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Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

inpractice.yimbyaction.org

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Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#21

Post by Avicebron »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #4

Instead of getting tangled up in social issues, liberal politicians should be prioritizing housing, infrastructure and government services supporting people's economic activity of all kinds. Delivering better lives for people, and having the courage to stand up to vested interests, from house owners to corporations, would create a huge and lasting political win across a broad section of the electorate.

I'm pretty sure the political group that can guarantee a quality National Health Service in the US will win

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#22

Post by PartiallyTyped »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #4

Instead of getting tangled up in social issues, liberal politicians should be prioritizing housing, infrastructure and government services supporting people's economic activity of all kinds. Delivering better lives for people, and having the courage to stand up to vested interests, from house owners to corporations, would create a huge and lasting political win across a broad section of the electorate.

See, people, NIMBIES in particular, take issue with housing and infrastructure, people with stock in pharma and insurance corps take issue with government supporting others.

In this very forum, some asinine person supported Trump administration axing the free tax submission programme of the IRS on the basis of them owning shares in the tax software companies.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#23

Post by TulliusCicero »

JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #13

Wasn't Build Back Better meant to be roughly the same kind of objectives, maybe the stated means were different (and less vague) but roughly the same? I haven't paid that much attention to either, mind. This whole thing feels more like its about getting a snappy word out there than anything achievable.

The sheer amount of regulations is an incredibly tangled mess. For housing, for example, typically every city has its own standards, so your talking thousands of different sets of standards. They usually won't be all that different from the next city over, but nevertheless they're functionally separate, you can't directly change the whole state or country at once.

You can get state laws that push cities to change, of course, and the feds can incentivize change through requirements for funding/grants, but overall there's just a lot of momentum behind the existing web of regulation.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#24

Post by thinkingtoilet »

avidiax wrote: post #9

I think the author has it quite backwards, at least as it comes to housing. Politicians are beholden to the members of their district, not would-be members. Sure, more affordable housing would benefit many people, but it wouldn't benefit the members of the district, particularly the wealthy and powerful, since more affordable housing is very nearly equivalent to real estate values decreasing (at the very least, as pe…

>Politicians are beholden to the members of their district

In a perfect world with informed voters this would be the case. It is not. In America, you can get away with literally killing your constituents as long as you have the right party affiliation next to your name.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#25

Post by huijzer »

Noah Smith also wrote a IMO nice review of the Abundance book [1]. I'm very happy that problems like this are discussed:

> This is only one way that Klein and Thompson would have us focus on outputs instead of on inputs. Progressives love to focus on the number of dollars the government spends on high speed rail or green energy; Klein and Thompson would have us focus instead on how much actually gets built as a result of that spending.

[1]: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/book-review-abundance.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#26

Post by matthewdgreen »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #3

> In many ways, Jerry was ahead of the curve. He was lamenting “everything bagel liberalism” and “process over outcomes” before it was cool. Process over outcomes is a great way of putting it. For example, California has a well known environmental law, often referred to as its acronym, CEQA. Intended to protect the environment, it was certainly well intentioned, and surely much of what it accomplishes is good. But as…

When examining any given political outcome, your first question should always be "how does this benefit people with large amounts of money", because that's why most of the things in our society actually happen -- particularly the persistent structural flaws.

It can be absolutely true that CEQA was passed by sincere environmentalists. But it can also be true that the beneficiaries are wealthy property owners. If this law produced really bad outcomes for those people, it would already be gone/reformed. But it makes most property more valuable, so that doesn't happen.

Anyway, I'm offering this because loads of people think this is some kind of left/right "process" dynamic that they can fix, when in fact if you fix the process dynamic those same people will find another way to fight you. And that's ok! It's possible to win! Just don't confuse yourself that this is some accidental screwup that you can easily fix, like a downed tree blocking the street.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#27

Post by loeg »

JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #13

Wasn't Build Back Better meant to be roughly the same kind of objectives, maybe the stated means were different (and less vague) but roughly the same? I haven't paid that much attention to either, mind. This whole thing feels more like its about getting a snappy word out there than anything achievable.

I mean, no, not at all. BBB was a massive tax-and-spend proposal that included all kinds of cost-inflationary stuff; it was not focused on cutting red tape and increasing the supply of housing / energy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Build_Back_Better_Plan#Vision

It was exactly the kind of "everything bagel liberalism" that abundance/yimby types malign.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#28

Post by JadeNB »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #16
xnx wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, it seems the real work of politics is convincing someone that what they want is different from what they currently want.

That's not necessarily bad. That's leadership. You can use leadership to do bad things, but you can also use leadership to do good things.

> That's not necessarily bad. That's leadership.

I don't think your parent said it was bad.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#29

Post by wwweston »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #4

Instead of getting tangled up in social issues, liberal politicians should be prioritizing housing, infrastructure and government services supporting people's economic activity of all kinds. Delivering better lives for people, and having the courage to stand up to vested interests, from house owners to corporations, would create a huge and lasting political win across a broad section of the electorate.

That's pretty much where liberal politicians end up targeting most of their policymaking and even a sizable portion of their campaign platform (as demonstrated in the Harris platform).

Yet "tangled up in social issues" remains a popular misconception. Why?

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#30

Post by aweiland »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #23
JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #13

Wasn't Build Back Better meant to be roughly the same kind of objectives, maybe the stated means were different (and less vague) but roughly the same? I haven't paid that much attention to either, mind. This whole thing feels more like its about getting a snappy word out there than anything achievable.

The sheer amount of regulations is an incredibly tangled mess. For housing, for example, typically every city has its own standards, so your talking thousands of different sets of standards. They usually won't be all that different from the next city over, but nevertheless they're functionally separate, you can't directly change the whole state or country at once. You can get state laws that push cities to change, of…

Some of that is for good reason. Take for instance in North Carolina; a house built in the mountains in the west will have quite different standards from one built on the Outer Banks.
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