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Comment by ucaetano | Hacker News Reader

I never claimed them to be stupid. Your words, not mine.

But the Stanford professor writing about the plight of the poor workers commuting for 2 hours lives in a multi-million dollar home in Atherton and votes for anti-poor-people zoning laws.

The young, billionaire, startup CEO who wants to cause a positive impact in the world lives in Los Altos Hills, where zoning laws forbid lot sizes smaller than 1 acre, and bans multi-family housing or more than one dwelling per lot.

And the progressive tech worker who advocates for low-income-housing and makes $250k per year lives in a rent-controlled apartment in the Mission paying half of the market rates.

The Bay Area housing situation is a tragedy of the commons.

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> I never claimed them to be stupid. Your words, not mine.

The adjective "self-inflicted" has an undeniable negative connotation. Why didn't you say, "deliberately chosen" instead?

> The Bay Area housing situation is a tragedy of the commons.

No, it's not. It is neither a tragedy, nor does it have anything to do with commons. Yes, it is a case of the rich making life harder for the poor, but that's only a tragedy for the poor. It's not a tragedy for the rich. It's not a tragedy for tourists who can enjoy the distinctive nature of the SFBay area while it still has redwood trees instead of being paved over with high-rise apartments. It's not a tragedy for the wildlife that lives in the privately owned open space on the Peninsula. And none of this has anything to do with "the commons." All that open space is privately owned, and all of the governments who won't change the zoning laws (including the state government, BTW) are democratically elected.

If you turn the San Francisco Bay into another Manhattan or Hong Kong that would not make it any less of a tragedy. It would just be a different kind of tragedy.

> The Bay Area housing situation is a tragedy of the commons.

For those who don't appear to know what "Tragedy of the commons" is, it's an economic concept[1] that doesn't necessarily involve a "tragedy" and "the commons" can include private property.

A recent example of "tragedy of the commons" was during the recent California extended drought, Wall Street firms were buying up struggling pistachio farms in California, drilling wells deeper than nearby farmers did, and were undercutting those farmers by siphoning the aquifer from below, encouraging those competing farmers to dig deeper wells and use water faster. "The commons" would be the aquifer / water rights that the farmers commonly depend on. The tragedy was that in the depths of the drought, other pistachio farmers were unable to afford to dig deeper, their harvests were scant, and the price of pistachios worldwide had tripled -- all of which further incentivized well funded outsiders to do the same and buy out farmers.

You can argue that SF MTA management and SF building / zoning policy isn't in the best interest of SF citizens, but pedantically arguing the semantics of "tragedy of the commons" won't win you any intellectual arguments.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

Completely agree. Nonetheless, I stand by my position that the SFBA housing situation is NOT an example. In the case of the pistachio farmers there was a common resource (the aquifer) that was available on a first-come-first-served basis, so deep drillers were rewarded. I don't see any analogous mechanism at work here.

The common resource is land. Although there is a private aspect to land, it is also managed collectively through zoning laws (and other laws).

The commons in this case isn't the land, it's the government and laws.

It is a choice. The San Francisco Bay Area is already denser than the entire country of Switzerland and has a similar GDP. However, the Swiss have incomparably better public transit. And their taxes are lower than the US.

There's no need to become Manhattan or Hong Kong. Just invest in infrastructure.

Minor nitpick, but I do not think you know what dense means.

Most cities are denser than Switzerland. My undergrad town of 25K is over 20 times denser than Switzerland.

Your statement is exactly right and strengthens my argument. Switzerland has absolutely fabulous public transit while having low density. Therefore, the argument that you have to be incredibly dense to support good public transit is false.

Switzerland has excellent public transit. Therefore, if there is a density threshold to offering good public transit, an area would need to be at least less dense than Switzerland in order to argue that it isn't possible.

The SF Bay Area is denser than Switzerland. Therefore, the reasons for not having good transit are not to do with density, but with something else (politics, zoning, public support, etc.). But density is not the issue.

> There's no need to become Manhattan or Hong Kong. Just invest in infrastructure.

