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Comment by maxaf | Hacker News Reader

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I think you are conflating entirely two different concepts. NIMBYism is a unique California value and closely related to California history rather than a true left ideology. In fact, leftist policies are for more denser urban development, public transit etc as you can see in European countries

"Liberalism" is the "hipsters" of modern leftist politics...

I’m not sure where you get those ideas? Where I live in NYC, they recently shut down a major street to cars so buses could run more easily — and the furthest left want to expand that. The left leaning people I know want to close jails, not build better ones elsewhere. We opposed an Amazon campus in our backyard specifically because it would drive up rents — and the furthest left want rent control.

Liberals are obviously not a monolith of only ethically consistent people, but I definitely don’t see the pervasive NIMBYism.

The Left in New York City are largely socialists by now, who had enough of a long-standing working-class tradition to avoid allying with liberal NIMBYs.

He's honestly pretty spot on about liberals, as the spot on the spectrum in between conservatives and social democrats.

Maybe so, but I don’t read the original comment as a critique of centrist Democrats in particular. (I also don’t think centrist Democrats are alone in the gap between their professed values and their actual ones.)

I live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Here the same people who yell for affordable housing also go to court to block construction of new towers. The same people who complain about buses stuck in traffic on W 86th St also prevent the introduction of universal metered parking and congestion pricing.

But my original comment was mainly addressing the NIMBYism in California. Look at SF: it's a low-rise city of sky-high demand and prices. Who's preventing new construction? The same local NIMBYs who enjoy rising property values due to severely restricted supply of land that can be built on.

I until very recently lived downtown, where congestion pricing would actually take effect, and the people most in support were again the furthest left.

SF does seem to be more NIMBYish, but I’m not sure why you think it’s a microcosm of liberalism.

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