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Comment by nathan_compton | Hacker News Reader

This article is good, but the phrase "antitrust left" really turned me off. I am probably some kind of a leftist (I want higher taxes on rich people and a society much more welfare oriented with a substantial degree of labor and resource allocation performed democratically instead of by markets) but I don't know a single leftist who actually cares about this housing shit except to think that houses should be cheaper by any means necessary. Like the idea that there is an active contingent of leftists trying to construct some kind of defense of the current housing system or critique of reforms (in general) aimed at making it easier to build houses strikes me as truly bizarre.

There may be some environmentalists who have housing as a pet peeve or something, and there are lots of yuppies who want to defend their housing prices who might be liberal but I don't associate this position with leftism in any way.

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I live in a very wealthy, extraordinarily progressive muni (almost certainly in the top 5 nationally), and my primary political project is zoning reform, and I assure you that left-NIMBYism is a thing, and that the "we should make blue state governments perform better and increase supply of things people want" thesis of "Abundance" (Thompson and Klein's book) is a bête noire among those leftists.

The argument isn't that the left broadly construed opposes housing legalization! Just that there's a prominent faction of them that do. Right-NIMBYs are a much bigger problem across the US.

Thompson recently recorded a podcast episode with Zephyr Teachout, taking the "we shouldn't do anything before we address antitrust" side of the argument; you can listen to it if you think "the antitrust left" isn't a real thing. Understand: the issue isn't antitrust; it's a totalizing worldview based purely on antitrust. Antitrust is probably super important! But where I live, zoning reform is much more important.

Keep in mind: Klein and Thompson's political project is a plan to organize the Democrats. They're not talking to the Republicans. Not in the sense they're talking to Democrats, at least. I don't think they could make that much clearer than they have.

I guess this is a bit definitional, but I do not think of "very wealthy, extraordinarily progressive" people as typically leftist. I think of them as liberal and only in the American brain is that associated with leftism, so much so that we usually distinguish between "leftists" and "liberals" rhetorically. With, say, Hillary Clinton, being a classic American liberal and Bernie Sanders being more like a leftist. If you visit the DSA contingent I doubt you'd find anyone per se against zoning revisions to build more housing. Eg, Mamdani had literally building more housing as a part of his platform.

Leftists tend to feel very little solidarity with wealthy progressives and don't really vibe with their political interests, in general. It seems really weird that the specific label of "leftist" is being thrown around in this context. Especially in the context of organizing the Democrats where there is a meaningful and material difference between liberal and leftist.

Again, if you try to collapse this down to "leftists" vs "Derek Thompson", you're totally missing the point. Thompson's rhetorical adversary here are "people who believe we shouldn't do the zoning and envelope reforms required to increase the supply of housing", a subset of whom are on the political left and thus in his target audience: his term for them --- fairly applied! --- is "the antitrust left", but you could (like I do) call them "left-NIMBYs" and be in the same rhetorical place.

Most leftists gag over current anti-housing laws (I wish that were true of the right, but right-YIMBYs make up a tiny minority of the political right).

Right-YIMBYs are a tiny minority, but have you seen one in person? Truly a majestic, noble creature. You know they will fiercely stand their own ground but at the same time also go to extreme lengths to avoid putting their noses where they don’t belong.

Long thought extinct, sightings have been reported.

Here in extremely liberal Portland, there are a huge number of people who genuinely believe that 'greedy developers' are the cause of the nationwide housing shortage, having talked themselves into the nonsense belief that building fewer homes makes people more money.

Supply destruction to put a floor on prices is not an unknown phenomenon.

The effort to make it seem silly to think that there aren't enough houses because the industry whose job it is to build houses did not build enough houses is itself a little silly. Circumstantial as the evidence may be, it's logical to assume that they didn't because it was more profitable not to.

> Circumstantial as the evidence may be, it's logical to assume that they didn't because it was more profitable not to.

This willfully ignores evidence that community after community has actively passed laws to stop that industry from building more.

Chesterton's Fence: why do those laws exist? Because people thought they were necessary to stop housing construction (especially, but hardly exclusively, densification).

It's not a partisan thing - red states are full of NIMBYs and littered with HOAs too - but the largest cities in red states have happened to not be hit quite as hard yet because they are generally newer cities, with plenty of room to sprawl horizontally still, starting from a lower baseline.

