I don't think the Star Trek analogy holds up so well for housing, even though it works very well for our own level of technology. Transporters, combined with advanced display and holodeck technology so windows and doors each present whatever view of the world you want, make the physical location of a home irrelevant for all practical (non-status) purposes. With advanced construction technology, you can build many stories underground without obstructing anyone's views, including expanding schools and hospitals and other infrastructure. If you want, you can have a kitchen overlooking Tuscany, a sitting room in a forest glen by a waterfall, a bedroom on the grounds of Versailles, and a dining room with a view of Everest on one side and the Statue of Liberty on the other. And you can wage status and signaling games just as well by deliberately *not* having these kinds of views and scenery as a way of demonstrating other forms of taste.
So the good citizens of Star Trek Socialist Utopia change the rules and allow 200-storey skycrapers built around Chateau Picard. It's temporarily a bit noisy, but people grin and bear it because, hey, housing abundance is good.
And then a new problem emerges - living around Chateau Picard is no longer attractive because all you can see is the 200-storey skyscapers.
I agree with 99% of YIMBYism, but to pretend there is no limit of the housing you can build in every single place without fundamentally changing what makes that place attractive is nonsense.
In the case of Chateau Picard, this is a relatively easy problem to solve, because we can easily create more equivalents to Chateau Picards through the simple expedient of planting some grape vines and a bit of landscaping. But that's not always the case. Pretty hard to make another Yosemite Valley, for instance!
Late to the party, couldn't sleep, so I've been reading the websites of the city council candidates in my somewhat upscale suburban community. Every candidate checks the NIMBY box. Can't blame them, anything else is a tough sell in this town. But I have no one to vote for!
A great way to explain it, loved the Star Trek example.
Landlords know how much supply there is because they set a price and if no one takes that price after a week they lower it. If no one was willing to buy at that price because they had lots of other options then the price would keep falling. Landlords are quick to lower prices because having an unoccupied house is extremely costly. Unlike other areas of the economy like employee pay, renters would have a lot of market power if we lived in a world of housing abundance. It's the opposite of the power dynamic in employee pay because landlords care more about not losing a good tenant than tenants care about staying in one place, which is why many don't even raise rates on existing tenants.
I have to say I’ve never met a specifically “left” YIMBY. Most of the ones I know are simply disgruntled about being unable to afford housing in the Palo Alto’s and Chevy Chase’s of their school days.
You’re probably too young. They are often “good progressive” types who claim they would support development if it were “contextual” or “affordable enough.” They are also often extremely sanctimonious and self-regarding. I’m an Old and have spent almost my entire adult life living in big cities, surrounded by such people.
Dogmatism around land planning motivated by short term thinking is a problem. I am a advocate for gridded street networks. I think there are a lot of good reasons to like grid street networks like connectivity. But one I don’t hear talked about is they are evolvable. They change, they grow and adapt. They accommodate diverse uses which again can change over time.
The PUD thinking of today’s land planners is rooted (maybe unconsciously) in not evolving. It about not easily changing. This is what we want and we’re going to make it just perfect for what it is. By doing that you make it difficult to evolve into something new over time. Suburban growth is hard to change. It’s costly. It has to happen at large scales. Old City’s can change more slowly which adds to their dynamic nature.
True and very interesting but I also think that to solve the problem one needs to figure out how to break the incentives that favor this kind of obscurantism.
Yes, of course the econ-101 model is oversimplified and incomplete but the underlying issue is that so many ppl so want to reach certain conclusions that they feel the success conditions are merely showing imperfection rather than offering a model that's a better predictor.
I mean, on a less hot button issue that would be obvious. Given the option between a model with a degree of proven predictive power and guessing we'd always go with the former until someone came up with a better one.
However, what makes this hard is the strong desire ppl have to signal various kinds of care/concern/tribalism via stated beliefs about econ. I'm puzzled as to why this happens and at a loss about how to fix it but it's the ur-problem.
“…the econ-101 model is oversimplified and incomplete but the underlying issue is that so many ppl so want to reach certain conclusions that they feel the success conditions are merely showing imperfection rather than offering a model that's a better predictor”
You see that all the time in debates about minimum wage laws. Economic theory is pretty clear about the broad effects of price controls, but there is a tendency for proponents to proclaim that, ‘simplified Econ 101 models don’t properly describe the Real World.’
I agree, but TBF econ-101 doesn't directly tell us if minimum wage laws are good or bad. It tells us that higher minimum wages will tend to decrease employment while increasing some people's wages.
