Paul Coelho

you was told, you was

I’ll make it simple, just for you. Social things are related; justice and destroying oil companies are related. Physical things are unrelated; renewables and fossil fuel production are unrelated.

Don’t make me tap the sign.

bsky.app/profile/indi...

Tear down the wall.
Open the borders.

One reason it is not capturing the public imagination is because of conceit. You claim it stops climate change, but the electorate has been lied to for so long that that lie does not fool even one voter. They know full well the only way is to stop big oil, and renewables don’t do that.

I had all those symptoms, but did not identify the disease until I became a boomer.

touche

You have to change things in the right order. YIMBYs have 4 or 5 things they want to change, none of which include lower prices or fewer cars. Instead, they claim those things will magically lead to lower prices and fewer cars. I think it was real estate investors that came up with those things.

You are talking the same 4 or 5 things that Ezra Klein talks.

Specifics are not appropriate in this context, and yet YIMBYs exist in this context. I'm a universalist, so I understand one size fits all, that is the only thing the state can do, does not address the specifics. Only cities can address the specifics.

It happens less so if real estate investors have to jump through hoops, such as zones designated as high quality affordable.

Deregulation allows real estate investors to decide what gets built. And real estate investors will never fund any housing that is not as much above market value as they can get away with.

I think local governments are way more democratic than state government. Cities tend to make ideal deals, whereas states tend to advantage those that spend the most on campaigns.

I'm a retired computer engineer, so I understand how beneficial standardization is. I imagine regulation is like standardization; they both cause all companies to do some things the same. To anthropomorphize, they are like discipline necessary for all creative endeavors.

I'm a universalist. In general, diversity is better than monoculture. Personally, allowing cities to keep single family homes while simultaneously building density worked out well for me. But I'm too humble to think a city with a HSR station in the central valley could be anything like my city.

I'm the first to agree the USof$ democracy is imperfect. The question is whether it is more or less democratic to give the state power over the cities. Whenever I notice a travesty, such as Ford abandoning Richmond for Milpitas, or Chevron setting up shop in Richmond, I ask who it benefits.

I disagree.

It's complicated.

The stated goals of YIMBYs, such as banning cars from cities, are good, but how they go about it is just more deregulation, which is bad.

Apologies to the blind community. I could have stated that differently, but left to their own devices, brainless corporations would make cities hostile to the blind.

For companies that do more good than harm, we have to create fertile ground for them by weeding out some of the ones that do more harm than good. It is the blind faith in real estate investment companies that I object to.

My community is as close as any to what YIMBYs imagine SB 79 will produce. Most corporations in the USof$ do more harm than good. Even some European companies, such as Siemens, are too big to succeed. To survive, the electorate will have to deliberately destroy some of the worst ones.

fair

Exclusionary was the bad old days. Zoning is different now. Now, there are plans to destroy some of the parking lots around the Shark Tank. What slowed that was allowing corporations to put their name on it.

physics

Your third places are last century. My third place is busses, light rail, and caltrain.

I chose high density on principle, and there are big plans to partner with Google to make it even higher density.

Well, you can't go back to the good old days, either. Use for good the zoning that was abused in the past.

No one takes transit from one residential community to another residential community. SB 79 mandates that every zone around transit is residential.

What makes it difficult for locals, is you demanding that they pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Progressive property taxes will allow Mamdani to bring fresh food to food deserts. Without zoning, grocery corporations will prohibit progressive property taxation.