[ganeumann]

Part of the argument here is that if government regulation has created artificial scarcity: if market forces were at work then more living spaces would be built.

On the other hand, the market isn't everything, especially in the near-term. The market, for instance, won't create diversity in the city; it will create a monoculture of whatever is working that decade. So, right now, in SF, it will create a monoculture of tech workers as, in Manhattan, it almost created a monoculture of finance workers in the '80s/'90s. Monocultures lack resilience and if NYC hadn't traded its finance economy for a tourist-driven one, it could have been hard times. Booms and busts may be okay from a Liberal philosophy point of view, but it's hell on the people caught in it.

The other thing about diversity is it's part of the reason people move somewhere in the first place. One of the reasons tech has moved from the Valley up into SF is that SF has more diversity, so it's not all tech all the time. It would make sense to try to preserve what it was you wanted in the first place (even if, a la any gentrifying neighborhood, it may be a bit of a lost cause.)

[rosser]

Part of the argument here is that if government regulation has created artificial scarcity...

Is NIMBY-ism "government regulation"?

[kd0amg]

I would expect government regulation to be a common strategy for people who want to keep certain things from being built near them.

[tomkarlo]

NYC traded finance for tourism? Something like 1/3 of the cit is still employed in jobs tied to the financial industry (and it pays over half the wages in Manhattan). I literally can't remember knowing a single person working in tourism when I lived there.