I serve as a planning commissioner for my city, and my city just recently tried to overhaul our zoning code to allow for more affordability and better economic outcomes for our citizens and future as a city. Here is what I have learned:
In the US, few people participate or care about local laws, zoning, and elections, or even understand why participation may be important. In a citizen ballot to determine if we should cap housing construction, 10% of the population voted. 5.1% were in favor of a limit on housing construction, and it passed before later being made illegal by the state. Among those voters, most have rose tinted glasses of better economic times from the past, and want to recreate the past instead of learning from it and using it to make the future better for future residents and businesses.
Most people do not realize how zoning impacts the daily life of everyone in an area, and how it impacts personal finances, which businesses will thrive, and public finances. Where I live, we have an absurd number of chains, and local businesses struggle. Part of this is out of our control, but the part that is (minimum parking requirements, single use zoning, etc) continuously gets upheld against changes that would help local businesses.
I think we need to figure out how to get young people engaged locally. Many young people will protest national or state policies and be engaged at those levels, which is great, but very little time/energy is spent where they could directly see meaningful impact on their lives.
Protests come when people are pushed into a corner with little other choice. Participation is more prevalent when people have free time in their lives. Our economics has systematically squeezed free time out in favor of more work to most of our workforce, and particularly hard for young people.
One reason so many local city policies favor the old, is that they're retired and have the time to participate
This. I fought against a zoning exception (ironic comment) that would allow an asphalt plant near my children's school. When we showed up at meetings, they were canceled and rescheduled at different times for 'reasons'. I managed to get people there every time, but it was tough for parents to get there, and it seemed like the process had been weaponized against our participation.
Probably never, except maybe during the period when only white male landowners could vote and so the "we" was a much smaller and wealthier group. Voter turnout is pretty high these days though.
In the latter half of the 20th century, while many things were much worse than they are today, it was genuinely possible to support a family on a single minimum-wage job in many parts of the country.
Now, that doesn't mean that everyone used the extra time for civic participation, but when you compare that to today, when far too many people have to work two or three jobs per adult just to keep the lights on, I think it's fair to say that there was more free time.
Young people seem to have plenty of free time to march around the streets protesting, chanting and banging drums (which has pretty much zero effect on policy), but they aren't able to find the time to attend a city council meeting, or even vote, for that matter.
Pretty sure the young people protesting are the ones also voting. But that’s only a small fraction of the total young people.the rest are too busy on TikTok :/
Hmm… 1 in 20 individuals are affected… I get the idea being 2 adults per family, one of them affected, hence 1 in 10 families, but I think its incorrect/misleading (potentially in either direction) to say 1 in 10 families. I haven't looked at the data about how many families are single parent (which could increase the impact per family) OR how many of those 5% identified as working multiple jobs are married (I wouldn't be surprised if more of them are unmarried, since a two parent family with both working one job might be expected to not need the additional jobs).
That is a self reported survey of households that doesn't lend itself to capturing all of the people. One, participants need to respond, which a busy and tired person isn't likely to do. Two, it doesn't define job, so if you don't think of your side hustle/gig work as a job, then you won't say it is. In the survey, if you did answer, and you do have 2 jobs, but you didn't work both in the exact week that you were surveyed, then you also aren't counted. IRS data, ADP private payroll estimates are much higher, but have their own issues.
Protesting is basically "doing nothing, loudly." It looks virtuous but has almost zero actual affect on policy. Does any politician actually look at a protest and say "Oh, my, look at that, people don't like what I'm doing! Looks like I have to change my mind."
They never change their minds, that's because the police are willing to beat the protesters for them. The Civil Rights movement is an example of (mostly, but not always peaceful) protest that changed things within living memory. Gay rights advances in recent decades definitely owe a lot to demonstrations and public organizing that put the issues into public conversation. Women's suffrage movements also featured many protests. Policy effects are everywhere.
What has no effect pretty much ever is protesting foreign policy, because the majority of people in any country neither care nor know what happens anywhere else.
Politicians are like ROM. You can't change them once they are programmed. If you want a different function, you need to swap them out. Yelling in the street is not going to get you anywhere.
