Funny thing, I just posted a tweet about my recent research on where are the good biotech hubs with low cost of living: https://twitter.com/pochekailov/status/1598088198995218437
I was hypothesizing similar conclusion as in the article.
129 karma · joined October 31, 2019
I was hypothesizing similar conclusion as in the article.
Would you listen to me ranting about evil nimbyists preventing any form of urban development and thus blocking economic growth?
Would you call me asking me to help you with an unexpected problem?
Can I stop by your place just to hang out a bit, without any particular reason?
Would you pick me up from an airport tomorrow if I ask you to?
Will I come to you if I have a wild business idea? Or will you come to me to brag about your recent promotion?
No, we are not friends. We don't even know each other. You need to spend some time with a person for at least couple of hours a day for about half a year to become friends.
Humanity indeed faces a lot of problems. Each of them have many possible solutions (The only one unsolvable is a heat death of the universe).
Thing is, the solutions usually may be divided into two categories: technical and societal.
For example, for the horse manure problem in big cities there were two possible solutions: invent a car, or limit the number of horses in the city.
The thing is: technical solutions are always cool. They open up new possibilities, the one which could not be foreseen. Technical solution also creates new problems, that require solutions of their own. Societal solutions always suck. Societal solution is to make people do less of the thing that causes trouble. The problem therefore kind of resolves, but the life become more boring and less free. Such solution does not bring new possibilities, does not advance life, but there is no risks of unforeseen new problems.
Examples of the problems and possible solutions:
Global worming: limit consumption and consumerism - or - perform climate engineering (spray high albedo particles in stratosphere, send controllable aluminum foil mirrors to the orbit, install more solar cells and wind turbines
Cancer, Alzheimers, heart diseases, obesity, etc.: live "healthy life", eat boring non-tasty grass, die 5 times a week at the gym, don't eat most awesome sugar, don't dring amazing coke, don't smoke, don't enjoy, don't ... - OR - Concentrate on solving the cause of those illnesses, that is the ageing. Treat ageing as a disease and fund anti-ageing research.
"Overpopulation": Make people believe that earth is dying and they shouldn't have children - OR - Build habitat (O'Neil cylinders) on the orbit thus opening virtually endless living space
Nuclear war: Pacify a horrible dictator, leave him "ways to retreat" - OR - build habitats on the orbit; atomic explosions in space won't do much damage at all (there is a constant atomic explosion already there, called Sun).
Hunger: Not a problem, earth agriculture is overproducing; the real problem is horrible dictators and the lack of new land that people can escape to from that dictator.
I think the modern doom and gloom era is very depressing. I am a technocrat and a futuristic optimist.
For me, the modern popular vision of future is not worth living for.
US politicians serve the rich only because they think that donations will help them win. Make the donations irrelevant - "rich" will loose the political power. How to make the donations irrelevant - go to vote, especially if you are poor and powerless. Convince your friends to vote. And not for a president, but for a local mayor, city council, judge etc.
Yes, it is harder for renters, but it is designed to be harder. This is to prevent renters from having political power and making homeowner's houses more expensive. One more reason to fight, from my point of view.
Aspiring homeowners will never become homeowners if the price is exclusionary.
Take SF: with average salary of 75-79K, the apartment cost starts from 1.1M. Only 8% has salary > than 100K, that makes the remaining 92% the "aspiring" homeowners.
They will stay "aspiring" for the rest of their life. The only think they (or rather, "we") can do - make sure that post-zoomer generation don't have to be "aspiring" for their entire lives.
What I meant is an ability to be within the reach of any other person within an hour.
Using zoom for 3 years now (for obvious reasons) - I find it inferior to the private in-person communication. Problem that you need to schedule a meeting, which adds some formality and is usually harder, while you can have a pleasant chat with even a rich and powerful person while accidentally meeting them in a hall. For scheduling a zoom call, you need to find an excuse. To chat in a hall with someone - you don't need and excuse.
Industrial and maintenance automation for needing less labor.
Relying on next generation to fund your retirement is ok if you live modestly; but not ok if you live luxuriously.
Working person should not be doing worse than a non-working person; otherwise you have an extractive economy and social instability.
Banking on your family dying - this is like saying "I am a worthless loser". I want old generation to live eternally, and still afford housing.
Q2: Yes, obviously there is a positive correlation. This is exactly why renters need to fight: stakes are against them. Current status quo is in favor of homeowners; it will not be possible to change it while being passive. Renters and homeowners have conflict of interests, there is inevitable fight.
Q3: I think blaming is the call for fight. If renters want better deal, they need to fight. Is it most constructive? I don't know, this is the best I can come up with. Does it reinforces the status quo? No, I think inactivity reinforces it.
And don't call it a "collapse": a change is not necessary to the worse, sometimes it is to the better.
