Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Britain doesn’t build

worksinprogress.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 520 posts

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#111

Post by cassepipe »

lll-o-lll wrote: post #49
ggm wrote: post #3

I find the economic reductionism in housing planning really irritating. It's not like other public utility functions, but it is damn close to a fundamental and is included in human rights declarations. What kind of state throws up it's hands and claims "it can't" fix housing when states can do precisely that? Thatcher's revolution in council housing is a cesspit of counterfactual outcomes. It made individual househol…

It’s the whole western world at the same time. The same policies, the same social outcomes. It makes me question whether there is any real democracy; did we all just happen to make the exact same decisions in lock step since the 70s by incredible coincidence? And it’s not as if the eventual negative outcomes of housing costs continually outstripping wage growth weren’t obvious and growing year on year. Who is actuall…

Recommend this book: https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/164-democracy-agai...

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#112

Post by danem »

lucideer wrote: post #48
robertlagrant wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note: I originally said Britain built 30k houses last year, which commenters have corrected. Thank you! I don't really understand all this. Surely the main reason for a lack of housing is the difference between house demand (e.g. Britain took in 606k people in net immigration last year) compared to house supply (Britain built I think around 200k houses last year). The state shouldn't need to build houses (in fact it…

> The state shouldn't need to build houses (in fact it doesn't; it just uses your tax money to pay private companies to build houses). It should just make the building and zoning rules simple enough that it's possible to make money from building houses and selling them, and let people get on with it. This is the modern wisdom in the west - it's the approach taken by many governments since the Reagan era (not just in…

I'm confused... Are you arguing that zoning, red-tape, and generally anti-development politicians and voters aren't the fundamental problem here? How exactly do you envision a government housing program to side-step all of the above issues? Do you think voters who fight relentlessly to block development feel differently about public housing? How do you expect it to get funded even, when a single unit of "affordable housing" costs ~$1m to build in a place like San Francisco?

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#113

Post by beisner »

dumpsterdiver wrote: post #52
bloqs wrote: post #31

Something cannot both be a good investment and accessible to all. The decision was made to make them a good investment, and thus our lazy, entitled economy that is addicted to foreign goods and services became what it is today.

> Something cannot both be a good investment and accessible to all. Roads are a perfect example of a good investment that is accessible to all. It's called a "common good", and it exists.

OP means something more like "a security which appreciates on average faster than inflation", AKA an asset I can purchase and hold and sell later for more than I paid for it+improvements in real terms.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#114

Post by groestl »

lll-o-lll wrote: post #49
ggm wrote: post #3

I find the economic reductionism in housing planning really irritating. It's not like other public utility functions, but it is damn close to a fundamental and is included in human rights declarations. What kind of state throws up it's hands and claims "it can't" fix housing when states can do precisely that? Thatcher's revolution in council housing is a cesspit of counterfactual outcomes. It made individual househol…

It’s the whole western world at the same time. The same policies, the same social outcomes. It makes me question whether there is any real democracy; did we all just happen to make the exact same decisions in lock step since the 70s by incredible coincidence? And it’s not as if the eventual negative outcomes of housing costs continually outstripping wage growth weren’t obvious and growing year on year. Who is actuall…

> did we all just happen to make the exact same decisions in lock step since the 70s by incredible coincidence?

Not US, and for reasons, the housing crisis is not _that_ bad where I live, but: in principle our country is exactly like our parent's generation imagined it. It's perfectly aligned with their interests. Where they'd hike to a hut in the mountains once, there is now a paved road, so they can still drive to the hut, even though they're not able to walk anymore. Somewhere else they built a cable car, for exactly the same purpose. They have houses. They have cars. They dominate every political institution there is. They voted to keep the conscription, so enough poor young people who alternatively chose community service would be available when they need care, eventually. They go on vacations three times a year. And heaven forbid they'd need to give up _anything_ they once had. Political parties that suggest anything like that would have no chance in elections.

> Who is actually in control here?

I think they are.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#115

Post by mattlondon »

Aromasin wrote: post #85
ggm wrote: post #3

I find the economic reductionism in housing planning really irritating. It's not like other public utility functions, but it is damn close to a fundamental and is included in human rights declarations. What kind of state throws up it's hands and claims "it can't" fix housing when states can do precisely that? Thatcher's revolution in council housing is a cesspit of counterfactual outcomes. It made individual househol…

> If I was a young person, this above all other things would radicalize me. Our elected leadership are captive to stupid market force arguments. I'd rather they tried and failed than sat on their hands. I truly think it has radicalized a lot of us. My generation (millennials and younger) are one of the first ones not to slide further right politically as time goes on but remain staunchly left wing. That's culturally…

Please remember not to ask for a pay rise too, otherwise you'll be making inflation worse! /s

Yep it sucks. Many people I know cannot afford unless there are two people paying the bills. You need two to tango for kids of course, and some might argue why do you need a 3 bed house if you are single without kids (I am assuming here - you may not be). Of course that is no one's business apart from your own and shouldn't factor in to this.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#116

Post by scythe »

dumpsterdiver wrote: post #52
bloqs wrote: post #31

Something cannot both be a good investment and accessible to all. The decision was made to make them a good investment, and thus our lazy, entitled economy that is addicted to foreign goods and services became what it is today.