The reason Civil Rights, Gay Rights and so on got traction was not through protestors changing politicians' minds. It was through the masses changing their minds and actually going to the ballot boxes to replace their (essentially robot) politicians.
It was also through the violent actions of terrorist groups that police couldn't keep under control. For every time the politicians agreed with a Rosa Parks, it was because they were afraid of a Black Panthers.
While the police and politicians were afraid, it's not because there was a real terrorist threat from the Black Panthers or other militant black movements of the time. While the Panthers had some issues with violence, almost all of that was dedicated to infighting, and the few incidents that weren't were almost all revealed to be incited and planned by agent provacateurs. They were just afraid of blacks, and of giving the "lower" classes any kind of idea that they could effect change.
That's demonstrably false. Politicians like Strom Thurmond and Joe Biden enjoyed long careers in the Senate after opposing the Civil Rights movement. Lindsey Graham opposes gay marriage today.
Civil disobedience and other exertions of citizen power are only a subset of "protest". I've been to a lot of protests and most of them accomplished jack shit.
It's very rare for anything to change as a direct result of protests, but the act of protesting brings issues into the public consciousness that weren't necessarily there before. That is the real driver of change. Changing public opinion directly transforms the Overton Window and limits the acceptable range of opinions and actions politicians can take. Just because no laws were directly changed doesn't mean your protest did nothing.
Note that I'm not saying you, yourself, are a proponent of the status quo, deliberately spreading propaganda.
But protests are absolutely not useless.
"waaaah they don't change Trump's mind after a single protest waaaaah" of course not. That's not what they're there to do. That's the win condition, not the only move in the game.*
Protests have a variety of important effects, but let's just focus on two of the big ones, which are closely linked:
1) They tell the other people who disagree with what is going on that they are not alone. That there are others like them out there, and that if they do try to do something (whether that's go to a protest themselves, call their congresspeople, or whatever), it won't be just shouting into the void.
2) They tell the people who agree with what is going on that this is not over. They can't just expect to be greeted as liberators; there are people in their own hometown who think that this is not OK, it shouldn't be allowed to continue, and anyone who supports it can expect at least a side-eye at the supermarket, if not much more serious social shunning.
And no: neither of these lead directly to a change in the policies that are being protested. But that doesn't mean that they're useless, any more than it's useless to, say, release wolves into Yellowstone, if what you care about are some of the myriad downstream effects of a trophic cascade.
* Not, I would note very firmly, that it's a game. This is merely a convenient metaphor.
Some politician in Japan pushed zoning away from cities up to the prefecture and national level. So locals do not get veto rights over new construction.
It's an archetypal social coordination problem that can't be solved at a local level. If relaxed zoning pushes all new buildings into my neighborhood, because all other vote against it, then I'm going to end up with 20 stories of balconies hanging above my property but see no benefits, not even indirect ones like lower rents leading to lower inflation and prices etc. Some developer will simply capture that rent - both in the rent extraction sense and the real estate rent meanings.
A smart central planner can act for the shared benefit, they are sensitive to the votes of renters in some other high density area that also can't solve the problem locally etc.
if your neighborhood gets denser you will see the benefits
if you want to live there you can pick from more options
developers capture value, but the buildings are there
obviously the usual problem is that the land value goes up, and thus the rent goes up too (because suddenly the neighborhood becomes more desirable - which again is a sign of benefits for those who already live there)
My state did something similar recently as well for land within a quarter mile of transit, they have to be zoned for a minimum number of housing units, and parking minimums cannot be enforced in that radius. Some of the municipalities impacted are suing the state.
5.1% were in favor of a limit on housing construction, and it passed before later being made illegal by the state.
FWIW, it is a learned behavior that voting doesn't change much. It doesn't help when elected officials obviously ignore the will of the people (nationally, see polling data on legalizing, or even at least decriminalizing, marijuana, as one example), or when things just get overturned by someone else. My neighborhood "votes" on zoning, but the vote literally means nothing. The city council has to hear how we voted, but they don't have to take the vote into account.
