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Comment by JackFr | Hacker News Reader

It's easy to look at Jeff Bezos and say ego-driven billionaire jealous of Elon Musk. That's a fun narrative.

On the other hand, why should Amazon leave money on the table to be happily scooped up by other companies. Forget Tesla, Washington state was giving billions of dollars in subsidies to Boeing, while Boeing was cutting jobs in Washington. The city council of Seattle was feuding with Amazon for "for making the city too expensive". The city is complaining that Amazon is making some of their citizens too rich.

I think his frustration would be understandable as businessman, and not as envy.

Of course the whole system is perverse and corrupt, but hate the game, not the player.

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> The city is complaining that Amazon is making some of their citizens too rich.

The city would prefer that Amazon's presence has benefits for citizens as a whole - or at least didn't make their live worse - rather than enriching a few. Seems reasonable to me.

And it does: "anchor" industries are what brings in wealth in general to a city or metro area. Wages for unrelated jobs in Seattle are still higher than average.

That said, the problem is that average wages don't rise as fast as the cost of living does. But that housing is so expensive is a failure of local government policies, and by extension, the voters who support those policies. Housing doesn't have to be super expensive; voters actively choose policies that make it so.

People are getting what they voted for, and they're mad as hell about it.

> That said, the problem is that average wages don't rise as fast as the cost of living does.

And that's presumably part of the problem

> But that housing is so expensive is a failure of local government policies, and by extension, the voters who support those policies. Housing doesn't have to be super expensive.

I'd be interested to know precisely which local government policies are failing here. To a naive outsider, it sounds as if its likely that well-off incomers are displacing existing populations from desirable areas/properties.

What are the failures of local government housing policy? Failure to relax standards so that existing residence can move into nice high-density prefab blocks built on existing green-space?

Failure to allow supply to meet demand. Zoning regulations constrain how much housing can be built to a very low amount on most residential land. No surprise that prices would rise in that environment, this is barely econ 101, it's like high school level economics.

Like, when demand goes straight up and supply can't go nearly as fast, what else would anyone expect? I don't understand why everyone always acts so shocked that the completely predictable happens over and over.

Seattle has actually been much better about allowing more housing than some peer cities, like SF. But compared to cities in most other developed countries, the situation is still awful. For example, the kind of very low density zoning that is commonplace in Seattle literally doesn't exist anywhere in Japan or Germany.

I don't think you'll find many urbanists or YIMBYs pushing to demolish greenspace like parks or trails. I'm certainly not; if anything, I'd prefer to push to acquire more greenspace, perhaps by redeveloping surface parking lots. As for housing needs, there's plenty of space where things are already developed.

Housing doesn’t fit the traditional supply/demand model b/c of the time constraint. It takes time to build housing but companies can grow and hire faster than housing can be built. You don’t want to overbuild and create ghost towns where developers go bankrupt trying to sell (a couple of these places exist in Europe, Canada, and America - I think China too but I haven’t seen it in person), but you don’t want to underbuild a la SF. So I agree with you that the zoning laws have a lot to do with it - but housing isn’t an instant commodity either - it can take many years, esp for high density projects.

*typed with thumbs

It doesn't take time to build warehouses and factories?

Housing doesn’t fit the traditional supply/demand model b/c incumbent owners are able to increase there wealth by using the power of the state to constrain supply through zoning and other regulatory means.

The time constraint you mention is often artificial, six months for permitting here and two months for an impact study there. Actual construction is surprisingly fast.

Companies can't grow faster than the supply of office space, which also has time constraints.

What allows companies to hire faster than cities can grow? The companies still need office space that means more and bigger buildings, it's the same damn problem as housing.

...with one significant difference: communities are generally much more amenable to increased jobs than increased residents. And companies growing fast usually are cool with huge buildings in the city center, which is the one place where cities are generally fine with high density. Getting cities to be okay with, say, low-rise housing developments across the city is a much harder ask. So it really does just come down to zoning and zoning-adjacent concerns (e.g. community input meetings where developments get shot down).

Overbuilt is not a function of supply and demand, but more often speculation.

I'll take the occasional unlucky overbuild if it means sanity in the bay area, Seattle, NYC, Boston, etc.

Nobody overbuilds into ghost towns where there are real housing problems. The only ghost towns I've seen were really small areas that didn't really need all of the houses.

Also, manufacturing delays don't have any impact on supply and demand. They are part of the "supply".

