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Comment by nefitty | Hacker News Reader

I can't help interpreting your opinion as, "it's ok to kick the poor people out, as long as the upper classes, government and businesses prosper." People aren't numbers to throw into a mean function. That "net positive" argument is what has been used to excuse globalization's "there have to be some losers" philosophy, which disproportionately affects those already in poverty.

A sense of community is one of the few things poor neighborhoods can offer their inhabitants. When those impoverished people are elbowed out and away from each other to make way for another coffee shop, it becomes hard to sympathize with the moneyed class's desire for late-night gourmet poke.

Edit: Taking a look at TulliusCicero's WaPo link is making me reconsider my position.

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I don't know a whole lot about the general outcomes of those slowly and progressively displaced by gentrification but in sufficiently small catastrophies (i.e. not Syria) the displaced lower classes often do better economically. For example, Katrina refugees who stayed away are reported to have more income and live in safer and less impoverished areas with better schools (e.g. [1]). The city is more diverse and affluent as well (look for Citylab article on this, I can't look up atm) so it might not be a selection bias thing.

However complaints all around are that social networks and cultures were destroyed. It seems that when it's time to move, people move towards economic opportunity rather than for culture, etc. Hopefully with time those social networks can develop into the next rich permutation.

[1]: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/a...

Your link is subscriber only - does it address selection bias, eg perhaps those who relocated had an existing advantage?

Not really. The relocated people generally arrived in Houston with nothing because they were evacuated to Houston and had nothing to return to in NOLA. Houston took in some of the poorest of the poor. I lived in Houston during Katrina (and actually was a catastrophe insurance adjuster,) so I saw it first hand. Many of those people got healthy FEMA money and were able to restart in Houston. However to be fair, the crime rate in Houston did spike due to some of the influx and the problems it brought (such as NOLA gang members getting into disputes with local gang members.) Overall though, it seemed to be a positive for most involved. (It did result in a much elevated Cajun/Creole cuisine due to the NOLA cooks that relocated!)

Confirm. Born and raised in Houston but now in Austin.

Texas is not "the deep south", we opened our arms and our hearts to everyone who was displaced by the hurricane. Nearly every major city in Texas participated. Moreover, we've experienced enough hurricanes to know the depth and severity of damage that can occur – and will continue to occur.

Neighbors help each other in times of crisis. Who knows, in the future maybe Louisiana will have to return the favor.

The problem with the opposite position, that even the greatest net positive is invalidated if even a single person is inconvenienced[1] (which, reductio ad absurdum is what you seem to suggest), will obviously lead to practically no change ever. Indeed, it will most likely lead to decline, as any active attempt to change things will probably inconvenience at least a few people, while you can't pin such a charge against passive apathy, even if it long term inconveniences a much greater number of people.

Even the creatives with their coffee shops (generally considered the acceptable level of gentrification, a fact that is obviously totally unrelated to the fact that a substantial subset of people fretting over gentrification are creatives in coffee shops) probably displaces some local activity, perhaps a "brown cafe" loses some customers to the new coffee shop etc.

I recently went on a street-art themed walking tour of Shoreditch in east London, and the guide started the tour by explaining how in the late 80s the area was a total write-off with poverty, violence and prostitution left, right and center, and how entire houses changed hands for as little as £1 -- and ended it by railing against the building of new apartments. The irony of he, himself, being a recent transplant to the area (he alluded to his small-town upbringing, and he was much too young to have moved there pre-1990) did not seem to trouble him much.

Bottom line: clearly there is SOME level of positive development that justifies SOME level of inconveniences. Perhaps we should be a little better at articulating the positive benefits instead of knee-jerk defending those inconvenienced by progress and idealising the gritty urban semi-slums being displaced.

PS: I'm very happy the WaPo link is making you reconsider your position.

1: This article describes the plight of "the poor" being pestered with offer to buy their flats for cash, offers they are perfectly in their right to decline. That's being inconvenienced, not kicked out. http://www.wnyc.org/story/de-blasios-affordable-housing-figh...

>I can't help interpreting your opinion as, "it's ok to kick the poor people out, as long as the upper classes, government and businesses prosper.

I can't help interpreting the original argument as "we're fine with our people here (the artists), but we don't want those other people in our community".

See: almost anyone in San Francisco complaining about "tech bros"

What exactly would you offer as an alternative to globalization? Purely curious.

I basically trust the process of globalization. "You don't go to war with your trading partners." The main fault I pointed out has to do with a lack of protectionary measures for the sections of society most at risk.

I think this also has relevance to the gentrification debate, though looking into the data it seems like governments continue failing on that front. I wasn't smart enough to come up with an alternative to capitalism when I was 15, I'm not smart enough to come up with an alternative to globalization now.

> "You don't go to war with your trading partners."

http://blogs.reuters.com/anatole-kaletsky/2014/06/27/world-w...

To drill into a point of my quoted assertion: "You don't go to war without support from your trading partners." A world war is an exceptional case. I meant to point at national conflicts, specifically between equals. I think having to defend your ally is a separate problem.

Well, you're less likely to go to war with your trading partners.

I'd have thought, at least historically, wars were more likely with trading partners - they're going to be close and, by definition, they have stuff that you want.

So what's the solution here? How else would you improve those kinds of neighborhoods? Do you expect the poor people are going to suddenly all get better jobs and simultaneously decide to make their neighborhood nicer?

Define the problem first, then we can talk about a solution.

The problem (as I see it) is artificial scarcity of housing which creates artificially inflated and unaffordable housing costs. Depending on what sources you look at, there are around 4-6 empty houses in the US for every homeless person.

The solution to that would be to cease the state-sponsoring of fraudulent and dishonest sub-prime mortgage shell games like the one which climaxed in 2008 and let simply the market normalize.

>let simply the market normalize.

Who's to say what that "normal" market looks like, and what it means for housing affordability?

Very good question, considering how abstract of a term "the market" is.

I suppose in a "normal market" if a surplus of supply exists affordability should increase as prices should decrease. That's Economics 101.

But in a market controlled by a monopoly/oligarchy, the price system is dictated by the recidivist whims of the super admins, rather than by the needs and desires of the user base or the physical reality of the resource(s) in question.

So in the current state of housing surplus, affordability has decreased as prices have increased.

An "alternative to globalization", you say?

I vote for Inter Planetary Commerce. Let's give Musk a $3T budget for a couple of years and see where we get. Plenty of jobs will be created if he can terraform Mars.

You think Musk is the right guy? He might be but his ability to build rockets and be a 'visionary' is directly proportional to the amount of funding he has received. It would seem like there could be others that could be even more effective than Musk if given the same resources.

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