I get that it's easy to scold people that don't vote, but it is more important that people with power do something to earn our votes. Hold them accountable. They're failing us more than our neighbors who have either been taught that voting doesn't matter especially when sometimes voting laws make it harder than it should be to vote anyway.
A good start would be to allow everyone living in the city to vote. I don't care about politics, zoning or planning if I am not allowed to vote or participate. There isn't anything I can do, so why bother putting effort into it?
I've lived in various European cities where I was not able to vote for various reasons. Such as living hotel long-term, living in a holiday home, being semi-homeless, sub-letting, crashing on someones couch. Seasonal workers, migrant workers or people with unstable employment are typically in this situation.
What do you think makes someone who’s pretty much just passing by entitled to push their opinions on the locals who’ve lived there their entire lives? Especially when that person
likely won’t suffer the longterm consequences of it
I get the sentiment about "why would I let people who aren't going to stay long term decide how the city is run?" but in the end it creates a city that is indifferent or even hostile to people in that situation. It ends up disenfranchising a population that will always be there, even if the people who make up that population is constantly changing.
Thank you. I know people who have lived in Amsterdam for over five years but can't vote for local politics because of their legal status or because they are illegally subletting due to the shitty housing market in The Netherlands.
Don't complain about people not being engaged with local politics if you don't allow them to vote.
The ones who will “always be there” can get their papers for permanent residence done and vote. If they don’t want to (or can’t since they don’t have the legal grounds to even stay there for longer), then they shouldn’t have a say on decisions that can permanently change things about the place.
There will always be the population of people who will be in short term housing or similar situations, but due to their circumstances the individual people will come and go. 5 years from now the makeup of the itinerant population may be almost entirely different, but the people in that population are in the same circumstances, especially if they don't have any political representation.
Who is going to speak for the people who aren't allowed to vote?
In my country, citizens without a permanent address (which is very few people, those who have no place of theirs mostly register at someone elses for easier administration) can still sign up and vote, so that leaves us with just the people who don’t have the permits to even stay here permanently.
I’m also not expecting to fly to country X, book an airbnb for 6 months or get a summer job, and then just somehow be entitled to vote there.
That is only possible with stable and legal housing. Not everyone is privileged to be in that situation, especially not with the housing market in many countries.
With your thinking you are creating a class of subhumans where you enjoy the benefits of their labour but you are not allowing them to vote. Like African Americans in the US not that long ago.
A yes, why didn't I think of that! Let me just completely ignore the broken housing market, the 15+ year waiting list for social housing and scrape together... lets checks... €400k for a small appartement with a 45 minute commute to work.
Do you have any clue how privileged you sound here? This is peak "have you tried not being poor" attitude.
While I don't know about European countries, given this is an article about America it's worth pointing out that you can, in fact, vote in the US while homeless[0], using a friend/family's home, shelter, or religious center as your address.
Actually yes, that is by design. There is a reason the US had property ownership as a requirement to vote in the constitution. Whether removing that requirement was correct or not is up for debate. But there is a distinction in a democracy between an active citizen and a passive citizen. An active citizen is someone that has skin in the game and is a willing participant in the process. A passive citizen is someone that does not engage in the process, or does not actively have skin in the game. The thought espoused in the enlightenment was that someone with property would be tied to the location long term and would therefore have interest in the long term success of that town/state/nation. Someone who is only in a town for a year doesn't meaningfully have stakes in the town. They don't really care if the schools aren't funded well enough, or if the roads don't have long term maintenance budget, they are only going to care about immediate needs. Someone with a house, that has children or grand children, they are going to not only care about now but 30 years from now as well.
It was because they thought that landowners would direct the votes of the people who lived on that land. The same reason was given for not allowing women to vote. https://shec.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1645
Ancient democracies, including those of Greek city states like Athens, restricted voting to landowners because prior to the invention of the printing press, only aristocrats could understand the issues being voted on.
Yeah I know. My point is that in the US, in 2026, whether voting should be restricted to property owners is not "up for debate," except maybe among a certain set of cranks.
Eh, a growing set of cranks. The diversity of political opinion in America seems to have exploded over the last decade. Cranks are now serious contenders for power and influence.
