Since comments are off on the Molloy dialogue, I will restrain myself from commenting here; but I hope Freddie will give us the opportunity once it’s concluded.
"YIMBYs need to be more forthright about the fact that there are time lag problems with building more housing as a way to lower prices."
It is telling with respect to the economic illiteracy of the population that this explanation would be required.
In fact, the "lag" circumstance is a key missing understanding of the general American voter that explains much of our social and economic problems. Presidents and economic outcomes are an example. Generally the policies put in place by an administration would not pay dividends or cause disruption until later when the next administrations takes over. There are exceptions of course if the administration takes direct and profound action like canceling organic energy exploration and production following the dumping trillions in the economy. But most policy changes are more subtle and there would be a lag until the results were experienced.
But the people don't seem to get that and vote in an irrational and reactionary way that requires the strongest of crisis before they can be nudged in a common direction.... but then they freak again that the problem is not solved and vote for the next shiny new thing.
Once the tents start going up in the exclusive liberal enclaves, only THEN will we see support for profound enough housing policies. But then the activists against it will keep up the propaganda that it is not working immediately and they will manufacture other crises related to the actions taken, and the people will vote for the next immediate fix of those problems which will defeat the goals of the previous.
I have started a few businesses in my life from the ground up. One of them is a family-run craft distillery. We give tours. People ask our background (no previous background in it) and comment that they cannot fathom building something like this.
But what many of them lack is the understanding of persistence working on long-term goals with incremental progress. The family knows about it because we did most of the work ourselves and we have all the bruises and scars from doing all that work.
We are an instant gratification society today... and people... especially young people... don't understand the path to success at almost anything worthwhile, including solving our housing problems, will take a vision, a plan... and then persistence working that plan until the goals can be achieved. It took us decades to get to this point of inadequate affordable housing... and it is not a problem that can be solved overnight.
But we absolutely cannot make any material progress in solving our problems with NIMBYs in control.
I found the exchange with Parker Molloy to be both tedious and disingenuous (this particularly from Molloy’s side).
Molloy initiates the dialogue with volley after volley of imprecise drivel, basically.
Molloy denies there is a problem with open and free speech (in a casual sense, anyway) and also denies that empowerment of private corporates (that are partially run by the Feds no less) to regulate virtual public spaces is happening (much less that it is bad).
The responses from FdB have to somehow dance around that for fear of insulting Molloy’a groundless hysterics.
Since comments are off on the Molloy dialogue, I will restrain myself from commenting here; but I hope Freddie will give us the opportunity once it’s concluded.
"YIMBYs need to be more forthright about the fact that there are time lag problems with building more housing as a way to lower prices."
It is telling with respect to the economic illiteracy of the population that this explanation would be required.
In fact, the "lag" circumstance is a key missing understanding of the general American voter that explains much of our social and economic problems. Presidents and economic outcomes are an example. Generally the policies put in place by an administration would not pay dividends or cause disruption until later when the next administrations takes over. There are exceptions of course if the administration takes direct and profound action like canceling organic energy exploration and production following the dumping trillions in the economy. But most policy changes are more subtle and there would be a lag until the results were experienced.
But the people don't seem to get that and vote in an irrational and reactionary way that requires the strongest of crisis before they can be nudged in a common direction.... but then they freak again that the problem is not solved and vote for the next shiny new thing.
Once the tents start going up in the exclusive liberal enclaves, only THEN will we see support for profound enough housing policies. But then the activists against it will keep up the propaganda that it is not working immediately and they will manufacture other crises related to the actions taken, and the people will vote for the next immediate fix of those problems which will defeat the goals of the previous.
I have started a few businesses in my life from the ground up. One of them is a family-run craft distillery. We give tours. People ask our background (no previous background in it) and comment that they cannot fathom building something like this.
But what many of them lack is the understanding of persistence working on long-term goals with incremental progress. The family knows about it because we did most of the work ourselves and we have all the bruises and scars from doing all that work.
We are an instant gratification society today... and people... especially young people... don't understand the path to success at almost anything worthwhile, including solving our housing problems, will take a vision, a plan... and then persistence working that plan until the goals can be achieved. It took us decades to get to this point of inadequate affordable housing... and it is not a problem that can be solved overnight.
But we absolutely cannot make any material progress in solving our problems with NIMBYs in control.
"Chomsky has a vast corpus of published work... It can be hard to know where to start."
You are completely right, and this is a great recommendation. Thank you.
I found the exchange with Parker Molloy to be both tedious and disingenuous (this particularly from Molloy’s side).
Molloy initiates the dialogue with volley after volley of imprecise drivel, basically.
Molloy denies there is a problem with open and free speech (in a casual sense, anyway) and also denies that empowerment of private corporates (that are partially run by the Feds no less) to regulate virtual public spaces is happening (much less that it is bad).
The responses from FdB have to somehow dance around that for fear of insulting Molloy’a groundless hysterics.
Waste of time, sorry.