I understand you have the opinion that people should be able to build as high as they want and that the capacity to house many many more people in desirable areas should theoretically bring housing costs down. I am saying your solution is a solution within a context that is like putting a bandage on a cancer. At the moment you applie the bandage some gains could be said to have been had, but soon enough the treatment will prove to have failed.
How do I see this playing out….. First of all it will be resisted. Now what you have done with that, as I refer to it, fact of human psychology that inevitably manifests in a competitive system, has been what looks to me to have been an attempt to shoot the messenger, me, as if the message was not a description of what I see, but my personal opinion. The only opinion I was expressing is that the solution you propose flys in the face of reality, that reality being that ‘we of the system’ have been trained to be selfish as the proper road to success. You are up against human genius of self interest.
Now of course I am not terribly bothered by your criticism personally, because all of the things I think I see in others I only see because of that quality you have accused me of lacking, introspection. One of the sacred cows that I lost and that lead to much suffering was the realization that I was little if not selfish and that all of the negatives I could see in others I used as a means to feel better about myself. Surprise surprise.
Sadly just because I can see something about myself I wish were otherwise does not instantly change it. It just makes it a waste of effort to deny. And the reason recognition alone does not cure one of such issues is because their origin lies in unconscious repressed memories that are a bitch to bring to the surface. In short then, I am the monster you describe but it’s not news to me.
Also, not sadly the NIMBYs are like that, but naturally they are like that. And that sadness is caused by the frustration of wanting people to change what the system demands them to be instead of the changing the system that drives that behavior competition instead of cooperation, or socialism vs what is essentially interpersonal warfare.
Now aside from the problem of overcoming NIMBY resistance, there is the issue if it is wise. Aside from all of the selfishness involved is there anything worthy about their fight? I think there is. They perceive that low density living is better than being densely packed. You seem to see no value in that opinion but I do. The whole wonder of life in my opinion lies in how intimately one can experience the natural world. I believe this kind of feeling if manifestcould be called a peek experience. Like enlightenment the experience of the joy of being can’t be had by reading words, perhaps with exception of poetry, but that’s hot a thingi for me. As I consistently maintain their value is known only to those who know them and the force of the joy they produce erases any doubt of their value. In short, the solution you aspire to, density inside vast stretches of tall buildings is ruinous to the natural aspirations of children exposed to both lifestyles of life. I know, then, to put it bluntly, that you are the monster because you think wonderfully well but don’t feel what you should be thinking about. A home without, shall we say, ‘soul’ may appear to be better than none but it will only transfer the unnameable misery that haunts humanity out of touch with its true self. So from your perspective this makes me an egotistical know it all and you, and you asleep, from my perspective but with the potential to awaken.
So, everything you see in the world, the misery of homelessness and poverty is much more deeply systemic than just a scarcity of housing. The search for desirability is the search for self satisfaction within. The proper answer to that in my opinion is to know the hearts true desire and to cooperate in the creation of that. This is why the religious pray, on Earth as it is in Heaven.
Your view, in my opinion, accepts the inevitability that desirability leading to increased housing costs can only be offset by increased building. I say the problem is much vaster, that the mess we are in is the product of the system we look anywhere else for fixing to avoid the real change we need. The problem is that in our system the way to win is to suppress any feelings of empathy for others.
Anyway enough, gotta go. But I don’t know why you don’t promote the obvious selfish answer to this. Tax land and not whatever property is on it and expand building heights to the moon.
@Greenman will be building as high as he can overnight. But sell early to lock in a price as sale prices and rents are sure to fall. I think the profit from selling a few hundred condos should get me my yacht.
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