The only downside to this plan is it gives local governments an incentive to jack up the required permits, requirements and fees to increase revenue, waved away under "well, no one actually has to do those things, everyone just pays and gets it over with," while at the same time saying "it isn't too expensive to build! Look, you can do it for as low as X!" The end result would likely be a 20 year wait at the lower price or a staggeringly large fee to build now. That this would benefit large, wealthy and connected developers at the expense of everything else would be a feature for those making the rules.
I was really hoping this would be an analysis of theme park "skip the line" systems, as theme parks are a hobby of mine. Even if it ended up just being more housing stuff, I don't think I'll ever tire of the subject, so it was still an enjoyable read.
I believe that's called "bribery". Local governments aren't businesses that can rightfully charge more money for better service. An important part of a legitimate democracy is that government treats all citizens equally - you should not be able to buy better service from the government with more money.
This is not to say that these kinds of problems shouldn't be solve in some other way - just that asking for bribes is not the solution.
I don't see how this is a useful suggestion. It seems like a solution to the nonexistent (or not significant) problem of how to do economically efficient permitting quicker not the real political problem of getting ppl (the most influential of which are hurt by development) to approve a better system. Charitably those ppl want to be really sure no environmental harms or quality of life harms occur, uncharitably they want to extract greater rents by limiting development. Neither reason would give them cause to support this proposal.
Tactically speaking this has awful optics. Whatever the truth it's dreadfully easy to spin it as letting the rich buy their way out of complying with the law.
Enough people actively favor the current delay ridden system that it persists despite the many reasons to streamline it. If you can't get enough support to just for the easy sell of makimg it quick how do you get the support for this much harder political sell?
I don't think this is so exotic--lots of public services already work this way. In the UK, you can pay extra to have your visa application expedited, for example.
why not putting the onus on the bureaucrats. i submit my file, in line with requirements, and if you don't come back within X months i can start breaking ground.
You discovered the reason that nuclear power is expensive. A 4-5 billion dollar reactor project is held up in endless lawsuits for 15+ years, which leads to ~200 million in additional financing interest costs every year, and then environimbys claim that the entire energy source is “uneconomic.”
Many municipalities provide special exemptions to developers in exchange for making a certain percentage of the units low-income housing (inclusionary zoning).
The optics of low-income housing requirements seem better than direct cash payments. You can imagine the latter would be referred to as bribery.
This is pretty much how it works now, isn't it? The city has onerous regulations for land-use, but it will give a special-use permit if a deal can be worked out with the developer. This deal usually involves building a park, or repairing roads, or even just a cash payment. It isn't labelled a "skip the line pass", but it is similar.
In 1890's Chicago, they had something similar called the "boodle ordinance", used whenever the aldermen needed extra funds.
"Some people barely mind waiting, but others are truly desperate to get a move on."
I kind of buy this, but I think there are social costs. It definitely degrades the "we are in this together" vibe.
Furthermore, if you do it wrong it can be off putting to everyone. Disney has had a lot of issues with this.
"Housing regulation has the same problem."
My town upped the hookup fee for utilities, which is in effect like this. If you can pay the hookup fee, you can get fast tracked. Note though that this acts like a fixed cost and encourages UMC SFH building.
" local governments can use the piles of extra money they extract to fund better government services or cut property taxes for existing residents."
Eh, it depends on your local government. When we got a COVID windfall about 50% went to good stuff and about 50% went to pork.
"not rational self-interest, but status quo bias, economic illiteracy, innumeracy, and sheer paranoia"
No
"Demand multiple hearings. Require studies of environmental, parking, and traffic effects. Extend the time frame of the study to make sure you’re not missing anything. Ask for revisions. When the revisions arrive, demand new studies."
A mixed used commercial/residental development downtown has been stuck in limbo for ten years since the "slow growth" mayoral candidate won. There is a big mayoral election in which the "pro growth (you would call them NIMBY shitheads since they don't endorse libertarian growth for good reasons) election candidates got endorsement from the Republican Party which is a break from the non-partisan norms of local elections. They endorse the development since it won't burden local schools which is the big bottleneck around here. There is also controversy because the left leaning town council rejected the highway bypass that would have relieved traffic that is the main gripe of the NIMBY sentiment.
