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Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

inpractice.yimbyaction.org

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Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#471

Post by jack_h »

mrguyorama wrote: post #297
CivBase wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that what she ran on? My perception was that she ran on "more of the same but also different... nevermind, look at all these celebrities telling you to vote for me!" and something vague about protecting women's rights. It's almost like you need more than a couple months to run a serious presidential campaign. Despite being the VP for 4 years, most people didn't know what to expect from her. Almost nobody was enthu…

Did you look up her platform at all? Or do you insist this because it wasn't spoon fed to you? There was a platform document pretty early on in her campaign. Meanwhile Trump in 2020 did not have a platform at all and yet the voters didn't give a shit.

> Did you look up her platform at all?

I did. I also knew what she campaigned on during her brief presidential campaign in 2020. I also know her Senate record. I also know what she did as AG and DA. Harris' problem is that her platform was inconsistent with past actions. I'm all for politicians having a change of heart, but they have to be able to articulate what they believed before, what made them reconsider, and how they got to their new position. She failed spectacularly in that task which made her look inauthentic and the GOP seized on that weakness.

Her platform ended up looking like the output of a focus group with the express intent of winning votes rather than having any real policy positions. GP's "more of the same but also different... nevermind, look at all these celebrities telling you to vote for me!" is pretty spot on.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#472

Post by dctoedt »

rayiner wrote: post #230
leptons wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Harris graduated from Howard University and the University of California, Hastings College of the Law." So dumb.. she has a degree in law and was a very successful prosecutor. > "Harris was elected attorney general of California in 2010, becoming the first woman, African American, and South Asian American to hold the office in the state's history.[56] She took office on January 3, 2011, and was reelected in 2014.[…

Dan Quayle also had a law degree, but he was also dumb. And he passed the bar the first try, unlike Harris.

> And he [Dan Quayle] passed the bar the first try, unlike [Kamala] Harris.

Harris took the California bar exam. It's notoriously difficult. AFAICT, Quayle took the Indiana bar exam.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#473

Post by gopher_space »

rayiner wrote: post #137
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your assumptions are wrong. Kamala lost because of inflation during the Biden admin and some related missteps. Also her gender and skin color likely worked against her. Also you're misreading my point, campaigning on these things isn't a panacea, but delivering on them just might be.

It probably wasn’t either inflation or Harris’s race, because the rightward swing was heavily skewed by race. Compared to 2016, all of Trump’s gain came from non-whites : https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/03/18/opinion/18eks-sho... . Whites didn’t shift at all from 2016 to 2024. Latino moderates shifted 23 points to the right, and Asian moderates shifted 11 points to the right. It’s hard to explain how inflation w…

Conservative minorities don't shift to the right, they're far right and temporarily move left whenever the Republicans get a little too on-the-nose. A Democrat in office means they won't be exposed to that rhetoric for a few years so the "bloc" will swing back to their baseline for a cycle or two. I'm trying to think of a visual analogy that isn't a double pendulum.

I feel like the "voting against their best interests" trope exists because people don't realize that conservative minorities vote as far right as the GOP will let them. Because they're conservative.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#474

Post by BobaFloutist »

PaulHoule wrote: post #105
eddythompson80 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is what the Kamala campaign ran on, it didn’t work. It's what Obama ran on, and it worked for him. The fact that he achieved very little there is a different issue. Kamala's 2-month long campaign wasn't very convincing.

The odd trouble was that ordinary people saw the Harris campaign as being preoccupied with the issues of a lunatic fringe online plus what conservatives said Harris was preoccupied with. Harris would have had to kick the lunatic fringe to the curb but didn’t have the will to do so.

And the lunatic fringe saw her as overly deferential to republicans because there were a few notable republicans that were willing to stand up and say "Actually, I would prefer this democrat over this republican" and she thought that was worth highlighting in her campaign.

