Yes, probably, but isn’t this worse? Group incentives favour those that already have capital (material and political), which creates a feedback-loop increasing the rich-poor divide until… what exactly? What’s the end-state? A return to feudalism? Bloody revolution?

It just seems like there was a “once upon a time” where politics was about “this is the society we want”, and they tried to build it. Now it seems we’ve all just given up.

Meaningless! Meaningless! Let’s deconstruct society until we can argue that a future of 1% home ownership is somehow better.

It's clearly a global structural issue. Low interest rates are a pan-national commonality - and they can take a lot of blame for part of the situation we're in now. But they don't explain housing shortages.

Population growth probably plays a big part - housing is always going to be lagging population growth. The various stories I've seen about Japan - with low rents, falling house prices and large numbers of abandoned houses - seem to map with the falling Japanese population. "Things were better in the 70s/80s/90s" probably partly just means that the ratio of houses to people was better. The population of most major western cities was falling or flat through much of the 70s and 80s - leading to the situation where my parent's generation all seem to have snapped up large, well located houses for not very much money.

I'm fully supportive of the idea that, with all things equal, if we build more houses then supply and demand will drop prices. But if you allow unchecked population growth (which in the UK and Canada seems to be primarily caused by immigration) then the amount of building required is effectively infinite.

I've visited the Toronto area from the UK more or less every year since I was a child, and the overwhelming story is one of huge development. The change in the suburbs of Toronto over the past 30 years has been vast and unlike anything I've seen in the UK. Yet that clearly hasn't been enough to stop house prices going crazy as well. The net effect, though, is that there's miles and miles of sprawl and 6 lane streets dominated by cars. The answer definitely isn't to build more of that. The population of Canada has grown by 40% in the last 30 years.

Population growth combined with an ageing population and the kind of rights purchasing a house gives you in the west create increasing inequality driven by land. That seems to be the underlying issue that's driving city house values up everywhere.

There are possibly some answers. In the UK in the 60s-80s we built entire new cities, with the land purchased by the government at agricultural value so that the entire uplift was captured by the developers rather than speculators.

I think the reason is there are a lot of tech / tech-adjacent workers on Reddit and they know people less than 100 miles away (in the USA) are doing the same job as them, possibly at the same company even, but are getting significantly higher compensation packages.

US immigration laws are a complete non issue for tech workers (at least in my experience). Mostly, people I work with seem to not want to move the the US for the same reasons people don't want to move to another state: they're happy enough where they are, they'd be leaving friends/family, they're worried if the move that their life will be worse. They already make enough money to be comfortable, if not inordinately wealthy.

I suppose my consideration could be different if I got a job that paid > $150k or something and could actually take it, but the recession is here and the job market is dead, and so far it hasn't crossed my mind to try and make it possible, so I'm going to continue draining my savings while I look for a job here in Vancouver that will probably be below $130k CAD

We have very different views of the US though. I felt the same as you when my only US experience was in the Bay Area, but after living in Chicago for 5+ years and having visited a bunch of places around the country, I miss a lot about American culture now that I'm not there.

Regarding the degree, it was less a matter of whether people care, and more about the actual visa. Perhaps a two-year diploma is more workable; I only have a 1 year technical diploma from a Uni, and although I haven't aggressively pursued getting across, it doesn't seem like I'd meet the requirements with it. Would be curious though, because the job market is truly shit here atm.

Just took a short road-trip down through Washington and Oregon, and really enjoyed my time. You're right in that I didn't think much about the difference until I got down to the Bay Area. I do think there is some sort of imbued mega-capitalist eat eat eat buy buy buy nature to many other places though that just sort of vibes me out sometimes, and maybe some airports are an example of this; almost a volume difference.

I noticed it for the first time when passing through the Minneapolis airport of all places. Felt like there was a hundred neon signs flashing at me to eat some burger or get a pedicure while waiting for my flight. Every table at a particular restaurant had an iPad right when they came out. While we have Cabela's and Bass Pro Shops, there's are basically theme parks. That kind of thing; it's not everywhere, in-fact it's probably a rare feeling I get, but it's a level of excess that's hard to feel comfortable around.