I mean, in my local case, the Chesterton's Fence answer is pretty clearly and directly racism.

> Supply destruction to put a floor on prices is not an unknown phenomenon.

The business model of construction companies is to buy a piece of property, develop it and then sell it for something more than the cost of buying it plus the cost of developing it. Constraining supply increases the cost of property which they then have to pay in order to acquire properties to develop. It isn't really in their interest to increase their own costs.

The most significant way it could be is if they were buying lower density units and replacing them with higher density units, so they'd be selling more units than they're buying and therefore benefit from the price per unit increasing. But in order to benefit from that they'd need to be increasing rather than decreasing the supply, which is contrary to the premise of them doing the opposite.

> The effort to make it seem silly to think that there aren't enough houses because the industry whose job it is to build houses did not build enough houses is itself a little silly. Circumstantial as the evidence may be, it's logical to assume that they didn't because it was more profitable not to.

Suppose that it would be profitable to buy a single family home and replace it 10 condo units, except that there is a law prohibiting you from doing that. Then it would be more profitable not to build those units, since doing so is illegal. But who is to blame for this?

> The business model of construction companies is to buy a piece of property, develop it and then sell it for something more than the cost of buying it plus the cost of developing it. Constraining supply increases the cost of property which they then have to pay in order to acquire properties to develop. It isn't really in their interest to increase their own costs.

Let's say for a moment that this is close but not quite actually the business model.

Let's say that the construction companies have spent a long time buying up vacant lots, faster than they are developing them, such that they now have a large inventory of land and would not have costs go up to continue operating if they did what you say.

What would you expect would happen in that case?

At that point you've ceased to describe construction companies and are now describing real estate speculators while calling them construction companies.

Moreover, notice how little sense that business model makes. To do that you would be sinking capital into vacant lots that you're neither developing nor receiving rents from while paying both property taxes and opportunity costs. You're paying interest on the loan or could have been getting ~10%/year by putting your money into the stock market. A real construction company would be trying to minimize the period they're holding an unproductive property.

And even if you wanted to be a real estate speculator, how does that make you more money than investing in rental properties and then actually renting them out so you receive rental income on top of any price appreciation?

Meanwhile, what, if not for zoning rules and other regulations, is preventing anyone else from undoing your attempt to constrain supply by opening up a new construction company which is actually a construction company?

You must be drawing from experience in a specific locality in the US, probably a rural one, because what I described is how land sales in the largest cities in the US has worked for half a century.

Doing what I described in New York City is exactly how Donald Trump made an initial fortune back in the 80s. It's happening right now in Seattle.

The business model not making sense, is due to the incorrect assumptions you make. For one, that land or buildings in cities appreciate less quickly than the stock market.

> At that point you've ceased to describe construction companies and are now describing real estate speculators while calling them construction companies.

I'm not sure what you think the difference is in practice. There may exist some construction companies that don't engage in real estate speculation, they just aren't the big or most profitable ones. Which addresses:

> Meanwhile, what, if not for zoning rules and other regulations, is preventing anyone else from undoing your attempt to constrain supply by opening up a new construction company which is actually a construction company?

The fact that the most valuable land is owned by other construction companies who have more money because of the real estate speculation.

> Doing what I described in New York City is exactly how Donald Trump made an initial fortune back in the 80s.

The total value of NYC real estate is approximately $2.8T. Trump has a net worth of something like $5B. Even if all of that was invested only in NYC real estate (which it isn't), it would be less than 0.2% of the NYC real estate market, which is hardly enough to have market power.

> The business model not making sense, is due to the incorrect assumptions you make. For one, that land or buildings in cities appreciate less quickly than the stock market.

That doesn't appear to be accurate. Metro housing prices have increased by more than wages but not by more than e.g. the S&P 500.

> I'm not sure what you think the difference is in practice. There may exist some construction companies that don't engage in real estate speculation, they just aren't the big or most profitable ones.

You're just pointing out that real estate speculation has been more profitable than construction, which is exactly the problem -- we make construction too expensive, on purpose, which is what increases the profitability of speculation. That some companies do both is a poor excuse to blame the construction companies for what the speculators are doing.

> The fact that the most valuable land is owned by other construction companies who have more money because of the real estate speculation.

