domain:youtube.com
Tomato
52m ago
California’s housing problem and people’s political views on it is completely orthogonal to national party differences. It’s caused by local zoning restrictions which is basically older incumbent homeowners versus younger new entrant renters. Through demographics it’s probably accidentally related to national party affiliation but that’s likely weak and completely incidental. Whether the locals like Trump or not has nothing to do with whether they’re in favor of multi family apartment building construction. The state (Democrat) has implemented pro-building policies that short-circuit local power to restrict it but again you should think of this as largely orthogonal to D vs R. Viewing this as a Trump-related culture war issue totally misses the mark IMO. (I’m responding to your comment but this goes for everyone in this thread).
Supah_Schmendrick
1hr ago
Who do you think goes to all the public hearings on building permits and bitches that the new rowhouse or apartment building "destroys the character of the neighborhood?" Who do you think leverages historic building designations to keep anything from being built? Who do you think files the CEQA lawsuits (okay, that's mostly unions pissed off that developers don't want to use "prevailing wage" labor).
ResoluteRaven
7m ago
Buildings are torn down and rebuilt all the time as they age and wear out. In the absence of zoning restrictions, homes in high-demand areas would be replaced piecemeal with taller and denser structures over a period of many years. We don't need a massive government intervention to flatten entire neighborhoods and remake them from scratch, we just need to give people the freedom to build what they want on their own property and market forces will take care of the rest.
sarker
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
18m ago
No, you simply have to allow people to develop their own property.
sarker
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
19m ago
Lots of people do this (see Taiwan, Japan). Even in San Francisco there are tall buildings. There's no shortage of demand.
Sheepclothes
5m ago
A couple of months ago, I made a post about my struggles with retroactive jealousy/relationship OCD.
https://www.themotte.org/post/825/wellness-wednesday-for-january-10-2024/178374?context=8#context
I'm happy to report, I've beaten it (and waited a couple of months to be sure), without breaking up with my girlfriend. It was very, very hard, but I came up with an effective strategy that was successful, my girlfriend was supportive in her way too. If you go to Reddit communities about this thing, it looks pretty dire and terminal, but there is hope!
So here's a quick summary that might work for other modal mottizians:
The process was first to never ask another question about her past relationships, no matter how innocuous, never trusting my subconscious to not have an ulterior motive. The disease is categorized by an escalating need for certainty that can never be fulfilled. This was the hardest step and where most people fail. I managed by committing myself to ask these burning questions, tomorrow or a month, and see if I still cared to know exactly how often she cuddled with her ex or whatever. Also, I told my Girlfriend not tell me even if I asked, which mostly served to make the commitment public and easier to keep.
The second step was trying to fix the bad world model I had that caused the issue in the first place. Which was also very hard. I talked to a select few of my female friends and asked very personal question about their past love life, questions that I would have like to ask my girlfriend but didn't let myself. It really put it into perspective how ridiculous and unproductive my probing was, and how woman just didn't think like that. Reading about internet woman's experiences also helped.
The third step was exposure therapy, where I went through some bad scenarios in my head and came up with answers to questions that would hurt me the most. This was and seemingly didn't work at first. I felt like my confidence levels plummeted those weeks, and I felt like I was losing my pride.
Finally, since I hated that, I just started acting like I was amazing. Being completely shamelessly confident in my sexual and relationship abilities. Stating out loud how I'm way better than other guys in this or that. Just being super cocky. Because fake problems require fake solutions. And it worked amazingly. Obviously, my girlfriend didn't mind me saying those things, because she believed it too! That's the great thing about woman, if they love you, you are their one and only.
Positive delusions, are said to be good in relationships. I couldn't just will it into being, though, I couldn't just stop caring about her past either. I firmly believe I had to go through the previous steps, my heroes journey, to really get me to believe in my new truth. It's all fiction, and I needed to make myself a story.
Tomato
1hr ago
If that’s a priority for you there are tons of places in the country where demand is low enough to allow that. It’s totally crazy for us as a society to empower someone to prevent his neighbor from doing what he wants to do with his own land in the most productive, in demand location on the planet.
Tomato
1hr ago
The entire sunset district could look like Manhattan. It’s not like we don’t know how to build buildings that are taller than two stories. It’s a completely self-inflicted space constraint.