What you're hearing isn't accurate. Rents are going up in Tokyo, not down. Sure, there's a bunch of abandoned houses way out in remote rural areas, but no one wants to live there (for good reason). Housing prices do seem a lot more stable than in Anglosphere nations, however, and they're constantly building new housing (and knocking down old buildings to make way for them). Just like many other places, the population is concentrating in the big cities, so the population is generally rising there. However, unlike the US in particular, the Japanese yen has fallen a lot in value during the pandemic, and combined with recent inflation, this might have something to do with the recent rise in rents.

less blind forces, more "well, what would you do in their situation": the people who first paid money for a given square of land were also the first to try to convince someone else to pay them more for that same land

natural resources aside, land only really has the value that other people are willing to pay for it, like currency. so if you want the "growth of your asset", the only thing you can really do is convince people the land is worth more than what you paid for it, for whatever reasons you dream up

globalisation just made everyone's marketing messages go 'round the world

It seems a bit silly to argue that increasing land prices is principally a result of marketing. The amount of earth on the planet in the last 10k years essentially hasn't changed but the number of humans has increased almost 2000%. Population growth is surely a "blind force", right?

which parts of the land are worth more than others though, I think the article does a good job of providing examples too: people living closer to each central city had higher wages, which meant they could pay more for the land pieces... so they did, which meant they had to ask more when selling in order to 'break even' or 'realize on their investment'

i guess the bigger question is: why did we tie our need for shelter into the economy? in order to achieve constant growth (ensure someone isnt left 'holding the bag'), we have to either be willfully ignorant of a growing population, or maintain a fantasy of there always being viable room for ever more people

i hope we start colonizing the moon or even mars before we have to deal with fallout from the above...

I don’t think that’s a very compelling explanation for increased market prices for city centers either. It doesn’t address the rival (and more likely IMO) claim that prices increased for economic reasons (maybe city salaries increased even further or even something as nebulous as “Hollywood portrayed cities as vibrant, desirable places to several generations”).

1850 1,610 —

1860 4,385 172.4%

1870 5,728 30.6%

1880 11,183 95.2%

1890 50,395 350.6%

1900 102,479 103.4%

1910 319,198 211.5%

1920 576,673 80.7%

1930 1,238,048 114.7%

1940 1,504,277 21.5%

1950 1,970,358 31.0%

1960 2,479,015 25.8%

1970 2,811,801 13.4%

1980 2,968,528 5.6%

1990 3,485,398 17.4%

2000 3,694,820 6.0%

2010 3,792,621 2.6%

2020 3,898,747 2.8%

As you can see, the city used to experience massive decade over decade growth. It also used to be zoned for 10 million people in the 1960s, today though, its zoned for a little bit over 4 million people, creating the housing crisis we see today because not a lot of properties are even able to be built up even if they are available for sale and potentially a turnover. There's no shortage of land, its just mismanaged.

But in some places population is the same or even declining and prices are still going up.

I think nimbyism just appeals to the monkey side of the brain we all have. If you are happy and surviving, there's probably millions of years of biological evolution in your behavior that's telling you to keep up what you are doing where you are. There's probably a side of your brain that subconsciously gets irritated at seeing more humans move into an area competing for resources with you, even if today that just means a parking spot at the grocery store and not an appreciable dent on game populations. Stuff like cities and dense living on top of many different "tribes" only happened within the last few thousand years, that's only like 50-100 generations and that's only considering those ancient cities that were around then, plenty of places have been rural for all of human history. Not nearly enough time to expect a significant amount of adaption, and that's only if there is a remarkably strong selective pressure favoring adaption.

There is no failure of democracy here, but rather a good indication of it's strength.

However, we haven't exactly seen better systems of governance, plus not all democratic societies are filled with such short-sighted idiots like we see in the US, and those societies are doing much better long-term and stability-wise.

You can just as easily ask "why was there a rise of right-wing nationalist and fascist sentiment throughout the Western world in the mid-to-late 2010s?" There's no grand conspiracy to any of it, and looking for one is likely to lead you down exactly the road that far too many conspiracy theorists have gone recently.

