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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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Confession - I am a NIMBY (Part 1/2)

There, I said it. In the circles that I reside in, calling someone a “nimby” comes with a clearly negative connotation, such a strong negative connotation that it stands alone as an argument in favor of any given development or policy change. To make sure that I’m thinking clearly and not just embracing the term because I’m a contrarian (although I am admittedly a contrarian), I turned to Wikipedia to make sure I had a sound working definition:

NIMBY (or nimby),[1] an acronym for the phrase "not in my back yard",[2][3] is a characterization of opposition by residents to proposed developments in their local area, as well as support for strict land use regulations. It carries the connotation that such residents are only opposing the development because it is close to them and that they would tolerate or support it if it were built farther away. The residents are often called nimbys, and their viewpoint is called nimbyism. The opposite movement is known as YIMBY for "yes in my back yard".[4]

Well, now that I’ve got a clear definition, yes, that’s exactly me. I support good things in my neighborhood and I’m against bad things in my neighborhood. I even embrace the implied hypocrisy of saying that I don’t care if other people want to have bad things in their neighborhoods, it’s really up to them whether they accept or refuse those things. In the event that such a thing is truly necessary for both neighborhoods to succeed and that one of us must accept the bad thing, I embrace Coaseian negotiated handling of the externalities.

Let’s move on to some concrete examples of my nimbyism. The first one that pops to mind are the frequent local proposals for homeless shelters, family shelters, and similar structures and aid organizations. One of my best friends used to live in a condo that was seated next door to one of these, which gave them a rather first-hand and literal application of what it means to say, “yes in my backyard” to this sort of project, and it was about as unpleasant as you’d expect. The frequency of parking lot fights, ambulances in the middle of the night, and police presence were, again, about you might expect. Without regard to whether such organizations are actually helpful or not, should I want to accept such a similar proposed structure in my backyard? The answer that I give is a fervent no, that inviting the indigent to my neighborhood will make it a worse place to live in just about every conceivable way. I want indigent populations removed from my neighborhood as soon as practicable and legal for the police to do so, for the incredibly obvious reason that this makes my neighborhood a better place to live. Some people feel quite differently from me on this - perfect! Since I don’t want drug addicts and crazy people in the park across the street and others say they don’t mind, we have a Pareto optimal solution. If they actually do feel that there is a cost, we’ll have to come to some sort of Coaseian handling of externalities, but I’ll at least have extracted the concession that it actually does suck to have hobos in your park.

Moving on to one that’s a little less plain to see and that is even more galling to those that think the nimbies must be stopped, let’s talk a bit about housing density. Madison currently faces a housing crunch, caused by economic opportunity and geographic constraints. The city has an unusual abundance of high-skill job prospects as the state’s capitol, home to a large and prestigious university, and large software and biotechnology sectors that have spun off of that university. Geographically, the heart of the city is the largest American city situated on an isthmus, just about one mile wide, running between a picturesque pair of lakes. The city has an ordinance protecting the prominence of the state capitol building, keeping the overall aesthetic of the skyline as it has been. It is also famously tedious to deal with when it comes to historical preservation; if you’d like to enjoy some ridiculousness, check out this recent argument about a bar that Al Capone apparently went to. As a result of these factors, that slice of land is a surprisingly expensive place to live for the Midwest.

Despite the prices, I elected to settle here anyway and I really do love this city. I love the beauty of the city, the historic skyline, the lakes, the biking, the fitness culture, the breweries, the cheese, the parks, the huge farmer’s market, and much more. I even love that it’s the kind of place that a fake Indian nonbinary lunatic would set up shop for fun and profit.Others in my city share that love, but think it should be a cheaper place to live, that we should increase housing density, and this is basically a human right. One recent opinion piece on this has a decent enough piece on a rather villainous and peculiar bit of law here:

An ordinance the Madison Common Council adopted in 1966 defines a “family” as “an individual, or two (2) or more persons related by blood, marriage, domestic partnership, or legal adoption, living together as a single housekeeping unit, in a dwelling unit, including foster children,” though city ordinance does carve out some exceptions for roomers, children, group homes of people with disabilities, and so on. The implication for renters is that, depending on the zoning of an area, it might be technically illegal for more than two unrelated people to live in an apartment together. Restrictions are also tougher for renters than for people who own homes. In our scenario, if one of us had been able to buy a home, it would have been legal for us to live together, but as renters, it would be illegal in most residential districts to share a home.

