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Comment by kory | Hacker News Reader

Please stop the urbanism spam.

On average, Americans like suburbs. They like driving. They like space, a yard, a DIY workshop, and sunlight. They don't like cities. "haha go live in a city and bike to work" is not a fair response to high gas prices and inflation. It's not how people want to live.

We've got a better chance of the USA banning oil exports to lower crude prices, or enacting substantial EV subsidies to get people off gas before we can convince the suburbanite with a 5bd house + quarter acre lot in a good school district that they should move to an urban 2 bedroom apartment instead. Even if we can, I guarantee you that the apartment won't be considered an upgrade.

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Don't "convince the suburbanite", just get petrol taxes to the same point as in Europe, so that the $10/gl price sends a signal to the soccer mums in their Canyonero when they fill up at the pump after ferrying their kids around - and on the margin it will have an effect. (And it is good for the climate too.)

> Don't "convince the suburbanite", just get petrol taxes to the same point as in Europe, so that the $10/gl price sends a signal to the soccer mums

...to vote you out a replace you with someone who will undo the tax hike.

The US is a very imperfect democracy, at best, but there are some red lines that, if you don't convince people first, will toast you immediately politically, and rapid tax increases related to automobiles or their operation are high on the list.

I think the US is actually a very responsive democracy—liberals just don’t like the revealed preferences of the polity.

My dad is a blue dog democrat. Has voted democrat ever since becoming naturalized. Wouldn’t even vote for Larry Hogan. Yet he’s apoplectic about inflation and gas prices, and hates the idea of raising taxes on people making $100-200k/year like himself. At the end of the day he cares more about those things than anything else Democrats care about.

Liberals keep pinning their electoral prospects on people like my dad. Before it was Bangladeshi immigrants it was Irish and Italian immigrants. But these folks came to America for the American dream—two cars, a house with a pool, drive through McDonalds. As a result, liberals take it in the chin every time there is the slightest threat to the low tax consumerist suburban lifestyle. The last time it happened, in the 1970s, we got two decades of Reaganism.

It seems to me that there's a common theme among urbanist folks. That is, if people don't like the urbanist vision, they should be forced to change their habits via government policy, even if they don't like those changes.

Why is that? Hasn't the opposite (suburbia and car dependency) been forced upon you by government policy for the last 70 years? Yet, there's a substantial population that wants to completely destroy the suburban way of life via taxing it to death. Governments never intended to destroy city living. At least, not purposefully (perhaps via disinvestment).

You'd think you'd want the government to just create conditions for cheap energy since that's objectively good for everyone, and let people live how they want. If people choose suburbia, great. If they choose cities, great too. If the online movement is representative of a larger group, there are a lot off people who will still choose cities!

I'd be fine with this if most folks saying it actually were being genuine.

What I've found when I head down this path with folks on a deeper level they actually don't want everyone to own their life choices. They actually want the status quo of being the most subsidized political cohort the US has.

Suburban living in most areas I've stayed clearly should be far more expensive. The fact my parents live 50 feet off a paved 60mph road 60 miles away from the nearest large city is utterly absurd. That road might see two dozen cars a day. There is no way the tax base can support such a thing.

I think in our lifetimes we'll see prices start to escalate rapidly due to the fundamentals baked in.

However I have very little hope this turns into anything but more subsidy for that cohort, since they are the ones who show up to vote. Anyone not offering to prop up the suburban property bubble will not have a chance in office.

> I think we'll see in our lifetimes see prices start to escalate rapidly due to the fundamentals baked in.

I agree. One of the big risks to future political stability and, honestly, avoiding violent conflict is that these price increases won't just be rapid but immediate. People could adjust if the price of gas went up $1/gallon every year for ten years. If the government keeps the price artificially low all that time and is then forced to raise it $10 all at once, that would be very difficult.

This is why I'm not an urbanist even though I support in theory a lot of urbanist policies.

The motte: "There is great demand for dense, walkable, affordable, towns/cities/neighborhoods in the US, and not enough supply to satisfy this demand. A big reason why there is a supply shortage, aside from the relative inelasticity of housing in general, is government restrictions on building/zoning these sorts of developments. There are many coordination failures in attempts to create these sorts of neighborhoods which could be rectified through government action."

The bailey: "Suburbs are a failure of city planning. Car ownership/usage is a net negative on society and should be disincentivized. Government policy should work to eliminate suburbs, replacing them with dense development. Most of those who live in suburbs would surely choose and be happier living in denser developments."

First, don’t worry about it. Just change the zoning and then let people choose what they will. If what you say is true, the market won’t change a thing.

Second, price per square foot in cities is set by demand, and it is several times prices in suburbs. That behavior tells us there are people who would rather be downtown and we aren’t letting them.

> Just change the zoning and then let people choose what they will

But, we already know from the political fortunes of people who have run on those ideas, what they will choose is to replace the people implementing those policies, unless you do a lot of work in advance to convince them of the merits rather than thinking you can just dictatorially change incentives and let that shape behavior without any blowback that undoes the policy.

Oh, I don't think you can do it with the legislative branch of government at all. I think there's a clear path to overturning Euclid and finding zoning unconstitutional. That court case was entirely based on a bunch of racist shit in the appellate decision.

> We've got a better chance of the USA banning oil exports to lower crude prices

Banning oil exports would reduce the incentive to pump domestic oil, and, because much of the domestic supply isn't the grades best for producing gasoline, even if it did reduce the price of those grades of crude, it wouldn't do much for gasoline prices.

An export ban would place the maximum American crude price at about $70/barrel, since that's a little bit above the shale breakeven price. Prices would tank overnight. There is no conceivable scenario where an export ban would not substantially cut oil prices.

Maybe we won't see $2/gallon again, but $6+/gallon would be a thing of the past.

Of course those suburbanites love their hard won individualism, the point is, that this kind of life is built on externalities that make it unsustainable for the majority of people to live this way.

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