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Why Britain doesn’t build

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Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#231

Post by lucideer »

danem wrote: post #112
lucideer wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 h…

> Are you arguing that zoning, red-tape, and generally anti-development politicians and voters aren't the fundamental problem here?

Minus the leading language (as I presume these so-called "anti-development" politicians don't self-define as such), yes, this is what I'm arguing.

> Do you think voters who fight relentlessly to block development feel differently about public housing?

I believe the tales of such voters are highly overstated, a really common red-herring used by advocates of private developer subsidy to deflect criticism. Do NIMBYs exist? Of course. But their impact is overstated, and overconflated with genuine concerns: there are valid reasons to object to new developments, though these have a tendency to be lumped in with less valid objectors for political gain/expediency.

> 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?

Have you ever stopped to think about why it costs $1m to build such a unit in SF in 2023? About what system of incentives lead to the current status quo? I can assure you it wasn't decades of publicly-run projects.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#232

Post by acheron »

_dain_ wrote: post #193
lmm wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

>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. uhh what? we're talking about britain here. I don't know what kind of yank(?) political dysfunction you're alluding to, but nobody has any trouble voting because of a lack of ID here. you don't need one to vote. you notify th…

> yank(?)

To be clear, it’s not a real problem in the US either, but some people like to pretend it is. Don’t believe things you read on Reddit or wherever.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#233

Post by WalterBright »

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…

Oh come on. If there was the mass of people who couldn't get registered to vote, the Democrats would pull out all the stops to get them registered.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#234

Post by lmm »

RestlessMind wrote: post #219
lmm wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

California is one of the worst affected states for housing, and yet > they paid for the right kind of ID, or navigated an impenetrable web of underpaid bureaucrats Pretty much everyone starts driving around 16-18 and has a driver's license > manage to get off work on election day CA is an early voting state where ballots are mailed to you ~1 month in advance. You can drop them off at your convenience at one of the nu…

I'm glad to hear we've finally put down that 1776 nonsense and restored California to the British crown.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#235

Post by WalterBright »

edent wrote: post #201
_dain_ wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. uhh what? we're talking about britain here. I don't know what kind of yank(?) political dysfunction you're alluding to, but nobody has any trouble voting because of a lack of ID here. you don't need one to vote. you notify th…

That is not correct. During the recent elections in England about 14,000 people were denied a vote due to lack of ID. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-65988959

Great Britain has 67 million people. 14,000 people is unlikely to swing any election, even if they all voted in lockstep.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#236

Post by lmm »

WalterBright wrote: post #233
lmm wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

Oh come on. If there was the mass of people who couldn't get registered to vote, the Democrats would pull out all the stops to get them registered.

You mean the SDP? They haven't been an independent party since 1983, and have been politically irrelevant for even longer.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#237

Post by _dain_ »

acheron wrote: post #232
_dain_ wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. uhh what? we're talking about britain here. I don't know what kind of yank(?) political dysfunction you're alluding to, but nobody has any trouble voting because of a lack of ID here. you don't need one to vote. you notify th…

> yank(?) To be clear, it’s not a real problem in the US either, but some people like to pretend it is. Don’t believe things you read on Reddit or wherever.

oh I already know it's not, you don't even have to be alive to vote let alone show ID

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#238

Post by danaris »

teddyh wrote: post #124
danaris wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not coincidence, and it's not conspiracy. It's zeitgeist, and people seeing one place do something and decide that's a good idea, and people following everything from scientific (and pseudoscientific) studies that came out around the time, to philosophical works published around the time, to all of the above that were old but re-popularized around the time. You can just as easily ask "why was there a rise of rig…

The entire world was (and still is, to some extent) horribly racist. Every nation, institution and venerable principle you hold sacred has horrible racism lurking in its very bones, if you dig deep enough. You can’t, therefore, dismiss anything on that basis alone. Argue with an issue on its merits alone ; to attack the supposed secret origin of an issue is equivalent to an ad hominem argument. Also, alternative expl…

Ah, yes; the good old "everything is impure, which means that everything is equally bad, so it doesn't matter if I do/support bad things, because I have no choice!"

Yeah, no. That doesn't fly.

There's a massive difference between, say, "the fact that I am a person of European descent living in upstate NY is only possible because of the genocide of and racism against generations of Native Americans; therefore, my entire existence is predicated on structural racism" and "many, many groups have vilified Jewish people for centuries for a variety of reasons (that are out of scope of this discussion); that vilification has led to ostracism and genocide on numerous occasions and still does to this day, frequently based entirely on completely false stereotypes; the propagation of those stereotypes still to this day leads real people to choose to ostracize and murder Jewish people; "lizard people who rule the world" is one of those stereotypes, and participating in its propagation does actual, measurable harm to Jewish people."

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#239

Post by khalladay »

asdff wrote: post #188
sefrost wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have noticed the same thing as the person you're replying to. I think the reason is there are a lot of tech / tech-adjacent workers on Reddit and they know people less than 100 miles away (in the USA) are doing the same job as them, possibly at the same company even, but are getting significantly higher compensation packages.

People have been saying this for years. Why do Canadian techies stay in canada? Tough immigration to US keeping them trapped? Seems like that's been the drumbeat of the central US tech scene for years and its resulted in all the engineering grads from those schools trying to flock to the coasts, and there basically being not much of a tech industry at all in the wake.

Canadian techie here :) I moved to the US for work super early in my career, and recently moved back to Canada after nearly a decade (mostly just for a change in scenery). I work in games, so I never made the super high FAANG wages I see talked about everywhere on here, but it's true even in games that you'll make significantly more in the US than in Canada. I make more than I need for the lifestyle that makes me happy though, so the pay disparity is honestly a non issue for me.

US immigration laws are a complete non issue for tech workers (at least in my experience, you still have to fill out a boat load of paperwork, but if a US company wants you, things move pretty quick). Mostly, people I work with seem to not want to move the the US for the same reasons people don't want to move to another state: they're happy enough where they are, they'd be leaving friends/family, they're worried if the move that their life will be worse, they already make enough money to be comfortable (if not inordinately wealthy). If they're parents, they usually are also wary about uprooting their kids' lives.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#240

Post by diveandfight »

rcarr wrote: post #154
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…

It definitely seems to be more of an Anglosphere problem than elsewhere. I've been learning other languages with the long term view of permanently escaping the Anglosphere in the next 5 years, unless I finally manage to land a job that pays enough to allow me some stability.

> Anglosphere

In my opinion, this is an underutilized term that could be used to group trends/behaviors and consequently policy decisions.

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