There is a sense in which productive is being used here that is slightly subtle. Security doesn't really add anything to net output. It is, in other words, a cost. That doesn't mean it isn't valuable.
One way to think about it is that production allows you to pay for stuff. Not necessarily directly but by way of trading. It is the output you use to buy things like security.
Consider an apple farm. What does the apple farm produce to pay its bills? Apples. They could also dedicate resources to pears, &c, and that would add to their production -- to the goods they produce, the goods with which they (indirectly) purchase tractors, fence posts, &c. They could also dedicate resources to security -- more fences, &c -- and this may even be prudent. Maybe thieves are getting taller. This doesn't really add to production, though; at best, it maintains production at the status quo ante (assuming the fence is effective).
True in the sense of physical security, but I think it's not true here.
Security bugs are just bugs, as Linus likes to say. And the bugs are often also crash or correctness bugs (use-after-free for example usually causes segfaults). For the most part this actually is a productivity boon in the sense of getting higher quality goods out the other side.
To use your apple farm example, it would be like an apple farm where, if the apple rots, it's sometimes just gross but also sometimes it explodes and kills you. Would it be productive to reduce the rot rate of the bomb-apples? I think so!
YES. I think homeowners are too close to the problem to make rational choices.
People move to a place and then expect it to never change again. After all, they bought a house there because they liked it as it is now.
All that does is create places that are encased in amber and unable to adapt. Homeowners have a disproportionate say. aspiring homeowners don't show up to local city council meetings
The top-down approach surely has problems too, I'm not denying that. I just think we need people in charge who can look at the problem holistically and say "hey maybe that inner suburb next to transit shouldn't force you to have a 1/2 acre lot".
This is a complicated issue. What if those people in charge decide your town would be better as a highway? I don't know... it's complicated.
> I think homeowners are too close to the problem to make rational choices.
The homeowners are making rational choices. That's the problem. As the most expensive asset a typical homeowner will ever own is their home, it makes rational sense for them to support any policy that supports it's value and oppose any policy that undermines it's value. Building more housing undermines it's value.
And this is why the local community absolutely should not have any more say about a new development than a hypothetical someone who would like to live there, but can't, because there is no available housing.
> And this is why the local community absolutely should not have any more say about a new development than a hypothetical someone who would like to live there, but can't, because there is no available housing.
If you start giving "hypothetical people" a say, you stop having democracy. You can invent as many hypothetical people as you want to force any outcome.
And real democracy requires local control. A distant democratically-elected government making centralized decisions may just as well be replaced by a tyrant, given how unresponsive it will be to your concerns.
The "hypothetical people" are in actuality all the other voters in your country. Lots of people are "pro-development, just anti-development near themselves".
Do you think that the Japanese system where permitting is centralized away from local government antidemocratic?
But aren't there other salient factors? Is energy policy any less "big" than zoning in its effect on your local environment? The thing is, it's just really hard to get certain policies to work right when they are set at too small a scale -- even if they have a big effect at a small scale.
When I consider the housing situation, I am starting to think that land use policy seems to be that kind of thing.
Ultimately, cities are granted a charter by the state. It's not a given that they can control zoning, the location of people's garage doors, &c. We can think about these things and decide.
no it doesn't, high density allows more value to be extracted from the same plot of land since the volume of units offset the individual price reduction of each one. as a result, developers regularly offer homeowners 2x or 3x their market value to incentivize selling.
Yes, it more efficiently utilizes the land. But, if you are not the person who owns the plot that gets developed, more housing being built next to you harms you.
My impression is that "home value" is often a dodge that sounds better on paper than "I don't like change". You generally can't sue over hurt feelings, but if you can attach some kind of monetary value to it then the courts may take your case.
As you note home value is an extremely nebulous concept as it is tied to whatever people who currently do not live in the community might pay to buy a house. No matter what someone sells for they can always say "it would have sold for more if every single house was painted exactly the same shade of beige, you miscreants with your off white, ecru, and oatmeal houses have cost me tens of thousands of dollars!"
Density will make their home value go up. They are perhaps making rational choices if what they want is for the neighbourhood to stay the same -- but then they are accepting a lower value, by retarding economic growth.
