No one in the western world really questions whether water provision is best suited to the public or private spheres. Being hooked up to city water and sewer is unanimously considered a good thing. Was it always that way? Well- no. Londoners purchased water from private suppliers through the end of the nineteenth century.
John Broich gives an excellent history of how the desire for water provision shaped London.
His account tells how secondary cities in the British Isles adopted a municipal water system decades before the great capital on the Thames. In fact, the continued delays in accomplishing this civic feat help exemplify the many facets of interests and the levers in play. There are issues of pollution and health concerns, there are networks of private providers, and the wealthy who buy their way to what they want. There is petty jealousy and the pride of belonging to an international city. And most astonishing, there is no government structure to handle such infrastructure outside of the walls of ancient London.
For provincial water reformers, the principles on which the administration of water was based-as well as the engineering principles on which water provision was based-were meant to make their cities more modern in the sense expressed by Avery, the Birmingham councilor.
“When water is under the control of private companies, the chief desire of the directors is to obtain good dividends,” said a Bradford town councilor in 1852. “When the Town Council possesses the works,” he continued, “their chief object is to make the works instrumental to the promotion of cleanliness, the health, and the comfort of all classes of citizens.”57
Water administration by a directly representative body was to provide an obvious contrast to the commercial companies that made independent decisions about water quality, abundance, and price based on the profit motive.
It is an excellent story depicting the nature of what is public and what is private. For a literary companion piece, consider reading Dickens’s Bleak House.
There are laws about such things. The authority to take a cut off a sale or charge or demand an annual fee for property, whether homes or cars, needs to be officially granted. The funds travel from individuals to a fund for government officials to distribute out for public commitments.
But there are other things local governments do that act as a tax. There are all sorts of city permits required to replace a hot water heater or install a deck. When a builder applies for approval of a subdivision, the city council may say that is all fine and good as long as a sliver of the land is threaded through as a trail and a chunk of green space in the middle is spun up into a playground. The release of land is a tax on the developer. A good one mind you but still a relinquishing of an asset.
What would be the difference between a favorable tax and a verging-on-illegal tax?
Having a developer build in parks and trails at the time of development leaves an asset for the new owners directly, and for the city at large for those who travel further for recreation. This flow of money from a private company back to the community, for the use of all residents, seems to fall in the spirit of the arrangement. It is a particularly timely ask since retrofitting older neighborhoods with parks and trails is difficult and impractical.
Consider another example. A builder wants to convert a five-story building in a historic district in a significant US city. There are extensive regulations associated with the age and history of the area. There are also regulations in place to meet current environmental concerns. Without spending the time to delve into every detail, the end result is that the builder must install solar panels on the roof of the building, which cannot be serviced by the building due to its age and preservation requirements. The building’s infrastructure cannot effectively utilize the energy output from the solar panels.
The final agreement is to hand over ownership of the panels to the utility company. Their maintenance and output will now be maintained by a completely separate entity, even though they sit atop the developer’s project and the developer’s bottom line had to muscle in their expense.
Doesn’t this seem like a direct transfer of funds from the builder to another semi-private company? Doesn’t it seem like a redistributive tax or at least a subsidy? Does the municipality this type of taxing authority?
Zoning, a means of controlling the land and housing markets by dictating acceptable uses for particular parcels of land, was invented during the 1910s and spread to most American cities by the end of the 1920s. St. Paul and Minneapolis passed their first zoning ordinances early in the 1920s. The goals of zoning were similar to those of the building permit and inspection programs: to promote public health and safety, and to preserve property values. Zoning is an effective control mechanism, but it is essentially a preventive tactic.
There continue to be mobile home parks across the metro offering one of the most affordable form of housing. The structure is considered a vehicle and licensed as such. The home is anchored on a lot in a mobile home park and rent is due every month in a similar fashion to association dues. People like to talk about tiny homes now. Still, manufactured homes can be reasonably constructed in a factory and meet the same quality and amenities as RV’s, another acceptable form of shelter.
:Here are some current listings and recent sales:
Few mobile home parks rise to the level of civic engagement that can be seen in Landfall Terrace, a community on the eastern side of the metro. As with many good things it starts with its history.
James and Mitzi Olson used to own all of the land in Landfall. They moved here in 1953 into a cottage that was hardly better than a log cabin.ย …The Olsons had lived in a mobile home during World War ll and knew that there was a shortage of affordable housing, so they developed their site into a mobile home park. As it was on the early highway between St. Paul and Hudson, Landfall developed several businesses, including a truck stop, restaurant and nursery, most of which left when Interstate 94 was put through and access became limited.
Often successful things are born out of a basic need of local people. But it is only through nurturing and ongoing maintenance that group projects survive. Especially one a s successful as this.
Landfall is a city in Washington County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 843 at the 2020 census and it is the smallest community in Washington County in terms of area. It lies on the eastern shore of Tanner’s Lake on Interstate 94.
Landfall is an incorporation of a manufactured home community, contributing to its reputation as the most affordable community in the Twin Cities. In 2008 & 2010, the city was named one of the 100 best communities for young people by America’s Promise.
Landfall is one of only two incorporated cities in America that consist primarily of manufactured housing.
The grain elevator was the most ubiquitous commercial building in Minnesota’s small and medium towns during the mid to late 1800s.
In most towns in western Minnesota, grain elevators were the dominant feature of the skyline 1837 Treaty | Minnesota DNR. As railroads expanded westward in the 1870s-1880s, grain elevators sprang up along every railroad line to store wheat and other grains before shipping them to Minneapolis and beyond.
This makes perfect sense given Minnesota’s economy at the time. Wheat farming dominated the landscape, and Red Wing held the title as the world’s largest primary wheat market in 1873, exporting 1.8 million bushels valued at more than two million dollars United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians – Wikipedia. Every town with railroad access needed a grain elevator to collect, store, and load farmers’ harvests onto railcars.
Typically, small services would pop up alongside the tall wooden structures. Or an eating and drinking establishment. Sometimes a church was erected down the road a bit. And for decades, the railroad infrastructure supported a node of activity in remote rural areas.
A shift occurred once the interstate system was established in the 1950s. Rail is still most beneficial for long hauls, whereas trucks carry the grain for shorter distances, typically under one hundred miles. With fewer stops, the isolated wooden elevators fell into disrepair. Often they fell for the useful purpose of serving as a training exercise for local firefighters.
The purpose of this short vignette is to show how land uses are tied intimately with public infrastructure. And these types of projects are engaged over long time frames. A slow natural progression of the property from peak usefulness to decline can be led by aging owners, people who can view themselves in a steady state for another decade or more. The insight for the outside observer to understand where in the process a parcel finds itself. And then to implement policy in relation to the receptive impulses of that moment.
Those of you who follow this site know that we view the boundary between public and private as fundamentally a matter of choice. Bridges can be privately owned and charge tolls, but they more commonly become part of public transportation infrastructure. These decisions about what remains public versus private are often driven by considerations of efficiency and practical management. It was fascinating, then, to recently discover that following the collapse of communism in 1989, one of the most immediate and sweeping divestitures involved housing itself. Here’s that remarkable story.
The Great Housing Transfer: Eastern Europe’s Post-1989 Privatization Revolution The collapse of state socialism in Eastern Europe triggered one of history’s largest transfers of public wealth to private hands through housing privatization. Between 1990 and the early 2000s, millions of state-owned apartments were sold to sitting tenants at deeply discounted prices, fundamentally reshaping the region’s housing landscape and creating lasting economic and social consequences. From State Monopoly to Private Ownership Under communist rule, Eastern European countries maintained near-total state control over housing. In most countries, 80-90% of urban housing stock was publicly owned, with the state serving as both landlord and developer. This represented one of the most comprehensive public housing systems in modern history, housing the majority of urban populations across the Soviet sphere. The transition was dramatic and swift. Following the privatisation of state-owned housing in the transition to a market economy in the early 1990s, CEE countries now record some of the highest homeownership rates in the OECD, with over 70% of households owning their home outright. Countries like Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic saw homeownership rates soar from under 20% to over 80% within a single decade. The Titling Process: Converting Tenants to Owners The privatization process varied by country but followed similar patterns. Most governments opted for “sitting tenant” sales, offering apartments directly to current occupants rather than through open markets. The privatization policy of the 1990s aimed to make the sitting tenants owners of their rented flats, by offering 70โ90 per cent discounts on the price of the houses and flats. The legal titling process was often complex, requiring new property registries and cadastral systems. Many countries had to create entirely new frameworks for private property ownership, having operated under state control for decades. Voucher systems were also employed, where citizens were given or could inexpensively buy a book of vouchers that represent potential shares in any state-owned company, though these were more commonly used for enterprise privatization than housing. The Value Transfer: A Massive Subsidy The financial scale of these transfers was enormous. With discounts typically ranging from 70-90% below estimated market value, the programs represented massive implicit subsidies to sitting tenants. In Hungary alone, the value transfer has been estimated at several billion dollars in current terms. The Czech Republic’s privatization program transferred approximately 1.2 million units, representing roughly one-third of the entire national housing stock. These discounts were justified as compensation for years of poor maintenance and recognition of tenants’ de facto investment in their homes through decades of occupancy. However, the beneficiaries were not necessarily the neediestโmiddle-class professionals and party officials often lived in the most desirable state housing and captured the largest windfall gains. Lingering Effects: Winners, Losers, and Market Distortions The privatization legacy continues to shape Eastern European housing markets today. The dramatic shift to homeownership created several persistent challenges: Market Thinness: The formal rental market is generally thin and underdeveloped โ only in the Czech Republic is the rental market home to more than 15% of households (19%). This limits labor mobility and creates barriers for young people entering housing markets. Quality Degradation: Multi-apartment buildings dominate the housing stock, many built during the communist period. As a result, the stock is ageing and of poor quality. Most households cannot afford to maintain or upgrade their dwellings according to environmental requirements. The mass transfer of maintenance responsibilities to individual owners without corresponding financial capacity has led to widespread deterioration. Social Housing Shortage: The social housing supply in most CEE countries is well below the OECD average, with the exception of Poland and Slovenia. The elimination of public housing left a gap in affordable housing provision that has never been adequately filled. Inequality Effects: The privatization created a new form of wealth inequality, where accident of residential location in 1989 determined lifetime wealth accumulation. Urban professionals gained valuable assets, while rural residents and those in less desirable locations received minimal benefits. The Eastern European housing privatization represents both a remarkable success in creating a property-owning democracy and a cautionary tale about the unintended consequences of rapid large-scale privatization. Three decades later, the region continues to grapple with the market distortions and social challenges created by this unprecedented transfer of public wealth to private hands.
For 125 years, this building has been a form of low-income housing. It was a hotel for most of the time, but it is now being explicitly managed in aid of Veterans. But slowly, these types of housing are squeezed out of areas, as are trailer homes.
Rentals in single-family homes are also less common than in years gone by. Many core cities, which would benefit most from additional forms of rentals, require a variety of regulations which discourage owners from renting out part of their house. They are also held to standards that, in the past, favored an owner whereas now puts them as a disadvantage.
Yes, more homes need to be built. But many other forms of casual living situations have been squeezed out of existence by rules and regulations.
Data collection by government is good. It is necessary. Itโs as reliable as the bureaucracy that Shepards its output.
I love how this article in Bloomberg, The BLS Canโt Be Replaced by the Private Sector, by Claudia Sahm slices and dices the public nature of data collection. But I wonder about her denial of its private creation. Letโs consider her claims.
To be clear, this is the way it should be: Private companies are not in the business of creating public goods, which is what economic statistics from the government are. They are free to users, transparent in their methods, protective of the privacy of individuals and businesses, and dependable. Most private companies that create statistics charge users for access. (Some share their results publicly as a form of marketing.) Many private companies share only limited information about their methodology to deter competition.
Private companies are in the business of making a profit, and to do that they need to attract customers. Some customers are more profitable than others. As a result, a companyโs data will tend to reflect the needs of its clients โ it wonโt capture the economy as whole.
And yetโ many privately created data sets are used openly in a transparent fashion.
Hereโs a list summarized by Grok of data provided by private enterprises for public consumption:
Private organizations often provide data that can function as a public goodโnon-excludable and non-rivalrous, benefiting society broadly. Here are some examples:
Open-Source Software Data: Companies like GitHub or Red Hat share code repositories and software documentation, enabling developers worldwide to build and innovate without restriction.
Environmental Data: Private firms, like those operating weather stations (e.g., IBMโs Weather Company), provide real-time weather and climate data, which supports disaster preparedness and agricultural planning.
Health Data Aggregates: Pharmaceutical companies or research institutions sometimes release anonymized clinical trial data or disease prevalence statistics, aiding public health research and policy.
Geographic and Mapping Data: Organizations like OpenStreetMap or Google (via public APIs) offer mapping data that supports urban planning, navigation, and disaster response.
Educational Resources: Platforms like Khan Academy or Coursera provide free or low-cost educational content, democratizing access to knowledge.
Economic and Market Data: Financial institutions like Bloomberg or trading platforms sometimes release anonymized market trends or economic indicators, informing policy and research.
Scientific Research Data: Private research labs, such as those in biotech, occasionally share datasets (e.g., genomic data) that advance collective scientific knowledge.
These datasets, while often generated for profit, can be shared in ways that make them accessible and beneficial to the public, resembling public goods.
Furthermore, there are frequent examples of bureaucratic efforts being led astray by private subgroups. The temptation for biased numbers can occur in both sectors.
Can we think of any recent Federal agencies being dismantled?
First, there is the concept of Minimum Profitable Construction Cost.
But the regulatory approach on housing should compare housing prices to the Minimum Profitable Construction Cost, or MPPC. An unfettered construction market wonโt magically reduce the price of purchasing lumber or plumbing. The best price outcome possible, without subsidies, is that prices hew more closely to the physical cost of building.
Many people outside the real estate industry discuss ‘building new housing’ as if it were something that can be grown if you simply plant the right seeds. Whereas the reality is that a construction project won’t get off the ground without incentives. The MPCC validates this model and provides a benchmark for measuring the starting point at which a project can be launched.
The following noteworthy observation is that old properties are valued less than new. Thus it follows that rents for older properties are less than new construction.
We then compare these construction costs with the distribution of self-assessed housing values in the American Housing Survey. The distribution of price to MPPC ratios shows a nation of extremes.ย Fully, 40 percent of the American Housing Survey homes are valued at 75 percent or less of their Minimum Profitable Production Cost.ย
What this means for the public is that it is 25% cheaper (or more) to subsidize a renter in an older property than in brand new construction. Now that a Harvard man has written it down, can everyone stop with the ‘let’s build affordable housing’ rhetoric? New is never the least expensive option.
In reference to the 2008-2011 downturn, Glaeser remarks.
Our painful housing bust eliminated some of the affordability problem in our most expensive areas, but that problem has returned.
So, housing prices go up and down. Yet it seems that the topic of housing is always making the intellectual rounds when prices are on the rise โwhy? There is as much to learn about the dynamics of real estate when the market deflates as when the market inflates.
Here is a most underinvestigated observation.
ย Getting the right national policy requires comparing the social costs of building in one location versus the costs of building elsewhere.ย
The two social costs mentioned are environmental damage and the downsides of local growth. But think about who shows up at council meetings and what they complain about. Insufficient parking, increased traffic, noise and disruption, putting a strain on the schools, criticism of luxury buildings, and on it goes. The social aspect of this is extensive and profound. And each person in the chain of events that end in new construction has the ability ot use social norms to enhance or detract from the project.
Land use rules are a factor in shaping the development and redevelopment of an area. But there is so much more.
Me: It sounds like he (James M Buchanan) wants to believe in self-governance, yet he doesnโt have faith in the distribution of the groupings, hence โfree ridingโ, so in the end he supports the cohesion of the state after all.
Grok:
Your observation captures a tension in James M. Buchananโs work thatโs worth unpacking. Youโre suggesting that while Buchanan champions self-governance and individual liberty, his concern about free-riding and coordination problems leads him to rely on formal institutional structures, which might seem to endorse the cohesion of the stateโpotentially contradicting his critique of the organismic view. Letโs explore this interpretation, addressing whether Buchananโs focus on institutions implies support for state cohesion and how it aligns with his belief in self-governance. Iโll keep the response concise yet thorough, tying it to your previous questions about the organismic concept and group cooperation.
Buchananโs Commitment to Self-Governance
Buchanan, a classical liberal and founder of public choice theory, strongly advocates for self-governance, meaning individuals should have maximum control over their choices and the rules governing their interactions. His rejection of the organismic conceptโwhere collectives like โthe stateโ or โsocietyโ are treated as unified entities with their own goalsโstems from his belief that only individuals have preferences and agency. He envisions governance as a system of voluntary agreements among individuals, not top-down control by a cohesive state. Key points:
โข In The Calculus of Consent (1962, with Gordon Tullock), Buchanan proposes that political systems should emerge from unanimous or near-unanimous consent at the constitutional level, where individuals agree on rules for collective decision-making. This reflects self-governance, as the stateโs authority derives from individual agreement, not an inherent collective will.
โข His concept of โpolitics as exchangeโ sees government as a mechanism for individuals to cooperate for mutual benefit (e.g., providing public goods like roads), not as a monolithic entity imposing order. This contrasts with organismic views that assume the state naturally serves a unified โpublic interest.โ
The Free-Rider Problem and Institutional Needs
Your point about Buchananโs lack of faith in the โdistribution of the groupingsโ (i.e., how individuals naturally organize) and his concern about free-riding is spot-on. Buchanan recognizes that self-governance faces challenges in large groups due to:
โข Free-Riding: Individuals may benefit from collective goods (e.g., clean air, defense) without contributing, undermining cooperation. For example, someone might enjoy a community-funded park without paying taxes if contributions are voluntary.
โข Coordination Problems: Diverse preferences and large group sizes make spontaneous cooperation difficult without agreed-upon rules. Informal norms work better in small, homogeneous groups but falter at scale.
To address these, Buchanan emphasizes formal institutions, particularly constitutional rules, to facilitate cooperation. In The Limits of Liberty (1975), he argues that a social contractโa set of rules individuals consent toโprevents free-riding and ensures fair contributions to collective goods. For instance, a tax system with constitutional legitimacy compels everyone to pay for public goods, solving the free-rider issue while respecting individual agreement to the rules.
Does this mean Buchanan lacks faith in self-governance? Not quite. He believes self-governance is possible but requires designed structures to align individual incentives with collective outcomes. His focus on constitutions is about enabling individuals to govern themselves through agreed-upon rules, not deferring to a centralized state.
Does Buchanan Support State Cohesion?
Your suggestion that Buchananโs reliance on institutions implies support for the โcohesion of the stateโ is a nuanced critique. Letโs break it down:
โข Not State Cohesion in the Organismic Sense: Buchanan explicitly rejects the idea of the state as a cohesive, sentient entity with its own goals (the organismic view). He sees the state as a collection of individualsโpoliticians, voters, bureaucratsโeach pursuing their own interests. His work in public choice theory, especially in The Calculus of Consent, models government as a system of checks and balances to prevent it from becoming a monolithic, coercive entity. For example, he warns against a โpredatory stateโ that exploits citizens under the guise of public interest.
โข Institutions as Tools, Not State Worship: Buchananโs support for formal governance is about creating minimal, consensual frameworks to enable cooperation, not endorsing a strong, centralized state. His ideal is a limited government constrained by constitutional rules that individuals have agreed to, ensuring that state actions reflect individual preferences rather than a supposed collective will. For instance, his admiration for Knut Wicksellโs principle of โjust taxationโ requires taxes to be tied to benefits and approved by near-unanimous consent, minimizing state overreach.
