Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

This is not helpful, funny, or intelligent. It’s a child’s rant about the world.

At the end of the day, the reason more housing isn’t built is that the incentives are greater to not build it. You can build a high rise with shoebox apartments that have to be aggressively managed and make a profit. Or you can build a high rise with half the units, higher reoccurring revenue and less hassle and make 2x the immediate profit.

At the end of the day as long as there is demand for more expensive housing that’s what’s going to get built.



I thought it was funny. And sad.

The incentives you're talking about -- they're missing because of NIMBYist overregulation. The whole point of NIMBYism is to use regulation to hamstring the positive incentives in the market. "There's demand for twenty units here but the place is zoned for a single unit." or "There's demand for twenty units but the city demands that if we build a multitenant unit, we have to do a twenty-year environmental survey first".

Do you live in a place with a homeless crisis. Guess what: You're a citizen and you have some agency. Democracy can be a backstop to "pure" (or mis-regulated) market forces. I, for one, enjoy clean drinking water (and also: a good deal from a healthy competitive market).


I really want to see a whole town built in US out of commie block style high rises or Chinese dystopian ant nests, and how quickly it will devolve into a ghetto, because there’s no authoritarian arm to keep it in check.


The typical counterpoint to this NIMBYism isn't, communism, but rather most of Texas (where there's loosening zoning law) or West Virginia (where there's abundant poverty and social problems but also abundant housing).


So Manhattan with less brick and more modern insulation?




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: