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The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

derekthompson.org

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Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#571

Post by kloop »

bluGill wrote: post #174
nathan_compton wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I get it. But we also use liberal and I think in this particular case its worth drawing the distinction between these two "camps" of the democratic party.

The meaning of liberal and conservative has shifted so much over time that the term is now useless. The original meaning of liberal was about not killing you neighbor if they were a different religion - from which we get freedom of religion. That slowly expanded to things like freedom for slaves and women voting.

You're describing classical liberalism. The meaning of the term liberalism in the US switched to social liberalism back in the great depression (unless specified with a qualifier). It has remained roughly constant for as long as most people on this site have been alive. Though I will grant that the policies social liberals support have changed since then.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#572

Post by potato3732842 »

grafmax wrote: post #503
dlcarrier wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, developers are incentivized to build whatever units are most profitable, but the price per square foot is much higher for small units than for large units, so without regulations prohibiting high-density projects, you'll end up with far more units for a given amount of resources. Instead of building 20 units of 2,000 sq ft, if allowed a developer could instead build 40 units of 1,000 sq ft, for a similar cost, a…

It’s more than just extra fixtures and interior walls but bathrooms, kitchens, plumbing, and HVAC - some of the most expensive parts of a build. For example if a developer has 4,000 square foot of land, and it costs $1.6 million to build 4 units selling at $2.4 million total - vs costing $1.2 million to build a luxury unit selling at $2.2 million, they will build the single luxury unit. The overall price for the cons…

If you wanna break it down by "systems" the most expensive part is the regulatory compliance you need to engage in before you start.

People shit on the healthcare industry for being written into law and they shit on the credit processors for taking a cut of every transaction but the degree to which various flavors of paper pushing engineers are required by law to be given a cut of every single creation, alteration and major repair of a structure is mind boggling.

And this racket is a large part of what puts the squeeze on low end projects.

If it takes me $50k of engineering to be granted a $100 permit to do another $50k of tree clearing and dirt work on a lot then whatever I build needs to make up for that. If not for BS compliance those numbers would be something like $5k, $100, $20k

All of this expense, levied upon literally every single project everywhere, all to prevent the 1/100 or 1/1000 case where someone does something (that they likely knew was) stupid and causes a runoff problem or whatever, that could likely be mitigated by the same costs after the fact where and when it happens.

And this is before you start discussing all the areas where industry and company lobbyists have got their clients inserted into the IBC at the expense of the public.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#573

Post by echelon_musk »

bboygravity wrote: post #445
hamhock666 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't people already pay for things like the NYT? I guess local papers might be harder, they may have to demonstrate they can reveal the journalistic failures of other papers in local affairs.

It's fascinating to me that people would pay to read obvious political propaganda. I get that the state-sponsored "news" in many EU countries is heavily politically coloured, but why would something like NYT be if they have paying subscribers? I never did the research, but I'm guessing they must have huge additional streams of income besides payments from readers?

It's depressing to see the paper that once had the courage to publish the Pentagon Papers seen as publishing political propaganda.

What alternative revenue incentive do you see that could support independent journalism?

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#574

Post by johnecheck »

username332211 wrote: post #520
podgorniy wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Excessive regulation is 90% of it. Housing crisis is observed in almost all what is called "first world" (europe, japan, usa). I believe that 90% of the issue is more global than a regulation.

The global issue is that elected representatives are becoming weaker. The idea that a city hall would need to organize some sort of public meeting before approving a construction project is a fairly new one. The city council is elected to represent the people. If they need "community input" why are they even here? (Nevermind the obvious problem with such participatory process - sane and normal people can't participat…

"Sane and normal people can't participate in every local government decision unless it's their job. Hence why we have representative democracy".

While true, times have changed. The information flow is orders of magnitude faster and have you seen any sane and normal people lately? The norm is spending hours scrolling social media. The argument that nobody has spare time/attention and thus we all need representatives falls flat to me.

We need to explore alternative forms of representation to allow people to choose their level of engagement in various levels of government. Perhaps I'm happy to delegate all national matters to a representative I trust but want to regularly weigh in on local decisions.

Between the technical challenge of trust/security and the inevitable political resistance to such ideas, I sadly don't expect to see them implemented any time soon.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#575

Post by niam »

TFYS wrote: post #435
999900000999 wrote: post #352

Excessive regulation is 90% of it. Here's how a rational market works. If I build an apartment complex, eventually those apartments will get older and more affordable. And even before that upper middle class folks will move in, freeing up their previous homes. But that's not how many in local governments see it. So you have affordable housing quotas on new developments. You have developers building units for the home…

> Here's how a rational market works. Might regulations be the result of these "rational markets"? After all, if I invest a lot of money to build apartments, I might want to protect that investment by lobbying for regulations to make it harder for competitors, increasing the value of my investment. Or if I buy an apartment, I might want to prevent others from ruining my view, prevent noise, etc. All completely ration…

Whether it is or isn't seems immaterial if you're of the opinion that government should step in to solve issues where the market has proved ineffective.

