Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming • Hacker News Board

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#461

Post by pdonis » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

bobthechef wrote: post #158

antisthenes wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quality of life is not zero-sum, bot on a local level and a short timeframe, many things are indeed zero sum. The best example is land & desirable real estate. It only takes a few people with "outside" money to drive up prices in the market or to purchase land and sit on it in perpetuity, driving up prices by taking it out of the local supply.

From [0]: "Aquinas believed that it was specifically immoral to raise prices because a particular buyer had an urgent need for what was being sold [...] Aquinas would therefore condemn practices such as raising the price of building supplies in the wake of a natural disaster. Increased demand caused by the destruction of existing buildings does not add to a seller's costs, so to take advantage of buyers' increased wi…

> Aquinas believed all gains made in trade must relate to the labour exerted by the merchant, not to the need of the buyer.

So if I need my house painted, I should pay you a lot more if you do it with a toothbrush instead of normal painting equipment?

> the divorce of market value from labor

Which is simply a fact of life--often an unpleasant one, but a fact nevertheless. Market value--what someone else will trade for something you have--has nothing to do with how much labor you put in to whatever it is you have.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#462

Post by throwaway0a5e » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 5:44 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #369

Workaccount2 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also have the issue of the wealth divide. Its gonna be very difficult to hang out with locals when your annual income is more than they have made in a decade. Jealously alone will tear things apart, nevermind the near complete lack of overlapping life experience. So you end up with the wealthy newcomers only interacting with other wealthy newcomers. Essentially a new culture in a place that had an established cul…

I think that can happen, but doesn't have to. It depends if the person integrates into the local system. There are usually some wealthy people in the area to begin with, like doctors, lawyers, etc. If the community feels you are a part of it, then the wealth shouldn't be an real issue.

>depends if the person integrates into the local system.

That's just not going to happen though. The newcomers have nothing in common. Life experience, wealth, religion, ideology, none of if. And then the top it off by showing up and changing the place both intentionally and unintentionally. No wonder the locals don't want them around.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#463

Post by oh_sigh » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 5:45 PM UTC

elthyrior wrote: post #454

randomopining wrote: post #352

I heard all these places, especially Denver and the area around it, are swarmed with "outdoors bros" etc from Cali and the east coast. Overcrowded. Traffic jams to go out to the mountains every weekend. Cultural homogenization. Is that true, or overblown?

Pretty much true. I-70 into the mountains is a parking lot on Friday and Saturday, and basically the same leaving the mountains on Sunday. Turns what should be a three to four drive to get to the western slope into six to seven some days.

You're complaining that too many people are making a Fri-Sun trip into the mountains, and it is making your Fri-Sun trip into the mountains take too long?

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#464

Post by giantg2 » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 5:46 PM UTC

zip1234 wrote: post #453

giantg2 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'll never understand anti-gentrifiers." I think the main point is being forced out of your life-long home due to increased costs or taxes. Or the destruction of the local cultures/customs through change in local government policies. If you want an extreme example, you can look at the way that cult in Oregon took over a county/town in the 80s or 90s. Nothing legally wrong with it (the population segment with the hig…

Every place changes regardless of people trying to preserve them in amber. The 'forced out of your lifelong' home thing is tough but I haven't seen any good solutions to it. California absolutely messed up their state with their property tax changes that turned home ownership into feudalism. Good intentions to help the old people stay in their homes but it means that the new people moving in support the people that l…

"However, in essentially 0 places in the US that are hot housing markets do they allow as much housing as is demanded."

And thus my question/comments about controlling the demand side, as the supply side changes haven't worked well.

"Good intentions to help the old people stay in their homes but it means that the new people moving in support the people that lived there earlier."

Well, the system of funding the schools through property taxes on people without children is essentially the same - tax is used for "the collective good", where you have some people supporting others.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#465

Post by pdonis » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 5:46 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #370

lotsofpulp wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of increased prices is to incentivize more supply to come into the market. If prices do not rise with demand (and static supply), then you’re left with a market where certain buyers are lucky (or connected) and some don’t get anything.

ERCOT's dismal failure the past several months has once again shown the fallacy of this thinking. Raising prices to infinity cannot induce supply of a good or service for which there is simply no capacity to provision. Nor does discrimination by price for life's essentials result in fair or equitable distribution when there is a tremendous inequality in purchasing power among the population, much if that itself the r…

> There's another market mechanism for addressing probabalistic risks, which is to prepare in advance

And that means that someone has to pay the costs of doing that. In a free market economy, the people who do the preparing in advance are called "speculators", and they are rewarded or penalized by standard market mechanisms according to how well they prepare. Those standard market mechanisms include being able to charge a higher price during periods of scarcity according to the natural laws of supply and demand.

