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Comment by 22289d | Hacker News Reader

It's not a problem to everyone. For example, it's not a problem to many homeowners that the value of their homes keep going up and to the right.

Living in California is expensive, in more ways than just housing. Not everyone can afford it. Just like not everyone can afford a new BMW. In my corner of the state, people who increasingly cannot afford to live here are noisy. I mostly don't engage because I'm aware that I will simply receive vitriol and anger for sharing my views. But quietly, I'm ok with it. They can move if they want to. I love it here and having fewer people on the fringes of society as neighbors isn't really the worst outcome to me.

Edit: and this why I don't engage. I'm out. Merry Christmas everyone.

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Yes, if we made it illegal to manufacture new lawnmowers or sofas or iPhones, then the value of the existing lawnmowers, sofas, and iPhones would skyrocket, which would be (at least in the naive accounting [0]) very good for the current owners of lawnmowers, sofas, and iPhones -- but hopefully you can see how ridiculous that is as policy.

[0] I say "naive accounting," because it's not so great if you ever need to buy a new lawnmower, sofa, or iPhone or if you hope your kids will someday be able to. And it's not so great for your city in the long run if making ordinary products illegal results in drastically lower levels of productivity, etc, etc.

Like most analogies, those fail.

One person's quality of life is not affected in any way by another person having a sofa.

More housing and population density does lead to increased crowding, which some people consider a decrease in quality of life.

We can argue which QOL argument outweighs the other, but it's plain wrong to say that increasing housing has no impact on existing residents.

Of course allowing more housing impacts people. And people on their iPhones impact me -- when they're behind the wheel, when they're talking loudly in a restaurant, when I can't get their attention in a shop. The towers impact me (they're ugly and ubiquitous and use valuable spectrum). And lawnmowers? Those impact me, too! They're loud and stir up dust. I'm struggling to think of anything objectionable about sofas, but that just means 2/3 of my totally-arbitrary examples have significant impacts on others. And, because those examples were totally arbitrary, we could easily substitute three far more objectionable products.

You live in a society. Of course the things other people do impact you. That's a low bar, easily met, and not interesting enough to justify a ban on new housing. The impacts have to be overwhelmingly harmful to justify prohibition. Apartment buildings clearly do not meet that standard. You might not like apartments, but I love them, and banal preferences shouldn't drive policy in a free society.

Sure, that's the beauty of democracy though. Everyone gets an equal say. Seems like not enough of the voting population agrees with you and as such no new houses are built. America is a huge country though, plenty of very affordable housing elsewhere. Everyone doesn't get to just have what they want where they want it though, that's capitalism for you.

> Sure, that's the beauty of democracy though.

In the United States we have a Constitution that enumerates a set of Rights about which nobody gets to vote. It doesn't matter if you (or even 99% of all people) think it should be illegal for me to express this opinion, for example; you don't get to vote on that.

Private property rights in my view quite clearly fall under this rubric and it's only because of a few laughably bad SCOTUS decisions that this is even a live debate at all. For most of our history this was well understood.

If given the chance, most people will vote to ban new construction in their neighborhoods. I presume that if given the chance significant percentages of the population would also vote to ban certain kinds of speech. In neither case do I believe those positions are made legitimate by virtue of having majority support.

> In the United States we have a Constitution that enumerates a set of Rights about which nobody gets to vote

No, it doesn't, since people actually do campaign on changing the Constitution. I mean, unless you specifically and exclusively mean “the right to equal representation of your State in the Senate”, and even that is debatable, since you could vote for someone who proposes removing that limitation on amendments from the Constitution.

I agree for the most part but government is always going to have the power to regulate what property in city limits can be used for. This prevents things like me opening a shooting range or a night club in a single family home neighborhood. Laws are put in place to prevent a worsening of living conditions for people that already live somewhere. 100% with you on free speech though. Government has no right to control what we say. I would go even further and ban companies being able to fire people for expressing unpopular or even racist opinions away from work. I'm a jew and if a dude is a Nazi on his free time but professional in the office he should remain unfired. Applies to speech only, if he's breaking the law via assault, arson, etc. then sure, fire him.

It's not capitalism, though. In capitalism, I could use money to build an apartment building on the land that I own.

If wouldn't be capitalism if we demanded you let us build on your land, but it's certainly not capitalism when you won't let us build on our land.

In any -ism.you could build an apartment on your own land[1]. It's capitalism that turns it into capital which allows you to rent it out or sell it as property.

1. to the extent that land can be owned under a given mode of production.

Tenants existed before capitalism. Marx discusses this in Capital when he discusses the transition from feudalism to capitalism. The ownership class changed (from the Lord to the landlord) but the relationship continues to exist. The idea of using an asset to generate returns on the asset is indeed a capitalist concept but housing is but one aspect of that.

It's in important distinction because even post-capitalist dialectics need an answer for the need of housing.

If I did not want more people to live near me, I would simply not live in the most economically productive region in the country. People who hate other people are free to sell their homes and move to the country.

> People who hate other people

Why introduce "hate other people" into the discussion? Would you maybe allow that what some people actually "hate," are jammed highways and thoroughfares, not enough parking, and everything crowded? To the extent that people have a say (a vote) in zoning regulations, people are entitled to voice their opinion about the population density of the area where they live.

In other words, you're against more cars, not more houses.

You get anger and vitriol because your views are part of the problem. NIMBY’s pull up the ladder and try to turn a nice semi-affordable car into a Porsche then tell everyone “sorry, it’s just expensive to be here. Not my fault!”

It's not a problem to me, that's the point. By saying I am a part of the problem, what you really mean is that my views are an obstacle to you getting what you want.

> It's not a problem to me, that's the point.

We get it, you don't care about anyone else, only yourself. This was already clear from your previous comments.

