Migration, Housing, and Beyond
My new Accelerated Globalists podcast
In this three-part Accelerated Globalists interview, I discuss migration, housing, and their interaction.
Big Picture: When you combine strict housing regulation with high immigration, you naturally get higher prices. The same goes, of course, for strict housing regulation with high tourism. As the intro econ textbook propounds: Low supply plus high demand equals high prices.
But to regard this as a good argument against immigration (or tourism) is laughable (or would be, in a world where laughable arguments got laughed at instead of enacted). If lots of people love living in (or visiting) your area, that is a reason to build lots of housing for mutual benefit. Insiders benefit by supplying the housing; outsiders benefit by demanding the housing. High demand is an opportunity, not a plague.
Shouldn’t we weigh the externalities? Sure. And if you do, you will soon discover that the positive externalities of development almost always outweigh the negative externalities, so restrictive housing regulation is even worse than simple supply-and-demand models say. As I explain in my notes:
Big Problem #4, the biggest problem of all: These defenses only consider the negative externalities of construction, but there are also enormous positive externalities!
1. How do we know? Actions speaker louder than words: You can escape almost all negative externalities by living in a remote rural location, but almost no one chooses to do so.
2. Prices show that the NET value of all the benefits of density minus all of the costs of density is strongly positive.
3. What are the positive externalities? Work, consumption, and social opportunities.
Want to hear more? Here are the three parts of the latest BBB interviews:
This, to me, is the heart of what is wrong with the "open boarders" argument, as opposed to "open borders".
"If lots of people love living in (or visiting) your area ..."
I'd love to have more immigrants and tourists, but only of the voluntary category. When they are enticed by welfare, free room and board and spending cash, and absolution of their past, present, and future crimes, and brag how their allegiance is to their home country and not their new country -- they do not "love" living in my area.
The worst are the refugees who are flown in and "settled" without being given a lot of choice, don't like where they end up, and their end-result communities don't get any say either. They seem to make no effort to adjust to their new community, in fact just the opposite.
I don't want them, and they don't actually want to be here either, they are just in it for other people's money -- my money. I am especially disgusted with them getting elected and bragging that they are in office with the express goal of helping their home country, not their new country, the one they swore allegiance to, the one whose constitution they swore to uphold.
I am no big fan of "my country above all others" but I sure as heck am a fan of not giving my taxes to disruptive bums and criminals and foreigners whose only interest is my tax dollars and their home country.
This is not legal vs illegal immigrants. This is bums, criminals, and foreign loyalty against the natives.
It’s all about supply. We need more supply