> What if those people in charge decide your town would be better as a highway?
They did. Google Robert Moses for details.
Ultimately I think this particular problem is a diseased outgrowth from the cancer that is "homes as an investment vehicle." Is it so much that people don't want change or is more that they (correctly) identify a house and the land it sits upon as the only thing in their life that appreciates in value, consistently? It represents stability, a future to be handed down to one's children, that sort of thing.
It seems to be having houses function this way is just causing too many social ills to ignore. It's why private equity is holding tons of houses, during a housing crisis, and refusing to sell. It's a cornerstone of the 2008 financial crash. It's why few in my entire damned generation can HAVE a home, not to invest in but to simply live in.
IMO a house can be a need for life, or it can be an investment. It can't be both at the same time.
> Ultimately I think this particular problem is a diseased outgrowth from the cancer that is "homes as an investment vehicle." Is it so much that people don't want change or is more that they (correctly) identify a house and the land it sits upon as the only thing in their life that appreciates in value, consistently? It represents stability, a future to be handed down to one's children, that sort of thing.
There's no one cause. Even if homes weren't "an investment vehicle," I don't think it would change much. Few people in a neighborhood of single family homes would want a 20-story apartment tower getting built next door.
Perhaps it's a failure of my ability to empathize then. I have owned a home for 8 years, I have never once been concerned with anything going on nearby. Buildings being built of any sort, of any height, at all. And I genuinely struggle to enter the mind of someone for whom this is top priority, something they put time into.
> Perhaps it's a failure of my ability to empathize then. I have owned a home for 8 years, I have never once been concerned with anything going on nearby. Buildings being built of any sort, of any height, at all.
You don't really have to empathize all that much. Can't you imagine anything you wouldn't like built near your home?
> And I genuinely struggle to enter the mind of someone for whom this is top priority, something they put time into.
OK how about this: you live in a quiet neighborhood, where kids are safe playing in the street. Your house gets a nice amount of sun in the afternoon. You like it.
Then someone builds a couple of 20 story apartment blocks, just south of you. The sun is blocked, traffic increases. The neighborhood isn't quiet anymore.
> You don't really have to empathize all that much. Can't you imagine anything you wouldn't like built near your home?
A data center or sewage treatment plant (but I repeat myself)
> Then someone builds a couple of 20 story apartment blocks, just south of you. The sun is blocked, traffic increases. The neighborhood isn't quiet anymore.
Okay? Why am I entitled to dictate who builds what near my home? Because I bought a 0.25 acre plot there?
Maybe the 20 story apartment block will contain a new friend. Maybe it'll bring a bunch more kids to play with the neighborhood kids, who btw aren't plants and don't require constant sunlight. Maybe the block will come with a pool I could use for a reasonable fee, or basketball courts for the kids. Maybe that block going up will increase the overall local population enough so we get better restaurants in the area, and it'll almost certainly increase property tax revenues to local schools.
Like I dunno if you find this situation absolutely intolerable, you could always just... move?
> Few people in a neighborhood of single family homes would want a 20-story apartment tower getting built next door.
Only this is just a thing that really doesn't happen much at all. Very few developers are putting up 20 story apartment buildings in the middle of an existing SFH community in the suburbs somewhere. Most of those such fights are people fighting the 5 over 1 development built greenfield just outside the current SFH neighborhood in question. And for those such people? They should have zero say.
If they are doing so, it's typically in very dense city cores that support the density and thus investment. If someone wants to put up a 20 story building next to me in my Chicago neighborhood, sounds good to me! I am upset there are not more of them and that zoning has effectively made them illegal to build here, as I'm roughly 500 feet away from a rapid transit station and two arterial roads with high frequency bus routes. It's a crime that they are illegal to build.
I'd be an asshole if I bought a house in such an area and wanted my little conclave to be protected at the expense of everyone else in the city. I should rightly be overruled and told to pound sand and move the hell out if I don't like it.
Instead, laws have enabled such people to effectively veto such buildings. Or even simply stuff like 12 unit 4 floor apartment buildings that already exist due to predating zoning on my block.
