Or to make a clichéd example: being cool and arty isn't particularly rewarded by salaries because there are a limited number of opportunities for this to improve a company's profitability. But it can be rewarded by subsidised rents because people prefer to live in cities with a population of cool and arty people for the non-monetary benefits they bring to that society.
Well, some people do. But everyone is paying for it, even if they'd rather save.
If those jobs are paid for by voluntary customers, then that's fine. If they're subsidised through taxes of people who don't want them, that's the issue I'm mentioning.
>If they're subsidised through taxes of people who don't want them
Yes.
how do people show up to work at Google, Apple etc?
through everything from "not dying from preventably disease in adolescence" to "being educated in public schools" to "being carried to work on roads and transit paid for by the public"
As in if I am a private plumber who does jobs for people, my job is subsidised by taxes?
That's not considering your customers, who are likely also subsidized by the government in some fashion - if their jobs do not involve federal or state government contracts or supplying or servicing companies holding such contracts, they're almost certainly taking advantage of advantageous tax rebates or deductions.
Well, not necessarily. People stay for jobs, family and friends. They will just pay for something they're not bothered about if it's not so expensive they're forced to move. That doesn't mean them staying is anything to do with the thing some people want.
I'm passionately opposed to private automobiles and the fact that my tax money goes to subsidizing them (including stupid road upkeep etc)
unfortunately I don't get to choose not to pay for that (but I can choose to live in a place like Paris where the Mayor is taking active steps to support not only private automobiles but give equal importance to other modes of transport)
I don't have a problem with roads, I have a problem with roads being gridlocked and destroyed by single occupancy private automobiles and the resulting unnecessary deaths and road upkeep.
You need to be able to speak without classifying people into groups. I'm not an ardent motorist. I don't think it's good to allow myself to be indoctrinated into any of the (frankly bizarre) transportation-obsessed groups that exist.
Unfortunately, current styles of "democracy" not only do not do this, they instead engage in deceptive propaganda to make it appear like they do this and more (how you can tell: observe how people praise "democracy", based on clearly silly memes). I often wonder if the quality of these institutions in an absolute sense (as opposed to a relative comparison to literal fascist dictatorships, the only other option dontchaknow) may have something to do with some people thinking they should be eliminated and replaced, a sentiment which is always and without exception represented as being dumb/etc.
Note also that these institutions also control school curriculum, which "denies" the public the skills needed to realize any of this is going on, how utterly riddled with error and deceit/delusion the public conversation is, etc.
this would be a disaster
take how Hidalgo is deprioritizing private automobiles on the streets of Paris
most of the public was passionately and intensely opposed to that, but she did it anyway
now, people can't imagine ever going back to how it was before - families being able to walk and ride bikes along the Seine and Rue de Rivoli is too nice
= asking for peoples opinion on stuff in lots of cases is just going to result in locking in status quo because people don't really know what they want, but they're usually pro status quo and opposed to change
It depends how you do it. For example, if you ask their opinion and then carry out that opinion without thinking about it, it would probably not yield optimum results, because humans almost always hallucinate (our culture teaches them this behavior). But with patient guidance I believe it is possible for people to improve over time.
As it is, we are at the mercy of bureaucrats with questionable ethics and goals, who also also always hallucinate (again, because of culture), so this is not a fantastic position to insist on maintaining either.
It has been well demonstrated that under very specific conditions, humans can achieve a state of high coherence. We've only managed this in a few select domains so far, because of hard work and counter-cultural attention to detail, and mainly: because a few individuals thought it seemed like a good idea, and made it happen against the odds. I personally think we can make it happen again, but not if no one tries.
> now, people can't imagine
Not quite. In fact, people cannot stop imagining, the problem is that they do not have control over it, or realize they are doing it. But we are in luck: we have children and teenagers, who have yet to fall victim to the hypnosis/Maya that has spread throughout the adult world. They could teach adults how to do it in a controlled manner, as we could in the past, or ideally even better (children and teenagers have never had enough say in decisions if you ask me, they are waaaaaaaay better than adults at specific forms and domains of thinking).
> asking for peoples opinion on stuff in lots of cases is just going to...
Do you still believe this?
if people are given the choice of anything, the answer most of the time will be "no"
Prime example: do you remember that big pandemic a few years ago? Do you remember how passionate most people were that everyone should go get their vaccinations, to protect each other? I sincerely think that these people genuinely believed that the feelings they were experiencing were sincere, and human belief even if non-genuine is an incredibly powerful force, maybe even the most powerful of all forces.
It’s not in human nature to give charity that would elevate others to the same or, God forbid, higher status as compared to the benefactor.