Nobody even owns most of the land in any major US city, much less all of it. The properties that could derive the largest increase in housing units would be to replace single family homes with multi-unit complexes and the majority of existing single-family homes are owner-occupied.

I have been doing YIMBY stuff for around 8 years now, and it does not map nicely onto any kind of left-right narrative.

There was one conservative dude who ran for city council here who was all about 'private property' and 'get rid of government regulations', who also ran against the idea of liberalizing zoning.

I've met left wing people who I agree with on many issues who will do the most spectacular, Olympic level mental gymnastics to avoid the notion that 'supply and demand' apply to housing.

There are moderate Democrats who are big backers of various reforms. And some on the far left who get that if you want Vienna style social housing, you also need Vienna style zoning and building regulations.

A former mayor here is a moderate Republican - he totally got what we were about and said some really nice things about welcoming new neighbors in one speech a few weeks after he met up with our YIMBY group.

It's just not an issue that - so far - has been slotted into the trench warfare that other issues have been.

But you literally described the moderates being YIMBY and the more radical being NIMBY, which is left-right, but instead of left vs. right on pole ends opposing, it's the leftists and rights agreeing on NIMBY against the moderate centrists. Horseshoe theory strikes again. There is a growing populist frustration where citizens like both people like Tucker Carlson and Bernie but hate the moderate establishment. Low educated are frustrated with outcomes (ironically being NIMBY on housing is a primary cause) and go extreme compared to the educated moderates.

I also included a far left example who got it. I should have kept going with the examples because there are also plenty of moderates who do not want to rock the boat. The governor of CT vetoed their big housing bill this year.

It really does not map onto left-right.

It's dogmatic among the left that "market based solutions are bad". And because Abundance embraces market solutions, it must therefore be bad too.

Basically, all the arguments I've seen against Abundance tend either towards the ideological, or irrelevant. I tend to see very little empirical arguments.

Tons of the critics of the book haven't even read it, because large portions of it are about making the government work better, not just using market-based solutions for all our problems.

Housing, though, could definitely use a better market with less constraints like zoning.

No, the problem is when the markets are freer than the people.

I don't disagree with that. I think economic power getting concentrated in a relatively small number of hands is unequivocally bad.

That said, the Abundance argument for building more housing is that in many local housing markets, the pendulum has swung too far the other way in ways that are well-meaning but ultimately counterproductive. This very article makes the case that oligopolistic economic power is not the reason for unaffordable housing.

The housing market is anything but a free market. In a free market, a bunch of NIMBYs like these would not have been able to stop homes from being built:

https://bendyimby.com/2024/04/16/the-hearing-and-the-housing...

That belief has reached prominent political leaders as well. I listened to a bit of the Ocasio-Cortez/Tim Walz Madden livestream on Twitch, and they were talking about how something needed to be done about the greedy developers who were driving the housing shortage.

,"having talked themselves into the nonsense belief that building fewer homes makes people more money."

Can you show me an example of someone pushing this?

keep reading along in the comments, I've come across an example already

So people in comments are pushing it? That's not meaningful. I can find a Republican who pushes pedophilia would you act against Republicans because of that?

Politics is local and there's nothing more local than your housing values

> Keep in mind: Klein and Thompson's political project is a plan to organize the Democrats.

This is the crux of the opposition. It's not that leftists necessarily have a problem with zoning reform, I don't at least, its fine. It's that the "abundance" project is a play for control of the party by the same losers who gave us Biden and Kamala.

People on the left feel that we need to be speaking to economic problems that regular people face. "Think of the millionaire land developers" is a losing message even if it does indirectly help regular people 10 years later. It's not even actionable at the federal level.

> People on the left feel that we need to be speaking to economic problems that regular people face.

Housing is that.

This just sounds like you want populist things and the outcome doesn't matter. Like price controls and tariffs.

Its about the message. Centering the message on something that has indirect, timelagged effects and isnt even actionable at the federal level is terrible messaging strategy for the national party.

"The dairy industry ran ads saying milk was good for you for 20 years and sales went down. Then they tried 'got milk' and sales went up" https://youtu.be/keCwRdbwNQY?si=kc14Ms7ECxglNgbl

"Build more" is direct and actionable. Regulatory reform is only one dimension.

