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Rents in Megacities Can't Go Up Forever

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Re: Rents in Megacities Can't Go Up Forever

#251

Post by conanbatt »

jes5199 wrote: post #238
geff82 wrote: post #4

Especially for information technology, I don't understand the rationale why it has to be concentrated at certain places. As long as there is a good net connection, it could be anywhere in the world. Let's concentrate on the US for a moment. Why can't a successful startup not be in Dallas, Amarillo, Miami or Des Moines? Talented people already move from one coast to the other, so they could as well move to any other p…

> City centers simply get voided of average earning people and replaced by high earning ones. As soon as they are the average earners, even more wealthy people move okay but how do you run a city like San Francisco once all of the service industry workers get priced out? Do you start paying people 6 figures to clerk a convenience store?

Yes? And thats not really a problem at all.

Re: Rents in Megacities Can't Go Up Forever

#252

Post by davidf18 »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #161
nosuchthing wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fallacy of rent control, which only treats the symptom and fails to address the root problem of inadequate supply and restrictions to adding additional supply to the market.

I'm genuinely curious how the supply of housing in Manhattan could be increased.

Replacing 4 story Brownstones with high-rise apartments. Simply removing the politically induced scarcity of zoning density restrictions would achieve that or something similar.

See my earlier comment to this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13940272

Re: Rents in Megacities Can't Go Up Forever

#253

Post by Arizhel »

amyjess wrote: post #249
Arizhel wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but now you're forced to get a new job in a new place, or at the very least have a very lengthy commute. What's the point of having a family and kids if you're spending 3-4 hours a day just commuting to work? Or worse, having to live in Texas? This of course assumes that there's even jobs for you in TX or other low-cost locations. Basically, if you want to be a decently-paid professional and have a rewarding c…

I'm typing this from work -- I work at a B2B telecom in an inner-ring suburb of Dallas -- and all I have to do is look around the office and see lots and lots of white-collar professionals who live and work in the suburbs and have spouses and children, including everyone on my team (well, one guy on my team doesn't have kids, but he's married and owns a house in a conservative suburb). I remember when I used to sit n…

>Oh, and having a long commute and spending lots of time at work is considered a bonus to many people who have kids. Work is the best way to get a breather from the screaming babies at home. You know the guy who's always super-excited and happy to be in the office at 8:00 Monday morning? He's obviously a father.

So it all falls on the wife to do the vast majority of the child-rearing and domestic duties (in addition to their employee job), as supported by many current studies. No wonder so many women are opting out.

Anyway, I think the population figures speak for themselves and support my arguments. The US is at either ZPG or probably even NPG except for immigration, and statistics show a huge portion of children are born into poverty.

Re: Rents in Megacities Can't Go Up Forever

#254

Post by olalonde »

CPLX wrote: post #47
startupdiscuss wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very interesting and original way of looking at it. It would also explain clustering in other areas (finance in NYC, Oil and gas in Houston etc). Do you have any links or references exploring that idea in greater detail?

I don't mean to have this come across as snarky, at all, but really the reference for this is the whole of human history. Wealth is basically self-concentrating. Our political systems tend to end up with a few capital (and often Capitol) cities where the spoils from the plundering, both metaphorical and literal, end up. The original article does present some interesting and relevant examples of countervailing forces…

> Wealth is basically self-concentrating. Our political systems tend to end up with a few capital (and often Capitol) cities where the spoils from the plundering, both metaphorical and literal, end up.

Plundering, seriously? Isn't HN supposed to be a community of entrepreneurs?

Re: Rents in Megacities Can't Go Up Forever

#255

Post by prewett »

fallingfrog wrote: post #223

Well, of course, no number that represents a physical quantity can go up forever.. neither electric charge, nor information, nor energy, or mass, nor money. Yeah I'm being a bit nitpicky I guess.

Well, since I'm good at contrarian nitpickiness, I'm going to argue that it can. Mass can increase forever in a black hole, and if you keep accelerating, you get heavier and heavier so that you can never actually reach the speed of light. I guess you could argue that black holes will eventually run out of matter, and you would run out of accelerant, though. Conductivity is infinite in super-conductors (i.e. resistance=0). I don't see any reason why energy has any limit to how much it can be concentrated. I think people have argued that irrational numbers like Pi contain all possible strings (that is, of the characters [0-9]), although you may have to look pretty far out. So that would mean that the digits of Pi have infinite information.