None of these candidate would pass your ideological test, but one is trying to develop intelligently and one is trying to stop all development. It doesn't surprise me which party each affiliated with. When we had Christmas last year the chorus sung in masks because the mayor requested it even though nobody else did. Fear and safetyism all the way down.
Environmental engineer here. I don’t do housing, I don’t do highways, I don’t do office buildings. Every project I work on is environmental protection of one sort or another. NIMBYs are our second worst problem. As usual they don’t really care about the environment, they just want us to do it somewhere else even though it’s their pollution we’re cleaning up.
But if NIMBYs are only second worst who is worst? The Greens: Sierra Club, NRDC, WWF, etc., etc. etc. The NIMBYs provide the infantry but the greens provide the intellectual power firepower.
Everything costs three times what it should cost and takes five times as long.
Given you link a modest proposal it's possible you are being sarcastic but I also don't understand how this would even work. I mean it's not like a project which destroys the habit of some endangered species or creates some other negative externality can be unbuilt.
And if paying the greater fee means you can ignore such worries then the moral hazard is obvious.
Now if it was a serious proposal you'd want to have some kind of trust established as massive insurance in case the building was found to cause certain kinds of harms (in which case they pay some huge damages). But my concern here is that such deciscions are often likely to be insufficiently objective ultimately resting on assumptions that reasonable ppl can disagree about. That's fine if done beforehand and you have nuetral adjudicators but after fact it's unworkable. Either big companies can just avoid paying the insurance payout by being the ones who tie everything up in court until the other side lacks funds to proceed or I worry the system will be too vulnerable to populist attacks in an attempt to raid the big piggy bank.
Let's say I have a house overlooking the ocean that I've owned for 50 years. My neighbor sells his house, basically identical to mine, to a developer. Developer wants to build a mansion, so pays the 10x fee to be able to build and preclude my ability to delay his project. Your skip the line permit process uses the government to "accurately" assess the costs imposed by the project. But I do not receive any direct benefit, while I endure the majority of the direct cost. A loser pays system would seem to me to be far more efficient.
The only downside to this plan is it gives local governments an incentive to jack up the required permits, requirements and fees to increase revenue, waved away under "well, no one actually has to do those things, everyone just pays and gets it over with," while at the same time saying "it isn't too expensive to build! Look, you can do it for as low as X!" The end result would likely be a 20 year wait at the lower price or a staggeringly large fee to build now. That this would benefit large, wealthy and connected developers at the expense of everything else would be a feature for those making the rules.
I was really hoping this would be an analysis of theme park "skip the line" systems, as theme parks are a hobby of mine. Even if it ended up just being more housing stuff, I don't think I'll ever tire of the subject, so it was still an enjoyable read.
I believe that's called "bribery". Local governments aren't businesses that can rightfully charge more money for better service. An important part of a legitimate democracy is that government treats all citizens equally - you should not be able to buy better service from the government with more money.
This is not to say that these kinds of problems shouldn't be solve in some other way - just that asking for bribes is not the solution.
I don't see how this is a useful suggestion. It seems like a solution to the nonexistent (or not significant) problem of how to do economically efficient permitting quicker not the real political problem of getting ppl (the most influential of which are hurt by development) to approve a better system. Charitably those ppl want to be really sure no environmental harms or quality of life harms occur, uncharitably they want to extract greater rents by limiting development. Neither reason would give them cause to support this proposal.
Tactically speaking this has awful optics. Whatever the truth it's dreadfully easy to spin it as letting the rich buy their way out of complying with the law.
Enough people actively favor the current delay ridden system that it persists despite the many reasons to streamline it. If you can't get enough support to just for the easy sell of makimg it quick how do you get the support for this much harder political sell?
I don't think this is so exotic--lots of public services already work this way. In the UK, you can pay extra to have your visa application expedited, for example.
why not putting the onus on the bureaucrats. i submit my file, in line with requirements, and if you don't come back within X months i can start breaking ground.
Exactly. What's needed is a "shall issue" rule on a short time leash.
You discovered the reason that nuclear power is expensive. A 4-5 billion dollar reactor project is held up in endless lawsuits for 15+ years, which leads to ~200 million in additional financing interest costs every year, and then environimbys claim that the entire energy source is “uneconomic.”
