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Move fast, break things: A review of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

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Re: Move fast, break things: A review of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

#61

Post by nradov »

velcrovan wrote: post #17

From another good review of the book: > “One of the personally amusing aspects of reading Abundance is that it kept reminding me of a two-hour discussion I had with Ezra Klein in 2019 about Medicare for All. […] In our discussion, Klein balked at making Medicare for All the centerpiece of a Democratic health care agenda because he thought it was not politically practical. […] At one point in the discussion, he asks h…

The focus on "Medicare for All" or single payer healthcare in general is so misguided. Commercial insurers are like the smallest problem in the whole messed up US healthcare system. Putting everyone on Medicare wouldn't solve any of the more fundamental problems.

https://www.sensible-med.com/p/the-entire-healthcare-system-...

Re: Move fast, break things: A review of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

#62

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

hollerith wrote: post #50
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #44

I gave this criticism to Peter Thiel a long time back that he complains about. We were promised flying cars but all we got is 140 characters and yet the startup that he has is basically a chartjs version of a database with an aggressive sales strategy like Oracle. Not exactly world changing now and that is the problem with most of these critics of society, just like movie critics. They can make a great argument over…

>Marc Andreessen who has never actually had a successful startup. He was a founder of Netscape. But maybe you meant for your statement to apply only to his career as a VC.

James Clark was the founder and the actual visionary. A lot of history has been rewritten about Marc Andreessen. Even most of the coding of the original Mosiac was done by Eric Bina.

Re: Move fast, break things: A review of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

#64

Post by xnx »

dralley wrote: post #41
tgma wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fucking everyone does No. Many people don't. Lots more don't have it as a priority. Ted Kaczynski and all the climate-change crowd come to mind. Also you conveniently deleted my first word "deregulation."

Fine, 98% of the population would like to see increased economic development. The point is that you would be very hard pressed to find any issue in American politics less controversial. Degrowth is incredibly fringe. You wouldn't even get 10% at a Bernie Sanders rally to agree. Pointing to the unibomber is hardly a great way to prove the position is mainstream. I started with your latter point because it was just so…

Unintentionally, no modern administration may do more for degrowth than the current one.

Re: Move fast, break things: A review of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

#65

Post by nradov »

tptacek wrote: post #58
nradov wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a common misconception. The most active NIMBYs have lived in their homes for years and intend to die there. They don't intend to ever sell and aren't particularly concerned with property values per se . What they do care about are quality of life issues: noise, traffic, privacy, parking, crime, litter, etc. The more neighbors you have, the greater the risk that some of them will be antisocial assholes who let…

That may be true in some places, but in the Village of Oak Park, where I live, it's definitely not. Places like Oak Park --- wealthy inner-ring suburbs of major American cities --- are defined by their school systems. Those schools drive property taxes, which ratchet down affordability. Housing is dominated by SFZ lots, and the houses built on those lots are rational acquisitions only for families of school-aged chil…

I don't understand why people keep harping on about morality. No one cares. What matters are votes.

As for where you live, Illinois in general is particularly badly governed among US states. The entire state is a corrupt fiscal train wreck and serves mainly as an example of what not to do. Some other states have mechanisms to roughly equalize school district funding independent from local property taxes. My advice is to move.

Re: Move fast, break things: A review of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

#67

Post by davidw »

xnx wrote: post #54
davidw wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a specific hearing that I attended where exactly that dynamic played out https://bendyimby.com/2024/04/16/the-hearing-and-the-housing... A room full of angry, wealthy, older people who showed up at 11AM on a weekday to stop homes for people who doubtless earn less than they do. And in that case, they were successful, sadly.

I'm conflicted. Who should be allowed to say what gets built in an area: the neighbors, the neighborhood, the city, the county, the state, the federal government?

The property owner, unless what's being built is really smelly, loud, or dangerous. With perhaps some carve outs if people want to voluntarily have some kind of HOA type thing that isn't publicly enforced.

I think this take on it is pretty good: https://islandpress.org/books/arbitrary-lines

Re: Move fast, break things: A review of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

#68

Post by [deleted] »

nradov wrote: post #65
tptacek wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true in some places, but in the Village of Oak Park, where I live, it's definitely not. Places like Oak Park --- wealthy inner-ring suburbs of major American cities --- are defined by their school systems. Those schools drive property taxes, which ratchet down affordability. Housing is dominated by SFZ lots, and the houses built on those lots are rational acquisitions only for families of school-aged chil…

I don't understand why people keep harping on about morality. No one cares. What matters are votes. As for where you live, Illinois in general is particularly badly governed among US states. The entire state is a corrupt fiscal train wreck and serves mainly as an example of what not to do. Some other states have mechanisms to roughly equalize school district funding independent from local property taxes. My advice is…

[deleted]

Re: Move fast, break things: A review of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

#69

Post by tptacek »

nradov wrote: post #65
tptacek wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true in some places, but in the Village of Oak Park, where I live, it's definitely not. Places like Oak Park --- wealthy inner-ring suburbs of major American cities --- are defined by their school systems. Those schools drive property taxes, which ratchet down affordability. Housing is dominated by SFZ lots, and the houses built on those lots are rational acquisitions only for families of school-aged chil…

I don't understand why people keep harping on about morality. No one cares. What matters are votes. As for where you live, Illinois in general is particularly badly governed among US states. The entire state is a corrupt fiscal train wreck and serves mainly as an example of what not to do. Some other states have mechanisms to roughly equalize school district funding independent from local property taxes. My advice is…

No. The states you prefer resolve this problem not by convincing people to vote against their interests, but by denying individual homeowners the right to vote down new housing. I would welcome that approach too, but in the meantime, I work within the system I have. And, sorry, but I'm really not interested in your take on where I should live.

Re: Move fast, break things: A review of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

#70

Post by divan »

tgma wrote: post #18
dralley wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is basically advocating for and co-opting the core ideas of the current administration How on earth do you come to this conclusion? Trump is famously NIMBY, both in real estate and in infrastructure. He objects to solar and wind purely on the basis that "they ruin the view". He's anti-dense and pro-suburb, he hates zoning except when it actually comes to residential zoning, where he has pretty consistently tr…

Both advocate deregulation and increasing economic growth. Of course you can debate the difference at the margin ad nauseam, something the authors are doing more authoritatively than you and I could on every single podcast on the planet, trying hard to differentiate themselves from libertarians that preceded them decades ago. I remain unconvinced.

> Both advocate ... increasing economic growth

Does anybody ever advocate economic decline?

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