Supah_Schmendrick
54m ago
Well, the appeal of living in gigantic skyscrapers does diminish a bit when you're living in an earthquake zone. Even being in a fourth floor apartment during a 3.2 a few years back was a deeply unpleasant experience, and I say this as someone who slept through the '92 Northridge quake as a kid.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
2hr ago
Second, Republican organizations have been using "war on the suburbs" are rhetorical demagoguery against almost any policy to increase housing supply
You know why? Because it hits home. It takes some people a while and some never catch on, but a lot of people in the suburbs have figured out that the "sprawl" that leftists often decry is their home.
jeroboam
10hr ago
The California model.
I just got back from a brief trip to California that didn't include the parts where the violent drug zombies live. It was a lovely vacation. California is absolutely beautiful.
Let me introduce the secrets to California's success.
-
Be blessed with the most amazing geography and weather anywhere in the U.S. and maybe the world
-
Be the center of the world tech and entertainment industries
-
Make a deal that baby boomers get to live out their natural lives in splendor and grace while a complete population replacement happens beneath them
As a wealthy tourist, it was all very nice. Whereas the coast of Florida is loaded with aggressive traffic and people, the coast of California is dotted with pleasant beach communities. All the houses cost like $3 million dollars so no one can afford to live there. Despite the best weather and scenery on the planet, the population is going DOWN. People are friendly and nice. The restaurants are full of white retirees, still paying $1000 in annual property tax on their $4 million house they bought for $200,000 in 1981. 95% of the workers are Hispanic. I have no idea where they actually live. But the quality of service was very high and prices were reasonable (at least compared to Seattle).
A quick 5 minute drive from Santa Cruz and you're in a beautiful redwood forest. No houses or people here. Just a beautiful state park with miles of trails. I saw a school group with an earnest white teacher explaining tree rings to a group of about 20 young students. 100% of the students were Hispanic.
People are actually leaving this state, the state that has everything, that was dealt a hand of aces. Productive citizens are taxed at eye-popping rates to prop up the seniors and the underclass. It works for now. It seems kind of similar to what's happening in Europe and where the rest of the U.S. is headed as well.
In any case, I had a wonderful time. I highly recommend California as a tourist destination.
sarker
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
26m ago
Incorrect, the bay area has been losing population since the pandemic, albeit at a slowing pace.
And the population becoming insanely wealthy like the Bay Area has because of tech and wealthy people moving in from all over the world can shift the demand curve to the right even if the population stays the same.
Okay but prices have been marching up in the face of declining population, so clearly people moving in from all over the world is not a factor. Perhaps you wish to bite the bullet and say that it's bad that people are getting rich in the bay area because they have higher willingness to pay?
So today there was an assassination attempt on prime minister of my country of Slovakia - Robert Fico. It happened during his tradition of government meetings across the country, in small coal town of Handlová. He went to greet his supporters when a 71 years old man shot him several times, he was then carried away and sent to hospital in critical condition, he undertook complicated surgery and his fate is still not known.
All the leaders sent their condolences from Putin to Macron, Biden and Ursula von der Leyen all condemning the violence. The same for Slovak political leaders. Of course, Slovak reddit as a bastion of more progressive people could not hold their glee, most upvoted comments for one of the threads were of the like of "JFK from Wish" or "this is what you get from hate". I mention it just as a litmus test of how more progressive people think in Slovakia and to be frank I find it disgusting. As you can gather, Fico is viewed as a populist and Slovak Orban and pro Putin and all that, despite major differences that may take too long to explain. But he definitely is described as archenemy by the strongest opposition party literally called "Progressive Slovakia" here. You probably get the picture.
As for the assassin, to me he seems like an unhinged man that was supporting a lot of fringe movements from right-wing movements to talking against the current government as leaked by one policeman who released a video of the perpetration in custody, where the assassin ranted something about recent law regarding the state broadcasting and overall disagreement with the government.
At this point all I have to say is that I am in shock. Something like that never happened in 40 years history of my country. I see already a lot of spin including Guardian and other foreign press as well as very strong proclamations from parties in government about "political warfare". One thing is apparent, the politics in my country changed and not for the better. I think there will be some ripples also elsewhere, ranging from "stochastic terrorism" by having somebody radicalized by media to just politicians being more alerted to this kind of thing happening. There is also EU parliament elections in couple of weeks and this is something that may have more impact there.
That is all for now, I am not sure if this will be deleted as it is not probably quite a topic for some extra thread, but also not your cookie cutter idea thrown here for discussion. But it is widely relevant on so many levels even outside of Slovak politics so I think there may be some good discussion bellow. I may add some edit and I am willing to anybody else to update bellow if let's say Fico's condition changes in the upcoming hours when I am asleep.
sarker
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
16m ago
Up zoning is great for property values. The nimby argument is not due to property values but rather "neighborhood character".
