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It’s also interesting to me how many people propose increasing supply when there is nowhere to build, but can’t even think about reducing demand, say by reducing the all time record in migration. But that’s literally crimethink.
Sure the USA has a ton of empty space. But guess what, that’s because most people don’t want to live in those places. And the places where people do want to live like waterfront cities are geographically full.
[1] https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2021-09-17/wh...
Until it’s Kolowoon Walled City from Tijuana to Oregon it’s not enough!
> You must use the government to essentially take land and repurpose it.
Which government? In your first sentence we removed land planning from the local government.
* - enough to eat, anyway.
- "use the government to essentially take land and repurpose it"
These are third world tactics.
Abstractly hyper local optimization is suboptimal.
All governments get their power from the people who they serve. As soon as they do not serve the interests of the people the represent they should be dissolved. Local government gets its power from the local people and no one else.
Most obviously their form and powers vary based on the state.
Several hundred years of court cases make there limits clear. Local governments regularly get overridden on all kinds of things.
Local governments are also completely dependent on outside help for all kinds of things. It’s common for them to even lack local police forces let alone a court system. Outliers like major cities seem extremely powerful, but for the most part they have similar powers to HOA’s.
PS: As to getting authority from the governed… Some let people outside the area vote, and a few that give corporations a say.
I know it's out of fashion, but the Tenth Amendment appears to say otherwise.
The 10th makes it clear the constitution gives the federal government specific powers which means those specified powers aren’t available to the states or local governments.
The first draft is a little easier to understand: “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.” (Which is not) can be flipped to the front so -> “Those powers given to the United States are its alone, all other powers not specifically listed are retained by the States.”
Both versions makes it clear states are losing some power, but they are given a little spin to make it less obvious.
Basically a rehash of colonialism (or something that rhymes with it). We want a resource that the existing people on the land (NIMBYs, this time) have, so we'll take it using force.
It certainly rhymes with how we’ve done things in the past. And there's even a nifty phrase for it - the tyranny of the majority.
And I've gotta ask... why do we "need" these specific parcels of land? Especially in a time where so much work can be done from anywhere in the US. There's plenty of land, why are we so eager to use force to take these highly specific parcels?