> Ancient democracies, including those of Greek city states like Athens, restricted voting to landowners because prior to the invention of the printing press, only aristocrats could understand the issues being voted on.
This is such bullshit. Pre-literate societies were not ignorant societies, they were not stupid societies, they were not issue-free societies. The printing press gave rise to literacy which then gave rise to both books and print-based issue campaigning. But the idea that before people were able to read they were also unable to understand "the issues being voted on" is ridiculous. People ate, built, got sick, got hot, got cold, got injured, were richer or poorer ... everyone had a framework in which to understand "the issues being voted on".
You could argue it wasn't an educated understanding, and that might be correct depending on your understanding of what "education" is. But the idea that people couldn't actually understand stuff until literacy arrived is just ridiculous.
So are the justifications of Adams and Blackstone. Literacy was the justification given by early Greek democracies with written legal codes, though some, like Athens, later broadened eligibility.
Everyone affected by the laws passed have "skin in the game".
Someone renting an apartment and working a job in a community definitely has skin in the game in regards to local tax rates, building regulations, public amenities, etc.
Sure but there’s degrees to this. If you’re a day laborer renting a room at the local motel, it’s a lot easier for you to say “screw this place I’m going to the next town over” than for someone who has their kids enrolled in the highschool and a mortgage.
Everyone has skin in the game but some have way more.
Renters can also enroll their kids in public schools. And in terms of mobility, renters might be stuck in a one- or two-year lease, far longer than it might take to sell a house.
Maybe those transient homeowners are the ones who shouldn't get to vote...
I think you're kind of (completely) missing my point. Who signs two year leases at a motel?
Obviously someone with a kid enrolled in school and locked into a long-term lease is not transient and has a comparable amount of skin in the game as a homeowner.
Whatever idea you have about how black Americans live is bizarre. And despite being ignorant of us, you attempt to silence discussions by acting like you are us.
There people have residency, they just don't live in a stable form of housing that allows them to register as living in the city. But some of them have lived in the city for years.
I saw your other comment with regards to the Netherlands. If that’s where you’re located, you only need to have a stable location once. Then you can register. Another person can’t unregister you from there, so you can vote even if you then move to a hotel.
Only question remains is how you want to deal with mail, but there are workarounds for that.
...and sorry: Thats absolutely OK. I do not want strangers stopping by for 3 - 4 years to be able to influence the politics of my country? Thats totaly understandable?
I would never to ask to vote at a remote place where I do not live permanently, yet where I even not a citizen?
Somebody who spends 3-4 years in a place has an immense interest in how it's governed. Their view is 100% as valid as yours, and they should have equal voice, if we are going to judge people based on how long they live somewhere.
I live in a college town. Why shouldn't student voices be represented, when they are a huge chunk of our community?
Maybe I'm too US focused, and have been accused of that a lot recently, but your views are fundamentally at odds with basic democracy as I see it as a US citizen.
There's a massive difference between "will be in a place for 3-4 years maximum, then leaving" vs "has been in a place for 3-4 years but is planning on staying permanently." In the former case their interests are going to be short-term and might not align with long-term residences. Per your example, university students would vote against allocating funds toward schools or playgrounds, because they know they're not going to be raising a family there. Or more globally, you have the population of "digital nomads" who are working in Vietnam/Thailand for a few years before they come back to the US.
It's pretty debatable if these temporary residents should have the same voting rights as permanent residents, since their interests are going to be at odds with long-term residents. I would not be happy if schools got defunded because university students who are only going to be there for a few years wanted to lower alcohol taxes.
Permanent residency/citizenship being a prerequisite for voting is used as a (very imperfect) screening for this.
A city isn't just for the long-term residents. It must serve short term residents too. Those interests must be represented.
In the US, people get to vote where they live. We used to require silly things like owning land or being male or being white, but that was a really bad idea.
It is not debatable at all if short term residents should had the same voting rights as long term residents. It is very settled constitutional law in the US, and a completely radical idea to suggest changing a principle that has been fundamental for the period of time when the US has been a strong country.
