Stidmatt

This article by Strong Towns is a good one, read this before reading my commentary on it.

I mostly agree with this article. I do not believe there is a free quick fix to ending the insane housing inflation we are experiencing in this country. We have had restrictive zoning which has reduced the quantity of housing significantly as our population has grown. We see the same pattern in Canada, to an even greater extent.

We do not see the same pattern in Europe. Europe has slower population growth, actually declining in many places, which reduces pressure on housing in the region. They also tend to have more lax laws regarding building which allows housing stock to keep up with population growth.

This has created a structural change in the market for housing. As demand for housing has increased, supply has been unable to keep up, especially in the growing tech hubs around the country. Increase demand, keep supply the same, price will go up.

The article is absolutely correct, relaxing zoning laws is not going to necessarily reduce the price of housing, but we have seen the cities which have done the most to loosen zoning laws have seen the slowest growth in rents, regardless of their job markets. We need an economy which can respond to market demands, and is best done through a free market which is allowed to respond to market pressures.

Everywhere in the country has significantly restricted the market’s ability to respond to changing conditions, leading to supply being unable to catch up with demand, which is why rents have climbed. Only a few places have reversed these policies lately, and that is where inflation has slowed.

There are two ways to make an economy to work, depending on market structure. In naturally competitive markets, like housing, the best thing to do is limit regulation to things regarding health and safety. Do not overly restrict the market, since that will only cause inflation.

Naturally monopolistic markets, markets with high structural barriers to entry such as utilities, however typically work best when they are publicly owned. There is thriving competition between couriers, you have DHL, UPS, FedEx, and many more regional courier companies competing with each other for business. They are able to do this in an open market because the highway system is publicly owned. Anyone can use it. If the highway system however were private they could make deals with one courier or another preventing the market from being competitive, and the industry would devolve into regional monopolies, stifling competition, leading to higher prices for all. That’s how America’s railroads work. So this goes to show that simply making every market as free and private as possible will not necessarily lead to a better economy. It depends on the industry, it depends on the market structure.

In the case of housing, it is clearly not a natural monopoly. The best thing to do is allow developers to build housing, following standard safety protocols, and allow said housing to be built tall to increase the number of people living in a square kilometer. This increases the supply of housing, reducing pressure on housing prices.

While there might be other policies to reduce the price of housing, the best way to do it, the cheapest way to do it is to increase supply.

The one thing you don’t want to do is chase inflation with more money supply. That never works.

References:

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/average-rent-by-state

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USSTHPI

 

The center-right party in Austria has spent the last couple of years doing everything it possibly can to get votes from the far right. They have denied Schengen membership to Romania and Bulgaria and have not been supporting Ukraine with military weapons. They’ve played right into Putin’s hands. Yesterday, the far right still won the most votes and seats. All of that compromise did not save the campaign of ÖVP.

It’s not just in Austria yesterday. It’s across pretty much every election in every country. The most successful parties tend to be the ones who stick by their platform. I wish there would finally be a clenching point where this endless compromise is finally seen as what it is.

We can also look at Chancellor Scholz and President Biden. While I will take them over any conservative, their reluctance to do everything necessary to save Ukrainian lives is not saving their campaigns.

Look at the Liberal Democrats in the UK in 2010. They are closer to Labour on social and economic issues but decided to follow the advice of compromise, make a deal, and coalition with the Conservatives. As a result, they were slaughtered in 2015.

Keir Starmer, the Brexiteer in chief, now has an approval rating of -30. It usually takes leaders years to get to such abysmal approval ratings, but it didn’t even take him a year. He has compromised with the Tories at every opportunity on Brexit. It is not working.

For an American example, President Biden has made the following of compromise as an end to itself the goal of his presidency. If Biden just compromises with Republicans enough, does not make waves, and keeps a steady, even keel, he will be the most popular president in history and be able to finally bring unity to our country. He is wisely working on balancing domestic political with ideological goals regarding the war in Ukraine, attempting to bring all sides together into one great harmony. He will be the greatest president of…

Wait… what do you mean he’s not running? His approval rating has been hovering around 40% for three years? He has worked so hard to bring unity to the American people, yet he is the second least popular president in history, behind only Jimmy Carter. If the goal of compromise is to maintain power, it has been a colossal failure.