If it's the case that market participants have an imperative to convince the government to screw everyone else over: a solution preventing the government from being convinced by small petty nonsense seems remarkably simple, relative to the other kinds of policy challenges that exist.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#576

Post by yunwal »

scoofy wrote: post #227
gopher_space wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collusion using online management services to fix prices across a region. I think Washington State is working on legislation around rental services due to this already being a problem in the Seattle area. “Extra supply” is added to the portfolio containing housing they’ve already purchased. They own part of “existing supply” too.

Housing is a depreciating asset. Even if you're trying to continuously corner the market, you'll be losing money in the long run if you're not actually renting the units for more than you're buying them for. If supply can be built to meet demand, trying to corner the market to achieve monopoly rents will fail in the long run.

> Housing is a depreciating asset.

It ought to be, but that is not how America works

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#577

Post by olddustytrail »

alienbaby wrote: post #521
olddustytrail wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I've never heard that. He seems reasonable to me. Can you provide a link where someone dismisses him as a "crank"? I'd be interested to see whose opinion this is.

a quick google for 'garys economics critique' throws up a good few places to get started :) - I would summarise here, but I'm no expert and am just digging into this myself.

I had a quick search and there's a Reddit thread where the first comment is critical but they get corrected by replies. Then some right wing blogs that spend more time on ad hominem and remarks about "lefty" admirers than actually going into detail.

Did you find any intelligent criticism you can point out? I'm too lazy to trawl through endless stupidity to try and find a nugget of truth! :)

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#578

Post by IFC_LLC »

dlcarrier wrote: post #457
IFC_LLC wrote: post #221

Pretty much any criticism of a current housing market can't happen without mentioning the quality of said housing. I have just come back from one of the apartments I was looking at to see an abysmally small shoebox with some sort of doors and windows installed in there. I live in a house with 9-foot ceilings and I feel like a king. But this is insane. Recently I've visited a rental property to find shallow, not sound…

Rest assured, the quality has gone up, just not in ways that you, or most anyone, cares about. You'll be satisfied knowing that every house in the country is built with outlets every 12 feet, with independent circuits for the for every few hundred watts of lighting, able to withstand Arizona heat, California earthquakes, Florida hurricanes, Louisiana humidity, Minnesota cold, and everything else you may or more likel…

Oh man, how much I agree on a building code.

The last hurricane I survived, I had to spend time in my office building. It is made of concrete and real brick and mortar. There is no need whatsoever to “hurricane-proof it", save for the special shatterproof windows. Big, 4 by 6 shatterproof windows.

The shoebox I live in currently features the same shatterproof windows. 2x1 feet, small windows. I had to re-install all the light fixtures in the rented house because despite featuring white walls, it’s darker than a necromancer’s cave.

The former was built in the 70s. The latter - in 2023. The latter does boast an impressive array of anti-hurricane features. For example, it is bolted down to the foundation so it can't be torn by a wind gust. And the frame was re-inforced so it won't lean under the wind.

Shall I mention the fact that none of those features are necessary for a brick building?

To top it off, the AC has leaked in 2024, so I had to deal with that already. It was less than 1 year old at that moment.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#579

Post by chronogram »

setopt wrote: post #339
Animats wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't want to shell out $20/mo for, say, the Economist right now but if there was a particular article I wanted to read I'd probably pay a few bucks. The Economist is one of the few news sources worth paying for. Every week, there's a tour of the world's major events, by region. There will also be an in-depth article on one country (how's Rwanda getting along?), an in-depth article on one industry (what's the sit…

I love their writing, but I hate their subscriptions. The only way to cancel is to talk to customer service via chat or phone, who will keep begging and insisting that you not cancel and offering discounts to try to stop you. When I finally did manage to cancel, it required at least half an hour of insisting to some salesman. I originally planned to just take a break, but after that distasteful cancellation procedure…

I sent them an email to unsubscribe one time to take a break too, though I'm European that was many years ago. I hope it didn't get worse.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#580

Post by tghccxs »

thrance wrote: post #552
didibus wrote: post #287

I just couldn't keep reading with the constant "antitrust left" being refered to on every sentence. The issue, is that for me, the reader, it framed the piece as the author seemingly positioning themselves as the "the other side", the one that knows best and isn't those "antitrust left". It felt like it was creating a strawman and was engaging in tribal signaling. And when you consider the rest of the piece was them…

It all makes sense when you take "abundance liberalism" for what it actually is: a rebranding of neoliberalism in support of establishment democrats. Its main goal is not to provide the democratic party with a new direction, but to defend the status quo against the populist left, incarnated by the likes of AOC and Mamdani. It makes sense then, that they'd spend more time attacking the left than the right, as they rea…

Do you think this specific criticism of the “populist left” by the “abundance liberals” is valid though?
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