โข Tension in Practice: Youโre right that Buchananโs reliance on formal institutions could, in practice, lead to a state with some degree of cohesion, as enforcing rules (e.g., tax collection) requires authority. Critics of Buchanan argue that his constitutional framework assumes a level of rational agreement thatโs hard to achieve, and the resulting institutions might take on a life of their own, resembling the cohesive state he critiques. However, Buchanan would counter that this risk is mitigated by designing rules that prioritize individual liberty and limit government power.
Reconciling Self-Governance and Institutional Reliance
Buchananโs position is that self-governance is not spontaneous but requires deliberate institutional design to succeed at scale. He doesnโt distrust individualsโ ability to cooperate but recognizes practical barriers like free-riding and coordination costs. His solution is a two-level governance framework:
1. Constitutional Level: Individuals agree on rules (e.g., voting systems, tax policies) to structure cooperation. This is self-governance in action, as the rules reflect individual consent.
2. Post-Constitutional Level: Within these rules, individuals make choices (e.g., voting, paying taxes) that produce collective outcomes. Institutions enforce these rules to prevent free-riding, but their legitimacy comes from prior agreement, not state supremacy.
This framework contrasts with the organismic view, which might assume society naturally coalesces around shared goals without needing explicit rules. Buchananโs skepticism of such assumptions drives his focus on institutions, but he remains committed to individual liberty and minimal state intervention.
Addressing Your Critique
Youโre correct that Buchananโs concern about free-riding and group coordination could seem to undermine his faith in pure self-governance, pushing him toward formal institutions that resemble state cohesion. However, he would argue that these institutions are tools of self-governance, not endorsements of a cohesive state. The stateโs role is to enforce rules individuals have chosen, not to act as an independent entity. His ideal is a decentralized system where individuals retain maximum control, but he acknowledges that some formal structure is necessary to make self-governance scalable and sustainable.
Conclusion
Buchanan believes in self-governance but sees formal institutions, particularly constitutional rules, as essential to overcome free-riding and coordination challenges in large groups. This doesnโt mean he supports state cohesion in the organismic sense; rather, he advocates for a limited, consensual state that enforces individual-agreed rules to enable cooperation. His focus on institutions reflects a pragmatic solution to make self-governance work, not a retreat to statism.
This is from Bloomberg’s news letter a few days ago:
This example comes from South Africa, but the pattern is familiar in city neighborhoods across the United States. A single area becomes highly sought afterโoften because of a natural amenity like a lake, a hilltop view, or tree-lined streets. As people concentrate their attention and investment there, surrounding neighborhoods are overlooked. That neglect can manifest in subtle formsโlike disrepair or increased petty crimeโwhich only reinforces the appeal of the original “best” area.
At first, residents welcome the rising property values. But over time, that early advantage turns into a burden. Friends and family are priced out. Local businesses close as commercial rents climb, replaced by boutique shops that cater to outsiders. What began as a benefit morphs into a form of isolation.
A regional perspective offers a solution. If planners and policymakers ensure that all neighborhoods remain livable and desirableโnot just one or twoโthe pressure on any single area can be eased. Without that balance, scarcity drives runaway prices, and the community as a whole suffers.
In the video from yesterday’s post, Fukuyama focuses on how to improve government services. He notes that one must first recognize the differences between the private and public sectors
Private firms can go bankrupt- public cannot. Incentives perform
Subject to mandates- matrix of provisions healthy water, plentiful
Cannot retain earnings, and thus, no profit incentive
Worker relations are subject to multiple demands and protections
I’m wondering, though, whether it would be valuable to look through these differences, not from the perspective of trying to fit public goods into the private mold, but rather from the perspective of why certain goods fall into upon the public conscience.
For instance, there’s no bankruptcy in government because the supply of these services is too important to have them fail. If a shoe producer sets her factory to make 5000 shoes that no one buys, and this closes her down, then she might take the hint that she’s not good at shoes. No harm except to her pocketbook.
However, when a fire consumes a building, people want firefighters to show up. People want the police to break up fights, and they want clean water to come out of their pipes, without fail. People don’t want to be tested by start-ups that make imprudent decisions. The goods and services that fall under formalized government are there because they are deemed necessary for a certain standard of living.
So, if the threat of bankruptcy is gone, what is another threat that would incentivize the bureaucracy to a higher level of performance? Let’s go to #2 first and see how things unfold.
Fukuyama argues that governments are subject to multiple mandates, whereas private companies can focus solely on generating profits. The water department is not only producing clean potable water, but they also must make provisions for vulnerable people on the edge of financial distress. I wonder if this is because goods that tend to fall into the public sphere are those expected by a group– not only do the parents want water, but the kids and the seniors. With a wide range of participants in a group, some are bound to be less capable than others. The relationships, however, dictate the standard that everyone is expected to receive.
Although the group values consistency, they also desire affordability. So this isn’t a realm of profits and retained earnings. The idea is to meet the standard at the least possible expense instead of creating something fantastic and interesting that everyone will throw money at you to obtain. The fact that departments must return their unspent budgets, however, might be a policy flaw. But that topic is for another day.
It shouldn’t be surprising that the environment subject to providing goods and services under multiple mandates cloaks their employment contract with the same tribal protections. It has long been understood that public servants earn less than private sector employees but have greater job stability and larger pension benefits. Fukuyama feels this is a drawback in pressing for higher performance on the job. And perhaps that’s right.
So, it seems the trick for improved performance in the public sphere is three-fold. First off, only those services that are suited to the no-bankruptcy nature of things should fall to the public. If it is an unfettered good, let the private sector figure it out. Secondly, figure out how to measure the group as a whole or the individual. Individuals really don’t matter in and of themselves; only the group counts. Incentivize people as members of the group, give them pride in that, and tucked away social capital over and above the dollars safely sitting in their pension funds.
Let me introduce my first favorite public intellectual:
Iโve been a fan of Francis Fukuyama for a very long timeโ since I was in my teens. Heโs the first intellectual who spoke non-biased speak and in doing so opened his intellectual pursuits to me. It wasnโt just that he spoke without condescension, he always pulls together the most pertinent information and delivers it in a straightforward and understandable manner.
A decade ago, a large apartment complex in a first-tier suburb was sold to an investor. (Who else buys such things except investors?)
Though the sale isn’t the news. The hubbub that followed was about the residents. Many were low-income individuals who would eventually relocate. The sheer number of people involved was a stress test for the supply of low-income housing. The discontent escalated, and legal action followed, resulting in settlements.
People often blame the businesspeople involved. They are the individuals taking the action that resulted in the displacement. But consider these perspectives.
If long-term repairs have been postponed to keep rents low, at what point does the building become overburdened by impending renovations? And how does a dilapidated building affect the quality of the neighborhood?
Is it a good thing to use housing assistance for low-income residents in geographic proximity? Whether it be due to a tragedy– ex a natural disaster destroys the building– or an impending renovation– the pressure to relocate effects a disproportionate number of folks looking for the same niche of housing.
Are the residents better off or worse off for the move? Perhaps the old, dilapidated building with low rents was serving as an anchor for someone who would have had more opportunities elsewhere.
Each group, the neighborhood, the property owner, and the residents, each has a unique mix of community concerns and private returns. Often hasty assumptions are made, ie, the tenants are worse off for the move, when that may not necessarily be true. Or the landlord benefited during the period of limited repairs– not so as their equity at the time of sale will be diminished by the condition of the property.
By separating out the players and their motivations, the dynamics at hand become apparent.
I thought the US Census was a factual thing. It is meant to report data, not succumb to opinion. This headline, however, which is being used nationwide as a rally call against housing markets, is a product of capture.
The census people want us to believe that nearly half of renters are in financial straits.
How did they get this number, and why does it seem high when you look around in your life and donโt see that half of the people you know or come into contact with are shouldering the pressure of a cost-burdened housing expense? The threshold used to determine financial distress occurs when a household spends more than 30 percent of its income on housing expenses. It is said that this is an industry norm– meaning lenders of all stripes rely on this benchmark when determining creditworthiness.
That’s not to say that lenders do not approve borrowers with a higher debt-to-income level. They do. In fact, they will lend up to 50% in situational circumstances. Note that up to these levels, the financial institution is still anticipating that the loan will be repaid. Delinquencies are not the objective in the lending business. (Here’s a post on debt-to-income ratios from a few days ago.)
But that’s not what this headline implies. According to the census, 30-50% of the population is ‘burdened.’ Perhaps one could let that go to semantics. Only the ratio calculated in this case differs from the industry norm. This ratio includes utilities as a monthly expense, where the industry standard does not. So, how does the added cost of heating bills, electricity, water, and possibly internet (I’m not sure what the American Community Survey includes) adjust the threshold and push a larger share of the population over the 30% threshold?
The first thing to know is how a debt-to-income ratio is calculated. Take an average rental cost of $1300 a month. The monthly income amount for a 30% debt-to-income ratio is $4333/mo. If you add $139 in utility costs, everyone adjusts up 3%. An added monthly cost of $200 (say the respondent includes all their streaming options), then the debt-to-income ratio rounds up another cohort by 5%. It’s safe to say that the census is no longer using an industry standard by calculating ratios with additional monthly obligations.
Is the renter who likes streaming services cost-burdened or simply choosing an entertainment option? Is the renter who elects to pay a larger portion for rent to live on a metro line, forgo the cost of a car payment, and net out a lower monthly expense as a result, cost-burdened? Is the renter who selects a living option close enough to an ex-spouse to share custody and not pay child support cost burdened or cost savvy?
People arrange their monthly budgets all the time with savings and benefits that may not be readily apparent to the outside world. That’s the beauty of choice. As long as a market is loose enough for people to navigate to their best circumstances, they arrive at a combination that works in their best interest, reflecting all facets of their lives.
College students will undoubtedly pay more for rent than their income would seem to allow. That’s the reality of their stage of life. Seniors also fall into a different category of consumer than working adults. Many could be at a stage where their monthly living expenses may include food and care, while their monthly income may just be one source in their retirement plan for covering expenses at the end of life. Are these students octogenarians, cost-burdened, or simply living their lives as planned?
Affordability is a subjective measure. I question the Census’s objectives in publishing opinions on affordability in the housing markets. What’s next? Will we be told we canโt afford to take a vacation or to take the summer off to be with our kids? Or should the Census return to the way it was– a fact provider?
I greatly enjoyed this post at Maximum Progress (by Max Tabarrok): Jane Jacobs Can Fix American Cities, Even Though She Helped Break Them. Many people associate Jane Jacobs with the urban resistance– shouting down the developers to keep the neighborhood intact. Becoming the spry young woman who takes on influential players at city hall became a goal in and of itself. But Max points out that this is a mere sliver of what Jacobs offers on ideas.
In fact, a careful reading of “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” reveals that Jacobs didn’t advocate for preservation and obstruction (at least, not in the book itself)โshe advocated for market urbanism and organic development. The solution to our urban problems isn’t a middle path between Moses and Jacobs, but rather a return to Jacobs’ actual ideas, not the distorted version that became embedded in planning practice.
Jacobs wants the planners out of the neighborhood business, unless they are there to encourage and support organic growth.
In โDeath and Lifeโ Jacobs argues that urban planners should plan less. They should stop drafting grand visions and bulldozing neighborhoods to rebuild them in their image. โPublic policy can do relatively little that is positive to get working uses woven in where they are absent and needed in cities, except toย permitย and indirectly encourage them.โ When discussing a successful commercial district in Nashville she notes that โNobody could have planned this growth. Nobody has encouraged it.โ
Or this. Let everyone go about their lives and find their way. The actors are best at decision making.
In Jacobsโ view, planners should merely set favorable conditions for decentralized, unplanned, and incremental development. Lay out the street grid if you must (though with smaller blocks than Manhattan) and bring the infrastructure to where itโs needed but otherwise refrain from regulating private land use. Let all the uses of the city mingle together and fill each street with eyes and activity at all times of the day. Jacobs is like Hayek (1945) or The Fatal Conceit applied to urbanism. โThe curious task of economics [and Jacobsian urban planning] is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.โ
I think there is a little more that the planners can do in their supporting role. That is to keep track of things. Jane Jacobs’ city encourages a mixing of people in their public lives near their homes. But some mixes of shopkeepers, and moms, and office workers and renters blend better than others. What are the civic jobs that various cohorts do? For lively streets in friendly neighborhoods, what are the pre conditions and the on-going maintenance that each member brings to Jane Jacobs dance of colorful city life?
The best part about using AI is being able to request information in various ways. In the process of thinking up the question, a new angle on the issue can open up further probing. Say you start with something you only know a bit about, like property rights in Africa. You might think it is all about wealth. If GDP is high, then laws must be in place for such things as the enforcement of property rights. And these two things seem connected to political stability.
So you ask. And this is what you get.
(Unfortunately, Ethiopia was cut off. Property rights are entirely controlled by the governement.)
Surprisingly, GDP does not appear to be connected to securing property rights. The legal enforcement column raises various issues: whether there is a process for recording ownership, whether there is a mechanism to resolve disputes, and finally, whether there is political power to take even with these two features in place.
Of course, the level of political control is of interest. But it’s hard not to believe that even in countries where the story is that the government controls all, informal institutions do not play out in everyday lives. Governments do not have the manpower or interest, I would think, to dictate who gets what dwelling when such and such happens. And directing who has a pecking order over whom. These societies more than likely barter in their own off-the-record way to say who gets what.
A local guy whoโs good with computer software is taking the time to match public figures with associational affiliations.
These non-profits were once thought to be nice background features in a community. But with all the misdirected funds in the news lately, some are recognizing associational work as players not bystanders.
Itโs fascinating how many there are to consider.
It’s a little hard to believe, but the concept of recording land ownership in a centralized (and supervised) public location is a relatively new thing. In Great Britain, a nationwide mandate was not enacted until 1990. The title work! The property claims! It must have been a messy process. And what if a deed went up in a fire or was thought to have turned to ash?
Here’s a Chat overview of the history of real property titling.
1. The Era of Deeds and Legal Descriptions (Pre-19th Century โ Early 20th Century)
Great Britain
Land ownership was historically recorded through deeds, private legal documents that had to be manually traced to prove ownership.
The system lacked a central registry, meaning land transactions relied on historic title chains stored by property owners and lawyers.
United States
A similar system of deed recording existed, often based on metes and bounds descriptions (especially in the Eastern U.S.) or the Public Land Survey System (PLSS) (for lands acquired after 1785).
County governments recorded deeds, but there was no standardized way to track land ownership.
2. Early Land Registries and First Steps Toward Systematic Record-Keeping (Mid-19th Century โ Early 20th Century)
Great Britain
1862 โ Land Registry Act established HM Land Registry, but participation was voluntary.
1875 โ Land Transfer Act simplified the process, but land registration was still not compulsory.
1897 โ London mandated land registration, gradually expanding nationwide.
United States
1800s โ Early county plat maps and tax assessment rolls began organizing land records more systematically.
Late 19th โ Early 20th Century โ Cadastral surveys (especially in the Western U.S.) improved property mapping.
1920s-1930s โ States and local governments began experimenting with numbered parcel systems for property taxation.
3. Systematic Land Registration and Adoption of Parcel Numbering (Mid-20th Century โ 21st Century)
Great Britain
1925 โ Land Registration Act made registration compulsory for land sales in designated areas, gradually covering more of England and Wales.
1990 โ Almost all land transactions required registration.
2002 โ Digital land registration introduced, enabling electronic transactions.
United States
1950s-1970s โ Parcel Identification Numbers (PINs) were introduced in many counties to systematically track land ownership and taxation.
1970s-1990s โ Geographic Information Systems (GIS) were integrated into land records, linking parcel data to maps.
2000s-Present โ Digital land records became the norm, allowing online access to property information.
Key Takeaways
Both Great Britain and the U.S. started with deed-based systems requiring lengthy title searches.
Great Britain centralized land registration earlier (1862), but it became widespread only by the 20th century.
The U.S. never adopted a national land registry but instead developed county-based parcel identification systems (PINs) during the mid-to-late 20th century.
Both systems are now largely digital, enabling online property searches, tax assessments, and real estate transactions.
It was only twenty-five years ago that abstract books were still in circulation. When a property changed hands, the abstracts were located and pages were added to reflect the changes. The result multi-page pad told the parcel’s ownership story, as seen below.
This bill is a shame. As if our school districts arenโt already reeling to keep up with mandates under strained budgets.
Of the 49.6 million school age children in the US, according to the article, 22 thousand experience a cardiac arrest while away from a medical facility. Thatโs less than a half of one percent of children.
This plan would require the district to have a designated cardiac emergency response team. Those teams would, as the bill is written, be required to do a simulation 30 days before the school year begins. Coaches would also have to be CPR and automated external defibrillator trained.
It feels like a lawmaker trying to get a bill passed more than a community need clamoring for attention. Feels like a resume builder.
And yet time, regulation and responsibility is going to be mandated down across 331 school districts in MN. It turns educators into medical care providers.
The bill would also require schools to make response plans available and accessible both on the school website and in paper form. It proposes offering $3 million to schools to assist and fund these efforts.
CNN brings readers up to date on the antitrust lawsuit against the National Association of Realtors. The plaintiffs were granted $418 million last summer, not a small amount of cash. Once all the legal bills were paid, the 500 petitioners received an estimated $900.
So, did all that work and expense result in a new way of doing business?
โPaperwork has changed, and I think some really good things have happened in the way most of us discuss commissions upfront with our buyers and sellers,โ said Brita Kleingartner, a Realtor in Los Angeles. โBut I donโt think that business has changed in any way.โ
With mortgage rates hovering around 7% for the last six months and average home prices across the USย continuing to rise, the new rules, which took effect in August, had spurred hope that commissions paid to real estate professionals would plunge, making homebuying and selling less expensive for average Americans. Last year, TD Cowen Insights estimated that the new rules could cause fees paid to Realtorsย to fall by 25% to 50%.
Instead, commissions have remained largely unchanged since August, according to a study released this month by real estate platform Redfin. For relatively lower-priced homes that sold for under $500,000, Redfin found that the average commission has increased since the rules took effect.
As I predicted a year ago, how business is done has not changed. The lawsuit alleged a problem that did and does not exist. How do we know? Watch the consumers and what they do. If they choose not to employ two realtors (one to represent the seller and one to represent the buyer), if they decide to pay them at a different rate, then their pull in the market generates a change. If consumers, despite all the layer’s fees, publicity, and exposure, continue to desire representation by a professional licensed agent, then the market rate is being met in an open and non-coercive environment.
Is all this activism worth it? I wish someone would keep track. A legal battle of this size is expensive. Plus, the plaintiffs who were encouraged to participate spent valuable time on this versus other aspects of their lives. It tapped into some of their family capacity for civic participation. Could other causes within their immediate circles better deserve their efforts? Very possibly.
Many feel a moral superiority by fighting the good fight. But when the fight goes to show that the monsters were but mist off a lake on a cold fall morning, then one must count up the expense of it all and do an analysis.
Robin Hanson wrote recently about his Status Circles. They start on an enormous scale with the whole universe and then life on Earth. But when most people focus on nation, acquaintances, and family, Robin distinguished his affiliations to people interested in the big questionsโthe intellectuals. But even within this grouping, he offers a wide range of ever-narrowing groupings.
Government structures are often thought of as falling into one another. The town is part of a county, which is part of a state, which falls under a country’s national laws and jurisdictions. Let’s call this the Russian Doll effect. By encapsulating one organization into the other, it seems a default that the interests of the smallest doll would be taken in consideration up the chain.
In Vincent Ostrom’s book The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration, the author uses ideas offered by de Tocqueville to suggest otherwise.
