{"items": [{"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123336010482", "anchor": "fb-10100123336010482", "service": "fb", "text": "@Eli this is partly a response to your comments earlier", "timestamp": "1574521943"}, {"author": "Eli", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123336010482&reply_comment_id=10100123356484452", "anchor": "fb-10100123336010482_10100123356484452", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jeff, glad you want to engage on this. While I put some thoughts together, I reckon that you might find this piece interesting: https://www.newyorker.com/.../the-plight-of-the-urban...", "timestamp": "1574532259"}, {"author": "Eli", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123336010482&reply_comment_id=10100123366394592", "anchor": "fb-10100123336010482_10100123366394592", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Fights over \u201cneighborhoods dominated by single family houses have their roots in racist zoning policies that sequestered much of the land surrounding cities for white families. This development pattern grew so large that by 2010, a majority of Americans lived in suburbs. Those policies contributed significantly to sprawling, polluted metros and multi-billion dollar wealth disparities. The current housing crisis presents both a high-contrast snapshot of the logical consequence of such policies and an opportunity to rethink how we use, share, and distribute the benefits of our cities.\u201d
https://www.shareable.net/cities-at-turning-point-will.../", "timestamp": "1574537454"}, {"author": "Eli", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123336010482&reply_comment_id=10100123366863652", "anchor": "fb-10100123336010482_10100123366863652", "service": "fb", "text": "→ \u201cBy separating ownership of the land and the residential or commercial developments on the land in this manner, a CLT can ensure that public and private investments used to maintain the affordability of the housing and other establishments remain within a community for generations. Core to this strategy are the limits placed on the amount of equity a CLT lessee is able to pocket at the time of resale or property transfer as well as the tripartite governance system which provides CLT lessees, community members, and CLT managers with equal representation and decision-making power in the CLT.\u201d
https://thenextsystem.org/learn/stories/community-land-trust", "timestamp": "1574537605"}, {"author": "Eli", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123336010482&reply_comment_id=10100123367252872", "anchor": "fb-10100123336010482_10100123367252872", "service": "fb", "text": "→ \u201crecognizing that a community\u2019s need for affordable housing is not transitory, an LEHC may establish either on its own or through local regulation a maximum resale value that prospective residents must agree to before becoming a member.
...
as cities more aggressively address the affordable housing crisis, some policymakers have leveraged affordable housing trust funds, municipal bonds, bank settlements, and other long-term sources of funding to support LEHC development and growth.\u201d
https://thenextsystem.org/.../limited-equity-housing...", "timestamp": "1574537741"}, {"author": "Elliot", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123339987512", "anchor": "fb-10100123339987512", "service": "fb", "text": "The implied argument is based on the unstated assumption that the food market and the real estate market have no material differences that undermine the analogy. This premise seems incredibly questionable, and would take a lot of work to substantiate.", "timestamp": "1574523966"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123339987512&reply_comment_id=10100123352996442", "anchor": "fb-10100123339987512_10100123352996442", "service": "fb", "text": "→ They're not the same (critically, food pretty easy to move while housing is famously all about location) but I do think (a) the main problems in the housing market are caused by massive restrictions on production and (b) if we put similar restrictions on food production people would be saying things like \"market rate food is luxury food\".", "timestamp": "1574530626"}, {"author": "Elliot", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123339987512&reply_comment_id=10100123362342712", "anchor": "fb-10100123339987512_10100123362342712", "service": "fb", "text": "→ But your (a) is just asserting the conclusion again.
The argument in the OP is roughly like this:
P1: Allowing unrestricted production of market-rate food produces enough food for everyone at affordable prices (except maybe with some subsidies needed for the very poor).
P2 (suppressed): The housing market is similar to the food market in all respects that are material to the ultimate effect of allowing unlimited market-rate production.
C: Therefore, allowing unlimited market-rate construction will produce enough housing for everyone to afford at reasonable prices (except maybe for some subsidies for the very poor).
It seems like all the work is being done by P2, but P2 is very far from obvious, and you offer no defense of it.", "timestamp": "1574535369"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123339987512&reply_comment_id=10100123362552292", "anchor": "fb-10100123339987512_10100123362552292", "service": "fb", "text": "→ If you would like to point at a particular aspect of the analogy where you think P2 breaks down I would be happy to look at it.", "timestamp": "1574535532"}, {"author": "Elliot", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123339987512&reply_comment_id=10100123366015352", "anchor": "fb-10100123339987512_10100123366015352", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jeff Kaufman but now you\u2019re just flipping the burden of proof by considering that the most controversial premise is obvious and challenging people who doubt it to challenge it.
For someone like me, who is just not sure whether or not P2 is true, assuming that none of the differences between two very dissimilar markets are material doesn\u2019t cut it. I\u2019m the undecided one: it\u2019s your job to convince me, not the other way around.
