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Re:Marc Andreessen says he’s for new housing, but records te... by xyzzy_plugh on Friday August 05, 2022 @12:03AM (#32351454)
I'm amazed that commenters are defending this quite insulting behavior.

What a joke. A system is what it does. Andreesen is a hypocrite.

You know what would be fucking incredible? If he had taken the opposite stance and put his money where his mouth is. Instead, he plays the coward, unwilling to embrace his own advice.

Re:Marc Andreessen says he’s for new housing, but records te... by BbzzbB on Friday August 05, 2022 @12:32AM (#32351695)
Most incredible thing to me is that this is his main point of contention :

>They will MASSIVELY decrease our home values

I get that mansions, like SFHs, are seen as investments. And I suppose this is just how they want to bring locals/voters/officials (who might not be as uber-rich?) on board while muffling the quiet part ("quality of life", i.e. mixing classes). But if it's even a remotely honest sentiment, how damn much is enough? He's a (multi-?)billionaire and still gives two shits about his house's appraisal? So shallow, but I guess in character for someone who just bought a $177M palace ("priciest home sale ever in CA") with the money of retail bagholders.

Re:Marc Andreessen says he’s for new housing, but records te... by pas on Friday August 05, 2022 @03:16AM (#32352786)
not to mention that it's false. a one acre plot sells for more in the middle of SF than in the middle of richtown.

what goes down is the immediate price to rent out if new units become available in the vicinity.

what all these NIMBYs want is a reservation for themselves, where time (and gas prices and everything else) is frozen.

Re:Marc Andreessen says he’s for new housing, but records te... by masklinn on Friday August 05, 2022 @07:29AM (#32354605)
> You know what would be fucking incredible? If he had taken the opposite stance and put his money where his mouth is.

That is one thing I really enjoyed about George Lucas v Marin County.

Lucas bought Grady Ranch to build an extension of the nearby Lucas film studio. Following the backlash he decided to develop the property (zoned as residential) as low-income housing, paying for it out of pocket (after 3 years getting the runaround from housing grants and regulatory boards).

Sadly a decade later the project is still blocked by Marin NIMBY.

Re:Marc Andreessen says he’s for new housing, but records te... by alexrtan on Friday August 05, 2022 @12:19AM (#32351597)
It’s amazing how little inefficient land use/NIMBYism is discussed in American politics. It is actually even more important than healthcare as a cost of living issue. Especially for young people living in major cities.
Re:Marc Andreessen says he’s for new housing, but records te... by plankers on Friday August 05, 2022 @02:58AM (#32352664)
well it's not discussed much because it's handled at a strictly local level. you don't get a national or even state-level conversation about what goes on in town hall public planning meetings.

the article advocates for bringing housing planning under state jurisdiction:

>The hypocrisy itself is galling, if informative. Andreessen might well support legislation upzoning neighborhoods across California. This macro-micro disconnect should push policy makers to grasp that they cannot reason with NIMBYs on a project-by-project basis. They have to eliminate NIMBYism’s veto power by moving decision-making to the state level.

Re:Marc Andreessen says he’s for new housing, but records te... by tomuli38 on Friday August 05, 2022 @12:52AM (#32351842)
I mean it's basic "got mine, fuck you". The story of history, then we rewrite the narrative to paint the rich as virtuous and self-sacrificing after the fact. The assumptions that others would swallow such narratives is the amazing bit.
Re:Marc Andreessen says he’s for new housing, but records te... by curiousgal on Friday August 05, 2022 @01:14AM (#32352008)
> his own advice

Why the words of rich people are important is beyond me. It's like you guys put these wealthy assholes on a pedestal and then act all shocked when they're looking to enrich themselves even more. Take money out of politics. It's that simple.

Re:Marc Andreessen says he’s for new housing, but records te... by hackerlight on Friday August 05, 2022 @02:51AM (#32352627)
> Take money out of politics. It's that simple.

I totally agree with this goal, but the core problem is deeper and won't be solved by banning political contributions and so on. Homeowners will still have a financial incentive to vote in NIMBYs, even though that's not directly "money in politics" (albeit it is so indirectly). We need to somehow take negative sum self-interest out of politics through systemic change. I have no idea how one would achieve that, though.

Re:Marc Andreessen says he’s for new housing, but records te... by ItsMonkk on Friday August 05, 2022 @10:05AM (#32356264)
You need to correctly align incentives - anything else won't work. The way you align incentives is through a Land Value Tax.

Currently lower supply means higher prices, which benefits existing owners, so they vote for that. Under a LVT, lower supply means higher taxes instead of higher prices.