I’m reading Vincent Ostroms The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration. On page 80, he refers to De Tocqueville’s impressions of the US administration. Can it be said that the French man thought there was independence between various levels of US governance, and that’s a good thing?
ChatGPT said:
Yes, Alexis de Tocqueville generally viewed the decentralization of governance in the United States as a positive feature. In Democracy in America, he admired how local institutions, especially townships and states, maintained a degree of independence from the central government. Tocqueville saw this decentralization as essential to fostering civic engagement, political responsibility, and democratic stability. He believed that allowing different levels of government to function with relative autonomy helped prevent tyranny and encouraged active participation by citizens in public affairs.
Vincent Ostrom, in The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration, often draws from Tocqueville to critique centralized bureaucratic models. Ostrom emphasizes how polycentric governanceโwhere multiple centers of authority operate independently but cooperativelyโaligns with Tocquevilleโs observations about Americaโs administrative structure. So yes, Tocqueville did see this independence as beneficial, particularly in reinforcing democratic habits and limiting the overreach of centralized power.
4o
You said:
If one were to take the imagery one step further, could one separate each level out by encapsulating them in a self-interest cloak- the idea being that in terms of action, each level will prioritize the interest at the local level, which can be at odds with other levels of governance.
ChatGPT said:
Yes, you could extend the imagery in that way. If each level of governance is wrapped in a “self-interest cloak,” it suggests that local, state, and federal authorities will act primarily to protect their own interests, which may sometimes conflict with other levels. This aligns with public choice theory, which Ostrom himself engages with, emphasizing that political actorsโwhether at the local, state, or national levelโpursue their own interests rather than some idealized collective good.
Tocqueville observed that the strength of American governance lay in its decentralized structure, where local institutions had enough autonomy to make decisions that best served their immediate communities. However, this same independence could lead to friction when different levels of government pursue conflicting agendas. For example, a state might resist federal mandates that it views as intrusive, or a local government might implement policies that are at odds with state priorities.
This “self-interest cloak” metaphor also ties into the broader tension in American federalism: the push and pull between cooperation and competition among different levels of government. In practice, while decentralization fosters adaptability and local problem-solving, it can also create inefficiencies, redundancy, and legal battles when interests clash. Ostrom, like Tocqueville, would likely argue that this tension isn’t necessarily a flaw but an inherent feature of a system designed to resist centralized authority and encourage pluralism.
The benefit of this model, as opposed to the Russian Doll model, is understanding when a group becomes a competitor rather than an altruistic companion. For instance, during the COVID crisis, all the states bid up the price of masks by bidding against each other. In their actions, which were independent (cloaked in self-interest), Americans increased the costs of masks for all Americans to the benefit of those abroad. When reorganized as a bidding unit at the national level, this price effect is reduced.
The only trick, of course, is that you must trust that the greater group will, in turn, divide out the masks to everyone’s satisfaction.
They say some things you can’t buy. Or maybe some things are more conducive to pecuniary transactions than others. Take the Violence Interrupters. By the summer of 2020, the community wanted to try a new angle on crime prevention, as an article from September explains.
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — The city of Minneapolis is sending members of the community into the streets to prevent violence that is plaguing the city.
They are called the Violence Interrupters, and they’re tasked with stopping shootings by mediating conflicts in the community, and following up with individuals to decrease retaliatory violence.
Jamil Jackson and his group of interrupters are on the move.
“Our mantra is engage, relationships, resources,” Jackson said. “We’re teachers, we’re business owners, we’re city employees, we’re park employees, we’re just individuals who came to the call and had a desire to come out here and change.”
Their bright-orange shirts stand out, so they can walk in and use their relationships within the community to stop the shootings before they happen
The idea was that if responsible people in the neighborhood could step in on demand when they saw an event unfolding, interacting with police would be avoided entirely. Neighbors helping neighbors have the advantage of, in many cases, a clearer view of the issues at hand.
Others have written about this very thing, extolling the benefits of an active community busy engaging with each other across the sidewalks and parks of a neighborhood. Here’s what Jane Jacobs wrote in The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
The first thing to understand is that the public peace the sidewalk and street peace-of cities is not kept primarily by the police, necessary as police are. It is kept primarily by an intricate, almost unconscious, network of voluntary controls and standards among the people themselves, and enforced by the people themselves.
With good intentions, an office of violence prevention was created and funding was carved into the city budget to pay people in the neighborhood to step in and prevent an incident from escalating. So what happened? Fast-forward to this week in 2025.
Some Minneapolis City Council members say the cityโs Neighborhood Safety Department (NSD) has been too riddled with mismanagement to continue overseeing violence intervention programs. On Thursday, three council members proposed that more than $1.1 million be allocated to Hennepin County to temporarily take over two intervention programs.
For more than a year, council members have routinely flagged concerns over the department that administers violence interruption programs. Several violence interruption groups reported contracts that had lapsed or gone unpaid last year, which council members say shrunk safety services in parts of the city. A 2023 lawsuit also alleged the department arbitrarily awarded millions of dollars in contracts without adequate oversight.
Things have gotten so bad that the council people, who are most vocal against professional police, no longer want to be responsible for this new form of neighborhood quieting. But why didn’t it work? It has the right components.
It’s the money.
The eyes-on-the-street people, who help keep the peace, are many and are often never called on to intervene in any way. To meter out the job to an individual is resource misallocation as it takes a large group, a whole neighborhood, of people to monitor and, through small actions, or phone calls, or gestures, alter the course of events. There isn’t enough of a job for just one person.
When resources don’t have a direct draw against them, they become ripe for fraud. Those in charge of the money have to put it somewhere. Opportunists realize this and create a demand where none exists.
Community policing is a group thing. It does not jive with the division of labor or hourly wages. Whoever is available when the car crashes into a pole and is set on fire, whoever happens to be passing by and has the will and capacity to help, are those who step up voluntarily in times of need. For that they receive an award.
A few months ago, I wrote about an investor who bought a property with an old style of electrical wiring called knob and tube. Their post was an example of the complexity of a rehad project. The price of the building was undoubtedly part of their decision-making. But you don’t always know what you are buying. Inspections are done to determine all the variables upfront; when it comes to real estate renovations, there are bound to be some unexpected costs. The expense of rewiring a nine-unit building was a downstroke against their profit.
Homes have so many features, which leads people to make different choices depending on their skills, what they value, and their tolerance to risk. Some homeowners, for instance, will not purchase a home with a tuck-under garage. The thought of the amount of energy loss every time the twenty-foot double garage door goes up in the winter when it is below zero makes them cringe. The energy inefficiency of this floor plan makes the home unacceptable in their eyes.
Over time, particularly when mechanicals or construction processes improve, old systems like knob and tube wiring make their way out of the market. First, the market starts to reject the item, so sellers, in preparation for sale, determine they would be best off making the improvement before going on the market. Sometimes, the insurance company will influence the market by making it more expensive to insure certain features, which provides incentives for replacing those items. Eventually, the old way of doing things becomes obsolete and unacceptable to buyers.
This process may take a couple of decades or a quarter century. Old-timers grumble about replacing perfectly feasible mechanicals, wasting funds that could be spent elsewhere. A long time ago, a local electrician advised that as long as the cylindric glass fuses supported the current demand, then all was well. When one insurance company refuses coverage, other smaller companies may step in. And around it goes until the verdict changes and most homes have been converted.
Consider this method versus a regulation. Once an empowered authority draws a line and publishes a restriction, the market no longer has the ability to evaluate this change in contrast to all the dozens of other upgrades and improvements that can go into a home. The burden falls most heavily on the more dated homes, which are often owned by people who have gotten on in years and are not keeping up on things or those of lesser means who patch and plug problems as that’s the best they can do.
A decree from above creates an acute demand for that one mechanical, which, in my experience, causes opportunistic behavior and price inflation. The market system is the kinder and gentler way to transition from one set of norms to another.
Sometimes, crazy northerners crack a hole in the ice and disrobe down to a skinny bikini before plunging into a chilly frozen lake. It’s called a Polar Plunge. It’s supposed to be fun!
But that’s not the type of plunge I’m bringing you in this article by well-known urban geographer Bill Lindeke. New construction in the legacy cities, which had made nice strides from 2017-2021, plummeted down 88%.
Comparing the slowdown to other cities of similar size reveals an undeniable first place in the worst record award to be given out. The cause, you ask? Bill suggests.
The most obvious culprit to me is that both St. Paul and Minneapolis have enacted (or taken steps toward enacting) rent stabilization policies. This was an issue that I argued about back in 2021, writing that the policy proposal appearing on the referendum would amount to St. Paul โredlining itselfโ when it came to attracting housing investment. The bigger surprise is that Minneapolis seems to also have been affected by concerns about rent stabilization, even though they havenโt actually enacted any actual policy.
I say it doesn’t stop there. The hostile environment against developers, landlords, tradespeople, maintenance and upkeep folks, and anyone who puts effort into the upkeep of real property has taken a toll.
There are other municipalities that welcome people who want to build upon and maintain investment properties. Options provide choices.
Is the Housing Act of 1949 the reason today for the hyper-local control of housing and real estate decisions? It’s hard to say. But the slum clearance, financed by the federal government, was significant enough to still be recognized today.
THE GATEWAY PROJECT City planners assumed that the Gateway area, the old core of downtown Minneapolis, would qualify for federal urban renewal assistance when they proposed clearing and reconstructing about one-third of the entire downtown in the mid-1950s. Beginning in 1956, federal renewal officials raised serious questions about the size of the project: was what was proposed too big for the local real estate market? In 1957 a group of civic and government leaders, led by Mayor P.K. Peterson, went to Washington, D.C. to convince federal renewal officials that Minneapolis needed a project this size. They were successful, and returned with a commitment for the money.
Not everyone found favor with the proposed redevelopment however. Several owners of condemned property tried to stop the Gateway plan. They sued the HRA, claiming that the condemnation action was “arbitrary and unreasonable.” They also challenged the legality of the overall development plan. The owners did not win any of these suits, nor did the preservationists who sued to stop the destruction of the Metropolitan Building (formerly the Guaranty Life Building). This last suit made it as far as the Minnesota Supreme Court, which upheld the HRA’s right to condemn the Metropolitan Building. This decision essentially reaffirmed the “greater good” argument about eminent domain (Buildings 1961 b).
The 1956 Highway Act worked with the Housing Act by sometimes forging the interstate system through poor, dilapidated neighborhoods. While I suspect only the most dedicated automobile haters would argue against a national network of roads, the lamentation of housing being leveled still lingers today. And petitions are underway to return the freeway to neighborhood streets. (Although, most recently removed from the planning process.)
What is the balance between hyper-local governanceโwhere people want to take out a freeway for residential streetsโand an all-encompassing federal project? In the end, who owns the land?
The downtown library sits in the old Gateway district.
Say you live in a high-density, well-frequented area where lots of people come and go to visit local amenities like ballparks, restaurants, and museums. At some point, you get tired of being unable to host book club because your friends can’t find parking in front of your home, or the noise of continual foot traffic along the sidewalk is plain annoying. You decide to do something about it. After all, this is your homeโright?
The voluntary action taken to rev up the neighbors, petition your city council, and air your grievances across social media platforms can, in sum, add up. It is an opportunity cost to you. You’ve engaged in volunteering and spent some of your time and talents to improve your environment. In fact, you’ve done such a good job that there is now a team of neighbors- Team A- all on the same quest.
Traditionally, streets and sidewalks are open-access town amenities. It’s too inconvenient to block passage for those from afar and those nearby. Hence, most roadways in the US are public in the most generous sense of the term. The free flow of people circulates around for their various needs, whether it be for a commercial delivery, a commuter getting to and from work, or a family out and about doing what families do. People in the know might adjust their schedule and stay off the roads at rush hour or following a Taylor Swift concert, but otherwise, it is a free-for-all, first-come-first-serve type commodity.
Team A, in the neighborhood wants more control than the anything goes, and engage their city to intervene in the spirit of preserving their neighborhood. They make a material claim to the pavement outside their doors. In order to make it official, they need the blessing of an official body with authority. The constraints change once a sign goes up on the block limiting parking hours, or requiring a parking pass.
Imposing minor inconveniences like restricted hours, passes, or even meters might make street parking more orderly. It’s a way of relaying information. A restriction might be just what someone needs to make an effort to drive through the alley and put their car away in a garage. A small charge encourages people to walk further and park on a less busy street.
The time to take note is when a restriction pushes other groups to form. Then, there are more preferences to consider than simply those of the neighbors who want ownership benefits of the street spots in front of their homes. Take the recent change implemented for those who wish to drive into Manhattan. To listen to this guy, it’s all a great success to charge $9 and discourage entrance by vehicle. He appears to speak on behalf of the commuting group.
Screenshot
What other groups are in the mix? Shoppers who would come into the city, but now the surcharge discourages them? Small shop workers like home repair people? Tourists who decide against coming in for the day? What is the cost of their behavior in the face of this new constraint? It seems that retail shops and restaurants could see a decrease in business. Less competition for small-scale home repair services results in higher prices for homeowners. Fewer tourists, as pesky as they seem, weakens the arts and museum support systems.
Time will tell. But it seems that gaining a little bit of ownership of the asphalt might cost Team A more than the time it took to lobby for the change. Commuter Team B may benefit the most, as the $9 is a fraction of the income they earn in the city. And the othersโworkers, shoppers, and touristsโall lose out. After all, there’s no free lunch. But more importantly, is this matrix of tradeoffs between various interest groups the desired outcome of implementing the surcharge?
Andrew Yang points out that money wonโt always purchase what you want to buy. Despite outspending her competitor handsomely, Harris lost.
You see this in social services too. Money can be poured into some of the most deserving causes: care centers, autism learning, culturally specific food without comparative results.
In fact, the less the objective is tied to a cash response, the more likely the cash flow will be highjacked by fraudsters.
So what is the factor which better represents a price paid for results?
Crisis [หkrฤซsษs], noun, a time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger.
Let’s consider a few housing facts to see if the state of our housing needs rise to that level in MN:
According to the US Census, Minnesota’s homeownership rate has hovered between 72% and 76% in the last four years. This is well above the national homeownership rate of 65%.
Minnesota’s foreclosure rate is down 9% from last year and ranks 27th nationwide with 370 homes in foreclosure or 1 out of 6,740. (Attomdata)
It seems that many Minnesotans can afford to own homes. Few are having difficulty maintaining their ownership positions. Crisis of homeownership averted in the far north.
That’s not to say that there may be housing issues for non-homeowners. Princeton University tracks evictions. Minnesota is third from the bottom on their list, at 4%. So renters don’t seem abnormally stressed or in crisis.
For those undergoing foreclosure or eviction, there is a crisis. Thus, they should receive the appropriate support to help them navigate their way to a solution to reestablishing shelter.
There is a crisis. It’s a crisis of wasteful regulation. So, call that out and make efforts for reform where needed.
Everyone is talking about peeling back regulations. I, too, think this is a good thing. Picking which rules should go and which should stay is the question of the day. The rules were put in place often to save folks from some harm, so those would be worth keeping, right? But where is the final test to turn for such judgement?
Every industry will be different. Perhaps people in each walk of business will have an opportunity to point out the absurd or even the slightly off base.
Real estate construction offers a wide play of potential overreach by bureaucrats. At least from the layman’s side of things, it’s a bit difficult to understand the fine nuances of a vent’s proximity to a floorboard. Can a metal heat vent ever rise to a temperature that would ignite a beam? If the vent turns at this angle it is unacceptable, yet a few degrees to that angle it passes.
AI could be one way to double-check the interpretations of safety requirements. Instead of well-intended people imposing the most stringent interpretations of what is safe, a history of events could be considered. The power of scanning large files allows thousands of cases of, say, insurance claims to detail actual construction failures that resulted in harm. If there has never been a claim involving a heat vent setting framing on fire, that should give some direction on whether the rule is worth pursuing.
The standards each community picks will reflect its risk tolerance. But if the level of acceptability has risen far above what the average person tolerates in their own dwelling, then the rule makers are stifling the construction process and adding undue expense.
People expect their government, or governing bodies, to protect them. It’s the most basic and oldest public good. Band together in a cave or behind fortifications and put the physically strongest in charge of fending off harm. For better or worse, this placed the physically strong in high-status positions for more than several millennials.
But what does that mean to keep you safe? And here is the sticky part. There is a broad spectrum upon which the answers to that question may fall. In some cultures, women are safe when clothed from head to toe and sequestered out of the public eye. Most people and women find this a violation of individual liberty. It is not up to the group to seek a safety goal so that it impinges excessively on one or a whole section of society’s liberties.
One story in the news yesterday tells of a mom in Georgia arrested for negligence when her ten-year-old was seen walking home on a rural road. The police were notified by a neighbor. They then showed up at the family’s home and cuffed the mom in front of her kids. Last month, there was a story in the news of another ten-year-old in another part of the country who was finally detained when he drove a stolen car through his neighborhood playground. This ten-year-old had been released on numerous occasions for auto-related theft to a mother who was never held responsible in any way.
Of course, there are many more mundane questions about what is safe. How many smoke detectors does a house need? How many inches does a metal vent need from a combustible floorboard? Will that tenth detector be the one that alerts the family of smoke in the house? Can a wood rafter really catch on fire from metal only exposed to air heated to seventy degrees? Someone thought so. How high does a standard need to be to be safe enough? I’m not sure. But I expect that no one wants to be the regulator who, after a death from a fire, is thought to have been too lax.
The thing is that too much regulation can kill, too. At least, that’s the argument for those who feel there are too many restrictions in the drug industry. Failure to approve causes people to die from lack of access to a cure. Lengthy approval processes cause people to die, too. Just like too many building codes add an undue burden to housing expenses. Without housing, some people are severely disadvantaged and may even die on the streets.
So– what to do? What level of protection is requested when the people go to the government and ask? It seems like the answer would be some expected norm of the group.
If you raise the standards above the norm, people are restricted from liberties they would have enjoyed. Plus, more than likely, some people will disregard the regulation as they feel it is not worthwhile. Before you know it, the mayor of some town is caught at a party without a mask when all other good city dwellers have been putting up with the stinky things. A non-conformist attitude can then carry over to different areas, like permits for home repair. And people start getting their brother-in-law, who’s ‘handy’ to connect a gas line. Here the permit and ensuing inspection is beneficial.
Walking the fine line between setting regulations and meeting people’s expectations for safety is a balancing act worth figuring out.
There are no regulations against garage door decorating.
Even prior to the election outcome, there was bipartisan interest in reducing regulations which hinder housing. Yet in 2024, efforts around housing ended up being a power struggle between different levels of government and zoning control. Traditionally, land use is determined at the local level. The political efforts were geared at removing local control through state mandates. Come to find out, residents like to control the land in their direct periphery.
With the new administration, one would anticipate this spirit of deregulation to find its way to most industries. Is there a good place start? Where would less government result in a net positive? Where are the low hanging fruit?
The market solves for social concerns. Tesla is a prominent example. If there is a mass of consumers with a shared concern, than they will demand it of the market. Looking for the majorities with shared common interest might be a start. For example a ballot measure passed in Minnesota to divert funds from the lottery to the environmental trust fund. It passed with 77.5% of the vote.
When people voluntarily allocate resources for a casue there is a better chance that mediating their interests through the market will result in a more efficient outcome. Without the surcharge of bureaucracy and the unintended outcomes of intervention, markets often are more fruitful. When it comes to the environment, the majority of Minnesotans indicate that they will spend the money to preserve and protect.
One- that this is news. Two- that actions speak far louder than words. Three- that this is considered a solution.
Aย Minneapolisย City Council committee has approved a proposal to add two people who are currently or were previously unhoused to join its housing advisory board. (Bring Me the News)
The presidential debate has actually been worth watching.