If you just want me to list differences, there are tons: ability to transport the product over long distances, transaction costs, fungibility of products produced by competing companies, chance that the option value of unused productive capacity exceeds the use value, how fast productive capacity can be redirected in response to demand shifts, extent to which the product is valued for conspicuous consumption value rather than use value, economies and diseconomies of scale, type and extent of public investment required for new production to be useful (roads, transit), and so on with lots of other differences I haven\u2019t thought of. Why would I take it for granted that none of these will affect the outcome?
Please don\u2019t try to individually address every one of these items, since I lack the time and expertise to evaluate those arguments. What you really need to convince me is empirical evidence and/or appeal to a credible authority. (ETA: you are not an authority, and neither are activist groups.)", "timestamp": "1574537199"}, {"author": "Alice", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123340271942", "anchor": "fb-10100123340271942", "service": "fb", "text": "I am in favor of building more housing, but this is a bad analogy.
The federal government has aggressively intervened in the ag sector since the 1930\u2019s to ensure that food prices are low and that farmers can keep them low. This year almost 40% of farm income is from federal programs
https://www.google.com/.../farmers-income-insurance...
To subsidize building construction to that degree would require $2-3 trillion annually in direct federal subsidies of construction
https://www.census.gov/construction/c30/pdf/release.pdf
Food in this country is not a free market, it is a sector with tremendous market intervention.
There are other issues with the analogy that I see, but I hope that this is enough to suggest that the comparison is not illuminating.", "timestamp": "1574524146"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123340271942&reply_comment_id=10100123341709062", "anchor": "fb-10100123340271942_10100123341709062", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Alice there is state intervention in the food market, but it is far smaller than the level of intervention in the housing market, especially in terms of production restrictions.", "timestamp": "1574524890"}, {"author": "Elliot", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123340271942&reply_comment_id=10100123342392692", "anchor": "fb-10100123340271942_10100123342392692", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Alice is that 40% standard? It sounds like part of it is a one-off subsidy due to Trump\u2019s trade war with China, not a policy to be continued indefinitely, but I can\u2019t tell how it breaks down.", "timestamp": "1574525475"}, {"author": "Elliot", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123340271942&reply_comment_id=10100123342961552", "anchor": "fb-10100123340271942_10100123342961552", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jeff Kaufman but if 40% of farm revenues come from direct subsides, it seems like it\u2019s only an apt comparison if you\u2019re proposing to replace the current housing status quo with construction deregulation plus a multi-trillion-dollar subsidy program.", "timestamp": "1574525704"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123340271942&reply_comment_id=10100123343250972", "anchor": "fb-10100123340271942_10100123343250972", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Reading more about this, but as a start that article seems to be counting insurance payouts as subsidies, when you should instead count only the amount the insurance is cheaper than market price.
(And we do already have things like this for housing, such as heavily subsidized flood insurance)", "timestamp": "1574525887"}, {"author": "Jai", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123340271942&reply_comment_id=10100123344932602", "anchor": "fb-10100123340271942_10100123344932602", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jeff Kaufman s/food/flood in the last sentence?", "timestamp": "1574527103"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123340271942&reply_comment_id=10100123345306852", "anchor": "fb-10100123340271942_10100123345306852", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jai thanks, fixed!", "timestamp": "1574527221"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123340271942&reply_comment_id=10100123346200062", "anchor": "fb-10100123340271942_10100123346200062", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Here are people who have an incentive to overstate the size of farm subsidies who say $20B/year total agricultural subsidies for the US. [1] This is $60/person, and includes cotton subsidy, which really isn't that much?
[1] https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/agriculture/subsidies", "timestamp": "1574527753"}, {"author": "Alice", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123340271942&reply_comment_id=10100123349378692", "anchor": "fb-10100123340271942_10100123349378692", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Elliot it is particularly large this year, but that's because of stabilizations to shield farmers from market forces. E.g. it would be like if in response to the 2008 construction bust the US government stepped in to keep all the construction companies afloat.
Using the $20 billion figure and $400 billion in pre-subsidy farm income in 2018 vs $ 6 trillion in private residential construction would scale to $300 billion per year. That's an affordable number, but it is also a big commitment.
This years numbers are not typical, but they are indicative of the bedrock commitment the federal government has made to stabilizing the farming sector.
I //am// in favor of additional construction. I just find this analogy inapt.
