Ending the war on drugs is a great example - this regulation was politically motivated from the start according to Nixon’s aid on his deathbed.
The downstream effects of this are difficult to overstate what with cartels controlling nearly every bit of turf between Colombia and Texas, concurrent with massive flows of asylum and opportunity seeking migrants. Hundreds of Central American politicians are murdered by cartels very year. Our immigration woes are a large part of what exposed us to Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, inner city gang drug sales fuel weapons purchases. Incarceration costs and downstream impacts are also hard to overstate.
We need a better way forward. We didn’t have an opioid crisis with walking dead zombies 100 years ago before heroin was illegal.
First, We need Democrats to register that so much regulation is counterproductive, is creating barriers to entry, stifling small business and helping to push the never-ending mergers and consolidations. Regulation needs to be really really thoughtful and Democrats are just too keen on applying it. It feels like some Democrats love all regulation, see it as a barrier to corporate power.
To help do this, and change perspectives, those of us who experience this stifling of regulation in their professional world need to be vocal but reasonable about this stuff, citing our real world experiences and demonstrate how they are counterproductive.
For example, in an effort to protect a recently endangered migratory bird, NJ moved all the oyster farming along the Cape May’s bayshore flats to one access point. Our farm was less than a mile from this point but we were mandated to move also. State of NJ wrote us a grant to make our move easier (so we wouldn’t fight them essentially) - a 4x4 vehicle to help us move, something we’d never used before and something that very obviously disturbs the same birds far more than anything we were doing previously. The whole basis of forcing our farm to move - that our no-input farming was resulting in “take” - the death of endangered birds, was absolutely absurd. But absurd will win the day when these issues become pure partisan affairs.
Meanwhile, we have literally collapsing ecosystems and we’re arguing about stinking paper/plastic straws. I wish we could get it together people.
I think the nuclear bit is key. We need an enormous push in funding for designing then building bulletproof-safe but also economical nuclear plants and just run with that as a medium term solution to climate change. We don’t have a ton more time to bicker over this and now crystal clear Saudi Arabia and Russia will blend their tyranny with their trade in oil.
We need to break the tyrants backs with energy policy.
Unfortunately, we’re just not quite able to make the renewables work as a substantial replacement for fossil THIS generation. Next one, it seems more feasible. But for now, it seems crystal clear to me nuclear is the stop gap in energy policy we need to balance our economic, environmental and geopolitical goals. Getting off the black crack from the Middle East will solve a lot of the world’s problems.
Then ending the war on drugs IS AN ENORMOUS ECONOMIC BOON. The effect of taking that economy away from the black market and putting back into legit economy is hard to overstate. Especially as so many toxic, costly effects flow downstream from the black market, those cartels, the political and economic instability they bring throughout central America. The recruitment and firepower of so many inner city gangs is crushed when they lose the monopoly on soothing substances not called alcohol. The incarceration costs, and downstream impacts of that.
And first trimester abortion as an economic freedom is very legit issue as well. If you are able to take religion out of this issue, 1st trimester abortion restrictions becomes a civil and economic freedom issue, one that is quite compelling. There is no compelling argument that an unborn fetus, too early in development to have a functional nervous system (and without stated constitutional rights) has any legitimate claims that the government should need to stand behind. Meanwhile, unwanted pregnancies often result in neglected children who often fall through the cracks.
Economy is so intimately tied to the overall health of our society and its governance.
You are almost certainly correct that doing away with restrictive zoning would increase the housing supply. But I think you’re ignoring the fact that zoning, while it is a crude tool, is intended to minimize the downsides of unrestricted building. There are many such downsides, including destruction of wetlands, paving over of good farmland, cutting down of forests, degradation of water supply and other environmental damages. There are aesthetic impacts of unrestricted zoning also; many areas have been uglified by “development.”
