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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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I have been watching a lot about housing lately. The lack of affordability and so on. I won't bother you with details, since they are known to everyone. Almost every capital city in the developed world (and big parts of developing) is struggling with unaffordable rent, insane house price rises etc.

The process is usually something like this. Rural people move to cities, city people move to capital cities and capital cities people move to global cities. And global cities people try to live as close as possible to the city center. All the eastern europeans that I know that moved to UK didn't move to bumfuck nowhere in the Midlands. They moved to London. Ditto for a lot of other immigrants into the UK. So there is real demand to live in London. The process of concentration of people in the big metro areas doesn't seem to slow down or reverse (white flight is the only counter example).

So there is the minor problem that I have with YIMBY people - why do you think that building more will actually solve the problem with unaffordable housing? We have been adding lanes to highways since time immemorial (aka the 50s) and the congestion is still here.

But what I have been thinking is - are freedom of movement and affordable housing compatible at all? The communist regimes had something like city citizenship - you were allowed to move to the capital only with marriage/secured job in the city. Not saying it was good, but it kept the capitals a bit emptier. In the 30 years since the Berlin wall fell in my eastern european country the only people that didn't try to move to the capital are the ones that moved to London, Paris and the big German cities to make their housing situation worse.

Now people are sometimes just priced out and they move. And if the city becomes terrible people will also move. But so far it seems that if the city is safe enough, people are willing to tolerate insane economic hardships to live there. We can't cram 8 billion people in 20-30 megapolises. Could this be solved with policies alone? Should we even solve it? Is it ok to infringe on the right to move to actually strike a balance.

And the way this ultimately has to end, the only sustainable way, is for jobs to move to the second tier cities with the ability to grow massively. Waco instead of Dallas. Of course it’s also the only way no one even thinks of doing.

regardless of what people actually want.

The question is always which people's wants should be listened to? Should the people who live in a neighborhood's desire to keep their neighborhood the way it is be privileged over the desires of others who want to live there too? Should the neighbors be able to coordinate against "defectors" who want to cash in on the desires of those others by selling their property to a developer?

Why should people who live in a neighborhood have more say over the legal structure than people who live elsewhere?

Basically this argument boils down to “people who own property should have more rights than people who don’t.” I find that unpersuasive.

Having "skin in the game" of the existing area is generally-regarded as relevant. As are what the law generally calls "reliance interests." People in the past made decisions based on conditions at the time, and generally shouldn't have the rug pulled out from under them without some notice or a chance to recoup their investments.