621–630 of 660 posts
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Taxes! Of course; there is no problem just taking more money from other people can’t solve.
Taxes have made our modern societies possible, so yes they are often the answer to a problem. The American insistence taxes are wrong or "theft" is a malign view that, if adopted widespread, would destroy the ability of most democracies to function.
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Yes, and even if they do magically popup, the grocery stores will STILL be a drive for everyone. And stores for every other supply, and the JOBS , will be a significant drive away. So, you will have just condemned every poor person you transplanted to now buying, maintaining, and insuring an automobile or several for each family. A constantly depreciating asset. Which may well cost more than they saved in rent. "Oh,…
> Yes, and even if they do magically popup, the grocery stores will STILL be a drive for everyone. And stores for every other supply, and the JOBS, will be a significant drive away. There is basically nowhere a family can pay less for rent that the price of upkeeping a beater car - the residents were going to have a car either way. There's just not enough public transit in the US to avoid this reality outside of citi…
It is not only the price of purchase, insurance, maintenance of a car, it is also the TIME you are condemning them to spend on commuting everywhere.
The solution is to make massively more residential development/redevelopment IN and NEAR the cities, such as now converting underutilized office space to residential, and not only passing regs favoring and encouraging such conversions (as is being done noe in Boston), but ALSO passing regs encouraging Remote Work.
And, where there IS public transit, encourage development there. Massachusetts is doing this, specifically encouraging conversion of offices to residential and overriding zoning laws within X distance of commuter rail stops.
Those are both good moves. But arguing for merely blanket 'develop anything anywhere' is literally stupid and will do more damage to society than any gains. There are reasons zoning was developed, and while a small part of it was racist/classist, most of it has very good reasons to exist. Simply overriding it is statist authoritarian, and saying people in their locales have no right to determine how they run their LOCAL affairs, from environmental, to historic preservation, to traffic patterns.
Plus, it's already been proven that cheap housing away from the city doesn't work. People can buy a trailer for $10-$30K and as spot for $400-1000/mth, or rentals for a bit more. But the locales are all away from the city. There are very few people who actually do it BECAUSE it is impractical to live so far from jobs in the city. If you want to house people more cheaply, it needs to be done NEAR their jobs. Destroying everything else for a bad idea will merely leave the problem unsolved, and destroy value.
I've watched towns have zoning, abandon it, then reinstate it a decade later because they saw what an awful idea it was to have none. I've seen towns that rezoned to "modernize" and destroy their character, and towns preserve their character and grow steadily into desirable locales. NONE of it is as trivial as you think.
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Smug about an argument I haven’t seen? What do you believe is the actual argument…?
The part where you like to go around being annoying and then when people get upset retreating to "my opinion is just as valuable as yours". Which I think is stupid, except this time I'm not even going to engage on that and directly say that I also agree with their position, which means that not only is your opinion dumb it is also in the minority.
And why would the number of users expressing opinions even matter?
Edit: I’m not here to score points, so it seems irrelevant in any comment chain whatsoever.
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But you complain about fictive homeless people attacking you, with or without moral compunction. What will you do with this person after you've committed them? It turns out that forcing people to detox isn't effective. Addiction is a disease with no reliable cure; you can't just give someone a round of antibiotics. But if you think it's possible, demonstrate it to the world: Get yourself addicted, then detox, and you…
I've not complained about anyone, fictional or otherwise. If your assertion is that getting someone off of drugs in the short term plays absolutely no role in getting someone off drugs in the long term, then I'm not really sure what to say to you. It's my understanding that people primarily get and stay sober out of fear of losing absolutely everything and dying. The trouble with rehabilitating the homeless is that t…
That is the wages of fear. It results in attacks on the things that alarm us, including other commenters, unhoused people, and addicted people. Unhoused and addicted people are nothing to fear.
And on top of that, fear doesn't justify hurting other people. It's a very different thing being afraid and vulnerable, and being afraid and in a position of power. You have a position of power relative to unhoused and addicted people. Power corrupts; powerful people don't have a check on them; they think their hunger or fear or lust or whatever are important, are the natural priority. Your fear isn't a priority over the freedom, rights, and welfare of addicted people.
The only thing to fear is fear itself, according to someone who was smart, courageous, and who had led people through danger we can't imagine, and held positions of great power.
Your theory of how addiction and homelessness work conflicts with what I've heard from many experts I've spoken to and that I've read. That doesn't make you wrong, but look up the research.
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Fear is a feeling, and I'm not sure what "very real" means, as if your feelings are matter of national importance. If someone commits a crime, then the people are justified in acting - in a proportionate, necessary way - through government. Otherwise, your fear is your problem. Maybe the homeless person is scared of you - after all, you can call the police and subject them to serious abuse. I agree that it's an often…
I'm saying the fear people feel is real, and "valid" in the sense that the rest of us must recognize it, not dismiss it. Only when we meet people in the fearful place they're at, and they feel heard, can we start to try to make them see that the fear is not justified or rational compared with the actual risk posed by the homeless or mentally ill or what have you. I do agree, it's human rights for everyone or no-one.
