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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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The honest rhetoric is “you don’t want a bunch of poors (largely black) underclass to move into your neighborhood making it crime ridden, destroying the schools, and crushing property values.”

That is different from “my home value decreased a little because there is more inventory because there is more building.”

The first thing is a catastrophe as it kills your investment and lifestyle. The second is a minor nuisance that on balance may be positive to you.

I don't want my neighborhood torn down to make 5-over-ones packed full of 300 square foot apartments for NEETs even if they don't cause crime and make property values go up.

If that’s a priority for you there are tons of places in the country where demand is low enough to allow that. It’s totally crazy for us as a society to empower someone to prevent his neighbor from doing what he wants to do with his own land in the most productive, in demand location on the planet.

If that’s a priority for you there are tons of places in the country where demand is low enough to allow that.

I'm already living in my home. Let the NEETs have their pods elsewhere.

Presumably in the process of self-segregation where the pod people and the McMansion people move into separate communities and redevelop them somebody is going to have to get pushed out of their home. Once this uncomfortable business is behind us we can all go on with our lives in peace.

Well, no. Because what the pod people want is basically Kowloon Walled City surrounded by farmland. An urban growth boundary, inside of which there is only high density development, outside of which no one may build at all. So if the pod people have their way the McMansion people will be pushed until they hit the boundary and then they'll be forced into pods.

An urban growth boundary, inside of which there is only high density development, outside of which no one may build at all.

I don't claim to want this at all. An urban growth boundary would be a terrible thing. Letting people build on farmland they own is no different to letting people build on urban land they own. You wouldn't get the Kowloon Walled city, you'd get a smooth gradient of housing densities slowly decreasing from urban centres to rural locations.

A lot of the UK's current housing problems stem from the fact that people can't build on farmland they own.

An urban growth boundary would be a terrible thing. Letting people build on farmland they own is no different to letting people build on urban land they own.

Without this, how would you stop white people from moving out to the suburbs again?

Why would you want to stop this? White people should be just as free to decide where they want to live as anyone else.

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