Donald Trump has promised to deport 15-20 million people and right now the GOP has PEPFAR in its crosshairs. Sam’s piece isn’t an argument, it’s completely divorced from reality.
I agree! This is one reason I'm always a bit suspicious of social housing. I don't know if allocating largesse to communities with the most political power is any better than doing it through the market.
I first heard about you from a podcast (perhaps with Jonah Goldberg). It inspired me to buy your book on fabrics, which in turn led me to this newsletter. Your book is one on my all time favorites.
I wonder why the backlash (and, in my view, overcorrection) against technocratic modernism from the middle of last century has lasted so long. It seems natural that there are cycles in political opinion, but usually the loop closes a lot faster. A great example is immigration: Americans kind of soured on immigration during the Obama years, then Trump's unnecessarily cruel approach made Americans more open to immigration, and now Biden's extremely laissez-faire approach has led to a huge backlash. This cycle took 10 years or so. But Americans still seem scarred by the terrible abuses of the "it's time to build" crowd from 50-75 years ago, and don't seem to have reacted against the restrictive zoning, excessive permitting, and public veto points that are making housing so expensive and low-quality.
The approach of the Biden immigration policy is not extremely laissez-faire but waving as many people through as possible and now that they are here, you will notice a big push for giving them the right to vote (blue of course). Part of the "Turn Texas Blue" push. If they had jobs, that would be one thing. But how many big blue cities are now not able to support their citizens because they are swamped with the wave of immigrants who do not work. There was at one point in time a requirement of immigrants that they have a person or organization that would be responsible for them if they were not able to support themselves (for 5 years?). Today it is the cities, and they are being buried under the load.
And then we have Trump threatening mass deportations. if elected. I think it is swagger for votes, but it is always hard to know what he will do.
Great piece Virginia. Eminent domain laws are really a bad workaround for a kind of market failure. The challenge here is the “holdout problem.” Or, as I called it, the “tragedy of the anticommons”: https://www.lianeon.org/p/the-dark-side-of-property
When you need to build something and buy tracts of land from many different owners, each has an incentive to extract as much value as possible from the buyer, knowing full well that the project cannot be built without all tracts of land. Thus, “holding out” is great for them, but not socially optimal.
One possible solution to this problem would be to place a Harberger Tax on properties, perhaps set at 2 percent of its self-assessed value. This would enable the “true value” to be on public record and make land and property easier to buy. In such a system, everyone wins.
To each his own opinion but the The Obama years, the last three years, today, four out of any five news articles, Harris, etc. make me extremely optimistic about a second President Trump term!
Donald Trump has promised to deport 15-20 million people and right now the GOP has PEPFAR in its crosshairs. Sam’s piece isn’t an argument, it’s completely divorced from reality.
I agree! This is one reason I'm always a bit suspicious of social housing. I don't know if allocating largesse to communities with the most political power is any better than doing it through the market.
I first heard about you from a podcast (perhaps with Jonah Goldberg). It inspired me to buy your book on fabrics, which in turn led me to this newsletter. Your book is one on my all time favorites.
I wonder why the backlash (and, in my view, overcorrection) against technocratic modernism from the middle of last century has lasted so long. It seems natural that there are cycles in political opinion, but usually the loop closes a lot faster. A great example is immigration: Americans kind of soured on immigration during the Obama years, then Trump's unnecessarily cruel approach made Americans more open to immigration, and now Biden's extremely laissez-faire approach has led to a huge backlash. This cycle took 10 years or so. But Americans still seem scarred by the terrible abuses of the "it's time to build" crowd from 50-75 years ago, and don't seem to have reacted against the restrictive zoning, excessive permitting, and public veto points that are making housing so expensive and low-quality.
The approach of the Biden immigration policy is not extremely laissez-faire but waving as many people through as possible and now that they are here, you will notice a big push for giving them the right to vote (blue of course). Part of the "Turn Texas Blue" push. If they had jobs, that would be one thing. But how many big blue cities are now not able to support their citizens because they are swamped with the wave of immigrants who do not work. There was at one point in time a requirement of immigrants that they have a person or organization that would be responsible for them if they were not able to support themselves (for 5 years?). Today it is the cities, and they are being buried under the load.
And then we have Trump threatening mass deportations. if elected. I think it is swagger for votes, but it is always hard to know what he will do.
Great piece Virginia. Eminent domain laws are really a bad workaround for a kind of market failure. The challenge here is the “holdout problem.” Or, as I called it, the “tragedy of the anticommons”: https://www.lianeon.org/p/the-dark-side-of-property
When you need to build something and buy tracts of land from many different owners, each has an incentive to extract as much value as possible from the buyer, knowing full well that the project cannot be built without all tracts of land. Thus, “holding out” is great for them, but not socially optimal.
One possible solution to this problem would be to place a Harberger Tax on properties, perhaps set at 2 percent of its self-assessed value. This would enable the “true value” to be on public record and make land and property easier to buy. In such a system, everyone wins.
To each his own opinion but the The Obama years, the last three years, today, four out of any five news articles, Harris, etc. make me extremely optimistic about a second President Trump term!