141–150 of 393 posts
The only way to make it happen is to incentivize it monetarily. That means the government’s budget would have to be heavily controlled by how many residents there are. But just residency is too narrow of a lens to make any conclusions from, in my opinion.
... aren't we there already?
Wow. Is Bloomberg actually a credible business publication? Barring a serious housing surplus, or similar major economic problems, there are ~no upsides for political leaders who actually work to attract more residents to an area. (Attracting more & higher bidders, for the limited housing stock, is a different story.) Vs. "attracting new business"? That attracts plenty of favorable press, bragging rights, etc. And fo…
> and every dollar worth of residential housing is a money pit. This can't possibly be true in any of the municipalities I've ever lived in. Property taxes are insane, like fancy private school tuition insane and it's definitely not going into the roads. Actually lets break it down: Power, water, and sewer are paid for by their consumption. My local utilities actually have the problem that they _make_ too much money.…
Former educator: This mostly comes down to being able to select for students from house holds that have large disposable income and care enough about their child's education to send them to a private school.
This usually gets you a lot of benefits:
1. Less disruptive kids (get too disruptive and they kick you out)
2. More engaged kids
3. Parents with leisure time to volunteer
4. Easier fundraising (private school in my area rakes in ~$1ml/yr in fundraising, vs $500k for the public school).
I really want to re-iterate how powerful the effect of being able to kick people out of the school is. Like in most things 20% of the families generate 80% of disruptions in public schools and private schools basically get to elide that by not being a public service.
I've owned houses in two cities in my life. One called itself "A developer-friendly community" and the other "A healthy community" The cities were organized around their taglines. One was 300 years old and focused on parks, trails, conservancy, and community centers. The other a younger city focused on growth and sprawl, tax abatements, and new businesses. You should live where the government aligns with your phase o…
Your healthy community is experiencing homelessness and a housing affordability problem along with every "themed" community around you. Does it make sense to stick with the original theme? No. It doesn't.
The problem here is that by owning property you buy into that theme. Any divergence from that theme is harmful to what you bought.
The only way forward is eminent domain.
But at the scale of current property ownership there's going to be huge backlash from property owners. If people who don't own property organize in numbers that dwarf the total amount of property owners then that could generate enough conflict towards social change.
But that level of organization won't happen until the desperateness hits a sort of criticality. We're still far from that so I'm safe. But make no mistake I know the moral action that we must take, and me sitting on my property is not it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For a migratory species it is literally inhuman to erect a border. Borders should be jurisdictional boundaries but should be permeable like the states in the US. The rest of the tribalism BS is just that.
I'm interested here, as I'm inclined to disagree pretty strongly. How would you prevent the erosion of rights or culture by a group with a bigger population? For instance, have a few hundred thousand Americans move to Cuba and vote to have Cuba secede to the US? Or a few hundred thousand mainland Chinese citizens move to Taiwan and do the same? While it's definitely nice to keep migration smooth and easy, it seems li…
I’d use the US as an example. In a real sense the US is a collection of small countries with a federal system and free right of migration. For this discussion the federal system is irrelevant. How does California or New York or other high populace states ensure erosion of rights? I’d posit part of the very reason they’re so attractive is they tend to hold rights very high on their list of priorities. More oppressive states, likewise lose populace to migration because unless you’re in the in group you don’t belong there.
Cultural erosion is IMO nativism and bias. Time is change, no culture is static, and even our oldest cultures are young compared to humanity and look nothing like they did 100 years ago. Changing populace doesn’t change a culture any more than time does, it’s just easier to blame someone that doesn’t look or talk like you for it.
Your examples of mainland Chinese citizens or Americans moving around are only relevant because the issue of borders to begin with. If there were permeable borders we would be in a steady state and you wouldn’t see behaviors like that. Maybe in the beginning you would see artifacts of history manifest weird transient behaviors, as you do in any suddenly changed dynamical system. But in steady state your scenarios would be as likely as all democrats moving to Georgia to change the election. It sounds good but in practice didn’t happen.
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> and every dollar worth of residential housing is a money pit. This can't possibly be true in any of the municipalities I've ever lived in. Property taxes are insane, like fancy private school tuition insane and it's definitely not going into the roads. Actually lets break it down: Power, water, and sewer are paid for by their consumption. My local utilities actually have the problem that they _make_ too much money.…
> Schools are paid by property tax, but every public school in every jurisdiction I've ever lived in has been inferior to private while costing me almost as much via property tax. Former educator: This mostly comes down to being able to select for students from house holds that have large disposable income and care enough about their child's education to send them to a private school. This usually gets you a lot of b…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The way I interpreted it is- cities and states should focus more on being great places to live, not great places to move your corporate office. And although I'm sure this is not a popular sentiment, I think governments are too biased towards people already living in their jurisdiction, even if those people are there by mere coincidence (i.e. they happened to be born there). People shouldn't be held to higher standard…
It is not "coincidence" that Chinese are born in China and Polish in Poland. It is their inheritance, their birthright, the fruit of their ancestors' labors. To tear out all connection to one's history by calling it "coincidence" is, frankly, sickening.
It is just a statement of fact that the geographic location a person is born is coincidence.
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It's a modern (a 'temporary measure' enacted in WW1) invention to enact a passport-controlled system of travel and residency across the entire world. Border control prior to it was more focused on customs taxes, and in some countries, keeping undesirable races/religions out. We have decided the latter is wrong, so instead of directly banning, say, Chinese or Jewish immigration, we replaced it with quotas on country o…
We can go one step further and also say that the entire system of social welfare is a post-WW2 invention. Before WW2 the state only helped those who couldn’t help themselves. Now the state just fucks everyone.
Not...really? Unless by "state" you are broadly including the church and other philanthropy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and every dollar worth of residential housing is a money pit. This can't possibly be true in any of the municipalities I've ever lived in. Property taxes are insane, like fancy private school tuition insane and it's definitely not going into the roads. Actually lets break it down: Power, water, and sewer are paid for by their consumption. My local utilities actually have the problem that they _make_ too much money.…
I have no idea whether it is true where you are, but it certainly IS true where I am. First, commercial property taxes in California are generally higher than residential. Which is an incentive to attract business, not residents. https://www.hechtgroup.com/the-different-taxes-imposed-on-co... Second, you're seriously underestimating the cost of roads. As https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193...…
Sure, but businesses making _more_ for an area doesn't mean residential areas aren't profitable.
>the bit of road your car is parked on usually costs more than the car.
Sensational nonsense. ~100sq ft of black tar asphalt, barring some kind of bananna republic corruption scheme, could never cost _more_ than an average automobile. Think about how absurd that statement is, and reevaluate why your internal filters allowed that statement through.
>Now walk around your neighborhood and look at how much road there is. ALL of it costs that much. Most of us don't think about it, but it has to be paid for somehow. And it really isn't cheap.
The premise is absurd, so the conclusion from it is invalid.
This line of thinking comes up often on HN but it ignores the central reason for governments to enact borders, a rather modern invention. Governments (at the behest of businesses) enforce borders so that labor cannot effectively organise. A border exists often for workers only, but is mostly a legal fiction that corporations can easily navigate. The most common example for the Americans reading this is NAFTA, which m…
Every deceased Emperor, Chief, King, Earl, Duke, Lord and other ruler of lands and holder of fiefdoms would disagree with this.