Just finished "Abundance" and that fact that any of it is controversial just illustrates how hosed the Democratic Party is. Building more homes, generating more clean energy and developing a mass transit network is the easiest and most obvious thing that blue states ought to be doing right now.
Comments
"...the Golden State built plenty of housing in the mid-aughts. In fact, at times in 2004 and 2005, California even permitted more new housing units than Texas did."
The study is not a meta-study and even its abstract said that cities who tightened restrictions saw rents increase.
Here he links an article dispelling myths that two fairly prominent academic frauds put out about Auckland's zoning RIGHT NEXT TO AN ARTICLE WRITTEN BY ONE OF THOSE AUTHORS!
Pro-abundance folks want the democrats who win power all throughout the country to govern well and not teach their voters to be proud of overpaying for housing and energy
Look at the backers of the abundance movement.
Did you actually read the book?
No wonder you are thoroughly convinced by anecdotal evidence when it agrees with your preconceived beliefs.
And I'm perfectly aware that regulations can be a hindrance, but this Abundance group provided misleading and incomplete evidence based on anecdotes.
It also makes the assumption that corporations will just start building low - middle income housing. There's no incentive for that. Gov. should do it.
So either way, scaling zoning boards back to only regulating potential physical harm will be necessary
All I said is the regulation as a practice is not bad, only the motives behind them. Most of the bad regulation affecting the marginalized was written by the Abundance crowd.
I only claimed that the authors' arguments are cherry picked, often misleading and sometimes prove the opposite point they purport to be making.
A regulation isn’t de-facto good because it exists.
Zoning laws were a literal replacement in the US for when racial covenants were ruled illegal.
Also, how is it deregulation to not want all apartment dwellers to live on arterial roads?
You really think they'll start putting chemical plants near rich housing developments if zoning regulations get repealed? 😄
Nope! Just more poison for poor kids
Chemical plants, and polluters more broadly, should not be next to any housing. Existing regulations fail to achieve that.
Again. Read what Ezra is actually saying. Not what you think he is saying.
If you want to stop people from being exposed to pollution from chemical plants, you should regulate pollution from chemical plants, not where apartments can be built.
2. If you got rid of all zoning and related regulations you would have some chemical plants near wealthy residences - and there’d be no mechanism to stop them. Having *certain* zoning laws protects everyone.
1) Claiming that the book is arguing against all regulation.
2) Claiming that "arguing that some regulations are harmful" is bad because it necessarily implies that all regulation should be eliminated.
3) All regulations are bad because they by corporations, so none of this matters?
But I can, based on the way you argue, why you like the book.
They cherry pick the regulations to blame and then give misleading anecdotal evidence to back up their claims.
Did you know that Charles Koch is one of the financiers behind this movement?
Motive?
Explain to me how Gates' money helped education.
Incarceration rates have been dropping since. We used to be #1… now we’re #5.
We should want those in positions of power to investigate their city/state, see what their particular roadblocks are, and find ways to reduce or remove them.
https://imgur.com/a/Q4ri1Rn
I'm not arguing FOR regulation. I'm arguing against SCAPEGOATING regulations.
Not to mention that Derek Thompson has admitted in interviews that this is an attempt to take control of the Democratic Party.
These are the same Reaganesque neo-libs
I'm not going to throw out good ideas and mindset because some of Koch's money is supporting the project.
I should hope an adult would never write such ridiculous nonsense.
But it sure doesn't sound like you're agreeing with him or asking for more details. Or was I wrong?
More reps and electoral votes for the GOP
Nuke zoning boards
Speculation in essential goods like health homes and food, has led us here. Affordability is not prioritized.
it's effectively avoided.
So if Perdu wants they just double the price of chicken
... after stock buybacks 🤑
Zillow has been buying houses, increasing their value on the site, and raising home prices in the area.
They often sit empty
Is grotesque what capitalists will do
The systwmic issue of money in politics is never addressed in Klein's abundance book. It doesn't address the current circumstances either.
Worse now with an unstable government and the dollar losing it's value by the day.
Why would a well off person live there if everything's shutting down?
https://frontiergroup.org/articles/the-problems-of-abundance/
Priorities.
Not buying it.
Arizona was 5th. Colorado and WA were up there too.
New York led average units per building by almost 2.5x over the next state.
Damn auto correct...