> Per your example, university students would vote against allocating funds toward schools or playgrounds, because they know they're not going to be raising a family there
I think you have very bad intuitions here. In my college town, long term residents get upset that college students vote in favor of school funding, because the long term residents have kids that have already graduated and they don't want to pay for it anymore.
Shorter term residents have significant disadvantages in local politics, as local politics is largely a function of long term relationships and getting the word out on obscure elections where there's almost zero coverage of candidates, and for positions where few know what they do. Depriving short term residents of even using a vote is a huge perversion to the idea of democracy in the US.
> It is not debatable at all if short term residents should had the same voting rights as long term residents. It is very settled constitutional law in the US, and a completely radical idea to suggest changing a principle that has been fundamental for the period of time when the US has been a strong country.
Sorry what? Only US Citizens are legally allowed to vote in federal and state elections. This explicitly excludes a vast swarth of short-term residents who are there on school visas, work visas, or permanent residents who haven't gotten citizenship yet.
Because people do not vote "for local interests" but for "the interests they are carrying with them according to their believes", which are usually not on par with the interestes of the long-term-resident local community.
So what? Why does that matter on being able to vote? Shouldn't people bring their values to voting, isn't that the entire point?
Should we deny long term residents the right to vote becuase they aren't voting in the interests of short term residents? I don't understand the principle here, unless you think that short term residents are not residents, or full people, or something.
That is OK but OP should not be complaining about people not being engaged with local politics if you are excluding a large part of the people living in the city from voting.
Are a large part of the people living in a city the kind of semi-transitory-but-also-there-for-years people you describe?
I'd wager that's a small proportion of almost every city. Most cities will have tourists who are visiting for a few days or weeks, and long term residents who have a permanent address there. The percentage of people living full time in hotels or airbnbs must be tiny. Perhaps in high cost of living cities there's more "hidden homeless" living on couches, but even then it's not going to be "a large part" of a city.
I don't have sources but for cities like Amsterdam I wouldn't be surprised if 5% of the population isn't registered with the municipality for various reasons. But have been living there for years. Plenty of people I know would sublet empty rooms of their social housing apartment, which is highly illegal but for some people the only way to find a place to stay. But you obviously can't register because then the person subletting would be kicked out.
Among those that are registered to vote locally, most don't. Regardless of whether or not people should or shouldn't be able to vote, many of those currently with the ability to do not.
There’s a lot you can do. Voting is the entry stake. You can make a big impact with a very low level of political engagement.
Allowing popular referendum for everything just invites a particular and usually really dumb level of politics. You can influence a board’s decision and get some or all of what you want.
IMO one of the biggest problems with society is that you have this view that politics is this idea that it’s some sort of magical thing that is done to you. I can get my city councilman on the phone easily. Probably would get a meeting with my state senator in a few days if need be. Just show up and work with people.
People who live in the city for the majority of their time. They should be able to vote. Regardless of their housing situation. In basically all of Europe, voting for local elections is tied to having stable housing.
I don't disagree with you per se, but how would that work in practice? How could you actually tell someone lives there if they don't have an address to back up that claim?
Yes, because they don’t legally permanently live in that place. Sorry not sorry. Why do
you think anyone can just sign up for some local elections and vote for a town they’re not even legally permanently situated in??
Then change the fucking system so that people who have been living in a city for years can legally do so. Or kick them out. But don't have this vague system of sub-humans that are not allowed to influence their surroundings by voting.
I'm not saying GP was implying this, but my read of their comment is that it would be a bad thing for everyone to start to voting. If a person doesn't know what they're voting for, they're not more likely to make good decisions. They're just more likely to cancel out the vote of someone who did educate themselves.
It's touched on in this article, but there's a lot more than just zoning that makes it impractical to operate businesses like the ones being talked about. Tax code, health code, ADA, etc. not to mention the complete lack of density in the majority of the US.
As much as I'd love to have something like Matsuya in the US, it's just not practical here. I'm surprised it hasn't been talked about yet, but zoning is also a major factor in the spiraling of housing costs.
How do you even find out about these types of votes? Other than state/federal voting every two years, I wasn't aware there were more times to cast a vote locally.