You're not getting the basic point with transit infrastructure: it requires density.

Transit systems are only viable with enough people living and working at walking distance from the stations.

Increasing density decreases traffic, increases transit effectiveness, and reduces environmental impact. It's simple geometry.

I don't know the details but Antwerp seems comparible. It seems to have amazing public transportation with a density only 1/6th of SF. Why they can do it an SF can't I don't know.

The area of Antwerp includes the entire harbor and several empty areas. Looking at the map, it seems to include islands of high density surrounded by empty areas.

That works very, very well for public transportation. The issue with transit and density is not about distances, is actually about the number of people living and working within walking distance of a transit stop.

If you increase density by 5X, that number increases by 5X.

So two cities with the same density, one spread out evenly and the other in high-density islands surrounded by low density seas, have very different viabilities for public transit.

If that's the point, why does Switzerland have a lower density than the SF Bay Area but a transit system that is orders of magnitude better?

I lived in Switzerland for 9 months last year. They have arguably the best transit infrastructure in the world, with a passenger rail system that is 100% electric.

According to Wikipedia, the density of Zurich is ~4600 people/km^2. The density of San Francisco is ~7170 people/km^2. So what excuse does SF have for being so very, very much worse?

First, there's just the willingness to invest in infrastructure, which is nearly non-existent in the US. Swiss people LOVE infrastructure, they are proud of their tunnels, railroads, bridges, dams, etc.

Take a look at the referendums over the past few years: universal basic income? No. More vacation days? No. Forbid speculation on food products? No. Define marriage as man/woman? No. Build a new tunnel across the Alps? Hell yeah!

But it isn't just about density. You can have mid to low average density, but still have a viable transit system.

Public transit doesn't just depend on the overall average density, but on the density of the area surrounding the transit stops.

Switzerland has reasonably dense cities and towns, with very-low-density areas in between. The SFBA has evenly-distributed low density (except for a few areas).

Increasing the distance between dense cores doesn't have as much negative impact on transit viability as spreading people out has.

The SFBA could easily solve this by changing the zoning laws around Bart, Caltrain, VTA and Muni stations.

> First, there's just the willingness to invest in infrastructure, which is nearly non-existent in the US. Swiss people LOVE infrastructure, they are proud of their tunnels, railroads, bridges, dams, etc.

I totally agree with you here. This is the crux of my argument.

Your statement about Switzerland having reasonably dense cities and towns compared with the Bay Area I'm interested in learning more about - can you cite your source? Having lived in Switzerland for almost a year and in the Bay Area for almost 4, this doesn't ring true to me, but I don't have a heat map of population density to check against; if I get more time at some point I'll try to find more data.

Regardless, we do have some areas of sufficient population density that it would make sense to connect efficiently and we don't. That's the choice I'm talking about. At the very least, it should be easy to get between Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose without needing a car. Within San Francisco, you should be able to go from the east side to the west side without using a system that suffers from being delayed at least 50% of the time.

Also - regarding more vacation days? The government already mandates 4 weeks of vacation (5 if you're under 20) and you are supposed to take at least two of those weeks in a row.

How does the density of SFBA (or even SF proper) compare to the density of the Swiss cities that actually have the transit you're talking about?

Basically every Swiss city has the transit I'm talking about. I lived in Switzerland for 9 months last year. Zurich is less dense than SF. Geneva is more dense but the density of the country as a whole is less than the SF Bay area.

I had some Swiss friends and we were on a train once that was delayed by 15-20 minutes. They were all complaining because this happens once in a blue moon. They mentioned that if the train is delayed by more than 3 minutes it has to be posted on signage and if it's delayed more than 6 minutes or would cause someone to miss a connection it results in fines to the operator. I haven't been able to find a written source to back this up but personally I almost never experienced delays on Swiss transit.

This is a good example:

https://qz.com/166186/the-swiss-are-scandalized-by-trains-th...

Swiss media are abuzz with the news of the country’s faltering rail system. Last year, the state-run rail operator missed its target for punctuality; only 87.5% of trains arrived within three minutes of their scheduled arrival.