Whether that trade off is worth it depends alot on how those monetary and stability consequences map onto utility (who is losing the jobs...highschoolers or family providers, who is gaining how it interacts with our safety net etc).
Then again I'd love to just short circuit the whole thing and go with UBI (which of course will reduce employment but that's not the goal).
Economics does not assign moral value to any given policy, so anyone attempting to make a valid moral argument for the minimum wage (or UBI, for that matter) can only do so by explaining the expected economic effects and justifying those as desirable.
If your values tell you it is better to have fewer productive people in a society, then maybe UBI makes sense.
There's a radical YIMBY motto "build the cube". A lot of people think this refers to a theoretical cube the length of Manhattan that could fit all of Earth's population, but it actually means a Borg cube.
I really appreciate this post. It's useful to be able to more progressive types how the "NIMBY/YIMBY" debate is mostly orthogonal to "capitalist versus not-capitalist" debate. The solutions they tend to be most passionate about tend to revolve around "who owns the buildings", rather than "who gets to decide on what kinds of building".
Order without Design by Alain Bertaud does a lot of interesting work in how urban planners in the Soviet Union or China in the 1980s had to grapple with very similar problems.
A Star Trek utopia is good for communicating with socialists. For Libertarians, you need to imagine a society of non-omniscient angels and show that they would still need government regulation of hazards, state provision of public goods, Pigou taxation, and (probably) progressive consumption taxes.
To stay a little closer to the problems, or not, of Econ 101, the Marshallian cross captures the potential wealth creation of un controlling a market. It does not capture at all the resistance to un-control based on local externalities. Do they cover externalities in Econ 101 nowadays?
Your housing abundant utopia is someone else's dystopia, which is why these are contentious political issues we fight out in the political arena. That these questions should be settled at a higher level populated by Yimbyists rather than a local level controlled by Nimbyists isn't self-evident.
The question is really do we care more about continued American growth, prosperity, and the future of our children or making sure our neighborhoods stay exactly the same. One can argue about the details but that's basically the reality.
I don't think the Star Trek analogy holds up so well for housing, even though it works very well for our own level of technology. Transporters, combined with advanced display and holodeck technology so windows and doors each present whatever view of the world you want, make the physical location of a home irrelevant for all practical (non-status) purposes. With advanced construction technology, you can build many stories underground without obstructing anyone's views, including expanding schools and hospitals and other infrastructure. If you want, you can have a kitchen overlooking Tuscany, a sitting room in a forest glen by a waterfall, a bedroom on the grounds of Versailles, and a dining room with a view of Everest on one side and the Statue of Liberty on the other. And you can wage status and signaling games just as well by deliberately *not* having these kinds of views and scenery as a way of demonstrating other forms of taste.
So the good citizens of Star Trek Socialist Utopia change the rules and allow 200-storey skycrapers built around Chateau Picard. It's temporarily a bit noisy, but people grin and bear it because, hey, housing abundance is good.
And then a new problem emerges - living around Chateau Picard is no longer attractive because all you can see is the 200-storey skyscapers.
I agree with 99% of YIMBYism, but to pretend there is no limit of the housing you can build in every single place without fundamentally changing what makes that place attractive is nonsense.
In the case of Chateau Picard, this is a relatively easy problem to solve, because we can easily create more equivalents to Chateau Picards through the simple expedient of planting some grape vines and a bit of landscaping. But that's not always the case. Pretty hard to make another Yosemite Valley, for instance!
Late to the party, couldn't sleep, so I've been reading the websites of the city council candidates in my somewhat upscale suburban community. Every candidate checks the NIMBY box. Can't blame them, anything else is a tough sell in this town. But I have no one to vote for!
A great way to explain it, loved the Star Trek example.
Landlords know how much supply there is because they set a price and if no one takes that price after a week they lower it. If no one was willing to buy at that price because they had lots of other options then the price would keep falling. Landlords are quick to lower prices because having an unoccupied house is extremely costly. Unlike other areas of the economy like employee pay, renters would have a lot of market power if we lived in a world of housing abundance. It's the opposite of the power dynamic in employee pay because landlords care more about not losing a good tenant than tenants care about staying in one place, which is why many don't even raise rates on existing tenants.
Shared walls/ceilings/floors are not a utopia, they are a nightmare of neighbor noise -- and the conflicts that result.
I have to say I’ve never met a specifically “left” YIMBY. Most of the ones I know are simply disgruntled about being unable to afford housing in the Palo Alto’s and Chevy Chase’s of their school days.