Going to mute this thread and try to disengage, having said my piece.", "timestamp": "1574528941"}, {"author": "Sweet", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123340271942&reply_comment_id=10100123361259882", "anchor": "fb-10100123340271942_10100123361259882", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I would say, among commodity farmers I know (ancestrally related to some), subsidies and insurance are far more important income sources than the actual crop they're producing generally. Yeah, there might be some crop money, but it's less consistent and therefore mostly ignored relative to subsidy and insurance money.", "timestamp": "1574534989"}, {"author": "Jai", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123340870742", "anchor": "fb-10100123340870742", "service": "fb", "text": "This is a generally excellent proposal, but glosses over the importance of preserving the history and character of our groceries and meals. We need to require farms and groceries to produce and stock foods of historical import indefinitely, and any proposal to discontinue any foods most be subject to at least several months of public comment before a local gastro-preservationist authority rules on whether or not the item may be discontinued. Additionally, new foods must be in keeping with the tastes and presentation of existing recipes, or else we might be overwhelmed by wildly clashing foods at every turn, destroying the character of our meals.", "timestamp": "1574524323"}, {"author": "Linchuan", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123340870742&reply_comment_id=10100123567501572", "anchor": "fb-10100123340870742_10100123567501572", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jai don't forget the need to keep the candle of Western Civilization alive by only having European cuisine in all but a few designated ethnic neighborhoods!", "timestamp": "1574634860"}, {"author": "johnswentworth", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Pg9JvLuALa47Wbios#fY4LH9ShSNYXnbu5m", "anchor": "lw-fY4LH9ShSNYXnbu5m", "service": "lw", "text": "How does the price cap suggestion avoid the usual econ-101 rule that a price cap either does nothing or causes a shortage?", "timestamp": 1574531914}, {"author": "jimrandomh", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Pg9JvLuALa47Wbios#hpRXMneym4p9H2usN", "anchor": "lw-hpRXMneym4p9H2usN", "service": "lw", "text": "→ It doesn't; this post is satire.", "timestamp": 1574551173}, {"author": "gjm", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Pg9JvLuALa47Wbios#5fwKFg68rhxGjiqBf", "anchor": "lw-5fwKFg68rhxGjiqBf", "service": "lw", "text": "It's not at all clear to me that housing and food are similar enough for this analogy to work. It seems to me that I can totally imagine a world in which the argument in the initial part of your post is right, and for that matter I can also imagine a world in which the corresponding argument about housing is right; whether either of them actually is right depends on details that needn't be the same in the two cases.
So the implicit argument here (if I'm understanding right) -- "some people say that to solve our housing problems it isn't enough to build more houses, so we should prioritize building affordable housing or something instead; here's an analogous thing people might say about food, which is obviously silly; likewise, saying these things about housing is silly, so the main thing we need to do is to build more houses regardless of exactly what they are" -- doesn't work for me. It's not obvious enough that the food version of the argument is wrong, nor is it obvious enough that if one is wrong then the other is too.
(I do tend to agree that building more housing is much the most important thing to do to address the difficulties many many many people have in affording somewhere to live, so my unconvincedness here isn't the result of not liking the conclusion.)", "timestamp": 1574532550}, {"author": "Douglas_Knight", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Pg9JvLuALa47Wbios#a6iyky93raKhFe2ke", "anchor": "lw-a6iyky93raKhFe2ke", "service": "lw", "text": "→ If the arguments are actually analogous, then this shows that one of them is wrong. Maybe there are important differences between food and housing, but if the argument doesn't mention them, it is wrong. It's that simple.
It is also striking that when people claim that there are differences and flail around looking for differences, the differences generally support the wrong side. It makes is pretty clear that they didn't have any belief about the topic.", "timestamp": 1574897413}, {"author": "gjm", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Pg9JvLuALa47Wbios#x4KKPY5ojpfeSRiLc", "anchor": "lw-x4KKPY5ojpfeSRiLc", "service": "lw", "text": "→ → It's hard to tell whether the arguments are "actually analogous" because ...The spoof-argument about food, in the OP here, leaves lots of things implicit. (E.g., "With deregulation, farmers would massively shift to luxury crops, and we would have shortages of bread, milk, eggs, and other staples"; it doesn't go into details about why this would allegedly happen.) So we don't know what the parallel argument about housing actually says.The parallel argument about housing leaves everything implicit, in that we don't actually know what it is. Jeff hasn't (so far as I know) pointed at a specific pro-housing-regulation article and copied its arguments, he's provided a bunch of food-arguments that supposedly parallel common housing-arguments. So what's "the argument" here?
I think it's reasonable to suspect that they aren't "actually analogous" in sufficient detail that if one is wrong then the other is too because ...They depend on all sorts of details about the world that there's no particular reason to expect behave the same way in the food and housing cases. E.g., is a (fictional) several-year waiting list for SNAP equivalent to a several-year waiting list for, er, whatever housing thing this is meant to be parallel to? It might be, but maybe not; the timescales on which hunger and homelessness happen aren't exactly the same, after all, nor are the timescales associated with normally-functional food-buying and house-buying, and if I try to imagine mechanisms leading to several-year waiting lists for food assistance and for housing assistance, it's not clear to me that I should expect them to be similar. (Hence, the prospects for fixing them might differ.)
