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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

#201

Post by CivBase »

knowknow wrote: post #47
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.

It’s amazing that this gets upvoted while it is completely uninformed about what liberal politicians actually run on. This is what the Kamala campaign ran on, it didn’t work. People love getting tangled on social issues as it’s the most provocative. This conception that most people actually care about rational policies is false and has been false for at least the past decade.

Is that what she ran on?

My perception was that she ran on "more of the same but also different... nevermind, look at all these celebrities telling you to vote for me!" and something vague about protecting women's rights.

It's almost like you need more than a couple months to run a serious presidential campaign. Despite being the VP for 4 years, most people didn't know what to expect from her. Almost nobody was enthusiastic about her and she had no real momentum. That's obviously what killed her campaign.

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

#202

Post by PaulHoule »

legitster wrote: post #154
PaulHoule wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who owns a second house on a farm that has two rental units in it, I’m skeptical of attempts to expand ‘tenant rights’ in New York. I had a tenant who decided that he did not have to pay the rent, it took months of trying to reason with him, we hired a lawyer and went through the process which took several months, in the end the tenant stayed on a few months past what would have been the eviction date but…

My dad is landlord of an 8-plex in a small town. My brother is a social worker in a big city. When they get together and talk it's amazing how much their jobs overlap. So much of the job as a small time landlord these days is dealing with drug abuse, interpersonal problems, police, social services, housing authorities, etc.

Around the time we bought our place we had some spare cash and thought about getting another house. I'd seen the Rich Dad, Poor Dad book which had the advice that you should buy a rental property only it was wildly cashflow positive after the mortgage.

That's not realistic in most cases but we saw one rental property which looked crazy profitable that was full of Section 8 tenants. We passed on it because it was really buying yourself a job as a social worker and the fact that we were bleeding hearts would make it harder, not easier. I think my wife and I have gained the maturity that we might be able to handle that now but we've also gotten better at setting boundaries such that we wouldn't.

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

#203

Post by grumpy-de-sre »

RickS wrote: post #193
grumpy-de-sre wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if democracy has the tools to adequately deal with this tbh, at-least in the short-to-medium term. I really hope we can find a way to make voters actually believe an abundant future is possible, and that it'll benefit them and their families. It's the biggest difference I see in societies like China, there's this pervasive optimism about technology, progress and abundance (~700 million people have first…

This is the china of "let it rot"[1] and a housing market so f'd that people felt pressure to buy and pay for houses that didn't even exist yet, leading to a massive mortgage boycott[2] in protest of all the resultant shenanigans? They're already failing to keep up the growth[3], their population pyramid projections are pretty bleak going forward. I agree with you re the need to convince modern western voters of an (…

All of the above is completely true.

But right now they are in the acute/fallout phase of a massive economic disruption (the deleveraging of a highly indebted real estate sector, no less severe than the GFC, they overbuilt to a massive degree). No matter what folks are going to be struggling bad atm.

The trillion dollar question is what does this look like in ten years? It could go either way. A Japan style lost decade, or they manage to find and exploit new growth opportunities. I guess we'll see whether having pretty much the cheapest energy on the planet and impressive logistics allows them to get through this.

Do not discount the tremendous potential of electrification, and cheap renewable energy.

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

#204

Post by scoofy »

grumpy-de-sre wrote: post #192
scoofy wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>On a purely numbers basis the older generation of homeowners far outnumber the young. The point is numbers of voters. There are more young voters now than older voters, this is why we are seeing things change at the state level. Now that many millennials are in there 40's with no real shot at home-ownership it's starting to freak people out. Which is why we will continue to see the YIMBY and Strong Towns movements,…

I'm not sure how much acceleration we're seeing, do we have numbers on this? Or are voters just becoming disenfranchised? Acceleration is great hope/source of optimism.

I've been in SF for a long time and I remember when the YIMBY movement didn't exist, just 10 years ago, and Sonja Trauss was trolling SF by running for Board of Supervisors and saying all this shit out load knowing she'd lose in a landslide.

10 years later, the governor is a self-proclaimed YIMBY (even though he isn't), a book on YIMBYism is a national best seller, and nationally, folks are finally realizing that the reason why we're losing the working class on the left is because the left cares more about their own property values than about helping working folks. All the while, there is the parallel center-right focused Strong Towns organization that is making the exact same argument for the exact same movement in more conservative areas.

If that's not extreme acceleration I don't know what is.

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

#205

Post by horsawlarway »

nimish wrote: post #7

Old people are 'aging in place' instead of cultivating the new generation and it really, really shows

I think this is closer to hitting the truth.

I'll add... I think idealizing single family housing as the default, over generational family housing (mostly as a response to industrialization wanting worker movement, and the advent of automobiles) is going to eventually be seen as an unforgivable mistake.