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> Relative scarcity is the necessary and sufficient condition. Either there's enough housing or there isn't This seems like an oversimplification. Speculation affects demand, so the amount of speculation is hidden within “relative scarcity”. If there is no speculation then demand is directly related to the needs and finances of potential occupants. If there is speculation then demand becomes connected to the buying p…
That isn’t quite right. Speculators look for good deals, meaning they look at prices N years from now and try to make money on that. They aren’t pushing prices up just for existing, they are predicting higher prices and acting to take advantage of that. They are looking for second hand property that is undervalued for the horizon they are looking at. But yes, wealthy people have more capital and leverage to participa…
It’s that correct? Consider NFTs. They are a speculative asset with no recurring revenue attached. The natural price, I think, is zero, but speculators push that price up based on the expected return from future buyers based on predictions of how the market will move. There are no other supply and demand effects, just speculation on sale. Of course there was a bubble but housing is more grounded in reality and real value. Still, it may demonstrate that speculation alone can raise prices.
> Gentrification is a bit more productive
In the dry economic sense of “production” yes, but at the expense of dismantling communities. Perhaps more productive and less destructive would be the approach to housing taken in Vienna. The government buys land and builds affordable housing complexes on it, and once residents stabilize and their income goes up they get to stay in the housing so the buildings become mixed income and they’re pretty nice. Near where I live West Oakland is gentrifying with a wall of corporate owned housing that is replacing the front stoops and back yards of local residents with parking garages and Teslas. It seems almost as though the community is being slowly eaten alive.
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That isn’t quite right. Speculators look for good deals, meaning they look at prices N years from now and try to make money on that. They aren’t pushing prices up just for existing, they are predicting higher prices and acting to take advantage of that. They are looking for second hand property that is undervalued for the horizon they are looking at. But yes, wealthy people have more capital and leverage to participa…
> That isn’t quite right. Speculators look for good deals, meaning they look at prices N years from now and try to make money on that. They aren’t pushing prices up just for existing It’s that correct? Consider NFTs. They are a speculative asset with no recurring revenue attached. The natural price, I think, is zero, but speculators push that price up based on the expected return from future buyers based on predictio…
Housing isn't comparable to NFTs, all logic goes out the door when something doesn't have intrinsic value.
> In the dry economic sense of “production” yes, but at the expense of dismantling communities.
Yes: whenever cities devote resources to "clean up" a neighborhood, they are also doing this. Slums are ugly, but they are also a source of cheap housing; old buildings might not use land very effectively, but they are also a source of cheap housing (and that new dense apartment building that they knocked down the old housing to build is no longer as affordable on a unit basis).
> The government buys land and builds affordable housing complexes on it
This isn't a bad approach, though I'm not sure how it would scale to the USA. The problem with the US is that "affordable" is often a term that is applied to a few hot cities rather than in general. If all the affordable housing is in Mississippi, no one would be interested in taking it, if it is where people want to live, then we will have lots of lopsided unsustainable population movements, if we just somehow even it out affordable housing, then some people are still going to be left out of their preferred location for housing.
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I've not complained about anyone, fictional or otherwise. If your assertion is that getting someone off of drugs in the short term plays absolutely no role in getting someone off drugs in the long term, then I'm not really sure what to say to you. It's my understanding that people primarily get and stay sober out of fear of losing absolutely everything and dying. The trouble with rehabilitating the homeless is that t…
How disappointing that you are resorting to the ad hominem attacks; we could have learned from each other; we could have connected. That is the wages of fear. It results in attacks on the things that alarm us, including other commenters, unhoused people, and addicted people. Unhoused and addicted people are nothing to fear. And on top of that, fear doesn't justify hurting other people. It's a very different thing bei…
It is telling that your opinion isn't based on talking with addicted and/or homeless people.
> How disappointing that you are resorting to the ad hominem attacks; we could have learned from each other; we could have connected.
I think you should still consider learning from what Boogie_Man said.
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> Relative scarcity is the necessary and sufficient condition. Either there's enough housing or there isn't This seems like an oversimplification. Speculation affects demand, so the amount of speculation is hidden within “relative scarcity”. If there is no speculation then demand is directly related to the needs and finances of potential occupants. If there is speculation then demand becomes connected to the buying p…
Yes, but this speculation is grounded on the possibility of extracting future rents. Which is an assumption about future relative scarcity. We’ve all decided that it’s totally fine to artificially limit the supply of real estate. Speculation is the market (correctly, in most cases) betting that that will continue.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S24058...
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> That isn’t quite right. Speculators look for good deals, meaning they look at prices N years from now and try to make money on that. They aren’t pushing prices up just for existing It’s that correct? Consider NFTs. They are a speculative asset with no recurring revenue attached. The natural price, I think, is zero, but speculators push that price up based on the expected return from future buyers based on predictio…
> Consider NFTs. They are a speculative asset with no recurring revenue attached. Housing isn't comparable to NFTs, all logic goes out the door when something doesn't have intrinsic value. > In the dry economic sense of “production” yes, but at the expense of dismantling communities. Yes: whenever cities devote resources to "clean up" a neighborhood, they are also doing this. Slums are ugly, but they are also a sourc…
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S24058...
For public housing, there is also the approach taken by Singapore. This article discusses both and may interest you. What I think matters most is we understand that it is possible to have more people in stable affordable housing, and we accept nothing less.
https://www.shareable.net/public-housing-works-lessons-from-...