Up north, Carney ran on a platform of building 500k homes annually, approx double the rate of housing starts. That's direct and done at the federal level, with billions in financing. It's impossible to be less timelagged than that by way of policy. So-called "affordable housing" qua government funding development (price controls after the fact notwithstanding) still entails hoop jumping and waiting for approvals, they don't spring up the next day.

The effects of zoning reform where they're implemented are reflected quickly as well. See: Minneapolis.

The general trend I see is that the left attacks the "Abundance agenda" without having read about it. Either that or the fact that it isn't just about market solutions is deliberately ignored.

> "Build more" is direct and actionable. Regulatory reform is only one dimension.

I could get behind "build more" much more easily than "abundance". You're onto something there IMO.

Fair, and I have to give credence that messaging effectively is extremely important. It's not enough to be "right", you have to sway and win. Will quibbble that the left is not exactly known for message-discipline, what's popular with them does not often translate well to most voters.

Many leftists have a problem with zoning deregulation.

Housing supply is the biggest economic problem that regular people face.

Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson did not bring us Joe Biden, Ezra became one of the most critical mainstream journalists of Biden. Their politics are meaningfully different.

> Many leftists have a problem with zoning deregulation.

I've been in leftist housing advocacy circles. I studied urban planning.

1) Every leftist I know who cares about housing hates euclidean zoning

2) Every leftist I know who cares about housing hates down-zoning

3) Every urban planning class I took said that euclidean zoning is bad

Euclidean zoning is the principle land use regulation in the United States because it is supported by powerful people, landowners and yes property developers (who are also almost always land speculators.)

Thompson and Klein misrepresent euclidean zoning as a leftist project and then set it up as a wicker man to stuff with all the environmental and labor protections they want to torch.

I live and am politically active in a front-line municipality for these issues (Oak Park, IL --- the actual redlining bastion of the western suburbs, a 4.5 square mile gravity well for Cook County school funding so egregious it was one of the first examples in Johnny Harris's NYT "Blue States, You're The Problem video) and I'm telling you, straight out, leftist defenses of existing zoning rules are a very real thing. In fact, where I live, they are the entire defense of those zoning rules: progressives have a supermajority of the board.

Leftists are not solely or distinctively responsible for exclusionary zoning and housing restriction in the US. Nationally, they're not even the biggest problem. But in many jurisdictions, places that should be the vanguards and test cases for housing reform, they are the controlling factor.

Which is why Derek Thompson addresses them so directly. What would be the point of aiming these criticisms at Republican-controlled municipalities? They don't share these values to begin with! They're not listening!

Right now, we have two parties actively propping up home values and the interests of the upper middle class. Klein and Thompson propose: what if on this issue we had two parties?

I guarantee you all your Oak Park neighbors are the type who were With Hillary in 2016 (probably calling Bernie a sexist) and voted for Biden and against progressive income tax in 2020. They are not leftists. You seem to be having some trouble understanding the difference between democrats, liberals, and leftists.

T&K are fundamentally dishonest about the role of euclidean zoning in american cities, who supports it and why it's so powerful. Their basic project is to strip environmental and labor protections by tying them to euclidean zoning and saying "it's all the same."

And by the way, they may get their way (Newsom is already forcing repeals of environmental protections in California while toasting Klein) but at the end of the day euclidean zoning will still be around, because it is supported by people who are way too powerful.

Another by the way: I remember fighting the big Chicago rezoning in 2004. They had us chasing our tails by trying to double the parking requirements and letting us fight to get them back down to where they were in the old code, feeling like we won a big victory.

You couldn't be more wrong; this is absolutely Bernie country. In the primaries, it made Washtenaw County MI look like Maricopa County. No, I think I understand just fine what I'm talking about.

Again: this is one of the 5 most progressive municipalities in the country.

Speaking of Washtenaw County, as a resident, it is also "the leftists" that are protecting existing zoning and are the major NIMBYs. It is the "evil corporate right wingers" that want to build all kinds of housing, but are prevented from doing so. There is literally two ballot measures for next week where the left wing NIMBYs want to protect a "park" (which is literally a parking lot) from being turned into a larger library and actual green space, because we also want to build more housing as well above the library.

"I guarantee you all your Oak Park neighbors are the type who were With Hillary in 2016"

Its both. That's the problem. In my neighborhood, the construction of any market rate housing will be blocked by Hillary voting land-owners and single family home owners and card-carrying Bernie Bros mad that a private developer even gets to set foot in the city.

