demsas was always ideologically thus, she just wrote primarily about a topic (housing) that has a tendency to be routinely depoliticized as long as you throw the same few liberal signifiers in there - ThreadSky

katewagner.bsky.social • 36 days ago

demsas was always ideologically thus, she just wrote primarily about a topic (housing) that has a tendency to be routinely depoliticized as long as you throw the same few liberal signifiers in there

Reposted from Adrian Daub

If I ever need to run a scam, remind me to make sure to target the masthead of The Atlantic, because those appear to be the most gullible motherfuckers on the planet

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santelli.bsky.social•36 days ago

"The Case for Finding Common Ground With RFK" was my cue to unfollow.

andrewsehmann.com•36 days ago

Someone needs to write about how Steve Jobs’ widow owning The Atlantic started the rightward slouch of the paper.

castouroboros.bsky.social•36 days ago

Is there anyone good still writing there? Ed Yong and Adam Serwer were the only good ones for a long time and I think they’ve both gone.

claudiacalhoon.bsky.social•36 days ago

Adam Serwer has an article there today.

claudiacalhoon.bsky.social•36 days ago

I mean the broader point stands. It’s full of hacks. But I was happy to see this.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/trump-executive-order-citizenship/681404/

katewagner.bsky.social•36 days ago

by depoliticized i mean made technocratic

katewagner.bsky.social•36 days ago

there's a pattern of this exact "ideological pipeline" - yglesias, noah smith, etc - and yet people are surprised every single time. sorry to have to hold your hand when telling you this but what if some of their ideas once thought progressive are in fact the opposite of that

matttttttttb.bsky.social•36 days ago

Thank youuuu lol I find it a little funny, the eagerness of some to avoid seeing how all the people you mentioned have a pretty coherent ideology

katewagner.bsky.social•36 days ago

i don't believe yimbyism is a monolith nor do i think it was a failure or anything like that, but i do think a lot of people in the movement failed to anticipate that certain ideas also had broad appeal to people on the other side of the ideological spectrum and could be used to different ends

zbs.bsky.social•36 days ago

someone compared it to bush-era atheism which has stuck with me

jeffrgq.bsky.social•36 days ago

For those of us who've been in the housing movement since before they rebranded trickle-down economics as "YIMBY", hate to say we told ya so... ;-)

nsdolkart.bsky.social•36 days ago

I'm genuinely interested in your overall take on YIMBYism—have you written about that in long form somewhere before?

katewagner.bsky.social•36 days ago

i'm not an urban planner and don't possess a specific set of knowledge so it's not my bag to get into on a granular level. the shift towards the building code discussions does put things more in my wheelhouse however. i say some things about it in my book but i'm more focused on architecture

nsdolkart.bsky.social•36 days ago

As someone for whom Yglesias was an entry point into thinking about YIMBYism, but was too dumb to detect his ideological lean until 2020, which ideas did you have in mind as "also [having] broad appeal to people on the other side of the ideological spectrum and could be used to different ends"?

gordondouglas.bsky.social•36 days ago

The stronger forms of yimbyism are indistinguishable from Koch brothers libertarianism, and, in fact, guys like Nolan got their books published through the Cato Institute, a Koch backed organization.

katewagner.bsky.social•36 days ago

i think this was most true not about upzoning or the like but about the desire to eradicate democratic community involvement in housing which is painful, long, and a site of political contention but the thing is direct political confrontation requires us to fight for our ideas in a way that matters

gordondouglas.bsky.social•36 days ago

It's also a misinterpretation of where nimbyism comes from. It isn't caused by too much democratic involvement but not enough. It's consultation policies that privilege a small group of homeowners while excluding renters and the wider needs of the city, which could be solved with more democracy.

katewagner.bsky.social•36 days ago

exactly

katewagner.bsky.social•36 days ago

wanting to get rid of it makes you an ally of, like, garry tan and elon musk whether you like it or not

katewagner.bsky.social•36 days ago

meetings should be made MORE democratic. you have to organize politically within your communities instead of ceding them to the people who suck or eliminating public imput. sorry that this is hard, but it's always been this way. invoking the ballot box is funny because you have to organize there too

caladaley.bsky.social•36 days ago

It's not clear that community meetings where people seethe about the poor moving in are more legitimate than the ballot box, but they do have no obligation to consider the wellbeing of everyone in the state, and they don't.

katewagner.bsky.social•36 days ago

those people also do that at the ballot box and yet we fight in elections anyway. the point isn't to not have elections.

jasonjdelaney.bsky.social•36 days ago

i always more or less think of all of them as "convenient except when they're not" which is fine as long as you're good at not forming parasocial relationships with pundits, which everyone should get good at imo

believing what you believe and having reasons seems reeeally helpful

pushtheneedle.bsky.social•36 days ago

The one thing I hear in left leaning Seattle is that we can’t make it easier to build more housing by relaxing zoning rules and permitting processes because that’s “deregulation” and it just baffles me they don’t see how that deregulation is actually beneficial for housing.

katewagner.bsky.social•36 days ago

i think part of the problem of upzoning is the misidentification of it as "deregulation" in the first place. it is replacing one rule with a different one. it's the same with single stair.

danielkayhertz.bsky.social•36 days ago

This--I think there's a conflation of strict zoning with capital controls, but zoning very rarely has the effect of blocking capital flows, it just redirects them to pure speculation and rentiership rather than material production

katewagner.bsky.social•36 days ago

this is my view on it too

holz-bau.bsky.social•36 days ago

this. upzoning (especially from single family/ADU/townhouse to multifamily) entails *more* regulation, and this is especially the case with single stair (even more conditions for equivalent life safety)

pushtheneedle.bsky.social•36 days ago

And even when I am able to make sense of it for them they snap back that the idea of more housing supply relaxing costs is “trickle down housing”. And, like, why does someone want an empty home that loses money? They don’t get it and use political terminology to cloud their thinking

katewagner.bsky.social•36 days ago

i am filtering skeptical but you gotta change the zoning law if you want to build anything so

ahjohnson.bsky.social•36 days ago

It’s true and you should say it

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