And I don't understand why you are so sure that if the arguments are analogous then "this shows that one of them is wrong". Normally, when that sort of thing is true it's because the conclusions of the two arguments are incompatible, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. Perhaps you mean "this shows that the one about housing is wrong" because you find it obvious that the one about food is wrong (though in this case I am not sure why you said "one of them", which seems wrong on Gricean grounds), but I don't find that convincing becauseThe argument about food is liable to seem obviously wrong simply because it's based on a world that is clearly quite different from ours in implausible-seeming ways.If I leave aside the fact that the things it says about food are in fact false in our world, it's no more obviously wrong (to me) than the argument about housing that it's meant to be undermining by its more-obvious wrongness. In some hypothetical world where food is highly regulated and unaffordably expensive, would it be the case that deregulating it would bring prices down to the levels we see in our world? Are you sure you aren't just assuming that since Jeff has described a world that differs from ours in those two respects, the regulation must be the cause of the cost?", "timestamp": 1574906971}, {"author": "jkaufman", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Pg9JvLuALa47Wbios#v5WGTCudb3kYnZSeP", "anchor": "lw-v5WGTCudb3kYnZSeP", "service": "lw", "text": "→ → → \n
is a (fictional) several-year waiting list for SNAP equivalent to a several-year waiting list for, er, whatever housing thing this is meant to be parallel to?\n\n
Section 8\n", "timestamp": 1574909403}, {"author": "gjm", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Pg9JvLuALa47Wbios#6iHikqC2TuH4xu5iW", "anchor": "lw-6iHikqC2TuH4xu5iW", "service": "lw", "text": "→ → → → Thanks! Here are a couple of relevant extracts for anyone else who didn't know the same things as I didn't know. First, what it is:Section 8 of the Housing Act of 1937 [...] authorizes the payment of rental housing assistance to private landlords on behalf of low-income households in the United States. Of the 5.2 million American households that received rental assistance in 2018, approximately 1.2 million of those households received a Section 8 based voucher.
Second, those waiting lists:In many localities, the PHA waiting lists for Section 8 vouchers may be thousands of families long, waits of three to six years to obtain vouchers is common, and many lists are closed to new applicants. Wait lists are often briefly opened (often for just five days), which may occur as little as once every seven years. Some PHAs use a "lottery" approach, where there can be as many as 100,000 applicants for 10,000 spots on the waitlist, with spots being awarded on the basis of weighted or non-weighted lotteries, with priority sometimes given to local residents, the disabled, veterans, and the elderly.", "timestamp": 1574936080}, {"author": "jkaufman", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Pg9JvLuALa47Wbios#ucGj5bM8PLGxhmx5y", "anchor": "lw-ucGj5bM8PLGxhmx5y", "service": "lw", "text": "→ → → → → \"Fully Fund Section 8\" is part of Bernie Sanders' housing proposal and is popular among people on the left. If we think low income people should get housing vouchers, why give out so few?\n
If I thought there was no way to bring down the cost of housing I would probably agree, but since supply is so restricted giving Section 8 to everyone who needs it would (a) raise rents even more, (b) be incredibly expensive, and (c) transfer a huge amount of money to landlords.\n
Building public housing (at higher densities than would normally be allowed) or just removing zoning restrictions would go much farther.\n", "timestamp": 1574941796}, {"author": "Douglas_Knight", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Pg9JvLuALa47Wbios#9neBt2riNPKh3yXg9", "anchor": "lw-9neBt2riNPKh3yXg9", "service": "lw", "text": "→ → → Maybe this argument is a straw man. That is, maybe it's not accurately describing the arguments that people use. But that is a very different problem than saying this argument might be OK. ", "timestamp": 1574993948}, {"author": "gjm", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Pg9JvLuALa47Wbios#hzXFYJgTpr5eCoGjf", "anchor": "lw-hzXFYJgTpr5eCoGjf", "service": "lw", "text": "→ → → → I agree. That's why I listed those two issues (1. the spoof argument might not be a good analogy for real arguments about housing; 2. the spoof argument isn't obviously wrong) separately.", "timestamp": 1575025998}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123359508392", "anchor": "fb-10100123359508392", "service": "fb", "text": "You need to take into account the fact that many people have invested their life savings in tinned food. Any moves to liberalise the market will ruin these people, so in practice are very hard to achieve. They invested expecting continuously rising food prices and we need to ensure this expectation is met.", "timestamp": "1574533805"}, {"author": "Jai", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123359508392&reply_comment_id=10100123360226952", "anchor": "fb-10100123359508392_10100123360226952", "service": "fb", "text": "→ (headlines from an alternate universe)", "timestamp": "1574534362"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123359508392&reply_comment_id=10100123360730942", "anchor": "fb-10100123359508392_10100123360730942", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Ben that's a good point, and it's compounded by (a) many people have taken out large loans to afford a lifetime supply of tinned food and (b) the government has historically encouraged that via the food-loan interest tax deduction.