You’re probably too young. They are often “good progressive” types who claim they would support development if it were “contextual” or “affordable enough.” They are also often extremely sanctimonious and self-regarding. I’m an Old and have spent almost my entire adult life living in big cities, surrounded by such people.
Brilliant. Thank you.
Dogmatism around land planning motivated by short term thinking is a problem. I am a advocate for gridded street networks. I think there are a lot of good reasons to like grid street networks like connectivity. But one I don’t hear talked about is they are evolvable. They change, they grow and adapt. They accommodate diverse uses which again can change over time.
The PUD thinking of today’s land planners is rooted (maybe unconsciously) in not evolving. It about not easily changing. This is what we want and we’re going to make it just perfect for what it is. By doing that you make it difficult to evolve into something new over time. Suburban growth is hard to change. It’s costly. It has to happen at large scales. Old City’s can change more slowly which adds to their dynamic nature.
Obviously, the Federation would use quantum interposition to allow infinite numbers of households to occupy the same space
True and very interesting but I also think that to solve the problem one needs to figure out how to break the incentives that favor this kind of obscurantism.
Yes, of course the econ-101 model is oversimplified and incomplete but the underlying issue is that so many ppl so want to reach certain conclusions that they feel the success conditions are merely showing imperfection rather than offering a model that's a better predictor.
I mean, on a less hot button issue that would be obvious. Given the option between a model with a degree of proven predictive power and guessing we'd always go with the former until someone came up with a better one.
However, what makes this hard is the strong desire ppl have to signal various kinds of care/concern/tribalism via stated beliefs about econ. I'm puzzled as to why this happens and at a loss about how to fix it but it's the ur-problem.
“…the econ-101 model is oversimplified and incomplete but the underlying issue is that so many ppl so want to reach certain conclusions that they feel the success conditions are merely showing imperfection rather than offering a model that's a better predictor”
You see that all the time in debates about minimum wage laws. Economic theory is pretty clear about the broad effects of price controls, but there is a tendency for proponents to proclaim that, ‘simplified Econ 101 models don’t properly describe the Real World.’
I agree, but TBF econ-101 doesn't directly tell us if minimum wage laws are good or bad. It tells us that higher minimum wages will tend to decrease employment while increasing some people's wages.
Whether that trade off is worth it depends alot on how those monetary and stability consequences map onto utility (who is losing the jobs...highschoolers or family providers, who is gaining how it interacts with our safety net etc).
Then again I'd love to just short circuit the whole thing and go with UBI (which of course will reduce employment but that's not the goal).
Economics does not assign moral value to any given policy, so anyone attempting to make a valid moral argument for the minimum wage (or UBI, for that matter) can only do so by explaining the expected economic effects and justifying those as desirable.
If your values tell you it is better to have fewer productive people in a society, then maybe UBI makes sense.
There's a radical YIMBY motto "build the cube". A lot of people think this refers to a theoretical cube the length of Manhattan that could fit all of Earth's population, but it actually means a Borg cube.
"What the leftists want is to not have an economy like that. That’s fair enough."
Insert Thor: Ragnarok "Is it though?" animated GIF here.
I really appreciate this post. It's useful to be able to more progressive types how the "NIMBY/YIMBY" debate is mostly orthogonal to "capitalist versus not-capitalist" debate. The solutions they tend to be most passionate about tend to revolve around "who owns the buildings", rather than "who gets to decide on what kinds of building".
Order without Design by Alain Bertaud does a lot of interesting work in how urban planners in the Soviet Union or China in the 1980s had to grapple with very similar problems.
Love that book! Also has a great discussion of the deficiencies of policies like NYC’s affordable housing program.
A Star Trek utopia is good for communicating with socialists. For Libertarians, you need to imagine a society of non-omniscient angels and show that they would still need government regulation of hazards, state provision of public goods, Pigou taxation, and (probably) progressive consumption taxes.
To stay a little closer to the problems, or not, of Econ 101, the Marshallian cross captures the potential wealth creation of un controlling a market. It does not capture at all the resistance to un-control based on local externalities. Do they cover externalities in Econ 101 nowadays?
Your housing abundant utopia is someone else's dystopia, which is why these are contentious political issues we fight out in the political arena. That these questions should be settled at a higher level populated by Yimbyists rather than a local level controlled by Nimbyists isn't self-evident.
The question is really do we care more about continued American growth, prosperity, and the future of our children or making sure our neighborhoods stay exactly the same. One can argue about the details but that's basically the reality.