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A comment on Housing in the Bay Area. Parent comment

Re:Housing in the Bay Area by apsec112 on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @10:19PM (#11774793)
This is absolutely democracy. It's just democracy on the state level, rather than the local level. In this case, the state level is appropriate, because San Francisco's policies have an effect on all the surrounding cities, and all the other Americans who might want to live in SF. Would it be "undemocratic" to say that San Francisco can't unilaterally vote to stop paying federal income taxes?

In any case, cities will still have huge influence over what gets built, since every building under this law still has to comply with local zoning. All this law says is that cities can't pretend to allow development, and then arbitrarily block individual developers for no reason (or because they didn't pay enough bribes).

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Re:Housing in the Bay Area by studentrob on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @10:27PM (#11774846)
> San Francisco's policies have an effect on all the surrounding cities, and all the other Americans who might want to live in SF.

You could make that case for all regions of the world. Nobody is completely isolated. We breath the same air and everyone deals with the effects of pollution.

It's not a reason to prevent changing existing law.

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Re:Housing in the Bay Area by apsec112 on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @10:31PM (#11774874)
It's a difference of degree. The effect of most local policies on the region, nation, or world is negligible. The effect of San Francisco's is very large.

See this magazine article on how NIMBYs pushed suburban sprawl on surrounding areas:

https://web.archive.org/web/20001001083046/http://www.sfweek...

See this article, on how restrictive urban land use is estimated to lower America's entire national GDP by 5-15%:

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21647614-poor-land-use...

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Re:Housing in the Bay Area by studentrob on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @10:41PM (#11774922)
There are plenty of things that lower GDP. Environmental policies, for one. That's not reason enough alone.

I suspect the impact of restrictions on SF growth at this point are large because as the parent notes, growth has been large there in the digital age. Tech businesses have had it good there for awhile. Maybe time for some change, no? At least get rid of Feinstein..

Edit: please explain down votes, thanks!!

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