On the other hand, if people stopped saving up tinned food and moved to a system of buying food \"just in time\" that would make us massively more vulnerable to short term supply disruptions. Though people would probably still save 3-6m of food in their basements just in case, so they're prepared for a major storm or other disaster.", "timestamp": "1574534689"}, {"author": "Kiran", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123359508392&reply_comment_id=10100123467986002", "anchor": "fb-10100123359508392_10100123467986002", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Ben makes a possibly relevant point. The government has pushed the idea that housing is an investment that should increase in value, instead of being a consumable that falls in value over time and is replaced. If houses depreciated like cars, the used ones would be affordable and eventually would be replaced by better models.", "timestamp": "1574574049"}, {"author": "Alexandra", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123361105192", "anchor": "fb-10100123361105192", "service": "fb", "text": "If more almond growers start there won't be enough bees to pollinate them anyway and some farmers will loose their crops. Maybe then they'll switch back to foods people need?", "timestamp": "1574534934"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123361105192&reply_comment_id=10100123362612172", "anchor": "fb-10100123361105192_10100123362612172", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Why would they switch back to low-profit staples when there are so many high-profit luxuries? Sure, they might misjudge the market for almonds in particular, but that's just one crop of thousands.", "timestamp": "1574535609"}, {"author": "shminux", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Pg9JvLuALa47Wbios#DWdip2aCYDsJYgJfp", "anchor": "lw-DWdip2aCYDsJYgJfp", "service": "lw", "text": "Your post starts with a questionable statement and is heavy on poorly motivated emotional shoulds and light on anything that can be charitably called "research". How do you define a food crisis? Which food crises in the past are you comparing it to? How were they resolved? Have you looked at the food availability issues around the world and the various ways they have been or are being (mis-)handled? ", "timestamp": 1574541777}, {"author": "Self-Embedded Agent", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Pg9JvLuALa47Wbios#Wq7zDJAzQAhG23Mu2", "anchor": "lw-Wq7zDJAzQAhG23Mu2", "service": "lw", "text": "→ Whooosh.", "timestamp": 1574566177}, {"author": "sonicstates", "source_link": "http://www.reddit.com/r/yimby/comments/e0m3cr#f8firy9", "anchor": "r-f8firy9", "service": "r", "text": "Red rose Twitter doesn't get the joke\n", "timestamp": 1574544348}, {"author": "[deleted]", "source_link": "http://www.reddit.com/r/yimby/comments/e0m3cr#f8g31jw", "anchor": "r-f8g31jw", "service": "r", "text": "→ I love the red rose, it flags people as too stupid to be worth listening to.\n", "timestamp": 1574553303}, {"author": "core2idiot", "source_link": "http://www.reddit.com/r/yimby/comments/e0m3cr#f8flr9t", "anchor": "r-f8flr9t", "service": "r", "text": "I mean I support turning section 8 into an entitlement. However I do think that the best course of action is to abandon almost all zoning, parking requirements and density restrictions and instead have an Urban Growth boundary mostly to restrict the liability of city utilities.\n", "timestamp": 1574545715}, {"author": "agitatedprisoner", "source_link": "http://www.reddit.com/r/yimby/comments/e0m3cr#f8g2whc", "anchor": "r-f8g2whc", "service": "r", "text": "Eat more plants. Eating plants directly is more efficient than feeding them to animals and eating the animals. Eat a healthy plant based diet and as an added benefit you won't get heart disease.\n\n
Micromanaging food production from the state level is one way to go. Want to go this way? Outright ban or heavily tax meats/eggs/dairy/sugar and funnel the revenue into a state healthcare system. People won't get sick nearly as much the cost cost of food will go down as a result of freeing up land and resources from being used for resource intensive animal ag.\n\n
If you don't want to eat more plants and just want other people to subsidize your unhealthy diet, boo hoo. I'll save my tears for the chickens/cows/pigs bred and tortured for unhealthy snacks.\n", "timestamp": 1574553208}, {"author": "cbr", "source_link": "http://www.reddit.com/r/yimby/comments/e0m3cr#f8gbhn7", "anchor": "r-f8gbhn7", "service": "r", "text": "→ the post is satire; you're on r/yimby\n", "timestamp": 1574557134}, {"author": "agitatedprisoner", "source_link": "http://www.reddit.com/r/yimby/comments/e0m3cr#f8gdjup", "anchor": "r-f8gdjup", "service": "r", "text": "→ → I'm not plugged into anything enough to spot satire. My reality is satire.\n", "timestamp": 1574558019}, {"author": "Kevin", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123410102002", "anchor": "fb-10100123410102002", "service": "fb", "text": "mmK, lets see here
commenting as a farmer with dirt time in both production and marketing, and as an agriculture geek and regenerative homesteader, but not as a policy wonk.
I typed this out fast, and its not really edited or compiled. My apologies for the extra mental work that will be needed to understand it. Numbering is mostly for reference, not to be construed as some kind of coherent set of individual assertions. Some of what I;m saying might seem tangential to the OP, but if I wrote this well enough the relationship will be clear.
1) \"Lack of supply is only a symptom of a fundamentally broken system where food is a commodity, for sale to the highest bidder. We cannot leave something as fundamental as food to capitalism.\" Bingo, thanks for saying that!