The moderators are doing a good job. The candidates are acting fairly presidential. They dodge the questions equally. They preach from their notes a fair amount. But there is still new information being talked over. There are glancing insights to new angles of old problems.
This is a definite improvement over politics in the past ten years.
David Hume, a member of the Scottish Enlightenment crew and good friend to Adam Smith, was a practical sort of guy. Perhaps it was his good sense that kept him out of the universities and engaged with a broader, more genial audience. He wrote on many topics. Fortunately, people like Letwin parse through the material to pull out interesting bits like this one.
But if the politician had to be in a way mediocre, he had also to be thoroughly civilized. Civilization was not the same as morality. Hume refused to divide men into good and bad; in the history he rounded off each portrait with a neat balance of virtues and vices, that fails utterly to give a picture of a living man, but makes it clear that he was neither saint nor villain. For Hume would allow no character to be “wholly bad or good; thoโ the prejudices of party make writers run easily into the extremes of both panegyric and of satire.”
So often people are painted as all evil or all angel when we all know, as David Hume tells us, there’s at least a bit of both in most everyone. Then what should we look for in evaluating the political performance of public servants who are apt to be swayed in both directions?
The political morality Hume demanded is in a way far more difficult to observe than the extremest puritan austerity. For it is easy either to follow some set of rules absolutely or to ignore moral qualms altogether. It is easy also to try to establish a perfect city, come what may. But the man who tries to adapt himself to circumstances and yet preserve his integrity, to recognize new problems without destroying law and order, has an endless task. He is eternally obliged to balance one thing against another, to distinguish and compromise, and all this without falling into moral indifference. Perhaps most difficult of all, Hume’s politics assumes great personal resources, an ability to find meaning in life for oneself, and to require from the state nothing more than a convenient setting for private enthusiasms.
How would that work exactly, an efficiency commission? In the business world, when the system is open and monopolies aren’t gumming up the flow of things, new entrants keep prices lean by undercutting the legacy companies, while maintaining a high enough price so as not to go bust. This tension is how people trust that they are paying a competitive price.
๐จ๐จBREAKING: Elon Musk just volunteered to help on a Government Efficiency Committee to rein in government waste.
When groups or governments come up with pledges to jointly pay for goods and services, the obligation to purchase distorts a more fluid and flexible exchange. It also can set up a fictitious demand, as in the Feeding our Future Fraud case. The knowledge that the funds would arrive gave a financial incentive to fabricate the hungry kids who demanded the meals.
Another inefficiency appears in the form of joint missions, also known as mission creep. For instance, a government acquires a property in poor condition. Instead of bringing it up to the standard that most of the nearby residents would do if it were their home, the government entity goes over and above, not by a little but perhaps by three times the expense of average expectations. “Because it is the right thing to do.”
There are two counting mechanisms that could help an efficiency commission discuss examples such as these. The first is to count the population of the end recipients or receivers of service. A simple demographic count of the kids meant to be served would have immiediately revealed the fraud that led to the theft of $250 million from Federal subsidies. The state demographer has those numbers. It’s not hard to add.
The second example requires a comparison to the average typical repair for the area. Many home repairs and services vary in price. Should a homeowner go with the highest efficiency model, or is 80% high enough? It seems that the likely answer lies with the community of like-minded folks and not the bureaucrat. Wouldn’t it make most sense to spend the money in the fashion that a conscientious owner in the neighborhood would choose to do? After all, they’ve gone through the scheme of pricing and comparing.
Those in charge of public dollars should be vigilant to avoid being taken for a ride, as well as in line with the spending expectations of their constituents.
Basketball player Brittney Griner spent ten months in a Russian penal colony for being caught at the Sheremetyevo airport with e-cigarettes with cannabis oil in her luggage. The experience may be the reason for her emotional response to the playing of the national anthem while on the podium at the Olympics.
It’s easy to take for granted what is so familiar to us. Coming into contact with dire regimes across the world most often causes people to appreciate the standard of living in the US, despite the problems here. When it doesn’t, be wary.
Not just any asylum – one that was built in the middle of a farm field in a small Minnesota town on the railroad line between St. Paul and Fargo. The last surviving Kirkbride Building that was designed by Dr. Thomas Kirkbride: a complex of four-story structures creating an arc to maximize light and hence health benefits. At 700,000 finished square feet (TPT), the Fergus Falls (formerly) State Hospital is a lot to take care of.
If footage is hard to visualize, here are some comparisons as listed by The Measure of Things. The facility is three fourths as big as Alcatraz (960,000), two times as big as the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool (339,000), and half as big as the Pentagon (1,490,000). In addition to the main buildings, there was a power plant, a gymnasium, a workshop, maintenance buildings, a rehab center, a nurses’ quarters, and acres of cropland which sustained the facility.
On a recent tour I captured a few shots.
Over its one hundred and twenty-year history, there were good times and bad. Built before the turn of the twentieth century, at its peak, it housed 1800-2000 patients. The years of overcrowding led to criticism, which in turn was addressed. The tour guide from the Ottertail Historical Society narrated a balanced set of stories from personal experiences as written in journals, to newspaper articles, to reviews given to the facility from state inspectors.
State-run institutions became an unpopular means of managing mental health patients starting in the 1980s. The trend at the time was to return individuals back into the communities for care. The hospital’s population decreased until it was closed by the state in 2007. Shortly thereafter, the property was sold to the city of Fergus Falls, a community of 14,000.
The conundrum now is what to do with these structures? A commercial building on an acreage site would get bought out and redevelopped, as is underway at the Prudential Site. Even when the buildings are in decent shape, the value of the land makes the numbers work to pull down the structure and replot the acreage for further development.
Over a few posts, I’ll discuss why this scenario is different. Of course, the location in a rural area, an hour away from the Fargo airport is a factor. The condition of the buildings comes into play in redevelopment costs. The historical designation impacts the outcome. So what is it? What is the highest and best use for a historic asylum?
Sounds like folks at the top of DNC and Harris machine are down to Kelly of AZ and Shapiro of PA. They are hemming and hawing over those two.
Walz was shooting for the moon, but the two quotes below have been quickly been regarded as bad form and indicative of theโฆ pic.twitter.com/nRzT79OhT3
— MN Up North Lake Guy (@MNUpNorthLakeG1) July 30, 2024
Zoning is not a taking by the government. Zoning is a means for a population to control the neighborhood where they live. Whether they bought into the single-family setting, or whether they zoned the corner bar out of their neighborhood, it’s the neighbors’ call.
There’s no shortage of desire for control. So accept zoning. It’s here to stay.
Vacant properties are not popular with municipalities. Cities create a vacant land registry to keep a running log of properties that do not host residents. Here are directions from the town of Brookhaven New York.
There is no longer a requirement to submit a notarized application or payment through the mail โ it is all available online. The cost to register is $360 for the year and can be paid through our secure online platform.
Please be advised, that any owner, or agent of an owner acting on behalf of the owner, who fails to register a vacant building or to pay any fees required to be paid pursuant to the provisions of Chapter 87, within 30 days after they become due, shall constitute a violation punishable upon conviction thereof by a fine in the amount of not less than $1,000 nor more than $15,000 for each failure to register, or for each failure to pay a required vacant building registration fee.
The amount of the fine implies that full buildings are of value to the hamlet. Perhaps, in part, this is due to the services a resident will take up once they walk up their sidewalk every day to their front door. Perhaps having people come and go in the neighborhood keeps everyone more secure. Here are the benefits as expressed by the bureaucrats.
Registrantโs point of contact will be notified by phone and/or email of issues that may arise such as:
Property maintenance (tall grass, litter on property, etc.)
When the Town is notified by law enforcement of unauthorized occupancy
If property becomes unsecure.
When properties are registered, the Town will have contact information and will have the opportunity to notify the owner/property manager to correct any issues before taking action. This will save the property owner money.
The city of Miami goes one step further and requires the owners post a no-tresspassing sign and authorize their police force to enter the property should a need for their services become apparent.
Install No Trespassing Sign
Once you’ve submitted your forms, you’ll need to install a No Trespassing sign on the property (this can be any sign purchased any where).
Although it may never cross your mind, your comings and goings every day in your neighborhood and place of business are a public service.
I like Frederick Melo- Reporter. He knows how to sum up a message in a few words. Here are some captions from the public at a city council meeting.
โIf you want to condense the speeding, how about you patrol it? We canโt even get a (police) presence in our neighborhood. The lack of communication in our neighborhood is just hugeโฆthe bike lane, I donโt like it. Itโs unsafe. That bump out? Thatโs stupid. Cars canโt see it.โ https://t.co/TSyJyiWT69pic.twitter.com/e7CT4ICz0L
— Frederick Melo, Reporter/Axolotl (@FrederickMelo) July 10, 2024
Does affordable housing vary in quality based on location? Or is it simply a category of housing no different than a category of a car or a type of breakfast cereal? If you can use the home to shelter a household whose income falls below an acceptable level, then the property adequately meets its intended value.
A group of black pastors, led by Dr. Alfred Babington-Johnson, thinks location does matter. They are suing Minnesota Housing, an agency responsible for the allocation of public funds to subsidized housing, for exacerbating a household’s access to success by predominantly building in areas serviced by weak institutions.
A prominent voice among Black Twin Cities ministers, Babington-Johnson sued Minnesota Housing and the Metropolitan Council last year, arguing that state and regional efforts to build affordable housing effectively have backfired, increasing racial segregation while concentrating poverty in poor neighborhoods.
โWhether thatโs done with proven intentionality, the outcomes clearly indicate none of the disparities go away,โ Babington-Johnson said in an interview Wednesday. โThe educational gaps donโt close. The economic opportunities donโt materialize.โ
In this quote, Babington-Johnson refers to two institutions: schooling and the workplace. Efforts to develop educated people are regarded as the path to improved employment. Yet when people reside in areas where 40-50% of the residents live below the poverty level, it is easy to imagine that the lack of informal networking and time resources available to nurture these institutions is not at hand.
The Minnesota Housing Commissioner counters:
In a letter to the state advisory committee last month, Minnesota Housing Commissioner Jennifer Ho wrote that โin the last several years, 63% of the new rental units in the Twin Cities metro area that have been awarded funds through the Agencyโs Consolidated Request for Proposals have been in the suburbs while 37% have been in the central cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.โ
Which seems to contradict what people on the ground are feeling. My question, as a casual follower of the issues, is why are the numbers so hard to come by? Every time I’ve gone down the rabbit hole to try to nail down the numerical facts of these conversations, time has not allowed for a successful outcome. As public information, it seems they should be accessible. Attorneys for the pastor group put out these numbers.
Attorneys for Stairstep noted that in the Twin Cities, more than 23,000 affordable housing units received subsidies that began between 2017 and 2021. Of them, 56% โ or 13,000 units โ were subsidized by Minnesota Housing, the Met Council or another form of state funding.
Note the difference in verbiage between ‘new’ units versus all subsidized units. Two thirds of the new units may go to the suburbs. However, this clouds the issue, which is that most subsidies, by the structure of aid distribution, flow to neighborhoods of high poverty. The Housing Commissioner proposes work to be done to create the ideal institutions in place.
โFor example,โ she said, โthe only avenue for lower-income parents of color to access well-resourced schools should not be making them move to a white, wealthy community, which may lack other opportunities that they value. Rather, we should invest in disinvested communities and ensure that all schools are well resourced, allowing people to achieve equity in place.โ
The implications that folks could be giving up support groups in a move is a valid one. But who would be in the best position to provide voice to whether it is more feasible to relocate or to enhance institutions in high poverty areas? The pastors, or the residents if given the choice to move, or the government who holds monopoly on dictating where the housing units are located? Shouldn’t residents have a choice?
Some numbers are hard to find. The number of permits pulled to build homes, for instance, are shrouded in mystery. For all of you counting building starts, however, I have the link for you! The statistics can be found on the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. You can break it down to the county level.
According to HUD Minnesota’s total for building permits pulled in 2023 was 25,665.
As the Lift/Uber kerfuffle comes to a close, it will be interesting to see what is learned from the two year process of politicians acting as labor negotiators between the independent ride share drivers and the platform owners.
The Governor singed a bill amid grandstanding to settle a set ride fare which all parties found acceptable. This is a win as the service is valued by a spectrum of riders and sectors. The negotiations, however, were lengthy. As one council member recently observed, the final horse trading involved in getting to ‘yes’ from all sides used up the political capital that could have been used to get the bonding bill done this year. No bonding bill means no bonding money for all the projects requested across the sate. The loss is all the agreements that were left unconsidered due to the distraction of a relatively small pool of workers.
Economists refer to this as opportunity costs. If your capital is doing one thing, it can’t be doing another. Some might say the politicians are constrained by the amount of time they have in a session to review, discuss, and come to terms on items of public concern. But if public officials are in the profession of providing goods and services of value to their constituents, doesn’t it follow that their choice of which products to work on is actionable? To not make time for the bonding bill is a choice not a constraint
In Chapter 4 a plot of land is identified for aquisition.
3. And he said unto the kinsman, Nแบฅ-o-mi, that is come again out of the country of which, selleth a parcel of land, which was our brother Elim-แบฝ-lฤch’s:
Then one worries about past liens and encumbrances.
5. Then said Bo-ฤz, What day thou buyest the field of the hand of Naomi, thou must buy it also of Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of the dead, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance.
So one asks for witnesses to the transaction.
9 And Bo-ฤz said unto the elders, and unto all the people, Ye are witnesses this day, that I have bought all that was E-lim’-e-lech’s, and all that was Chi-li-ฤn’s and Mรคh-lรตn’s, of the hand of Na’-o-mฤฉ.
Instead of gap coverage, the buyer secures the potential claimant to the land through marriage.
10 Moreover Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mรคh-lon, have I purchased to be my wife, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance, that the name of the dead be not cut off from among his brethren, and from the gate of his place: ye are witnesses this day.
That’s a wrap on a closing.
The thing is- many countries still rely on insufficiently formal titling of land.
Man who kept his boat besides his house was ordered from the city to put up a fence to hide the boat from view. So he built the fence and hired someone to paint it. pic.twitter.com/wrkQh6RjXn
There’s a frequent complaint around government’s performance. Measurements for outcomes on public policies are difficult to evaluate. So how do we know when regulations meant to make things better, work?
One sense of it could be reflected by the populations adherence to the new rule. For instance, when smoking was banned from indoor areas there was a lot of grumbling. Now, a quarter-century later, it is rare to enter a home hanging heavy with the sent a-la-ashtray. The constituents agree. No smoking is great! Don’t even think about lighting up by the public entrances to buildings as perfuming oneself with the sent of Marlboros is not OK.
Some cities place permit requirements on all sorts of home improvements. I doubt there are objections to paying for an city inspector to stop out for the significant improvement projects like roof replacement or furnace upgrades. But the fees can hit smaller appliances like gas ranges or hot water heaters too. In these cases the regulatory charge adds an additional ten to twelve percent to the new appliance. After paying a sales tax and a delivery fee, people find this onerous.
As a result, people bypass the permit process. Pretty soon it becomes a known thing and nobody is following the rule. When the public ignores a regulatory process, I’d say it’s time for a reassessment.
Christ Church is the oldest protestant church in Malaysia. It sits on the same square as the administrative buildings set up by the Dutch in the seventeenth century.
TheStadthuys(an oldDutchspelling, meaningcity hall) is a historical structure situated in the heart ofMalacca City, the administrative capital of the state ofMalacca,Malaysia, in a place known as the Red Square.[1]The Stadthuys is known for its red exterior and nearby red clocktower. It was built by theDutchin 1650 as the office of the Dutch governor and deputy governor. It continued to be used as the Treasury, Post Office, Government Offices, and suites of apartments for the high officials after the takeover by the British.
Massive suburban mall parking lots must be one of the more unattractive features in a built environment. Thatโs why I like this little park so much. The city of Minnetonka installed a well landscaped gathering spot in one corner of Ridgedale Mallโs lot.
A woman walking her dog mentioned that on Tuesdays in the summer months the farmerโs market sets up in the open space.
Westminister Church has a wonderful town hall forum that hosts interesting visitors in a its beautiful nave. Today’s guest was Keyu Jin whose book, The New China Playbook, Beyond Socialism and Capitalism, was recently published. I was not familiar with this professor from the London School of Economics but the title of the talk drew me in.
After the half hour talk, Prof Jin took questions from the audience. Tane Danger, the host, looks through the cards in order to group similar topics together.
One audience member asks about the nuts and bolts of the k-12 education system in China. She responded that the party originally was responsible for education and it was free to all. But the one child policy in conjunction with fierce competition to vie for the best spots in the work force, led couples to hire tutors. A high score on placement exams guarantee economic and social advancement. Thus, in response to demand, a large industry of private education providers was spawned. This led families of limited means to expend, according to Jin, as much as a quarter of their income on supplemental instruction.
Prof Jin saw this as a negative outcome to capitalism. People’s hopes and fears for their children’s success were being exploited by a private entrepreneurial spirit.
Which brings us back to a favorite topic here at Home Economics. The theory is that certain endeavors are better suited to cooperate efforts of resource providers, while others respond favorably to incentives. In the first instance, the common goal is achieved through public governance and provisions, whether informally within a group or formally via a state structure. Public education has positive impacts from all angles in a society which is undoubtedly why it was established and is still maintained as a public good in the US.
Prof Jin provides a counterfactual. When the state fails to prioritize education, private entrepreneurs jump in and fill the gap. In her example, their success in combination with the high stakes creates an inefficiency.
The first author of neighborhoods points out the need for self-governance.
Let us assume (as is often the case) that city neighbors have nothing more fundamental in common with each other than that they share a fragment of geography. Even so, if they fail at managing that fragment decently, the fragment will fail. There exists no inconceivably energetic and all-wise “They” to take over and substitute for localized self-management. Neighborhoods in cities need not supply for their people an artificial town or village life, and to aim at this is both silly and destructive. But neighborhoods in cities do need to supply some means for civilized self-government. This is the problem.
A coalition of diverse groups, it was reported, were all coming together for a housing bill. That was sixty days ago.
(KNSI) โ The Central Minnesota Builders Association is throwing its support behind a piece of legislation aimed at addressing the lack of housing and the high cost of new construction.
A coalition of housing advocates and bipartisan lawmakers joined together at the State Capitol to call for an increase in access and affordability in housing through the Minnesotans for More Homes initiative.
The bill (HF 4009/SF 3964) legalizes missing middle housing and new starter homes across Minnesota.
From the builders association to affordable housing advocates, an unlikely melange of interested parties were looking for ways to reduce housing costs. How better to lower expenses then to reduce barriers to building by rolling back the rules. This bill brought authority over what can be built where to statewide control.
Once the implications of un-zoning the neighborhood hit local communities, residents weren’t impressed. Here are some of the changes proposed.
Sets a base level for density allowed on any residential lot by right (or without needing to go through a discretionary review processes) regardless of size at 2 units statewide and 4 units in cities of the first class. If certain conditions are met, 8 units are allowed in second-, third-, and fourth-class cities and 10 units may be allowed per lot in cities of the first class.
Forces administrative approvals of projects that meet the standards in the bill language and prohibits public input in the approval process.
Limits minimum lot size requirements to no greater than 2,500 square feet for first class cities and 4,000 square feet for all other cities except for Greater Minnesota cities with populations of less than 5,000.
Requires all cities to accept Accessory Dwelling Units on all residential lots regardless of size and allows property owners to subdivide their lots by right.
Prohibits off-street parking from being required close to major transit stops and limits off-street parking minimum requirements to 1 spot per unit in other areas.
