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Why Britain doesn’t build

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Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#221

Post by ozr »

lmm wrote: post #192
dahwolf wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Elections are largely monopolized by older people who mostly tend to be homeowners". Sounds like democracy?

> "Elections are largely monopolized by older people who mostly tend to be homeowners". > Sounds like democracy? Young people might get their first chance to vote at age 23 - assuming they paid for the right kind of ID, or navigated an impenetrable web of underpaid bureaucrats to get the mythical free ID. And if they manage to get off work on election day. Meanwhile the elderly are reliably on the register (because t…

This is a wholly imaginary problem.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#222

Post by adhesive_wombat »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #101
nindalf wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having to wait 6 months for treatment isn’t luxury, what are you talking about. That’s effectively no health care.

I am contesting the "having" part of that sentence. The UK has problems, but it is not a country in dire straits. To be clear: We are talking about GP right? To say get your blood pressure checked, or some mild antibiotics, or a rash cream, or referral to specialist? Not a specific treatment or surgery.

GPs gatekeep a most referrals, it's often virtually impossible to get any substantial treatment or surgery unless referred by a GP. Furthermore, for NHS treatments, it has to be a referral from an NHS GP, so you can't simply pay for a private GP to check something out.

Or, you can just wait for it to become bad enough that you go directly from A&E to inpatient care.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#223

Post by pradn »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #128
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…

1. Politicians and the bureaucratic class have deep investments in real estate 2. Foreign money keeps flooding into western economies to find a safe haven and lack of capital controls. A bulk of it goes into real estate. 3. Elections are largely monopolized by older people who mostly tend to be homeowners. The entire system is rigged against anything that would impact home prices - such as an increase in supply or ch…

That’s also the set castigating young people who want to live in expensive cities. Prudence dictates you must live far far away. Why are you even thinking of living in New York City, you fool?! Why live in a cesspool like you goof!! It’s become a culture war, too.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#224

Post by lmm »

vidarh wrote: post #28
bluescrn wrote: post #2

There's loads of houses being built in the UK (often of questionable quality, built for maximum profit, packed into minimal amounts of space). It may still not be enough to match the demand, but the real problem is we don't seem to be building any infrastructure to support these homes. More people and more homes requires more roads, railways, hospitals, police stations, power stations, sewer capacity, even reservoirs…

One of my pet peeves is that UK infrastructure focus seems to be about getting people to the centre of London faster, and that just makes the pressure on London greater at excessive costs, and then you start the cycle all over. You see that even with HS1 and HS2, where instead of focusing on lines towards London it'd have been better to strengthen the triangle of Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, and pour money into effe…

> You see that even with HS1 and HS2, where instead of focusing on lines towards London it'd have been better to strengthen the triangle of Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, and pour money into effectively creating a bigger "third city". Then maybe link Birmingham, and purposefully delay any links to London.

Sabotaging London won't make the rest of the UK better - it will just mean less tax money available to subsidise the rest of the country. If you stop companies from expanding in London they won't go to Sheffield or Birmingham - they'll go to Amsterdam or Frankfurt or Paris.

> But even on a more local level, I wish instead of spending in the centre of London, focus shifted to bypassing the centre. E.g. I live in Croydon. Croydon has rail towards multiple towns around London, but anything not on the main lines in towards London doesn't have commuter level rail services running on them, or in some cases have no passenger trains at all.

They're trying that up to a point. Stratford has worked pretty well, and they're going to apply the same playbook at Old Oak Common. Croydon might be next on the list. But of course at the rate the UK builds anything that wil be what, 2060 before anything is done.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#225

Post by majormajor »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #128
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…

1. Politicians and the bureaucratic class have deep investments in real estate 2. Foreign money keeps flooding into western economies to find a safe haven and lack of capital controls. A bulk of it goes into real estate. 3. Elections are largely monopolized by older people who mostly tend to be homeowners. The entire system is rigged against anything that would impact home prices - such as an increase in supply or ch…

The purpose of real estate development is to make real estate more valuable.

So if you have laws restricting that development you need to look further than just "real-estate investors don't want development."

Even ones not doing the development benefit financially - landlords love being able to raise the rents cause other people in the area built a bunch of new shit.