2) Food spending in the U.S., at 6.4% of income, is the lowest of any country in the world for which data is kept. (Research by USDA, source: https://www.vox.com/.../map-heres-how-much-every-country... ) This raises questions about food prices being a problem here... huh?
3) It's nonetheless true, we are in a major food crisis! Crap. But I don't agree we are in a food price crisis. I think we are in an income scarcity crisis and an unspecific cost of living crisis and a government-spends-all-our-money-on-war crisis, and also a food production scarcity, but food prices? Not a standout problem to my eyes, and a weird one to focus too hard on... taking the world as a benchmark, anyhow.
4) Although economies of scale exist in nearly all farming models, subsidies and regulation overwhelmingly favor large, extractive farming enterprises and promote the yield of low-nutrition food. Many of the current factors functioning as \"economies of scale\" are artificial. For instance, CAFOs exist in large part because grain is so artificially cheap. Fossil fuel subsidies make it more economical to run machines in large factory farms (literally, farms run on the model of the industrial factory) than to pay workers to use lower-input, higher-labor methods with big advantages. These advantages include carbon balance, nutrient density, environmental impact, ethics, and land quality restoration. When I was at a small CSA using carbon-negative regenerative methods to produce the highest quality meat around, we couldn't get our prices to compete with conventional prices because the conventional prices are so deflated by tax dollars, and also because the regulatory hurdle is extremely biased towards large producers. That, even though our models and out products are way better for stakeholders, on the balance. In order for us to be able to run a real farm that really tends land and really feeds people, we needed food prices to go UP to support what we do. We as a society need SNAP, WIC, and related programs to support issues with food access... not lower prices!
5) I'm not advocating either ag deregulation or the elimination of ag subsidies. I'm saying the current state is that regulation and subsidy favor extremely perverse approaches which don't support the common good.
6) Large farming operations are extremely problematic. Everything dies around them. The soil dies, the birds die. Regenerative agriculture is essentially impossible at industrial scales. For instance, any farming system which makes any kind of ecological sense in new england incorporates trees extensively, and trees are not very conducive to mechanization. Small farms, and specifically certain kinds of small farms, offer solutions to many of the major problems in our food system. Policy should account for this.
7) Land is all different. Certain lands are only appropriate for certain crop cycles or growing systems, creating products at different price points. Restricting this diversity is harmful.
8) Proposals based in industrial thinking, which treat farms as generic and homogenous food production units, will exacerbate broad structural problems already here.
9) Agricultural policy is nutritional policy. Broadly speaking, the nutritional perspectives still in vogue today took root 60 years ago based on really bad science, and it's causing an ongoing epidemic of chronic illness on enormous and unconscionable scales. Ag policy dictates what we eat. Grain subsidies have not been good for us. Lax regulation on chemical inputs have not been good for us. If we double down on existing ag policy in response to a food crisis, we will kill people. Literally, by the millions. Mostly, they will be lower income people whose dietary choices are more tied to economic constraints and therefore to subsidies and the like.
10) Ag policy is climate policy. Use of fossil fuels at all levels, loss of carbon from the soil, loss of carbon from deforestation, loss and degradation of habitat leading to extinction and ecological crisis, are all centrally agricultural issues. There are agricultural solutions to both immediate-term ecological crisis and also longer-term climate crisis. These must factor large!
11) I get really nervous when we talk about requiring farms to produce affordable food. That makes all the worthwhile farms I know untenable, under the current system. There is a whole cadre of bright young idealistic farmers who are *definitely* not in it for the money, and you'd put them all right out of business. Since there's an overall scarcity of new farmers and young farmers, you'd be worsening an existing generational labor shortage. Affordable food requirements also add another layer of disadvantage to small producers vying for a seat at the table, a hurdle that only bigger players can meet.
Conclusion: The current landscape of agriculture is an unmitigated disaster, which has been growing for 100 years and has reached epic proportions. Wading into agricultural policy and economics runs quickly into a pretty dramatic minefield with large consequences. The nuances of the situation seem lost on policymakers, most of whom live in urban environments and understand the theory of industrial food production better than the reality of feeding families and communities and tending land. Any sane course forward involves dismantling the minefield first and foremost... otherwise energy goes primarily to reactive corrections to ongoing structural problems.", "timestamp": "1574553568"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123410102002&reply_comment_id=10100123419632902", "anchor": "fb-10100123410102002_10100123419632902", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Kevin I'm sorry for eliciting such a thorough response to a satirical post! I'm trying to talk about housing policy by making an analogy to food policy in a hypothetical world where food is regulated very differently", "timestamp": "1574557362"}, {"author": "Kevin", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123410102002&reply_comment_id=10100123444328412", "anchor": "fb-10100123410102002_10100123444328412", "service": "fb", "text": "→ dude... thats hilarious, just made my day
we actually live largely in this universe, though! your post made way too much sense as a sincere critique of food policy and food crisis. we're facing global food shortages, caused largely by climate disruptions, and it's already resulted in mass migrations and refugee crises. it's been a major stressor in igniting several recent conflicts, including syria and yemen. we're obviously not feeling it here, for the most part, though there have indeed been worrying price fluxuations which have affected producers perhaps more than consumers. Food prices in the U.S. are indeed rising a bit faster than inflation over the last 20 years; but this is rather dramatically true if you normalize for key quality markers.