It's this alliance that has basically blocked housing in most metro cities.

When it comes to 100% affordable housing, yes the Hillary voters are on their own, but those are like 1-2 headline causing projects. For every affordable housing project there are 10 market rate housing projects that never even see the light of day.

As an example when I was active in housing in Chicago one of the organizations that was with us on the left was a developer of affordable housing: https://www.bickerdike.org/

Several of the activist actually worked for this developer.

Real leftist housing rights supporters are not against developers. They are against for-profit, private equity, land banking speculators, and yeah nimby homeowners. In general we hated the Oak Park type nimby liberal more than we hated the right to be honest.

“leftist housing rights supporters are not against developers.”

They certainly are in my neighborhood.

https://www.ourneighborhoodvoices.com/48-hills-cost-of-growt...

The “private developer risk” the article derides is an enforceable approval timeline that lets private developers have bounded risk. Apparently that’s a bridge too far.

In a market system, Creating a system that is "against for profit" housing developers very predictively restricts housing supply & drives up the cost of living for everyone.

Sounds like you're just applying somewhat arbitrary purity rules to what falls into the "leftist" bucket or not.

I believe that for most people "leftists" means "on the left side of the political spectrum", and so, in the US, it would be a strict superset of democrats & Liberals. But for you, it sounds like it's only subset of these, based on some criteria you haven't made explicit.

Fair enough, but that's a somewhat non-standard definition.

It's standard among self-described leftists, to distinguish themselves from establishment liberals.

I'm not even very far left and I identify with the term because party leadership are all 80yo and out of touch.

"Liberal" is an epithet here too (I'm a liberal, for whatever that's worth).

For what it's worth back, a lot of the opposition towards "establishment libs" is based more on optics than policy IMO.

Voters feel ripped off by the establishment. Running on "we're the establishment and we're here to help" is a loser, and letting Trump be the rebel is malpractice.

I am a libertarian (anarcho-capitalist) but people do not know the differences and similarities to liberal, because both has the prefix "liber".

Both ideologies evolved from the same source of classical liberalism, and still share plenty in common today.

But liberals would definitely down-vote me if I talked about Rothbard and Mises. Why do you think that is?

Because they have a difference in opinion with you about the degree to which markets should be allowed to exclusively allocate resources?

I personally am in favor of free market. Are they? I do not shy away from being a minarchist either, to be honest.

No, that's not what “leftist" generally means, it means adherence to any of a broad grouping of anti-capitalist ideologies (the more widely recognizable being the various forms of socialism and communism). It overlaps a little bit with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in the US, but beyond that is mostly outside of the US major party system. The only people who use “leftist" to describe a superset of the Democratic Party also use “socialist” and “communist” in the same way.

I think you're injecting your personal views into the definition, which don't align with the common meaning of the word.

Here's the definition of the word taken from macOS's built-in dictionary (New Oxford American Dictionary):

> leftist, noun: a person who has left-wing political views or supports left-wing policies.

> left-wing, noun: the section of a political party or system that advocates for greater social and economic equality, and typically favors socially liberal ideas; the liberal or progressive group or section

Anti-capitalist thought represents a subset, but is certainly not the sole marker of left-wing political thought.

Now, my _personal_ take on this is that western left-wing thinking and liberalism (in the moral philosophical sense) are deeply intertwined (given the Enlightenment and its values), but anti-capitalist thought is deeply illiberal in nature. It is this fundamental contradiction that leads to permanent infighting within the left-wing spectrum.

> I think you're injecting your personal views into the definition,

I think I'm injecting what I know from getting a degree in political science and a two and half subsequent decades of experience paying attention to how political terminology is used by scholarly, journalistic, popular, and activist sources across the political spectrum into the definition.

> Here's the definition of the word taken from macOS's built-in dictionary

And that's a tolerably decent definition for a relatively compact general dictionary, but it misses a lot of nuance; outside of activist sources using it as a slur for their opponents, it is not used in nearly the local-politics-relevant way that left/right (especially qualified with a national label, like "American left") is.

I think that conflating "blue state" with leftist is incorrect. "Blue state" confidently implies "centrist" and "not too much on the right". It does include also leftists, but not just them.

The parties are asymmetric. "Red state" implies very much on the right and is much more radicalized then democrats. But democrats themselves are centrists and unlike the republicans, tend to push away more radical parts.

FWIW: Ezra Klein called for Biden to step down before most others and asked for a fast national convention (not Kamala). Broad brushstrokes are energy saving, but just incorrect.

> Klein and Thompson's political project is a plan to organize the Democrats.

“Abundance” appeals to the financial backers of the Democratic Party because deregulation doesn’t threaten them. But our problems are much graver that what YIMBYism can address: authoritarianism, climate change, austerity, warmongering toward China.

It’s because the wealthy block left-wing populism that so many people have turned to right-wing populism. Which is only making our problems worse.

At this rate, it’s only a matter of time before society cracks. There’s a good chance it doesn’t end well for the financial backers of “abundance.”

"Abundance" directly addresses climate change in the book. The scenario it describes is that we need to electrify at a pace far beyond what we're doing today in order to find off climate change, but large scale clean energy projects are often stymied by red tape and legal challenges. Also lack of government investment in scientific research.

> houses should be cheaper by any means necessary.

That's basically the position Klein has in the book Abundance, but everywhere I go online the left automatically comes out hostile to it or anything that embraces market solutions. Your anecdote might be true but beyond your small sample size it doesn't seem representative. Broadly, they want populist solutions. This is why Sanders and Warren gave a lukewarm criticism of tariffs, and why they like price controls for grocery stores despite their having small margins, and risk of food shortages it could bring.

Mamdani - rent control. Dean Preston - NIMBY. UK Greens Party - NIMBY. Australian Greens Party - NIMBY.

Explain?

In the last election, Australia's Green Party was the only party whose housing plan involves actually building homes.

The major parties went with throwing more money at the problem.

Talk vs action. The Australian Greens opposed Australia's build-to-rent legislation. They didn't oppose the entire legislation. They opposed the one part of the legislation that would have helped the problem.

Aside from the fact that the few policies they made explicit in their platform would actually be counter-productive to getting more supply (such as National-level rent freezes), they also don't have a good track record at the local level when it comes to housing.

I've been very involved in council-level politics where repeatedly the Greens members were aligning themselves with the right-wing members ("ratepayers rights"-type groups) when it came to delaying/blocking development permits, enforcing parking requirements, preventing/delaying rezoning, etc. They fundamentally don't understand the issue at all. All talk, no substance.

And that's before we get to the CFMEU matter, which I think was the final blow for them during the last election.

UK Greens aren't NIMBYs. They're against doing more of what's being done across UK cities already - which is building generic boxy blocks of cheap housing that look like they fell out of Minecraft, and selling them for unreasonable prices.

Many of the flats end up in the hands of landlords, who charge even more unreasonable rents.

There is no sense in which that's a workable long-term solution to the housing problem.

The Green pitch is "That's clearly not working, let's not do more of it." Which has nothing in common with "We don't want anyone to build anything anywhere."

Dehydrated man, after drinking one glass of water, rejects more water, reasoning that he's still thirsty.

Thats being a nimby in all but name. The UK does not build flats relative to its needs.

Uk greens are unfortunately nimbys. They even shut down solar farms and things you would think they would be in favour of.

> Mamdani - rent control

Mamdani wants to freeze rents of housing that is already under rent stabilization. He is also an advocate for reform and deregulation, and working backwards from outcomes. He has been talking to people from the construction industry and one of their main concerns is predictable time scales. He seems very pragmatic.

My guess is that the "leftist critique" isn't one of not wanting new houses built, but of not wanting extensive government subsidies and political energy to go to builders and other groups who will not solve the problem, a la our storied history with broadband subsidies.

This pitched debate may very well simply represent an attempt to forestall action by bogging efforts down in debate over what's effective or correct, of course. It's worked for any number of groups looking to forestall what seems like an obvious and inevitable solution: reducing lead exposure by banning its use in consumer products, reducing tobacco-related illness by making it difficult and more uncomfortable to partake, and, in our case, making housing affordable by letting prices fall.

It's a disturbing trend that extremely complex issues are framed as a 'symptom' of broad political leanings. At the very least, it's a distraction and disservice to their own good argument, when an otherwise-intelligent narrative constantly reverts back to the polarisation "it's mostly those Others, from the Other Side".

Just let arguments stand on their own merits. The minute an article includes the term "lefties" or "righties", it's gone wrong imo.