He has arguably succeeded at uniting the country. No other president has successfully made over 60% of Americans agree on a president’s job performance for 3 years running. Mission accomplished, I guess…

Bill Clinton also compromised heavily on many issues, including gay marriage, bank reform, and more. While his approval rating was sky-high in 1996, under his presidency, the Democrats lost the House after holding it almost continuously since 1932. He failed to win a majority of the vote in the presidential year. I believe he would have lost if not for Ross Perot.

What if we did the opposite? What if we stood for our values? I cannot guarantee it will always work. LBJ did everything he could to pass civil rights legislation during his presidency, and a lot of voters still made the Vietnam War the reason why they couldn’t vote for Democrats, even though the Republicans also supported the war.

But then there is Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He went full steam ahead and passed policies that pulled us out of the depression and a massive wealth transfer to the Lost Generation in the form of Social Security. He was elected four times, then his vice President, Harry Truman, won yet another election. Except for the Japanese Internment camps, he was a great president on basically every other policy for the people of the time.

Democrats retained control of the House for all but four years between 1932 and 1995.

Based on CFR, this is how I would answer:

China

We need to strengthen our ties with every country in Asia to ensure that any invasion by the People’s Republic of China of its neighbors will be a suicide mission. To ensure peace on the continent, bring back SEATO and invite India, Nepal, and Bhutan as members. Normalize relations between Pakistan and India. The Republic of China will always be a critical ally of the United States. We need to include South Korea and Japan in SEATO and help mend ties between those countries, as they are both critical allies of ours.

Iran

Iran supports numerous terrorist groups around the Middle East, and their government seeks to undermine democracies. The only thing keeping them in check is their abysmal economy. We need to build a world where there are fewer ways Iran can exploit tensions to support terrorist groups like Hezbollah. We need a free and prosperous Lebanon to bring stability to the region.

North Korea

North Korea is a significant threat to the world. Their barbaric regime is supported by both Russia and China. I support Korean unification under the Republic of Korea.

Ukraine

Ukraine should have been invited to NATO along with Georgia in 2008. It was a major strategic blunder not to invite them. The consequences are that they have both now been invaded, and hundreds of thousands of people have died in this pointless war. I believe Ukraine can win and will win this war as long as we provide them with the weapons and allow them to use them strategically. I trust our Ukrainian allies more than our own advisors on this issue since they are on the ground and we are not, meaning they naturally have more information than we do.

If Russia turns Ukraine into a vassal state again, there will be genocide, just like there was in the 1930s. Russia will then turn its sights towards Georgia, and the perception of NATO as a weak and ineffectual institution will weaken every democracy in the world, including ours. America is not safe until Ukraine is free and controls all of its territory. I support NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia; the only thing that will provide peace and security to the region. Ukraine and Georgia are democracies and our allies, and we have not treated them as such. This changes with me.

Afghanistan

Abandoning Afghanistan to the terrorists was risky, dangerous, and stupid. Reducing America’s power projection has made the world significantly more dangerous. I believe it is only a matter of time before the terrorists from the Taliban and allied groups attack India. India is the world’s largest democracy. I will work to make India a vital ally of the United States and provide whatever advice is necessary to help India root out corruption and develop their economy. This is the only way to counter populism. A free Afghanistan and a prosperous India are paramount to American national security and power projection.

Saudi Arabia

Most of the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia. There are numerous reports from respected newspapers and non-profits of Saudi citizens funding terrorism and the government turns a blind eye. They are engaged in a pointless proxy war in Yemen. I do not believe Saudi Arabia is an ally of the United States. I will look into evidence regarding Saudi Arabia and pressure them to crack down on money laundering if any is found. I believe in a rules-based order; our allies must follow the law.