The alternative is to have some central planning organization that sets requirements and doles out rewards and penalties. And that alternative has all of the same flaws as every other central planning solution--as the very example you give, ERCOT, shows.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#466

Post by throwaway0a5e » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

ecshafer wrote: post #333

AlanSE wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm extremely sympathetic to this view. Habitat destruction is the #1 or #2 way we're screwing over the planet. However, this looks like an area where environmentalists risk getting themselves into trouble. Global warming is a defined and solvable task, but the messaging keeps changing to something more like an open-ended commitment. That has huge risks for the public to tune it out, and perhaps further procrastinate…

Housing prices are almost purely supply and demand. Cities like New York City have 90% of their existing housing stock ( the cheapest and densest buildings) labelled as illegal under their current zoning laws.Los Angeles have extremely restrictive laws that make only the most luxurious high end towers being financially viable, and most of the city zoned for only suburban sprawl. San Francisco is largely illegal to bu…

Trying to force density on people will fail because people don't like being told what to do and the government is terrible at telling people what to do. Just let people build whatever, wherever (hazardous commercial activity notwithstanding) and the suitable density for the area will develop naturally... like it did pre-ww2

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#467

Post by pdonis » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 5:52 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #212

bobthechef wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From [0]: "Aquinas believed that it was specifically immoral to raise prices because a particular buyer had an urgent need for what was being sold [...] Aquinas would therefore condemn practices such as raising the price of building supplies in the wake of a natural disaster. Increased demand caused by the destruction of existing buildings does not add to a seller's costs, so to take advantage of buyers' increased wi…

The purpose of increased prices is to incentivize more supply to come into the market. If prices do not rise with demand (and static supply), then you’re left with a market where certain buyers are lucky (or connected) and some don’t get anything.

> The purpose of increased prices is to incentivize more supply to come into the market.

It is true, though, that this only helps if more supply can come into the market quickly enough to help. If "more supply" means "more electrical power generation plants that will take five years to build", that's not something that increased prices in the short term can fix.

Another way of dealing with cases like that, however, is innovation: finding an alternative way to meet the same need that doesn't have the same supply problem. For example, if people know that their state's power grid is unreliable, they have more of an incentive to find ways to decrease their reliance on the grid--solar panels, individual homes with their own generators, etc. But that requires transparency--people have to know, well in advance of a problem happening, that their state's power grid is unreliable, so they can take action. Which means the government has to be honest in telling them what the state of the grid is. That, I think, is where the actual root problem often lies.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#468

Post by ptudan » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #145

wwweston wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As much as I'd love to work for a FAANG, retire early, and buy a large house in an idyllic mountain town, I'd hate for that same town to loose its historical roots and what makes it that special idyllic mountain town in the first place. It's already arguably happened; fruit orchards and irrigation turns were big part of the milieu in Orem/Provo a few decades back, and they're all but absent now, and in general the…

The problem is the money firehose. Getting rich steadily is fine. Getting rich quickly because of outside factors is what provides perverse incentives, room for bad things to hide and screws everything up. Using fat paychecks to lay waste to small towns is one of the few things tech yuppie and oil pipeline workers have in common. Best (i.e. least worst) case scenario you end up as a rich people playground like Tahoe…

I'm confused, how is owning a bar or cafe in a hot spot an immoral activity?

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#469

Post by asdff » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

prostoalex wrote: post #383

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're seeing negativity because it's getting harder and harder to deny that this "dream" involves the locals getting screwed when tech monopoly money turns their local economy upside down. Sure the guy who had the foresight to start a brewery wins but everyone else loses. You know what the end game of this looks like? It looks like Vail CO, Cape Cod MA, coastal Long Island and CT, the Hamptons, wealthy retirement ar…

Any small town has two problems: * influx of tourism and remote owners -> rising prices * lack of tourism or property interest -> slow death I am not sure what would be the right public policy to balance the two extremes. Maybe Hawaii has the right idea with tiered property taxation - the longer you reside there, the lower your property tax becomes?

Prices shouldn't rise if you are allowed to build enough supply to meet demand. A lack of property interest isn't necessarily a bad thing for a place. Land isn't for speculation, it's for use.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#470

Post by lotsofpulp » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

kristjansson wrote: post #402

davidw wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this concept of "acceptance of other people" is key. There seems to be a sort of cultural meme, especially in the western US, that everyone should be able to have a ton of land to themselves, but that's simply not realistic. "Beautiful, scenic place; solitude; easy access to population centers" - pick two. There's a popular Wilderness Area about a 30 minute drive from Bend, Oregon and people act all surprised…

Exactly. With the slight caveat that beautiful and scenic really only enter into your triangular choice when a place is publicized (advertised?) as such. There are beautiful, restive, empty places to go within an hour Los Angeles, Seattle, ... that are kept that way only by relative obscurity and mildly inconvenient access.

All of those places are probably less likely to stay obscure or will blow up quicker due to the internet.