Sometimes I am considering running myself for a local government after getting my citizenship, with the only goal: drop housing price at my city for at least 70%. Once achieved - retire from politics :).
Even in the cities where the renter population is bigger than the homeowners, such as in Seattle, half of the votes come from people of > 65 years old (all of whom are homeowners, likely more than one home). Young people simply won't vote at all.
There is very little incentives for the young people to vote. Even if you cancel all the regulations right now and allow for unlimited constructions in the cities like Seattle, SF of NY, one will need about 10 years or longer to build enough apartments for the price to go back to affordable (which is 2-3 years salary of an average worker in the area). So the after-next generation will profit from the effort of the current renter generation.
Nevertheless, I think young generation needs to engage in the politics with the uncompromised goal to crush the housing price, to prevent the economic collapse of the "rich" world and prevent entire Earth from sliding into the dictatorship. Such is life.
This unlocks the possibility for serendipitous connections. It is awesome when you can meet a founder, a leading engineer, an investor, a designer and a PR person in a coffee line, forming a new company before finishing your morning coffee.
Talents concentrated in one place gives significant boost to their productivity. This is called a "proximity bonus" in video games; building dependent factories in the nearby slots gives them the productivity boost. This is what US is missing by being nimbyistic.
I think we should return to the 1950s ideas of a futuristic cities and invest in building giant arcologies, where entire Earth population can move if they want to, and where the least paid McFastFood worker would afford to buy a minimum apartment.
Here is why: so you can be 41, 441, 1041 and still have millions years ahead.
Once 41 years old no longer means you wasted your youth away, you will be able to concentrate on one thing per day and don't feel tragic if this thing fails.
I do think it is a political issue. Thus my support for full regulation removal: if ones press for it, the actual consensus may be closer to liberalization.
Thanks also for sending the links. I have not read those, and so I don't feel I can keep a productive discussion before I read the books.
I am considering building my house (being my own general contractor and doing as much work myself as possible), but I was discouraged by the extreme number of regulations that seem to forbid anything, with just obtaining permits taking years and costing ~25K. Perhaps I was looking at the wrong state.
The 250K range that you cite is about 5 years of my current income. I honestly think I can build the house myself faster than saving those money and paying a professional.
Regarding substance abuse for example: Shall I happen to lose my home, I would have to use the named substances to soothe a terrible shame and misery associated with my new status. I could only think of fighting my harmful addictions if I can see the way out. Currently though, with number of houses almost constant, if you manage to pull a homeless person out of the streets, there will be another person priced out of their home.
The point I am trying to make through the thread, is there is a homeless catastrophy. When I am showing my family or friends in Ukraine some photos taken in Seattle, LA or san francisco, they don't believe me this is US.
In a time of an acute crisis, as now with housing, the radical measures must be taken. The problem must be attached from as many directions as possible. The simplest step is to eliminate the regulations. Sure some of the regulations are useful, sure some housing may end up of low quality, use too much resources, and even harm environment. However, in the situation when 100K people or more have no housing, the priority must be to supply enough houses over everything else.
The city I grew up in (Kiev) builds only from reinforced concrete, bricks and stone. Somehow, the 2-bedroom apartment can cost 50-100K and such building can still be profitable.
Another data point: the commercial building are build with the concrete.
Therefore, I think that the materials price is not a significant cost in the house; neither is the labor. Current average US home price is $400K; or 5-10 average yearly salary in the area. Other countries build houses as cheap as 30-40K from high-quality materials. This brings me to the conclusion, that the difference must be the regulations, either zoning or construction.
BTW, in many countries, if a person can't afford to buy a house, they buy a land and build themselves. My current understanding that in US you need licenses to perform almost any construction work.
As we all know, N_homeless = N_people - N_homes.
Current regulations effectively forbid to build horrible ugly high-rises that can house 50,000 people in each. Currently, it is only profitable to build luxury houses that nobody can afford.
However, the horrible ugly high-rise has the only one advantage: it is cheap, and everyone can afford it. Even a homeless guy that manage to found a crappy -paying job through his heroic effort.
I only see one way to end homelessness: make housing 20x cheaper than it is now. And that would not be possible without cancelling all housing regulations.
If we do really care about people not being homeless as we claim we do, I suggest as a first step we cancel all the construction regulations. Temporarily. For the next 20 years. Then, extend the cancellation indefinitely.
The simplest and "obvious" guides are often the most helpful, and hard to find.
I wish every city has a similar website with the most basic instructions.
Until the general public accepts the necessity of the age-related research, there won't be any effective mechanism for age reversion.
NIH yearly budget is 35B dollars. Half of that they spend on cancer research, the other half divides between the other diseases. Age research is a tiny fraction of this budget.
Until NIH spends at least 1/3 of their annual budget on fighting aging, there won't be any significant progress.