And regarding your footnote about EVs and gas-powered electricity production: You’re correct if the EV is relatively small and efficient and if there’s not a significant amount of gas leakage from the production and transmission systems. Assume the U.S. average CO2 emission from gas-fired electricity production is about 840 lbs. CO2 per MWh. If 2% of the gas leaks, assuming a GWP of 25, the emission rate goes up to about 1000 lbs. CO2eq per MWh, or about 1 lb. per kWh. A hybrid ICE car, say a Prius getting 55 mpg, emits about 0.36 lbs CO2 per mile. A Tesla Mark 3, which uses 0.24 kWh per mile, if charged exclusively with gas-produced electricity, would thus emit about 0.24 lbs. CO2eq per mile, considerably better than the Prius. But if the EV is a Ford Lightning pickup, using 0.5 kWh per mile, the Prius emits less. This is another case for restrictive measures. If the EV fleet develops as the ICE fleet has developed, with huge, heavy vehicles common, shifting our transportation system to electric won’t do much to lower CO2 emissions.
I don’t think there’s much evidence the laws that prevent meeting the demand for housing are mainly designed to protect the environment or indeed have such an effect. If anything, restrictive home building regulations tend to have the opposite effect, by channeling the demand for housing ever further from urban cores, thereby turbo-charging sprawl. Moreover, it shouldn’t be impossible, and I don’t believe it is, to preserve significant swaths of the countryside for future generations while allowing relatively unfettered home construction in *already dense* areas. Japan has some of the loveliest natural landscapes on the planet.
I think we need to find a way to train more doctors, nurses, social workers, and teachers domestically. The problem is the education system is too expensive and the length of time too long to justify the salary received once you complete it. We already are seeing the existing professionals retire or quit with no replacements ready. As with many things, the current system is over 100 years old and isn’t working anymore. Yet, we have so many people who would be capable to fill the slots if the cost of entry wasn’t so high.
I’d like to see a military-style corp system set up to train these types of professionals rapidly with a public service requirement on the back end to deploy them where needed. Provide VA-type benefits if they choose to continue on past there required service or take a job in an area with high need. And I’d pay for it with a Marie Kondo style purge of existing programs that don’t work.
We don’t have a supply side problem, it’s a crisis. We need to treat it as such.
I wouldn't quarrel with many of the ideas to stimulate supply, but how about breaking up large corporate oligopolies, strengthening and enforcing labor rights, and laying off gratuitous insults, such as "weirdo" and using terms like "white guilt" for "historical accountability." And you sound like you've thrown the towel in on seeking a fairer system of taxation. It's not just "redistribution" but giving government the extractive capacity to invest in a system of mass transportation (for example).
“…you shouldn't rely on hypothetical redistribution to protect the interests of lower-income people”
As a solid YIMBY-ist living in Washington DC, and as someone who has spent much of my career in affordable housing, I am trying to reconcile this quote with the calls my fellow YIMBY-ists (including Matt) make for more housing of all types (i.e. market rate). With these generic calls for more housing, aren’t we assuming that more market rate units will allow higher income people to move into them, and vacate their naturally occurring affordable housing, which will bestow benefits to lower income people? Isn’t this “hypothetical resdistribution”? While I believe this hypothetical redistribution is a reality when it comes to duplexes, triplexes and 2-3 bedroom units, it’s much more hypothetical when it comes to one bedroom units. Higher income families want to move into bigger places, not one bedroom units in high rises. Don’t we YIMBY-ists need to be more specific: fewer one bedroom units in multi family buildings and more affordable 2-4 bedroom duplexes, triplexes, and townhomes? I get that it’s not as catchy of a clarion call but we need to be more nuanced, no?
In cities with a lot of old housing, like DC, NYC, etc, it is essentially impossible to build new “affordable” housing without subsidies. The simple fact of it being new and meeting the bare minimum of current building codes will make it more desirable than a 100 year old fourth floor walk up with radiator heat and no central AC. The cheapest new apartments in the Sunbelt are on average way nicer than super expensive old apartments in NYC.
Home renovations. High-voltage transmission. Wind farms. Solar farms. New nuclear. Old nuclear. Vat-grown meats. GMOs. Genetic medicine. E-VTOL aircraft. AI doctors. Human challenge trials.
(Seriously, this is a good list, and fitting existing ideas into the currently relevant frame is how the slow boring is supposed to work. It's just also a bit amusing to watch.)
You'd think losing the House to an historically unpopular Republican Party would cause some soul searching among Democrats, but no apparently they "basically won."
Here in Washington they just banned net pen farming, completely the opposite of the kinds of pro growth positions you suggest. I'm not sure that Democrats can help themselves.
