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The core fabric of society - the deal that was offered by society to the people - to work in a job, own a house, raise a family, have a retirement - has decayed

The core fabric of society - the deal that was offered by society to the people - to work in a job, own a house, raise a family, have a retirement - has decayed away entirely for many people.

crooked-v 2mo ago
The housing part never 'decayed', it was actively blocked by the people who already had homes. That's why you see things now like California actively overriding local zoning.
- cucumber3732842 2mo ago
  >, it was actively blocked by the people who already had homes. You're not wrong but this is too simplistic and avoids holding up a mirror that really ought to be held up. Zoning was the "we're gonna regulate our way into utopia" of their time. The class of useful idiots who made it happen and the class of useful idiots who will go to bat for it's continuance because they make a buck on it is far broader than that.
  - tptacek 2mo ago
    It's not simplistic. It is literally the core problem with housing. Zoning had a first objective of preventing Black families from moving into white neighborhoods, and then, in the 1980s, assumed a new role of driving scarcity (and thus the price of houses in areas of opportunity, to the benefit of existing homeowners).
    - cucumber3732842 2mo ago
      You're missing the point. If the states come along and override it and say houses can go anywhere they'll find another thing to use. They'll block the ancillary services (food and basic commerce) or they'll block the jobs. If not via zoning the same useful idiots will find some other avenue by which to micro manage. Environment is a common one, but not the only one. Once again, the race thing is a distraction because it lets the useful idiots who are peddling stuff that's just as short sighted claim that it'll work out simply because they're not peddling racist policies this time. Nobody has the balls to put their foot down and say that your neighbors have the right to build stuff you don't like and you can move if you don't like it.
- Auracle 2mo ago
  There are plenty of places without zoning issues that have that same housing problems. More people. Same amount of land, and features people want to live by - cities (which in the past often meant rivers but always meant jobs)/in my area, lakes. It’s really that simple. Everything else is missing for forest for the trees.
  - spwa4 2mo ago
    That's why you'll find in old economics textbooks that it's up to the government to fix these issues, by hiring and raising compensation for (all) their employees. This then forces other employers to raise compensation as well and so makes housing affordable again.
SoftTalker 2mo ago
This is quite a new deal and not one enjoyed by most people for most of history.
- AngryData 2mo ago
  Is that not how the 95% of the population of farmers lived before industrialization? The only difference is the job being their own farm or trade.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  - lazyasciiart 2mo ago
    They didn’t own their own houses.
    - AngryData 2mo ago
      They owned their homes just as much as you own yours. Oh sure technically the state/king owned their home, but that is just pedantry when our government could also eminent domain our homes at any time and also demands taxes to maintain control. Subsidence farmers built and maintained their own homes and worked the same land usually for their entire lives. If strangers came onto their land and bothered them they could force them off, potentially even legally kill them, and if there is some more complicated dispute they could go to their government/lord and demand a legal ruling on their claim. Peasant farmers didn't sign up for and get given random plots of land by their lord for temporary holding that gets taken back later. They lived and died in the homes they themselves built on land they managed and worked in basically perpetuity down their family line, provided their family survived or wasn't driven off by or killed by war.
- Loughla 2mo ago
  What is the purpose of what you're saying? Because people lived like serfs and slaves for a lot of history, we should be okay with that? I don't mean to be shitty, and I fully understand that contrary takes are what HN is great at, but I genuinely fail to see what the point of your comment is other than a knee jerk nothing?
anon291 2mo ago
Well states need home prices to increase because the majority of their pension funds for their employees is invested in hedge funds seeking outsized returns that use single family homes as an investment vehicle. This can never be solved until we resolve the public pension crisis. Lawmakers in my state of Oregon are soon going to debate how the state invests in hedge funds but the simple truth of the numbers says that there's no possible way Oregon can meet its pension obligations without their stated returns.

The core fabric of society - the deal that was offered by society to the people - to work in a job, own a house, raise a family, have a retirement - has decayed away entirely for many people.

crooked-v 2mo ago

The housing part never 'decayed', it was actively blocked by the people who already had homes. That's why you see things now like California actively overriding local zoning.

cucumber3732842 2mo ago
>, it was actively blocked by the people who already had homes. You're not wrong but this is too simplistic and avoids holding up a mirror that really ought to be held up. Zoning was the "we're gonna regulate our way into utopia" of their time. The class of useful idiots who made it happen and the class of useful idiots who will go to bat for it's continuance because they make a buck on it is far broader than that.
- tptacek 2mo ago
  It's not simplistic. It is literally the core problem with housing. Zoning had a first objective of preventing Black families from moving into white neighborhoods, and then, in the 1980s, assumed a new role of driving scarcity (and thus the price of houses in areas of opportunity, to the benefit of existing homeowners).
  - cucumber3732842 2mo ago
    You're missing the point. If the states come along and override it and say houses can go anywhere they'll find another thing to use. They'll block the ancillary services (food and basic commerce) or they'll block the jobs. If not via zoning the same useful idiots will find some other avenue by which to micro manage. Environment is a common one, but not the only one. Once again, the race thing is a distraction because it lets the useful idiots who are peddling stuff that's just as short sighted claim that it'll work out simply because they're not peddling racist policies this time. Nobody has the balls to put their foot down and say that your neighbors have the right to build stuff you don't like and you can move if you don't like it.
Auracle 2mo ago
There are plenty of places without zoning issues that have that same housing problems. More people. Same amount of land, and features people want to live by - cities (which in the past often meant rivers but always meant jobs)/in my area, lakes. It’s really that simple. Everything else is missing for forest for the trees.
- spwa4 2mo ago
  That's why you'll find in old economics textbooks that it's up to the government to fix these issues, by hiring and raising compensation for (all) their employees. This then forces other employers to raise compensation as well and so makes housing affordable again.

SoftTalker 2mo ago

This is quite a new deal and not one enjoyed by most people for most of history.

AngryData 2mo ago
Is that not how the 95% of the population of farmers lived before industrialization? The only difference is the job being their own farm or trade.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- lazyasciiart 2mo ago
  They didn’t own their own houses.
  - AngryData 2mo ago
    They owned their homes just as much as you own yours. Oh sure technically the state/king owned their home, but that is just pedantry when our government could also eminent domain our homes at any time and also demands taxes to maintain control. Subsidence farmers built and maintained their own homes and worked the same land usually for their entire lives. If strangers came onto their land and bothered them they could force them off, potentially even legally kill them, and if there is some more complicated dispute they could go to their government/lord and demand a legal ruling on their claim. Peasant farmers didn't sign up for and get given random plots of land by their lord for temporary holding that gets taken back later. They lived and died in the homes they themselves built on land they managed and worked in basically perpetuity down their family line, provided their family survived or wasn't driven off by or killed by war.
Loughla 2mo ago
What is the purpose of what you're saying? Because people lived like serfs and slaves for a lot of history, we should be okay with that? I don't mean to be shitty, and I fully understand that contrary takes are what HN is great at, but I genuinely fail to see what the point of your comment is other than a knee jerk nothing?

anon291 2mo ago

Well states need home prices to increase because the majority of their pension funds for their employees is invested in hedge funds seeking outsized returns that use single family homes as an investment vehicle. This can never be solved until we resolve the public pension crisis. Lawmakers in my state of Oregon are soon going to debate how the state invests in hedge funds but the simple truth of the numbers says that there's no possible way Oregon can meet its pension obligations without their stated returns.