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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.

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.

Wouldn't all the workers moving to higher-productivity cities lower the salaries of workers living in those cities? The glut of workers vying for jobs would probably bring the price down more than several thousand dollars for every worker.

And that wouldn't matter because on aggregate products will be cheaper (And ultimately everyone is richer on balance). I think @Ecgtheow said it a lot better than I could in another comment in this post.

Now you may say, my backyard is special and I value it over economic efficiency because I discount the value of future/geographically distant people who may want to move there. But if everyone applies this logic to their backyard we make it impossible to increase housing density anywhere, we underproduce an important commodity, and we get a housing affordability crisis. That's great for you because it increases the value of an asset you own, but it's bad for society as a whole because it reduces economic dynamism which libertarian economists are keen to remind us has diffuse benefits

For example, the value produced by biotech firms gets siphoned off by Madison area homeowners who used control of local government to enact regulations that restrict housing supply, raising prices, so that biotech firms have to offer higher wages to induce skilled workers to move there. This slows the creation of an agglomeration effect in biotech and reduces the margins of biotech firms, slowing the rate of innovation which would be beneficial to society as a whole.

This is why unions are better. People teaming up to offer lump some deals drive up the overall price when individual workers would sell cheaper. Same thing housing. If a group hangs up to ban the entire construction of new housing it can drive up home prices. But our system is based on having defectors drive down the price in nearly every business and transactions going to marginal value. Many individuals homeowners would gladly sell off their yard for cash and allowing building in it etc.

They are defecting if you consider getting something and holding onto it and not allowing more of it to be made cooperating. There is another mode of doing things, which is doing things better and doing/building more things.

From a bird's eye view, you want the price of things to go down over time, you want more competition, more things, more goods, more services, and more houses. If your mode of operating is to not grow the pie but instead defend your share then sure, large swathes of humanity operates under those principles.

That’s my point individuals will defect. Sort of a prisoners dilemma where if everyone cooperates to restrict supply of land they can cause the valué to skyrocket in a booming jobs market. But individually a lot of people who paid $500k for their house now worth $1.5 would gladly sell off their backyard for cash.

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard, and I was an econ major.

It does matter. There are winners and losers. The people two states over who get to save two cents at a time are better off, and the people put out of work are tens of thousands of dollars worse off, but there are enough pennies to balance the tens of thousands of dollars, so it's all a wash!

The world doesn't work that way, and while it can be modeled in such a fashion, you should not confuse that model with reality.

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard, and I was an econ major.

This hyperbole doesn't add anything to your argument--it just undermines your credibility and makes you guilty of unnecessary antagonism. Don't do this.

Arguably that is exactly the economic decisions that have been taken over the last few decades. Outsourcing manufacturing makes everything cheaper for all consumers but hollowed out steel works and manufacturing in the rust belt.

Now you can certainly argue as to whether that was a good thing ( I would lean towards yes but some of the value should have been redistributed to the losers) But it is basically the essence of the neo-liberal economics of the past 50 years or so. So it is definitely reflective of reality as it stands.

I don't care about what you majored in.

Arguing for maximally free markets is hardly a novel economic stance to hold. And yes I do think 10 people imposing anti-free-market policies to shift 2 pennies from 1000 people so that they could be 2 dollars richer is morally wrong. This is the standard free-market maximalist stance. Also, half the pennies get lost in thin air (DWL) the moment they make their deal with the devil (market restrictions) so they are 1 dollar richer each. I want there to be the most dollars in the world, not some people having a lot of them at the cost of others having less, sue me.

That's definitely a position.

There's a problem with basically lying about how "rising tide rises all boats" instead of admitting that you have this position and honestly telling the people who are getting fucked that they are getting fucked at least, not to mention actual redistributive efforts in their favor.

There was a Scott's post that I was never able to find, maybe of the Links kind, where he was seriously surprised that the majority of economists in some poll admitted that removing import tariffs hurts local workers. Because when you don't ask them directly they are very good at making it seem that the fact that their models only look at the GDP and such is OK because everything else is unimportant.

There was a Scott's post that I was never able to find, maybe of the Links kind, where he was seriously surprised that the majority of economists in some poll admitted that removing import tariffs hurts local workers.

Was it this one? It's about immigration, not tariffs, but otherwise seems to match pretty closely.

It appears I might just be totally miscalibrated on this topic. I checked the IGM Economic Experts Panel. Although most of the expert economists surveyed believed immigration was a net good for America, they did say (50% agree to only 9% disagree) that “unless they were compensated by others, many low-skilled American workers would be substantially worse off if a larger number of low-skilled foreign workers were legally allowed to enter the US each year”. I’m having trouble seeing the difference between this statement (which economists seem very convinced is true) and “you should worry about immigrants stealing your job” (which everyone seems very convinced is false). It might be something like – immigration generally makes “the economy better”, but there’s no guarantee that these gains are evently distributed, and so it can be bad for low-skilled workers in particular? I don’t know, this would still represent a pretty big update, but given that I was told all top economists think one thing, and now I have a survey of all top economists saying the other, I guess big updates are unavoidable. Interested in hearing from someone who knows more about this.

OMG THANK YOU! It's been bothering me literally for years!

How did you find it?

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