of covers). Likewise if you want to watch a dancer, though perhaps a different venue. If you want anyone sexy you can see sex better at a local strip joint. If you want to sleep with someone you can pick someone up in any bar (you probably couldn't sleep with Tayler Swift even if she was the type looking for a one night stand). However the shared experience of being a Tayler Swift fan is not something you can find if you stick to the local scenes. That national/international shared experience can only belong to a few people at any one time and no amount of schools, talent shows, scouting... can change that.
  - lesuorac 1y ago
    But there's tons of places where the cost of housing is going up. If everybody was uprooting from Philadelphia to go to NYC then only NYC's prices would go up. It seems to me that we already have multiple Taylor Swifts so having even more shouldn't be a problem. For many people, the school system is the reason why they own the house they do. In my experience, many of the schools self-report having pretty bad math/reading comprehension amongst their students. I'm not picking a house based on it being "the best" or the one "I hear about the most". I picked it based on it actually having good outcomes. If other districts had that too I would've considered theirs.
gausswho 1y ago
Please continue the analogy while including Ticketmaster.
paulddraper 1y ago
What adding a new showing? Or taking a smaller venue and expanding that?
api 1y ago
I concluded long ago that the only solution to unaffordable housing is geographic diversification. You can only cram so many people into one city before costs spiral for a myriad of reasons. The root of today's housing unaffordability is geographic consolidation of opportunity into a handful of places. There's a ton of affordable housing outside the top ten cities. For the most expensive places I'd advise young people to consider going there temporarily to get your career started, but don't stay unless you are making serious money -- enough to offset real estate costs. E.g. for the Bay Area I'd say if you're not making over $350k/year by age 30 you should leave.
- bluGill 1y ago
  Nearly every city in the world has plenty of room for more. Most cities in the US dedicate more than half of their space to just cars, a great transit system could nearly double the density of the city while increasing the quality of life. Even in cities with good transit, they all have a lot of space dedicated to cars for people who don't find transit good enough (most of that isn't about snobs not wanting to mix with poor people, it is quality of service)
pythonaut_16 1y ago
In many places though it's more like most of the stadium is made up of various levels VIP booths. So one of the options is to replace those VIP booths with more dense traditional stadium seating. Only it's not enough to convince the ticket holders of one VIP booth to sell their tickets so more dense options can be sold, for some reason all of the VIP booths around that one also have to agree, and they're not so excited that plebeians might get to sit in dense seats right next to their pristine VIP booth to watch the show.
kmeisthax 1y ago
> You can add more seats (this stadium happens to be extremely modular) but the experience for everyone becomes worse in a multitude of ways. To keep your analogy... well, analogous, this is also a stadium where you have to buy tickets in groups of at minimum four seats, with generous buffer zones of at least two seats between each group, specifically to cater to a handful of extremely vocal Swifties who couldn't bear to sit next to a stranger in their life. We could easily double the capacity of the stadium without impacting anyone's experience.

mcv 1y ago

The real problem driving up prices, both in housing and concerts, is scalpers. They create artificial scarcity. If you want to fix these sort of problems, you have to do something about scalpers.

baggy_trough 1y ago

There is nothing to solve; this is the best overall outcome.

postflopclarity 1y ago

> the experience for everyone becomes worse in a multitude of ways. your analogy requires the assumption that the stadium is already "at capacity" for the maximum comfortable number of seats 99% of American municipalities are nowhere even close to this capacity.

Workaccount2 1y ago
Taylor Swift (and other super stars) don't play shows in 99% of American municipalities. Companies want top talent for their workforce. They naturally will set up shop where they have easiest access to this talent (hence why you get industry hubs in different locales). The companies move to the spots for workers, and the works move to those spots for the jobs.
- s1artibartfast 1y ago
  Yep, and these changes take place for reasons. For example, California and the Bay area have had 40 years of opportunity to make it easier to build, and ample people willing to pay. There's an alternative world where SF and San Jose look like Singapore or Hong Kong, and policy is one of the big differences
bethekidyouwant 1y ago
Analogies are always bad, but in this case, I would say that if I wanted to walk to see Taylor Swift within 15 minutes, then most municipalities are at this capacity.
have-a-break 1y ago
Even worse, a lot of municipalities are losing population. But no-one wants to drop everything in their lives and move to a dying city, specially not high intelligence individuals who tend to gather causing home prices to skyrocket. Worse, those individuals tend not to buy into the types of housing typically seen by large developers building "relief" housing.