Many areas of the US are effectively retirement communities by zoning. People who moved in 20-30 years ago who demand zero change and have captured nearly all political power.
Robert Moses held a lot of different offices at once, and many of them were a kind of local government: parks commissioner for New York City, commissioner for certain bridges in New York City, &c.
He is not really quite what you would get if zoning, &c, were handled at the state level.
I keep saying that permitting should be - broadly - same as driving.
You get handed a nice set of rules, you get tested on them.. and then you can go ahead and build within those rules without asking anyone for permission.
If you break the rules - we break your piggy bank to set everything straight. You can buy insurance (which will have its own set of rules) - or not.
Maybe in some jurisdictions you need to buy insurance, while in others you get to have a choice.. after clearing it with your financier.
Zoning is actually rule-making. Permitting is just bureaucracy. Keep them separate.
This is called as-of-right development or by-right development, which is how things (nominally) work in several states. That is, as long as a project adheres to the zoning and other regulations, approval is as-of-right or a so-called ministerial process.
It's not necessarily a black or white approach. In theory as-of-right is supposed to be the rule everywhere as Due Process guarantees mean government can't act capriciously. And there's actually pre-existing SCOTUS precedent regarding how zoning plans are supposed to be applied, and how community input processes aren't supposed to allow mobs to subvert the rule of law with a de facto but informal veto power. In practice, non-as-of-right municipalities and states basically have zoning rules and approval processes that are fuzzy and ambiguous, effectively granting regulators significant interpretive leeway and discretion.
Federal and often state courts are extremely reticent to jump into the fray and defend the rule of law. In fact, there's SCOTUS procedural jurisprudence designed to make it difficult to "make a federal case" out of zoning disputes. NIMBY battles are just too politically fraught and courts are afraid of falling into the bottomless tar pits of adjudicating public grievance, which is what politicians are supposed to be for.
California is especially bad for multiple reasons. First is CEQA, which allows literally anyone in the state to erect legal hurdles to any project (modulo some very recent carve outs). Second is home-rule principles enshrined in the state constitution, which makes it difficult for Sacramento to force municipalities to behave a certain way or even abide many mandatory state regulations--the state often has to rely on indirect means, such as contingent funding, to cajole cities. Third is California Supreme Court procedural principles that demand state courts entertain law suits in a way that allows interlopers to drag out court cases, e.g. CEQA cases, for long periods of time.
I’m aware of this - what I’m curious about is whether we can go a step further and skip the “as by right” process.
This is similar to the difference between “shall issue” and “constitutional carry” states.
In the former you still have to deal with the system to exercise your right, and the system has to have staff to deal with you.
In the latter you’re approved - without anyone being on a taxpayers dole and having an incentive to keep themselves employed by enacting more laws and keeping the system inefficient.
Imo this should be the biggest political issue. By-right zoning and permitting accross the board. So much graft, corruption, waste, and stagnation from discretionary approval/denials.
Don't want factories zoned next to elementary schools? Perfectly reasonable rule, but then you don't get to pass a variance for the mayor's nephew's cousin's factory. And vice versa.
Isn't that fundamentally what California did to solve the problem? They provided a route that a local municipality could not override to build housing, as long as the state level rules were followed.
Yes, but the rule only came into effect this summer. I think we should start to see some traction in the next year or two when developers begin to challenge NIMBYs.
Fun fact, that's basically the case in large swaths of the country. Many states do not have home rule, which means counties can't set zoning rules. So in mostly rural areas of these states, it's wide open unless the state has decided to set rules or to be benevolent enough to grant the county the right to set zoning rules
I dunno, it seems like decisions about what to build in a given spot should be made as locally as possible. If I want to build a house in Sonoma, the voters in LA should not get a say.
Major projects like power plants or dams should be made at a state or even national level, but rules for which house goes where, less so. And if your town's rules are overly burdensome and stupid, that's an issue for your town's government to solve.
This sounds reasonable, but all this means is "nothing gets built".
For example there's me, an empty plot, and the next neighbor. Nothing is more local to the both of us than the empty plot. We've even grassed it, and maintain it.
