5 ms·

Well, the planning restrictions don't just come from nowhere. People pay for them (with their lobbying time, lost rent and so on) because they want them. There'

Well, the planning restrictions don't just come from nowhere. People pay for them (with their lobbying time, lost rent and so on) because they want them. There's a market for "no poors in the neighborhood", an unpleasant market, but a market nonetheless. Add to that the fact that there's plenty of cheap housing in places with no jobs. So, what should we do? Should we fight against the "no poors in the neighborhood" market in rich cities? Or should we make more jobs appear in other cheaper places instead? I don't know the answer, to be honest.

bluGill 3mo ago
> There's a market for "no poors in the neighborhood", an unpleasant market, but a market nonetheless. I place freedom as a higher value than the market. Thus while I recognize that market exists, I don't allow anyone to serve it. Your ability to keep poor people away ends at your property line. They can walk on the sidewalks in front of your house because roads (a sidewalk is just another road) are not your property. They can live in a shack because that isn't your property and so you can't control what they do on it. Freedom isn't absolute. They are not allowed to release poison into the air just because of freedom (unless they can keep that entirely to their property - which ends not far above their buildings since airplanes get their own roads above their house)
- cousin_it 3mo ago
  You're simplifying to the point of nonsense. Freedom you say? How about the freedom to have a say in government of the place you're living in? That seems a pretty fundamental freedom. When the rich folks of a town vote for planning restrictions and the vote goes through, that's an expression of freedom. Sure, we both don't like it. We both agree it has bad consequences. But what I'm trying to say is that there's a real want backed by serious money. One way or another, it will create a market (maybe a shadow market). Rich folks will always want "no poors in the neighborhood" and will keep trying to find ways to spend money to ensure it. They'll never give up. That's why I'm trying to think of solutions that don't require arm-wrestling one market vs another. For example, if we somehow created jobs elsewhere so that poor people wouldn't have to fight rich people for city air, then maybe that could work too.
  - bluGill 3mo ago
    I place strong restrictions on what I allow my governments to control. You get a say in your local government, but that government only has limited things it is allowed to control/do.
    - amanaplanacanal 3mo ago
      Allowing local government to restrict what can be built and where has been a double edged sword. Yes it's good that you can't build noisy, smelly, or potentially polluting activities near where people live. But we have gone far beyond that, in ways that harm our communities, require people to own a car to get through daily life, and leave people sleeping in the street. Some places are taking baby steps in the right direction, but there is still a long way to go.
  - eszed 3mo ago
    > if we somehow created jobs elsewhere so that poor people wouldn't have to fight rich people for city air Or, maybe... a VAT-funded UBI?
    - lelanthran 3mo ago
      Why VAT? It's a regressive tax that hurts poor people more than rich people.
      - TeMPOraL 3mo ago
        Not in this case, it doesn't - at least per the other articles in this series.
  - xg15 3mo ago
    Well, how about the freedom to invade a country you don't like? Or how about that country's freedom to invade your country? One person's freedom always ends at the point where another person's begins. That's not exactly a new observation.
  - xg15 3mo ago
- cogman10 3mo ago
  The primary issue is the people that live in "no poors allowed" area can literally push the poors out of a voting area and thus use their "no poors allowed" policies to take over local governments. Which ultimately allows them to expand the "no poors allowed" zones. Another major issue is there's a false impression about what's profitable when it comes to property ownership. That, in turn, drives up the price of property in a way no amount of "tent cities" can really compete with. In particular, landlords are using their freedoms to price fix and gouge. They've all realized that it's better to have 50% occupancy with 10x what a competitive market could bear (netting them 5x the profit of competition) then it is to shoot for 70% or 100% occupancy at a competitive market rate. And the cost of joining their ranks is high enough that there's really no option for a spoiler to come in and disrupt the market. Further, we have the freedom of airbnb which has recognized that if you pay a rate that's 30x the cost of rent you only need rent a property out once a month to turn a profit. And, as it turns out, that rate is often somewhat competitive with a hotel. All these freedoms give property owners massive extractive power against the working class. Zoning, IMO, is a red herring to the real problem. You can fix it, you can not fix it. It really doesn't matter because builders very often are participating in exactly the same structure and they aren't going to build themselves out of profit. Looser restrictions will mostly just mean they'll spend even less delivering homes while still charging the same rates because their rates are based not on a market but rather on the income of their tenets. The fix is a brutal one. The poors need to understand the predicament and vote for politicians that will serve their interests and not the interests of the property owners. A very hard uphill battle because property owners have a lot of money and politicians can be unfortunately easy to buy.
  - cousin_it 3mo ago
    Your heart is in the right place, but I want to push back a bit. Zoning is a red herring, sure, but landlords and airbnb are a red herring too. The truth is worse. The natural bloc for restricting housing construction and increasing home values is all homeowners! Everyone with a mortgage, too! Maybe the fight is still winnable, but we need to see clearly what we're up against.
    - 3mo ago
- danaris 3mo ago
  I mean, this is a very good philosophy to have. The trouble is, the people who are most vocal about "no poors allowed" emphatically do not subscribe to it, and the people who are most likely to have power over these things do not subscribe to it (there is some, but not perfect, overlap between these groups). And it's kinda tricky to go over their heads and get rules put in place at the next level above them (ie, the level that sets the rules they have to follow) that can effectively prevent this sort of thing.
rjsw 3mo ago
Pay UBI only at the level needed to live in the place with no jobs and cheap housing.
em-bee 3mo ago
segregating poor people into their own area is a sure way to make them stay poor. i believe there is evidence that the best way to help people out of poverty is to let them live in mixed areas where they have a chance to associate with people who are better off than them. i believe the primary reason is that even if you work hard to improve your life, as long as everyone around you remains poor then you are limited or are self limiting in how much you can actually achieve.
xg15 3mo ago
I mean, one of the main takeaways from the article was that "there is a market for X" is something fundamentally different and sometimes even the opposite of "X is a good thing".