Allows multifamily buildings to be built up to 150 feet tall on any lot in a commercial zoning district.
Broadly prohibits design standards for residential development and eliminates minimum square footage and floor area ratio requirements.
The cities organized and alerted their constituents who must have followed thorugh with calls to their state representatives as the bills is no longer progressing through the chambers. I doubt constitutents will agree to handing over local property rights to the state. This seems like a heavy handed, top down approach.
So how does one encourage increased density? Why- the market of course!
Adam Smith closes out Book Four, Of Systems of Political Economy, of Wealth of Nations by telling us the duties of the sovereign.
According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign (Commonwealth) has only three duties to attend to; three duties of great importance, indeed, but plain and intelligible to common understandings: first, the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice; and, thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions, which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain; because the profit could never repay the expence to any individual or small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society.
Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith
We no longer have sovereigns, but we can see those duties in our local governance. And thus we can expect citizens to evaluate each of them in turn.
It looks like Lyft and Uber are leaving Minnesota- the tech company sent out a notice to all their customers to that effect. This was brought on by the biggest city’s city council who voted to set price controls for wages within their municipal boundaries. But the political backlash to this political control-grab is snapping quick and hard as it seems there are many other groups who value the service and price of Lyft and Uber.
Thankfully a journalist has written the whole kerfuffle all out from the view point of groups. (Perhaps he’s an institutionalist.) Here’s Adam Platt’s essay Getting to the Big Picture on Rideshare in Twin Cities Business magazine of which he is the executive editor.
The big picture refers to group 1, Minnesotans. He’s looking to break down not one issue, the issue that was the bee in the bonnet of the activists, that drivers (who fall mainly into group 2, first generation immigrants) fight to challenge the oppression of low wage labor imposed by a corporation. The political entity who has the elected power to carry out the move was chosen by group 3, the residents of the largest city.
But it turns out that even parts of group 3 find themselves together with other Lift and Uber riders, Group 4,in that they are poor, handicapped and disadvanted themselves. They use the service regularly as public transit does not accomodate their needs for a variety of reasons. And a group of other politically elected officials across the metro in particular, group 5, are putting pressure on the only person in the state who can intervene, the Governor, to put an end to this Marxist, but not really, tale of oppressed labor.
The irony of it all is that group 2 (the drivers) are independent contractors not wage earners beholden to a no-face factory-boss. They work when they want. They break when they want. They set their own plan. So what Adam Platt also elucidates is that the whole political play goes contrary to established structures of paid labor versus self-employment. It’s really a very interesting twist on villanous characterizations with the whole red march theme.
In all seriousness, this article is worth the read. Adam Platt lays out the details both with a historical perspective and with an accounting of all the groups in play. Analysis of these issues are never a dichotomy. And only with a sense of where things originated, and in what direction are they heading, can a proper analysis be done for a stab at the best outcome for the most people.
A new bill is being introduced in St. Paul concerning zoning. An eclectic mix of backers from builders to affordable housing advocacy groups, from the National Association of Realtors to progressive politicians, are in support eliminating exclusive zoning of single family homes across the state of Minnesota. Here’s are some of the highlights of the bill as provided by Edina Realty’s president Sheri Schmid- who did a nice job of presenting all sides of the issue at today’s company wide sales meeting.
The first bullet point is interesting. The public is denied the right to speak to their city council. It seems to me that there is an effort to take the NIMBY’s out of the conversation. Yet aren’t many, many city council meetings filled with advocacy groups doing their best to talk the loudest? Are they to be muted as well? This might be a public service.
I am an advocate for missing middle housing. In a 50s built neighborhood, it is common to see nice looking duplexes mixed in with single family homes. They blend in well and come at all levels of housing from a modest one bedroom to significant four bedroom units. They are also the main means of aquiring investment property for those entry entrepreneurs who would like to give rental property a try. I just wonder if these multifamily buildings sync with people today. The buyers in the 50s were still feeling the effects of the depression and thought of a little rental income on the side as comforting. Also families would buy a two unit property for siblings to live side by side, for instance. You just don’t hear those same demands anymore.
Let’s leave the next few points about building heights and parking for another time. Here are the points given that necessitate a shift of control from the very local level of the municipality to the state level.
The first bullet point in valid. There are too many regulations in the building process. But regulating by zoning is only one of the areas in question. Even after this is removed, said building would need to meet a whole host of other building regulations and set backs and still fit on the lot. Furthermore, these plans need to go through a planning approval process. It seems like whenever a change goes into effect on complicated process it takes the bureaucracies years to smooth out their systems.
Last I heard, considering the second bullet point, the production of new housing was on track to meet the Governor’s Task Force recommendation of 300,000 additional dwellings by 2030.
Do we need more affordable housing? Sure- the most disadvantaged in society will always, simply on a comparison scale, need to be accomodated to catch-up to the average. Minnesota has a poverty rate of just under 10 percent and folks in that income bracket have real and pressing needs. But what are the best housing opportunities for these families, and more importantly where are they?
Building more housing brings down the overall cost of housing. But helping people in need of housing as well as all the other components to a good life is a multidemential problem. I don’t think we’ve tackled all of the aspects involved. But I do think cities are at a much better vantage point to connect people to housing than the state.
Maybe because violent crime gets people’s attention, or maybe because we all like to look at problems from one dimension, I’ve noticed that analysis about people in prison has very little if anything to say about the family life of a criminal. Sure many of these guys and gals are thugs. Most don’t return home to streets shaded by old growth oaks and lined by tidy homes. But some do. And some have relationships outside of crime; and all have parents, possibly brothers and sisters and children.
The most galvanizing activity in the life of a criminal maybe their husstle. The monetary and materialist attraction to crime certainly has a strong allure. Undoubtedly for some that is all they have in life along with their network of work associates. But for most people family matters. It is a lifelong bond that can’t be shaken easily. And even if there is no connection to parents, these (mostly) men have women in their lives and children in their lives. It would be pretty cynical to think they elude the attraction of family that most of us hold dear.
In order to understand the dynamics of a certain population it is necessary to account for all the interests that draw their attention, especially the ones they are willing to act on. After personal security from harm and some form of sustenance for food, and housing, it must be family. Sometimes this is refered to as community. But that’s down the list from family. Sometimes the criminal try to tell each other they are family. But I don’t buy the omission of lovers and wives from this calculus.
At least for some, and certainly not for all, persuasion by family relations has got to play into the lifestyle choices of those who have found their way to prison. Support from these connections is the most likely way to prevent recidivism. Pulling this subgroup out of the main prison population could very well worth the effort.
The state legislative bodies just went back to work for the season. One item they are working on involves land use regulation. The libertarian in you mught thing, ugh more rules. Maybe that’s too quick a judgement. Maybe there’s more liberty than restraint in this case.
Minnesota House and Senate will begin work on a sweeping change in local housing land use Tuesday, limiting city ability to regulate so-called Missing Middle housing. Bills are DFL led but with GOP co-sponsorship.https://t.co/4PIIZZoGqj
If an issue has risen to the attention of state politicians, than it’s possible it impacts all Minnesotans. Let’s call it the greater group or G-group. From Peter Callaghan’s tweet it sounds like the rules envolve restaints at the city level. Let’s call these groups C-groups. And then let’s keep households in the story and they’ll be H-groups.
So the line of reasoning goes, that due to land use restrictions at the local level, insufficient housing is being built. Since real estate is sold in an ever adjusting market, low supply rises prices for all participants. One might even argue that low supply is gumming up the market as single, older folks are sitting in large 3-4 bedroom homes as they have no where to go. So the opportunities for new buyers and move-up buyers to navigate to a new port-of-call is slowed. While those that would prefer to give up their large home, as they are no longer using but a quarter of it, are not finding appropriate options. Hence many participants in the H-group are not feeling very free.
The C-group is responsible for, over long periods of time, formalized language on the books to prevent hither dither building. This was all done to preserve the liberty of the H-group, at those points in time. The H-group had a certain idea of what their neighborhood was meant to be. It wasn’t meant to abutt a bowling alley, or a five story apartment building. The H-group wanted to drive down tree-lined streets past other single family homes just like theirs. They wanted consistency. They wanted tranquility. And with all the other options just a bit further out, their desires did not interfere with others in the G-groups
A few generations go by, and the metro area triples in population. The spacial relations evolve to something different. Those who were newlyweds hoping for a family now are elderly with low maintenance needs. The formal regulations set out be the C-group, which made perfect sense at the time, is putting a dam in a dynamic system. Instead of transforming itself under new demands, new needs are blocked at every turn.
And so the greater group is making a rule to take out the rule that is holding back the market. Call it a liberty rule instead of a regulation. For it is through transformation of the land to new uses that allows the C-group to arrive back at a balance of the greatest freedom for the best price.
People often conflate cooperation with doing good or what is right. The thought goes that is everyone just gets along and cooperates, than it’s a win for everyone. And getting along is exactly what those nice churchy people do when they reach out into the community with a helping hand to those in need. Out of a sense of duty to our fellow person, an altruist will act to augment the welfare of others.
And this is true. But there are other examples of cooperation that have not a thing to do with do-gooders in their Sunday best.
We’ve been reading David Skarbek’s book The Puzzle of Prison Order. It’s a thoughtful book of comparative analysis. By looking at various prisons, both their physical structures and their management structures, the author elucidates the emergence of a variety of levels of self-governence throughout the convict community. In South America, prisoners maybe responsible for virtually all necessities behind their wardens’ wall. While in Norway the prisoner to guard ratio is virtually one-on-one creating little need for the captive take on any duties.
From the case studies it is clear that where few services are provided, prisoners organize to allocate housing, maintain safety standards, and supplement the meager amount of food provided to them.
In San Pedro prison, governance emerges in the political realm (in the form of housing associations), in the commercial realm (markets and exchange with the outside world), and in civil society (as with the parents association).
Whereas in Bolivia the time invested by the inmates is extensive, in a small Californian prison for the gay and trans population only one position was necessary to be the intermediary between the prison population and the guards. A House Mouse takes on the duties of go between with the prison staff. Skarbek’s examination of the various spontaneous arrangement throws light on the various levels of investments demanded of the convicts. Depending on the need for governance, individuals rise to the occasion and donate their labor hours to the endeavor (one might say the socially necessary amount of labor hours, but that’s for another post).
But wait. It’s easy to forget that these are criminals who have been removed from civil society. Their emerging cooperation is forced upon them as a result of immoral behavior against their countrymen and women. They are not do-gooders. They are not altruists- at least not to the outside. Altruism delivered through self-organization is to noone’s benefit but them and theirs. And the moral behavior is dictated by their own set of rules.
Cooperation is a descriptor for a type of societal action. It’s the act of foregoing a bit of freedom to be apart of a group. Cooperation is a technique to attain an aim for an ingroup while withholding it from an outgroup. Cooperation has no moral compass. Resulting outcomes can either be good or bad depending on which wall surrounds you.
It is not equivalent to altruism. Altruism is a gift for which no duty or repayment is required.
In Chapter 3 of An Economic Theory of Democracy, the Anthony Downs suggests government services delivered to neighborhoods be measured by their utility.
All citizens are constantly receiving streams of benefits from government activities. Their streets are policed, water purified, roads repaired, shores defended, garbage removed, weather forecast, etc. These benefits are exactly like the benefits they receive from private economic activity and are identified as government-caused only by their source. Of course, there are enormous qualitative differences between the benefits received, say, from national defense and from eating mince pie for dessert. But no matter how diverse, all benefits must be reduced to some common denominator for purposes of allocating scarce resources. This is equally true of benefits within the private sector. The common denominator used in this process we call utility.
What he goes onto say is interesting as well. The reliability of government services in policing your streets, delivery your mail or making sure that potable water is shows up in your pipes should be thought of as a flow of utility income.
Using this broad concept of utility, we can speak of a utility income from government activity. This income includes benefits which the recipient does not realize he is receiving. It also includes benefits he knows he is receiving but the exact source of which he does not know. For example, many citizens are probably not aware that the water they drink is inspected by a government agency. If inspection were discontinued, they might not realize their utility incomes had fallen until they received polluted water. Even then, not all of them would know that a cessation of government activity had caused this drop in income.
He goes on to spell out a whole bunch of utility functions. But I am still back thinking about this flow of income to neighbors. Where is a the asset value that backs this benefit?
I'm worried about us. Last week there was a county campaign to show "Recycling is real" and this week we're telling people "Don't rake those leaves" on February 6. Are we really this dumb? Or are government comms people this bored? pic.twitter.com/yUoEF23bkL
A few days ago Time magazine posted an article entitled Millions of Americans Spend Half Their Paycheck on Rent. Here Are Median Rental Prices by State. The research used in the analysis was generated by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard. And the intent is (seemingly) to draw readers to an alarming conclusion- that there is a large underclass in America who can’t afford a place to live.
But let’s pull apart the numbers in this claim that half of rental households and who that puts in dire straights.
In Minnesota three quarters of the population own a their home. That leaves one quarter of the population living in rentals. So half of those who rent are approximately twelve percent of the population.
In Minnesota just under ten percent of the population is known to live in poverty. Let’s use an even number of ten so that we cover the homeless as well. I donโt think it is surprising that this population pays a disproportionate amount of the income in housing expenses. And it should also be noted that support for people in poverty is not categorized as income, but arrives in different categories such as child tax credits, SNAP, and renter credits.
That leaves two percent of the population unaccounted for in this observation by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard. Could there be an explanation for the remaining few who pay a large share of their montly income to rent? College and grad students come to mind. For a brief time individuals work summer jobs, take out loans and yet still must pay for housing. Many of these folks are back stopped financially by family. The policies however for student loans and financial aid give advantage to individuals with lower income. And thus kids come off their parentโs returns and file individually.
In additional to students, the elderly could fall in this category. Say someone was living out their last years in a care facility with high rental fees for comprehansive services. Maybe they are even spending down a large retirement portfolio- because that what they saved it for in the first place. Their ratio of montly expense toward rent versus income will still be high. That was planned, not unexpected.
Here are some reasonable explanations for the breakdown in how housing expenses filter through the population. None of it is worthy of a hair-on-fire headline. And diverting attention to one market can do damage elsewhere. As people who need assistance are ignored.
It’s been a while since I’ve written a ‘what is public and what is private’ post. The premise is that goods and services fall into varying degrees of uses but what is important to note is the dynamics for their supply and demand differs.
Consider the shift from funding for higher education. Several generations ago parents were the main financiers of their childrens college education. Some kids could put themselves through school with scholarships and work programs, but those kids were particularly driven. In an effort to open higher education up to those who did not have the support of a family, the governement got into the student loan business.
Pretty soon norms shifted. No longer did parents see it as their responsibility to pay school. Kids became comfortable with taking out loans. And institutions of higher education saw a means of obtaining extra dollars for their operating expenses. And that is how we got to the point of kids graduating with large amounts of debt and schools having far more administrators on the payroll than professors.
Just to review. It used to be that kids had access to the public good education through their tribe. No kin, no school. Then government said- no here’s a way to make education public for all kids who wish to go. The outcome to this, however, was to have kids retain a private debt once they were done. Some kids under the old system may have come out debt free or with far less debt.
What maybe wasn’t considered at the time was this government intervertion not only created a demand among students but also demand from Universities and Colleges via the students. This is because the later group, although a non-profit and seemingly public in nature, is respondong like a private entity to incentives. We have expenses, here’s a source of revenue that we must pursue.
But did it work as intended? Did more kids that would not have gone to college end up getting a degree? It’s funny that no-one declares victory here. Was the public objective achieved?
Is this claim about Minneapolis renters correct? Is paying 30% of monthly income toward housing a distressed situation?
Lenders often extend the debt-to-income ratios to 30% for all types of loans.
50% of Twin Cities renters spent more than 30% of their income on rent and utilities in 2022โan all time high. 27% spent more than half of their income on rent and utilities.
On a trip to Manhattan a few years ago, my son and I noticed boarded-up store fronts along the best sidewalk shopping in the city. From the layers of flyers pasted on the brick wall and the thickness of dust perched on the window ledge, it was apparent that this state of disuse was a longterm thing. It didn’t make sense. What would make an owner prefer to leave a space empty instead of collecting rent from a desireable tenant looking for a desireable location?
If you were to think of this interms of a model, one might say, what are the negative implications of renting a storefront that zero out the benefit of incoming revenue from a tenant? What circumstances cause a property owner to be more interested in sitting on a vacant portion of a building rather than maximizing profit?
I say a portion of the building because the street level space of a NYC building is most always a small percentage of the entire building.
When an investor is looking to acquire new property there’s a lot of calculating to evaluate its prospects. The price of the building is mostly determined by how much cashflow the structure can generate. The lender (as in most cases there is financing involved) is also interested in the return their borrower will receive.โThis determines their comfort level in receiving payment on the debt.
With this in mind, a seller will often take action, prior to going on the market, to make the property attractive not only to the buyer but to all other parties involved in the transaction. For instance, an inspector will most probably make some rounds and look for mechanical flaws. The easy fixes are best done up front. Often there is a target renter in mind for the property and enhancement will be made to their structural preferences.
When a property goes for sale, there are lots of incentives to shine the place up and present it in its best light. Any salesperson will tell you this is how to generate the best offer.
Now fast forward twenty years, or thirty years, and the young investor with ambitions to build a portfolio has done exactly that. He or she is wealthy. There is a nice amount of equity in the property and the stress to recover every dollar in rent in order to pay the bank, the insurance company, the regulatory agencies and do repairs has eased.โIf the property is in a strong location, it is garnering a nice return year-in-year out. Often, it is better than other investments can offer.
Now, let’s consider the rental transaction for the storefront. It’s been a couple of decades since the property has had a full upgrade. Perhaps the paint is looking a little faded. Perhaps the interior tile work has more chips in the tile than some deem acceptable. A new younger set of folks want just that much more than what was available before.โSo for a bit more money in rent the owner is dealing with a lot more in either managing expectations or renovations. Renovations almost always means interacting with a regulatory entity as well. Once on the property, other issues may be brought to light.
There are two factors that go into the cost-benefit calculation of securing the lease. The rent received. And another important factor which we will call the engagement factor. When the owner takes on a new tenant they are agreeing to engage with their expectations, their payment and request idiosyncrasies. It’s not just the dollars. In the same way an insurance claim is not just about getting reimbursed for the repair work. You have to deal with the insurance rep, meet three contractors to get bids, and supervise the work. There’s an engagement factor.โThe street level activity also has an engagement factor. If the public has become more truant, than property damage or security issues create a cost on the owner’s time.
It gets to the point that the hastle of interacting with others starts to draw down the marginal benefit of the extra rent. Throw in a potential tax implication and that little benefit could shrink to almost nothing. An empty unit creates a tax write-off. A rented unit throws off income that is now taxed at higher rates, as many deductions have run their course.
The store fronts could be collecting dust because the engagement factors are simply too expensive.
Javier Milei is the recently elected president of Argentina. He is a vocal libertarian and critic of socialism. He gave a speech this week at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos Switzerland where all those with lots of money, or political power, or both, go to mull over global issues.
Here are some reactions on Twitter.
Mileiโs speech is dangerous & ideological misinterpretation of economic history. Itโs not about MARKET vs STATE. Itโs about CONFIDENT & CAPABLE governments working w business around global challenges. Opposite of my @wef point โก๏ธ https://t.co/vIFr6mtQJ2https://t.co/f6uAGYa6sO
This view of the State vs. the Market seems a little old fashion. Does anyone really believe that one entity, the bureaucracy paid for through taxation, provides all public goods to all citizens? Often the media acknowledges the role of non-profits, like the Red Cross, stepping in with services in countries under siege. The western countries are set apart in their degrees of social democracy, implying that the decision to draw lines between state provision of benefits and the private sector vary depending on the will and the customes of the people.โThe concept of a dichotomy between two centers of power, the State and Big Business, is so twentieth century.
