Is it a good or a bad thing when multinational corporations step in and take the place of government?
I think in places like SF or Seattle it’s a combination of government regulation and zoning rules, and idle capital. But at the same time I don’t see why government itself can’t invest in building things like transportation infrastructure to support the increased density (assuming density is something we want - I’m not entirely convinced it is).
Over the last few decades the default state appears to have been “build up” rather than “build up where needed, and out where you can”. Cities from previous iterations of civilization appear to have done the latter, while we mostly just do the former here in the states (over recent decades). LA could maybe be considered an exception, however it’s zoning rules are draconian and density seems to be the way forward less some major overhaul.
The problem is that these things take time, mostly because this isn’t China and Seattle doesn’t have hundreds of billions in Treasuries to do what it wants, nor is it willing to conspire using shady financial vehicles like Chinese local governments.
And governments are absolutely incentivized by opportunity. The prosperity of the people is their entire job. Its why you have a state to begin with. If its unable to fulfill that objective, get a new government.
Do you have concrete examples? Everything I can think of points to the opposite.
But closer to the topic, look at the government housing programs. Billions of dollars to build housing projects that do effectively nothing to lower the overall market price of housing, while creating slums by concentrating poverty in specific locations, while actively making the actual problem worse with zoning rules.
Because they outsource to a bunch of private contractors, no?
No. The government contracting process is as broken as anything else, but hurry up and wait, FUBAR and SNAFU did not originate at Lockheed Martin. We don't have major military bases in states with powerful legislators because that's what makes the most strategic sense from a military perspective. The VA healthcare system is not a disorganized mess primarily as a result of contractors.
It's a systemic issue with any large bureaucracy, which is why small and local governments are more efficient than large and centralized ones. It's also why small and medium businesses are more efficient than huge conglomerates.
And there is no bureaucracy larger than the US government. People like to compare their cash on hand with Apple's, but governments don't hoard cash like corporations do (and corporations only do it because of dumb tax policies). The US federal budget is around six times Apple's market cap, much less their own annual budget.
But it is a good thing that someone is solving the problem.
See https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/05/multinationals.html for a comparison of multinationals' management to local companies. I don't have stats for local government on hand, but anecdotally, it's common for it to be even worse than local companies.
Exactly. Why put our eggs in MSFT's basket?
And then once constructed, there would be forces wholly removed from the natural demands of the population, as represented immediately by the encompassing markets, determining how the housing is to evolve over time.
People should be much more reserved than they are in terms of handing things over to the state, there is much to be lost.
That is not true. California has a budget surplus right now...
It’s not a poll. One is expected to answer “bad, because...”, as you did.
The proper use of the state should really only be as a reluctant override meant to address explicit market failures, such as monopolies and collusion and negative externalities. Unfortunately, that isn't the way that most people view the role of government anymore, and are increasingly content to see it as a consequence-free button for moral authoritarianism.