341–350 of 461 posts
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There's a reason that "Fuck you, got mine"/"socially liberal, fiscally conservative" was named "the California Ideology", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology .
That's outdated. California hasn't been fiscally conservative for over a decade.
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This isn’t true. The only industry I’m aware of that might actually be a natural monopoly, as in the efficient number of companies is one, is aircraft manufacturing. Local utilities aren’t natural monopolies, cable isn’t a natural monopoly, water, gas, electricity, these definitely aren’t natural monopolies. If manufacturing semiconductors, with fabs that cost tens of billions of dollars isn’t a natural monopoly, why…
Local utilities aren’t natural monopolies, cable isn’t a natural monopoly, water, gas, electricity, these definitely aren’t natural monopolies. How are utilities not a natural monopoly? The cost and disruption of building infrastructure to serve everyone is definitely a monopoly. Do you really want four or five companies digging up streets and building pipes, wires, etc? Also, if you had multiple companies competing,…
Utilities are not a natural monopoly because we have multiple examples of competition lasting decades in municipalities. This is not compatible with the economic concept of natural monopoly. It’s a disproof by existence.
If you want to discourage too much digging up the street charge people to do it. If they’re doing too much charge more. Problem solved; the various companies that want to dig up will come to a mutually agreeable arrangement on cost sharing if they want to dig up the street.
Multiple competing companies going after the most profitable customers is very much not proof of the existence of natural monopoly. It’s also perfectly fine. If you want uneconomic customers served for reasons of equity pay for it. You can either pay for it directly and make the costs visible or you can mandate universal service and spread the costs across all customers. Either way the cost is paid; you don’t get anything for free.
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Say you have equity in a non public company, would you be okay if the government taxed your equity forcing you to take out a loan against it?
These 2 scenarios aren't equivalent. Land is an exclusionary good; you using it means I can't. Equity is non-exclusionary. Additionally, the city has to provide services to owners of land, which requires money. The government has no such obligation to owners of equity.
The government also has to fund services to everyone who works there whether or not they own land. Do devices cost more to home owners based on the value of their land?
I thought the purpose of tax was to fund the government. Not to take stuff that other people wanted.....
There’s one thing that constantly confuses me with the housing crisis, which is why more people aren’t moving to other cities (or at least a lot faster than they currently are). Perhaps my mentality is different than most, but if I can improve my economic situation by moving elsewhere I will. I know for some people it is difficult to move because of family ties or costs associated with moving, but I would have though…
Economists have studied this pretty extensively. What they've found is that every time a city doubles in size, its economic productivity goes up by around 5-7%[1]. This relationship seems to hold across a remarkable range environments. In the ancient times, in modern times, in the Renaissance, in American, in Europe, in Asia, in the first world, in the third world, and so on. This is what makes bootstrapping a new ci…
> … in contemporary US cities productivity increases by about 11% with each doubling of their population.
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Local utilities aren’t natural monopolies, cable isn’t a natural monopoly, water, gas, electricity, these definitely aren’t natural monopolies. How are utilities not a natural monopoly? The cost and disruption of building infrastructure to serve everyone is definitely a monopoly. Do you really want four or five companies digging up streets and building pipes, wires, etc? Also, if you had multiple companies competing,…
Please consider reading the linked article. Utilities are not a natural monopoly because we have multiple examples of competition lasting decades in municipalities. This is not compatible with the economic concept of natural monopoly. It’s a disproof by existence. If you want to discourage too much digging up the street charge people to do it. If they’re doing too much charge more. Problem solved; the various compani…
And as far as what happens when you let multiple companies dig up the streets that are willing to pay for it, we also have an example of what happens when a company decides to abandon an area when it’s not profitable and leaves the infrastructure and the streets in a mess. Google Fiber and shallow trenching....
https://www.cnet.com/news/google-fibers-secret-weapon-in-its...
What do you think is going to happen when these companies go out of business? Are we now also going to have multiple companies serving the last mile? What happens at the last mile when your water company goes out of business? How long will it take a competitor to get to your home?
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Preserving nice low density areas is not selfish. Why does everyone need to be entitled to live anywhere they want?
Is everybody conversely entitled to live in low density areas?
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Campaigns cost millions of dollars. Where do you think that money comes from? Principles and integrity?
A well-funded campaign is useless against pissed off voters.
The re-election rate of incumbents in California state senate districts approaches 100%. Getting into office in a district of a million people is about money, nothing else.
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Local utilities aren’t natural monopolies, cable isn’t a natural monopoly, water, gas, electricity, these definitely aren’t natural monopolies. How are utilities not a natural monopoly? The cost and disruption of building infrastructure to serve everyone is definitely a monopoly. Do you really want four or five companies digging up streets and building pipes, wires, etc? Also, if you had multiple companies competing,…
> How are utilities not a natural monopoly? Water, sewer, and storm drain, yes, that's a plausible natural monopoly. Electrical power, telephone, and internet, no. At most the conduits that the cables have to go through could be a natural monopoly, but not the services themselves. > if you had multiple companies competing, they would only serve the most profitable customers who live in the most dense areas. You see t…
There is historical precedent for internet providers competing for internet over a common infrastructure. That use to be required for DSL. None of the companies were profitable. Locally there was MindSpring and Telestream among others that both tried.
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>California is a perfect example of what happens when you let environmentalists handle housing policy, the poor suffer because environmentalism is classism in disguise in these social contexts. Most of the environmentalists that I know are very much in favor of increasing housing density and reducing commute time in ICE vehicles. Current housing policy does neither of these things.
Environmentalist support for density increases is only about 20 years old. When these policies were created, it was done by the previous generation of lawmakers.
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Anyone in this situation can easily take out a home equity loan to pay the taxes and come out way ahead. Your assertion that the higher taxes would force them to move is wrong.
Say you have equity in a non public company, would you be okay if the government taxed your equity forcing you to take out a loan against it?