Some of the nets in the past were filled with non-native fish which was destructive if the nets failed, but I believe the reason they banned it for native fish too was based on really bad pseudo science about fish diseases that have all been debunked. It's just another irrational environmentalist bugaboo.
I don't think so, really. She definitely is saying that she is for the fishing industry but also saying that she is for preventing the loss of fish. She certainly isn't going to be advocating for policies that hurt fishermen and in that way she's a bit separated from her party. But we also just don't have many specifics yet of what her pro-fish policy means in the real world yet.
Net pen farming means that they set up giant Nets in the Puget Sound or the Ocean and raise fish inside the nets. They hatch the fish themselves so they aren't depleting the salmon stock and the fish grow up in a more natural environment than if they lived in a land based environment.
One thing not noted but I think can be included in your post is reforming the requirements to receiving a college degree and a graduate degree. What I mean is that colleges (as you have noted) are essentially designed in their structure around a world and society that existed in the 19th century. In other words, they are designed to serve only the upper crust as it existed pre-20th century. As much as I loved my college experience, I would say a lot of the classes that I had to take to fulfill my requirements for graduation were probably unnecessary and resulted in me staying in school longer than is strictly necessary. At least with state schools there should be a push to eliminate "common core" requirements and allow students to concentrate on taking classes that are needed for their major. In addition, there should be a way for students to go directly into graduate level programs as soon as they are able to. My understanding is that in other parts of the world, you can go straight into an MBA program without undergraduate classes (this may be different from country to country and it's perhaps not right out of high school, but I think I'm on pretty firm ground saying the class requirements to go to grad school are a lot less stringent). For thinks like medicine, it seems like the necessary undergraduate requirements (classes like organic chemistry) should be included in medical schools. The time spent in medical school would be strictly speaking longer, but your overall number of years spent studying to be a doctor would be shorter.
Given the huge debt loads kids need to take to finance higher education (Kevin Drum had a good post noting that the gap between Millennial wealth and Boomer wealth at the same age can be explained primary by the burden of student debt), finding ways for kids to graduate with undergraduate and graduate degrees in a quicker timeframe seems a no-brainer to me.
“I don’t think it makes a ton of sense in the current macroeconomic situation to center an economic message on welfare state expansion...”
Matt, if I could “yes/and” this a bit, it would be to also mention the political cost of such expansion.
Swimming in the circles I do, I’ve been confronted by a profound distaste among many for direct redistribution. In fact “profound distaste” is an understatement. Basically it’s everything. Everything. There are is a large polity which, citing “basic fairness,” simply finds it abhorrent to take earned money and give it to somebody who’s not earning. Of course, they reserve the right to declare that folks “who really need it” may be granted help, but then of course they reserve the right to determine who’s “deserving” ... or who’s “earning,” for that matter ... and I’m sure we all can predict to whence this leads.
But unless I’m crazy, I see progressive politicians and layfolk alike pay but lip service to these concerns, or to find it as a reason to go to their happy place pointing out the inherent race/classism involved. It’s a baffling obtuseness to me, one that speaks to our lack of political integration, our contentment to seek out and remain in bubbles.
I think there has to be a way to harness these folks’ earnest desire for “basic fairness,” to turn that energy around and forge common cause with those who harbor enmity towards all things uneven.
One way is to address the leaky buckets, as you lay out here--its the kind of policy direction that keeps me excited about the future. It also seems to be of a piece with your friend Mr. Klein’s invocation of a “supply side progressivism,” so there’s that.
Another way is to reorient our political (if not all) discourse away from the language of charity, which reinforces power differentials and “otherness,” towards the language of investment, which invokes the solidarity of human self-interest, via the returns reaped from dismantling inequalities. But perhaps that’s for another thread.
Another banger Matt, keep it up
Ending the war on drugs is a great example - this regulation was politically motivated from the start according to Nixon’s aid on his deathbed.
The downstream effects of this are difficult to overstate what with cartels controlling nearly every bit of turf between Colombia and Texas, concurrent with massive flows of asylum and opportunity seeking migrants. Hundreds of Central American politicians are murdered by cartels very year. Our immigration woes are a large part of what exposed us to Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, inner city gang drug sales fuel weapons purchases. Incarceration costs and downstream impacts are also hard to overstate.
