https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_Banana_Exporting_Coun...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company#Reputatio...
As a pragmatist, one of my favorite phrases I say quite often: "The difference between theory and reality is that in theory there is no difference."
The article is excellent expose of an issue and a solution. I hope they would include specific things we can do to help improve the situation. I'm part of California YIMBY, which promotes legislation that helps ease these issues.
Hmm, I prefer the phrasing:
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is a difference.
Mine is intentionally convoluted. It works for two things: 1- Easy to spot people who really aren't paying attention to what you say. 2- It takes a second to understand the point, people remember better when they have to 'figure it out' so to speak. 3- I get a smile from some people if they pause, think it, then understand.
I might be wrong in my assumptions though.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/practice-and-theory/
This "practice and theory" quote was said by someone, but who exactly said it first was lost to time. Its not going to be possible to find the canonical quote (since the cannon-quote seems to be nonexistant). But its definitely a long-running idiom with some history.
When I said 'mine'/'yours' I simply meant what we use.
I tend to presume that originality is near impossible with such pithy sentences. For quotes, I only quote things I actually read from the author.
One criticism of "Everything will balance itself out by itself thinking" is that it leads to exploited people. Regulations are one of the tools intended to prevent such things. Nothing is perfect. But the result is we end up arguing about "I pay too much for this" where we would have been arguing about "This guy died making this" if the regulation did not exist.
You are perfectly correct, that some level of regulation saves lives. I doubt thread parent would disagree. A discussion of which regulations are beneficial and which go too far would be interesting. Unfortunately that discussion was short-circuited by a banal list of wiki entries that could have been generated by a bot.
Dictators acting in the interests of the giant multinational corporations that support them. Did you look at the links I posted? I think you're imaginging some sort of firewall between "market" and "government" but no such separation exists. Buying politicians, funding armies, and bribing dictators are all simply economic activities with pros and cons that — in the absence of stern regulation prohibiting — corporations are happy to do.
Which is not to say that all regulation is bad. No one in this thread has claimed that. Some people have pointed out specific problems with specific regulations related to housing and urban planning. I really wish you would respond to those specifics, rather than posting generalities that require extensive exegesis to even relate to the topic under discussion.
You mention zoning laws in particular. Those were designed for specific reasons so what about them would you change? Surely you aren't suggesting just to get rid of them all?
1 - https://devonzuegel.com/post/north-american-vs-japanese-zoni...
No-zoning means housing is much much cheaper, we're talking 100K - 800K difference or more. With all the money you saved, you'd be able to buy another house far away from that bus depot.
> ... and have another bus depot opened on that lot next door a year later.
and so on.
Besides which, does anyone really deserve to live a certain minimum distance from transportation options? Why would anyone dislike her neighbors that much?
Personally, I'd rather pay 200K for a home, rather than 1 million $ for the same home but with zoning laws. Now, I don't know if it's a 5 to 1 difference in every case. But, we all know 5 to 1 difference in cost is not at all unusual on a per sq ft basis.
Regulations have undeniably caused harm in California.
Yet, an elephant lurks. Housing is a massive system dependent upon the price of homes/land continuously rising. History has shown that when that doesn't happen, it is disastrous.
Maybe the market disentangles that, but by god would it be destructive.
[0] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/06/25/six-facts...
On the other hand, so do externalities in the absence of regulation to internalize them. Real markets quite often don't approximate the idealized way markets should work without lots of help.
> Have you ever heard of a banana shortage crisis [...] in the US?
“Yes, we have no bananas today” is actually a reference to such a crisis.
"Blokable Closes $23 Million in Series A Financing to Lower the Cost of Developing, Building, and Owning Multi-Family Housing in West Coast Communities"
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/blokable-closes-23-...
(Effectively) banning SROs in many localities did nothing to improve poor living standards, and probably made them worse since choice was now between being on the street or being in illegally subdivided SROs.
It blows my mind, but I have multiple friends regularly linking me to container-related housing projects ever since I bought land and started building cabins.