The neighborhoods with the greatest opposition to this change are already some of the most expensive in the city. Homes currently for sale in Dudgeon Monroe, Vilas, Greenbush, and Wingra Park range between $625,000 and $1.3 million for a 4 bedroom home. They’re not your typical target neighborhoods for student housing. UW-Madison undergrads are a smart bunch, but likely very few of them have the time, money, and energy to hollow out your neighborhood of expensive homes. Most of them are perfectly decent neighbors, too, by the way.

The fact that the current ordinance doesn’t relate to use, but is more about who, is an indicator that it is designed to be discriminatory. While more explicit restrictions against poor people, young people, unmarried people, or students living in certain homes would certainly violate fair housing laws, these thinly-veiled discriminatory ordinances seem to fly under the legal radar. Still, one could argue it does violate city protections based on marital status, income, as well as student status. It actually could be cause for a lawsuit. Some municipalities’ family definitions have been struck down by courts in various locations around the US, and the Attorney General of Wisconsin in 1974 wrote an opinion that these ordinances “are of questionable constitutionality” under the Fourteenth Amendment. It’s discriminatory enough that housing is so gosh-darned expensive—do we really need unjust zoning ordinances on top of the price tag?

Here’s where I bite the bullet and go full nimby - yes! I am in favor of exactly that in my neighborhood. I want to live next to married couples with decent careers. My experiences with poor people and the transiently coupled have shown me that they’re lower quality neighbors. Even aside from trustworthiness, transience, investment in the property, and quality of friends and relatives, we simply don’t share the same cultural norms and preferences. I would rather be around the petit bourgeois. Back to the distinction between being a nimby and having a broader policy recommendation though - I don’t care if someone else in some other neighborhood would like to get rid of this sort of restriction, it’s not like I have some moral prohibition on there being poor people with roommates, I would just rather that my neighbors be a nice married couple that is going to stick around a while. I’ll even cop to the even more villainous take that I rather like the high property values here in part because they serve as an effective barrier against living around the kind of people I don’t want to live around.

I think you are fighting a strawman of yimbyism. Of course everyone wants to live in pleasant neighborhoods with friendly stable people and not drug addict criminals! The nimbys don't have a monopoly of that desire.

Since you cited Coase. There's a very obvious path of reasoning that leads to one not being a "nimby", that is being for free markets. If you believe in the power of the market to allocate scarce resources among agents with infinite wants most effectively. Then dense housing will be built where dense housing is in demand because there is no stronger force in the universe than people wanting to make money. Using any form of political leverage to oppose such developments let that be through onerous zoning regulations or whatever is interfering with the free market, and as such creating economic deadweight losses.

A study by economists Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti estimated that the housing restrictions brought on by NIMBY activists are costing US workers $1 trillion in reduced wages, (several thousand dollars for every worker), by making it unaffordable to relocate to higher-productivity cities.

Your preferred mode of living would still be available in a world without rampant nimbyism of the likes present in America. It's not like there are no good neighborhoods with high-earning residents in Japan, or Korea or Finland or the UAE. But you won't have housing prices so ridiculously high that you start dun goofing the birth rates. If there is a demand for the type of living arrangement you so revere, it will exist even in a yimby world, you will have to pay for the privilege though (you already are in aggregate and directly). I've said it before and I will say it again, there is some serious bullshit afoot if random housing in your city costs more to rent than renting a much superior arrangement in the tallest building in the world in pure luxury.

If you believe in the power of the market to allocate scarce resources among agents with infinite wants most effectively.

I don't think this applies meaningfully to any of my three examples, where the externalities are born by current residents rather than the agents accruing the benefits (in the first case, there essentially isn't an economic benefit).

It's not like there are no good neighborhoods with high-earning residents in Japan, or Korea or Finland or the UAE. But you won't have housing prices so ridiculously high that you start dun goofing the birth rates.

You picked four of the absolute lowest fertility countries in the world to illustrate this point? I cannot express just how confident I am that the price of a square foot of housing in the United States is not an important driver of low fertility rates.

I cannot express just how confident I am that the price of a square foot of housing in the United States is not an important driver of low fertility rates

You are absolutely wrong. Population density and it's associated costs are maybe the biggest difference in variation between tfr of developed countries.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1693032/

This is why France, Russia, and the US have had relatively higher birth rates than other developed countries--they all still have quite a bit of low cost free space. On the other end of the spectrum, extremely densely populated over urbanized countries with high cost per square foot of property in east asia, such as Korea, China, and Japan, are on the opposite end of the spectrum.