Here’s an example of two people hearing the same speech and yet not registering the same intake of information. Rodrik says Milei denounces neoclassical economics as another brand of collectivism, empowering the state through the doctrine of market failure.
This speech by Milei is something. Denounces neoclassical economics as another brand of collectivism, empowering the state thru the doctrine of market failure (which of course is an "oxymoron" since markets, based on voluntary exchange, can never fail!) https://t.co/M8zPYmUZkg
Here’s the section of Milei’s speech this Havard professor is referring to:
The problem with Neoclassicals is that the model they fell in love with does not map reality, so they put down their mistakes to supposed market failures rather than reviewing the premises of the model.
Under the pretext of a supposed market failure, regulations are introduced. These regulations create distortions in the price system, prevent economic calculus, and therefore also prevent saving, investment and growth.
This problem lies mainly in the fact that not even supposed libertarian economists understand what the market is because if they did understand, it would quickly be seen that itโs impossible for there to be market failures.
President Javier Milei’s WEF speech at Davos 2024
I don’t hear Milei saying neoclassical economics is a brand of collectivism. The neoclassical model, although powerful and useful, does not always represent of the entire economic picture under analysis. Instead of addressing why that could be and re-evaluating the premises of the model, hands have been thrown in the air and the following conclusion reached: “It’s not the model! It’s a failure in the marketplace itself. Players in the market are not rational when it comes to certain things. Hence, there is no market for these items.”
Who is called to shepard the irrational? The steadfast hands of the politicians who in turn hand off their mandates to the bureaucrats. This is the opportunity for collectivism, in the under utilization of the model. Even with the best intentions, a pencil pusher is not a player in the transaction. And this artificial involvement with the pricing system causes the mess. Barriers are erected. Transparency turns opaque and then solid. Consumers are dubious of outcomes and become cynical of efforts.
What President Milei is suggesting is that the underlying components and conceptual structure of markets has not been fully flushed out. Part of the driving force behind decisions are either taken for granted, ignored or simply not significant in a particular transaction. Once people digest how men and women search for meaning, how they are compelled to act on desires for freedom, a better life, and in support for the health and well being of the ones they love- then there will be an understanding. An interpretation of a market failure is the result of the failure to properly identify the players to the transaction, their objectives and how all this plays out.
And then there’s this guy. I’m using his post mainly because he has the best clip of the speech. Yet what he says is interesting as it is so man-of-the-street in its political orientation. If you object to a government intervention then you support fat cat Wall Street types. Sadly, excessive regulation mainly hits small business and the least skilled. They don’t have the capital required to navigate the new rules and regulations. And so, it becomes easier for them to work for others, loosing their freedoms, security and access to property.
I heard that Milei's speech at the WEF champions freedom, so I listened. It doesn't. It seeks to move power and control from governments to corporations if you listen carefully and thatโs happening anyway. What he doesnโt say is that governments and corporations are owned by theโฆ pic.twitter.com/he8nLabi7Z
Words are so easy, so fluid. People with a silver tongue can have an audience rich in the information of their choosing. Pursuasive people are often great with rhetoric.
This airline spokeswomen is paid to stand up and deliver a positive report. And the objective reports as to whether the airline is on time, whether they loose baggage or whether they cancel flights inconveniencing their customers is realitively easy to com by.
But what about political claims?
Will the sports stadium really bring in that much out of state spending? Will the program really propel people out of poverty? Will the light rail trasit be used to justify its expense? Some of those questions are more difficult to prove of disprove.
Although audiences have their way of calculating their personal benefits and observing the outcomes of others. They don’t need a camerman to pan upwards to the delayed flight arrival board to get a gut reaction to a politican’s claim.
It would just be nice to have earlier benchmarks to at least tighten up the projections before plunging forward with some of these joint ventures.
I’ve been rereading Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms which rekindled an interest in the history of WWI. The story’s debut is based on the author’s experience in the war as he drove an ambulance for the International Red Cross. After serious injury from mortar fire, he returned home unlike his lead character, Lt Frederic Henry.
While clicking around to find out more about the Italian campaign, I came across this excellent article in Vox: 40 maps that explain WW1. I find visuals so useful. There is far more information indicated by shadings, lines and labels within the four boundaries of a map than a writer can pound out on a keyboard . Although this passage sums up pretty well how devasting the war was.
One hundred years ago today, on August 4, 1914, German troops began pouring over the border into Belgium, starting the first major battle of World War I. The Great War killed 10 million people, redrew the map of Europe, and marked the rise of the United States as a global power. Here are 40 maps that explain the conflict โ why it started, how the Allies won, and why the world has never been the same.
Hemingway cites enough geographic references to encourage the reader to look up exactly where his ambulance was called into service. Or, at least, I’m curious enough to look up Gorizio where he returns to base camp before he is sent on to Caporetto. In the passage about the retreat, as the Germans advance into Italy, Lt Henry’s goal is to reach Udine.
Further on in the book, Lt Henry and his sweet Catherine must flee to Switzerland in a row boat. The journey takes them along the coastline of the famous Lake Como. The porter who helps arrange their escape assures them the winds will be at their backs pushing them along the 35 kilometer journey.
Wartime stories have so much to offer. There’s conlict and suspense. There’s heartbreak. But most interestingly is the sudden change in circumstances creates a back lighting to social arrangements, making their properties just that much more apparent.
Minnesota has always been home to ice hockey supporters. But it’s just in the last dozen years that support for the fairer sex has come on strong. Tonight’s turnout for a 3-0 shutout win against Montreal sailed past the last attendance record of 8318 in Ottawa.
ANOTHER RECORD PWHL CROWD
A new world record for professional womenโs hockey.
Just announced in Minnesota: 13,316 fans at the Xcel Energy Center attending todayโs PWHL game. Outstanding. pic.twitter.com/Hwuvqa2Agj
You can’t hit a record if you don’t have a stadium. Here some deets about the Xcel Center.
Xcel Energy Center is regarded as one of the finest arenas in the world. The one-of-a-kind, multi-purpose facility is home to more than 150 sporting and entertainment events and approximately 1.7 million visitors each year.
Location:ย Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA โ Located on six acres in downtown Saint Paul on the former site of the St. Paul Civic Center
Owner:ย City of Saint Paul
Operator:ย Saint Paul Arena Company (SPAC), an affiliate of Minnesota Sports & Entertainment (MSE)
Architectural Firm:ย HOK Sports Facilities Group
Construction Cost:ย $170 million
Opened:ย September 2000
Home Teams:ย NHLโs Minnesota Wild
First Event:ย Minnesota Wild vs. Mighty Ducks of Anaheim (3-1 win, preseason) โ Sept. 29, 2000
Most Sellouts In A Row By An Artist:ย 3 โ Prince โ June 16-18, 2004; Taylor Swift โ September 11-13, 2015
When a city is proposing to build the next sports palace, the objections run high and low, long and loud. The price ticket of $170 million seems like a bargain today. But twenty-three years ago it was a pretty penny. People write op-eds about how the money could be spent in a so much more deserving fashion.
So that begs the question, how many people have benefited from events at the stadium in the last two hunderd and seventy-six months? Is there a social bounding which occurs when strangers reminess about attendence records and concert remories? Are people drawn to living close to a mega venue?
Talking about methods, I noticed one method pop up on Twitter around the value of providing free school meals (breakfast and lunch) to all school children. There has always been provisions to feed children in poverty at schools across the state of Minnesota. So about 12% of school age children’s families were not charged and 88% were billed by the school. Or moms prepared lunchs and sent them out in backpacks.
In actions reflective of an exuberant majority, the law makers passed a bill to cover meals for all children. (We feed kids instead of banning books! was a slogan this year) On the face of things it sounds like a wonderful thing to do. In the world of constraints it shouldn’t be a surprise anyone that the cost of the program is bulging well past the initial number. Listen to little onion.โ
This goes on to say that it will cost the state $80-$95 million in the coming years.
For perspective, 2019-2023, Minneapolis* has paid out over $70 million in police misconduct settlements.
Is it valid to compare the cost of free meals to the cost of police misconduct settlements? On the one hand government decided to pay food bill for families who could afford to buy their kids lunch. On the other hand there’s a number for mismanagement of a police force and the subsequent fallout. One is for sustenance, the other is for public security. The only thing to grab onto here is that taxpayer money settles the tab. Method Grade: F-.
Here’s another method to present whether the cost of increasing the school meal tab to cover all students is justified.
Just for perspective, the Minneapolis Police overtime budget for 2022 was 15% of the cost to feed every hungry school child in the whole god damned state. Just their overtime budget! just the city of Minneapolis. – Feeding children is not expensive.
We note a pattern here between those who support free lunch- they value it more than funding the police. Public safety is a concern for all. Lunches are covering less than 20 percent of the population. Lack of public safety results in a loss of some kind to all citizens. Lack of school meals, in this case, means a few more PB&J’s and carrots sticks for some families. As a method, these comparisons, well, are weak. Method Grade: F-.
The Gov thinks the program is worth it since a mom wrote to him and said she appreciated not having to pack lunchs ever morning for her three kids.
We arenโt going toย split kids into โhavesโ and โhave notsโ, especially in the school lunchroom. ย With free breakfast and lunch for every student in Minnesota, weโre keeping our children fed โ and saving families money along the way. pic.twitter.com/oUJWKBmBaP
The owners of Cup Foods along with other business owners in George Floyd Square are suing the city of Minneapolis and Mayor Jacob Frey over alleged lost business.
I think this is an interesting match-up: social justice vs. neighborhood grocer. If it goes to a jury will they simpathize with a city’s effort to designate space to an internationally recognized event, or the corner store who served a disadvantaged neighborhood deligently?
They seek over $1.5 million in damages, claiming the city and the mayor were negligent in violating the city’s nuisance ordinance and charter.
The damages don’t even seem that high. But let’s look at the claims.
Cup Foods at GeorgeFloydSquare and 4 other businesses (owned by the same family) are suing the @CityMinneapolis and @MayorFrey for the violent crime wasteland they've created at the intersection of 38th and Chicago (as we've been telling you for 3.5 years).
The claims revolve around two issues: the blockades halted business traffic and secondly the complete lack of police presence encouraged excessive crime. I can’t imagine anyone coming up with a strong rebuttal.
Perhaps the courts will be successful where the city was not in making it politically feasible to dismantle what has become hallowed ground for those who place social justice activities in the forefront of their lives.
It’s a gritty looking thing, isn’t it? Nestled into the concrete floor of a basement shoulder to shoulder to the hot water heater. But that teal cap, covered in years of grime, needs to be twisted off the main stack in order to have a look-see into the drain and out to the street.
This home was built in 1960, and who knows if the the lid has ever been lifted. The sewer scope guy wouldn’t touch it. Said it looked like it would splinter if a guy threw some weight behind a wrench to twist it off. And you can’t exactly leave a house with the main drain wide open. He’d be stuck.
A sewer scope inspection is a relatively new add on to the inspection process in the sale of a home. Homeowners are responsible for the line which transport all the waste products from the pipes from the home to where it connects to the city infrastructure. So if tree roots have dug into it and it weeps waste product into the soil, then the owner is required to do the repair. This can entail digging up the front yard and replacing the pipe or running a liner pipe through the damaged area. It’s on the more expensive side of a home repair.
Some cities of predominantly 40-60’s built homes require the line be scoped prior to sale. This envolves accessing the drain and sending a camera at the end of a line down through the pipes. The guy today said that typically it takes 80 feet to hit the connection. The city then determines whether the property needs work.
The one in the photo isn’t located in a city with a point-of-sale ordinance concerning waste lines. The sewer scope guy was there on behalf of a buyer. The seller suggested he run the camera through the laundry drain pipe instead, yet alas, that pipe’s diameter is too small. So a sewer repair guy was supposed to come out to the house, but he couldn’t on short notice. Instead, a few days later, a contractor who was familiar with the house went over and installed a new cap.
Today the inspector guy was successful. His footage showed the buyer that all was well until the 60ft mark at which point a bundle of debris was causing a blockage. No real concerns, he said. Just need a Rotter Rooter type out to clear the path.
All this is to point out one small part in the massive collection of parts that comprise a home. When it wasn’t in working order a scurry of others had to swirl around to but it back right. No issues, no problem. An issue, possible delays. Sometimes none of the parts are of concern. But when there are issues, a person with comprehensive experience is going to keep the transaction on track. They’ll know who to call when. And that’s why people hire a professional. Because they add value through their knowledge.
People don’t associate wells with metropolitan homes. Wells are a country thing. When there is distance between homes, putting in infrastructure like water lines or gas lines or internet connections is more difficult to justify in the money sense.
When you do run into a well issue in the city it is usually to do with an old abandoned well. There is always a time when every housing development was new. The post WWII baby boom pushed demand for housing before all the infrastructure was figured out. So many homes in the first tier suburbs were serviced by a well. The well room was located under the front stoop (steps to front entrance) and housed the pump and holding tank.
Ten years go by and many municipalities start catching up on their water main infrastructure. A rule is passed that no well can be dropped once municipal water is available in the road. A generation goes by and the pumps start to fail. Perhaps the owners had been using the well water to water their gardens, but this use doesn’t warrant the cost of a new pump. So there it sits in the damp well room, under the front steps.
Eventually people realize that hundreds of unsealed wells could cause a public health concern. The monitoring and tracking to wells is turned over to the Health Department. A disclosure is required at time of sale to indicate the status and location of any well on the property. But people think there is no harm in continuing to do what they always have done. They don’t want to bear the expense of an additional regulation.
Another generation goes by and many of the wells have been properly sealed. Those who worked in city utilities departments and at the health department and with well sealing companies have graduated onto retirement. A younger generation looks at the quaint cellar under the steps, see a clear floor, and can’t think why a well would ever have been stationed in such a spot. The pipe end protruding slightly above the concrete means nothing to them. It doesn’t take long before things are forgotten.
The tacit knowledge held by that older generation as a lived experience is gone. And those who never knew are convinced there must be some mistake. And thus, for infrastructure of a certain level of social benefit, a central regulating agency is desireable.
What are your biggest post-election takeaways in Minnesota? Mine: people aren't sick of paying taxes in the metro.
St. Paul for roads; Bloomington Ice Rink + Community Center; Edina + Golden Valley sales taxes too. Many metro school bonds approved. Specific goals worked best.
When government imposed restrictions are lifted on a property, does it automatically result in the property owner being better off? If a developer can has more leeway for a new project there is a sense that would create a positive income.
Say the new rules allowed for things like tightly stacked mobile homes and low-slung light industrial; neighbors that not everyone welcomes. Even without a formal acedemic review, it is possible to imagine that the neighborhood as a whole would drop a bit in value. It is even more believable should the nearby suburbs still exclude this type of land use in their geographic purview. Buyers choose the area that protects their lifestyle over the one that doesn’t and thus reducing price in the undesireable and increasing price across the city border.
And even if local government loosened some restrictions on development there is still the possibilty that the neighbors will fight a new project. In fact, it could be argued that changing the status quo is likely to drive up the prep and presentation costs for a developer. The more uncertainty, the more likely it will take longer to get through the approval process. No one likes not knowing.
What is relevent about the above tweet is that zoning rules, parking restrictions, turn around time for approvals all affect the cost of doing business and thus the value of the property in question. The rights of the those representing the public share a portion of the underlying value of real property which is then represented in money-form in the final sales price of the parcel.
Of all the dozens of features buyers look for in a home purchase, property taxes barely bubble into the conversation. Must haves are things like number of bedrooms, bathrooms and garages. A property tax rate of xx% is never a delineating factor. In part that is because people have already processed the pro’s and con’s of the various areas that attract their attention. Indirectly, the cost of property taxes has already been judged as one of the many components of a city’s attributes.
One sees property tax comparisons much more frequently in this type of format. Here it is presented as a bragging point for the city which included it in its newsletter.
Our US Rep, Dean Phillips, is willing to say it out loud. Abilities based on age should be a factor in evaluating the performance of duties for public office. He recently encouraged his party to look for a new presidential candidate instead of endorsing someone who keeps loosing track of his speeches. He’s willing to say Biden is too old for the job.
This week Senator Diane Feinstein of California died while serving in office at age 90. She had recently been ushered in and out of the chambers in a wheelchair looking old and confused. Perhaps Philips was influenced by her recent passing when he stepped down from a party leadership role today. Perhaps he is trying to gin others up to say out load what everybody knows to be true. Age matters.
Many people rightly worry about the growth of government. Once programs and bureaucracy to administer them are in place, it is difficult to walk back the services as people have become dependent upon their economic benefits. So what does constrain a State (here the term State refers to any geographically described governance such as counties or cities)? Here are some instances of decline through norms, amenities, fraud and over regulation.
Negative public perceptions. Police departments across the state of MN are having a difficult time recruiting and maintaining officers of the law. The money is there for the salaries but the workforce is plying their trade elsewhere. The defubd movement didn’t hit their target yet they set enough negative energy out into neighborhood block parties and family reunions, that more and more peace keepers no longer want wear blue.
Competition with other States. If towns on the edges of corn and bean fields can’t figure out a way to keep their residents, then the towns diminish until they become a cluster of buildings at a rural crossroads. Municipalities large and small are always in the hunt to keep up their business community for an employment base, their core services so residents can be comfortable, and their extra amenities which makes them stand out. Although being more efficient with what you have is not necessarily an indication of size, it is a measure of more stuff per bureaucrat.
Interest in Exposing Fraud. In decades gone, by the existence of pork projects was a source of conversation but not outrage. Creating or exagerating a need and assigning funding through the political process is an ongoing vehicle for fraud. Mechanisms and analysis to identify missappropriations is another form of constraint.
Regulations send builders elsewhere. A city takes the energy and interest in new housing developments to collect a few extra fees or seed money for parks and trails. At some point, the builders say no more. Not too long ago, one suburb in the metro found that they were overcharging in when they lost a large housing development to an adjacent community.
New York City is obliged to provide shelter to those in need due to the Callahan v. Carey consent decree created 42 years ago. Originally thought to act as a safety net catching a few transient men, it has ballooned into an enormous expense.
It eventually grew to a $2-billion-a-year industry housing all comers โ and is likely to cost the city $4 billion this year and ahead, as long as influx of illegal immigrants doubles the shelter population.
If all large cities floated the same offering, perhaps NYC wouldn’t feel the burden of this right to shelter. As it stands it, the city is particularly attractive to migrants.
Without question, the โrightโ is the central reason New York is spending far more per migrant than any other large city โ nearly $40,000 a head here, vs. under $3,000 in Los Angeles and less than $7,000 in Chicago.
The mayor of the Big Apple is rightly going to adjust the benefits flowing out of the city coffers. As situations change, as population groups change, as the intentions for the support changes, government has an obligation to reassess the overall distribution of funds versus obligations.
The scenario is also a reminder that public funds, through programs, create a market. If one city creates laws to favor certain population groups, these groups will show up. In creating a new law, the intent might only be to help the few in town who clearly have a need. But once it is established as a formal offering, others are bound to migrate, incentivized by the above market public program.
The most interesting implication of the “ownership is not control” thesis, however, is the support it gives to the belief in our fate being largely a matter of the mores and moods of the office-holders above us. Whether a social system is acceptable or awful, whether people are on the whole contented or miserable under it, depends very much on the variable personal traits of members of the bureaucracy. When the civil service is arrogant or corrupt or both, the managerial elite stony-hearted, the media mercenary and the โtechnostructureโ soullessly specialist, we have the โunacceptable face of capitalism.” When those in charge genuinely want to serve the people and respect its “legitimate aspirations,” we get the Prague Spring and “socialism with a human face.” It is not so much systems of rule, configurations of power which are conducive to a good or bad life, but rather the sort of people administering them. If the bureaucracy is not “bureaucratic,” the corporate executive is “socially minded” and “community-conscious and the party apparatchik “has not lost contact with the masses,” private or state capitalism can be equally tolerable.
