snrplfth

36 ms·

241.
by snrplfth 10y ago
Economics is a science the same way climatology is a science, or ecology is a science. While you can fairly accurately determine what will happen on very small scales on short time spans (microeconomics, in short), questions about what will
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by snrplfth 10y ago
Exactly. It's like how I keep seeing people accusing "economists" (usually as an undefined group) with being concerned with "justifying the status quo". This, despite most economists having frequent, major disagre
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by snrplfth 10y ago
The trouble is that economists, of whatever theoretical school (well, except Marxians who are rather different) usually are asked to weigh in on the issues that are not well-investigated and where considerable disagreement exists. Basic con
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by snrplfth 10y ago
I'm not saying "all parking has the same externalities" - obviously, the first parking spot at a house has different impacts than the tenth. And of course people can do creative things with parking lots. I never said that the
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by snrplfth 10y ago
Well, a lot of it originated around street parking. When cars were becoming very popular and common, they would generally be parked on the street. Of course, since most street parking spaces were not metered (that is, free parking) this mea
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by snrplfth 10y ago
Most of the problems of resident-permit systems come from the fact that they are inconstantly enforced, or that no spots are reserved , so that people arrive in an area where they have permits but cannot find a spot. This is a problem in t
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by snrplfth 10y ago
Well, there's a number of solutions. You can tie the properties to particular street locations, like immediately in front of their house. You can give parking permits to local residents, and disallow visitor parking in some or all area
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by snrplfth 10y ago
I live in a metro area of 6.5 million people. The level of condo/apartment tower construction is huge, and is the majority of housing growth in the region. Developers demonstrably do construct parking - even expensive-to-build underg
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by snrplfth 10y ago
That's how these kinds of regulations frequently get ratcheted up. A: "It's nice to have lots of parking available everywhere! Let's make it mandatory." B:"But now everything is far apart, and I need a car to d
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by snrplfth 10y ago
Hugely. It's possible to build extremely tall buildings in certain specific areas of Manhattan (and New York in general, like in Downtown Brooklyn), but most of the city is "maxed out" to its zoning - that is, the tallest b
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by snrplfth 10y ago
If it's structured parking on a difficult grade, that's actually a totally plausible price, no cozy cost-inflating required. Recall that you're not just building the area of each parking space, but all the aisles and space le
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by snrplfth 10y ago
I think sfall means "cost to the public purse". It's like any minimum requirement that the government sets - it imposes costs, but doesn't require the raising of taxes, so it's easier to do politically.
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by snrplfth 10y ago
It's not hard to enforce the rule "don't park on places marked as not-for-parking". In fact it's quite easy. The problem is mainly that nobody tries actually enforcing them with sufficient strength, because they get
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by snrplfth 10y ago
>Sooooooooo private security firms for law enforcement? Pretty sure we saw how that worked out in Iraq with Blackwater. No thank you. A firm hired by the government , using taxpayer dollars , to carry out government orders , is not a
255.
by snrplfth 10y ago
Because if your building catches on fire, the people inside could die and it could spread to other buildings. Classic externality problem. Nobody is going to die because the owners of buildings get to choose how much parking their building
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by snrplfth 10y ago
Then just enforce the existing rules against parking on the street! This is not difficult. Indeed, it's easier than trying to centrally plan out exactly how much parking each house and business needs.
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by snrplfth 10y ago
The problem is that the requirements are so high, and demand the creation of so much parking (indeed, parking lots for commercial uses are generally required to be larger than the buildings they serve) that the price for parking is driven d
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by snrplfth 10y ago
All of those things are substantial factors. Building codes are another big one - most of them have little to do with safety or health, but rather "buildings must be of such-and-such minimum niceness, and if you can't afford that,
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by snrplfth 10y ago
But it's a large deadweight on the economy. It requires the production of considerable amounts of parking that is never, or almost never, used or needed by anybody. It makes parking easier only by hiding the cost of parking in everythi
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by snrplfth 10y ago
Maybe, maybe not. But isn't that for the businesses to decide, depending on their needs? As it stands, large numbers of businesses (and residences, etc.) are required to have more parking than they ever need at any point. How does th
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by snrplfth 10y ago
But you said it yourself - the way to solve the externality is to forbid them from parking on the street. How is that so difficult? Rather than the government trying to plan the optimal amount of parking for every possible time and use and
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by snrplfth 10y ago
Sure, if you want to sell. But if only some of the people want to sell, then the problem of non-compensated externalities arises again. It's a classic collective action problem arising mostly from the fact that things like air rights,
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by snrplfth 10y ago
Yes, Japan got it much righter than most.
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by snrplfth 10y ago
Which is one reason why condo ownership is so ubiquitous there.
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by snrplfth 10y ago
Yeah, it's hard to get this across to people who live in a city where it feels like supply is increasing fast (because it's in huge, highly visible towers), but as a percentage of the total stock, is growing quite slowly. I live
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by snrplfth 10y ago
I understand the response, certainly. But I don't think it's going to make housing (rental or ownership) substantially more available or cheaper in Vancouver - it'll just shuffle a few people around. And rich people don'
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by snrplfth 10y ago
The problem is that there's no effective way with (currently constituted) zoning law to 'trade' the externalities of density. You can't compensate your neighbours for shadows or traffic or other impacts in exchange for b
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by snrplfth 10y ago
The logic is that zoning makes for a housing shortage, which means it's profitable simply to hold on to properties without renting them, because the rent would be such a small portion of the investment gains. If supply increased, and m
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by snrplfth 10y ago
Vancouverism-as-high-density only applies to the small downtown area, and tiny slices of land near transit stations. Nearly all the city's area is single-family homes on tenth-acre lots.
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by snrplfth 10y ago
Vancouver voters simultaneously want: a) a low-rise, spaced-out city, b) rising property values for people who already own, and c) low home prices for people getting into the market. If you point out that you can only have two of these thr

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