And, um, closely related, be aware that the "lizard people rule the world" thing isn't just a funny joke. It's deeply and inextricably rooted in a raft of antisemitic tropes, slurs, and propaganda going back...I forget exactly how long, but at least many decades. In fact, in general, when you encounter any conspiracy theory that posits a shadowy group of people secretly ruling the world, the chances are nearly 100% that you can trace it back to a version where that "shadowy group" is explicitly Jews. This is a big part of why conspiracy theorists have a tendency to find themselves in a pipeline to fascism.

Also, alternative explanation of the lizard people thing: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8600

Yeah, no. That doesn't fly.

There's a massive difference between, say, "the fact that I am a person of European descent living in upstate NY is only possible because of the genocide of and racism against generations of Native Americans; therefore, my entire existence is predicated on structural racism" and "many, many groups have vilified Jewish people for centuries for a variety of reasons (that are out of scope of this discussion); that vilification has led to ostracism and genocide on numerous occasions and still does to this day, frequently based entirely on completely false stereotypes; the propagation of those stereotypes still to this day leads real people to choose to ostracize and murder Jewish people; "lizard people who rule the world" is one of those stereotypes, and participating in its propagation does actual, measurable harm to Jewish people."

I’m curious how far this stretches. Do you claim that “They Live” is antisemitic?

Not US, and for reasons, the housing crisis is not _that_ bad where I live, but: in principle our country is exactly like our parent's generation imagined it. It's perfectly aligned with their interests. Where they'd hike to a hut in the mountains once, there is now a paved road, so they can still drive to the hut, even though they're not able to walk anymore. Somewhere else they built a cable car, for exactly the same purpose. They have houses. They have cars. They dominate every political institution there is. They voted to keep the conscription, so enough poor young people who alternatively chose community service would be available when they need care, eventually. They go on vacations three times a year. And heaven forbid they'd need to give up _anything_ they once had. Political parties that suggest anything like that would have no chance in elections.

> Who is actually in control here?

I think they are.

A good example of this is the age at which our constitutions were drafted vs how old politicians are now. This is also the case in Norway but I think the US is a more relatable example on HN: Biden is twice the average age of the delegates in 1787.

The issue is that generally, it takes a while for a cohort to build up political power.

It might have been a combination of circumstances and intellectual tides turning. The 70ties saw stagflation everywhere, which led to a decade of economic problems that couldn't be fixed with existing, socialist policies. Finally, voters everywhere (starting with Thatcher in UK ) decided it's time to try something else.

Part of it might also have been a disillusionment with big leftist ideas in general - in the late seventies, there was enough reliable information coming from USSR and China to make it clear that anything resembling communism (a holy grail for much of the left back then) is an unmitigated disaster. People started to realise that capitalism, much like democracy, might be bad, but is better than all the alternatives.

Makes one wonder whether capitalism is actually compatible with democracy.

Is part of the problem that we think the 70s was normal and not the outlier?

https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual-inco...

Certainly there have been a couple recent bubbles, but even as recently as 2012 we were basically within the bounds of the long-term normal.

I'd like to say it's a supply problem, and demographics does support that argument to some extent, but the fact that it involves most of the western world makes me think it may have to do with monetary policy.

It is to the extent that various laws and regulations prevent or strongly disincentivize new construction, yes.

> the fact that it involves most of the western world makes me think it may have to do with monetary policy

It does. Mortgage loans have always been one of the primary places that governments choose to put newly printed money. The ostensible purpose of this is to make it easier for people to own homes, but what it actually does is bid up home prices to the point where consumers are no better off than they were before, but financial institutions and other corporate interests make a nice extra profit. It's similar to the way the easy availability of financial aid for college has not actually made it easier for people to go to the college of their choice (indeed, admission rates to many colleges have sharply declined as financial aid becomes more available), it's just transferred more wealth to the colleges from taxpayers.

There is will, and there is will.

