Comment by mindslight | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mindslight | Hacker News Reader

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Except your original volley of comments was channeling the efficient market fallacy, whereby anything that's suboptimal must imply an opportunity for profit. And this comment is still focusing on economic inefficiency coming from external non-economic factors, when my point is that the market itself will sustain such inefficiencies on its own.

> Allow people to build the cities they actually want, so long as they don't hurt or endanger anyone else.

Keep following this thought experiment. There is plenty of vacant unincorporated land that a group of people could get together and build whatever city they might want. That scale of investment could even get some legal leeway from state government. The type of blank-slate freedom that you're idyllically invoking ("build the cities they actually want") actually exists right now.

The intrinsic problem is still that of social scaling. Cities need people, and those people will inevitably have conflicts (and these conflicts become more intense with residents' capital buy in - cf a building full of owned condominiums versus rented apartments). Cue you've just reinvented laws but are perhaps calling them by another name (eg "policies" "user agreement" etc).

And so sorry, there is no blanket "striking the root" answer here, just a lot of messy tradeoffs. If you think eliminating some type of regulation (eg minimum lot sizes, height restrictions, etc) might change consumer preferences to make neighborhood grocery stores viable again, you can argue for that! But recognize that you're arguing tradeoffs (eg denser buildings now mean more traffic, taller buildings mean the fire department needs higher ladders, existing properties lose access to sunlight, etc) rather than some imaginary null hypothesis of a blank slate where everything will be correct by construction.

> There is plenty of vacant unincorporated land that a group of people could get together and build whatever city they might want.

This is just a big network affect failure. A bunch of zealots starting a cult in the desert isn't a city, and fails quickly every time.

> there is no blanket "striking the root" answer here

I didn't invent this. This is how the whole world worked, in general, 100 years ago. Japan already went back to this 30 years ago, and it absolutely worked.

> denser buildings now mean more traffic

But less need for cars when you can walk to where you are going. Also, public transit becomes a viable option at higher densities.

> existing properties lose access to sunlight

Exactly the NIMBY attitude that supposes you get to say what other people do with their property. This is what makes homes unaffordable, neighborhoods unwalkable, our working days full of commute time, the atmosphere full of CO2 and soot, and consolidates all sorts of commerce from the small and local into the national and international mega-corps. Great tradeoff!

> This is just a big network affect failure.

What do you mean "just" ? The whole point is that the difficulty of social scaling is the network effects.

> I didn't invent this. This is how the whole world worked, in general, 100 years ago.

Sorry, you cannot reverse the arrow of time. From the little I understand the Japanese model is close to what I proposed about buying up land and creating a new urban area from scratch. So as I said, that is actually legally still on the table in the US. The problem is it seems to be off the table culturally (development companies in the US are building suburban tract houses instead of train stations and sky scrapers).

> But less need for cars when you can walk to where you are going

Yes, as I said, it's a tradeoff. I didn't explore all the facets. You're free to make these arguments. In fact, I encourage you to in general! I'm in a more ruralish area now and at this point in my life probably won't ever move back, but I used to live in a good sized walkable/bikeable city and I really enjoyed it (but for the economic treadmill).

> Exactly the NIMBY attitude that supposes you get to say what other people do with their property

Here we've gotten to the heart of the matter where so called right-libertarianism falls apart [0]. We're not talking about property (the buildings), but rather real estate (a land area relative to other people's real estate). That distinction exists for an important reason - because physical proximity means that your actions on your real estate does affect your neighbors, regardless of how much you want to ignore it. The retort of living next to a chemical plant is cliche, but for a good reason.

The null hypothesis base case is to move somewhere less dense so you don't affect your neighbors as much (which is precisely why the American conception of freedom encourages the sprawl it has!), not somehow having high population density without any conflict-resolving regulations. Scaling population density inherently requires social technology, not merely the rejection of social technology. If you're concerned about freedom in the urban context, you should be looking for freedom-preserving social technologies.

[0] just for context here I am libertarian, but have come to see right libertarianism as pathologically specious.

> > This is just a big network affect failure.

> What do you mean "just" ?

You've made the, "If you don't like the oppression here, move to Somalia" argument. If you don't like the way that cities are mismanaged, abandon them. We could also stop mismanaging them, as an alternative.

> From the little I understand the Japanese model is close to what I proposed about buying up land and creating a new urban area from scratch.

Japan had a king-hell housing crisis in the 1980s and solved it by liberalizing zoning and permitting, quashing NIMBY vetos, easing parking, setback and height requirements. Today in Tokyo, families earning median incomes can actually afford to own a home in Tokyo. That is something that can't be said of New York, LA, Boston, San Francisco, Paris, London, and to a growing degree, the middle sized cities across the US. Restrictions on land use drive up the price of housing. This should not be shocking. They also create a list of negative unintended consequences I already mentioned.

America creates new housing on the model of turning pasture and desert into tract-houses and strip malls, that has been known for decades to make things worse.

> So as I said, that is actually legally still on the table in the US.

"If you don't like the violent coercion that keeps poor people poor, you are free to move to the desert." But we already own houses in a city where no one can afford the rent. Why can't we replace the building on our land with one that is actually appropriate to people's needs? [0]

> not somehow having high population density without any conflict-resolving regulations.

...was never suggested. Merely liberalization.

[0] Actually I don't want to tear down my house, I just don't feel it is my business what my neighbors do with theirs. And the effects of imposing my will on their property seem very bad, indeed.

> You've made the, "If you don't like the oppression here, move to Somalia" argument

Errr, yes, this is a very valid critique. My argument was based on the assumptions you seemed to be coming from, which fit the same pattern of conjuring up new structures out of thin air:

>> If black neighborhoods are underserved, go make a fortune in black neighborhood grocery stores or their suppliers.

You then continued on about "men with guns" and willfully ignoring that actions on one piece of real estate can affect someone on another piece of real estate. All three are common tropes of right libertarianism.

Hence my:

> not somehow having high population density without any conflict-resolving regulations.

because I thought this is where you were coming from. But if you're really just arguing for "Merely liberalization", that's fantastic! Argue away, and you will get no argument from me on this topic (I don't live in a dense area, and I still recognize that the high cost of housing is strangling our society). But perhaps reformulate your arguments so they don't come off as dead end right libertarian tropes.

(Although I will say, completely independently of the rest of this exchange, and obviously not as a replacement for liberalization - if we could figure out a way to bootstrap new [non-car-based] cities in this country, that could go a long way as well)

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