> Something cannot both be a good investment and accessible to all. Roads are a perfect example of a good investment that is accessible to all. It's called a "common good", and it exists.

I think the parent commenter meant "investment" in the narrow sense of "financial security" and not in the broader sense of any activity that generates a figurative return for the effort applied — in the case of roads, turning government action into economic activity.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#117

Post by throwaway894345 »

jareklupinski wrote: post #104
lll-o-lll wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the whole western world at the same time. The same policies, the same social outcomes. It makes me question whether there is any real democracy; did we all just happen to make the exact same decisions in lock step since the 70s by incredible coincidence? And it’s not as if the eventual negative outcomes of housing costs continually outstripping wage growth weren’t obvious and growing year on year. Who is actuall…

> Who is actually in control here? Is it blind forces pushing us to an inevitable outcome? The Illuminati? Lizard people? less blind forces, more "well, what would you do in their situation": the people who first paid money for a given square of land were also the first to try to convince someone else to pay them more for that same land natural resources aside, land only really has the value that other people are wil…

> less blind forces, more "well, what would you do in their situation": the people who first paid money for a given square of land were also the first to try to convince someone else to pay them more for that same land

It seems a bit silly to argue that increasing land prices is principally a result of marketing. The amount of earth on the planet in the last 10k years essentially hasn't changed but the number of humans has increased almost 2000%. Population growth is surely a "blind force", right?

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#118

Post by niyikiza »

lll-o-lll wrote: post #49
ggm wrote: post #3

I find the economic reductionism in housing planning really irritating. It's not like other public utility functions, but it is damn close to a fundamental and is included in human rights declarations. What kind of state throws up it's hands and claims "it can't" fix housing when states can do precisely that? Thatcher's revolution in council housing is a cesspit of counterfactual outcomes. It made individual househol…

It’s the whole western world at the same time. The same policies, the same social outcomes. It makes me question whether there is any real democracy; did we all just happen to make the exact same decisions in lock step since the 70s by incredible coincidence? And it’s not as if the eventual negative outcomes of housing costs continually outstripping wage growth weren’t obvious and growing year on year. Who is actuall…

EY wrote a good book about that very topic: "Inadequate Equilibria -- Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck" https://equilibriabook.com/

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#119

Post by Terr_ »

danjac wrote: post #26

This is an interesting political trap for the ruling Conservatives that they have made for themselves. The traditional Conservative voter is a home-owner. So you might be a rabid socialist in your youth, but once you get a job, save up for a deposit, and buy your own home, you eventually transition to become yet another middle-aged Tory voter. That pipeline is now broken - young people are unable to save up for their…

> but once you get a job, save up for a deposit, and buy your own home, you eventually transition to become yet another middle-aged Tory voter. [...] That pipeline is now broken

Not unsurprisingly, I've seen the same theory/sentiment in the US as well: The conventional wisdom (whether true or not) was that aging voters would increase their support of the status-quo, but that doesn't seem to be happening, and the theory is that they aren't getting the same wealth/status that would cause them to be protective of it.

That said, we should also ask whether our story of "how it used to be" was actually (statistically, scientifically) true, as opposed to just being a common belief. There's evidence that one's political/party-leaning is actually consistent after being established earlier in life. [0]

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2014/07/09/the-polit...

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#120

Post by mhotchen »

vidarh wrote: post #61
tsukikage wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to build houses at least as fast as the population grows. Because this has not happened for decades, we need to build houses even faster than that, to clear the backlog. This is not happening. Meanwhile, no-one will build infrastructure for settlements that do not yet exist, and we consistently elect a party that believes in less, rather than more, infrastructure in general. Rather than an investment, Tories…

The irony is that historically, a lot of rail was built for settlements that, while they may have existed, did not support the cost of rail, and this has driven a lot of development. And this is both how it ought to work and means that the UK has a lot of existing rail that could help solve this problem if the government would just commit to streamline planning processes and to increasing routes and frequency to stat…

I think this is a really interesting perspective. This could decentralise the population and solve many problems that way, and also reduce the costs and risks associated with utilising fully modernised technology; no need for compromise
Post reply on HN