Vice's view of politics is always like a naive high school kid who hasn't ever had a real job or read a single book on economics. Which probably accurately describes their (largely freelance) 'journalists' or more accurately bloggers.

Makes for good clickbait for their demographic though. In an ideal world they should really have stuck to fashion and culture (which their 'talent' is good at) and left the serious topics to people who have a strong grasp of the subjects. But that's boring and doesn't generate outrage on social media aka clicks -> ad views.

> Makes for good clickbait for their demographic though. In an ideal world they should really have stuck to fashion and culture (which their 'talent' is good at) and left the serious topics to people who have a strong grasp of the subjects. But that's boring and doesn't generate outrage on social media aka clicks -> ad views.

The author of this piece worked at Bloomberg and CBC prior to her position as the Economics & Money editor at Vice.

"But that's boring and doesn't generate outrage".

Even if she’s somehow an exception to the rule at Vice as the editor, aka top tier in her category, she’d be a rarity. But looking at her previous output (only a few as she’s a recent hire) there are quite a few that fit into the clickbait vs signal ratio pandering to an ideological niche.

That’s fine if that’s your thing but I put higher standards on the HN front page.

In Zurich I can get from any place to any other place easily because the tram/bus/train connections are always waiting for each other, and are almost never too early / late.

People can use cars if they need it, but it shouldn't be the first choice generally.

I'm not knocking their transit. I'm sure it's great. But you can have good transit, zoning, and affordable housing. See Berlin.

And, yes, Berlin has it's problems, and I'm sure somewhere else is doing things even better. I'm just curious why Zurich is a model we should look to.

Many of my colleagues were living outside Zurich in smaller towns / villages (me too), and we could get to work in 20 minutes, which was for me great actually, I loved sitting on the train and enjoying the beautiful view.

If you drove that during rush hour, you wouldn't be travelling at max speed the whole time, and likely would also take two hours to travel, potentially more (Google predicts up to 2 hours and 40 minutes).

Step 2: compare to alternatives, factoring in geography, culture, scale of operations, political environment

It's a hugely complex issue. I wouldn't define Toronto's public transit as bad, but it's not world class.

The train takes 2 hours to travel 100km. Cars can do that distance in one hour, despite having to cope with traffic. That's pretty appalling. Good public transit should be faster than a car along its main corridor.

Apart from geography, those other factors are reasons, not excuses. Lots of people here look down on public transit and associate it with poor people. That's a problem to be rectified.

And if it only were so easy!

Toronto, and Canada, is very much like the US in terms of its reliance on the car to get around. Except in urban centers, and NYC, the first choice of transportation is almost always the car. This is not just a mindset. The lack of a proper transportation infrastructure and the sprawling nature of North American cities make it difficult to get around without a car.

In fact, I would say urban sprawl and traffic are worse in Toronto than in most American cities (I'm originally from Toronto and I've lived in the US for more than two decades). And what about the surrounding regions, like York and Peel regions? I would say the prospects for an adequate public transportation infrastructure in the surrounding regions of Toronto are even worse, and the population in the surrounding suburbs rivals the population of Toronto proper.

Do you think it is at all interesting that housing pricing on the west coast of Canada and the US recently flattened out at the exact same time the economy slowed in China?

Every single city in Canada and the US currently has this problem. Including Houston which has very permission zoning.

Why doesn't anyone suggest that there are too many people and that we need to control population growth to rates below zero?

You can theoretically restrict the movement of people by decreasing immigration, or restricting local people to move into places with too many people. You can theoretically restrict having more children. Both of those restrictions have been hugely unpopular in places that have tried them. You cannot hold onto power in a democracy or democratic republic if you are sufficiently unpopular.

These are hard problems to solve, I readily admit.

In your opinion what is the end game of not zone restrictions?

Freedom of movement only allows you to get to a destination: it doesn't guarantee that you'll have sufficient resources at your disposal to do something once you at your destination (e.g. acquire a house, or find a job).

People migrating to more dense areas is the problem.

Unless you have an idea for reversing the trend of urbanization, telling people where they can and can't live is going to be a tough sell.

The zoning system was completely broken long before AirBnB showed up. Yes, Airbnb does exacerbate the already existing issues with zoning laws...but that's not an argument for eliminating Airbnb, it's an argument for eliminating or changing zoning laws.

I will not deny that the presence of airbnb rentals in a city can drive up the incremental cost of housing, but it is a proximate cause, not the root cause. The root cause is artificially constrained supply.

1: https://www.blogto.com/city/2018/08/toronto-has-highest-numb...