This sort of citizen engagement is cute, naïve and ultimately pointless. Where I live in the US the major landowner(s) and local billionaire(s) ultimately controls these things. I’m not being sarcastic.
Glendale, Colorado is the quintessential example of this. Like 2,000 people live there due to insane gerrymandering, but there are tons of businesses and money moving around. The mayor gives crazy zoning benefits to his wife (strip club and dispensary on the main road, right next to target and chikfila) among other controversy. Dunafon controls the county with the help of other powerful players.
Lack of engagement in local elections and politics is a major issue in the United States, there is a huge amount of low level corruption like this because its really easy to game things when 20 people vote.
Yep, largely the same for me. Half the city council and most of the planning commission seats are held by real estate people or developers. The state government is heavily influenced by the Realtors Association, and will frequently override local ordinances at the state level when they don't go favorably enough for the real estate industry. It was pretty disappointing to discover.
> Where I live in the US the major landowner(s) and local billionaire(s) ultimately controls these things
Idk exactly what you mean by `major landowner(s)`, but where I live, zoning and permitting is controlled by retired people who own homes and have all the time to show up to 2pm meetings on Tuesdays and demand nothing new get built to "preserve character". They are landowners, but they're certainly not billionaires. The young people who need housing are working and thus can't show up, thus nothing gets built, creating a flywheel of stagnation and price increases.
The point of the OP post, AFAICT, is that even in places where there are no powerful billionaire-backed campaigns and lobbying, and people can have their way with simple, effortless voting, too few people even care! And those who act, do so cluelessly, or in a narrowly selfish way.
The most powerful weapon the powerful have against the majority of "ordinary people" is to propagate the idea that all this local stuff is boring and ultimately decides nothing. To make people stop caring.
I find it curious that I earned -2 points. Perhaps my points in the post were too pointed for some people. That, or some people really love civics theatre.
"We can't do anything because the billionaires" is such dumb cynicism. Actually, local government has a say in zoning almost everywhere in the US. If more people participated, they could make a real difference.
I think there is a snowball effect with zoning. I specifically sought out a place zoned with no building code checks and hardly any zoning. I value my right to die in a fire a lot more than I value my right to have the jack-boot enter my own property and tell me he knows best.
People like me go to places with fairly free zoning. The jack boot lickers go to places with restricted zoning. Once one has a majority it just snowballs and pushes harder and harder in the direction it is going, because no one wants to buy/build a house in a place that will flip from the one strategy to the other.
That's the simplistic view but not true in reality. Where I live the zoning law itself creates code exceptions -- for instance where I live my zone explicitly says there is no enforcement mechanism for codes, which effectively makes the building code (redefined as, essentially nothing) part of the zoning.
So zoning can turn de jure code requirements into de facto nulled or altered.
In "communism works because the cows are spherical, friction is 0 and gravity is 10" example land sure.
In reality building code is how a huge amount of back handed regulation is done. When the powers that be can't make a particular rule, because of other laws, or because of precedent to the contrary, or because the peasants wouldn't stand for it, what they do is they adopt a ridiculous code and then slap a "can be waived at the discretion of board X" on it. This way they can make the thing they don't like a non-starter economically for most people.
In my city you can park a semi trailer as storage. But it counts as a "structure" and because it's not a commercially manufactured shed, car port, stick framed garage or litany of other exemptions you have to go through the "everything else" process which includes all the "normal code shit" that any other non-exempt structure would hav to go through like an engineered foundation and snow loads and all sorts of other stuff that's just inappropriate. They have a similar set of BS they use to prevent DIYers from erecting kit buildings.
I can't imagine I'd ever want to buy a house from someone who makes a point to live someplace where they can install sub-par plumbing and wiring, that this lack of code compliance was the selling point of where to build.
Imagine buying a meal from a restaurant which prides themselves by not meeting the standards of the nearby town's health department.
It's not about not meeting the standards of the town's health department, it's about having a 1-size-fits-all health standards.
If you make a 5-seat japaneese-style neighborhood micro-eatery conform to the same cross-contamination standards as a 800-people-per-hour mcdonalds, you're making one of these unprofitable and de-facto illegal.
