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0 pointsdavidw9y ago0 comments

By enacting laws, you create a very rigid situation that's much more difficult to change than "there's not enough parking", which is something the neighborhood could adapt to without too much trouble.

When I was born, Bend was still a wood products industry town based around logging and the local mills. These days, it's trying to develop a high tech industry, and doing reasonably well at it for a small-ish town. Places need to adapt, and rigid zoning is probably detrimental to that adaptation. Markets take in everyone who lives, or wants to live in a place. Planning commissions, or even city councils, have just a few people with their own ideas of "how things should be".

In terms of how they're too regulated, sure:

http://marketurbanism.com/2016/09/06/shut-out-how-land-use-r...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/10/04/...

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/04/business/how-anti-growth-...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/10/why-c...

And Exhibit A: the market for housing in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is completely batshit crazy because of the refusal to build housing.

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hackuser9y ago

I do think the market is a very useful tool and that some things are over-regulated and some are under-regulated. But I don't understand your point: All regulations are bad? Everything is too regulated? I know these ideas are trendy, but they don't really mean anything or inform us. As I asked before:

In what ways are they too regulated, and in what ways not regulated enough? ... How much regulation is just right?

Without answers to those questions, we have nothing serious to act on.

> By enacting laws, you create a very rigid situation

A general statement, but laws can change. Laws often are written to create flexibility, delegating authority to regulatory commissions. Markets can be very rigid; look that the market power of Windows, whose dominance has lasted longer than most politicians' careers. When is the last time the market allowed in a new car manufacturer (Tesla hasn't yet survived infancy, and if it does it will be the only exception in (80?) years). How long does it take to change a web standard in the 'free' market? If they were government regulations, they could be changed like analog to digital TV or the reallocation of spectrum. I thought Europe's regulated, universal GSM was better than the U.S.'s 'market' solution of competing technologies.

Also, laws allocate power democratically to all citizens. The 'market' allocates it to those with the most money.

> Planning commissions, or even city councils, have just a few people with their own ideas of "how things should be".

I disagree; they are creations of and responsive to the democratic process. The market, on the other hand, is responsive to a few people with the most money; most citizens have no say. I don't want my community run by the wealthy, with 99% of citizens living like subjects under an aristocracy.

> In terms of how they're too regulated, sure: ...

I don't see a few op-eds as evidence; I have no doubt there are enough people who believe it that op-eds could be supplied daily. If you are correct about SF Bay Area (I don't know), it is an example of something that is over-regulated in some way, not evidence that the everything is over-regulated (again, could you really be saying that?).

davidwOP9y ago

I'm not a 'markets solve all problems' guy. There are plenty of good regulations and plenty of places where markets don't seem to work. I'd be happy to tell you about how single payer health care works in Italy - better than the mess we have here in the US.

That said, I think housing and cities are overregulated in the US.

Those op-eds point out a lot of issues that you can study further and find that mostly, the cause is zoning and regulation of housing/land use. They also cite other sources.

Here's a book, talking just about parking:

http://amzn.to/2jvfxpJ - Donald Shoup's "The High Cost of Free Parking".

Here are some books about zoning and regulation:

Ryan Avent's "The Gated City": http://amzn.to/2jv3dpk

Bill Fischel's Zoning Rules!: http://amzn.to/2j62fTw - dry and very, very thorough.

thinkloop9y ago

Doesn't parking specifically seem like an easy thing for a market to fix: paid parking lots.

richmarr9y ago

The word "fix" is important here. When you fix something it starts broken and ends up working how it should. Since space in cities is fiercely constrained any change is always a trade-off with repurcussions.

Cities plan transport infrastructure years or decades in advance, and spend vast sums of money, with very different incentives to the market. Leaving parts of that plan (like parking) up to the whims of the market might seem a bit irresponsible.

For example; if a city makes design trade-offs favouring heavy long-term road use, but the market decides in the shorter term that office blocks are more profitable, then you end up with mismatched capacity (headaches for drivers and ineffective public spending) and inadequate investment in infrastructure for cycling, walking, and public transport. Now you could argue that the market will step in and fix the parking problem, but that could easily take longer than an election cycle, and cost the local economy vast sums in wasted investment and lost opportunity.

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richmarr9y ago

Thanks for making all these points so eloquently.

It does seem like an easy, and popular, refrain to claim over-regulation. It's a great way to sound contrarian and wise without actually having to do any analysis, after all, the market do the work so no planning is needed. In that noisy environment, asking for specifics of precisely what is over-regulated and why seems both fair and necessary.

> I thought Europe's regulated, universal GSM was better than the U.S.'s 'market' solution of competing technologies.

A similar example, the market has decided on competing standards for charging points for electric vehicles (in the UK at least, I expect most other places too). If a family of standards had been created to cover the various voltage/current requirements, rather than leaving it solely up to manufacturers then the time overhead for drivers of EVs could be dramatically improved, removing a significant obstacle to adoption.

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hackuser9y ago

In what ways are they too regulated, and in what ways not regulated enough? ... How much regulation is just right?

Without answers to those questions, we have nothing serious to act on.

> By enacting laws, you create a very rigid situation

Also, laws allocate power democratically to all citizens. The 'market' allocates it to those with the most money.

> Planning commissions, or even city councils, have just a few people with their own ideas of "how things should be".

> In terms of how they're too regulated, sure: ...

davidwOP9y ago

That said, I think housing and cities are overregulated in the US.

Those op-eds point out a lot of issues that you can study further and find that mostly, the cause is zoning and regulation of housing/land use. They also cite other sources.

Here's a book, talking just about parking:

http://amzn.to/2jvfxpJ - Donald Shoup's "The High Cost of Free Parking".

Here are some books about zoning and regulation:

Ryan Avent's "The Gated City": http://amzn.to/2jv3dpk

Bill Fischel's Zoning Rules!: http://amzn.to/2j62fTw - dry and very, very thorough.

thinkloop9y ago

Doesn't parking specifically seem like an easy thing for a market to fix: paid parking lots.

richmarr9y ago

2 more replies

richmarr9y ago

Thanks for making all these points so eloquently.

> I thought Europe's regulated, universal GSM was better than the U.S.'s 'market' solution of competing technologies.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse