njepa

The problem is very few of them are better enough to be an advantage. Almost all of them have similar problem just at lesser scales, which means they can't handle much of a change. The things with place like SFBA and NYC is that as bad as they are you know what you get.

Only if it changes. I think the point is that if people are buying under current zoning, the market has already spoken. As such it becomes weird when people want the market to handle things, but not if they don't like what the market is saying.

Only if you sell. Otherwise, if you are truly successful with up zoning for affordable housing, not only will the market rate of houses fall but land to build on won't be scarce anymore either.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to on the one hand supply large amounts of affordable housing and on the other to not negatively affect those benefiting from the lack of it.

But ultimately it isn't me you have to convince, but those who would risk their property values. If you do that, then you have a solution to the situation.

It seems extremely unlikely that affordable housing will ever happen in the Bay Area, since that would essentially mean a crash of the housing market (maybe even by government intervention). This would of course be extremely unwelcome. As such any acceptable solution would have to be ineffective. And an ineffective solution have little chances of counteracting the inertia of current developments.

> A person is within their rights to try and change the company from within before leaving. But, that will likely come with personal costs (right or wrong).

It is generally the opposite. You usually don't have any right to influence, or even sometimes speak about, the company. The right you do have is to suspend your work and go on strike. Companies are free to negotiate collective agreements that prevent worker to go on strike and instead have them complain to their representatives.

Google have opted for another model where there is no agreement. As such it is up to Google to win the trust of their employees.

> If those costs get to be too high, the correct action might be to leave. At a company, the impact of leaving could be much higher than the impact of moving to a different country on politics...

Impact isn't the same as change. If all people who like ice cream leave Google it doesn't make Google (or necessarily any place) better for people who like ice cream. Which is what they would want.

The whole point of taking action is that you think you are right and therefor shouldn't be the one to have to change, or at least not end up worse for it.

I have lived in smaller as well. But the point is that somewhere around 25 square meters you start taking away functional space. There is a big difference between a 120 cm wide bed and a 70 cm wide bed, or a 90 cm cook top and a 45 cm cook top, or 140 cm wide desk and a 70 cm wide desk. But the same isn't necessarily true as you go up. It is nice to have a bigger kitchen, but the utility diminishes. Or at least per unit of space. While just having a hot plate is likely to decrease ones likelihood of e.g. eating healthy.

In my experience scientific and enterprise organization don't use Linux for any given feature, but because it is available. In many ways they use Linux despite it being Linux. So whatever is the least obscure would be ideal.

Seems unlikely that they would, or even would think they would be able to, go on strike as that requires resources beyond what most tech workers have access to.

Their success is reliant on housing staying unaffordable. That is the only way to make "microhousing" profitable. They don't create anything unique. If anything this will make sure housing remains unaffordable and no one will create much of anything. What do you think "entrenches NIMBY attitudes" is if not financial interests?

I would assume they meant Alibaba Group which is Taobao, Tmall, Alibaba.com, AliExpress, Alipay, Aliyun. Ele.me, Youku etc.

Taobao is pretty amazing. But slightly hard to explain. It is like Amazon, eBay, Shopify, Wish and more in one.

> I'd be interested to hear opinions from anyone who prefers the studio apartment with windows at the narrow end (and why).

I am not sure about "prefers", but both glare and heat can be a problem. To a large extent it is trying to "polish a turd". In small spaces a little extra space, a single wall or other improvements make a huge difference.

I lived in shared accommodations, barracks, dorm rooms, serviced apartments and whatnot. The equation mostly doesn't change. You need like five square meters for every "feature".

The sensible limit is around 25 square meters / 250 square feet. Any smaller and you start losing function exponentially.

The amount of organizations, businesses and cultural things started from couches, kitchen tables or hobby rooms are plenty. Certainly not something to be underestimated as a benefit to society.

It is less "real-world markets" and just markets. Markets are one dollar one vote.

I see what you are saying, but I largely disagree with the premise.

We have had, and continue to have, enormous growth through technical and organizational achievements.

Growth is relative, but life mostly remain constant. The requirements to house, cloth and transport people remain largely the same.

The idea that we can't have retirement becomes absurd viewed over a lifetime of spending on housing, insurance and other fees. The average city dweller today gives away hundreds of thousands if not millions in rents, interest rates and other inflated costs.

> And I still can't wrap my mind around this - if company Y or X is so desperately seeking for employees and pays them bazillions of dollars - why they even consider burning so much time on the process of hiring?

It's a leverage thing. Companies in high cost of living locations can just wait for someone else and they will. That doesn't work in a low cost of living locations, since their isn't much urgency from the perspective of the applicant.

Unfortunately that doesn’t change the equation much. The lasting impression of China in comparison with the west isn’t so much their development as the lack of our. Shenzhen might be the exception, but we don’t even have that.

