“Do you think a conservative mayor has the power to create a libertarian utopia in their city?”
Obviously not. For starters, conservatives aren’t libertarians, and that divide has grown a lot in these MAGA times.
But your argument is remarkably bad for a different reason. We aren’t talking about a single mayor here. A place like San Francisco has been totally run by progressives for progressives for decades, and with a very ample budget and no constraints from a conservative state legislature. You seem to be operating under the delusion that SF’s problems are somehow because the politicians can’t quite do what they want, instead of the result of doing what they wanted with no political opposition from anyone left of Elizabeth Warren for nearly a century. It didn’t become a progressive dystopia by accident or from mysterious systemic forces holding back politicians.
One obvious policy choice relevant to the present post is choosing not to enforce laws against turning some of the most valuable real estate in the world into an open-air homeless encampment. Another is the choice to try freezing SF in amber by making it incredibly hard to build anything.
"well you can do socialism as an individual, and others can be capitalist, because a capitalist system provides that freedom for everyone."
I don’t think this is what someone said. I think this is what you think they said. Freedom for everyone is good though.
Thank you for laying all that out in better terms than I would have. Great examples of the kinds of forces that act here, and makes very clear how few of them anyone at the municipal or even state level have any control over.
The "kinds of forces" causing these problems is government policy restricting the supply of housing over decades, and refusing to enforce the law.
This is not some national problem where SF is somehow blameless and helpless to confront.
Either way, progressives and their policies have been bad because they haven't dealt with the challenges they face well at all. You can try pretending it's not a self-inflicted wound, but they're still ineffective in that case. What progressive ideas could a NYC or SF implement at this point that haven't been tried already?
Never said "municipal government officials are the absolute rulers of a fiefdom." What I said was that progressives have run SF for nearly a century at all levels and so trying to talk about "what could one mayor do" is a really stupid way to respond regarding the fruits of their policies.
Your B and C are remarkable. You think SF is a VICTIM of national and local market economies? You think the "unique challenges" of the richest city in the history of the earth are imposed upon it? SF's failures are a policy choice, not otherwise insurmountable challenges it faces through no fault of its voters and leaders.
You think NYC is not a progressive stronghold? No true progressive stronghold I guess.
NYC and SF both have extremely expensive housing for one major reason: They don't build enough housing to meet the high demand brought on by their economic activity, for a half century at least. They do not build enough housing as a policy choice through extremely restrictive zoning , burdensome regulations, and arbitrary permissions. NYC used to build a lot until roughly the '70s. SF cut off most density before it could get very high. They do not want more chairs in their game of musical chairs.
This is the dumbest thing I have read on the internet in quite some time:
"Developers have been incentivized to build large, horizontal luxury housing for tech workers instead of vertical affordable housing, even where zoning isn’t a hurdle. I guess they like money or something!"
What do you think has "incentivized" these developers? Perhaps it's zoning that bans the vertical housing? The developers WANT TO EARN THE MONEY OF WILLING BUYERS BY BUILDING AS MUCH AS THE MARKET WILL PAY FOR. This is not a market failure. It's the most goddamn obvious policy failure I know of, and economic illiterates like you somehow try to blame capitalism for hurting the poors, when it's actually the RICHEST PROGRESSIVES AND LEFTISTS IN HISTORY THAT RESTRICT SUPPLY TO RAISE PRICES AND THEN PRETEND GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION IS NEEDED TO FIGHT INEQUALITY.
(I'm trying a bit of ALL CAPS there to see if it will help your reading comprehension and basic logic. Probably won't, but you've demonstrably avoided employing those things on this topic heretofore, so the experimentation seemed worth it.)
New housing is expensive. "Luxury" is a marketing term, but imagine if the government made it so auto makers couldn't make as many cars. Of course they'd focus on the ones that brought them the most revenue.
This is why we can't have nice things. We choose to light money on fire to solve problems caused by government policies restricting supply.
"… so changing zoning laws, booting out businesses, and restructuring the tiny city is, in fact, extremely complex and expensive."
Completely delusional. All you gotta do is stop banning density. You have a severe case of "planner's brain" instead of just letting people figure things out. The way we used to, back when we built more. If Tokyo can do it, so can SF and NYC.
All this is to say that you're tying to make developers the bad guys in an environment where they are highly constrained by policies. It's like blaming farmers for a famine when the government won't let them grow as much food as they could for paying customers.
"SF is a permanent seller’s market that favors landlords"
Increase housing supply.
"No fault evictions”—where the tenant did nothing to violate their lease agreement"
Increase housing supply.
"Job loss is the number one cause of homelessness in SF."
Increase housing supply.
"The pandemic increased homelessness EVERYWHERE."
Increase housing supply.
You can't be a sane person and blame markets for problems caused by governments intentionally fucking with the market.
“bound by the same systems”
Are these systems in the room with us right now?
“Do you think a conservative mayor has the power to create a libertarian utopia in their city?”
Obviously not. For starters, conservatives aren’t libertarians, and that divide has grown a lot in these MAGA times.