Pretending that this doesn't apply to whole societies and that today's secular societies are not driven mostly by a deterministic mechanism consisting of human nature combined with the environment (technology + physical world) is a fool's act, and the ubiquiotus internet commenter attitude. Man yelling at the clouds, clouds of human nature and environment.

So yes, this is all something that is politically solvable in the west. We just need a unified legislative recipe, and strong advocacy. Other lobbying groups manage to get through very unpopular legislation. Why not for something that would actually help?

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WSCNDW01ESA470N

For the most part, I agree with building codes. They serve a purpose by ensuring that unsafe buildings aren't created. But they've become so esoteric, that meeting them is an exercise in futility.

I can't wait for the day that a "safe building" AI just watches everything, and tells people what to do. That way even unskilled labor can do work, and the work will be up to a safe standard.

Code officials are the worst sort of power tripping bureaucrats. I can't wait for them to be eliminated.

In my opinion, this is an underutilized term that could be used to group trends/behaviors and consequently policy decisions.

Then what about these consultants? Well, they don't need to actually solve the problem either. They just make various plans and present a slide deck to management at the end and collect a check. Whether the plan works or not doesn't even matter here, because the consultants got paid already and are on to the next job, the manager looks good because they brought in a consultancy, and if shit fails in the next three years well its no ones fault, because management will act like they did everything right bringing in the consultancy and will cut other staff first.

Consultancyism is everywhere these days. Its the next big thing in emerging markets which is even scarier and only a fig leaf away from imperialism with the terms of how some of these deals are struck, always to the benefit of capital with the people seen as a resource for extraction or exploitation. Consultancyism probably also encourages an unhealthy mercenary outlook on life. Never taking pride in projects because they are never your projects in your community, they are just jobs elsewhere to make some money.

Consultancy can be a good thing - or a bad thing, depending on which consultants are brought in, and why.

It is one of the oldest tropes that consultants are brought in to tell people what they already know - and there is some truth in it. But when it comes down to it, consultants are asked to do this job because they are external - and they can tell truth to power without being seen as having an internal political agenda.

As consultants, we are brought in by clients to provide skills that they don't have in house. There tend to be two reasons for this. Either they want us for a short period to do a specific task which wouldn't be worth them recruiting for, or they are looking for a longer term relationship - in which case we can offer them access to a wider pool of talent than they would get by recruiting in.

Finally, I have worked with a great number of talented folks at all stages of their careers. Almost without exception, every one of them has been passionate about their work, and determined to do the best job possible for the clients. And a number of them have left us to work directly for clients.

[edited for typos]

also, people getting surprised by the continuation of urbanization is ridiculous (but also a complete fucking tragedy).

It's technically possible that people just decided to vote the same way in half of the world for decades. Besides, the local plutocracy wanting the same things everywhere isn't easy to explain either.

Not in a democracy, not when respecting free market and property. But they are able to do it in China.

Cities were pretty similar to how they are now for all of human history except a brief period where things were weird after WW2 - see A Farewell to Alms and everything by Ricardo.

The US has one of the lowest Price to Rent ratios in the entire world.

And it's not like the US is rosey. There's really no where to look on the planet for somewhere that's doing things right beside maybe Singapore (which is a single city and has somewhat socialized the entire housing market) and Japan (which suffered through a lost 30 years and has a pretty rapidly declining population - possibly mainly as a result).

In both cases, I'd argue the US has a better housing market than either of those places. And again, it's still pretty sucky in most places in the US.

The way out is revolution, where the working class become the ruling class. We may yet see that in our lifetimes in several countries.

Nobody. If you wanted to point fingers though, then the reason nothing gets done is because "grandma". Not because grandma is some evil conspirator but rather because this is used to silence arguments by saying "you are hurting the weak, don't you feel ashamed?"

Honestly, I don't believe there is a solution that can be achieved through democratic vote because the only people that are being hurt are people who don't get to vote, aka children who will need a home in the future or migrants who are about to move.

Some form of private land trust will have to do a georgist experiment and reimburse tenants as some form of UBI. 50% of the profits will be reinvested, 50% reimbursed.