> We can't produce them at that price.

$100 per month isn't realistic, $500 might be. While construction costs do rise, you are mostly paying for the exclusivity.

"High-rise apartment buildings cost an average $302 per square foot."

https://therealdeal.com/2018/05/15/surprise-nyc-remains-most...

If we conclude that people should have affordable and predictable rent it is hard to make rent control the problem. While not adjusting rent for inflation and upkeep seems counterproductive, someone occupying an apartment at a low margin is only really a problem if we can't produce more apartments, or more opportunities, at the same price. The housing market cannot increase forever. You either end up with massive inflation or massive inequality.

The few good ideas seem to essentially be to treat housing as infrastructure. Of course building infrastructure is a problem in itself for many countries.

You still want to even out the swings. Supply won't necessarily keep up in any given time or area.

You aren't necessarily going to be able to supply enough housing in the most popular spot were construction is hard and land expensive. Instead you want create equivalent areas fast enough. But without rent control all the affluent people quickly ends up in the same space, which is hard to make an equivalent of with affordable housing.

Yes, for airlines since they are space limited. But the additional space on a train would presumably be cheaper, so the relative costs of luxuries would be more.

The point is just that you want "office class" on a train to be its own product. If I take a high speed train I am still probably just going to go and do some more work from a hotel, office or home.

So just make the slower train nice enough instead and save on the expensive track upgrades. Just don't try to sell me, or include, a 3€ water or a 25€ meal because then the extra time becomes a liability and you ruin the concept.

Seems to be pretty much disinformation though. There is a section about Sweden at the end, but it is ignoring everything that has happened in the last 20 years. Of course rent control 'doesn't work' when you are converting government owned apartments to co-ops at below market rate, subsidizing co-ops and issuing 100 year mortgages. Rent control has to be combined with active building policies if you want more housing, in which case it actually keeps down the value of land. That is the big problem in most cities today, builders simply can't get land at a price to build affordable housing.

You want the comfort. The seats, privacy and trouble free ‘logistics’. You don’t need the luxuries. The three course meal, the champagne and maybe not even the personal service. Business class on airplanes are to some extent eat, sleep and drink class.

Hauling drinks aren’t as expensive so no need to up-sell the service, just give me a snack station.

Agreed. I don't think trains are really good at speed yet relative to costs. They are however good at comfort if given the chance. There is less of a space and weight premium. Noise and vibration can be much lower. And a medium speed train they can still go twice as fast as car.

I wish someone would take the idea of a business or first class flight, without the luxuries and inflated cost, and put that on a modern medium speed train. Something similar to this seat layout: https://liveandletsfly.boardingarea.com/2018/02/08/swiss-777...

The underlying resource is space. If you are in an open field that you own with no neighbors and no zoning then the first unit of space is you pitching a tent. The second unit is another tent slightly to the left. If you are in a city were land is expensive, a prior building might have to be razed, a new advanced one planned for years and you might block someone else's view, the unit of space is very expensive. So now you have razed the building, built a new larger one and added to the supply of housing, what happens to the next unit? Everything else being equal it gets even harder to produce.

You can shift supply by e.g. changing zoning. Now you have more resources. But it doesn't change the equation, so eventually you might end up in an even worse situation were it is even harder do the same thing again. The even bigger problem however is that you don't necessarily get choose what should happen. Or maybe something is already shifting demand, like demographics.

I am not making a moral argument. When you build more housing you use the underlying resource, which is "space". That resource becomes more scares, so everything else being equal the next unit of housing is more expensive. That is why individual area in most cities never becomes more affordable by themselves. The way to get affordable housing isn't to supply more housing as such, but to supply it from a cheaper more available resources.

It isn't just supply though, but essentially inequality. Chinese cities have completely different demographics than western cities. If you want to live somewhere popular in China rents, and real estate values, are rapidly increasing.

Housing isn't like manufactured goods where the marginal cost decrease the more you make. Since the more you build in one area the less available space there is. If you want to decrease cost you have to supply more space.

Still that is only the supply side. As long as there are people, or even an increase of people, that are willing to pay it never becomes affordable even if there are comparable.

The whole idea behind the western world at the moment is to have as little in common as possible. No government, no taxes and especially no regulation is the dream. So why would the average citizen care?

While I would think it would be annoying, I think the multiparter (like one sentence per message) works pretty well for work stuff. The people I work with type pretty fast however. Maybe someone should bring back ytalk ;)

Tech workers face the same issues as most white collar workers. It's common to be unfairly treated in regards to promotions, workload, overtime etc. But the biggest issue is probably equity. It would probably be worth unionizing just over that.

I think this is true in many places. The real payday is when they don't want you to leave.