Wherever a young person, newcomer, or upstart has a reasonable chance of attaining what the incumbents enjoy, you’re probably going to find them taking it through market competition, not having it allocated to them by a vote of the incumbents.
a) we had a political system that was capable of enacting the will of the people
b) we had an education system that improved people so they were capable of making more optimal decisions
Alternatively, we could [1] consider waking up for even a short period of time and put some mental effort into considering whether our most sacred operating system may not actually be what it is advertised (and thus: believed) to be.
Is it not rather funny that thousands of incredibly smart programmers, systems analysts, etc are not able to even consider whether the system that controls our lives and well being, not to mention the literal continued existence of many thousands of innocent people throughout the world could maybe be substantially improved?
Day after day we engage in the pointing of fingers, funny how the fingers never get pointed at ourselves.
[1] Well, I am speaking a bit loosely: the laws of physics in this environment support it, but that does not guarantee that it is completely supported.
Also, mixed income housing in Paris has a long history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Pa...
No; I'm not suggesting anything of the sort. In fact, that seems like a fairly strange statement given that I mentioned the Centre Pompidou (opened in the 1970s) in practically the same breath.
>Or that Paris's culture can be reduced to a set of buildings?
No; again, not sure where that's coming from.
My point, which you didn't address at all, was that you seemed to be implying that there was some kind of correlation between lower-income housing in cities and their cultural significance. Was that your goal? If so, can you explain further?
Zurich and Oslo, I don't see the connection, they both have workers of all kinds, old and young people. They're organic and alive cities.
The point in Monaco farthest from France is like a 10 minute drive away.
And I don't know about Zurich, but Monaco is clearly dying. Luckily they can build on the sea (and do so), but it suffered greatly from covid and Russia invasion of Ukraine, as without the Russian mob, a lot of 'amenities' aren't as available, which slow the 35yo+ fratboy life.
As the poor constituency builds greater numbers they attract politicians that promise them things by stealing from those with money. This in turn chases those people away and the city is left poorer and poorer and becomes worse and worse. Once nice areas become undesirable and decay sets in.
People's intentions about when and where to move are important. A housing system that removes all individual agency from this question, abdicating everything to a government lottery/waiting list system, can meet other desiderata but is clearly losing something important.
We should have a clear objective system of governance that allows even terrible people to oversee it
How much room for discretion is there actually in promoting diversity? I suppose you could forcibly break up poorer immigrant communities which would be pretty harmful.
Do you favor removing those laws?
In Paris' case, the financial situation is bad and getting worse with a debt on track to reach EUR10 billion.
So it seems to me that Paris is borrowing like there is no tomorrow. This usually does not end well.
Obviously, this is not what they are doing, debts growing with quite high tax rises at the same time ("taxe fonciere" [property tax] doubled last year).
Paris is often depiected as a great model, especially by liberal foreign media, but the reality is rather different, and I believe that the Mayor's approval rating is currently abyssmal...
>"taxe fonciere" [property tax] doubled last year
My French is rusty, but it was a 50% increase, it was previously the lowest of all cities in France, and it was not raised since 2011[0]. It is also peanuts compared to property taxes in Canada where I live, and especially compared to many parts of the US. Not an apples-to-apples comparison because property taxes pay for different things in different countries (i.e. in Canada provincial taxes pay for schools, in the US it comes out of your municipal property taxes). But still, we're not talking about one of the main taxes for an average French citizen, clearly.
[0] https://actu.fr/ile-de-france/paris_75056/taxe-fonciere-a-pa...
And I won't even get into how ghastly areas around the Eiffel Tower (for instance) have become with crime, beggars, etc everywhere.
As I mentioned, rose-tinted glasses can be very strong, especially in people who have no insight but are looking for ideological reinforcement because, frankly, articles about how great Paris is in the NYT only serve that purpose, the readers will not know a thing about the actual situation.
Big number scary, but looking at it on a per citizen basis is it really that big, or unreasonable a number? Assuming that this debt has been spent rationally on say infrastructure, social housing policies, QoL upgrades for xyz?
Yes, good fiscal policy to keep debt stable or reduce in the long term is necessary, but it sure doesn't seem as doom and gloom as people make it out to be.
You should see how much debt some countries are in... It's an order of magnitude more in the extreme cases.
If Romans where able to relatively evenly spread their towns and population all over the place in the analogue age, then why aren't we able to do so in the digital age?
Correct. Therefore, subsidized housing is good and more of it is better? No, it does not follow.
What you say is correct, to a degree. Beyond that, it is incorrect. There are no solutions, only trade-offs.