foobarian 1y ago

Nice analogy. So it seems the solution would be to create more Taylor Swifts then, by investing in music schools and programs, talent shows, scouting, etc., where the analogous thing would be to create more "nice places to live" with all the desirable attributes like walkability, jobs, public transport, etc. It's a tall order since land and climate are the ultimate scarce resources, but there are probably some underutilized spots that could support it. The rest would also be difficult due to property rights.

bluGill 1y ago
You cannot do that. Taylor Swift is what she is not because she it better at music, dancing, or looking sexy, or sleeping with the record label executives (I don't know anything about her: the above list are the common things done to get positions like her, but not necessarily what she has done). What Taylor Swift is that is special is that nearly everybody knows about her (I'm a rare exception) - you can talk about her to strangers and have something in common because you know her music. If you want great live music you can find that in a 1 in 10 bars around the country. (less if you want original music instead of covers). Likewise if you want to watch a dancer, though perhaps a different venue. If you want anyone sexy you can see sex better at a local strip joint. If you want to sleep with someone you can pick someone up in any bar (you probably couldn't sleep with Tayler Swift even if she was the type looking for a one night stand). However the shared experience of being a Tayler Swift fan is not something you can find if you stick to the local scenes. That national/international shared experience can only belong to a few people at any one time and no amount of schools, talent shows, scouting... can change that.
- lesuorac 1y ago
  But there's tons of places where the cost of housing is going up. If everybody was uprooting from Philadelphia to go to NYC then only NYC's prices would go up. It seems to me that we already have multiple Taylor Swifts so having even more shouldn't be a problem. For many people, the school system is the reason why they own the house they do. In my experience, many of the schools self-report having pretty bad math/reading comprehension amongst their students. I'm not picking a house based on it being "the best" or the one "I hear about the most". I picked it based on it actually having good outcomes. If other districts had that too I would've considered theirs.

gausswho 1y ago

Please continue the analogy while including Ticketmaster.

paulddraper 1y ago

What adding a new showing? Or taking a smaller venue and expanding that?

api 1y ago

I concluded long ago that the only solution to unaffordable housing is geographic diversification. You can only cram so many people into one city before costs spiral for a myriad of reasons. The root of today's housing unaffordability is geographic consolidation of opportunity into a handful of places. There's a ton of affordable housing outside the top ten cities. For the most expensive places I'd advise young people to consider going there temporarily to get your career started, but don't stay unless you are making serious money -- enough to offset real estate costs. E.g. for the Bay Area I'd say if you're not making over $350k/year by age 30 you should leave.

bluGill 1y ago
Nearly every city in the world has plenty of room for more. Most cities in the US dedicate more than half of their space to just cars, a great transit system could nearly double the density of the city while increasing the quality of life. Even in cities with good transit, they all have a lot of space dedicated to cars for people who don't find transit good enough (most of that isn't about snobs not wanting to mix with poor people, it is quality of service)

pythonaut_16 1y ago

In many places though it's more like most of the stadium is made up of various levels VIP booths. So one of the options is to replace those VIP booths with more dense traditional stadium seating. Only it's not enough to convince the ticket holders of one VIP booth to sell their tickets so more dense options can be sold, for some reason all of the VIP booths around that one also have to agree, and they're not so excited that plebeians might get to sit in dense seats right next to their pristine VIP booth to watch the show.

kmeisthax 1y ago

> You can add more seats (this stadium happens to be extremely modular) but the experience for everyone becomes worse in a multitude of ways. To keep your analogy... well, analogous, this is also a stadium where you have to buy tickets in groups of at minimum four seats, with generous buffer zones of at least two seats between each group, specifically to cater to a handful of extremely vocal Swifties who couldn't bear to sit next to a stranger in their life. We could easily double the capacity of the stadium without impacting anyone's experience.