The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong • Hacker News Board

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#781

Post by donatj » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 12:25 AM UTC

infotainment wrote: post #13

Ericson2314 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking why they don't build affordable housing is like asking why don't they build used cars

Exactly -- all new housing is going to be marketed as "luxury". Who is going to build a brand-new apartment and say "well, this is janky low-quality housing, you might want to live here if you're poor or something"?

I go outside and look at my neighborhood of bungalows largely built immediately after the war, they were not sold as luxury. They were sold as affordable housing.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#782

Post by lovich » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 12:57 AM UTC

thrance wrote: post #772

lovich wrote: post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read the book? A large portion of it is dedicated to how we got here. Nimbyism and people’s desire to keep their property value high is part of it. The levers that have been used to make those values high include a ton of regulation that makes it impossible to build start ups homes even if you were a perfectly moral actor seeking to generate exactly 0 profit. > until we address all of this Address what? I wa…

> people’s desire to keep their property value high is part of it. Yes, exactly, and what are Klein and Thompson proposing to fix this? Fuck all. They only write about curing the symptoms of this crisis while telling us to ignore the root cause of it all: housing is now a very popular investment vehicle, used by many powerful private interests who absolutely wouldn't want to see their portfolios halve in values. How…

What they proposed is that we reduce regulations strangling the building of housing. The sheer quantity of regulation being the problem. We can have some for things we really care about, but we need to value actually building housing at something other than at the bottom of the priority list.

If you want a real world example of policies under this agenda that have now been put into place, look at the California budget passed under Newsom a month ago under the section literally titled “Advancing an Abundance Agenda”

https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/06/30/governor-newsom-signs-into...

> It is running away from any reform that would be critical to capital, hence why they dispense so much vitriol on the progressives and almost none on the right.

It has vitriol to the type of progressive who crows about if you scratch a liberal a fascist bleeds. The default for the right is that they are bad, the type of discussions like the one in the article this thread is about are internal left infighting, not intended for the general public.

Also I will quibble on you that it’s not a reform to capital. Saying everyone gets rich from the benefits of capitalism, by structural design, is a reform from our current “git gud” increasingly laissez faire approach.

If you’re one of those folks whose arguing for abolishing capitalism entirely, I agree with your end goal but I think we’re a century or two of progress at reducing scarcity away from implementing that level of reform

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#783

Post by dv_dt » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 4:03 AM UTC

pitaj wrote: post #735

asta123 wrote: post #348

In Australia most of the narrative on the housing affordability crisis is around lack of supply and nimbyism. In the meantime Melbourne has dropped to 4th most expensive city in the country and becoming more affordable. Most likely reason - land tax change in that state which is turning off accumulating multiple properties through investment and investors turning to other states where prices are still going up. So, w…

This reverses causation. Investors are involved because prices are going up, not the other way around. "Investors buying up housing" is a common explanation alongside "short term rentals taking over" but neither make up a large enough portion of the demand to explain prices.

In a feedback loop, every element in the loop is both a cause and an effect. The way to stop the feedback is to shift one or more relationships in the loop.

If you are lucky there can sometimes be arranged some convenient control elements- but in many difficult problems a lever that you can pull that only affects that one thing doesn't exist. You have choices of levers that affect a multitude of things, maybe many of which go counter to the desired independent effect

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#784

Post by johnisgood » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 5:30 AM UTC

Hammershaft wrote: post #765

johnisgood wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a libertarian (anarcho-capitalist) but people do not know the differences and similarities to liberal, because both has the prefix "liber".

Both ideologies evolved from the same source of classical liberalism, and still share plenty in common today.

But liberals would definitely down-vote me if I talked about Rothbard and Mises. Why do you think that is?

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#785

Post by solatic » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 7:03 AM UTC

camgunz wrote: post #589

solatic wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SF is surrounded by water on three sides. Palo Alto was the suburb. San Jose was the exurb. You could build 50 story towers all over San Francisco and it wouldn't suddenly make it feasible to build on water. New York has a similar story. You can't build on the Atlantic. Brooklyn and Queens were the suburbs. Long Island and Hartford were the exurbs. The US simply needs to build new cities, and link them with high-spee…

> SF is surrounded by water on three sides. Palo Alto was the suburb. San Jose was the exurb. You could build 50 story towers all over San Francisco and it wouldn't suddenly make it feasible to build on water. > New York has a similar story. You can't build on the Atlantic. Brooklyn and Queens were the suburbs. Long Island and Hartford were the exurbs. All kinds of places overcome these things. Pittsburgh, Hong Kong,…

> All kinds of places overcome these things

Yes, but it requires political will. America is rather characteristic (I want to say unique, but that's probably false) in its lack of political will to increase density anywhere that isn't already dense. Like I said, you're not going to suddenly see 50 story towers blanket San Francisco. This is why, as cities develop suburban and exurban sprawl to the point where the distances no longer become feasible to commute in an automobile, we need to develop new cities, with a strategy for reducing commute time between them (i.e. high speed rail).

> some level of new tech

I mean... it's not going to be datacenters, seeing as how they require a minimum of people and lots of power generation. So unless you have a suggestion, I would go with tried-and-proven approaches, yeah? A master plan for high-speed rail, with the budget to boot, is already a big spend of the innovation budget, the rest should be boring choices, right?