The better off - and therefore more politically-connected - you are as a homeowner, the more you care about "I don't want the wrong people living next to me" compared to "I need to maximize short-term property values." (And the long-term property values trends clearly shows that cities with more development, that more people want to move to, are where you find ROI.)

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#226

Post by dahwolf »

jezzamon wrote: post #211
dahwolf wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was referring to the idea that in an aging country, even if young/old people would equally show up to vote, the older people will have more votes. Which is democracy. It is fair in that sense, although surely it will not feel that way at all times.

You could imagine a system where similar to how we split votes into geographical regions via things like electoral colleges or having a locally elected representatives, there could be a similar splitting of votes into age ranges to ensure each group is sufficiently represented (Not advocating for this, just an interesting thing to think about)

Indeed, democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for lunch. It's just an unusual and new idea to see young people as a minority as this never was the case to this extend.

As it comes to housing though, I remain convinced that the issue is not as political as many make it out to be. See my other comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36486626

Meaning, even if the young seize more political power, there isn't going to be a law they can pass that says "cut rent in half".

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#227

Post by lucubratory »

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…

I don't know if it's the same in the UK, but in Australia 63% of MPs are landlords, compared to only 7% of the general population. Almost no MPs are renters, compared to 30% of the general population. These people are never going to meaningfully help renters because doing so harms landlords, and they are landlords. There's no legitimacy to a system like this, being ruled by people who have completely different fundamental interests to you and with no legal way to vote for anyone else because every major party is a landlord party.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#228

Post by bobthepanda »

prottog wrote: post #182
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How can you stop people from caring, or alternatively how can you make them vote against their interest? Voting against their interests: nothing. That said, I've often found folks deemed to be voting against their interests to be doing nothing of the sort. Those who don't care are, for me, also fine. They're self selecting out of having a voice. If they want to have one in the future, they can engage. The tragedy i…

> The tragedy is those who want to engage but can't. Due to registration requirements, ersatz poll taxes, difficulty of getting to and from poll sites or keeping tabs on the election calendar. I hear about this every now and then, but is it an issue in any real number? Maybe the problem of the "difficulty of getting to and from poll sites", which I can see arising due to the nature of this country being large, spread…

So things depend on the state, but IIRC some states have been way more brazen about others.

For example, at one point a proposal was floated to force changes in Texas polling center distribution, but only in counties with over a million people, which was pretty nakedly partisan. https://www.texastribune.org/2021/05/23/texas-voting-polling...

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#229

Post by bobthepanda »

tormeh wrote: post #155
groestl wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This is definitely it. It's a question of demographics. The developed world used to be for young people because people there were mostly young. Now decisions are taken by and for old people, and those of us who aren't are afterthoughts. A good example of this is the age at which our constitutions were drafted vs how old politicians are now. This is also the case in Norway but I think the US is a more relatable exampl…

The millenial generation is now the largest cohort in the United States.

The issue is that generally, it takes a while for a cohort to build up political power.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#230

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #208
vogon_laureate wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s even worse because there’s an adult social care crisis, a pension crisis, and in some areas a rundown NHS and school system. So all the incentives are towards not just home ownership but also additional buy-to-let ownership so that those with the means can afford private health care, dentistry, school fees for their kids/grandkids, inheritance for the kids who are priced out of the market, and retirement. It’s a…

> adult social care crisis, a pension crisis, and in some areas a rundown NHS I remember about 10 years ago, "the idea" was that retirees would, as their health starts to decline, do equity-release in their homes to pay for their care needs (on the basis that the NHS would start to means-test care based on the value of all assets, including housing, so that if an OAP has £1m locked-up in their house and they probably…

Theresa May tried to sell this as part of her election campaign. It was a disaster. No one wants to be forced to give up some of their personal wealth to pay more for an NHS they've already paid into.

That may not be fair, but when most voters are property owners you're not going to get a different outcome.

This is an interesting topic because it highlights how the political and economic culture is broken and incapable of effective national strategy. I don't think housing, health, industrial policy, education, or anything else can be fixed without a complete overhaul of the UK's political parties, media, and systems.

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