We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

Interest rates is much of it. Just calculate the total payments for a 30y, 100k mortgage in 1980 when the interest rate was 15%. It's 455k in total. The same amount as a 300k mortgage for today's 3% interest for 30 years, also 455k total. In other words, the monthly payments / total payments are the same and thus just as affordable at 3x higher prices, simply because interest rates dropped so much.

Second, there's indications of further concentration. If you have a 10x10 square of land and 100 people, you can each live on one square (spread-out) You can also all live on one square (concentrated). The price levels of the homes in the lived-squares of course grows the more we concentrate, even if total population is constant.

Concentration isn't a straight-line, e.g. NY depopulated in the 80s, but does tend to arc towards further urbanisation, further concentration, further population density. In large part because cities are knowledge/network centres, and our economy is based on knowledge/networks, whereas before our economy was based on e.g. agriculture, which is the opposite of concentrated. I'd be very interested to see if that will ever change due to a working-from-home / remote-work, and even virtual reality to have meaningful social and entertainment experiences remotely. It used to be if you lived in a small town, there'd be few jobs, few bars to meet people, few concerts to go to, no cinema. Many moved to the city despite higher prices, less room, noise and pollution and crime, in search for work and social life. But with remote work and VR, the calculus might change. (not 100%, but many a little bit, enough to bring a little bit of balance to the ever-growing concentration of people in a few big cities).

The gov is able to limit density within the office buildings, so it should be able to limit density within the county limits. I agree, though, that such an initiative would be against the interests of just about everyone, except the future workers who don't exist today and don't have the right to vote.

I understand that you may value your neighborhood.

But I think it is tyrannical for you to tell other people they can't safely develop on their property "because you say so". Why should your vote cancel out that of another citizen who wants to build on their own property? What gives you the right? Why don't you and your neighbors buy the property around you if you want to keep it as is?

Zoning laws are a modern invention. Historically everyone lived in mixed in neighborhoods. The businesses, the business owners, and the workers all needed to be near each other. Commuter train service started changing that, and then the automobile, allowing the rich to separate form the poor. A good bit of current zoning practices originated in the last century for classist and racist reasons, mandating the size of lots and houses to keep poor people out.

The regulatory restrictions on the housing supply cause houses to cost more. I assume you would agree? I feel bad for young people who can't afford a house. Will millennials needs to wait for boomers to die before they can afford to get into a house? It worries me that hedgefunds are buying more and more houses, because it is a rigged market and profitable. It embarrasses me that we don't let homeless people pitch a tent and live somewhere besides hiding in underpasses.

Japan is an example of a country that I would say has better zoning regulations. The regulations are set at a federal level, not by municipalities. As the concentration of residents in an area increases the buildings are allowed to increase in height and more businesses are allowed in the area. Industrial areas are kept separate. It is permissible to build housing in an industrial area if one wants to, but not the other way around. That seems logical and fair to me.

San Francisco is a good example of the problems caused by restrictive zoning. It appears that folks who didn't want to change the character of their neighborhood have changed it quite a bit. The San Francisco of today is nothing like it was two generations ago. Only certain people can afford to live there now. Instead of hippies, free thinkers, and musicians it is now a place known for overpaid tech workers, NIMBYs, and bums. It is so dysfunctional that teachers, fire, and police workers can't afford to live there anymore. Is that the character that current property owners cherish? Or their ever increasing property values?

The difference seems to be that you place more value on what the group has decided versus what an individual may have wanted. That is the definition of tyranny. You and your gang of neighbors would be telling other property owners what they can and can't do with their property. There's 'no principal involved, just that there are more of you.

I side with the individual unless there is a really good reason not to. I'm even offended that you and your neighbors are not just making decisions that apply to you and your neighbors, but also apply to future generations.

Do you have any opinion on the way the Japanese regulate zoning?

I'm not sure equating local democracy to tyranny is a sound argument. We all, from the locale to the nation, get to collectively decide the rules under which we live.

Or, we can fail to decide, and have it decided by whichever warlords come out on top this season.

Taking your individual liberty argument to it's end, it would be perfectly OK for me to build, one inch from your property line, a factory or party hall just under the legal limits of loudness, smelliness, and traffic. According to you, I could say "Hey, it's my property, pss-off!" (remember, your wish to end zoning).

I've literally watched people in a town that formerly had zoning, then voted it out, then had bad sht happen... and I watched them in real time have the realization that "oh, this sh*t wouldn't have happened if we still had those zoning laws, huh?". Then they vote zoning back in.

No intelligent individual buys zoned property intending to break zoning without knowing it is a gamble to get the variance or vote to change the rules.

It is a group of people who each individually decide to put their own resources into building their individual properties, and the town properties, as they best see fit for their purposes. And it is not like zoning laws are static inherited burdens - they are updated continuously, 2x per year in many towns.

We have individually and democratically decided to live by these rules, and to invest our money and efforts, both individually and collectively in maintaining that.

Your town has made similar types of decisions, but perhaps to different ends.

What right do I have to tell your town what to do, and you, mine? (obviously outside of national issues like environmental laws, or collectively going in and buying enough property in your town to get the voting power to change your town's laws)