> We've collectively destroyed this concept for the next generation of young people and we need to desperately course correct.

Sorry, turns out it's economically way more important for the richest two dozen people in the world to turn all of our collective resources into computer programs that will tell them how special and cool and inventive and totally not "the man" they are. Anything that gets in the way of that must be destroyed.

It was actually just everyday people who chose to destroy the concept of cheap housing, not "the richest two dozen people in the world". By limiting supply in the name of neighborhood character, boomer environmentalism, and property values.

There are lots and lots of nice cheap housing in small towns. Example, when all my coworkers were fighting over insanely overpriced condos and apartments in San Fran, I bought a 1300 sq ft house outside of Tracy for less than $200k (1/3 of rent in the city)

Get out of the cities...

> Get out of the cities...

This is a terrible public policy if it's the plan. And while I think selfishly it might be better for individuals if they did, I don't think it's actually helping anyone. Cities used to be a place where you made a life for yourself and could earn more and innovate more than you could in rural/suburban areas. Now it's a luxury to live in one and that doesn't bode well for the future of the country.

But that was before tech became so common.

You don't need to live in the city to earn more and innovate.

Warren Buffet didn't move to Wall Street and he did ok...

Your argument seems to be, "That might be better, but it would mean change, and that's bad!"

Better for individuals in the short term but worse for society as a whole.

Cities have always been the most expensive option... they are meat grinders for careers. There's plenty of jobs but it is very diffcult to get ahead. Always has been that way.

I'd rather be a big fish in a small pond.

I don’t think it has always been that way, actually. But I don’t have hard data.

Great, now most people can spend their lives driving. I see so many people on their phones on the road, and I'm sure that part of it is that they don't want to be commuting as much as they have to.

Not to mention, it's more inefficient to sprawl.

1/3 of the staff where I work are remote and it's a super conservative run factory. Most live within 20 minutes of the site.

Customer support, sales, accounting, HR, IT, etc., all don't need to go into the office most of the time. Why force them? It also opens up the job market to a larger pool, cuts health care and child care cost, insurance, etc.

As it should be. All I'd do is occasionally try to get staff onsite or offsite for team building or when it's crunch time. Most of the time, work can be done remote - it just dehumanizes things a bit. Some on/off site team building can mostly bridge the gap.

I promise you this is only a short term solution that will eventually ruin the small towns and their youth as well.

Canada is seeing that right now where so many people from big cities flooded small towns. All that has happened is something to the tune of 200% appreciation in small housing prices over the last decade with almost no appreciation in wages. It's crushed housing for the smaller towns and the individuals that lived there. It's truly just a kick the can down the road approach.

That’s just money supply increase cascading through different markets. Closest to money printer gets hit first, it goes out from there.

Your assertion seems intuitively correct, but I can't say I've seen any studies that explore the idea.

I think this is mainstream Austrian school thinking. They seem ideologically opposed to the kinds of studies that the branches that pretend to be a science do, though. I Am Not an Economist, though, open to being better informed by those more Austrian than myself.

This discussion is in the context of how creative scenes like those of 60s NYC develop.

We were discussing "one crucial factor in the city’s creative energy: cheap rents".

Apparently we now need to discuss another crucial factor notably absent in small towns: "density of and proximity to other creative types"

Density has to be even higher today to reach the same quantity of interactions as the past, given how many in the city will sit in their apartment and be online instead of outside.

No, it was the banks that held the mortgages, and the builders and real estate agents who make the most on rising prices. You can't buy a house without selling the one you live in... without leverage!

I don't know what kind of backwards logic that is. Banks help first time homebuyers purchase their house. Builders build houses and add supply that helps meet demand (everyone needs a place to live). Real estate agents help navigate the process for people who are unfamiliar with all the different steps.

There are bad actors in all of these (banks caused the financial crisis and agents are probably paid more than they're worth for $1M+ houses in CA), but the biggest root cause that's missing from your comment is NIMBYs blocking new development almost everywhere.

Not seeing "NIMBYism" in Nebraska.

Instead I am seeing developers who would rather build an upper-middle class neighborhood, not a starter home one, because they can get a much larger profit for only a little more effort/material-cost.

I suppose when they are finally unable to sell them they'll start addressing starter homes. I have no idea who could still be buying all of these though. (Perhaps people leaving CA like I did after retiring — they're not going to like the property tax rate though.)

NE seems relatively affordable?

Expecting starter homes to be a category of real estate that is newly built seems naive. Starter homes are some combination of older, smaller, bad location which makes them more affordable. Why wouldn't real estate developers satisfy the demand at the high end before moving down market? Seems like the easiest way to turn a profit to me. Rational actors etc

I’m still not clear that this actually a problem. If they overbuild more expensive housing, isn’t the inevitable result that they’ll have to eventually undersell it? There’s only so many wealthy persons, and no matter how fancy the house is I only have so much money to spend.

So in the long run, I’d expect that developers are really funneling money into the lower class by overbuilding upper class housing, when they eat the losses on their poor planning.

I’m also fairly positive a 30-year old upper middle class home makes for a fairly good starter home

Nope. Unlike the wealthy, the people who need the cheaper housing do not have the time or money to spend lobbying for their own interests. The wealthy are taking all of our resources[1] and spending them[2] to turn our water & energy into computer programs that will steal and extract even more wealth from the people who actually create things.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-...

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/private-investment-in-art...

Who shows up to the public comment meetings to register their complaints about new housing being built? Who empowered those meetings to exist in the first place? Who created the laws about needing an environmental review for a building being built in the middle of an existing city?

It was everyday people. Not the 1%.

Real estate and rent, just like bitcoin, designer fashion, "art work", and watches. Unfortunately, you need somewhere to live. If it's more profitable to hold empty real estate than or less dense/improved property waiting for it to go up then that's what will happen.

If people can effectively speculate on something in a leveraged high liquidity environment, they will, and prices will go up. Look at the terrifyingly overbuilt real estate in China with pricing comparable to NYC or London and huge vacancy rates.