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#786

Post by simgt » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 8:16 AM UTC

jajko wrote: post #678

simgt wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My shallow experience of Japan tells me that if there's one country that can regulate the shit of the airbnb problem, it's this one. We're so used in the west to see properties as an asset that only appreciates that we've lost sight of what homes are meant to be. Meanwhile the whole Mediterranean coast is being bought by foreigners with the help of greedy local fucks. I've been told the Portuguese have it much worse…

Nothing vents off like a bit of class hate, doesnt it. Locals from your description act legally within the limits of the law, if you dont like situation change laws, thats the way for a change. Everybody maximizes their profit and thinks first and foremost about themselves and only then about the rest. Case point - a better half of this forum works/worked for faangs and their variants who destroy privacy and more of…

It's my class that I'm blaming.

> if you dont like situation change laws, thats the way for a change

Which is done by protesting and advocating for it. Not being in a "that's the way things are" attitude.

> Everybody maximizes their profit and thinks first and foremost about themselves and only then about the rest.

What a sad way to see life. It is so easy to find countless examples of people doing exactly not that. American individualism really got to your brain.

I see a difference in-between selling your property at current market rate and having a business which relies on destroying the housing supply to make profit. I don't work for companies who "destroy privacy and more" even though it would be in my interest, many of us are not pure profit-maximizers.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#787

Post by mft_ » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 9:06 AM UTC

gwd wrote: post #540

mft_ wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the underlying beliefs of a 'left' anti-monopolist and a 'right' anti-monopolist are likely very different, and similarly their proposed solutions and view of an ideal society will also diverge significantly? --- Also, it should be noted that we lack sufficiently concise but specific terms to use instead, and because alternative terms that are used are relative, and open to interpretation. e.g.: Many politica…

> Because the underlying beliefs of a 'left' anti-monopolist and a 'right' anti-monopolist are likely very different, and similarly their proposed solutions...? Just curious, how "left" and "right" anti-monopolist solutions might be different? I mean, naturally some "left anti-monopolist" people might be in favor of governments taking over industries, but presumably that's not what most of the people in question are…

> I don't think so. It's essentially an accusation that they haven't thought through the hard issues...

...which itself is nosensical as a generic label, without considering policies individually.

Virtually all politicians say things to help them get elected which are somewhere on a spectrum from 'a vision for the future that is unlikely to be delivered' to 'outright lie'. Of course, on the one hand, we want leaders with a positive vision for the future, which means speaking about possibilities which aren't yet realised, but when even leaders as sensible/stodgy as Starmer/Reeves are doing it ("it's all about growth"... then deliver virtually no policies to meaningfully drive growth) you can see where the growing mistrust of politicians comes from.

I'd characterise "populist" more as "willing to challenge the status quo" - where the status quo in this case is boring centerist politics that rarely/never delivers exciting or meaningful change, is more or less (depending on the country) in the pocket of big business and donors, and which has overseen a progressive worsening of financial inequality and funadamental justice over decades. Which is why the establishment are threatened and use "populist" as an insult, while "populists" are growing their support, be they on the left or right - because people are crying out for something different, even if it comes with potential downsides.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#788

Post by CalRobert » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 9:43 AM UTC

munchler wrote: post #720

CalRobert wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been hip since drivers started showing up and killing people. The less parking the better.

Right. Let's just go back to agrarian times when people rode horses to get around.

Indeed, that is the only alternative and the favoured option for those trying to make it safe for their kids to bike to school. Though I prefer mules myself.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#789

Post by camgunz » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 9:48 AM UTC

solatic wrote: post #785

camgunz wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SF is surrounded by water on three sides. Palo Alto was the suburb. San Jose was the exurb. You could build 50 story towers all over San Francisco and it wouldn't suddenly make it feasible to build on water. > New York has a similar story. You can't build on the Atlantic. Brooklyn and Queens were the suburbs. Long Island and Hartford were the exurbs. All kinds of places overcome these things. Pittsburgh, Hong Kong,…

> All kinds of places overcome these things Yes, but it requires political will. America is rather characteristic (I want to say unique, but that's probably false) in its lack of political will to increase density anywhere that isn't already dense. Like I said, you're not going to suddenly see 50 story towers blanket San Francisco. This is why, as cities develop suburban and exurban sprawl to the point where the dist…

Nah I think we need to go big. This will require a big investment and we won't recoup it unless a big part of it is redoubling our high-end manufacturing and agriculture. This is stuff like robotics, sensors/chips/solar panels/batteries, biopharmaceuticals, modular housing, sustainable farming and textiles, etc.

Re: The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

#790

Post by camgunz » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 9:51 AM UTC

Tiktaalik wrote: post #776

camgunz wrote: post #756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey I think she was basically right (I think her ideas on local control are applicable way beyond building neighborhoods). But we have to admit the ability to get up at some board meeting and veto stuff was her idea. It wasn't perverted by people who came after. Jacob's herself used these veto points in her time in Toronto. I'm not saying she was wrong to oppose the stuff she opposed, but the ability to obstruct in t…

yeah that is true. It's a challenging thing to come down on in a clear cut simple way because there were a lot of things that that generation did fight against with grass roots neighbourhood democratic protest that are agreeable, such as fighting against razing neighbourhoods for freeway expansion. The problem is that along the way somehow local citizens having a voice in how their city changes became a veto over dev…

Oh I think it's getting way better. It's wild how fast this is all happening. People are alive today who remember when there were no highways and no commercial air travel. We're in extreme early days and iterating fast; I'm optimistic here actually.