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Comment by moonshinefe | Hacker News Reader

For some people money isn't that important or the end all of everything. So we get articles like this with "shocking" behaviors of people who "could be rich but don't do X." It's an interesting commentary on our society.

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When you have too many people living in the past, you get the mess San Francisco is in with NIMBYs blocking market rate housing projects, declaring rundown laundromats as “historical landmarks” and fights over shadows.

Lol did they really declare a laundromat a landmark? I swear the tactics that certain people will do to get their way....

No, they didn't, after years of legal battles the plans to build on that site were finally approved. https://hoodline.com/2018/09/plans-for-8-story-mission-devel...

Both the laundromat and the new building they want to construct are pretty numb. When I look at the architecture of the early-to-mid 20th century I can't help but feel we've lost a lot.

These days economic architecture reigns, and probably for good reason. It's no longer affordable to have ornate brick-work or any kind of embellishment. Interiors are functional and efficient, we've done away with unnecessary mouldings and again dispensed with ornate detail in general.

I wonder how the economics of the property market used to bear the additional cost of all that extra work? Were people just more proud of what they made, or was labour just so incredibly cheap that making a building beautiful made little difference to the bottom line?

I think physical presence was more important to a company’s “brand” in the past. Those were marketing dollars that are now spent on website theming / sophisticated animations / well-polished apps.

No; they just made the project sponsor pay $20,000 for a study to confirm that it wasn't historic. The cost of that study, and the time it took, and the uncertainty it added to the process, will all get factored into the price that people eventually have to pay for these desperately-needed, much-delayed homes.

This is the inverse of NIMBYism, which is about telling other people what they should do with their property... which is exactly what many of the people on this thread seems to want to do with respect to this woman.

The more interesting side of it IMO, is this situation has all the markings of Capitalism actually working well. Housing is a scarce and expensive resource in Manhattan that people are willing to a pay a lot for, and a factory will likely function just as well if moved a few miles away where land is cheaper. If she sells it everyone is better off, and she makes a ton of money.

Yet just because there is personal sacrifice involved lots of people seem to be applauding her for not selling.

Edit: Anyone care to explain why if you're downvoting? I'm genuinely curious why people seem to think this is such a bad way to think about it.

No one has the moral right to monopolize land. Land is not the product of human labor, it should not be possible to hoard so much natural value. If people want to own land, they should have to pay a steep tax for the privilege.

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