Yes, lets have health codes. But lets also recognize different risk profiles and encourage all sorts of entrepreneurship. If it's 1-size-fits-all, then the only size is going to be XXL.
Can you be more specific on exactly what kind of cross-contamination standards make it impossible for a small eatery to exist? Do you have any specific rules in mind?
Its been a while since I went through a food safety course, but I don't really recall any that would make it impossible for a small shop to achieve. I follow most of the rules I learned in my own kitchen at home. Stuff like don't use the same cutting board and knife between meat and veggies without cleaning in between, don't wear jewelry while prepping, keep things in safe time/temperature constraints, etc.
Cross contamination standards can't make it impossible for a small eatery to exist, and without standards enforcement businesses will absolutely go full The Jungle. Unfortunately, I could believe that paperwork around cross contamination standards could get there- a chain can spread the cost of the laywering to get paperwork right over hundreds of establishments, and learn it progressively as it gets worse, a single establishment has to do all the paperwork themselves up front.
It's not about cutting boards or temperature constraints. Yes, that applies at any scale. It's the stuff that legally mandates a minimum-size operation. Article talks about it:
> Relatedly, our health code regulations also effectively outlaw people from opening restaurants in small spaces. Most jurisdictions require at least 3-4 different sinks—one for washing dishes (usually a large three-part sink), separate ones for washing hands, one for mopping, and often another for prepping food. This makes small commercial kitchens in under 200 square feet much harder.
> America’s food regulations are also not set up for a single person to manage. The U.S. has 3,000 different agencies handling food regulations. The whole system, scattered across eight places in the municipal code, is basically uncoordinated and varies depending on where you are.
Meatpacking has the same issue. FDA regulations are designed for industrial-scale chicken, beef, and pig processing. And if you're processing hundreds or thousands of heads a day, it's absolutely needed. But what if you have just a few heads? What if you have a small flock you want to sell to your neighbors? A 1000-head-per-delivery processing plant won't even answer your call, and you even if they did you have zero negotiating power, so your only options are to go big or not be able to legally sell it.
A lot of people have amish or menonite communities that are able to process your livestock legally, but even those are disappearing. So small farmers have no way to legally get their product to market, and so they're being gobbled up by the large industrial farms.
The regulations use safety pearl-clutching to force a specific outcome that benefits a specific group, and it's not the small family farmer the commercials idolize.
Nixon's secretary of ag said it explicitly: get big or get out.
Well that's luck for you, because I built the house I live in, and I'm not selling it. Although since I actually have to live in the house, the wiring was designed by an electrical engineer and installed at or above NEC requirements. But there was no one to look over my shoulder when I did it.
If there were regulations house would have cost at least double. Because I have a day job and no time for inspectors, nor any trade license.
>Imagine buying a meal from a restaurant which prides themselves by not meeting the standards of the nearby town's health department.
Lol having lived in the third world I've eaten from probably a hundred of these. Very tasty. Not much different than the US where inspector is basically never there so you still must apply all the food sanitation rules in deciding regarding buying food from a vendor.
People who conflate "not actively regulated and inspected with government permission being given before stuff even happens" with "sub par" as if that's not reductive at best is exactly how we got here.
Most people don't make a point to go out of their way to avoid having rules applied if they're intending on following the rules. I don't think its that big of a leap.
You're also misreading my comment. I'm not saying they definitely will do a sub-par job, but that its now an option, that they can do it. And given its the cheaper option (up front at least), it probably will happen more often. And especially when it comes to stuff like wiring, where once the walls are all sealed it can be expensive to inspect later, and yet if done improperly may kill your family and destroy most of what you own.
Just like that restaurant I give as an example, its not necessary they definitely will ignore food safety rules, but they sure make an effort and pride them selves to the ability to ignore them whenever they want.
Once again this is a take predicated on bad assumptions.
If you're just doing something and intend to meet or exceed the rules then dealing with government enforcement apparatus is pure overhead. You were always gonna do the right thing so you gain zero upside and have to deal with a potentially capricious and unaccountable (in any practical way) enforcer which is a huge downside.