Completing mastery over civil society in maximizing discretionary power can be seen as a chain of corrective moves, each one being aimed at making the social system both amenable to the state’s purpose and internally consistent, although these two requirements are not necessarily or even probably compatible. Each corrective move is consequently capable of creating some new systemic inconsistency and of necessitating other corrective moves. This sequence drives in the political dynamics, such as it is, of state capitalism.
Have you ever noticed that there is often more to an issue at hand than you first realize?
Consider the preparation of land for home construction. Those big machines just go on into the staked-off space and move dirt around until it is pretty level- and voila! It’s ready for a new home. But then people start talking about cutting and filling. And schematic alarm bells start ringing right above the curved arch of your pinna. If there is vocabulary to learn than there is undoubtedly a whole segment of the process still to understand.
Luckily there’s YouTube to fill in the gaps.
As you can imagine, there may be outcomes from shifting around a bunch of dirt. Erosion is a typical concern. But changing a terrain effects drainage as well. So it shouldn’t be too surprising that this type of activity requires supervision by goverment in efforts to monitor the interests of the greater group.
On the flip side, a bureaucracy can really slow things down. The process. Rules are metered out in a checklist fashion instead of a dynamic response to uncovered circumstances. A centrailzed approval process is costly.
The pro-pollinator people have gained further traction in preventing cities from undermining their wildflower gardens. A few years ago, in the SW Minnesota city of Mankato, a court ruled in favor of the homeowner to maintain the usually tall and gangly plants that the Monarchs and the Eastern Tiger Swallow or Red Admirals like to float over. The city said it was a public nuisance. The courts said no- the owner could save the bees.
A pollinator friendly article by Christopher Ingraham (the Washington Post journalist who critized northern MN and then moved his family there when he realized it was better for his kids) ran in the Minnesota Reformer. He explains, “new languageย requires cities to allow homeowners to install and maintain a managed natural landscape.โย
Not every neighbor is thrilled with a relaxed yard which often looks unruly. Most cities have a restriction on how high the grass can grow before being declared a nuisance. Where some people see vivacious boulevard greenery, others fear bees and flying weed spores.
The private property rights people should rejoice. Owners are now protected in their ability to choose alternative landscaping. But you’d be surprised how quickly people turn on a dime when a rule is one they favor rather than oppose. Lots of people feel neighbors have some ownership in the view from the road. Whether it means you have to store you garage containers out of site, or keep the clip of your turf tight to the ground. Neighbors care!
The question becomes which level of governance is the right one to best address neighborhood expectations. As you can imagine the folks who are OK with dog kennels and RV’s sitting on a driveway all winter can hold different expectations than other metro dwellers. So shouldn’t this be a local decision?And who really gets to decided how many butterflies is the right number of butterflies?
It seems odd to me that this type of provision shows up in the state government finance bill. Wouldn’t something like this fit into the parks and trails type of category. Minneapolis Parks alone manage 6084 acres of land. Three River Parks, which covers an area mostly in Hennepin County, provide access to 27,000 acres of nature and wildlife to metro residents. Then of course local cities look after the local parks. The city of Plymouth for instance grooms 1855 acres. If state level politicians wanted to finance something for the butterflies and the bees, they could have given seed money to to one or all of these land stewards.
A few days ago I wrote about how snow shoveling the public sidewalks fits well into a polycentric model. Instead of one provider of snow removal for the whole city, having each residence responsible for their own removal will best use public resources. Inevitably there are situations when residents cannot shovel, but in these events, neighbors cluster together and work out arrangements or help each other out. Using local labor saves administrative overhead of filtering the work through a bureaucracy.
What about trash removal? It feels the same. Each resident needs a service at their curbside.
There are debates across city council meetings about whether their city should take charge of trash removal or allow various sanitation services to compete for the business of each household. The former is usually desired by those who feel the extra truck traffic through the neighborhoods causes wear and tear on the roads. The latter feels that competition will keep downward pressure on pricing and allow residents to purchase the extent of service they desire.
This routine neighborhood service differs from snow removal primarily in the fact that residents can’t dispose of the garbage themselves. Nor can they assist a neighbor in the task. There is no reserve of voluntary labor tucked under the rooftops for the dispensation of Hefty bags tied at the rim. In the disposal of waste, the choices are either to purchase a private provider or take charge of it through the city offices. So a polycentric model is not useful here.
As to whether to go private or public on this one, there are benefits to both. A large city can provide many extra services such as large item removal, one-time cleanout pick-ups, that are helpful to those who don’t have means a transport for such things. Thus centralized garbage pickup with additional services is particularly beneficial in areas of a significant rental population.
It’s hard to remember the snow once we’re swatting away mosquitos and basking in 90-degree weather. But the white stuff will be back in less than five months’ time. Last winter was a record breaker. The season clocked in as the third snowiest on record. And this makes for disgruntled shovelers.
Property owners are responsible for clearing the sidewalks which cross their property. In a city developed before 1950, it is common for sidewalks to line every block. Homes on the corner get the double benefit of a walk on two sides. And it is an important service. Failure to clear the precipitation when it is light and fluffy can result in a coating of ice which is treacherous for pedestrians. People use the walkways to walk to school, access busses, walk their dogs, access their properties, and on it goes.
The burden was so great last season that some cities looked into taking on snow removal as a centrally provided good. Some people are disabled and are unable to do their own walks. Some people are away and not in town to chase the snow after a storm. And then some folks simply don’t pull their weight. There is a threat of a fine for these folks, but when many residents let it go, it’s difficult to keep up the policing and fining.
So why not turn over the responsibility to a central system to be sure everyone gets to walk on clear dry sidewalks? Well- the cost of it of course!
The traditional way of handling the snow is a polycentric model. One might think it is a one-on-one match between a property owner and a strip of concrete squares, but that is missing a crucial element. Not everyone is at all times available to take care of their responsibility. The polycentric model implies that groups of people band together, and either one neighbor or another will pick up the slack, and do more than their share so that all the walks are clear.
The arrangements are extensive. I can’t count how many times we’ve come home from being out of town and our drive is clear. Guys with snow blowers love to run their big machines a little bit longer when half a foot of the fluff has blanketed the neighborhood. Some people exchange the use of an unused garage space for snow removal. Whether people are motivated by safety or helping out others or have a specific deal in play, the work that is necessary to keep a micro market of snow off the sidewalks is volunteered by a cluster of neighbors.
This is free labor. To hire it all done is bound to cost everyone more money in bureaucratic overhead and extra labor. A centrally planned snow removal program lacks the voluntary social contribution the residents dedicate to the project.
There can be reasons why this type of labor is unavailable. The very first single-family home I purchased was in a neighborhood built following WWII. I was amazed at the high percentage of original owners who were still living on the block, all entering their late sixties and seventies together. These folks had the ability to pay for the snow removal, but in other areas of high concentrations of homogeneous groups, the lack of ability or resources can cut short voluntary participation.
I think analysis would easily show that shoring up these weak spots in the system would still be far more economical than pushing a program through for centralized services.
Getting closing gifts for my customers has been pushed down the todo list for a couple of weeks now. So today was the day that I was going to make some purchases. I stopped at a corner liquor market for one client and then onto Ingebretzen’s for another who I knew would appreciate a gift with a Nordic flare.
It was just a couple of years ago that the store celebrated its hundredth year on this busy street in Minneapolis. It originates from a time when Norwegians and Swedes were the disadvantaged new immigrants, scraping by without two dimes to rub together. You wouldn’t know it from the gifts stacking the shelves at the shop now. They are abundant and exquisit.
There is an immediately identifiable flare to Scandinavian housewares. It might be the heavy dose of primary colors with an emphasis on marine blue for dishware and cherry red for accent pieces. The elves and gnomes are peeking out from all the margins as if to give the Viking miniatures their fair due. Carl Larson captured the portraits of fair-haired women in particular; you can always find a sleeve of his notecards for purchase.
A lot of people bee line straight for the deli counter. One yelp reviewer went for the “Six types of herring. ย Swedish Meatball Meat. ย Julekage. ย Limpa Rye. ย Scandinavian sausages and cheese. ย Store made Lefse. ย Candy, Fish, Crisp Breads, Lingonberry jam.” Another noted “I also found lingonberries in syrup, lingonberry jam, lefsa, tisanes, sweaters . . . so much more.”
I had no problem picking out a little memento and card for my client. I also knew my mother would appreciate the little lamb. After my card was run for the purchases I noticed the Uf Da pins and had to add it to my gift. A pleasant sale lady with gracious hair had been talking with me through my perusings. I asked her if I could pay the two dollars in cash for the pin. “Well, there’s tax,” she said just about spitting the words. “That tax,” again, the vehement words contrasting against the gentle woman.
As long as the talk is theoretical, anything is possible and everything is agreeable. Once the toll is in place to pay, then people’s feelings are more apparent.
Rent control works against capital improvements. “The strictย rent control policyย enacted in St. Paul, coupled with the eviction moratorium and the overall economic volatility that followed the post-pandemic boom, have all made it harder for Twin Cities multifamily operators to manage their properties, particularly for those active in the affordable housing arena.”
Managment of affordable housing is the long haul pull, as opposed to the initial heady deal making. “I think, in general, there is an underappreciation of the management and operation of affordable housing. The fee structure incentivizes getting the deal done over the long-term success of the property as an ongoing community.”
Crime in a rental community acts as a tax. “For example, security issues are a big topic at many of our properties right now. Essentially this adds a โtaxโ onto our properties because of the increased spending required. Someย local policiesย have made it harder for us to remove residents who have engaged in dangerous behavior which is sometimes required in order to protect the rest of our residents.”
Administrative overhead caused by detailed laws takes money away from keeping property affordable. “Again, these types of policies have a lot of unintended impacts. The main one is that it is taking a lot of time and money for lawyers and accountants to understand and interpret the rules that are not well understood often even by the cities themselves. This takes away from what we would rather be doing which is producing and running housing.”
Once there was a service called a taxi. For a fee, passengers could hire a ride from here to there. This was an organized commercial venture with firms and drivers and passengers arriving at an acceptable balance of profits, fares, wages, and benefits. There was a govorning role in place as well, one developed over time.
Then came the internet and individuals outside the taxi service business could offer people rides. Without the formal structure and regulation, thus fares were considerably cheaper. This was good for the consumer, especially those of modest means. This internet-based method of connecting those with cars to those who needed rides seemed like a win-win for everyone.
Then drivers (who did this for a living instead of simply being in the neighborhood) found they needed better working conditions. The conditions that were most probably in place in the taxi industry that was disrupted. Labor activists jumped in to help guide a political process. Drivers donated extra voluntary time. Paths were forged with local politicians. A bill is written and passed. The celebration that followed looked like this.
But the stark numbers reality of the push to revert back to the original model has been ignored in favor of winning. The old model is considerably more expensive to the consumer. Without a need for the internet service, Uber and Lyft claim they will leave the market. Should the drivers prefer the original taxi model, that is fine. But it is a mistake to ignore the reality of the other parties. The Governor overrode the unanimous preference of his party in order to study the matter further.
BREAKING: Gov. Tim Walz has just vetoed the Uber/Lyft ride share bill and then signed an executive order to create a committee to study ride share regulations. pic.twitter.com/LoWsnDwPGO
I’ve got to give the Gov credit for putting economics over politics on this one. Or did he? If the ones being hurt by the labor regulations had been higher-income folks, I’m sure he would have signed off.
The political types down at the state capital are scrambling to finish the bills they want signed before the end of session. One such document involves a mandate for hospitals to form boards of nurses who in some way dictate the required staff levels in Minnesota hospitals. The largest hospital in MN, and most famous, said not so fast. Mayo Clinic threatened to take a sizable investment elsewhere should this come to be.
Last week, I predicted here that this wrinkle would be ironed out.
But what’s interesting is the justification that the speaker of the house used to explain why Mayo is getting a carve-out in the bill. In an interview yesterday Hortman tells Esme Murphy that the hospital operates at a different level than others in the state as they cater to famous dignitaries from around the world. The implication is that the demands of competing worldwide for care are a valid substitute for regulatory intrusion from a board of nurses.
Speaker Hortman told @esmemurphy over the wknd that she believes a compromise on nurse staffing bill "that does treat Mayo differentlyโ will be agreed to soon. Cited Mayo's scheduling tools and unique role as a hospital that treats "kings and princes." https://t.co/fHDYAmX8AB
I wish this type of platter identification (the medical provision at a worldwide level, versus a metro level, versus an outstate level, to give a few possible divisions) was used more widely in the analysis and provision of public goods.
Just when you thought the @JoeBiden administration couldn't get any dumber, it does this. It's a perfect example of why government shouldn't have any involvement in the #housing market and why the FHA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should all be abolished. https://t.co/WbTzZjWzfd
One of the main reasons buyers make large down payments it to get lower mortgage rates. With this new rule, buyers now have an incentive to make lower down payments. Plus, its easy to screw up your credit score to qualify for a lower rate. So it's taxpayers who'll foot the bill.
Note: I think there is a role for government mortgage provision. But playing with a pricing system which affects everyone in order to help a pocket of people with poor credit shows incredible hubris. Plus it will make everyone worse off simply so some people can feel like the are doing something.
A lot apparently. Common sense values, health care, and clean energy have morphing definitions depending on whose lips they leave. Welfare was meant to describe the well-being of the citizenry. But then it became associated with the assistance paid to the poor. The word was further tainted by derogatory titles like Welfare Queen.
Welfare was meant to evaluate how well a group would end up after a selection of choices. Ceratinly the idea behind the war on poverty in the 1960s had its roots in increasing welfare, particularly to the most disadvantaged. Monthly subsidies were an answer. Yet.
In the United States, “aid to children,” or “relief” had become Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and then the comfortingly opaque acronym, AFDC. In the 1960s AFDC was usually called “welfare,” but to many of the recipients, the very name felt like a bad joke. “Welfare means health, comfort, and happiness,” as Johnnie Tillmon, a mother who received welfare payments, put it in 1969, “and we on welfare don’t have none of that.” Policy makers on both sides of the Atlantic felt the hypocrisy of the name shifts, and sometimes insisted, purely for honesty’s sake, on applying the old labels.
Great Society- A New History, by Amity Shlaes
Financial measures are a necessary component to getting people back on their feet. But to be well means to have good health, to exercise, to pursue a vocation, to eat well, to sleep in peace, and to be able to provide the same to those who depend on you. I think what is called wrap-around services is now in place to address provisions to some of these other forms of well-being.
But the word welfare will forever carry negative connotations.
According to MPR, the President will be in the Twin Cities tomorrow.
It’s good of him to remember former Vice President Mondale. The MN politician’s longevity in office and consistency of performance is remarkable. It was not unusual for him to appear at a talk in a large venue, even in his later years. Walter Mondale did well by Minnesota.
We will soon be hearing about food deserts (once again) due to three grocery stores vacating a segment of the city. The latest to close is the Wal-Mart in Brooklyn Center.
Walmartโs decision to leave, another blow to a neighborhood with a large Black population,ย comes on the heels ofย Aldi closing a store in North Minneapolisย and a nearby Walgreens closing shortly afterwards.The Brooklyn Center location, which has been in operation since 2012, is one of 10 stores nationwide the retail giant is closing, according toย USA TODAY.
โWhy are they closing a Walmart in a Black neighborhood?โ Kennedy said as she loaded rolls of paper towels and laundry detergent into her minivan.
She works in a group home close to Walmart and shops there for the low prices and wide array of products.
โI bring them here, itโs closer to the home and reasonable,โ Kennedy said.
The Sahan Journal did not cover the reasons for the departure from this location but other news sources did.
Brooklyn Center police said Walmart made 6,177 calls for services in the last five years. Thatโs double the number of calls compared to surrounding businesses like Super 8 and Cub Foods with 3,270 and 3,038 calls, respectively. All three businesses top the cityโs list for calls for services.
For further context, police say just six miles away, the Walmart in Brooklyn Park had 1,679 calls for services in the last five years.
City officials vow to fill the anchor store with another merchandiser. But wouldn’t it make more sense if the municipality focused on public safety and let the stores focus on business?
They are about to dump a boatload of money into Minneapolis. Thatโs going to do nothing because a lot of these organizations and the people who run the organization are not out to help they are out to make money so they donโt have to work a full-time job.
This comment confirms that it us still difficult to evaluate providers of public goods services. Why are there not more indicators? Why is the analysis kept under wraps? Where is the clearinghouse of market process that ruffles through the producers and shows the market who is getting business done?
Because without these feedback loops it is too tempting, as the Rev references, for people to privatize public funding.
The Dem trifecta in Minnesotaโs state offices is leading to a flurry of bills being passed. The latest is free school lunch for all k-12 students. A well-posed media shot of the Governor being body-embraced by a cluster of elementary school kids is as tart as an artificial sweetener.
We know the school kids aren’t banging down the doors for a bureaucratic response to their midday meal, so who’s asking for this culinary delight? The neediest kids were already receiving free breakfast and lunch at their public schools. From what I can follow on social media, the desireability of universal provision of food will first off not necessitate the requirement of some to ‘ask’ for a meal through the paperwork. And secondly, it will catch the kids whose parents fail to fill out the paperwork.
MN is a pretty well-off state. The poverty rate for children is 12%. From personal experience, I can attest that well over 12% of school kids are receiving free and reduced lunch. In other words, there was already a largesse to feeding the kids. Yet- to look at the celebration in St. Paul one would think this is a breakthrough of some sort.
Some politicians are asking for the ground rules on when and how the government should take from some and give to others. A new legislator, Walter Hudson, from an NW exurban area posted this recently.
I really want to hear the argument that we're owed stuff paid for by others.
So far, all I get when asking is indignant ridicule, which I receive as a concession of intellectual defeat.
If your case was moral and rational, you could make it easily, and it wouldn't anger you.
Although everyone can feel good about putting food in the mouths of babes, if those babes don’t need the food more than some other babes need mental health assistance, housing, or some other basic need, then the tradeoffs determined by politicians are failing the system.
There’s a deeper answer to Hudson’s question. Where in the interlinked transactions of public dollars flowing to private citizens can we identify comparative needs? Where do we see the production value of public dollars invested?
Two legislators and one Minnesota senator gave a town hall talk last Saturday. With majorities in both the MN House and Senate, a swarm of bills has been flying through committee and onto a vote. Let’s have a look at them.
Education: The schools are still (and always) underfunded. They need dollars. The plug’s been pulled from the bathwater as there was no depth offered to describe relative priorities, to meeting public expectations, to backing winning strategies.
Abortion: Many didn’t believe abortion was on the ballot until the votes were counted. And sure enough, the topic occupied the first hours of the legislators’ work. The right to an abortion all the way through the third trimester was codified into the MN constitution (not sure what they mean by codify, it’s their word). Winners: feminists and women of childbearing age. At risk: unborn babies and paternal rights. Losers: Religious ideology
The Surplus: The promise to return a portion of the surplus to the taxpayers is echoing more and more faintly. It really never was a return but a redistribution where people of lesser means received the most, middle income some, and wealthy folk nothing. Instead, the audience at this town hall was told of failing bridges and infrastructure. When you want to spend bring up the tangibles. There is more resistance to human services than to maintaining nuts and bolts public hardware. No offer of project eval or expenditure return on public use. The pols always declare the need, and steer clear of distinctive comparisons or hierarchical demand for public dollars.
