Social norms: The downside
wyclif.substack.com
wyclif.substack.com
No, its not. Fundamentally, this contrast is nonsense because “ideals” and “self-interest” amount to the same thing, personal preferences, depending on whether you focus upon the experienced utility fron fulfilling them (“self-interest”) or the fact yhat the elements of personal utility functions can be decomposed into rules (“ideals”).
But even in the superficial view where this contrast in general seems to make sense, YIMBYs are quite often people who have a perceived narrow financial self-interest in reduced housing prices, while NIMBYs (in a policy sense, the name imputes a particular motive and relation to the policy area that can be inaccurate) are often people who idealize the protection of existing character even in places they don’t currently live.
That's when they go beyond being NIMBYs and become BANANAs ("Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything"). A.k.a. CAVE dwellers ("Citizens Against Virtually Everything").
In my experience the Yimbys are the ones who are aware of the economics and the Nimbys are the ones driven by the value of nostalgia. (PS: Nimby are almost always older in California) The other unspoken value of nimbys is racism-- that's a value, not a calculation of self interest.
Property prices always go up as density increases. Density does change the nature of these neighborhood but in every case the nature has been changing for decades and the neighborhoods are nothing like they were fifty years ago-- objectively change is inevitable.
This is a shocking claim, and I consider myself a strong YIMBY type. I worry that you are ascribing the worst possible reason to an observation of others that hold opinions or behave different from yourself.
“It’s hard to tell when you’re being discriminated against.” —IASIP
The civil rights era is in living memory, people who were children for white flight are retirees and homeowners now. They're not all or even largely racist or strictly motivated by racism, but some of them are, somewhat. No one identifies as a racist and if asked could probably find marginally acceptable euphemisms for who they do and don't want in their neighborhoods and why. But come on.
As I understand it, most B&Bs are not campaigning for more housebuilding because it benefits them personally, but because they believe it is right. That is compatible with them having a good understanding of the economics. Note that understanding trade-offs and relative costs is not the same as being affected by trade-offs and relative costs.
Are you suggesting NIMBYs aren't quite often people with a narrow financial self-interest in maintaining above-inflation rises in (mostly local) housing prices?
Because in my experience, NIMBYs are much more motivated by financial self-interest than YIMBYs.
Obviously a right-wing perspective: left-wingers are foolish idealists.
A left-wing perspective is that the left is driven by the self-interests of labor while the right is driven by the self-interests of capital.
Or the opposite - when the Left seeks social justice it is to satisfy the self-interests of the relatively poor, and the Right often justify relative inequality by appeals to social norms around ethnicity, tradition and (supposed) class virtues.
This works only if you assume that left is composed of only or primary "relatively poor". Otherwise the concern is not self-interest.
A functioning society is in everyone's interest. Only the really rich can afford to trivially live somewhere else and profit enough from austerity to net out to positive even while wrecking else's backyard which is why its so strange to see those in the middle jumping on that train.
The idea that those on left dont also have their own norms (which they police ruthlessly) is ridiculous.
In our society we have an idea of an "ideal" human being, and the norms are designed to serve those people. Are you a tall, white, straight, neurotypical, handsome, wealthy, sports loving, business-minded person? Great! You'll fit right in.
Anyone else? Well you're kind of a failure and you should try as hard as you can to act like the ideal person.
I can assure you that I've spent a lot of time thinking about these things and I have, at various points, pissed off people on the left and the right during my process of learning.
Using one of your examples, the norm would have been slavery and the moral value would have been equality.
This is actually a great example of what I’m talking about. Norms usually enforce the status quo, but values drive us to break norms and change the status quo.
However, they both play a role in preserving the status quo. A certain set of norms and values will lead to a certain type of society. If you want a different society you have to change the norms and values.
It also suits the interests of the rich if everybody is constantly arguing about issues that cost them nothing (gender norms etc) but at the same time ensures the spotlight is always on something other than them.
Most importantly, I responded to claim that this is not affecting people and "costs them nothing". It is actually affecting real world people.
The concept of left and right began in the french revolution when people were arguing inside a government building and they grouped up on the left and right sides of the room.
The people on the right wanted to maintain the existing socioeconomic hierarchy whereas the people on the left wanted to get rid of the hierarchy in favor of more equality.
So left means against hierarchy and right means pro-hierarchy. This is confusing because historically people like Vladimir Lenin were actually considered right wing because, even though he was a communist, his policies were very much pro-hierarchy.