Extremely cringe to hear Chapo arguing that we shouldn't let more people into the US or build more housing because life isn't good enough for people here presently. @mtsw is right about "leftist" yuppies inheriting reactionary pro-sprawl politics from their boomer parents.
These people just don't like cities. Puzzling why they live in them if they don't like adding new buildings or new people to them! I want there to be a billion Americans, I just want them to live in cities that we have made as good as they can possibly be.
If you're going to exist within the framework of nation states, you really only have 2 options to improve the standing of people in other countries: you can conquer their governments and install better ones (brutal) or create a good society and open your borders to them (good).
Our goal as Americans should be to construct the greatest society we possibly can, a country with a socialist economy that values labor and human rights, and open our borders to allow as many people as we possibly can in to escape tyranny in China and Russia and Brazil.
We could fit the entire population of the world inside Texas if we built a society at the density of Paris. The United States has more than enough space to support the entire global population if we were smart about it. Let everybody in.
I've the courage to believe that we should build more housing in our cities generally, build more public housing in our cities specifically, and seize pied-a-terre's and idle investment real estate units in our cities all at the same time! These options are not mutually exclusive
Frustrating watching YIMBY/NIMBY arguments because they are both wrong. NIMBYs don't want new housing at all either to protect their house values or as a category error argument against gentrification while YIMBYs are mostly uber-capitalists who see nothing wrong with land rent.
Rent-seeking is bad and landlords are bad and housing shortages are bad and neighborhood displacement is bad and predatory corporate "investment" is bad and underfunding social services is bad. All of these things are bad. The solutions to them are complex and defy simple slogans
Yes, building new market rate housing in New York City will not immediately lower rents because rich people will gobble them up as investment vehicles for ground rent inflation. At the same time, preventing construction of all new housing will necessarily increase market rents!
Increasing the private housing stock is not *sufficient* for addressing the housing crisis, but in the absence of the state's ability/willingness to construct public housing on a scale America has never seen, increasing the private housing stock is *necessary.* This is obvious.
The only efficient living pattern for humanity is mass urbanization. The mission of all eco-socialists must be to provide abundant housing in dense, vibrant urban centers served by readily available public transportation. If your mission is anything else, you're a climate denier.
People can't be allowed to live in single-use residential areas whether in typographically rural, exurban, suburban, or urban settings. Efficient use of the land available to us as humans courtesy of mother nature requires mixed uses. Everybody must be able to walk to stores.
The expression is "workers of the world, unite!" not "workers of individuated nation states, unite inside your legal borders!"
YIMBYs mad at me after I made a lengthy post about how I want to build more housing, good summary of Twitter imo
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