Universal School Lunch: One might wonder if it is the best use of funds to pick up the lunch tab for those who can and might still provide their children’s meals.
Paid Family Leave: I’ve never heard a peep on how it was determined that enough folks were locked out of taking care of a few personal errands during work time to make a law worthwhile. Nor is there a whisper regarding whose pocket this human resource benefit will come from. I’m sure some people live in this uncomfortable pinch between time and money. Making a universal law benefit is great if most people need it. If it is given to everyone when one a handful are struggling, you have to wonder whether the donations to public funds would be best employed in another manner.
This is where I have to give my legislator credit. Here the school districts are being given additional funding only to have it taken from them to cover the paid family leave. Schools are public only in their function to educate children. Public institutions are employers as well. The legislator acknowledged she was hearing from her friends at the MN Teacher’s Union. Turns out that publically funded entities are employers too.
Which highlights the importance of coordination. Elected officials are only exposed to very limited voice. There’s got to be a better format to express the desires of the constituents in the manner public funds are allocated.
On Economists Writing Everyday yesterday, Zachary Bartsch posted how he came to support a tax to pay for mosquito spraying for nearby neighbors. His neighborhood has always been sprayed, but given the mosquitos’ lack of interest in our municipal lines, he surprised himself with a collective mindset.
At first, I wanted to write a blog about the collective action problem and how one can be comfortable with oppressing the will of electoral minorities. I expected to make a Kaldor-Hicks argument in favor the potential gain of the majority. Among free-marketers, that would be the edgy thing to do. But I realized that this referendum was fundamentally about changing our set of property rights. Itโs an externality story. I am now required to pay for mosquito mitigation on my land in order to prevent the harm to my neighbor.
Some might take this as an endorsement for more government. But it’s not. It is the private benefit gained from increasing the treatment area for the pests that gives dynanism to the collective product. Money (or resources) will flow to the issue as long as there are individual gains as well as the group gains.
Hence finding the right public subset to fit each public good problem is necessary for achieving the best use of resources.
A strong and stable family structure and durable social institutions cannot be legislated into existence the way a government can create a central bank or an army. A thriving civil society depends on a people’s habits, customs, and ethics attributes that can be shaped only indirectly through conscious political action and must otherwise be nourished through an increased awareness and respect for culture.
With a 17 Billion dollar surplus piling up in the Minnesota coffers, there will be a lot of public spending in the next few years. The message coming from the Governor’s office is a commitment to make Minnesota the best place to raise a family. This is actually what this state is known for and is near and dear to Minnesotans. Often young people will go explore the rest of the country after college and then return home once it’s time to raise their families.
There is a segment (a set, a group) of Minnesotans whose kids are not doing so well. In fact, they are scoring lower on standardized tests than their compatriots in Mississippi. One can quibble about whether these evaluations are a reflection on the state given how long these kids have been in our school systems. Or one can make excuses for the effects of Covid lockdowns, second language struggles, and general distractions from joy-riding friends. But one thing is for sure- a lot of people are not happy about it.
This is a @MPS_News school.9 out of 10 children canโt read at grade level. $18,000 per student for this? ๐คฏ@MNParentUnion is leading the charge to put parents in control of our childrenโs education through a grant worth $12,000 per student
I don’t think I’m going out on a limb to say the majority of Minnesotans want these kids to do well. There is pride in not only school performance but public school performance. Most people support public schools. So there should be no problem dumping a whole bunch of cash into the schools, right? Well, no. The Minneapolis school district, educator principal for this group of children already receives $4,610 (35%) more per child than the average MN student. Putting more money into institutions that are failing to perform seems a fool’s errand.
If you ask teachers what their biggest impediment is in the classroom they will often say disruptions. Their instruction time is spent on a few instead of teaching to the crowd. Others say the disruption originates around attendance issues: either showing up late or not at all. And lastly, they express the set backs from issues of disruptive behavior.
Instead of funneling dollars through a massive bureaucracy (trickle down doesnโt work so well) why not pay the kids directly to show up and sit still for a few hours every day? Make it worth their while. Let’s say $50 is paid out every other week. That would only be $900/kid which seems like a drop in the bucket compared to the numbers seen above. Maybe they could even cluster and have special events based on who’s pulling in the best attendance records. Make it fun- kids like fun!
The average Minnesotan wants to see these kids succeed. Kids will respond to incentives. Who knows, maybe the people will even pay more, and give more of themselves and their resources if they see a glimmer of success.
Saint Paul Mayor @melvincarter3 said the city will move forward with a proposal to offer low-income families up to $100 thousand to help buy a home and build wealth.https://t.co/gLfz5octyz
Melvin Carter is the young, dynamic mayor of St. Paul. Overall he has faired better in the public eye than other political leaders. The city of St. Paul however is endlessly struggling with increasing property taxes and decreasing core services such as snow removal.
The Rondo area of St. Paul was a predominantly African American neighborhood that was lost to the installation of I94 which runs between Minneapolis and St. Paul. Some property owners relocated to other areas of the cities. For instance, I know of one family who moved to Brooklyn Center as homeowners.
The viability of programs such as this always falters. But is it better to offer and campaign for a specific solution? I think so. It’s a reminder to people to make the effort to become a homeowner (and there already are so many programs available to make that happen). It’s a reminder that Melvin Carter’s family has taken this route and derived benefits from it. It’s an aspirational path that may just knock through some barricades- real or imagined.
For those of you out of our news broadcasting area, we’ve had record snowfall so far this winter. Over a Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, a storm dropped 17 inches of the white stuff (a bit more than 40 centimeters for those of you in the rest of the world). The total for the year recorded at MSP Airport is 45.5″ or 115 centimeters. It’s beautiful and all when it coats the bushes and trees with a fairytale-like mantel. It also needs to be shoveled off of roads, driveways, and sidewalks and that’s when you find out that it is not as light as powder sugar but quite heavy.
Not everyone is physically able to handle the task. This has a community effect as everyone uses the sidewalks and alleys. In the more densely populated areas of Minneapolis and St. Paul digging out of a storm is quite a project. Cars get stuck, plows try to get around them, cars get stuck more and on it goes. But on many a block, there is a neighbor with a large sturdy snow blower ($1500) who enjoys running the monster up and back across driveways and the like making short work of the daunting task.
In steps a Twitter suggestion from the Fat Culkin Brother.
Minneapolis sidewalk clearing: find the one โdadโ* every couple blocks who would gleefully wake up at 5 in the morning after a snowfall and go blow out the neighbors. Have the city provide this person with a heavy duty snowblower and a $30 stipend for gas.
Tap the joy a certain set of guys (and gals!) feel in this type of community work. Give them a few extra resources and let them live the good life. Maybe even throw them a recognition event along with all the other folks who volunteer for their city.
Find a way to encourage labor that otherwise is idle.
It’s such a low-hanging fruit that others popped online to tell of how it has worked elsewhere.
Some folks in Ann Arbor started doing this years ago with neighbor donations because itโs rather expensive to fund seasonal city labor. โSnowBuddy is a unique nonprofit sidewalk snow removal service run like a public radio stationโฆโ https://t.co/niXjS12flX
Back in the day (early 90โs) Minneapolis had a program that paid community groups looking to fundraise (like my Boy Scout troop) to clear street corners. They had a staff member go around and check to see if corners were clear, then they paid. Not sure if it still exists.
That is the latest projected budget surplus for the state of MN. Part of the swelling in the coffers is due to a failure of the past legislature to pass spending bills. A tax refund effort failed to pass as well. That leaves a whole lot of spending in the hands of the latest conglomeration of politicians.
Tax surpluses are going to happen. And it is always more comfortable to be on the excess side of the ledger from an operating standpoint. But it seems like there should be an automatic release of funds after a certain percentage of excess is reached. Our constituents are in a better position keeping those funds in hand and putting them to work than having them tied up at the capital in some budget battle.
If politicians feel they can provide a better product or service with those funds, then they should be able to show us how and where that has occurred in the system.
The New York Times ran an article the other day about access to public lands: Itโs Public Land. But the Public Canโt Reach It. Hunters out west in Wyoming are using an app called OnX to locate public lands. The controversy arises when access to the prime hunting acreages is blocked as the parcel is surrounded by private ranches.
This leads to the question of whether something is public if it is beyond their reach. But first, what does it mean to be public land. According to the NYT:
Especially around the fact that public land โ by definition owned by all Americans โ is not always publicly accessible.
Is it realistic that every park and open space is considered a public amenity to every person on US soil? It doesn’t seem like nearly a precise enough description of what is truly at work.
There are 30 million acres of public land in Montana
The sheer geographic distance can keep a US citizen from enjoying Half Dome in Yosemite or the Reflecting Pool on the Mall in DC, but there are other impediments to obtaining full use of a federal, state or city property. If a gang of pill pushers are dealing at the base of some statue or drunks are sprawled out across every park bench, then the function of the park is transformed. And a more general public is discouraged from entering.
Neighbors can also use local authorities and rules to keep people out as the private ranchers do in the NYT story. The hunters are threatened with a civil lawsuit for having stair-stepped their way onto Elk Mountain. There will be pressure for the use of the land and thus difficult to deter the public from venturing out. As the rancher finds out:
However, he couldnโt keep the public out, for interspersed within his property lay 27 parcels โ 11,000 acres in total, an area the size of several airports โ owned by the federal Bureau of Land Management and the State of Wyoming.
Restrictions on how and what is built where is an ongoing conversation in any city planning department. Too many rules limit the number of available dwellings, pushing prices to new heights. Too few rules might infringe on the use and enjoyment neighbors are promised when they acquire their homes.
In Japan, teeny tiny apartments are being built to allow more people access to the hot areas of town. These micro apartments are smaller than a ten-by-ten-foot room which is considered a small bedroom in our neck of the woods.
With its high property prices and the worldโs most populous metropolitan area, Tokyo has long been known for small accommodations. But these new apartments โ known as three-tatami rooms, based on how many standard Japanese floor mats would cover the living space โ are pushing the boundaries of normal living.
The article mentions that these units are not at the bottom of the market. They are stylish and new. They are attracting a younger set of renters who see themselves in a higher-end neighborhood and have yet to experience a larger apartment, and thus (perhaps) don’t feel the loss of space. It’s the match of neighborhood amenties, quality of interior finishes and price that make these small spaces work.
And they are situated near trendy locations in central Tokyo like Harajuku, Nakameguro and Shibuya, which are generally quite expensive, with luxury boutiques, cafes and restaurants. Most of the buildings are close to subway stations โ the top priority for many young people.
Over two-thirds of the buildingsโ residents are people in their 20s, who in Japan earn on average about $17,000 to $20,000 a year, according to government data. (Wages in Tokyo are on the higher end.)
On the other extreme of the housing restriction stories, is the conclusion of a longtime feud between a Marin County (CA) man and local regulators. He’s being evicted, in part, for operating a creative sustainable toilet that has been in use for the past fifty years.
…, heโs built a sanctuary to showcase his ideas about environmental sustainability: the Shower Tower, the Worm Palace (crucial to his composting toilet), the Tea Cave (where he has stored more than 50,000 pounds of rare, aged tea), the Tea Pagoda (where heโs hosted tea ceremonies for friends and dignitaries for more than 40 years) and so many more.
He calls it The Last Resort and he never had permission to build any of it. โIโve been a scofflaw all my life,โ said Mr. Hoffman, 78. โI have to recognize that.โ
The battle between this outsider artist and the government has been going on for more than a couple of decades. Ten years ago the NYT ran a similar piece. He has a contingent of supporters and recently had a shot at maintaining the property through a historical designation. But now his eviction seems imminent. Meanwhile, new construction in the San Fransisco Bay area is being stymied by regulation-induced high prices.
This brings up the point that in some areas of the country the use of an outhouse is completely acceptable. On large acreage properties in the wide open plains, there’s no harm done in digging a hole and erectly a one-stall shack with a bench and a door with a half moon. The value or harm of regulations that allow super-small apartments or unstructured sewage disposal is entirely dependent on the group structures and commitments of nearby neighbors.
With four weeks to go until election day, the campaign ads are becoming increasingly frequent. What is different this year is that every level of office, down to the Secretary of State (an administrative position), is coming up with the funds to run TV ads. And then there are counter ads. And the news media jumping in to evaluate whether the ad and counter ads are accurate.
A television ad produced by an independent expenditure group takes aim at Republican Kim Crockett in her bid to defeat Democratic Secretary of State Steve Simon.
The ad makes some truthful claims about Crockettโs stand on a couple of key election issues but also significantly misleads viewers by claiming she โproudly calls herself your โelection denier-in-chief.โโ
The ad starts with a narrator promoting Simon, saying โSecretary of State Steve Simon makes it his job to defend democracy.โ Thatโs followed up with audio from Simon himself saying, โI have pledged to do everything to always protect the freedom to vote.โ
The ad then quickly pivots to attacking Crockett, including a grainy black-and-white video of her speaking at a forum in June.
โKim Crockett proudly calls herself your โelection denier-in-chief,โโ the ad says, with the last part of the quote making it appear Crockett is calling herself that nickname.
……
Because this ad includes a mix of misleading and out-of-context material along with truthful claims, it gets a โCโ on the 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS โTruth Test.โ
The state auditorโs race is also getting more play on the local public affairs program, Almanac, as several DFL candidates have refused to participate in long-held debates. This position is in place to enable an outside audit of various forms of government. Ryan Wilson is the GOP challenger and Julie Blaha is the DFL incumbent. There is some question as to whether she should have stepped in and audited the disbursal of $250 million in federal funds in the Feeding our Future fraud scandal.
But by far the biggest race in terms of ad expenditures is the competition for the seat held by congresswoman Angie Craig (DFL) in Minnesota District 2. This is the second challenge by Tyler Kistner who narrowly lost the race two years ago. During the Vikings game or the news, there are sometimes three ad installments per commercial break. Angie is back-roading in a Jeep looking down to earth and Tyler shows off his beautiful young family. The race is often cited among the top ten most competitive races in the country.
Perhaps energy generated from this political tete-a-tete is stirring up the rest- but whatever the reason Minnesotans are getting an earful about each contest from the Minnesota Governor to the Minnesota Attorney General, the Secretary of State, the State Auditor, and even on down to the County Attorneys. Tradition has it that a last-minute bombshell always explodes in the weeks leading up to November 8th. I can only imagine what that will be.
It’s hard to extrapolate feelings out of numbers. Novelists have the luxury (and the skill) to fine-tune phrasing in a way that demonstrates how the same scene can in fact be different. Take this passage for example:
Yes, that was it-the change was there. Before the war at a luncheon party like this people would have said precisely the same things but they would have sounded different, because in those days they were accompanied by a sort of humming noise, not articulate, but musical, exciting, which changed the value of the words themselves. Could one set that humming noise to words?
Virginia Wolf- A Room of Oneโs Own
But when you see numbers, tabulated-out in sales figures of Rolex sales, income disparities between adjacent countries, or tallies of police arrests- you don’t feel anything. Of all the inputs that go into economic analysis- resources, labor, utilities, transport, and so on, there is no mention of an emotional quantifier.
Yet isn’t at least a portion of why people buy a Rolex due to a feeling? A luxury good makes one stand up a little straighter and beam a little brighter. A luxury good encourages others to treat you with a little more attention. A luxury good may be the ticket to gain entry into a new network of associates. There’s a swarming effect to luxury goods where people are drawn to the aura of the wealthy establishment. At least Kim Kardashian has a billion reasons to think so.
And then there is the opposite effect. The feeling of neglect and secondary status is always in the mix when economic results are released and compared to a strong neighbor. The numbers may divvy out the details of who stands where with what, but the gnawing feeling of being two steps back and half a year behind comes to the surface in casual conversation. “Oh- they are just so brash down there!” Implying, of course, a certain nobility in lower production, further justifying complacency.
Analysis of the cost of policing goes into rows and columns as easily as any set of numbers. But the emotion of seeing your middle school buddy handcuffed and walked out of school doesn’t show up in any way in the numerical representation. How many officers are needed in a community that has memories of one type of public safety is going to be different from another. The expense to leverage community participation in crime-solving is also going to vary. Like groups need to be compared to like groups.
And similarly, when solutions are presented and discussed, time and time again by people outside a community, especially those with elitist inklings, eye-rolling follows disjointed analogies.
I recently saw this quote on Twitter: Economics is the study of human behavior under constraints. This makes sense to me if the individual and the clusters of individuals operate under maximum freedom. But the reality is that virtually all people have some sort of, or many layers of, political structures also setting constraints. Where econ stops, and where poli-sci begins is deviding line to consider.
For instance, if you were trying to figure out the choice parameters for automobiles in the Amish community you may come to the conclusion that they don’t have a preference as you cannot come up with any data. Yet the political constraint of only being allowed to drive a horse and buggy is the political constraint which explains the lack of opinion. Complete exclusions from some choices are entirely political and hence do not provide economic insights through the actor’s behaviors.
Gorgeous blooms are still to be seen at the Lyndale Rose Garden in Minneapolis
In the old days, or in the movies, the good and bad guys are contrasting characters in nefarious plots. Activists love the straightforward dichotomy of the winners and the losers as it facilitates their theory of choice. If you want to benefit the world, you’re with us; if you want to harm the world you’re with them. You are either on the inside or you are excludable. You are blessed or descending into the bowels of the earth.
In the most recent free newsletter from Slow and Boring, Let Joe Manchin have his pipeline, Matt Yglesias lays out economic arguments for allowing the completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline despite the negative externalities it will generate. He tiptoes through a dizzying array of players and their platters, in the operating systems of cooperative endeavors. He concludes that there should be less focus on chum (I like that word) and more focus on the stuff that matters.
The stuff that matters appears to be the more socially favorable outcome once the pros and cons of the action are tallied up. Instead of hype, Matt wants an accounting.
Here are all the groups mentioned in roughly the order they appear: Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), Biden Administration, West Virginia, Virginia, Joe Manchin, green activists, Senators, democrats, Keystone XL pipeline, left writers, center-left writers, Barack Obama, Labor Unions, Rail Lines, activist organizers, protestors, Putin, Russian Oil Producers, LNP gas export facilities, the United States
There are a bunch of ways to sort these players. Elementary school math with Venn diagrams comes to mind. All the oil producers which operate on a for-profit basis, MVP and Keystone XL, and LPN export facilities form a group. Then you have the political people who are meant to act on behalf of their constituents like the two Presidents, the Senators, and Joe Manchin in particular. Clearly, there is different weighting on the impact of these decisions based on who they represent. This brings us to the states themselves, specifically West Virginia, Virginia, and a bunch of unnamed states affected by Keystone. And there are the people who advertize for the various positions, the writers (both left and center-left), and protestors. I would put the activist organizers in the same bin as the labor unions because their function isn’t to care about the issue as much as to energize those who will resist. Putin and Russian oil producers are in a group to themselves as they are not nested in any way with the others.
It is impressive to touch on so many levels of tradeoffs and draw the reader to the intended conclusion: Joe Manchin’s pipeline project will cause less environmental harm than economic good. The social externalities are less than internalized social benefits.
Not everyone can successfully call out those who oversell the need– in this case for climate caution. It is something only someone of his stature could accomplish. Since there is no numerical system of coordination, supply is determined by trusting the voices of those close to the action to describe the need. Food shelf providers give feedback on the demand for food. School counselors give feedback on the need for social services. Hospitals give feedback on the number of uninsured patients.
I’m all for calling out the beefed-up hype and manufactured objections to socially valuable industry. Hold the Chum! And give Yglesias the proper accounting he demands!
Home Economics 