bluGill 3mo ago

> There's a market for "no poors in the neighborhood", an unpleasant market, but a market nonetheless. I place freedom as a higher value than the market. Thus while I recognize that market exists, I don't allow anyone to serve it. Your ability to keep poor people away ends at your property line. They can walk on the sidewalks in front of your house because roads (a sidewalk is just another road) are not your property. They can live in a shack because that isn't your property and so you can't control what they do on it. Freedom isn't absolute. They are not allowed to release poison into the air just because of freedom (unless they can keep that entirely to their property - which ends not far above their buildings since airplanes get their own roads above their house)

cousin_it 3mo ago
You're simplifying to the point of nonsense. Freedom you say? How about the freedom to have a say in government of the place you're living in? That seems a pretty fundamental freedom. When the rich folks of a town vote for planning restrictions and the vote goes through, that's an expression of freedom. Sure, we both don't like it. We both agree it has bad consequences. But what I'm trying to say is that there's a real want backed by serious money. One way or another, it will create a market (maybe a shadow market). Rich folks will always want "no poors in the neighborhood" and will keep trying to find ways to spend money to ensure it. They'll never give up. That's why I'm trying to think of solutions that don't require arm-wrestling one market vs another. For example, if we somehow created jobs elsewhere so that poor people wouldn't have to fight rich people for city air, then maybe that could work too.
- bluGill 3mo ago
  I place strong restrictions on what I allow my governments to control. You get a say in your local government, but that government only has limited things it is allowed to control/do.
  - amanaplanacanal 3mo ago
    Allowing local government to restrict what can be built and where has been a double edged sword. Yes it's good that you can't build noisy, smelly, or potentially polluting activities near where people live. But we have gone far beyond that, in ways that harm our communities, require people to own a car to get through daily life, and leave people sleeping in the street. Some places are taking baby steps in the right direction, but there is still a long way to go.
- eszed 3mo ago
  > if we somehow created jobs elsewhere so that poor people wouldn't have to fight rich people for city air Or, maybe... a VAT-funded UBI?
  - lelanthran 3mo ago
    Why VAT? It's a regressive tax that hurts poor people more than rich people.
    - TeMPOraL 3mo ago
      Not in this case, it doesn't - at least per the other articles in this series.
- xg15 3mo ago
  Well, how about the freedom to invade a country you don't like? Or how about that country's freedom to invade your country? One person's freedom always ends at the point where another person's begins. That's not exactly a new observation.
- xg15 3mo ago
cogman10 3mo ago
The primary issue is the people that live in "no poors allowed" area can literally push the poors out of a voting area and thus use their "no poors allowed" policies to take over local governments. Which ultimately allows them to expand the "no poors allowed" zones. Another major issue is there's a false impression about what's profitable when it comes to property ownership. That, in turn, drives up the price of property in a way no amount of "tent cities" can really compete with. In particular, landlords are using their freedoms to price fix and gouge. They've all realized that it's better to have 50% occupancy with 10x what a competitive market could bear (netting them 5x the profit of competition) then it is to shoot for 70% or 100% occupancy at a competitive market rate. And the cost of joining their ranks is high enough that there's really no option for a spoiler to come in and disrupt the market. Further, we have the freedom of airbnb which has recognized that if you pay a rate that's 30x the cost of rent you only need rent a property out once a month to turn a profit. And, as it turns out, that rate is often somewhat competitive with a hotel. All these freedoms give property owners massive extractive power against the working class. Zoning, IMO, is a red herring to the real problem. You can fix it, you can not fix it. It really doesn't matter because builders very often are participating in exactly the same structure and they aren't going to build themselves out of profit. Looser restrictions will mostly just mean they'll spend even less delivering homes while still charging the same rates because their rates are based not on a market but rather on the income of their tenets. The fix is a brutal one. The poors need to understand the predicament and vote for politicians that will serve their interests and not the interests of the property owners. A very hard uphill battle because property owners have a lot of money and politicians can be unfortunately easy to buy.
- cousin_it 3mo ago
  Your heart is in the right place, but I want to push back a bit. Zoning is a red herring, sure, but landlords and airbnb are a red herring too. The truth is worse. The natural bloc for restricting housing construction and increasing home values is all homeowners! Everyone with a mortgage, too! Maybe the fight is still winnable, but we need to see clearly what we're up against.
  - 3mo ago
danaris 3mo ago
I mean, this is a very good philosophy to have. The trouble is, the people who are most vocal about "no poors allowed" emphatically do not subscribe to it, and the people who are most likely to have power over these things do not subscribe to it (there is some, but not perfect, overlap between these groups). And it's kinda tricky to go over their heads and get rules put in place at the next level above them (ie, the level that sets the rules they have to follow) that can effectively prevent this sort of thing.

rjsw 3mo ago

Pay UBI only at the level needed to live in the place with no jobs and cheap housing.

em-bee 3mo ago

segregating poor people into their own area is a sure way to make them stay poor. i believe there is evidence that the best way to help people out of poverty is to let them live in mixed areas where they have a chance to associate with people who are better off than them. i believe the primary reason is that even if you work hard to improve your life, as long as everyone around you remains poor then you are limited or are self limiting in how much you can actually achieve.

xg15 3mo ago

I mean, one of the main takeaways from the article was that "there is a market for X" is something fundamentally different and sometimes even the opposite of "X is a good thing".