I don't personally want anything to do with containers, but there's definitely a housing market for those boxes.
Specific regulations may have problematic impacts (or positive ones, or some mix).
Statements about "regulation" in abstract are meaningless, except to subtract from the idea that specific insight matters, and add to the idea all one needs to approach any given problem is a general ideological approach.
We also need to recognize that trickle down economics doesn't work when it comes to housing just like it doesn't work when it comes other areas of economics. A 1500 square foot high rise 1 bedroom condo with an in-unit washer and dryer is so different from a 200 square foot unit that doesn't even have an in-unit shower that they function as completely separate markets.
Those two things mean we likely need more regulation not less. Although that doesn't mean the regulation we have currently is necessarily good. Removing regulation regarding parking might still be a smart move.
"If rich people can't buy ferraris, and there is a limit to 100 BMWs and 100 civics, then rich people will boost the price of all the BMWs and Civics and all you can buy is really old broken down chevrolets, if you can buy one at all."
"But I bought my civic when it was an affordable price, and I have a special old person subsidized gas price, why do we need build more civics, ferraris and BMWs for all of these new immigrants?! Why can't they just stay in their own country?"
And what people call 'luxury jet housing' is usually really sad 600sqft housing that would be called honda fit housing elsewhere.
The only viable solution to reduce the cost of housing is prefabricated, but moderately sized apartments/multi-family homes. The way you get this is not by unilaterally removing regulation, but by getting rid of local regulation in favor of national regulation.
Yes, I agree, totally. Except where this is impossible.
You can't "free market" the cars out of cities. Nobody wants them gone, and everyone has vested interests in them staying: real estate, construction, parking+traffic violation revenue, car owners, car manufacturers, insurance companies, lawyers... Massive amounts of money flow through the co-existence of cars with cities.
The market's trend is to exacerbate the car problem. How will gutting regulation reverse it all?
I’d argue that that is exactly why we need regulation for housing. It’s just the form of regulation that has to change.
No, but I've heard of gruesome conditions for child laborers in sweatshops and I've heard of banana monoculture that has resulted in disease and threatens extinction of the crop.
We should all push for better and more adaptable regulations that aim to minimize the damages caused by capitalism and enhance its benefits. But regulations as a concept is not the problem, only the implementations.
https://www.theage.com.au/national/government-confirms-ban-o...
> Mr Howard told banana growers in north Queensland after the cyclone that he would not allow imports of fresh bananas until the industry got back on its feet.
> But he went further on the sensitive subject of importing fresh product, indicating the Philippines government's long push to export bananas to Australia may never succeed.
Unless all those growers had cyclone insurance, in which case, yeah, probably should have let in the foreign bananas, right?
Thanks to Walmart, I think clothing at affordable prices is available everywhere in the US. That comes with some nasty externalities, but we are at least clothed.
The US is mostly well supplied with air and water.
It is very easy to make these glib "just remove regulation and let the problem solve itself" comments, without really addressing what that reality actually looks like. We aren't talking about a city of single family homes, we're talking about family homes largely no longer existing since lawns, property separation, "extra" rooms, "extra" walls, etc are all inefficiencies that will be eliminated by the market sooner or later.
So, sure, run housing like bananas or jeans but don't be surprised when dwellings start to look less like homes and more like a efficient storage medium for human creatures.
Have you ever heard of a banana shortage crisis or a jeans shortage crisis in the US? No you haven't. The reason is because market forces are able to adjust to changes in market demand. In housing, those market forces are bottled up and stifled, preventing investments, preventing innovation, preventing progress, preventing better solutions. We really really need to start looking at regulations and find ways to get rid of the ones causing all these problems.
ADDED: We've seen very little actual VC money or Research and development go into improving the cost of creating Shelter (In fact, we haven't made any improvements in this in the last 50 to 100 years adjusted for inflation). Much of this is due to regulations. Other industries can find ways to reduce cost but the mountain of housing regulations prevent any and all progress in these areas. I'd argue Housing is one of the most critical areas that human should be trying to progress in, as it's most important for human survival.