And they're all made out of ticky-tacky And they all look just the same

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

#206

Post by kashunstva »

TexanFeller wrote: post #72
knowknow wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s amazing that this gets upvoted while it is completely uninformed about what liberal politicians actually run on. This is what the Kamala campaign ran on, it didn’t work. People love getting tangled on social issues as it’s the most provocative. This conception that most people actually care about rational policies is false and has been false for at least the past decade.

Because people have memory that lasts longer than a goldfish’s. People remember the DNC and its politicians hyperfocusing on controversial social issues for the last decade to the exclusion of everything else. They remember Kamala’s fringe and cringe positions and statements from her California and 2019 campaigns and don’t believe she’s a proud gun owning moderate that just wants to make government work for us. Bonus…

> she couldn’t think of anything she would do differently than Biden when asked

Which, though definitely suboptimal, would have been a pretty reasonable alternative to her opponent’s plan to self-cannibalize the government, threaten the sovereignty of long-standing allies, and chaotically disrupt world trade.

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

#207

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

korse wrote: post #161
ragingroosevelt wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Portland and own my house. I'd love to put in an ADU and rent to some of my friends but it's pretty expensive and I can't afford it.

That sounds nice, but don't rent to your friends. I've been there and it sucks. Everything works great until someone hits the hard times and the resource imbalance between parties gets amplified. You're either going to end up trashing friendships and dealing with the emotional baggage, making a really poor business decision or both. Rent to people you're comfortable evicting/taking legal action against if things sour…

“When you loan money to a friend, be prepared to lose the money or the friend” is a maxim I’ve lived by and has guided me through some tough decisions over time.

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

#208

Post by senderista »

senderista wrote: post #33
ModernMech wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always comes back to social issues because some people have a problem with policies that support all kinds of economic activities.

This is the GOP "wedge strategy" that squashes potentially-popular economic policies that the oligarchy opposes by distracting the electorate with culture-war issues.

I see I’ve triggered the local wannabe broligarchs.

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

#209

Post by pessimizer »

scoofy wrote: post #156
grumpy-de-sre wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if democracy has the tools to adequately deal with this tbh, at-least in the short-to-medium term. I really hope we can find a way to make voters actually believe an abundant future is possible, and that it'll benefit them and their families. It's the biggest difference I see in societies like China, there's this pervasive optimism about technology, progress and abundance (~700 million people have first…

We have the tools, it's just going to be inter-generational warfare, and nobody really wants to say it out loud. The bigger the housing crisis gets, the more people are going to change things on the state level instead of the local level. This isn't a pendulum shifting event, it's a cascade, and that's why Abundance is doing so well, and that's why things are getting ugly on the left.

> We have the tools, it's just going to be inter-generational warfare, and nobody really wants to say it out loud.

No, it's not. The people who own houses pass them down to their kids. As people invading a neighborhood, YIMBYs may be new, but they are not that young. They are early middle-aged and wealthy. They are trying to move into elite neighborhoods and cities that they can't afford, not trying to avoid homelessness. That's not a crisis. All of them can afford property, just not the best property in the world, (not coincidentally) near the jobs that pay them the most.

The problem is normal-case housing affordability, not elites wanting to build high-rises. Normal housing affordability is ruined due to the asymmetry between resident homeowners as buyers and wealthy buyers. Wealthy buyers are trying to extract wealth from housing. Resident homeowners and renters are the extractees.

The YIMBY goal is to make somebody in e.g. SF refusing to sell, and/or refusing to allow the houses on the corner to be demolished and a high-rise put in, the enemy. I have no idea why YIMBYs think they are either more rational, more likeable, or more victimized than that homeowner. Maybe all of the self-praise.

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

#210

Post by jakelazaroff »

rayiner wrote: post #152
wwweston wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Yet "tangled up in social issues" remains a popular misconception. Why? It’s not a “misconception.” Democrats choose to spend their political capital changing the status quo on social issues. For example, Americans overwhelmingly oppose affirmative action: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/06/16/americans... Affirmative action was banned in California in 1996. Which party tried to repeal the ban in 2020?…

Did you read your own link? It says that affirmative action enjoys at least plurality if not majority support:

> Americans who had heard the phrase affirmative action in the Center’s December survey were asked whether they saw it as a good or a bad thing. Among those who had ever heard the term, 36% said affirmative action is a good thing, 29% said it is a bad thing and a third weren’t sure.

> By comparison, Gallup has asked U.S. adults whether they “generally favor or oppose affirmative action programs for racial minorities.” In 2021, the last time Gallup asked this question, a 62% majority of Americans favored such programs.

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