The owner of the plot wants to build a house. Since we are the locals we simply say no. We like the plot as it is. Plus the loss of this open plot would affect the value of our property. And traffic in the neighborhood would increase.
This sounds bonkers - surely the owner of the plot has rights too? Sure, but this is democracy so our 2 votes outweigh his one.
The consequence of small govt is that nothing gets done at all because the majority of people are resistant to any change at all. If everything takes a majority, well, nothing happens.
Ultimately though local people are the worst decision makers. Which is why my city let's the owner build on his plot, and doesn't allow me and my neighbor to decide.
>If I want to build a house in Sonoma, the voters in LA should not get a say.
Should they get a say about building the necessary infrastructure to make your home (as opposed to homestead) possible in Sonoma? Their tax money is spent on it.
>And if your town's rules are overly burdensome and stupid, that's an issue for your town's government to solve.
And whose issue is it to solve if every single town's rules are overly burdensome and stupid? Not for incumbent homeowners, mind you, for them all is well and they'd like to keep it that way. But for renters and those wanting to afford a place to live.
Those highways were mostly built through neighborhoods filled with poor, marginalized people. Most of the NIMBYism that you see in the US is suburbs that don't want to upzone for more density that is badly needed.
No, that would be terrible and much worse, obviously, compared to walking down the street to my local borough building and getting a permit. In the vast majority of the country, that would be very silly suggestion.
As others have mentioned, venture capital is a form of private equity.
Private equity is investment in non-public companies. A lot of good has come from investment in non-public companies over the years.
Why can't all investment be in public companies? Not every company can go public: the regulatory and administrative requirements are high. Why are they high? To protect public investors -- to protect the general public.
In the past, many people put together fraudulent enterprises, sought investment from the public and then walked away with the money, perhaps even pretending to run the business for a while so there was convincing failure story. The regulatory and administrative requirements are there to make this harder, by requiring certain governance and reporting procedures.
The requirements are high enough that a new venture can not get started by going to public markets -- and in fact may run for several years before it is able to.
There is a lot of stuff you're saying here that sounds simple but isn't.
...once you admit that there can be restrictions on property rights, it's unclear how property rights in and of themselves is a steelman of private equity. Why not just say that "you can't sell to private equity" is one of the restrictions?
What do you think that would look like in practice? Private equity is investment in non-public companies -- the purchase of shares in non-public companies or the purchase of the companies outright. In many cases, the private equity firms themselves are public; but in many cases, they are private, as well.
There isn't a way to make a rule that "you can't sell to private equity" but there can be a rule like "you can't sell a private company at all" or "public investment funds can not purchase shares in private companies" -- if you try a few of the variations that are possible, you'll see that they're all bad rules, I think.
You really have to think about hard about what you mean by "a private equity company". It's not as easy as it looks. If a manufacturing firm starts to buy up suppliers (many of which are small, private entities), is it a private equity company? It's buying up non-public companies.
My point with these arguments is just to say that private property rights are not a steelman for private equity. I'm not saying that these are simple answers to the claim that we need private equity, I'm just saying that the concept of private property is also not a simple answer to the claim that we don't need private equity.
That said, I agree with you to some extent. I think it's not actually so hard to define what I think is bad about private equity, but it's true that that badness is not confined to private equity. In particular I think the distinction between public and private companies is almost entirely meaningless; what we should care about is what companies do, whether they are publicly traded or not. From that perspective private equity is not really different from publicly traded "holding companies" that do basically the same thing.
The crux of it, for me, is companies that are just doing "the business of business", and are not organized around human beings doing things that they genuinely care about and want to do a good job at. You can never run a good company by trying to run "a company", rather than trying to run a steakhouse, or a pet groomer, or a bank, or a car wash, or some particular company that does a particular thing. The problem of both private equity and public "holding companies" is that they value money to the point that they no longer sufficiently value the actual substance of the good or service that the business provides.
There are many, many cases where investors are misled by companies -- this falls under the (very broad) heading of securities fraud and it's easy to find documented cases of it. It's not a question of doing their homework.
There is literally no way to have the broad base of investment in markets by members of the public that we see today if investors incur personal liability. It was and remains one of cornerstones of any commercial society.
