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

Yes. Jon Stewart has said multiple times something like "it's just resource guarding," which is easy to say from a position of abundance.

He is the populist voice of the educated left and I find lots of echo's in my own social circles/education.

Stewart is coming around and waking up to the idea that "woke" policies were rejected, and the democrats need re-framing/a reckoning. IMHO, he is largely the voice of democratic reckoning. Biden wasn't kicked out until Stewart's public evisceration and declaration that the emperor, in fact, has no clothes. He at least adapts with increasing information.

That’s a good idea to automatically upzone to double the sqft and units of neighbors (and height too). The previous BoS president, Aaron Peskin, had the opposite idea: he proposed an ordinance that apartments should be capped at the 1× the average sqft of the neighbors within 300 ft (https://sfgov.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=3781286...). Fortunately, that ordinance did not pass, but it gives you an idea of the nonsense that he promoted: scarcity in the name of affordability.

> Stewart is coming around and waking up to the idea that "woke" policies were rejected, and the democrats need re-framing/a reckoning. IMHO, he is largely the voice of democratic reckoning. Biden wasn't kicked out until Stewart's public evisceration and declaration that the emperor, in fact, has no clothes. He at least adapts with increasing information.

I just finished watching his interview with Ezra Klien, and as an on/off viewer of the TDS from back in his anti-war rants from 2003 or so (still in HS so kind of fuzzy on dates) to today I have seen a noticeable difference; he has finally realized that it's not that 'fraud, waste, abuse' in government doesn't occur on both sides of the isles (that much is probably always clear) it's that the two-party paradigm have in fact insidiously profited in their own specific ways from their respective MOs, and political theater aside are entirely complicit with it as it maintains the status quo.

Anything that deviates from the norm (eg Bernie Sanders or Ron Paul) is to be brandished too extreme, or unelectable and a loss to the other isle is a better result as it is something that detracts from the business as usual approach in modern US politics. The faces/names might change, but the tactics are the same, denying access to RNC/DNC platforms removing or outright denying delegates etc... it's all been done on both sides.

Just look at the face of the man melt when he hears how the Rural Broadband Bill process purposely rendered itself moot, and perhaps made the cluster** of DOGE become an inevitability--the obvious profiteer in chief Musk being the only one to really 'win' because of his innate and impeccable ability to award himself and his corps Govt contracts while championing and branding himself the best CEO the private sector has to offer.

Not only that, watch the interview with Maria Ressa when he realizes that the same Zuck that got Obama elected and then cozied up to Trump when he needed to has been the cause and reason why extremes of political fascism in the Philippines has risen, via Cambridge Analytica, and is part of the same agenda that has been playing out in US elections since 2016.

I don't know what to say about the TDS Host alumni, I reserve judgment on their POVs at this point, but I was a big fan of John Oliver since his days on The Bugle but if/when both him and Jon get together on a stand-up tour like he did with Chappele targeted at their primary demographic I think they can exert their collective influence to their hard-liner leftist audience to see that in actuality the Left-Right paradigm is in actuality a very parasitic symbiosis where the host (The US populace and perhaps World at large) will always suffer if it is the only form of governance we can either fathom or implement.

It's clear that resources and technology aren't the limiting factor in solving a large amount of Humanity's problems, it's that entrenched power (and those who benefit from it) refuse to relinquish any of it and will sooner destroy itself, and us with it, before it ever corrects itself.

We are all rapidly aging and pretty much no-one is bringing in anywhere near enough net contributing migrants to offset this.

What the immigration argument overlooks is domestic migration, particularly urbanization. It's zero sum for sure and rural communities will be hollowed out but I think there's a real possibility that they'll be able to soak up much of the excess capacity in the coming decade.

Urbanization massively increases productivity, reduces infrastructure costs etc. There's a real economic beauty to scale. Downside it suppresses fertility even further.

Elder care will be a real nightmare though, but the Chinese elders are willing to accept far more modest conditions and outcomes than their western counterparts. Confucian values for better or worse really help here.

It could go either way at this point.

Perhaps people want to only see this problem as having a single facet: housing supply. Maybe others don't see a problem with growing inequality (that's not an uncommon opinion among the well-off).

Housing supply is a major part of it, but the reason it is so resistant to a solution is because it is multifactorial with the factors all influencing each other.

It's a wealth inequality problem created by the economic system favoring capital over labor, unreasonable local zoning restrictions, and also historical housing discrimination (redlining) which then feeds back into wealth inequality.