Israel-Palestinian conflict

Israel is a democracy, but Palestinians have been denied access to those institutions. The war must end, and we need a Marshall Plan to rebuild the Gaza Strip. Israel needs to abandon its settlements in the West Bank or lose military support from the United States. Terrorists advertise Israeli actions in Palestine as they are their most successful recruiting tactic and cause pointless pain for Palestinians. I do not believe in forcibly sending people to other countries. The only people who need to move are people who are illegally occupying settlements in the West Bank. Hamas must be defeated, and the Gaza Strip needs to be returned to the Palestinian Authority. Once this war is over, military aid must be conditional on abandoning settlements.

Support for Hamas has exploded over the last year as Israel has carpet-bombed the Gaza Strip. This is dangerous for Israel and the United States. My utmost priority as President is to protect American lives, and the war in Gaza is strengthening terrorism, putting Americans in danger. We need a different path to reconcile Palestinians and Israelis as soon as possible, and this is a strategic priority that could take a decade but is worth it. I will not tolerate actions that strengthen terrorism. There needs to be a ceasefire.

I am deeply concerned with how Israeli banks are being used by Russian oligarchs to bypass sanctions regarding the Ukraine War. This must end.

Venezuela

Maduro has led Venezuela down the path of poverty and authoritarianism, just as in Nicaragua. I do not support military intervention in Venezuela. Gonzalez is the legitimate president of Venezuela according to every available metric. Gonzalez was polling almost 70% before the election, and then the government announced Maduro was the winner and didn’t allow foreign observers into the country. The election this year was a sham. The people of Venezuela need to remove Maduro and put Gonzalez in place. America supports a free and prosperous Venezuela.

Regarding the rest of Latin America, the Rio Pact is one of our two most important treaties, which has allowed Latin America to become one of the most democratic regions of the world over the last 30 years. We will continue to stand by our allies, increase trade, and protect them from foreign threats. As Latin America continues to develop, America will stand with them. As President, I support the decriminalization of drugs to reduce the flow of money to drug cartels, which harms both our allies and the United States.

Africa

Africa is so diverse. Numerous countries are rapidly turning into major democracies in Africa. The United States needs to increase trade and start defense pacts with countries in Africa to help them move down the path to democracy. We need to clarify that there are two choices: You can be authoritarian, poor, and alone, but if you democratize, you can join us as voluntary partners with economic and defense benefits.

Trade

Trade is the most powerful tool we have at our disposal to bring countries together. We must form a free trade agreement with the European Union, our most important allies. We must end travel visas with our partners, a form of tariff. Tariffs must be used sparingly and kept in our back pocket, with free trade and travel as the default. That default will only be changed if a country is corrupt, sponsoring terrorism, or invading its neighbors. I will expand trade and eliminate all travel visas with our allies. Barriers between friends strengthen populists who offer false solutions. I provide honest answers.

Climate

I support an exemption-free carbon tax. I want to end all direct subsidies for fossil fuels.

For years, the left has commonly claimed that the reason the United States does not have universal health care is that it has a presidential system rather than a parliamentary system. This is also claimed to be the reason third parties have not formed a government in the United States since 1861.

The first reason this is not true is because if you look at South Korea, they have universal health care, as do many presidential systems in the Americas.

United States

The reason the United States does not have universal health care is because we keep voting for Republicans. It’s as simple as that.

Despite this, Republicans have only won one of the last eight presidential elections but have served three of the previous eight terms.

If the United States had a parliamentary system, assuming no changes in the House of Representatives elections over the last 36 years, Republicans would have formed a government in 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2022.

A parliamentary system would have given us a Democratic head of government for 12 instead of 20 of the last 34 years. We would have seen eight additional years of Republican rule under a parliamentary system.

A presidential system also slows things down, which is both a feature and a bug. Since 1988 we have had:

Start	End	President	Senate	House	Years	Trifecta	Congress President different	Split Congress	Both houses flip?
1987	1993	Republican	Democrat	Democrat	6		6
1993	1995	Democrat	Democrat	Democrat	2	2
1995	2001	Democrat	Republican	Republican	6		6		1
2001	2003	Republican	Split	Republican	2			1
2003	2007	Republican	Republican	Republican	4	4
2007	2009	Republican	Democrat	Democrat	2		2		1
2009	2011	Democrat	Democrat	Democrat	2	2
2011	2015	Democrat	Democrat	Republican	4			4
2015	2017	Democrat	Republican	Republican	2		2
2017	2019	Republican	Republican	Republican	2	2
2019	2021	Republican	Republican	Democrat	2			2
2021	2023	Democrat	Democrat	Democrat	2	2
2023		Democrat	Democrat	Republican	2			2

Since Reagan, we have had six years of Democratic trifectas versus four years of Republican trifectas, 14 years of Republican rule, and 14 years of Democratic rule under a parliamentary system.

This is one tradeoff you make between parliamentary and presidential systems. Parliamentary systems are faster than Presidential systems, for better and for worse. It all depends on how people vote and the election system you use.

Election systems make a tremendous difference in who gets elected into office.

Democrats won the most votes in the 1996 and 2012 House elections but did not win the most seats.

Democrats have not won the most seats without winning the most votes since 1942.

This is not because of how our head of government is selected; this is only because 50 states used first past the post until recently, and now the number is down to 48 states that use this archaic voting system.

United Kingdom

The same pattern appears in the United Kingdom, where the Conservative Party formed governments following elections in 1935, 1951, 1955, 1959, 1970, 1979, 1983, 1987, 1992, 2015, 2017, and 2019, with a majority of the seats and no coalition necessary. The Conservative Party has not won a majority of the vote since 1931.

This is under a parliamentary system. Parliamentary systems do not protect you from the spoiler effect and voters making bad decisions.

One of the easiest ways to tell whether an election accurately represents voters is to measure how much a party is over or under represented compared to their vote share.

The British election in which the Tories had the smallest margin in the last 70 years was in 2017 when they won 45% of the vote and 50% of the seats. This was the most accurate election since 1951. Margins are often 20% off or even larger, like in 1924, when the Tories won 69% of the seats with 47% of the vote.

Germany vs UK

The German election in which the CDU won the largest disproportionate share since the fall of Hitler was in 2013 when they won 7% more seats than they technically should have won. This is only the second time their margin of error has been above 5% since the fall of the Third Reich! The closest margin of victory since 1892 in the UK was in 1945, when the Tories were off by 3.85%.

The UK and Germany have parliamentary systems with a mostly ceremonial head of state. The only difference in government formation is their election systems. German elections always see close margins between the total votes a party receives and the number of seats it gets. No party has ever received a majority of the seats without having a majority vote in Germany.

In the UK it is the rule that at least one party will usually win a majority of the seats, and no party will win a majority of the vote. The only two times parties have won a majority of the vote in the last century were Labour in 1945 and the Tories in 1931. Majority governments have been formed with a majority of the seats in almost every election since.

In this case study comparing Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, it is obvious that the most important variable in electing a government that represents the people is not how you select your head of government but your election system, which ensures majority rule, which must come along with a majority of the vote.

The biggest risk in Germany and the United Kingdom is that you don’t vote for your head of government, which is how Hitler came to power through backdoor deals with Die Zentrum, the forerunner to CDU.

Ireland

Ireland offers us an opportunity to see ranked voting in action. Ireland has seen similar results to Germany since gaining independence from the United Kingdom in 1921. Ireland uses ranked voting, while Germany uses mixed member proportional, so one vote for your party, one vote in your constituency and then the party list seats are used to make the total allocation of parliament fit the vote share as close as possible.

Single Transferable Vote results in Ireland are similar to mixed member proportional results in Germany. Ranked voting ensures no party can win a majority of the seats without a majority of the vote once candidates with the fewest votes are eliminated. It also guarantees smaller parties can be started and gain representation in parliament. Ireland currently has nine parties in its parliament using a single transferable vote.