You can easily see this within the US as well. Places like NYC have abnormally low birth rates, especially among native populations.

This is why France, Russia, and the US have had relatively higher birth rates than other developed countries--they all still have quite a bit of low cost free space.

Russia and France have the same sub-replacement TFR as the Maldives and Qatar, two countries famous for having no free space at all. Next to the latter two are equally cramped Djibouti and the Seychelles, both with above-average TFR.

It makes sense that Djibouti would have a high fertility.

...what do you mean, specifically?

I just checked, and Djibouti's TFR is 2.522, according to this. This is actually interesting when one compares it to Somalia (note: Djibouti's population is majority Somali and overwhelmingly Muslim) with a TFR of 5.661, ie. over the double the rate in Djibouti. Just the effect of Djibouti's (obviously) greater urbanization?

I was making a childish pun about the pronunciation of the name Djibouti.

Russia and France modernized post WW2. Qatar is currently modernizing and therefore is only just now dropping below replacement. It's where France was in the 50+ years ago in the cycle. Obviously modernization is the main trend here that dominates all other, but Qatar doesn't seem to be an outlier at all. UAE is already sub 1.5. Saudi Arabia seems to be behind on the curve, but its still quickly trending below 2.1. It may be the case that in 20 years Qatar's TFR will still be 1.80, but it doesn't seem that way.

France modernized post WW2.

Wait.... Really? By what measurements? I always imagined they were as modern as the US or England prior to WWII and I'm surprised to hear that they weren't.

Basically all industrialized countries went through the modernization that led to declining birth rates post WW2, but France definitely lagged behind Germany and the UK economically before the 2nd world war.

This is why France, Russia, and the US have had relatively higher birth rates than other developed countries--they all still have quite a bit of low cost free space. On the other end of the spectrum, extremely densely populated over urbanized countries with high cost per square foot of property in east asia, such as Korea, China, and Japan, are on the opposite end of the spectrum.

I think this can be explained by demographics, like immigration and high Muslim population in France. Religiosity seems to be correlated with birth rates. Look at the Mormons for example.

Religiosity doesn't seem to have much correlation in general. There are exceptions (mormons, like you said, but even they are trending down fast) and the most religious countries in the world, the Arab peninsula states, have low birth rates that are trending down fast.

If that paper is correct that high density = low birth rates then NIMBY is a good thing. It reduces the number of people that can afford to move into crowded megacities where birth rates plummet.

This is a complete tangent. But I want some more opinions on this matter. I understand the general two themes of

  1. lower birth rate = Less young people to take care of old people

  2. less young people = less productive working people

I these negative consequences of a lower birthrate; however, resources in any country (or planet) are necessarily finite. So even if there is space now for there to be a higher birthrate in most of these countries, at some point there won't be. At some point it will be NECESSARY to have a lower birth rate (Alternatively a higher death rate, but i don't like that alternative) to account for the resource constraints. And the first issue issue is also a transitory one in many respects as long as the birth rate is at or above replacement, the number of people in the space will eventually stabalise to a consistent level and there will once again be enough young people to support the old. And both could potentially become obsolete someday with the increase in mechanical automation of labor.

TL;DR Can someone give me an argument against the fact that at some point we will eventually need a lower birth rate in at least some parts of the world at a given time.

Earth is nowhere near its carrying capacity, and the human population is more realistically limited by the resources of the solar system on any time scale where the Earth's carrying capacity is an issue. If Human population was about to trend to 40 billion, then Malthusian carrying capacity might become an issue. 9 billion? Not even close.

The biggest issue right now is that modern welfare systems are basically ponzi schemes. The eventual solution will be obvious--drastically cut spending, but that's difficult to achieve in democracies where the people paying are outnumbered by the people being paid.

This just seems like a kind of pointless worry as we don't actually have a high enough birthrate to replace ourselves. It's not at some point we're going to need to dip below positive so that we don't run out of space, it's we crossed that point decades ago and are so far on the other side that things are going to get weird. Unless you're talking on a global context, at which point housing policy in specific countries is not really an important factor.

If we accept that NIMBY policies lead to lower density, then sure. I don't think that's the case. Very few places have an incentive to build up and not out, but regulations increases costs for both.

Or conversely, low costs per area will allow bigger houses to be cheaper.

YIMBYs don't want bigger houses; they want more houses in the same space.

YIMBYs want the government not to force people into building one kind of house. It is a position of permissiveness, not forcibly changed direction.