There's no winning everyone, that's for sure.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#475

Post by packetlost »

grandempire wrote: post #455
legitster wrote: post #46

I've grown a little bit more skeptical of what can realistically be achieved by the passive nature of YIMBY-ism. In Portland, they passed some radical new zoning laws a few years ago that allowed anyone, anywhere the ability to zone ADUs on their property. And the cost to get permits is almost nothing. I have lots of friends and family in the area with property. But not a single one has added an ADU. It seems like it…

Another factor for me is there is risk to hiring contractors. If i could just pay money and have confidence things on my house would be fixed I would do it in a heartbeat. But you have to become a lawyer and project manager to make sure they do it. > There's a general fear of being a landlord. Tenants have a lot of legal rights Yes, these laws also increase the cost of housing.

Laws that protect individuals vs corporations usually hurt small businesses vs individuals a lot. Maybe not more than the harm caused by big corps, but it certainly has unfortunate side-effects.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#476

Post by lupusreal »

ReptileMan wrote: post #385
loglog wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"renegotiate at market rates" is extremely tenant-punishing, because the cost of moving for the tenant is much higher than the cost of finding a new tenant for a landlord. It becomes better if you remove the "renegotiate" part and couple the allowed rent increase to some index.

Yes picking carboard boxes from the store and stuffing them in the tiny US cars for a couple of blocks is a great cost. If you as a tenant want to lock a rate - sign long term contract. Then a year or six months before expiring start renew talks. Don't forget that market also changes - you may be in a better position too. Look - I support the idea of people owning their own homes and renting being the exception than…

I get what you're saying, but you're just not going to get a sofa, large dresser or cabinet, or anything like that into an American car, large as they are. Minivans or pickup trucks are a different story, which is a big part of the reason they're popular despite the online derision.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#477

Post by alabastervlog »

ceejayoz wrote: post #14
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the courage needed is not pandering to the left.

If only that was happening as much as the American right thinks it is.

Seriously, where's all the pandering? We should be swimming in awesome shit, if that were true.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#478

Post by alabastervlog »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #94
rpastuszak wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what sense?

In the sense that the center is where the action is, and votes are, and the left and right fringes attract too much attention and influence.

This is why Trump has done so well by running toward the center.

Oh. Wait.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#479

Post by alabastervlog »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #65
huijzer wrote: post #25

Noah Smith also wrote a IMO nice review of the Abundance book [1]. I'm very happy that problems like this are discussed: > This is only one way that Klein and Thompson would have us focus on outputs instead of on inputs. Progressives love to focus on the number of dollars the government spends on high speed rail or green energy; Klein and Thompson would have us focus instead on how much actually gets built as a resul…

Unfortunately, we have one party that wants the government to get some stuff done but doesn't really care about how much it costs, and another party that cares about costs but doesn't really want the government to get stuff done. So we end up either getting things done for an exorbitant price, or not getting anything done.

> and another party that cares about costs

This is nowhere present in that party's behavior over the last 50 years. No, not even DOGE, assuming the rule of law doesn't collapse completely they're going to cost us money because they've done things so obviously-poorly and illegally.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#480

Post by directevolve »

legitster wrote: post #46

I've grown a little bit more skeptical of what can realistically be achieved by the passive nature of YIMBY-ism. In Portland, they passed some radical new zoning laws a few years ago that allowed anyone, anywhere the ability to zone ADUs on their property. And the cost to get permits is almost nothing. I have lots of friends and family in the area with property. But not a single one has added an ADU. It seems like it…

ADUs are particularly ineffective, because each one requires the owner to work as a part-time landlord with the tenant being almost their housemate. All the headache without much increase in income.

I happen to have chatted with the head of a large commercial contractor in Portland a few months ago. He told me Portland's unattractive to developers because, compared to other cities, rents are low and the cost to build is high, so the flow of real estate investment dollars into Portland is slow.

Since the problem we're trying to solve is making rent cheaper, conditional on the current state of the economy, the solution here is making it cheaper to build dense residential in Portland in the urban core and improve transit options.

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