There's plenty of reason to be concerned, and reason to ask some hard questions about policy. food prices are also absolutely regulated very carefully, though somewhat more indirectly than your hypothetical in most cases. PFAs are not called such, as far as I know... which clearly I wouldn't... but governmental organizations of a similar form exist. SNAP is chronically underfunded and difficult to access.
You kinda nailed it, actually, on basically every count. Which maybe says something VERY interesting about both situations. some of the differences may prove prescient, as well.
also, I evidently have some strong bias that you would absolutely post something on food policy that makes total sense to me in some ways and not a lick in others. \"Faircloth Limit\" should have triggered a googling, thats on me.", "timestamp": "1574566173"}, {"author": "James", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123410102002&reply_comment_id=10100123464787412", "anchor": "fb-10100123410102002_10100123464787412", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I only realized it was parody when I came here to angrily yell about the lack of a food shortage, and then found all the discussion on housing.", "timestamp": "1574572937"}, {"author": "Kiran", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123410102002&reply_comment_id=10100123468574822", "anchor": "fb-10100123410102002_10100123468574822", "service": "fb", "text": "→ It took me about 15 seconds to figure out it must be some kind of attempted analogy, since the second sentence is so obviously false.
(OOops. The first sentence is true: we are in the middle of a major food production crisis: we don't produce enough to feed the two billion people expected by the middle of the century and yields aren't rising fast enough.)", "timestamp": "1574574254"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123410102002&reply_comment_id=10100123487252392", "anchor": "fb-10100123410102002_10100123487252392", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Whereas I thought almost no one would get past \"Yes In My BarnYard\"", "timestamp": "1574597270"}, {"author": "Sweet", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123410102002&reply_comment_id=10100123492711452", "anchor": "fb-10100123410102002_10100123492711452", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jeff I too spent more than 10 hours yesterday not realizing it was satire, until rereading it on your website I noticed the satire tag.", "timestamp": "1574603050"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123410102002&reply_comment_id=10100123503140552", "anchor": "fb-10100123410102002_10100123503140552", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I've now edited the post to change \"the above is an analogy to a world in which we have heavy restrictions on regional food production that are similar to the restrictions we put on housing production\" to \"the above is a satirical analogy to ...\"", "timestamp": "1574609135"}, {"author": "Kevin", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123410102002&reply_comment_id=10100123530306112", "anchor": "fb-10100123410102002_10100123530306112", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Give me 10 years, I'll get YIMBY to catch on", "timestamp": "1574620529"}, {"author": "Ofer", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123432676762", "anchor": "fb-10100123432676762", "service": "fb", "text": "\"I want to address the extreme position of eliminating marketing orders and allowing unrestricted production of market rate food\" - you could start by explaining what that extreme position is. What is \"marketing orders\" and who proposes eliminating it?", "timestamp": "1574560766"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123432676762&reply_comment_id=10100123433530052", "anchor": "fb-10100123432676762_10100123433530052", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Ofer If you click through to the version with links terms are linked to their explanations.
Marketing orders are used by the federal government to regulate the production and sale of agriculture commodities, for example milk. In this post I'm describing a hypothetical world in which marketing orders had been expanded so heavily that food production was highly restricted, to make a point about how we should handle the housing crisis", "timestamp": "1574561167"}, {"author": "Marcus", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123438914262", "anchor": "fb-10100123438914262", "service": "fb", "text": "This is really misinformed. I get that you're making an analogy, but it's a really bad one. Food production is heavily heavily subsidized both here and in most other countries. We do things like guarantee farmers minimum prices for their crops, which I suppose we could do with housing? Likewise we give poor people a monthly credit to purchase the food of their choice, which isn't quite enough often, but does help. This we could likewise do with housing.
Lastly there are problems in the agricultural sector that are quite serious. The retail price of food has been rising much faster than inflation for over a decade, even while farming is becoming less profitable.", "timestamp": "1574563112"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123438914262&reply_comment_id=10100123444797472", "anchor": "fb-10100123438914262_10100123444797472", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Marcus: US agricultural subsidies are only ~$60/person/year, and don't include most food crops.
While there are food production restrictions, they're tiny compared to the production restrictions we have for housing.
SNAP is good, and we would need something similar for extremely low income housing if we got rid of production restrictions (as I say at the end of the post).
The food CPI and the general CPI have tracked very closely for decades; I'm not sure where you're getting \"much faster than inflation\".", "timestamp": "1574566413"}, {"author": "Marcus", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123438914262&reply_comment_id=10100123459028952", "anchor": "fb-10100123438914262_10100123459028952", "service": "fb", "text": "→ My inflation data was out of date. Food inflation was significantly above average for the 2007-2015 period, but in the last four years has actually been below average.
