Pandas only evolutionary advantage is being adorable. It is like cows being delicious - without that, they’d simply cease to be.

Holy duck I love pandas.

Cool. I’m down with that.

No minimum parking, no height limit, no maximum FAR, no maximum unit count.

yeah get rid of these next and you’re set.

It’s gonna take a lot of work, man. The regulatory capture here is extreme.

Everyone wants to point to capitalism for this, but this is what happens when you kneecap any economic system. That’s why it’s all over the world.

This is specifically about Australia, but essentially all 3 parts of this piece (and related linked essays) sum up how to solve the housing crisis worldwide.

https://theemergentcity.substack.com/p/how-to-solve-housing-unaffordability

Boils down to:

1: change zoning laws to allow more multifamily construction

2: remove incentives for homeownership and generally disincentivize single family homes

3: build for density in ways that reinforce and support density

If you want more info, basically every mainstream economist in the world agrees this is the solution, and that this is a manufactured problem. It’s a result of regulatory capture by homeowners, essentially. There are many, many papers about it.

Here’s an easily-digestible article

https://www.businessinsider.com/economist-how-to-fix-america-housing-crisis-rural-cities-2022-10

And a well-cited study in an economic journal:

https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2022/12/30/the-economics-of-the-housing-shortage/

All these sources agree, because this is the solution. Realistically, the only bad solutions are subsidizing more demand via things like rent control - these will only make our problems worse, kind of like how adding more lanes to a highway doesn’t fix traffic.

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Unironically the answer is “shop less.”

Prices on goods rise when demand for goods stays sufficient to support the price going up. The less everyone buys, the less things will cost.

Prices for goods have almost nothing to do with the price of rent, but the mechanisms there are the same - it’s just that you have to encourage building rather than “live somewhere less” because the second option really isn’t tenable, for obvious reasons.

If you want rent to come down, campaign for, vote for, or even run for office to be the candidate that will change zoning laws and encourage building multifamily housing.

She is clearly trolling Fox News by pretending to be a psychic.

Gonna hard pass on the entirety of having a female reproductive system. More trouble than it’s worth imo.

VC money is meant to crush the competition and lock in the consumer to charge rent.

This is not anything close to correct lol. VCs specifically do not invest in mature companies or they aren’t VCs.

Why would any commercial real estate firm allow affordable housing to exist when they can scalp it on investment properties and leave them empty? Why build affordable housing when the margins are small?

All housing built helps other housing come affordable because it increases supply. You are correct that there is little purpose intentionally building less valuable housing

My hope would be that we can transition peacefully to a hybrid model with the rising power of unions, gradual emergence of worker cooperatives, and increased demand for socialized health care and affordable housing.

None of this has anything to do with capitalism tho.

Like, capitalism can and should be the economic engine driving these positive outcomes.

Father Christmas by The Kinks is my all-time favorite Christmas song.

https://youtu.be/fPPCPqDINEk?si=8V0_zTG1MOv2luIx

I have a very weird history with and a love/hate relationship with Christmas, but this song is always atop every Christmas playlist I’ve ever made.

I am amazing at geography, so that’s not an issue.

The real problem is getting around once you land, and I can say with absolute confidence that is universal.

Right? So many unique challenges lol

One reason it’s dangerous for me to drink in the UK is that everyone from the UK sounds like a small child to an American.

So yeah, big language differences. Some soccer hooligan would get all mad at the telly about his footy and I’d end up being stabbed for laughing.

There was this PC FMV game back in the early 90’s where there’s this woman doing all kinds of things that gets herself killed and all you do is flip the right switches at the right time and enter 3 digit codes.

This sounds similar to Night Trap.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Trap

Straight up one of the most legitimately difficult games ever on that system too. Dark souls from a bygone era.

One of the proudest days of my youth gaming career was beating Eternal Champions. The environment-based fatalities were incredible.

Cyborg kickboxer dude and the weird cane-staff guy were both OP as fuck, but the future cop guy’s ranged stun was amazing for longevity.

Oh my god I loved this as a kid, and had a shitload of the toys, and from my late teens on I’ve been trying like hell to figure out what this show/line of toys was!!!

Thank you for posting this today. Gonna show my kids. This is so wild.

My favorite quote on fanaticism applies here:

“Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim” - George Santayana

You’re not going to hurt my feelings by using words improperly lol