Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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...

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.

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