Second, the rules are chock full of 10,000ft ivory tower view type stuff that makes statistical sense but is inefficient compared to using judgment. But you can't use judgement because the whole point of code is to make everything quantitative so that idiots can inspect other idiots and parties can more efficiently bicker in court and whatnot.
There's a lot of upside to the fact the next owner isn't going to have to question if things were done properly, that insurance isn't going to be able to push back when something does go wrong.
> most have rose tinted glasses of better economic times from the past, and want to recreate the past instead of learning from it and using it to make the future better for future residents and businesses
So the voters are wrong? You know what's "better" for them, right? Whether they want it or not, right?
> we need to figure out how to get young people engaged locally
Because they are more in line with what you think?
PS
I'm being downvoted - but what is the point of local administrators, except to follow the voters demands? Sure, if you are a local politician, make your case, but local administrators ought to be doing whatever-it-is that people voted for. That's the whole point of voting, as I understand it.
The point is NOT to make people keep voting until they get it right, according to the administratots. That's the wrong way around! The administrators should be enacting whatever the voters want.
I've tried this. It's hard to get people to switch platforms when they don't perceive any major existing problems with their current platform.
My neighborhood that I'm on the HOA board for has been entirely on a facebook group. When I joined, I made sure that we communicate all necessary communication via email (for others like me not in the group or on FB). I created a website for the neighborhood that does everything the FB group does and more, but people don't see a reason to visit another website when FB has everything they want, so they still only engage on Facebook.
I'm okay with being the problem (green bubbles are a whole nother thing for friends and family), but without sufficient pressure to switch, people generally prefer what they're comfy with.
I don't think this is all that surprising. Car prices, car insurance, and maintenance costs are at all time highs, and costs of nearly everything else have risen faster than wages.
Older cars are being held longer, and newer cars aren't offering many advancements to justify the price increases and higher insurance costs.
Personally, I've tried to reduce my car dependency as much as possible. As soon as I had the ability to buy a home along a train line and bike trail into my city's downtown, I did so. Then sold my car. The cost of an occasional rental or rideshare was nothing in comparison to car ownership. I saved tens of thousands of dollars over the span of a few years, and then ended up buying my attainable dream car.
The price of car ownership is one that our built society has placed on us as near mandatory, and escaping that dependence is financially liberating for both private and public finances.
In your interview with MegaLag posted in the video, you say something along the lines that civil courts are probably the most likely place any lawsuits would be held (I forget the exact wording used).
If you had used Honey, would you join a civil or class action suit against them?
I believe in class actions as the most efficient way for large groups (of consumers or small businesses) to resolve disputes. Have to think about the specific claim. Yesterday's write-up covers a scheme harming other affiliates (creators, influencers, reviewers, etc.) and also harming merchants and networks. I don't know if users are direct victims of the stand-down violations and concealment.
They should care because they are expensive. If we become dependent on something that is expensive, we have to maintain a certain level of economic productivity to sustain our dependence.
For AI, once these companies or shareholders start demanding profit, then users will be footing the bill. At this rate, it seems like it'll be expensive without some technological breakthrough as another user mentioned.
For other things, like roads and public utilities, we have to maintain a certain level of economic productivity to sustain those as well. Roads for example are expensive to maintain. Municipalities, states, and the federal government within the US are in lots of debt associated with roads specifically. This debt may not be a problem now, but it leaves us vulnerable to problems in the future.
This seems like an assumption that over time would come to bite the banks that overexpose themselves to lending in this manner.
Wouldn't banks want to accurately assess these valuations so these types of "bad loans in actuality, good loans on paper" don't become a large portion of their balance sheet?
Maybe not all at once, but over time it seems like banks would want more accuracy on this.
The article applies to all kinds of loans for property though.
Apartment complexes could also be 50% vacant and still "worth" their original value if the asking rents remain high.
Office buildings that got cleared out after covid, same thing.
Brick and mortar retail are the same.
The article is more of a criticism of how asset values are calculated and loans are managed to avoid foreclosure. Which results in financially valid buildings/loans that are underutilized because the other option is creating economic equilibrium at the cost of lenders and debt holders.
reply