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The room the economy can't see

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Re: The room the economy can't see

#211

Post by bluGill »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #196
cogman10 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who gets on the ballot is determined by voting. I'm not going to lie, I'm not deluded enough to think voting will (often) bring change quickly. I don't even have a lot of hope in the likelihood of it working. However, it's not nothing and it's something everyone can and should do. Politics is a major part of all aspects of life and you'll do yourself no favors by completely opting out because it's hopeless.

>Who gets on the ballot is determined by voting. That’s not even remotely true political parties determine privately who they will fund to put on the ballot underneath their particular party The public is not invited to vote in those outside of certain primaries and even then the people who are proposed for the primaries are chosen from the party members Ballot access for third-party or non-affiliated typically requi…

The party itself is made up of the people. It isn't hard to join and get influence. Local elections in particular are easy, they are looking for help. Local elections make for people they look for to run in higher elections

Re: The room the economy can't see

#212

Post by em-bee »

inigyou wrote: post #130
Rygian wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't like zoning codes because too often they are placing restrictions that restrict freedom for some value that isn't objective. That might be a literal case of Chesterton's fence.

Zoning codes have some uses, doesn't mean they're still net positive value. Maybe the current situation is so bad that letting a pig farm or a coal power plant be build right in the middle of a residential neighborhood is actually a better tradeoff than whatever we have now. In many European places there are only a few zones: farming/industry, mixed commercial/residential, and of course random other stuff like parks.…

i don't know if this is the case everywhere in europe but i understand that at least in germany instead of zoning the local government approves the purpose of each building individually. so instead of deciding this is a commercial zone, they decide how many shops and businesses they allow in that area, and what kind of businesses they are. and once a building has a specific business use, then it can't easily be changed. so in effect that is very fine grained zoning. this is as flexible as the people in the government who make the decisions.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#213

Post by vlovich123 »

inigyou wrote: post #157
vlovich123 wrote: post #72

One fundamental challenge with basic income that gets overlooked is that if you’re a smart person and you’ve built a career where you make a lot of money, you have cash flow issues that prevent you from going to basic income. It’s a huge sacrifice that requires drastic quality of life changes which means the people who will be subsisting on that aren’t the people who have the motivation to set up that room nor are ne…

UBI is in addition to whatever you can make from a wage and the B stands for not very high, just barely high enough to live.

My point is that it doesn’t solve the room problem outlined in the post - someone who’s just relying on UBI isn’t going to be motivated to create this space because the space will exist regardless, they get UBI either way. That’s why the funding is necessary - it creates a market need through the coercion of pay. UBI will not magically incentivize self organization of social goods, only give marginally more freedom for personal goods.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#214

Post by em-bee »

infecto wrote: post #53
hiddencost wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDK if you're familiar with Church, but that's the most heavily used third space. And we grant it tax exempt status which it abuses to push bad laws.

Yes I am well aware of churches and their tax exempt status and generally don’t agree with it. So I will ask what’s your punchline to my opinion? My point is I am not convinced this is a pure market problem so much as the average consumer no longer wants it. There are still plenty of third spaces to organize events like game nights though not dedicated and that includes community centers or other private entity commu…

i believe most of the demand for third spaces is for things that are free to use. parks, places to hang out, activities. these spaces are not profitable.

in germany this is handled by supporting youth organizations. sport, scouts and other activities. most of these groups get free access to government owned buildings. they get financial support for their equipment, etc, under the condition that any youth can join with only a nominal membership fee.

in a pure market economy none of these organizations or spaces would survive. they depend on government support.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#215

Post by DroneBetter »

clickety_clack wrote: post #16
ixtli wrote: post #9

Very good and well-written. I wish we would also acknowledge that the market, by disincentivizing spend on stuff like this, is performing well. It is optimizing. The reason it matters to acknowledge this up front is so that we can, as the article says, get to the rule below all this which is that the market is default. This is a clear and thorough example of how the profit motive does not lead to the life any of us w…

An alternative view is that rooms like these would be a lot more feasible if market pricing of real estate was not being artificially driven up by planning restrictions. Historically, communities were able to afford their own versions of this in their own localities, but this isn’t possible anymore because of property prices. There was a community hall where I grew up that was funded like this along with a local spor…

also just as importantly (or moreso for cases of individual rooms used for social/hobbyist clubs like this) would be 'empty building taxes' to prevent the eventuality of landlords preferring to rent out fewer properties over reducing the cost of vacant ones because * housing is necessary for survival so people cannot afford to baulk at the prices of artificial scarcity, making the optimal price effectively arbitrarily high without regulation * landlords are generally not infinitesimal entities in a vacuum, and generally stand to lose existing customers who are still on the expensive contracts if they cheapen their unoccupied offerings although such a solution would just move the problem one layer further up (stop building properties to have them be vacant) and the solution is land tax

Re: The room the economy can't see

#216

Post by em-bee »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #161
ixtli wrote: post #9

Very good and well-written. I wish we would also acknowledge that the market, by disincentivizing spend on stuff like this, is performing well. It is optimizing. The reason it matters to acknowledge this up front is so that we can, as the article says, get to the rule below all this which is that the market is default. This is a clear and thorough example of how the profit motive does not lead to the life any of us w…

another POV is that many problems are political, they're not solved by markets or even math. that is, the hard part isn't "optimizing." how to use land is a political problem. the "optimizing" you are talking about is apathy, it's one of many valid, if inferior, political choices.

a pure market economy would never allow for the existence of a public park. they are on valuable land, cost a lot of money but don't make any profit at all.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#217

Post by em-bee »

jstummbillig wrote: post #35
ixtli wrote: post #9

Very good and well-written. I wish we would also acknowledge that the market, by disincentivizing spend on stuff like this, is performing well. It is optimizing. The reason it matters to acknowledge this up front is so that we can, as the article says, get to the rule below all this which is that the market is default. This is a clear and thorough example of how the profit motive does not lead to the life any of us w…

I mean the market is spending on stuff like this; this is just a form of youth center, no? We pay for those, as we pay for schools or parks. And it does have positive externalities: Trust, parents, neighbourhood, school outcomes, crime outcomes It's hot. Maybe I am missing something.

the market is not spending that money. the community/goverment is.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#219

Post by bethekidyouwant »

inigyou wrote: post #155
pixl97 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>which is the central thesis here No, not exactly. We're dealing with a historical confluence of long term changes in humanity. Before 1900 or so and some people had a lot of kids survive and others had a lot of kids die. The population rate increased very slowly, and not from a lack of trying. Then around the time I stated people figured out germs were real, chlorine in water was good, and washing ones hands was a s…

[flagged]

80% of women still have kids. They just only have one kid now.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#220

Post by red-iron-pine »

kubb wrote: post #97
bluGill wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That objection applies to the other options as well. Believe in... I like the market because it lets me make more choices of my own. I don't like zoning codes because too often they are placing restrictions that restrict freedom for some value that isn't objective.

Depends which objection you mean... But your choices are more limited than you might think. Ultimately what's available to you is decided by the economic machinery upstream.

the average American cannot afford a $500 surprise expense.

what freedom, or choice, does that translate to?

e.g. I either go without power or food, or I don't get a brutally painful tooth pulled

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