[energy123]

It is a big problem in Democratic states like California, where the leftists (Dean Preston and other leftist NIMBYs) have allied themselves with homeowner liberals to make it impossible to build housing.

Republican states like Texas do a significantly better job, as you can see by looking at annual per capita new housing, and lower rental inflation.

There's a growing liberal movement to change this status quo but they're still not that influential beyond rhetorical support from some Dems.

[BryantD]

To be fair, Minnesota is getting it right and Washington is reluctantly stumbling in the right direction. However, I’m forced to agree on the general sentiment.

California is a bit embarrassing. We’ll see how the Builder’s Remedy and laws like SB 1123 play out, I suppose.

[xnx]

Is "blue state" / "red state" the right distinction, or "rich area" / "poor area"? Rich people anywhere will do all they can to keep their property values from going down.

[loudmax]

There is a proposal to build an apartment complex in my neighborhood in Northern Virginia. The houses that had Trump lawn signs up last year, now have lawn signs arguing to block the new housing (or "preserve the neighborhood's character").

NIMBYism is an economic issue, not a culture issue. It has far more to do with how much impact the new housing is expected to have on the value of people's property. Or more saliently, the equity they have in the property. If people expect that nearby housing will cut their $500k equity in half, they're likely to petition against it, regardless of whether their governor is a Republican or a Democrat.

NIMBY isn't red or blue, it's just fear and greed.

[sokoloff]

It’s part fear and greed, but also part rational and practical.

Increased housing nearby brings increased traffic, parking pressure, crowding, and noise, none of which are positives for current residents. Fear and greed don’t motivate renters to be NIMBY, yet we have NIMBY renters because of other factors.

[PaulHoule]

Housing costs in Texas are going up too: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/messing-with-texas-how-bi...

[detourdog]

North Adams Massachusetts has plenty of empty housing. There is a lot of vacant housing in Western Massachusetts.

[energy123]

Those are words that are low in epistemic legibility.

I look at metrics to arrive at my opinions. Things like the difference between the number of new housing per capita in various cities in California compared to Austin, Texas. Things like the R^2 when you do a linear regression of the amount of new housing per capita against changes in rental inflation.

[detourdog]

I can't really follow your comment but new housing costs a lot because we now have high standards for what can be legally rented for buildings with more than 5 units.

The housing I was describing as plentiful is a mixture of existing housing as either standalone or fewer than 5 units.

[queenkjuul]

> leftists

Lmao

[derelicta]

There are no leftists in the US. The people you are refering to a liberals, who are defacto identical to conservatives

[danaris]

Hi there! I live in the US. I am a leftist. I am in favor of prison abolition, universal basic income, massively increased taxation of the rich, and voting reform.

Care to explain why I either don't count or don't really exist?

[fragmede]

Because of the two party system, you have to either vote Democrat or Republican for your vote to count, so your actually leftist ideals, which are to the left of the centrist Democrat party, do not meaningfully exist as a voting block.

[danaris]

So the only political movements that you think are allowed to be said to exist in a country are those explicitly and broadly represented by a major party?

I mean, I guess that's a position you could take, but it seems like a pretty extreme one.

[CrossVR]

> prison abolition

Can we stop calling reform abolishment? I know it's more fun to call it abolishment because it triggers the people you disagree with, but it's entirely counter-productive.

I'm just getting so tired of these constant motte and bailey fallacies in US political discourse.

[dragonwriter]

> Can we stop calling reform abolishment?

People talking about "prison abolition" aren't talking about reform when they do.

Some people talking about prison abolition (but far from all, or even the majority) might also be willing to accept reform as an intermediate step or compromise, and might engage in discussion about the shape of reform that might be acceptable in that role, but that's secondary too, and not the focus of, their advocacy for abolition.

[krapp]

People use the word "abolition" not to trigger you but because it's the word they mean to use and because they explicitly don't believe in reform.

You may not respect it enough to take it seriously, but it is a position that some socialists hold.

[CrossVR]

Oh I take it seriously and I also agree that in the US there's a large population that's sent to prison for no good reason, with almost no attention paid to rehabilitation and treatment.

However I have doubts that, when people who hold that position come to power, El Chapo will be walking free with no restrictions the next morning.

Some form of restriction of movement will be required for frequent violent offenders. You may abolish the old system since you believe it's rotten to the core and you may call whatever replaces it something other than prison, but it will still be prison.

[dragonwriter]

> However I have doubts that, when people who hold that position come to power, El Chapo will be walking free with no restrictions the next morning.

"Prison" (carceral punishment) does not encompass all possible restrictions on personal freedom and movement. Even in systems with carceral punishment, other restrictions on freedom and movement are used for some situations, that do not involve incarceration.

[derelicta]

Because you very likely still defend capitalism and US hegemony

[danaris]

...Where on earth do you get that idea?

Of course, one does have to be careful with one's definitions when talking about "capitalism", because I've seen people mean everything from "the current, specific, late-stage capitalist system and nothing else" to "the basic concept of exchanging currency for goods and services" and everything in between. Personally, I'm in favor of abolishing the former and some of the stuff in the middle, but I'm skeptical that even in a fully post-scarcity society we would abandon the need for the latter.

As for US hegemony...I think that the current situation demonstrates very well why it's a serious problem. We're a single point of failure, and the polarization here has been rising for decades, leaving something like this all but inevitable. Indeed, even if someone like Trump had not come along and normalized hatred and fascism, we would still have likely been in a situation where every 4-8 years the US's policies on a wide range of things flipped violently back and forth.

No; while I fear that the transition will be very rocky, the world will be better off if a broader coalition of nations can collectively take up the role of attempting to enforce the notion of universal human rights across the globe. While they're at it, maybe they'll finally be able to get the US to agree to things like the UN Convention on Rights of the Child, and the authority of the International Criminal Court.

[energy123]

Dean Preston is a self-described socialist. A socialist is not a conservative.

[svantana]

His instagram bio reads "Housing advocate, democratic socialist", so if self-descriptions are taken as truth, it kinda undermines the whole point of the argument.

[CBarkleyU]

Well, but a self-described socialist might just not be a socialist.

[PaulHoule]

My guess is that a Chinese communist is not a leftist.