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
17m ago
You are still in the new user filter, which means your posts have to be manually approved by a mod. After you've been posting for a while, this will stop happening.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
17m ago
Not having a personal obligation doesn't negate the fact your choices may be sup-optimal for society at large in other words.
And so what? No one is obligated to get the short end of the deal to achieve Kaldor-Hicks optimality.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
18m ago
You've already gotten a response from two mods, but let me add mine:
-
We don't claim to be "neutral." We claim to (attempt to) be fair. Not the same thing.
-
You are bitching about a post not being modded when in fact it was modded. As we have told people many times (and you're not new here), we sometimes don't get to posts right away. Sometimes we want to see what another mod thinks, sometimes we don't want to deal with a borderline low-effort shitty post because we're not feeling in the mood to deal with annoying anklebiters and we're hoping some other mod will shin up. Sometimes we're all busy and no one has gone through the queue in a day or two. If a post is less than 24 hours old and hasn't been modded yet, it's premature to start hollering about how the mods are totally biased.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
18m ago
If that’s a priority for you there are tons of places in the country where demand is low enough to allow that.
I'm already living in my home. Let the NEETs have their pods elsewhere.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
20m ago
you're knew, so your comments automatically get filtered and the mods have to approve them manually. This goes away once you've picked up some level of net upvotes. We get asked this a lot by new users, and to head off the obvious questions, yes, it really sucks, and no, there isn't anything we can do about it. The functionality is baked into the code package that was used to set up the site, and the owner and his support staff haven't had the time to change it. It's dumb and it sucks, but usually it goes away pretty quickly.
Welcome, by the way.
Whatever you guys might claim to be, this seems to be a place where it's ok to call an immigrant group an infestation but not to say that the antebellum south was an execrable culture.
You have either fundamentally misunderstood or are fundamentally misrepresenting the thread you linked. You are in fact allowed to say that the antebellum south was an execrable culture, and many people have said here it many times before. You can in fact argue that Confederate statues should be torn down, and you can even argue that people who think otherwise are bad; many people have argued that here many times before. You do in fact have to be careful about how you talk about any group here, and quite a few anti-woke people have in fact been banned for failing to do so properly. The objection in that thread, as described to you repeatedly at the time, was that you were conflating people to object to the destruction of Confederate memorials with slave owners.
I think the antebellum south was an execrable culture, and holding the history constant to the start of the Civil War, I prefer our actual history where their society was destroyed through mass violence to counterfactuals where it might have been allowed to fade away peacefully, continuing to perpetrate evil throughout its decline. Further, I think that destroying Confederate monuments is both stupid and evil here and now. I'd be happy to discuss either opinion with you as time permits, as either side of either opinion fit comfortably within the rules here.
ChickenOverlord
1hr ago
I love to shit on the Bay Area as much as the next rightwinger, but its nightlife is nowhere near as dead as Seattle's.
Absox
3hr ago
New resident of California as of this year; was unexpectedly sent here by my work.
As far as I can tell, the workers live 2-3 to a room in rented houses, which is why many neighborhoods of East Palo Alto have 5-6 cars parked in front of 1000 sq ft (100 sq m) 3br houses.
I was in Asia over the holidays, and the food there is better (at least to my tastes), costs 1/5th as much even without counting taxes, tip, and the bevy of surcharges they add (somehow a prix fixe dinner advertised at $95 a head costs over $270 for 2), and much more conveniently located.
Honestly, I hate it here already and am looking to leave at the first good opportunity. Until then, I'm living well below my means to minimize my exposure to the 9-10% sales tax rates, driving a 20-year old car, maxing out my contributions to tax-advantaged accounts and investments in general, and trying to pay as little in taxes as possible.
A new buyer of said 3 million dollar home would be subject to property taxes in the ballpark of 40k a year. I almost wish we could level the entire area south of I-280 and redevelop it into a megacity with housing for 20 million people according to Chinese urban development practices just to spite the nimbys.
Most of the US has gotten much richer and has also gained population. Prices are particularly so much higher in the Bay Area because it’s impossible to build new housing in the Bay Area. In other words, demand has increased everywhere but supply has been flat (or even negative given depreciation of the existing stock) particularly in California, due to incumbent local NIMBYs.
More options
Context Copy link