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Comment by atomi | Hacker News Reader

A lot of people complain about California policies, but I don't ever see anyone stop to think that maybe those policies aren't there to serve them. That is, perhaps they aren't the constituency those policies were implemented for.

And maybe America and certainly California don't need half the country moving to just one state.

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So just proud NIMBYism then?

I think if someone really owns this credo - “I’m using the government to improve my life at the expense of someone else’s property rights” - I could maybe respect that? At least it’s consistent.

None of the people I’ve encountered who oppose housing construction seem to see things this way. Most of them seem to be economic conservatives who see themselves as having won a “fair game” and the fact that they’re using the government to strip others of their property rights - rights to build, rights to house - is lost to them. There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance and post-hoc rationalization in this group.

It's a mutual agreement to strip each other of troublesome property rights. These people aren't exempting themselves. They want to prevent tragedy-of-the-commons troubles, spite houses, and other anti-social troubles. They mutually agree (government) to prevent anybody from making the place miserable.

Thus there is no right to build: an 80-story apartment tower, a supervised injection place for IV drug users, an organometalic peroxide production plant, a hog farm, and a tire recycling plant.

The demand is there for even more restriction. In many areas, new housing is exclusively in home owner associations or in condominiums.

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