Party-list, proportional, and ranked voting can all work well.

However, there is a weakness in proportional and party list voting, which we observe in elections in Israel. Ideally, when designing a party list system, the threshold for getting a single seat should be set as the total valid votes divided by the total number of seats. This minimizes the number of wasted votes. But Israel, among many other democracies, sets an artificial threshold above that limit, which can easily cause 10% of more votes to be wasted. In the last election, 7% of the votes in Israel went to parties that won more than 1% of the vote.

Germany used to have the same problem until they made some reforms within the last decade. It is not unique to Israel, but Germany has since fixed it. This flaw still exists in many other democracies around the world.

So, if you use a party list, you need to ensure that the threshold for getting a seat in your parliament or congress is set at the total votes / total seats. Any party that wins more than that should have representation.

Ranked voting completely bypasses this problem by ensuring every vote counts as long as voters fill out their ballot. Under ranked voting, voters can both vote their conscience and ensure their vote never gets wasted.

This is why I believe ranked voting is the most proportional voting system.

Join www.fairvote.org today!

The problem with technology visas is first of all countries don’t need this to record entries and exits. It’s the principle of the thing. If tourists were regularly traveling visa free to the US and committing terrorist attacks I would support ESTA. The problem is that has never been a thing. None of the 9/11 attackers were eligible for visa free entry, they all had tourist visas.

This trend gobbles up public resources while we ignore the problems which actually cause terrorism, particularly money laundering. Instead implementing these populist policies which target the wrong people.

Thanks Bush for making the world a more dangerous place!

This would make it seem that Canada is the proper country to source terrorists from. But there are as many Canadian tourists causing terrorist attacks in the last decade as there were citizens from all NATO countries in the 50 years prior to the implementation of ESTA.

None. Thats right. None. Not a single terrorist attack by a single citizen of any ESTA country against any other country in the world since 1949.

It’s just right wing populism.

And on that note, when we actually did take out bin Laden remember how we carpet bombed Abottabad? How we captured him via Real ID?

Nope. We didn’t even use a drone strike. All we needed to do to capture the most wanted terrorist in the world was standard military intelligence and sending in a strike team.

No drones, nukes, or carpet bombing necessary.

So when it comes to the carpet bombing of Gaza and increasing visa policies between democracies around the world, remember this is all just right wing populism and needs to be opposed.

Building walls and reducing communication only increases radicalization at home and abroad. This fuels violence.

The safest countries in the world are generally the most free.

We do not have to choose between freedom and security.

The choice is to have freedom and security or neither.

Today is the 23rd anniversary of the terrorist attack on the United States in Alexandria, Virginia, and New York City.

I will keep it simple: we did not respond to the attacks appropriately. The main thing we did right was remove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan following their attack on our country.

But what we needed to do was this:

• Embrace our allies and not lash out at them as the Bush administration did.
• Root out and destroy money laundering for terrorism around the world. Countries that do not participate will lose access to the economies and currencies of the United States and the European Union.
• Expand visas on countries from which the terrorists were from. Shorten the lengths of their stay.

But we didn’t.

Money laundering continues to finance terrorism to this day. We expanded visas on our allies as state sponsors of terrorism saw no repercussions. We infringed on our liberties.

“Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” is as true today as it was when legislators in Massachusetts were debating whether to sacrifice liberties they enjoyed under the crown in order to prevent war. It is the same debate America faced after 9/11.

It’s not just that you don’t deserve liberty or safety; it’s also that giving up liberty will not bring safety, as the temptation so often rings true.

The United States of America and every other country have laws that allow law enforcement to investigate and prosecute those who do wrong.

If your neighbor is caught selling cocaine to children, there is every reason to desire a drug investigation into their house to get evidence for the harm they are causing. That does not give the police the right to search my house for drugs unless there is probable cause I did something wrong.

If someone has committed a crime egregious enough to prevent them from crossing an international border, they should be in prison. Visas should be used on countries which have corrupt governments and countries which actively support terrorist organizations. They should not be the default for every country.

