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Why Britain doesn’t build

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Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#351

Post by alphager »

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…

> 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 out, and automobile-centric.

It's not just distance and cost, but time. Someone working 3 jobs simply doesn't have time to stand in line for hours.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#352

Post by nirimda »

techer wrote: post #285
throwaway2037 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people in the UK don't bother with a licence. Eh. "Many" is such a vague term. Like, 5% could be considered many. UK is a driving country, period. where a driver's licence is almost essential in order to go about daily life. This is true in all highly developed countries if you live outside the largest cities. You need to drive. It is baked in the cost of your life. Renting is much cheaper outside of the city, b…

“in the 5 years from 2015 to 2019, an average of 74% of people in England had a full driving licence“

I note your statistic refers to "people" and not "adults". Usually, some proportion of the people of any given country are ineligible to receive a drivers licence on the basis of their age. It seems that age is 17 in the UK, although I'm not sure whether that counts as full or provisional until they've got a bit more experience. I'll assume full.

According to https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populati... there's about 1.2% of the people in each age group <17 in England, which means 1.2*17 ~= 20 of the people in the England are ineligible for a drivers licence. So there's only about 6% of people in the England who could have a full drivers licence, but don't. So either they give licences out in the cornflakes at Tescos, or almost the whole adult population of the UK wants a drivers licence.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#353

Post by candiodari »

jgon wrote: post #213
dahwolf wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get what you're saying and I'm against inter-generational hate. There is no plot against young people. Remember that most old people have children. If today's young people would time travel to some decades back, they'd too make the most of the conditions then. I would not imagine any young person that owns a home to sell it at a discount out of solidarity, they too would self-optimize without any consideration for…

I don't think that the older generation "hates" youth, I don't think they think about them at all really. In the conversations I've had with Boomers and older people, although there is the standard derision for youth that is stereotypically expected of older generations, I would say there is more an immense blindspot and unwillingness to consider even a slight sacrifice of any type, even for their own children. The e…

Step on a bus sometime. The hate towards younger children (below, give or take 10 years) is easily noticeable. Oh and the hate towards male youngsters starts again at 17 or so, especially if there's somewhat more color on the skin, but of course nobody really dares to treat them like they treat a 6 year old.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#354

Post by peterfirefly »

switch007 wrote: post #200
_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…

You’re a little out of date with your info https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/about-14000-people-england-...

The article says that 70% of them hadn't bothered to bring their ID. Hardly the result of draconian laws, is it?

It also doesn't say how many of the 30% actually had the right to vote. It only says that they "brought a type that was not accepted".

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#355

Post by robertlagrant »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #344
danem wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I'm not familiar with Ireland or the UK, but for the US at least, this is absolutely false. I'm most familiar with San Francisco so let's look at that as an example. Why do you think it takes nearly 2 years to get permitting done for housing here? Why do you thin…

> Hell, why do you think California literally has an amendment to their constitution (article 34) prohibiting the construction of low-income housing without explicit approval from local residents? These aren't the demands of private developers, but the demands of influential neighborhood associations, unions (SEIU, CBTC, etc), and average homeowners who like their neighborhood as it is and don't want it to change. I…

I think the abstract point is that you bought something at a certain price and would like it to not be devalued, by whatever criteria you used to value it at that price in the first place.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#356

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

robertlagrant wrote: post #319
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No builder wants to stop building - money now is much better than money in the future This is plainly false in every way. Firstly, buildijg is an expense - why would you build now if you can put off the expense? Seocndly, market manipulation is as old as markets themselves.

> This is plainly false in every way. Firstly, buildijg is an expense - why would you build now if you can put off the expense? It might be worth considering how, if that were true, anything that has a capital investment required of it ever gets done. Building is not an expense to a building company. What do you think the company does to generate revenue, if it's not building?

If youre both managing a property portfolio as well as building on it, free capital gains for no work are a pretty good deal.

Sure, if you're a small builder you want to build ASAP for cash flow reasons. However over the past decade both the UK and Irish building markets have become dominated by REITs who do in fact benefit from increased land prices in the absence of building.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#357

Post by LatteLazy »

local_crmdgeon wrote: post #137
LatteLazy wrote: post #133

There are 100 ways we could solve this. And 100 groups, one to veto each way. So nothing will be done, it's the bystander effect. The same basic thing prevents action on climate change.

The West has moved to a Vetocracy. It prevents things from becoming significantly worse, but also things from becoming much better.

I think nations always devolve into this if there is no leadership or central purpose...

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#359

Post by r13a »

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…

> Thatcher's revolution in council housing is a cesspit of counterfactual outcomes [...] from shelter statistics [it] left 1.5 million families functionally homeless

I'm interested by this analysis. I found some web sources that seems to deal with that matter: Any specific in-depth article you could recommend?

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#360

Post by gadders »

pcdevils wrote: post #343
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…

Thatcher was a disease we've never recovered from. Shit, just look at water privatisation... Going sooo well. Or the utilities that have left us privatising profits and socialising losses

You must not remember the 70's.
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