This is one of those extremely important points that we say every once in a while and then forget to emphasize. Opposing good ideas or supporting bad ideas because they somehow get tagged into weird ideological buckets along with completely unrelated issues is a big reason why our political system is so dysfunctional.

> resource allocation performed democratically instead of by markets

The economy is too complex to be planned in details and such attempts at control have failed again and again.

I think some people also miss that, crucially, the market is not an external force, it is just the aggregate of each individual's need, decision, and desires. SO in a way a working market is as free and democratic as can be.

I like to say the market is undefeated thoughout history.

You can add regulations or limitations that incentivize the market one way or another to achieve social goals, but these distortions add up. And when there are too many distortions in the market, it stops acting how you want it to act, and starts acting how it will. And usually, that means negative unintended consequences.

"there are lots of yuppies who want to defend their housing prices who might be liberal but I don't associate this position with leftism in any way"

People tend to call the Democrats the left, as they're at least somewhat leftward of the Republicans. It's at least easier for discussion purposes than speaking of the right and the other right.

Yeah, I get it. But we also use liberal and I think in this particular case its worth drawing the distinction between these two "camps" of the democratic party.

The meaning of liberal and conservative has shifted so much over time that the term is now useless. The original meaning of liberal was about not killing you neighbor if they were a different religion - from which we get freedom of religion. That slowly expanded to things like freedom for slaves and women voting.

This is Phil Ochs describing liberals in 1966

In every American community, you have varying shades of political opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals. An outspoken group on many subjects. Ten degrees to the left of center in good times, ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally.

They haven't changed.

1966 is still modern. The liberals I'm describing go back much farther. The decleration of independence is perhaps their most famiuos work though even then things were changing

You're describing classical liberalism. The meaning of the term liberalism in the US switched to social liberalism back in the great depression (unless specified with a qualifier). It has remained roughly constant for as long as most people on this site have been alive. Though I will grant that the policies social liberals support have changed since then.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism

Excellent comment. I agree that not many leftists support the current housing system. Probably only some existing home owners are excited about how it works today - they may want home prices to stay high. I'm lucky to be a home owner but I also see that the current system is incredibly destructive, having not enough homes and very high home purchase prices is really hard on people. We should not have to spend so much of our income pursing a home.

What is it like living a life completely ignorant of reality?

If you'd like to learn, feel free to ask chatgpt on the leftish pushback against abundance. Or historical examples of leftists blocking housing projects. Or environmentalists prioritizing niche interests over those of the general community. There are many, many examples.

If the problem is in our midst, we must acknowledge it.

Local boards in blue cities (California in particular) have blocked new housing for decades using every tool at their disposal. Places that lean left have anomalous rent growth. Places that lean left approve fewer new houses. Places that lean left have anomalously high building costs. This is a matter of written record. Embarrassingly, the only US city to buck this trend is Austin, a city in red-Texas known for a recent influx of radicalized right wingers.

> yuppies who want to defend their housing prices

Yuppies, but definition, are young professionals. They don't own houses, they rent. They are the ones paying the high rental costs as neighborhoods gentrify. They want more housing. The 35+ home owning population is the one that blocks new housing.

> I don't associate this position with leftism in any way

The leftist - YIMBY conflict shows up on 3 fronts.

First, Leftists have issues with the free-market. They reject market-housing solutions as a way to create new housing.

Second, Leftists like Govts and regulation. YIMBY wants less regulation, so they can maximize for space and price. Regulated Govt built housing is both more expensive and worse than what free markets already provide.

Third, and the most important, is a subtle accusation: "Leftists act just as selfish as everyone else, once they are the ones in power". Having come from an ex-socialist country, I have a deeply rooted belief in this accusation. Not that leftists are worse people, but that people are people, and systems should work around their imperfections rather than having expectations of ideological virtue.

The anti-trust left is a nice way to point a sub-section of the left which uses regulation, social outrage and critiques of free-market as a way to get personally beneficial outcomes, at the expense of the wider population. I understand - #NotAllLeftists. YIMBY & abundance advocates themselves have left-sympathies. But the anti-trust left is a non-trivial number and the conversation must start from acknowledging that they exist.

You can just look at the empirical evidence. Where are homes being built? Primarily Texas, Florida, Nevada, Arizona. Where are they not being built? New York, California, Illinois.

Do with that information what you please.

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