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2024/01/04/minneapolis-land-use-reforms-offer-a-blueprint-for-housing-affordability
2) Is banning Airbnb not equivalent to adding a bunch of new housing units to the housing market?
2) No. Hotels, motels already exist. And perhaps not a complete ban, but significant regulation is in order.
a) https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4629628
b) https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/research/market-rate-development-impacts/
2) I meant that if banning Airbnb is a good thing because it brings more units to the market, then we can also get that effect through new construction
2) there’s a good argument for regulating but not banning AirBnb-type short term rentals. The impact (depending on area) is about 1% $125/mo of rent
https://hbr.org/2024/02/what-does-banning-short-term-rentals-really-accomplish
Libertarian leftists are willing to give a bit more power to private companies if it means allowing regular people the personal freedom to build affordable housing products on their own land
Like the overall concept of "the government should do more" is great, but Klein gets a lot wrong in his assessment of some of these issues in service of making a conservative argument for deregulation
Like, we aren't talking about perfection here and sure the process could be improved. But it's also quite an important process given that we know what happens without it.
Ezra Klein, on the other hand, seems to think that we hamstring government regulation and make them less effective at dealing with that corruption because regulations to stop that corruption slows things down too much
That would be my main contention with his otherwise solid goal framework
Also, because would have to admit that capitalism actually works in some circumstances.
It's definitely not enough...
(never)
We on the left need work together to ensure we are able to get stuff done in a progressive and meaningful way.
So they team up with Conservatives to sabotage it.
High speed cross country rail would help bring us together.
So-called "abundance" is really just trickle-down economics but for stuff instead of money.
"If we build enough houses, surely the owners of those houses will reduce the cost to buy or rent them."
Why would they?
Austin and Minneapolis are actual case studies today in: supply up, rents down.
If that happens, a bunch of private equity firms will roll in, buy up property, throw up a bunch of shitty houses and apartments as cheaply as possible and charge high rent for them.
(cont)
Even if many of the units sit empty, the rent they charge will be high enough to compensate. They may even get tax breaks by submitting the empty units as a business loss.
Capitalism will never solve social problems.
(cont)
"You can't more housing for people because someone, somewhere might make money."
If it isn't dismantling capitalism hard enough, it should be opposed.
We have a lot of homes and apartments sitting unoccupied right now that people could be living in if we introduced rent controls and real consequences for letting them sit empty.
That's not a controversial statement
Is it more important to you to prevent someone from making a profit, or to house people?
"Deregulation" just means making it legal to build apartments, mostly
No idea…
They are all Reagan Republicans, which with today's Overton window are considered centrist Democrats.
This is part of the broader re-alignment occurring where the parties are sorting on economic literacy.
But the book itself is very sensible
Claiming the govt bureaucracy can be streamlined is controversial to some people, though.
Not always requiring DEI or environmental impact studies on every level of every govt project is controversial to some.
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-real-path-to-abundance/
Not like it matters now...
Left and right, most people are operating with the equivalent of marketing jingles substituting for thought.
We just got lucky our default design is reasonably dense suburban sprawl. But I wouldn't call it urbanism.
Couldn’t possibly be that weaponizing discretionary approval for the most obvious planning decisions is a breeding ground for corruption 🤔
Kind of the anti - Japan: build whatever wherever, sprawl like crazy and hollow out cities, but housing is cheap and plentiful.
"Lord, thy will be done ...on my neighbor's cows."
I don't know them all, but here's one thoughtful article.
https://jacobin.com/2025/03/abundance-klein-thompson-book-review
In this case though, the linked article even admits in its conclusion that the book is fine and the author has no useful criticism to offer.
Your description of the conclusion is mot accurate.
Ex:Do we want Dems behind deregulation as a policy priority? Nothing good has come of that. But if you want that, say so.
I don't think Klein has ever been much of an environmentalist. The environment is in bad shape!
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-real-path-to-abundance/
Here is someone addressing your claim.
https://ceqaworks.org/ceqa-and-housing/
Republicans are tearing down NEPA and other protections nationwide for the same reasons - better for business.
Nuclear power is an industry disaster. See: Vogtle nuke massive cost overruns & delays.
Those are the exact things the seditious party of traitors are destroying while they are, in fact, the greediest, most racist bastards in U.S. history
2- Dems have been just as responsible for bad policy that hobbles the ability to achieve their own stated objectives.
They are Reagan Centrists who want to blame regulations for all the problems, when they are the same ones financing the lobbies writing the regulations.