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Well, rampant NIMBYism results in enormous transfers of wealth based merely on who got into an area first (primarily a function of age), massively infringes on private property rights, tremendously stifles any sort of economic development or indeed change of any kind, results in huge negative-sum costs paying lawyers, grants lots of power to the kind of sociopathic busybodies who want to control everything around them, makes moving into economically dynamic cities infeasible for the kind of young workers that they need, cripples economic mobility, and generally enshrines into law the kind of development and transportation (sprawl and cars, respectively) with by far the largest externalities and costs (people dying in car crashes and car/bike or car/pedestrian collisions, pollution, noise, congestion, etc.)
Have you heard of a thing called "property rights"? The NIMBYs are the second guy, they just already took the donkey and the YIMBYs would like it back.
NIMBYs are already capturing massive positive externalities due to the increase in the value of their land because other people made their city desirable to live in. To then act like a victim because your house will be slightly shaded by a small apartment block is reminiscent of the story that defines the word chutzpah.
But since you're opposed to externalities, you must also be on board with efforts to ban cars from the city? After all, why should pedestrians and cyclists eat the cost of the noise, danger, and pollution caused entirely for the benefit of drivers?
That's not a transfer of wealth, that's just the existence of wealth. Your take here is just reversing causality; NIMBYs want the status quo, YIMBYs are the ones who want a transfer of wealth (to themselves).
Property rights are literally the basis of NIMBY arguments. And note how you acknowledge that point about the status quo versus change? You don't get to just assume that the change you want is a good thing, and you don't get to just handwave away the costs you dump onto others in the process. Maybe it is! Maybe the utilitarian calculation comes down on the YIMBY side! But don't act like this is altruism instead of competing interest groups fighting over their own benefits.
Do you know what property rights are? NIMBYs are the guy who bought the donkey 30 years ago, YIMBYs are the guy who is pissy that he has to carry his own shit, waging a disingenuous rhetoric campaign to steal the donkey.
See, this is the kind of absurd rhetoric that makes it clear you're not even trying to reason, just doing a tribalism. NIMBYs are the people who are already there, dude. They're the ones who made the area desirable and full of positive externalities. YIMBYs are the ones who want to eat that for their own benefit.
That is a cost. If I install a solar collector in geosynchronous orbit over your house, have I not done you a serious harm?
No, I think the anti-car stuff is mostly the whining of idiot children. Cars are incredibly useful, and I've appreciated the hell out of them in every life phase that wasn't literally on a college campus. But if they bother you that much, feel free to go build your own car-free city. I'll swing by in 30 years to wage a dehumanization campaign against you and ruin the place for my own profit.
NIMBY policies allow the people who happened to live in an area extract massive economic rent--pretty much unbounded rent, in fact, for doing absolutely nothing. Actually, it's worse than that. It's even worse than merely speculating on land you bought, because at least a pure land speculator doesn't actively screw over all of the economic development on surrounding land for their own benefit.
What conception of property rights means that your neighbors have arbitrary authority to determine what you can build on your land? That's the opposite of property rights.
What does the status quo matter here? Are you confusing it with property rights? Are we supposed to assume that the current state is just always good or something equally nonsensical?
I gave a bunch of reasons why YIMBYism is beneficial, and is beneficial to many people who are not involved in these political fights.
Yes, but apparently you don't, since you think owning property actually means everyone else can ban you from building a second house on it or whatever.
Interesting attempting at projection, but no, merely living in a place does not mean you contributed to making it desirable. Places like the Bay Area generate a tremendous amount of wealth because of the efforts of tech workers, founders, and funders, not random suburbanites who happened to move there in the 1960s. And even with pro-development policies, those people would still see substantial returns on merely owning a house, which is not actually normal. It just wouldn't be the case that they can capture huge amounts of it.
So are apartment buildings, they just don't kill 30,000 people a year (40,000 during covid). But thank you for making it clear that you are just in it for naked self-interest, with 0 regard for anyone else, which is why you are forced to resort to shitty projection to make everyone else seem as narcissistic as you and justify controlling what other people do with their own land.
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