I appreciate their honesty. I am little tired of people on the internet pretending to be bleeding hearts for everyone else's problems.

Exactly you’re imposing your will on other people’s property. You’re engaged in theft by other means.

Pretty sure the basics of economics are your issue, not the people you pejoratively call NIMBY

The basics of economics are that housing prices is a function of amount of housing and number of people who want housing. NIMBYism is about keeping the amount of housing low, thus pushing prices up.

So control of supply... Is demand pretty high?

On a side note, how can you be mad at people who have a home, are raising their kids and don't want an apartment building smacked down next to them and their kid's schools flooded with hundreds of extra students?

Thing is, people aren't asking you (and people like you) to do anything, but simply to stop actively blocking things (like building new homes). You're getting the vitriol because you're simply sharing your views. You're getting it because based on your views, it seems like you support measures that actively blocks progress for others.

For the most part everyone arguing in favor of ideas championed by the left are unable to engage in rational argument they always engage by attempting to personally insult and label the other as bad or selfish. As someone that has always voted Dem prior to this past midterm, this style of argument actually drove me further right. Got to the point where I decided that if an idea can't be championed on it's merits it's probably not something I'm interested in

> this style of argument actually drove me further right

I believe you.

People who feel threatened move to the right.

This Volts episode about the psychology of "system justification" covers one facet of that phenomenon.

"Why social change is so excruciatingly difficult" [2022-10-24]

https://www.volts.wtf/p/why-social-change-is-so-excruciating...

Progressives ignore the psychology of action and reaction to their own peril.

Sad but true that progressive "people deserve to live decently in my city" ideas are at odds with the "I'm fine so stop talking about how there's a problem".

I'm working on an entire comedy set about how many of my peers care more about dissecting the wording of shit rather than actually furthering a cause. Those idiots aren't going to affect my ideology, though I am sometimes cancelled for the hilarious reasons (i.e. mentioning Joe Rogan).

Lastly, I got ran out of a bar for saying I think people deserve health care. Labeled a communist with no job and that I'm not welcome there. Lol!

I find it problematic that so many people reject your opinion, in particular because I suspect they are probably downplaying the degree to which it parallels the way most Americans think about where they live, to one degree or another.

Your logic isn’t unsound, but it will increasingly come across as unreasonable because not everyone in the workforce has the option of finding employment and accommodation elsewhere.

Make it unaffordable in a city for service workers to live, and there will be no one to host your night out on the town. No one to serve your dinner, or to tear your venue ticket, or to play live music.

As I said, it’s unreasonable in the big picture. The big picture matters.

But it’s not _illogical_ for someone who has everything they want to oppose things they don’t need.

NIMBY-is like another application of the “possession is 9/10ths of the law” argument. It has legs, but it doesn’t always win out.

I know what you mean but I still disagree. Is it _illogical_ to care for the disabled, elderly, widows and orphans in their affliction? I walk past people in need all the time but I don't justify it. Logical is subjective according to the person's wants and needs.

Do you support building more housing? Near your home?

Given that I know the local authorities will drag their feet and it'll take 5+ years for anything to actually be lived in and most stuff will be expensive to live in - yes. But that's already happening.

So if people keep leaving then the property values go down. Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it isn't going to happen.

Imagine property values start plunging, people can't leave, they just start abandoning houses, soon you get vast swathes of abandoned houses which lead to increased crime and urban decay.

Decades from now people will shake their heads and talk about the golden days of California and the problems with the silicon belt.

You're missing why people want to live here in the first place. It's one of the most beautiful places in the world, with one of the best year-round climates in the world. If prices start going down, people will move here. For those reasons.

You’ve described most of the country outside of job centers. There’s very little rural housing available and people crowd into job centers and drive up costs. Unless you own property or make a high salary, housing is unaffordable in all 50 states.

TLDR: I'm fine so what's the problem? I'm the victim! I can't speak my hilarious beliefs because people will "engage" aka challenge my poorly thought out and constructed opinions.

As a San Francisco area homeowner and a BMW owner, I believe every human deserves a roof over their head.

Edit: Please don't discuss the things I've said. My BMW is the victim! Merry Christmas.

> It's not a problem to everyone. For example, it's not a problem to many homeowners that the value of their homes keep going up and to the right

"Increasing price of cars during pandemic not an issue for people who already have cars."

Yes, people are upset that the government pushes policies that hurt people, and that make no sense generationally (intentionally targeting rising property values is just a generational ponzi scheme).

If your stance is apathy or even pleasure upon seeing the suffering caused by bad policy, it's no wonder you're being downvoted.

> If your stance is apathy or even pleasure upon seeing the suffering caused by bad policy, it's no wonder you're being downvoted.

There was absolutely nothing in the comment to imply he derived "pleasure from seeing suffering." You are making that leap in bad faith.

I think the build-or-not argument might be more productive if the "YIMBY" side would acknowledge that a massive increases in housing density (and therefore population density) does have an effect on existing residents.

> But quietly, I'm ok with it. They can move if they want to. I love it here and having fewer people on the fringes of society as neighbors isn't really the worst outcome to me.

Maybe pleasure was the wrong word, but they certainly seem to enjoy the terrible situation. It's not very far off, and saying that you're okay with and even love the current setup that helps you at the expense of others isn't a great look.

> would acknowledge that a massive increases in housing density (and therefore population density) does have an effect on existing residents.

Obviously it does, just like increasing the supply of anything has an impact relative to the option of constrained supply.

Realistically, the real solution is radical upzoning at the state or even federal level. Upzoning individual neighborhoods and cities exacerbates the negative side effects of upzoning by concentrating them in small areas. If the population increase is broadly spread out, it'll be much less of an issue.

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