> Like, when demand goes straight up and supply can't go nearly as fast, what else would anyone expect? I don't understand why everyone always acts so shocked that the completely predictable happens over and over.

Thay aren't shocked, as you say its a predictable side effect. That's why cities have to be careful when saying yes please to the economic growth promised by big companies - it can have a detrimental effects on the people living there. Zoning regulations aren't usually arbitrary (I can't speak for any particular city's ordinances) they are there to ensure that minimum housing standards are met, that people don't find themselves living too close to heavy industrial areas, that the infrastructure and green space can cope.

I'm afraid you're wrong: there are many, MANY supply and demand denialists around, who think it doesn't apply to housing. Believe me, I've argued with them. They see that brand new housing is more expensive than the decades-old housing it replaced, and go, "See?? It didn't help the prices at all!"

> Zoning regulations aren't usually arbitrary

True, in many cases they were designed to keep out undesirables, like people who are poor, or non-white. That's not arbitrary, it's intentionally bigoted.

Nobody's suggesting dumping factories into residential areas, or relaxing basic safety standards. That type of zoning is absolutely fine.

The biggest reason is political, that people have NIMBY tendencies: yes there needs to be more housing somewhere, but put it somewhere else please. I don't want to have to worry about parking or see unsightly apartments on my block.

I don't dispute that infrastructure is a concern, but it's not a blocker. Cities growing quickly isn't some unfathomable phenomenon of the 21st century, the logistics can be handled if people want it politically.

>I'm afraid you're wrong: there are many, MANY supply and demand denialists around, who think it doesn't apply to housing.

Are they really in denial though, I mean many want the housing prices to go up because it means their housing ( asset ) increases as well. So there is clearly a conflict of interest.

I think that's a different category of people, those who understand quite well that supply and demand applies here, and for that reason don't want more supply, to enrich themselves.

There's definitely a grouping of people who just think adding more housing doesn't help lower prices.

and, i've never understood why people ALWAYS assume that a new apartment building will be unsightly. There's just this general attitude of "any kind of building, any kind of development" is bad development. It's really crazying coming from a country that wants economic development so badly.

There's so much economic development that could happen if we simply allowed builders to build the housing that people so desperately need. its win win.

To be fair, in the US at least, most apartment blocks are kind of ugly compared to most single family homes. Living in Munich now, they're much more attractive on average.

It is a petty objection compared to the stakes but ugliness and beauty aren't in isolation. Take a beautiful Mediterranean Villa and plop it down in the middle of a colonial historic district and it will clash despite both being considered beautiful on their own.

By definition new apartments in a less dense area will have to stand out and the transitioning will result in either clashing. The alternative is they do it in a big wave and say buy out a small neighborhood cul de sac and turn them into apartments. It wouldn't clash any more even if they went with something downright garish but the big changes like that also upset people as they find it jarring.

Then the reasonable solution is for the city to tax the enriched citizens and distribute the taxes to the rest of the citizens so that they benefit as a whole.

But, what really happens, is the "city" or "city council" wants is to score political points, because a tax would also impact themselves and their friends and family. Everyone wants someone else to pay to benefit citizens as a whole, when obviously the fairest way is to pass a tax applicable to all "enriched" citizens.

Seattle approved an income tax a few years ago. It looks like it's still tied up in court.

Seattle council has voted for an income tax on highly paid residents (2.25% on everything above $250k), but income taxes are nominally unconstitutional in Washington State. It's been working its way through the state courts for years. So far the lower courts have ruled that an income tax may be constitutional (this would be a first, in Washington) ... but only if the rate is equal for all earners (So the Seattle tax still fails).

Interesting! Then their ire should be directed towards Washington state laws, not Amazon.

It brings to mind the stupid perfect enemy of the good of judging those who try to do better worse than those who don't even try in complete lack of proportion.

It is like reacting to a give away of free shoes to orphans with "Those orphan shoes aren't organic, the bastards!" while ignoring the others make luxury shoes /out of/ orphans because "Blood of the Innocent" brand Cobblers always does that sort of thing.

Amazon's mistake was not that they sought government incentives--it was that they did so in an ostentatious, tone-deaf way and turned it into some sort of strange game show.

They did not play the game by the (unspoken) rules.

> They did not play the game by the (unspoken) rules.

That's how they got to where they are. Not surprised they felt untouchable.

> On the other hand, why should Amazon leave money on the table to be happily scooped up by other companies.

In an ideal world, there wouldn't be any money on the table.

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