Thread by @tznkai

I'm not sure this works. Letting people live places is certainly best, but I'm not sure that personally approving every neighbor is required if the free rider problem is solved.

https://twitter.com/sbuss/status/1364311973471481858

Which is to say the problem isn't just zoning for single family housing, the problem is that people aren't paying enough for the privilege of zoning for single family housing.

I'm too tired to explain this properly but the idea here is that neighboring property owners have legitimate interests in the neighborss but not one that should be enforced with a costless veto.

That having been said if someone wants to convert the neighboring houses into low income housing, sounds good to me.

Ok with the benefit of some sleep here's I think the proposition I am rejecting is. Between this and the original tweet, the position is

"you don't support inclusive zoning policy unless you personally support anyone building anything by you"

https://twitter.com/sbuss/status/1364311973471481858

So there are two dimensions to it: One is a fairly extreme hypocrisy test. If you're not willing to personally bear the full costs of X, you do not/can not support X.

The other is full libertarianism on property rights.

This goes beyond "let homeless people live places."

Sorry, QT'd the wrong tweet.

https://twitter.com/sbuss/status/1364330252076425219?s=20

To me the essence of NIMBYism is the notion that thing X is good or necessary, but there's no reason that *I* should have to bear the costs, whether real or comically low. This is what binds the people objecting to windmills blocking their view to the people rejecting a landfill.

And because of the way incumbent interests are overrepresented, that ends up with no one building anything in anyone's backyard and/or everything being built in the backyards of the people with the least power.

That's why I think NIMBYism is best conceptualized as a combination of veto points and the free rider problem. There's nothing inherently wrong with valuing the aesthetic and tourism revenue of historic buildings. It's ridiculous to burden the property owner with all the costs.

Honestly, my sympathies are for full libertarianism with regards to property rights, and my instinct is that if someone in my neighborhood wants to, say, start a pig farm in a suburb, let them start a pig farm. But pig farms are actually noxious.

(None of these things are truly analogous to low income housing or homeless shelters and that's my point, I want to examine the principle as a whole not the specific proposed building purpose)

I don't think I have to assume that at all. Highly restrictive zoning as controlled by the most annoying incumbents is what solution we've chosen, but we could have thrown this whole thing to nuisance torts and/or negotiations. I think we should.

https://twitter.com/BusinessmanLego/status/1364587530000109571?s=20

There's also moving the general approval of useful things up a zoom level, and then forcing the component jurisdictions to take their fair share, which is sort of a inter-neighborhood negotiation, e.g., the city is approving 1000 units, every muni has to build 10.

There are buildings that have costs and there are buildings that have de minimis costs and there are buildings that people think have real costs but are bullshit and there are buildings that have real costs that I just think are bullshit, and there are aesthetics.

How do we sort through whether those costs are real or bullshit without giving into incumbent vetoes? I think a two step model, the first of which is you can have whatever you want /if/ you pay enough for it.

So if the county needs to put a landfill somewhere the neighborhoods bid on what their compensation and insurance requirements are to take that thing

And the second is to use suits as a backstop. If you insist that the fair price of you taking low income housing is a pony for every resident, then at some point someone can sue and demonstrate by evidence to a judge that low-income housing is not, in fact, terrible.

The implicit deal of full libertarianism on property rights is that we all get to do whatever we want on our own property and that any costs that come from that are nonexistant or meaningless and uh, that's not how the air works it turns out.

So whatever my sympathies, people reject it, and I think we need to acknowledge that on some level they have legitimate interests against neighboring property owners even if their motivations are nonsensical as they often are.

And to go back up to the hypocrisy point, I don't think we get out of incumbency veto points by telling people they might as well be a NIMBY if they fall short of full libertarianism.

OK, this whole thread was still pretty rambly but it's better than tweeting after staying up late to work.

Let that be a lesson to, uh, me.