Hacker News Reader

Comment by unquietcode | Hacker News Reader

One thing I've never understood (but would still like to) is where does the imperative to build more and faster come from? I live in Berkeley, am very nearly priced out at this point, but see no reason why the community is required to take in more people. Permitting snd process ensures a snail's pace for new construction here, but from the perspective of those that live here (and most have rent control) why should they rush to grow?

All I'm saying is, market prices reflect supply and demand, but they also balance the demand which would otherwise threaten to overwhelm the place. Who am I to say 'I want to live here! Make it happen!!' We could be building the city of our dreams, of the future, a mere 30 miles away.

View on HN

You're right to a large extent. This king-of-the-hill attitude towards property is exactly what you see with Prop 13, rent control, severe building code restrictions, etc.

Prop 13: The long-time home owners get to put a disproportionate amount of the tax burden on newer buyers.

Rent control: long-term renters put a disproportionate cost of the rental prices on newer renters, and landlords.

Building code: Land owners want to be able to build when it's their turn, but as soon as they build they want to restrict others for obstructing their view, or changing the character of the neighborhood.

Public transportation: Residents who don't use public transport have typically fought against it coming to their neighborhood to keep the undesirables out, then find out that their property values are lower, or shops aren't doing well, because of this 30 years later. See Georgetown, DC.

Basically, everyone wants to lock in their position, then keep everyone else out. That's really only rational, so I can't fault it that much. Where I personally get annoyed is when those motivations aren't acknowledged and also get paired with complaints about super high rent and property prices.

The "rush to grow" is simply the reasonable response to skyrocketing prices. If the city doesn't want to grow, then it should be ok with those prices. What's not reasonable to want to be a desirable place to live, not grow, and have stable, affordable prices.

The incentive is that people who own land (or even people who own existing buildings) can make money if they rent it out. It boils down to simple greed; as Adam Smith said, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

Adam Smith's big contribution was showing that, generally, if we assume people are greedy and will look out for themselves, we can still end up with a fair system. Lasseiz faire economics has a much better track record in that regard than the alternatives that try to ignore greed. You can set things up based on how you want them to work, or you can set them up based on how they really do work.

> Who am I to say 'I want to live here! Make it happen!!' We could be building the city of our dreams, of the future, a mere 30 miles away.

We could, and in a few decades we'd have the exact same problems there and people would look to move back to SF. This, incidentally, is essentially what happened when interstates led to suburbanization and now people are moving back to core cities.

You're almost priced out of Berkeley (if it weren't for your rent control), but you don't understand where the imperative comes from? Well, you will, once they find a way to evict you.

> the imperative to build more and faster come from

From a consequentialist/utilitarian perspective, you'd say that the utility benefit if you allowed a million more people to live in SF at affordable rents would outweigh by orders of magnitude the disutility of incumbents.

Another framing is just the attitude that it's wrong to exclude the poor from a community via high rents. I think people that focus on this framing are also relatively friendly to rent control, but building more housing is arguably more radically inclusive.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com