A national transit system runs like clockwork, every single gear must be turning in sync for the system to work.

They already paved it over with subdivisions. That's why the Greenbelt alliance supports more housing.

> Tragedy for the tourists

San Francisco will always be a distinctive and attractive place, with or without density. And by building more housing and improving transit, it will become less distinctive in negative ways (homelessness for one). NYC has multiple tourist attractions that have almost 3 times as visitors as those in San Francisco.[1]

> tragedy for the wildlife

It is a tragedy for the wildlife worldwide for people who work in cities to have to spend countless hours commuting and expending carbon emissions.

True, rich land-owners may have to pay more tax and some may see slightly lower appreciation rates, but many other rich people and almost all poor and middle class will benefit. No doubt someone of it is "self-inflicted" at the state-level (Prop 13 for one, and "environmental" approvals used to drag down new development), but there are actionable ways to fix some of this -- passing sales tax, easing rigid zoning laws, and using new funds for transit measures like Measure M in Los Angeles, and Measure B in San Jose.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourist_attractions_in_the_Uni...

>The adjective "self-inflicted" has an undeniable negative connotation. Why didn't you say, "deliberately chosen" instead?

You yourself said:

>we would prefer to deal with the problems caused by insufficient housing than by the problems caused by overly dense population.

Is problems not a negative connotation?

Yes, it is negative, and it is self-inflicted. In your original comment, you are actually agreeing with the parent.

Yes, but you're just saying the same thing as the parent, which is that this is a question of values. It's not a natural disaster. It's the expected result of deliberate policy.

On the one hand you have more access for more people to one of the most important and dynamic urban areas in the United States. On the other you have the "distinctive nature of the SFBay area" and redwood trees.

I think it's pretty obvious that the first is more important than the latter, but it's fair of you to want to make that tradeoff explicit.

> Yes, it is a case of the rich making life harder for the poor, but that's only a tragedy for the poor.

No, all parties take part in it. Rent control, mandating low-income units, preventing new developments, preventing gentrification, etc. all constrain supply. And it isn't just the rich doing it.

A more proper description would be a conflict between the insiders and the outsiders, with the insider being anyone who already rents or owns a place. Insiders don't want change, and want outsiders to be punished and taxed.

The commons in this case isn't the land, it's the government and laws.

I live in a rent controlled unit and still feel we need to eliminate Prop. 13 (prevents property tax increases caused by property asset increases) and eliminate rent control. Both are removing people from having skin in the game when it comes to housing policy. If everyone can feel the pain, maybe everyone can figure out a way to stop the pain.

Are there any concrete plans on how to implement this?

In the densely populated parts of the Netherlands we've had an unhealthy housing market for decades, partly because of government subsidized mortages through tax breaks.

"Everyone" kind of agrees that is should be abolished, but the polical and popular will is laking, and people won't be able to pay their mortages anymore if it happened too sudden. Also it would cause homes to deflate 10-30% which would be a serious issue for current owners who want to move.

That's a pretty interesting definition of "everyone." Lacking popular and political will doesn't leave many people who actually want it, does it?

Even when everyone thinks something should happen, it can still not happen because of individual incentives.

Everyone thinks the market would be better off without the mortgage subsidy, but no-one wants his house to lose value because of a resulting market slump or make higher mortgage payments every month.

I would start by reducing it bit by bit and avoiding large voting blocks that would be hurt by the changes.

- So for example, prop 13 would only apply if your above retirement age for example. (Avoiding old people)

- Or prop 13 only applies to somewhere where you live as a homeowner. (Not a lot of people have second homes)

- No secondary residences or rental properties would get prop 13 benefits.

- Prop 13 benefits cannot apply to corporations / LLCs. (Many people don't have their own house under a corp since they lose a big capital gains tax break if they do)

- Prop 13 benefits cannot be passed on to your children through a trust or whatever else.

Didn't the Zuckerbergs buy a couple of adjacent homes [1] so they don't have to look at their neighbors?

[1] http://www.mercurynews.com/2013/10/10/mark-zuckerberg-buys-f...

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