It's still a really bad analogy if you're arguing for non-intervention, given that we have both policies encouraging food production and policies making it universally affordable and spend considerably on both of them. This all makes perfect sense, given it's a necessity, like housing.
In a sane world, we would encourage housing production, like we do for food, and give people money to help them buy housing, like we do for food. The exact nature of the production assistance would be different, since most food production subsidies address the unpredictability of the business, which is less of factor in housing.", "timestamp": "1574571324"}, {"author": "Kevin", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123438914262&reply_comment_id=10100123463759472", "anchor": "fb-10100123438914262_10100123463759472", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jeff Kaufman Ag subsidies get complicated. See commodity credit loans, corn ethanol subsidies, state subsidies, petroleum subsidies, and various grant monies. I wonder about an accurate total, but haven't found one.", "timestamp": "1574572089"}, {"author": "Marcus", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123438914262&reply_comment_id=10100123486768362", "anchor": "fb-10100123438914262_10100123486768362", "service": "fb", "text": "→ It's also weird that you mock the notion that we could pay farmers to grow \"affordable food\" when the vast majority of the ag subsidies go to staple grains. (Many of which are then fed to animals, which complicates things.)
As to why they're more restrictions on housing, it's because it exists in the physical environment in different way. You may enjoy eating pork, say, but you wouldn't want to live next to a pig farm. Similarly if the super rich want to build high-rises that they keep vacant for investments and money laundering, let them build it out in the middle of nowhere, like the do in China. Let's reserve the city center for structures people actually live in.", "timestamp": "1574596416"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123438914262&reply_comment_id=10100123487177542", "anchor": "fb-10100123438914262_10100123487177542", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Marcus I'm not mocking the idea of \"affordable food\" in the post, I'm trying to show that when you have restricted production as much as we have with housing, \"remove production restrictions\" does much more to make things affordable than \"reserve some for low income people\".
I'm ok with the kind of zoning that says \"let's keep industrial uses that put off noxious smells/pollution away from everything else\". I don't think we need zoning to separate general residential and commercial use, though, or prohibit high-rises.
I know the two of us have disagreed for a long time on whether \"high rises they keep vacant for investments and tax evasion\" is currently a thing, but if we removed production restrictions behavior like that would be dramatically money-losing.", "timestamp": "1574597067"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123438914262&reply_comment_id=10100123487217462", "anchor": "fb-10100123438914262_10100123487217462", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I think something like zoning could do a good job letting people generally live in neighborhoods they prefer, but the cost of current zoning is far too high.", "timestamp": "1574597167"}, {"author": "Marcus", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123438914262&reply_comment_id=10100123490161562", "anchor": "fb-10100123438914262_10100123490161562", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I agree that there are way too many barriers to housing production, I just think the food analogy is really weird. Though there is a difference between \"let people build whatever they want\" and \"lower the barriers to production\", which is more the point I was trying to make.", "timestamp": "1574600966"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123438914262&reply_comment_id=10100123509048712", "anchor": "fb-10100123438914262_10100123509048712", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Marcus: \"My inflation data was out of date. Food inflation was significantly above average for the 2007-2015 period, but in the last four years has actually been below average.\"
Looking at CPIFABSL deflated by CPIAUCSL it looks to me like the cost of food has generally moved with inflation, staying within 9% of 1967 prices for the last 50+ years:", "timestamp": "1574612300"}, {"author": "Will", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123508265282", "anchor": "fb-10100123508265282", "service": "fb", "text": "Miguel I think you\u2019d like this", "timestamp": "1574612103"}, {"author": "Miguel", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123508265282&reply_comment_id=10100124304514592", "anchor": "fb-10100123508265282_10100124304514592", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Will lol we should talk off line, but there are many problems with this analogy. But I also don\u2019t know as much about this", "timestamp": "1574989663"}, {"author": "Will", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123508265282&reply_comment_id=10100124336006482", "anchor": "fb-10100123508265282_10100124336006482", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Yeah we should!", "timestamp": "1575001851"}, {"author": "Josh", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123561543512", "anchor": "fb-10100123561543512", "service": "fb", "text": "My experience is that when someone wants to meddle in a market, they will come up with a dozen ways why *this* market isn't like all other markets, and *this* market can't possibly be left alone, but instead needs to be heavily centrally managed, ideally by smart and wise and good people like them.", "timestamp": "1574633200"}, {"author": "Elliot", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123334787932?comment_id=10100123561543512&reply_comment_id=10100123565889802", "anchor": "fb-10100123561543512_10100123565889802", "service": "fb", "text": "→ When they point out a dozen ways this market is different, they\u2019re usually correct. But that doesn\u2019t by itself entail that the differences have the consequences they\u2019re imagining, or that their proposed regulations will have the effect they want.", "timestamp": "1574634345"}]}