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Comment by SllX | Hacker News Reader

Authoritarian regimes across the Pacific Ocean have consequences on American property demand too. So does migration across the southern border. In fact I think you would be hard pressed to name a thing that happens anywhere in the world that doesn’t downstream from it have an effect on the American property market.

Clearly the solution is for US to annex the Earth like we annexed the Moon and then nationalize housing policy. /s

Our local housing policy does suck, but this is not a constructive direction. You’re simply replacing one power structure with a different one in the hopes that maybe it’ll be better, when what you want to make are specific policy arguments.

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Yes they do. But we -- that is, our nominally democratic government, a "power structure" which you have arbitrarily equated with a collection of private corporations -- have placed restrictions on immigration, and some light restrictions on foreign ownership of real estate itself, for precisely this reason.

Secondly, Canada, whose real estate markets have been even more seriously disrupted by authoritarian regimes across the Pacific Ocean, have already placed outright, albeit temporary, bans on citizens of those regimes from parking their capital in the domestic real estate market.

Your characterization of my argument is specious and straw-man-esque. You are assuming that globalization is a given, that borders are always porous, that neoliberalism is the only way of looking at the world. I am kindly inviting you to reconsider your point of view, in light of evidence that it has made housing more unaffordable for the many Americans, disrupted their livelihoods, and dissolved their communities.

Or you can keep making colorless jokes to yourself about the property markets on Mars, up to you.

> -- that is, our nominally democratic government, a "power structure" which you have arbitrarily equated with a collection of private corporations --

Are you responding to me or someone else?

> Your characterization of my argument is specious and straw-man-esque.

Your argument was to effectively transfer local zoning power from local government to Federal government because as you put it, it’s a national issue. True in a way, but the solution isn’t constructive, and you had no policy proposals to accompany this transfer. The one you propose here about limiting foreign ownership of domestic property by citizens from authoritarian countries (PRC, KSA just to name a couple) is something I’m actually on board with.

However, perhaps you think my characterization was inaccurate and uncharitable, so could you clarify the following for me:

>> Housing policy in major economic zones in the US is a national issue, and should be treated as such.

What does treating it as a National issue entail? A broad reading of this is direct Federal intervention into municipal policy which would be a direct power transfer. Could you narrow it down for clarity with actual policy proposals to convey a better understanding of what exactly you have in mind?

I don't really have to propose solutions, actually. My point was the problem, and its inconvenience for many assumptions many Americans have about housing, cities, markets. I don't have to have a ready-made policy prescription on hand to recognize that.

Here are some potential solutions anyways.

Some of these would be unpopular, but we could consider;

1. National standardization of zoning (like Japan) 2. Federal funding for local rail instead of highways (this would probably be the biggest one) 3. Municipal incentives for densification 4. Federal laws regulating the lobbying power of neighborhood associations 5. Beheading local gentry at the guillotine before inevitably being placed in its open maw ourselves (vive la révolution!)

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