You can resolve this issue through a 100% LVT. A 100% LVT would set land prices to zero. You would still need to pay for the building on top of the land.

A good way to transition to this system is by giving everyone land tax credits equal to the value of their land. This is beneficial for everyone right now because the Fed is raising rates, that will yield lower land prices, and thus by zeroing out the risk of lower housing prices as we move into this recession through a one-time credit, everyone is better off.

If you want to preserve those bubble prices, you want to quickly vote in a LVT.

Re:Marc Andreessen says he’s for new housing, but records te... by whimsicalism on Friday August 05, 2022 @06:49AM (#32354252)
It's not that simple when "money in politics" looks very similar to just "paying for political speech." Good luck making the latter illegal in the US without an amendment.
Re:Marc Andreessen says he’s for new housing, but records te... by AlexandrB on Friday August 05, 2022 @02:02AM (#32352323)
> Why the words of rich people are important is beyond me.

As a culture we value money more than many other things thus financial success is often considered a proxy for virtue, intelligence, or both.

Re:Marc Andreessen says he’s for new housing, but records te... by wickedsickeune on Friday August 05, 2022 @03:20AM (#32352807)
How exactly?
Re:Marc Andreessen says he’s for new housing, but records te... by simonebrunozzi on Friday August 05, 2022 @03:19AM (#32352800)
I think you meant this MASSIVELY insulting behavior. Right?
Re:Marc Andreessen says he’s for new housing, but records te... by tptacek on Friday August 05, 2022 @12:05AM (#32351464)
I don't know what the point of personalizing it is. This is probably the most normal-person thing Andreessen has done in decades. Does it cut against a viral post her wrote a while back? Sure. But that post was still right about zoning!
Re:Marc Andreessen says he’s for new housing, but records te... by xyzzy_plugh on Friday August 05, 2022 @12:13AM (#32351537)
Personalizing helps highlight the hypocrisy of wealthy, influential people like Andreesen.

I agree that the post was right, but it discredits the author when they act so diametrically opposed to the words they write and, specifically, the action they call for.

Did he not mean those words in earnest? Is there some other play he is angling for? It begs everything to be questioned.

Re:Marc Andreessen says he’s for new housing, but records te... by tptacek on Friday August 05, 2022 @12:18AM (#32351595)
I'm not sticking up for him! I think that's pretty apparent from my comments on this thread (this is one of my hobbyhorse issues). I'm just saying, in this particular situation, Andreessen is behaving like the overwhelming majority of suburban homeowners.
Re:Marc Andreessen says he’s for new housing, but records te... by denton-scratch on Friday August 05, 2022 @06:38AM (#32354158)
> like the overwhelming majority of suburban homeowners

But he's not like the overwhelming majority of suburban homeowners; he owns mansions.

Re:Marc Andreessen says he’s for new housing, but records te... by kelnos on Friday August 05, 2022 @07:57AM (#32354847)
Most suburban homeowners will vote against anything that they believe will reduce their home values. It doesn't matter if their home value is $200k or $200M. Same result.

You'd actually think that a multibillionaire who owns a mansion would be less sensitive to fluctuations in home values, since their wealth is usually contained in other assets (unlike the average American homeowner, for whom their home is likely where the majority of their net worth is). If Andreessen were to accidentally light $200M of his own cash on fire, he'd come through it, lifestyle unscathed.

Re:Marc Andreessen says he’s for new housing, but records te... by denton-scratch on Saturday August 06, 2022 @10:56AM (#32368658)
Well, I'd have expected that most suburban homeowners are planning to stay put for a while (i.e. they're not renters). So I'd expect them to value the health of the neighbourhood over property values.

Where I live, property is expensive, and I live in a neighbourhood that seems to be dominated by investment property; many empty properties or short-let properties. There are no kids here, even though the neighbourhood would be fine for kids.

Anyway, that's apparently not the way the cookie crumbles; owning property so you can live in it seems to have become unfashionable. I hope the fashion changes, because I have no plans to sell.

Re:Marc Andreessen says he’s for new housing, but records te... by adamwk on Friday August 05, 2022 @01:46AM (#32352213)
I think the semantics of NIMBY got lost recently where I’ve read tweets about YIMBY’s who are against building that effects them. People forgot the acronym NIMBY refers to people in favor of liberal policy until it affects them.
Re:Marc Andreessen says he’s for new housing, but records te... by pessimizer on Friday August 05, 2022 @09:41AM (#32355993)
NIMBY transformed long ago into referring to people who don't want to live in the shadow of massive condo complexes with no parking.