We need a better way forward. We didn’t have an opioid crisis with walking dead zombies 100 years ago before heroin was illegal.
First, We need Democrats to register that so much regulation is counterproductive, is creating barriers to entry, stifling small business and helping to push the never-ending mergers and consolidations. Regulation needs to be really really thoughtful and Democrats are just too keen on applying it. It feels like some Democrats love all regulation, see it as a barrier to corporate power.
To help do this, and change perspectives, those of us who experience this stifling of regulation in their professional world need to be vocal but reasonable about this stuff, citing our real world experiences and demonstrate how they are counterproductive.
For example, in an effort to protect a recently endangered migratory bird, NJ moved all the oyster farming along the Cape May’s bayshore flats to one access point. Our farm was less than a mile from this point but we were mandated to move also. State of NJ wrote us a grant to make our move easier (so we wouldn’t fight them essentially) - a 4x4 vehicle to help us move, something we’d never used before and something that very obviously disturbs the same birds far more than anything we were doing previously. The whole basis of forcing our farm to move - that our no-input farming was resulting in “take” - the death of endangered birds, was absolutely absurd. But absurd will win the day when these issues become pure partisan affairs.
Meanwhile, we have literally collapsing ecosystems and we’re arguing about stinking paper/plastic straws. I wish we could get it together people.
I think the nuclear bit is key. We need an enormous push in funding for designing then building bulletproof-safe but also economical nuclear plants and just run with that as a medium term solution to climate change. We don’t have a ton more time to bicker over this and now crystal clear Saudi Arabia and Russia will blend their tyranny with their trade in oil.
We need to break the tyrants backs with energy policy.
Unfortunately, we’re just not quite able to make the renewables work as a substantial replacement for fossil THIS generation. Next one, it seems more feasible. But for now, it seems crystal clear to me nuclear is the stop gap in energy policy we need to balance our economic, environmental and geopolitical goals. Getting off the black crack from the Middle East will solve a lot of the world’s problems.
Then ending the war on drugs IS AN ENORMOUS ECONOMIC BOON. The effect of taking that economy away from the black market and putting back into legit economy is hard to overstate. Especially as so many toxic, costly effects flow downstream from the black market, those cartels, the political and economic instability they bring throughout central America. The recruitment and firepower of so many inner city gangs is crushed when they lose the monopoly on soothing substances not called alcohol. The incarceration costs, and downstream impacts of that.
And first trimester abortion as an economic freedom is very legit issue as well. If you are able to take religion out of this issue, 1st trimester abortion restrictions becomes a civil and economic freedom issue, one that is quite compelling. There is no compelling argument that an unborn fetus, too early in development to have a functional nervous system (and without stated constitutional rights) has any legitimate claims that the government should need to stand behind. Meanwhile, unwanted pregnancies often result in neglected children who often fall through the cracks.
Economy is so intimately tied to the overall health of our society and its governance.
You are almost certainly correct that doing away with restrictive zoning would increase the housing supply. But I think you’re ignoring the fact that zoning, while it is a crude tool, is intended to minimize the downsides of unrestricted building. There are many such downsides, including destruction of wetlands, paving over of good farmland, cutting down of forests, degradation of water supply and other environmental damages. There are aesthetic impacts of unrestricted zoning also; many areas have been uglified by “development.”
And regarding your footnote about EVs and gas-powered electricity production: You’re correct if the EV is relatively small and efficient and if there’s not a significant amount of gas leakage from the production and transmission systems. Assume the U.S. average CO2 emission from gas-fired electricity production is about 840 lbs. CO2 per MWh. If 2% of the gas leaks, assuming a GWP of 25, the emission rate goes up to about 1000 lbs. CO2eq per MWh, or about 1 lb. per kWh. A hybrid ICE car, say a Prius getting 55 mpg, emits about 0.36 lbs CO2 per mile. A Tesla Mark 3, which uses 0.24 kWh per mile, if charged exclusively with gas-produced electricity, would thus emit about 0.24 lbs. CO2eq per mile, considerably better than the Prius. But if the EV is a Ford Lightning pickup, using 0.5 kWh per mile, the Prius emits less. This is another case for restrictive measures. If the EV fleet develops as the ICE fleet has developed, with huge, heavy vehicles common, shifting our transportation system to electric won’t do much to lower CO2 emissions.
