You're essentially saying Seattle is too expensive for chefs to live in, which means it's too expensive for nice restaurants, which means it's too expensive to function.
Now extend your own logic to teachers, service workers, etc.
Now extend your own logic to teachers, service workers, etc.
Well it functions up until people such as this head chef say "screw these housing prices" and relocate somewhere else and open their restaurant and have a better life and then whoever is living in Seattle gets crappy or extremely expensive restaurants to account for the high housing prices.
Think about it like this. What do you think of when you think about Indianapolis, or Kansas City, or Charlotte, etc.? Do those cities seem very desirable to you? Places you want to go and uproot your life to move to?
Probably not. Flat. Boring. Dog shit weather. Car-only infrastructure. (I know I live in a similar city for family/friends reasons)
You can’t solve this problem with less home equity - that’s a contradiction. The great things you enjoy are tied 1-1 inseparably from your home equity. The only way for your home equity to not be as valuable in ten years as it otherwise would be is to get rid of the very things that you enjoy!
I also have to note that "dog shit weather" is literally one of the things that define the Seattle experience. I don't actually mind personally, but a lot of people do.
That’s not the only reason and you know it. And even if it were the only reason for you it’s not the only reason broadly speaking. But the desirable political climate adds to the desirability of Seattle.
> I also have to note that "dog shit weather" is literally one of the things that define the Seattle experience. I don't actually mind personally, but a lot of people do.
Seattle has fewer homes with air conditioning than even San Francisco [1] at 33% (as of 2018). Kansas City is at 99%. It’s very moderate throughout the year. You don’t get crazy temperature variance. Seattle isn’t San Diego but it’s not Buffalo, Kansas City, or Mobile either.
[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/seattle-is-le...
There's literally no force compelling it to invest in a failing area, or one perceived to be failing.
If it was a true free market, housing wouldn't be an issue because developers wouldn't be forbidden from building density. Capitol hill is a disaster for city living as most of it are single family homes, whereas they should be 5 story condo buildings.
Capitalism is detrimental to free markets because it has inherent positive feedback loops that concentrate capital. Concentration of capital inhibits competition, and a market without competition is by definition not free, regardless of the amount of government regulation in it.
That sounds an awful lot like socialism
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/sheldon-richman-libe...
I do think you need some mechanism of enforcement though, history has shown that violent people will easily come along to dominate in the way that they see fit
History did indeed show that violent people will try to take over - it is how we have the system of governance that we do today, after all. But individual violent people are not really dangerous to the community as a whole; it's only when they organize in sufficient numbers and possess sufficient resources that it is a threat. I believe that the best way to secure society against such threats is a broadly decentralized organization, such that any attempt to organize to concentrate power is clearly visible in its early stages and can be nipped in the bud by those immediately adjacent to it, without escalating it to higher levels of governance. The latter should be mostly about coordination of efforts and plans, not coercion.
The actual amount of policing power and the exact level of governance on which it should be the strongest is something that, I think, would need to be figured out by experiment. Maybe Murray Bookchin is right and it is, indeed, municipalities. I would hope that it can be more fine-grained than that. But I'd be immensely happy with any working proof of concept, so long as it does not preclude further tweaks and experimentation. If Rojava lasts, it might provide some more useful data.
The problem kind of solves itself.