Many municipalities provide special exemptions to developers in exchange for making a certain percentage of the units low-income housing (inclusionary zoning).
The optics of low-income housing requirements seem better than direct cash payments. You can imagine the latter would be referred to as bribery.
#teamyimby
This is pretty much how it works now, isn't it? The city has onerous regulations for land-use, but it will give a special-use permit if a deal can be worked out with the developer. This deal usually involves building a park, or repairing roads, or even just a cash payment. It isn't labelled a "skip the line pass", but it is similar.
In 1890's Chicago, they had something similar called the "boodle ordinance", used whenever the aldermen needed extra funds.
"Some people barely mind waiting, but others are truly desperate to get a move on."
I kind of buy this, but I think there are social costs. It definitely degrades the "we are in this together" vibe.
Furthermore, if you do it wrong it can be off putting to everyone. Disney has had a lot of issues with this.
"Housing regulation has the same problem."
My town upped the hookup fee for utilities, which is in effect like this. If you can pay the hookup fee, you can get fast tracked. Note though that this acts like a fixed cost and encourages UMC SFH building.
" local governments can use the piles of extra money they extract to fund better government services or cut property taxes for existing residents."
Eh, it depends on your local government. When we got a COVID windfall about 50% went to good stuff and about 50% went to pork.
"not rational self-interest, but status quo bias, economic illiteracy, innumeracy, and sheer paranoia"
No
"Demand multiple hearings. Require studies of environmental, parking, and traffic effects. Extend the time frame of the study to make sure you’re not missing anything. Ask for revisions. When the revisions arrive, demand new studies."
A mixed used commercial/residental development downtown has been stuck in limbo for ten years since the "slow growth" mayoral candidate won. There is a big mayoral election in which the "pro growth (you would call them NIMBY shitheads since they don't endorse libertarian growth for good reasons) election candidates got endorsement from the Republican Party which is a break from the non-partisan norms of local elections. They endorse the development since it won't burden local schools which is the big bottleneck around here. There is also controversy because the left leaning town council rejected the highway bypass that would have relieved traffic that is the main gripe of the NIMBY sentiment.
None of these candidate would pass your ideological test, but one is trying to develop intelligently and one is trying to stop all development. It doesn't surprise me which party each affiliated with. When we had Christmas last year the chorus sung in masks because the mayor requested it even though nobody else did. Fear and safetyism all the way down.
Environmental engineer here. I don’t do housing, I don’t do highways, I don’t do office buildings. Every project I work on is environmental protection of one sort or another. NIMBYs are our second worst problem. As usual they don’t really care about the environment, they just want us to do it somewhere else even though it’s their pollution we’re cleaning up.
But if NIMBYs are only second worst who is worst? The Greens: Sierra Club, NRDC, WWF, etc., etc. etc. The NIMBYs provide the infantry but the greens provide the intellectual power firepower.
Everything costs three times what it should cost and takes five times as long.
My point is, it’s not just housing.
Given you link a modest proposal it's possible you are being sarcastic but I also don't understand how this would even work. I mean it's not like a project which destroys the habit of some endangered species or creates some other negative externality can be unbuilt.
And if paying the greater fee means you can ignore such worries then the moral hazard is obvious.
Now if it was a serious proposal you'd want to have some kind of trust established as massive insurance in case the building was found to cause certain kinds of harms (in which case they pay some huge damages). But my concern here is that such deciscions are often likely to be insufficiently objective ultimately resting on assumptions that reasonable ppl can disagree about. That's fine if done beforehand and you have nuetral adjudicators but after fact it's unworkable. Either big companies can just avoid paying the insurance payout by being the ones who tie everything up in court until the other side lacks funds to proceed or I worry the system will be too vulnerable to populist attacks in an attempt to raid the big piggy bank.
Isn't this just corruption?
Let's say I have a house overlooking the ocean that I've owned for 50 years. My neighbor sells his house, basically identical to mine, to a developer. Developer wants to build a mansion, so pays the 10x fee to be able to build and preclude my ability to delay his project. Your skip the line permit process uses the government to "accurately" assess the costs imposed by the project. But I do not receive any direct benefit, while I endure the majority of the direct cost. A loser pays system would seem to me to be far more efficient.