Writing this makes me think the world is a stranger place than I thought. I would have said that a physical quantity cannot go up forever, but I've talked myself out of that.

Re: Rents in Megacities Can't Go Up Forever

#256

Post by conanbatt »

acchow wrote: post #235
mcguire wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College tuition has been going up much faster than incomes. When I went, the only people I knew getting student loans were those getting professional degrees: medical doctors and lawyers.

Tuition used to be very low. When we adopted a culture of "college is everything" that's when tuitions rose rapidly to meet what could be maximally extracted from the middle class. We've now reached that point so they will rise slowly now - only to meet increases in government aid (direct and indirect aid) and increases in middle class incomes.

Food is more everything than college and it didnt raise prices the same way. College tuition has specific market conditions to be the way it is.

Re: Rents in Megacities Can't Go Up Forever

#257

Post by ghaff »

conanbatt wrote: post #251
jes5199 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> City centers simply get voided of average earning people and replaced by high earning ones. As soon as they are the average earners, even more wealthy people move okay but how do you run a city like San Francisco once all of the service industry workers get priced out? Do you start paying people 6 figures to clerk a convenience store?

Yes? And thats not really a problem at all.

Except it doesn't work that way. Instead 7-11 simply decides that it can't run a convenience store profitably in that location. For other types of service workers, wages/fees may well go up but it probably also just gets harder to find people.

Re: Rents in Megacities Can't Go Up Forever

#258

Post by Retric »

CPLX wrote: post #47
startupdiscuss wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very interesting and original way of looking at it. It would also explain clustering in other areas (finance in NYC, Oil and gas in Houston etc). Do you have any links or references exploring that idea in greater detail?

I don't mean to have this come across as snarky, at all, but really the reference for this is the whole of human history. Wealth is basically self-concentrating. Our political systems tend to end up with a few capital (and often Capitol) cities where the spoils from the plundering, both metaphorical and literal, end up. The original article does present some interesting and relevant examples of countervailing forces…

A huge missing part of this discussion is Tech is not that concentrated in 'The Bay Area' people are. More people live in 'The Bay Area' than Maine, Montana, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming combined.

The Bay Area plus NYC metro area are 8.5% of the total US population so yes they are a significantly larger chunk of GDP and wealth. But, they are large enough that the differences are smaller than you might think.

Re: Rents in Megacities Can't Go Up Forever

#259

Post by dragonwriter »

fallingfrog wrote: post #223

Well, of course, no number that represents a physical quantity can go up forever.. neither electric charge, nor information, nor energy, or mass, nor money. Yeah I'm being a bit nitpicky I guess.

> Well, of course, no number that represents a physical quantity can go up forever..

Money isn't a physical quantity, though it can be represented by physical tokens; and, yes, a measure of a physical quantity can go up forever if the physical quantity is continuously (rather than quantum) valued. It may even be able to go up without bound whether it is quantized or not (which is different than going up forever), depending on the exact measure used.

In any case, nominal rents absolutely can go up both forever and without bound, and real (inflation-adjusted) rents probably can, too.

And rent in any particular city can go up forever and without boubd much more easily than overall rents.

Re: Rents in Megacities Can't Go Up Forever

#260

Post by humbleMouse »

jimlawruk wrote: post #55
bpicolo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are certainly a lot of factors. People want to live in trendy cities. There's a lot to consider besides rent - culture, nightlife, etc. San Francisco sure does have some of the best food in the country (and with tech consuming most of spare time the way it is, eating out is really a huge part of culture). Rent definitely ends up being the deal breaker for many, but for others isn't. It's a lot harder for a comp…

Exactly right. Young people today would rather be poor in a "trendy" city, than rich in a not so trendy one. It has almost become a badge of honor of how much you can rough it to stay afloat in X trendy city. I am guessing it was not like this for previous generations, and I think it leads to too much homogeneity of culture. I think we should start to encouraging people to go to a uncool city and help build it up and…

"I think we should start to encouraging people to go to a uncool city and help build it up and make it cool." -

This basically describes the prevailing attitude in Minneapolis. Minneapolis is super cheap and has all the fancy cocktail bars you will ever need.

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