Mike Aucott
I don’t think there’s much evidence the laws that prevent meeting the demand for housing are mainly designed to protect the environment or indeed have such an effect. If anything, restrictive home building regulations tend to have the opposite effect, by channeling the demand for housing ever further from urban cores, thereby turbo-charging sprawl. Moreover, it shouldn’t be impossible, and I don’t believe it is, to preserve significant swaths of the countryside for future generations while allowing relatively unfettered home construction in *already dense* areas. Japan has some of the loveliest natural landscapes on the planet.
I agree with the need to think outside the box.
Pushing high-fiber diets will have positive spinoffs for the health of Americans. And it will lead to "making more shit in America".
I think we need to find a way to train more doctors, nurses, social workers, and teachers domestically. The problem is the education system is too expensive and the length of time too long to justify the salary received once you complete it. We already are seeing the existing professionals retire or quit with no replacements ready. As with many things, the current system is over 100 years old and isn’t working anymore. Yet, we have so many people who would be capable to fill the slots if the cost of entry wasn’t so high.
I’d like to see a military-style corp system set up to train these types of professionals rapidly with a public service requirement on the back end to deploy them where needed. Provide VA-type benefits if they choose to continue on past there required service or take a job in an area with high need. And I’d pay for it with a Marie Kondo style purge of existing programs that don’t work.
We don’t have a supply side problem, it’s a crisis. We need to treat it as such.
I wouldn't quarrel with many of the ideas to stimulate supply, but how about breaking up large corporate oligopolies, strengthening and enforcing labor rights, and laying off gratuitous insults, such as "weirdo" and using terms like "white guilt" for "historical accountability." And you sound like you've thrown the towel in on seeking a fairer system of taxation. It's not just "redistribution" but giving government the extractive capacity to invest in a system of mass transportation (for example).
“…you shouldn't rely on hypothetical redistribution to protect the interests of lower-income people”
As a solid YIMBY-ist living in Washington DC, and as someone who has spent much of my career in affordable housing, I am trying to reconcile this quote with the calls my fellow YIMBY-ists (including Matt) make for more housing of all types (i.e. market rate). With these generic calls for more housing, aren’t we assuming that more market rate units will allow higher income people to move into them, and vacate their naturally occurring affordable housing, which will bestow benefits to lower income people? Isn’t this “hypothetical resdistribution”? While I believe this hypothetical redistribution is a reality when it comes to duplexes, triplexes and 2-3 bedroom units, it’s much more hypothetical when it comes to one bedroom units. Higher income families want to move into bigger places, not one bedroom units in high rises. Don’t we YIMBY-ists need to be more specific: fewer one bedroom units in multi family buildings and more affordable 2-4 bedroom duplexes, triplexes, and townhomes? I get that it’s not as catchy of a clarion call but we need to be more nuanced, no?
In cities with a lot of old housing, like DC, NYC, etc, it is essentially impossible to build new “affordable” housing without subsidies. The simple fact of it being new and meeting the bare minimum of current building codes will make it more desirable than a 100 year old fourth floor walk up with radiator heat and no central AC. The cheapest new apartments in the Sunbelt are on average way nicer than super expensive old apartments in NYC.
problem is if you restrict 1 bedroom and studios you get groups of single people outcompeting families for larger units.
Home renovations. High-voltage transmission. Wind farms. Solar farms. New nuclear. Old nuclear. Vat-grown meats. GMOs. Genetic medicine. E-VTOL aircraft. AI doctors. Human challenge trials.
Maybe I should do the research, but what is up with “make it hard for dental hygienists to clean dead teeth?”
Now more than ever!
(Seriously, this is a good list, and fitting existing ideas into the currently relevant frame is how the slow boring is supposed to work. It's just also a bit amusing to watch.)
You'd think losing the House to an historically unpopular Republican Party would cause some soul searching among Democrats, but no apparently they "basically won."
Well, they did? I mean, compared to the butchery of the Democratic House majorities in 1994 and 2010, they did spectacularly well.
Yep, except Donald Trump is one hell of a loser and they still lost the House.
