This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Is there some sort of gross statistic that bears out this impact on the whole economy, other than your disposable income one? In terms of GDP and GDP growth, Japan looks like bottom of the first world country. The "conventional wisdom" is that Western countries are mostly the same economically.
The question is, why do the strengths and problems seem to balance out so much? If you have multiple independent factors, then the total variance sets an upper limit on the effect size of individual factors. So whenever someone says that a factor like housing or regulation or something else that some countries already get right, has a huge potential for economic growth, I look at the small variance between first-world countries, and conclude that either the factor doesnt have that much of an effect, or theres some sort of interaction effect that eats away most of the first-order-effect.
So, I found your claim that Japan actually is doing much better in the whole economy very interesting.
Most of it is within a factor of 2, which corresponds to about 30 years of economic development - and the bigger ones grow slower.
My beef is with the claim that this is keeping the whole economy down.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Disposable income after tax and rent is much more useful in predicting actual living standards than GDP per capita is.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
For someone who owns property, as most NIMBYs do, the prospect of cheap housing is a bad one. It's not about keeping homeless people out of sight, it's about keeping rents flowing in and property prices climbing.
More options
Context Copy link
I have no idea why Japan has almost no homelessness, but how sure are you that it's because housing is cheap? While many temporarily homeless are really homeless because rent is too high and incredibly cheap living arrangements aren't available, the mentally ill or drug-addicted homeless might not hold an apartment at $100/mo, or might get kicked out of one. And even though the 'temporarily homeless due to cost of living' outnumber the addicts when you count by 'have you ever been homeless' on a population basis, the latter are less likely to climb out of homelessness, and are much more of the homeless population at any point in time. Compare it to Japan's low crime rate. (Although low rent is good even w/o affecting homelessness ofc)
Housing and mental illness and drug addiction are all very complex, and I'm not super confident in this hypothesis. But I think there's a good case to be made that making housing cheaper will reduce homelessness significantly. There are a lot of people who are borderline unable to care for themselves, where in good circumstances they do well enough, but in bad circumstances they'll totally collapse. You can take a person, and if they have a roof over their head and their own toilet, they'll be able to hold down a job at McDonald's, or doing landscaping, or some other straight forward job. But take away that roof over their head, their life becomes harder enough that they're unable to hold down any job, and they spiral. They turn to drugs to get any semblance of happiness, or maybe because all the other homeless people who become their de facto social circle use drugs. And expensive housing turns them from transitory homeless to a blight on society.
I think Scott's post here makes a good case about cheaper housing being very good good even if it's not the main point of the post: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-san-fransicko
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
In general I am skeptical of any comparisons to foreign countries like Japan or any in western Europe. This is because, for example, Japan has a culture of falling in line, keeping your head down, and being normal that is far more strict than culture in America. So the worst of the worst people in Japan are only doing things like, I don't really know, let's just say maybe talking too loud on the phone once in a while. This is far more tolerable than the worst of the worst in America, which OP describes as:
Not only that, but for Japan especially, they are more hostile to foreigners than America is, so they have far less of an immigration workload to deal with. That means if you're Japanese and you live in Japan and you were raised Japanese from the start, your neighbors are more likely to be just like you and as Japanese as you are, and dealing with the same culture. Having neighbors similar to you is what OP wants:
Of course, it's not all roses. Japanese culture has plenty of downsides (high rate of innocent convictions, peer pressure, work suicides, etc.). But I simply don't understand why any time someone brings up how Japan or the Netherlands has better housing/urban design/transit/etc. they will always, without fail, never mention the important difference between those countries and America: culture. (And other important things too, like law enforcement policies.)
Let me clarify my point. I'm generally skeptical of arguments of the form "they did [thing] in [Japan/Europe], why can't we do it here?" that do not take into account culture. Because my answer to that question is culture. If you live in Japan and affordable housing gets built next door, the worst thing your new neighbors might do is talk on the phone too loudly. If you live in America and affordable housing gets built next door, the worst thing that could happen is, well, let me just quote OP again:
So then people oppose these projects when they otherwise wouldn't if they had lived in Japan.
You state that "Prices are lower because supply is higher." This I do not have a disagreement with. But you seem to miss the point of why, exactly, supply is higher.
I think your mistake is characterizing it as "wasteful" for people to pay to price out undesirable people from their neighborhoods. People pay that premium for a reason: they think it's worth spending a lot of extra money to not have to live around those people.
In other words, the nimbies you're responding to are essentially saying "we'd rather give up a lot of money than live around those people" and your response is essentially "but that's a lot of money that could be used otherwise". Which... well, yes, of course, but people derive value from that money.
Your musical chairs point - that someone has to live near these people - is trivially true. But a basic principle of living in a free market liberal society is that people get to selfishly make themselves better off if they're able to afford it. Perhaps we'd be better off if people donated more of their wealth to alleviate the burdens of the less fortunate, but human nature is what it is. Why single out housing as the one domain where people shouldn't be able to use their wealth to obtain things they want at the expense of others?
Ok but how much money exactly does it take to price out undesirables and who/what else are you pricing out at the point the price actually gets to? If you have multiple children have you decided which one will get the house and which one(s) will be priced out of the neighborhood they grew up in?
More options
Context Copy link
This sounds like a good idea. Let's apply it to the rest of society first, and then apply it here last. Reasonable?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link