But your argument is remarkably bad for a different reason. We aren’t talking about a single mayor here. A place like San Francisco has been totally run by progressives for progressives for decades, and with a very ample budget and no constraints from a conservative state legislature. You seem to be operating under the delusion that SF’s problems are somehow because the politicians can’t quite do what they want, instead of the result of doing what they wanted with no political opposition from anyone left of Elizabeth Warren for nearly a century. It didn’t become a progressive dystopia by accident or from mysterious systemic forces holding back politicians.
One obvious policy choice relevant to the present post is choosing not to enforce laws against turning some of the most valuable real estate in the world into an open-air homeless encampment. Another is the choice to try freezing SF in amber by making it incredibly hard to build anything.
"well you can do socialism as an individual, and others can be capitalist, because a capitalist system provides that freedom for everyone."
I don’t think this is what someone said. I think this is what you think they said. Freedom for everyone is good though.
Thank you for laying all that out in better terms than I would have. Great examples of the kinds of forces that act here, and makes very clear how few of them anyone at the municipal or even state level have any control over.
The "kinds of forces" causing these problems is government policy restricting the supply of housing over decades, and refusing to enforce the law.
This is not some national problem where SF is somehow blameless and helpless to confront.
Either way, progressives and their policies have been bad because they haven't dealt with the challenges they face well at all. You can try pretending it's not a self-inflicted wound, but they're still ineffective in that case. What progressive ideas could a NYC or SF implement at this point that haven't been tried already?
"Even for a Substack power user …"
Right back atcha.
Never said "municipal government officials are the absolute rulers of a fiefdom." What I said was that progressives have run SF for nearly a century at all levels and so trying to talk about "what could one mayor do" is a really stupid way to respond regarding the fruits of their policies.
Your B and C are remarkable. You think SF is a VICTIM of national and local market economies? You think the "unique challenges" of the richest city in the history of the earth are imposed upon it? SF's failures are a policy choice, not otherwise insurmountable challenges it faces through no fault of its voters and leaders.
You think NYC is not a progressive stronghold? No true progressive stronghold I guess.
NYC and SF both have extremely expensive housing for one major reason: They don't build enough housing to meet the high demand brought on by their economic activity, for a half century at least. They do not build enough housing as a policy choice through extremely restrictive zoning , burdensome regulations, and arbitrary permissions. NYC used to build a lot until roughly the '70s. SF cut off most density before it could get very high. They do not want more chairs in their game of musical chairs.
This is the dumbest thing I have read on the internet in quite some time:
"Developers have been incentivized to build large, horizontal luxury housing for tech workers instead of vertical affordable housing, even where zoning isn’t a hurdle. I guess they like money or something!"
What do you think has "incentivized" these developers? Perhaps it's zoning that bans the vertical housing? The developers WANT TO EARN THE MONEY OF WILLING BUYERS BY BUILDING AS MUCH AS THE MARKET WILL PAY FOR. This is not a market failure. It's the most goddamn obvious policy failure I know of, and economic illiterates like you somehow try to blame capitalism for hurting the poors, when it's actually the RICHEST PROGRESSIVES AND LEFTISTS IN HISTORY THAT RESTRICT SUPPLY TO RAISE PRICES AND THEN PRETEND GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION IS NEEDED TO FIGHT INEQUALITY.
(I'm trying a bit of ALL CAPS there to see if it will help your reading comprehension and basic logic. Probably won't, but you've demonstrably avoided employing those things on this topic heretofore, so the experimentation seemed worth it.)
New housing is expensive. "Luxury" is a marketing term, but imagine if the government made it so auto makers couldn't make as many cars. Of course they'd focus on the ones that brought them the most revenue.
This is why we can't have nice things. We choose to light money on fire to solve problems caused by government policies restricting supply.
"… so changing zoning laws, booting out businesses, and restructuring the tiny city is, in fact, extremely complex and expensive."
Completely delusional. All you gotta do is stop banning density. You have a severe case of "planner's brain" instead of just letting people figure things out. The way we used to, back when we built more. If Tokyo can do it, so can SF and NYC.
All this is to say that you're tying to make developers the bad guys in an environment where they are highly constrained by policies. It's like blaming farmers for a famine when the government won't let them grow as much food as they could for paying customers.
"SF is a permanent seller’s market that favors landlords"
Increase housing supply.
"No fault evictions”—where the tenant did nothing to violate their lease agreement"
Increase housing supply.
"Job loss is the number one cause of homelessness in SF."
Increase housing supply.
"The pandemic increased homelessness EVERYWHERE."
Increase housing supply.
You can't be a sane person and blame markets for problems caused by governments intentionally fucking with the market.
As I suspected, low literacy abilities are in play.
My brother in the written word, you started off your economically delusional response by demeaning the fine readers of this very site.
Your points were bad and your horse so incredibly high.
Also it is the height of stupidity to criticize someone for arguing on the internet … as you argue on the internet with them.
And now you don’t even want to deal with the actual arguments, you just wanna cry about ALL CAPS.
You don’t have to live like this.