Hacker News Reader

Actually why do suburbs need saving?

I have always dreamed of being able to build a suburb community, with the poor building materials and rush production methods used, in the middle of nowhere and never let anyone move in. Just leave it and see how long it would take for it to return to nature. I might actually get the chance to see this happen now.

Because we've bulldozed wetlands and prairies and invested hundreds of millions of dollars in non-renewable building materials to put them there? "Save" might not be the best word here, though.

Just basic economics.

The Law of Sunk Cost: if you abandon a project, then all the money you sank into it to begin with is lost! Therefore, never abandon a project, always throw good money after bad.

I'm sorry, I wasn't writing well. I'm saying, the point of the article is that not all of those costs are sunk costs; some of it is reclaimable.

ah but the thing is you have no guarantee that the money you throw in after the bad/wasted money will actually become good... that is the risk you carry and to avoid that economists recommend not to chase after sunk costs (which are viewed emotionally rather than pragmatically)..

Maybe fast, efficient, long-distance, mass transit will save it?

Though I think we shouldn't have them in the first place.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com