But unfortunately, that’s not how the 9/11 Commission approached this horrendous tragedy.

The goal of Islamist terrorism from the beginning has been to eradicate the free world and bring the entire world under a single Caliphate ruled by their leaders. The best way to fight this is to be as different from them as possible. Eradicting our own liberties to fight terrorism is counterproductive.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germany-put-temporary-controls-all-land-borders-source-says-2024-09-09/

Germany is tightening border controls in response to the Alternativ fur Deutschland “winning” state-level elections in Germany. At least, this is the narrative.

Alternativ fur Deutschland won only 30% of the vote in Sachsen and 32% of the vote in Thuringen. They won fewer votes than CDU in Sachsen but got the most votes in Thuringen, which doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is which parties can form a coalition.

Remember when English-language media was saying how the Nazis were going to form a government in Saxony?

The German equivalent of the British Labour Party is BSW, which is less of a party and more a boggle of spineless weasels. BSW refuses to form a coalition with Alternativ fur Deutschland, which means AfD has no way to form a government. At least that means, despite being Euroskeptic meatheads, they are still better than Labour.

I wish news media would do follow-ups to such sensationalist headlines now that Scholz is doing Putin’s bidding by reintroducing border checks!

This is why, when it comes to important stories, it is very important to follow up.

My advice to Scholz is simple. Don’t give into far-right Russian fear-mongering, do not implement internal border checks, and send more weapons to Ukraine, which they can use to destroy the Russian military in Russia.

Don’t give in to hate.

This year, irregular arrivals to the EU were under 100,000 on every route, well within the normal range.

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/irregular-arrivals-since-2008/

The source for people claiming migration to Europe is at historic highs when indeed they are down is Voice of Europe, a far-right operation funded by the Russian government. It is nothing more than propaganda meant to destabilize the European Union.

Border checks are not going to solve any problem for Germany. They only strengthen the far right and Russia.

Slava Ukraine.

We live in a world where we can get information on so many different topics at the click of a button through search engines. Wikipedia is the largest collaborative project in the history of humanity. Scholarly articles are available to anyone with an internet connection. You can have food delivered to your house without picking up a phone. We carry faster and more powerful computers than the computers that send people to the moon in our pockets everywhere we go. In less than 24 hours, you can fly anywhere. High speed rail whisks people across the land in many countries at 300 km/h.

It is natural to expect that anything can be fixed quickly with how quickly so many things are improving.

But we still can’t go faster than the speed of light.

In a world of exponential growth and constantly increasing expectations, we still face the realities of scientific barriers. Unless our understanding of physics is fundamentally wrong, we will never travel faster than the speed of light.

It is good to envision a better world. It is what people are best at. However, poorly thought-out policies can end up hurting the people they intend to help. You can’t regulate your way out of economic fundamentals.

A classic example in economics is when politicians promise to help poor people by implementing a price cap on a good. What ends up happening is the amount of the good supplied by the market will be less than the amount demanded, which is a shortage. No company will produce a good at a loss, and the marginal cost curve, aka supply curve, will hit the cap at a lower level than the amount people want to buy.

In this classic example, you have only moved from price discrimination to time discrimination. You have not fixed the fundamentals! It does not solve the fundamental problem of economics.

We see this with the increasing housing prices in the United States and Canada. Politicians are going to every imaginable populist solution under the sun, but none of them solve the fundamental imbalance in the housing market. So they are not going to bring housing prices down.

New York City has the most low-income housing in the country, and it is one of the most unaffordable markets in the world. If these solutions worked, New York would have the cheapest housing in America.

Eventually, after all of these populist policies are tried, we will have to fall back on the fundamentals, and then prices will go down.

President Biden just issued an executive order requiring all space ships to include warp drives capable of traveling twice the speed of light tomorrow. We will now be in Alpha Centauri in two years.

Sounds absurd, right?

That’s America’s affordable housing policy in a nutshell.