Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)
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Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)
#2Not housing per-se, but concentrating too many jobs in few locations. Which causes issues with housing.
Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)
#3Investment bubbles are at the root of houses.
Undertaxation is at the root of investment bubbles.
Accumulating economic energy devouring the containment of the system that created it, as at the root of the root of the rootproblem.
We need a dependency manager for discussion topics.
Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)
#4Not housing per-se, but concentrating too many jobs in few locations. Which causes issues with housing.
Even that probably has a root cause. Capitalism, efficiencies gained from concentrating resources in a single location, network effects etc?
In the UK, jobs used to be at local factories and offices. It was rare for people to move for university then move to another city for work.
My Grandad worked at a local electronics factory. My Dad worked at a local auto parts refurbishment factory. My mother in her early 20s worked as a secretary for the emergency services. Moving away for university and then again to another city for work was almost unheard of. You worked and lived close to your family. Of course the 80s came along and everything changed.
Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)
#5Not housing per-se, but concentrating too many jobs in few locations. Which causes issues with housing.
> Not housing per-se, but concentrating too many jobs in few locations.
Jobs weren't "concentrated" per se by any form of planning or centralized action, employers simply shifted to urban centers because the amount of skilled workers and other necessities (such as high speed Internet, universities, road and rail infrastructure) was vastly higher there than in dilapidated flyover-state villages. Additionally, rural areas got devastated by mechanization of agriculture following WW2 and later-on the closure of manufacturing plants and the mining industries [1], which led to a massive rural flight movement as everyone who could fled to the only place where employment was available - urban areas.
The fix to the housing crisis would be to invest in rural areas again - there is no limitation in the nature of the work at all that stuff like a callcenter or a bunch of programmers can't work from some rural town, but as long as there is no actual high speed Internet or no amenities (healthcare, education institutions for children, entertainment) worth their name employers won't establish shop there and employees won't move there. Would you, even for free rent, move to some small town where your children have no perspective?
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/01/where-d...
Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)
#6Not housing per-se, but concentrating too many jobs in few locations. Which causes issues with housing.
This looks like a positive feedback loop. People move to locations where there are many jobs available, so end of employment would not require moving to another location. More jobs are created, where there is higher availability of candidates.
Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)
#7Housing is (along with healthcare in the US) a big part of why most people in the so-called "rich world" are in fact dismally poor, only one missed paycheck or turn of bad luck away from life becoming unlivable.
For most of us poors, money is a tool we need to survive. For the people who have the bulk of it, it's a weapon. And we're the targets. They love blowing us up; it's what they do. They care more about making others suffer than the material comforts (to which hedonic adaptation accrues quick) money affords. Putting the few "good jobs", the few jobs that offer us even a sliver of a chance (like 1%, but we're expected to work as if it were 95%) of being something more than an exploited worker, in congested and dysfunctional expensive cities is something they do because it's hilarious to them.
Barring a complete and final overthrow of corporate capitalism, you can't escape this crapsack world. The important land is already owned by reptilian shitasses. Billions of people are going without drinking water while a bunch of psychopaths fly around in private jets, destroying the planet because they find it comical.
Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)
#8Not housing per-se, but concentrating too many jobs in few locations. Which causes issues with housing.
Even that probably has a root cause. Capitalism, efficiencies gained from concentrating resources in a single location, network effects etc? In the UK, jobs used to be at local factories and offices. It was rare for people to move for university then move to another city for work. My Grandad worked at a local electronics factory. My Dad worked at a local auto parts refurbishment factory. My mother in her early 20s wo…
+ specialization
most of those jobs in the 80s require only basic education
but when you have thousands of graduates coming out of universities, they'll be looking at very specific job positions, not any office job near home
Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)
#9Not housing per-se, but concentrating too many jobs in few locations. Which causes issues with housing.
> Not housing per-se, but concentrating too many jobs in few locations. Jobs weren't "concentrated" per se by any form of planning or centralized action, employers simply shifted to urban centers because the amount of skilled workers and other necessities (such as high speed Internet, universities, road and rail infrastructure) was vastly higher there than in dilapidated flyover-state villages. Additionally, rural ar…
I read this kind of thinking a lot lately, people trying very hard to come up with solutions that don't address the main issue. Just guessing, you already own a house?
The fix is to enable builders to build enough housing, and not just single family detached housing, by removing regulations which allow NIMBY-ism. At the same time, prevent investors from hoarding houses and jacking up the prices. I find it similar to scalping GPU's and reselling them for more money, which was a common practice in the past few years during the chip shortage and crypto mining boom. This kind of investment provides very little value to consumers, and in my view only serves to extract money from the poor to the rich.
Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)
#10Not housing per-se, but concentrating too many jobs in few locations. Which causes issues with housing.
It is very good for productivity when many jobs are concentrated in one location.
This unlocks the possibility for serendipitous connections. It is awesome when you can meet a founder, a leading engineer, an investor, a designer and a PR person in a coffee line, forming a new company before finishing your morning coffee.
Talents concentrated in one place gives significant boost to their productivity. This is called a "proximity bonus" in video games; building dependent factories in the nearby slots gives them the productivity boost. This is what US is missing by being nimbyistic.
I think we should return to the 1950s ideas of a futuristic cities and invest in building giant arcologies, where entire Earth population can move if they want to, and where the least paid McFastFood worker would afford to buy a minimum apartment.