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Comment by foobarian | Hacker News Reader

Nice analogy. So it seems the solution would be to create more Taylor Swifts then, by investing in music schools and programs, talent shows, scouting, etc., where the analogous thing would be to create more "nice places to live" with all the desirable attributes like walkability, jobs, public transport, etc. It's a tall order since land and climate are the ultimate scarce resources, but there are probably some underutilized spots that could support it. The rest would also be difficult due to property rights.

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> where the analogous thing would be to create more "nice places to live" with all the desirable attributes like walkability, jobs, public transport, etc. It's a tall order since land and climate are the ultimate scarce resources

We actually ban nice places to live with walkability in the vast majority of the country. Our urban planning in the US been entirely focused on keeping out mixed uses, keeping out dense housing, the things that enable public transport to function at all.

Land and climate are much easier to manage if we were to simple legalize density and mixed uses. We are reaping decades of bad planning for car-centric lives, without planning ahead for future generations and their ability to find a home.

MUD of commercial/residential are popping up all over in suburban Maryland. I'm all for it - it's both pretty high density for burbs (townhomes/rowhomes), and local to shops and parks. The only thing that is really missing is bike lanes and better train transit. Some of it is nearby transit, but we need more transit faster to track developments.

>...where the analogous thing would be to create more "nice places to live" with all the desirable attributes like walkability, jobs, public transport, etc. It's a tall order since land and climate are the ultimate scarce resources, but there are probably some underutilized spots that could support it.

Absolutely. And in fact there are lots of places that could support such things. In the US we call them "small towns" and "rural areas" and "the rust belt."

Areas where a lack of good jobs (as manufacturing left and farming became much less human intensive) drove folks to where decent jobs are (were?) more available.

Which drove up the costs of housing and, well, pretty much everything else, in those places.

However, with the technological changes we've seen over the past eighty years or so (Interstate highways, compute/semiconductor industries, ubiquitous networking, etc., etc., etc.), revitalizing those areas that have been left behind could boost both local economies as well as broader ones.

However, ALEC[0] and its corporate backers have sabotaged efforts to do so in pursuit of destroying competition and maximizing rent seeking. a lack of infrastructure maintenance is part and parcel of that -- as a lack of economic activity reduces the amount of tax revenue available for necessary infrastructure repairs and investments.

If companies could get symmetric, multi-gb internet, decent office space with decent road and rail connectivity to/from regional hubs in small towns and rural areas, more people would move in, prompting more housing development, more local businesses, more tax revenue, better infrastructure, etc., etc., etc.

This type of investment could have instant positive economic effects in poorer areas, and longer term (coupled with more housing), reduce the insane housing prices you see in NYC (median apartment rent in Manhattan is ~$4500[1]), SF, Boston, etc.

Unfortunately, statehouses appear to be fully captured by big corporations wanting to maintain their rents by stamping out any competition, the economies of those states be damned.

Sadly, the above can't happen unless the folks in those areas stop voting (in municipal/state elections) for the folks who are supporting policies designed to maintain the penury endured in those places.

There are so many good reasons to reinvigorate these areas, but we keep electing folks that won't bite the hand that holds their leash.

[0] https://alec.org/

[1] https://www.brickunderground.com/rent/nyc-manhattan-brooklyn...

Edit: Added the missing links.

You cannot do that. Taylor Swift is what she is not because she it better at music, dancing, or looking sexy, or sleeping with the record label executives (I don't know anything about her: the above list are the common things done to get positions like her, but not necessarily what she has done). What Taylor Swift is that is special is that nearly everybody knows about her (I'm a rare exception) - you can talk about her to strangers and have something in common because you know her music.

If you want great live music you can find that in a 1 in 10 bars around the country. (less if you want original music instead of covers). Likewise if you want to watch a dancer, though perhaps a different venue. If you want anyone sexy you can see sex better at a local strip joint. If you want to sleep with someone you can pick someone up in any bar (you probably couldn't sleep with Tayler Swift even if she was the type looking for a one night stand). However the shared experience of being a Tayler Swift fan is not something you can find if you stick to the local scenes. That national/international shared experience can only belong to a few people at any one time and no amount of schools, talent shows, scouting... can change that.

But there's tons of places where the cost of housing is going up. If everybody was uprooting from Philadelphia to go to NYC then only NYC's prices would go up.

It seems to me that we already have multiple Taylor Swifts so having even more shouldn't be a problem. For many people, the school system is the reason why they own the house they do.

In my experience, many of the schools self-report having pretty bad math/reading comprehension amongst their students. I'm not picking a house based on it being "the best" or the one "I hear about the most". I picked it based on it actually having good outcomes. If other districts had that too I would've considered theirs.

It may not be a perfect analogy but I disagree that it's completely invalid. Use some imagination to make it work, e.g. with institutional support instead of having just local acts now there is Taylor, and Beyonce, and a few dozen other famous musicians.

Not everyone can live in San Francisco, but there exist other equivalent "nice places" of which there are too few.

That is the point: There is only one San Francisco. If you insist on living there you will have to pay the price. If you can move across the bay you can get a different price - is this the entire bay you could move across from or is the north/south side better? Or maybe you can move to a suburb of Omaha there are some nice ones, but most of us couldn't even name one (most of us wouldn't even think of Omaha if asked to list world cities)

Likewise if you need a famous musician there isn't room for everyone to know 10,000 different musicians. However if you can accept any musician there are 10,000 great ones to choose from.

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