The Nonlinear Library LW - Housing Roundup #7 by Zvi
Mar 5, 2024
01:10:02
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Housing Roundup #7, published by Zvi on March 5, 2024 on LessWrong.
Legalize housing. It is both a good slogan and also a good idea.
The struggle is real, ongoing and ever-present. Do not sleep on it. The Housing Theory of Everything applies broadly, even to the issue of AI. If we built enough housing that life vastly improved and people could envision a positive future, they would be far more inclined to think well about AI.
In Brief
What will AI do to housing? If we consider what the author here calls a 'reasonably optimistic' scenario and what I'd call a 'maximally disappointingly useless' scenario, all AI does is replace some amount of some forms of labor. Given current AI capabilities, it won't replace construction, so some other sectors get cheaper, making housing relatively more expensive. Housing costs rise, the crisis gets more acute.
Chris Arnade says we live in a high-regulation low-trust society in America, and this is why our cities have squalor and cannot have nice things. I do not buy it. I think America remains a high-trust society in the central sense. We trust individuals, and we are right to do so. We do not trust our government to be competent, and are right not to do so, but the problem there is not the lack of trust.
Reading the details of Arnade's complaints pointed to the Housing Theory of Everything and general government regulatory issues. Why are so many of the things not nice, or not there at all? Homelessness, which is caused by lack of housing. The other half, that we spend tons of money for public works that are terrible, is because such government functions are broken. So none of this is terribly complicated.
Matt Yglesias makes the case against subsidizing home ownership. Among other things, it creates NIMBYs that oppose building housing, it results in inefficient allocation of the housing stock, it encourages people to invest in a highly concentrated way we otherwise notice is highly unwise and so on.
He does not give proper attention to the positives, particularly the ability to invest in and customize a place of one's own, and does not address the 'community buy-in' argument except to notice that one main impact of that, going NIMBY, is an active negative. Also he does not mention that the subsidies involved increase inequality, and the whole thing makes everyone who needs to rent much worse off. I agree that our subsidies for homeownership are highly inefficient and dumb.
A neutral approach would be best.
Zoning does not only ruin housing. Taylor Swift's Eras Tour skipped New Zealand because there were not sufficient resource consent permits available to let her perform at Eden Park. They only get six concerts a year, you see.
With Pink's two shows on March 8 and March 9 and Coldplay's three shows on November 13, 15 and 16, it leaves Eden Park with only one concert slot this year. Considering the Grammy winner is playing seven shows across two Australian venues this February, Sautner says: "Clearly, this wasn't sufficient to host Taylor Swift."
…
The venue also needs to consider the duration of concerts in any conversations - as the parameters of Eden Park's resource consent means shows need a scheduled finishing time of 10.30pm, something that may have been too difficult for Swift to commit to.
A short video making the basic and obviously correct case that we should focus on creating dense walkable areas in major cities. There is huge demand for this, supplying it makes people vastly more productive and happier, it is better for the planet, it is a pure win all around.
Jonathan Berk: "Only 1% of the land in America's 35 largest cities is walkable. But those areas generate a whopping 20% of the US GDP."
Legalize Housing
Wait, is that, yeah, I think it is, well I'll be. Let's go.
Elizabeth Warren: 40 years ago, a typical single-fam...
Legalize housing. It is both a good slogan and also a good idea.
The struggle is real, ongoing and ever-present. Do not sleep on it. The Housing Theory of Everything applies broadly, even to the issue of AI. If we built enough housing that life vastly improved and people could envision a positive future, they would be far more inclined to think well about AI.
In Brief
What will AI do to housing? If we consider what the author here calls a 'reasonably optimistic' scenario and what I'd call a 'maximally disappointingly useless' scenario, all AI does is replace some amount of some forms of labor. Given current AI capabilities, it won't replace construction, so some other sectors get cheaper, making housing relatively more expensive. Housing costs rise, the crisis gets more acute.
Chris Arnade says we live in a high-regulation low-trust society in America, and this is why our cities have squalor and cannot have nice things. I do not buy it. I think America remains a high-trust society in the central sense. We trust individuals, and we are right to do so. We do not trust our government to be competent, and are right not to do so, but the problem there is not the lack of trust.
Reading the details of Arnade's complaints pointed to the Housing Theory of Everything and general government regulatory issues. Why are so many of the things not nice, or not there at all? Homelessness, which is caused by lack of housing. The other half, that we spend tons of money for public works that are terrible, is because such government functions are broken. So none of this is terribly complicated.
Matt Yglesias makes the case against subsidizing home ownership. Among other things, it creates NIMBYs that oppose building housing, it results in inefficient allocation of the housing stock, it encourages people to invest in a highly concentrated way we otherwise notice is highly unwise and so on.
He does not give proper attention to the positives, particularly the ability to invest in and customize a place of one's own, and does not address the 'community buy-in' argument except to notice that one main impact of that, going NIMBY, is an active negative. Also he does not mention that the subsidies involved increase inequality, and the whole thing makes everyone who needs to rent much worse off. I agree that our subsidies for homeownership are highly inefficient and dumb.
A neutral approach would be best.
Zoning does not only ruin housing. Taylor Swift's Eras Tour skipped New Zealand because there were not sufficient resource consent permits available to let her perform at Eden Park. They only get six concerts a year, you see.
With Pink's two shows on March 8 and March 9 and Coldplay's three shows on November 13, 15 and 16, it leaves Eden Park with only one concert slot this year. Considering the Grammy winner is playing seven shows across two Australian venues this February, Sautner says: "Clearly, this wasn't sufficient to host Taylor Swift."
…
The venue also needs to consider the duration of concerts in any conversations - as the parameters of Eden Park's resource consent means shows need a scheduled finishing time of 10.30pm, something that may have been too difficult for Swift to commit to.
A short video making the basic and obviously correct case that we should focus on creating dense walkable areas in major cities. There is huge demand for this, supplying it makes people vastly more productive and happier, it is better for the planet, it is a pure win all around.
Jonathan Berk: "Only 1% of the land in America's 35 largest cities is walkable. But those areas generate a whopping 20% of the US GDP."
Legalize Housing
Wait, is that, yeah, I think it is, well I'll be. Let's go.
Elizabeth Warren: 40 years ago, a typical single-fam...