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Comment by spacemadness | Hacker News Reader

I guess the question is, how can an upcoming generation fight against the locked-in self-enriching greed of asset owning generations in a non-destructive way? Visible suffering of homeless in the streets has done nothing to change the minds of homeowners in the Bay Area. What if anything will? I personally have little hope in my own generation (Gen X) doing anything different from boomers since the incentives are the same.

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Get involved with your local YIMBY group and, most importantly, vote for pro-housing politicians. One of the problems with housing policy is that it is decided at the local level, and the only people who turn out are the highly motivated zealots. In SF we could make a huge amount of progress if only we could vote out everyone on the board of supervisors apart from Joel Engardo.

Just remember that someday you'll be 65, with property, and someone who's been out of high school for five years will be furious at you for it.

That's hardly an argument against allowing people to build on their own property.

It wasn't intended as one.

I think the only thing that made it possible for my wife and I was very good timing. We bought a house that was bank-owned just after the housing market collapsed 15 years or so ago. If that major reset hadn't happened, I can't imagine we'd have been able to buy anything bigger than a backyard shack.

Yes, the gerontocracy is too entrenched to do anything but continue.

Why does it need to be non-destructive?

Well, I guess people can start burning peoples houses down, but I am going to go out on a limb and say that’s probably not an ideal solution.

I’m assuming there’s a productive middle ground between “do nothing destructive” and “burn people’s houses down”.

I’m not disagreeing. I think you’re putting more work on “non-destructive” than was intended. I mean it in the literal sense of property destruction and the like. I’m not lumping in protest as destructive or legislation that forces a lower gains on housing. I mean destruction born out of pure political frustration of the revolutionary type.

Fires are pretty, at a distance.

Well, the trivial solution is to organize. But not in the mostly low-impact "vote" way, but in the vote with your feet way. Move to a municipality that has the right idea, that builds high-density housing. Or get enough people together and move to somewhere and then vote.

Libertarians tried it. Of course that's just a very nice exercise in rediscovering democracy from first principles.

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