The most reckless will, of course; but most people won't -- they just won't do it.
Corporations evolved the liability structure they have today so that large undertakings, where many people have to work together and where the bad deeds of a small number of those people could sink the undertaking, were something that regular -- people who can't self insure -- could be a part of, as investors, managers, staff, &c, &c.
Limited liability may make accountability too narrow; but blanket personal liability makes it far too broad. It's not a solution for running a large, complex economy in a more accountable way.
And 70 years ago I would agree with you, but now we have a handful of individuals who are the economy with wealth that's rivaling nations. Something has gone awry.
That's right: no legal basis exists now. The proposal is to create such legal basis.
And if "No large undertaking could ever function with such broad exposure to liability" - that would be great, i think we would prefer that such firms doesn't exists.
> that would be great, i think we would prefer that such firms doesn't exists
They stop existing within your jurisdiction. Also, the idea that the public would go along with any of this for this issue is silly. Let's start with crimes that actually cost lives.
All the better, I've long suspected that these companies are collecting this data and selling some portion of it. Having this category of business entirely disappear sounds like a solid win to me.
Something much more targeted is appropriate there. Maybe we need a regulatory framework where people own their own data. Make it impractical, expensive and burdensome to hold personal data you don't absolutely need.
That has nothing to do with changing the whole approach to -- really undermining the whole idea of -- corporations. Limited liability is the only way they can work. It's a cornerstone of every developed economy.
Corporate officers can already be held individually liable for some things. This would just add another one, it wouldn’t be undermining the whole idea of corporations. If individuals can be held personally liable for their company’s failure to pay payroll taxes and corporations still manage to exist and do business, then I don’t see why this would be so different.
I’m not quite sure how to answer that. The situation I have in mind is the one described in the bit you quoted. A company doesn’t pay legally required payroll taxes, then depending on circumstances, corporate officers may be personally liable for them. See: https://www.irs.gov/irm/part5/irm_05-017-007
IRM 5.17.7 (https://www.irs.gov/irm/part5/irm_05-017-007), is about corporate officers who have a duty "...to account for, collect, and pay over..." taxes and failed to perform that duty.
I don't think this is at all similar to jsrozner's solution, which is to assign liability to "...every person who has ever worked for IDScan at any level of management...".
The IRM is describing officers with culpability as individuals whereas jsrozner is really proposing to do without any individuate consideration of wrongdoing at all.
Restitution is the legal basis, let's not act like the rich don't force the poor to pay for their civil violations. What it sounds like is the rich don't like it when the law is applied fairly to them too.
It seems like there is something specific to this that you are missing.
Holding all managers personally accountable for actions of a corporation runs up against the legal structure of a corporation -- a legal structure that is definitely not one of joint and several liability. That is what I mean when I say there is no legal basis for it. The whole point of a corporation is that the corporation is liable (which is a great convenience in many respects).
Restitution is not about who is liable but about making a wrong right. It's a different layer.
It's not a matter of economics, corporate policy or belief in people -- it's a strategic matter. A country needs a secure and stable pipeline for personnel as much as for any other strategic asset.
A country also needs to keep up and learn from other countries. That means working with and integrating technologies, ideas and, yes, personnel from other countries.
It's a balance thing and Anduril has a hard job in trying to strike the balance, but they have to do it. The defense industry is not simply a number-goes-up operation.
It's funny how the loyalties of imported "talent" are not front and center in any discussion of how their presence is "strategically important." I think we are getting strategically shafted by lax immigration laws.
One way to think about it is that production allows you to pay for stuff. Not necessarily directly but by way of trading. It is the output you use to buy things like security.
Consider an apple farm. What does the apple farm produce to pay its bills? Apples. They could also dedicate resources to pears, &c, and that would add to their production -- to the goods they produce, the goods with which they (indirectly) purchase tractors, fence posts, &c. They could also dedicate resources to security -- more fences, &c -- and this may even be prudent. Maybe thieves are getting taller. This doesn't really add to production, though; at best, it maintains production at the status quo ante (assuming the fence is effective).
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