Comment by cyberax
3 days ago
> The problem with this is that you can’t forcibly reduce population.
We don't need to. The population growth in the Western world is mostly over, the US will likely peak at barely +10% to the current population numbers. Europe is likely already at or near the peak number.
And Tokyo managed to get a bubble within a country with a _falling_ population. Not just stagnant like in Europe, but actually numerically decreasing.
> Halting growth in one area just displaces it.
That's EXACTLY what we need. The US already has 1.1 houses per household, except that they are not where the demand is.
So the fix is to shift the demand, not try to satisfy it. Ironically, this is exactly the same method that urbanists propose to fight congestion: instead of just adding more lanes to busy roads, you shift people to other modes of transportation.
How can this be done? Exactly like we did it with pollution: tax negative externalities, incentivize clean technology. For cities: tax dense office space (cap-and-trade can also work), incentivize work-from-home, incentivize offices in less dense cities, etc.
This doesn't even have to be a huge policy shift.
Interesting theory, although I don’t know if US based remote work will continue to be as common as it is now. The policies you suggest also seem difficult politically since most environmentalists seem to want more density, not less.
If the combination of AI, declining returns on service and knowledge-based work, and national security priorities create a resurgence in manufacturing then factory towns may make a comeback.
> Interesting theory, although I don’t know if US based remote work will continue to be as common as it is now.
During the pandemic, some research had shown that something like 70-80% of jobs can be remote.
The kicker is that remote work is less efficient. So in the long run and on average, companies with in-office jobs outperform fully remote companies. This is just like the situation with pollution: a company that spends money on waste recovery is less competitive than a company that can just dump toxic sludge into a nearby river.
And just like with pollution, centralized regulatory changes are needed so that all companies are affected similarly.
> The policies you suggest also seem difficult politically since most environmentalists seem to want more density, not less.
Yet they are misguided because they keep looking at the very tip of an iceberg. It's just one example out of many (see: nuclear power plants).
To give an example, light rail is more efficient than individual EVs. So it's great that Seattle is building light rail, right? It'll result in fewer "headline" CO2 emissions.
But then you realize that Seattle is going to spend $180B ("B", as in "billion") to build about 50 miles of tracks. It's more than the yearly GDP of 130 countries! All these resources could have been spent on something else, perhaps on building more renewable generation.
> But then you realize that Seattle is going to spend $180B ("B", as in "billion") to build about 50 miles of tracks.
Well yes, but that's not at all something intrinsic to the process, it's just a dysfunction that Seattle is suffering — along with most of the rest of North America.
In 2002, Toronto paid less than $1b to build the 5.5km of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_4_Sheppard , which is fully underground subway running on a custom gauge for historical reasons.
Last year, we finished https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_6_Finch_West , which is light rail running at-grade on standard gauge. It's not even twice as long but cost 3.6x as much. For light rail. And it's apparently running well below design speed and at least initially with terrible signal priority.
Currently we are building https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_5_Eglinton, just over five times as long. It's light rail at a combination of underground, at grade and elevated; current projected total cost is $17.5b. So, three and a half times as much per unit distance, for what is supposed to be a considerably less expensive option.
Prices for other things have not gone so crazy in that time frame. But yeah, it isn't costing us anywhere near 3.6b USD/mile (about 3.1b CAD/km) for light rail. Yet.
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I am curious how this intersects with a land value tax. Many LVT proponents try to draw in urbanists by noting its effect on density (LVT should economically increase density). But looking into it a little bit it sounds like that effect may be stronger in dense urban areas, with lower density areas less affected. I was curious because an LVT would likely also help undo distortion in the property market. Perhaps the two ideas are comparable after all; policies to encourage lower density wouldn’t necessarily be undone by an LVT.
In the real world, though, a Georgist style LVT probably has about as much chance to be enacted as any of these other policies. Unfortunately I think we’re going to run the current system into the ground.
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