But isn’t the idea broader than housing? It’s the same view of liberal economic policy I’ve always had - let’s make sure that we have so much of everything we can meet people’s needs instead of fighting over scarce needs.
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Well, I suppose so, but that's why I think of it as trying to sell supply side economics as left-wing, with an implicit assumption that market actors will overproduce and drive themselves out of business for some reason
aug 19, 2025, 1:24 pm • 0 0 • view
The leftist theory of housing describes a housing market that behaves like no other commodity market in the history, including the actual existing housing market
aug 19, 2025, 1:35 pm • 3 0 • view
"just get rid of regulations and the price of the durable commodity will go to zero" describes nothing useful
aug 19, 2025, 1:42 pm • 0 0 • view
That's true but I don't think anyone is saying the price would go to zero? Housing is inherently expensive - it's expensive to make and expensive to maintain. The idea is let's not make it MORE expensive via regulations that distort usage. Single family zoning makes houses more expensive.
aug 19, 2025, 1:46 pm • 2 0 • view
Sure, but the marginal cost of regulation is not actually an interesting question. What you would *like* is to provide housing that people want at a certain low price and that is not something that tinkering with zoning or stair count can guarantee
aug 19, 2025, 1:59 pm • 0 0 • view
And, like, it's really not surprising that in a country where home equity is half of the wealth of the bottom 50% that political incentives are as perverse as they are
aug 19, 2025, 2:04 pm • 0 0 • view
The primary purpose of zoning in the 21st century is landowner regulatory capture. The impact is not marginal, nor is it intended to be.
aug 19, 2025, 2:01 pm • 2 0 • view
Understand the meaning of the word "marginal" please.
aug 19, 2025, 2:07 pm • 0 0 • view
Yeah it’s about breaking regulatory capture by landowners, something anyone with leftist principles should whole heartedly endorse!
aug 19, 2025, 2:00 pm • 2 0 • view
Lol, no, that would be a state takeover of land, which people could then use on long-term leases. The very explicit "oh zoning stops people from doing what they want with their land, which is building multifamily housing and nothing else" messaging is quite the opposite of that
aug 19, 2025, 2:10 pm • 0 0 • view
Urban leftist activists advocate for things like that for the same reason Elon Musk pushed the hyperloop: because they know it will absorb political capital and never come close to happening. Upzoning does produce results in the real world and that *does* threaten their class interests
aug 19, 2025, 2:14 pm • 4 0 • view
This is just a profession of faith, sorry, and frankly this line of argument is exactly why this branding became so poisonous so quickly
aug 19, 2025, 2:17 pm • 0 0 • view
It's actually funny because I'm very much in favor of upzoning and density, and these discussions are like 90% of Austin politics, but here we're able to actually make useful incremental progress instead of declaring half the city to be kulaks to be liquidated
aug 19, 2025, 2:20 pm • 0 0 • view
Increasing supply relative to demand does reduce prices and rents in every city it’s been done in, I don’t know what else to tell you.
aug 19, 2025, 2:19 pm • 1 0 • view
Congratulations for rolling out that argument without any actual statement about how you make supply grow faster than demand, which is the actual question here
aug 19, 2025, 2:23 pm • 0 0 • view
Okay cool nobody said the market would reduce the price to zero.
aug 19, 2025, 1:51 pm • 0 0 • view