Here in Washington they just banned net pen farming, completely the opposite of the kinds of pro growth positions you suggest. I'm not sure that Democrats can help themselves.
This pairs well with Matt's first footnote.
Some of the nets in the past were filled with non-native fish which was destructive if the nets failed, but I believe the reason they banned it for native fish too was based on really bad pseudo science about fish diseases that have all been debunked. It's just another irrational environmentalist bugaboo.
I don't think so, really. She definitely is saying that she is for the fishing industry but also saying that she is for preventing the loss of fish. She certainly isn't going to be advocating for policies that hurt fishermen and in that way she's a bit separated from her party. But we also just don't have many specifics yet of what her pro-fish policy means in the real world yet.
Net pen farming means that they set up giant Nets in the Puget Sound or the Ocean and raise fish inside the nets. They hatch the fish themselves so they aren't depleting the salmon stock and the fish grow up in a more natural environment than if they lived in a land based environment.
One thing not noted but I think can be included in your post is reforming the requirements to receiving a college degree and a graduate degree. What I mean is that colleges (as you have noted) are essentially designed in their structure around a world and society that existed in the 19th century. In other words, they are designed to serve only the upper crust as it existed pre-20th century. As much as I loved my college experience, I would say a lot of the classes that I had to take to fulfill my requirements for graduation were probably unnecessary and resulted in me staying in school longer than is strictly necessary. At least with state schools there should be a push to eliminate "common core" requirements and allow students to concentrate on taking classes that are needed for their major. In addition, there should be a way for students to go directly into graduate level programs as soon as they are able to. My understanding is that in other parts of the world, you can go straight into an MBA program without undergraduate classes (this may be different from country to country and it's perhaps not right out of high school, but I think I'm on pretty firm ground saying the class requirements to go to grad school are a lot less stringent). For thinks like medicine, it seems like the necessary undergraduate requirements (classes like organic chemistry) should be included in medical schools. The time spent in medical school would be strictly speaking longer, but your overall number of years spent studying to be a doctor would be shorter.
Given the huge debt loads kids need to take to finance higher education (Kevin Drum had a good post noting that the gap between Millennial wealth and Boomer wealth at the same age can be explained primary by the burden of student debt), finding ways for kids to graduate with undergraduate and graduate degrees in a quicker timeframe seems a no-brainer to me.
“I don’t think it makes a ton of sense in the current macroeconomic situation to center an economic message on welfare state expansion...”
Matt, if I could “yes/and” this a bit, it would be to also mention the political cost of such expansion.
Swimming in the circles I do, I’ve been confronted by a profound distaste among many for direct redistribution. In fact “profound distaste” is an understatement. Basically it’s everything. Everything. There are is a large polity which, citing “basic fairness,” simply finds it abhorrent to take earned money and give it to somebody who’s not earning. Of course, they reserve the right to declare that folks “who really need it” may be granted help, but then of course they reserve the right to determine who’s “deserving” ... or who’s “earning,” for that matter ... and I’m sure we all can predict to whence this leads.
But unless I’m crazy, I see progressive politicians and layfolk alike pay but lip service to these concerns, or to find it as a reason to go to their happy place pointing out the inherent race/classism involved. It’s a baffling obtuseness to me, one that speaks to our lack of political integration, our contentment to seek out and remain in bubbles.
I think there has to be a way to harness these folks’ earnest desire for “basic fairness,” to turn that energy around and forge common cause with those who harbor enmity towards all things uneven.
One way is to address the leaky buckets, as you lay out here--its the kind of policy direction that keeps me excited about the future. It also seems to be of a piece with your friend Mr. Klein’s invocation of a “supply side progressivism,” so there’s that.
Another way is to reorient our political (if not all) discourse away from the language of charity, which reinforces power differentials and “otherness,” towards the language of investment, which invokes the solidarity of human self-interest, via the returns reaped from dismantling inequalities. But perhaps that’s for another thread.
And with that, carry on...
A CTC with a work requirement ought to satisfy the "deserving" criterion.
I was initially hopeful that the 106 reform (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/11/02/2022-23854/exemption-from-historic-preservation-review-for-electric-vehicle-supply-equipment) for electrical charging stations might be a step in the right direction for the permitting reform.
But the limits and recommendations seem pretty strikingly limiting, at least in my region...