Highlights from My *Reason* Interview
Talking *Build, Baby, Build* with Christian Britschgi
I had a fun conversation with Reason’s Christian Britschgi about my new Build, Baby, Build. Here’s the transcript. A few highlights:
Q: You make the strong case that ending zoning and most building regulations is a panacea that will solve so many of our problems. Why that is?
A: I am careful to not say "solve" because solve sounds like 100 percent. What I will say is it's like a panacea because it makes a big dent in a bunch of problems that often we think of as just individually unsolvable. The idea that there's one policy that can go and work some magic on all of them simultaneously is hard to believe. But that is my story.
Here’s my shout-out to Case and Deaton:
If you're really worried about non-college males and how they're faring and how they haven't really adapted well to a service sector economy or office jobs, here we've got a way to go and create a lot of additional traditional masculine, non-college jobs. And once again, because it is still a very large industry, this isn't just like doubling employment in chewing gum.
And:
Q: Your book presents big cities as bright, fun, futuristic places. How much of the case for cities rests on the aesthetic case and the economic arguments are secondary?
A: For me the economics is definitely primary. This is why I wanted to do this issue. But I was very mindful of the fact that for a lot of people, it's just the aesthetics that are bothering them.
I think most people can get used to a lot of different aesthetics, but the status quo bias is so strong that if you're used to things looking a certain way, not having skyscrapers around Central Park, then it's easy to convince yourself this is the only good way for things to look.
What I wanted to do in this book was to fight aesthetics with aesthetics and say, "Look, you're so convinced it's going to look bad. Let me get my artist to go and draw looking good, and maybe that will open up your mind."
Despite the glaring facts that (a) income never predicted voting well, and (b) higher income now probably predicts lower Republican voting, many people remain convinced that the foundation of NIMBYism is objective self-interest. So wrong.
Q: A common accusation you hear is that people who oppose new housing are just trying to selfishly prop up the value of their homes. You argue in the book that NIMBYs should support new housing out of self-interest. Why is that?
A: People's political views very reliably have almost nothing to do with their income or their station in life and almost everything to do with their high-level philosophy. If you think their high-level philosophy is just a smoke screen for objective self-interest, it just isn't.
Q: The book is fast-paced, it's optimistic, it's forward-looking. Would you describe yourself as optimistic on this issue? Do you think the YIMBY case will meaningfully change policy?
A: I'm a conditional optimist. The policy of [housing deregulation] will work wonders. I can't say that I'm really optimistic about it when coming anywhere close to winning. My prediction would be something like over the next 20 years, housing regulation will get 7 percent less bad. Of course, I love the idea that my book will start a political avalanche and everybody will read it and people wave it on the floor of Congress and 50 different state legislatures. There's actually a panel in the book where every Supreme Court justice is reading my book. I can dream.
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Despite the glaring facts that (a) income never predicted voting well, and (b) higher income now probably predicts lower Republican voting, many people remain convinced that the foundation of NIMBYism is objective self-interest. So wrong.
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I think this really misses the mark.
My experience has been that lots of professionals basically work for the government. This may be indirectly (as a contractor or as a company where government is a payer), but I would guess that most professionals today are basically dependent on the government for their income. That income can be quite high, and in many cases higher than it would otherwise be without the government!
So it's not obvious to me that people who make a lot of money would want say lower taxes, especially if their salaries depend on higher taxes. Do teachers vote against the school taxes? When tax cuts go directly to them (say the SALT deduction) people who ordinarily call for taxing the rich know how to butter their own bread.
The GOP basically represents the interest of the middle class uncredentialed and successful small time bourgeois.
BTW, for incomes above $100,000 Trump won 54/42 (60/39 among whites).
Among whites with *no degree* making $100k+ Trump won 73%.
Among whites with *a degree* making $100k+ Trump only got 51%.
People are voting their self interest, but in a world where almost 50% of GDP is government spending an incredible amount of "high income" people are basically government workers.
"Despite the glaring facts that (a) income never predicted voting well, and (b) higher income now probably predicts lower Republican voting, many people remain convinced that the foundation of NIMBYism is objective self-interest. So wrong."
I think there's a near mode/far mode issue here that challenges this line of reasoning. Most politics is far mode - your vote for taxes to go up or down is not going to affect whether your taxes go up or down, so you can vote to make yourself feel good, without actually giving anything up. Very far mode.
Zoning regulation is very local though. If a developer asks the city to turn the McMansion next to yours into a 15 dwelling walk up, posters get put up in your neighborhood and you can go to a meeting to make your voice heard. You can get a few of your neighbors together and materially affect the chances that the change will be made. Much more near mode than almost all other political issues.