Usually the YIMBY proposal is to take zoning decisions out of local hands, on the theory that at the municipal, regional, or state level addressing housing crisis can outweigh idiosyncratic NIMBY resistance. 1/
This proposal by @johnrmyers and @michael_hendrix flips that intuition on its head, arguing that at a sufficiently hyperlocal level, there are plenty of city blocks that would not object, that might for their own idiosyncratic reasons desire, “upzoning” of one form or another. 2/
If we enshrined a hyperlocal *option* to upzone, on terms agreed by immediate neighbors, would enough tiny sovereignties opt for granny flats or fourplexes to put a dent in housing supply bottlenecks? 3/
Market YIMBYs want distant governments to force localities to make owners of individual lots sovereign over land use. The status quo gives effective veto power to objectors within a sizeable catchment surrounding a change. 4/
Narrowing the size of the veto-empowered catchment, without eliminating it, is an interesting compromise. Those most affected by externalities retain their veto, discouraging neighborhood-capital destructive forms of “progress”. 5/
But a smaller population of stakeholders that needs to be won over renders it much more tractable to actually win over incumbents, when a change is not destructive, might even be desirable, from immediate neighbors’ perspective. Interesting. /fin
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the powerful have always had to self-censor. it’s a prerequisite of wielding power nondestructively. if you’re Fed chair, you don’t get to say what you think candidly in any context it might leak. presidents must be careful not to insult a wide range of delicate sensibilities. 1/
much of “cancel culture” comes from the fact power has become more divorced from formal public roles, so people who don’t understand that their institutional position demands self-censorship, who don’t think they’ve “signed up for this”, face the actual requirement of it. 2/
you thought you became a journalist to speak truth to power, to transgress, but once you’re at the NYT you wield power, and all the powerful, you must be careful about how you express your truths. you haven’t changed, but the social facts surrounding your words have. 3/
when the r/WSB guys realize their quarry is not high-short-interest hedge funds after all, but option writers and importantly their brokers, does that make them less or more enthusiastic about their games? 1/
so much of financial intermediation depends upon modeled distributions of asset price moves. what r/WSB did was basically to take direct control of some assets and make their prices move in ways to which the models would have given infinitesimal probability. 2/
if intermediaries update their models for much thicker tails, margin requirements become huge, and products like options become much more expensive. that would be disruptive. 3/
@chulsookim2@morganmz@ngpsu22 oh, you are absolutely right that falling housing prices would be extraordinarily disruptive, would break a lot of families’ (and investors’ and banks’) finances. that we’ve allowed this to emerge is precisely the problem. 1/
@chulsookim2@morganmz@ngpsu22 to become richer as a society, we want the price of housing, including high quality, desirable amenity housing, to fall. 2/
@chulsookim2@morganmz@ngpsu22 but we’ve created institutional arrangements under which increasing overall wealth in that very important way is financially and so politically intolerable to the more affluent part of our society, whose wealth is largely concentrated in homes. 3/
@ZeeshanAleem@ggreenwald@HeerJeet@ryangrim@sunraysunray There is often a strong tension between quality standards for individual pieces and quality of conversation. Imposing high quality standards at an individual piece level restricts participation, both between and within writers. 1/
@ZeeshanAleem@ggreenwald@HeerJeet@ryangrim@sunraysunray Within a writer, more good might come from publishing weak pieces with "half-baked" ideas that others can elaborate upon than imposing a high bar on her own writing's quality. 2/
@ZeeshanAleem@ggreenwald@HeerJeet@ryangrim@sunraysunray Between writers, if the standard for participation in a conversation is the beautiful craftsmanship that good editing can help to deliver, those who aren't institutionally placed to have such editing will be excluded, along with the contributions they might furnish. 3/
1. Control of the Senate, and thereby the full legislative branch of the United States government, for now.
2. The capacity to reform a judiciary "Constitutionally hardballed" with tremendous hypocrisy into a decades-long supermajority of Republican appointees at its highest level.
i am very torn about this stuff, but the issue i don't think @ggreenwald addresses is that leaks themselves constitute a form of selective editing, and an "in the public interest standard" has to consider that, even regarding authentic material. 1/ greenwald.substack.com/p/article-on-j…
if (not saying this is the case here and now, but if) one political faction is much more capable of unearthing competitors' private materials than others, when is it in the public interest to cover even the authentic material released? 2/
records of private, "candid" conversations will include things that would be discreditable in a public context, even when actions ultimately taken may be innocent. 3/