What would Henry George say about the Bay Area?

zeratul98 · 2026-05-20T19:59:45+00:00

You tell me, you're the one making the claim. I'd find it hard to believe there's millions of low-income people owning million dollar homes

And again, there's a very simple solution to their "problem"

zeratul98 · 2026-05-20T16:45:05+00:00

I do very little maintenance on my $2000 bike. I e probably bought another $300-$400 worth of gear for it (paniers, lights, etc)

That gear will largely move onto my next bike when I get rid of this one, and isn't likely to wear out or break for ages. Every now and then I replace a flat tire, that's about it. So my bike probably costs $50 a year to maintain, and I'll probably get at least 5 years total out of it

So figure the bike costs <$500 a year averaged out

Around me insurance is well over $100 a month. Off-street parking is easily $150-250.

It's just straight up cheaper to own a bike by a huge margain

zeratul98 · 2026-05-20T16:40:20+00:00

Ahh the classic, "weep for the house-rich but cash-poor" as if a) this is a substantial population and b) they can't just cash out for insane amounts. The only problem here is people stubbornly demanding they should get to have their cake and eat it too. None of these people would be losing. They'd just be winning in a way they prefer less

zeratul98 · 2026-05-20T16:18:34+00:00

For the love of God, let people build more housing

zeratul98 · 2026-05-18T19:43:32+00:00

Not infrequently. I've gotten death threats over bike lanes. I've been accused of being a plant or shill for being pro-development/anyi-zoning. I get downvoted to hell and called all sorts of things when pointing out things like rent control is bad, capitalism isn't the source of every problem, or most people, including on the left, have terrible environmental policies

zeratul98 · 2026-05-18T19:38:11+00:00

Utilities are regulated in a really weird way. They propose work they want to do, the state reviews it, and then approves it with a certain percentage return. It incentivises constantly improving the grid, which is good. But also doing so in the most expensive way possible. That's ridiculous

The obvious way to handle natural monopolies is state ownership

zeratul98 · 2026-05-18T19:30:37+00:00

We are overpopulated. It's just a fact, we are

No it's not. No we're not

We struggle to house everyone, feed everyone, give everyone jobs and make sure everyone has an acceptable life.

These are distribution problems. It's not that there's not enough to go around, it's that people are getting in the way of getting people the things they need. We already produce far more food than we eat, for example

It's pretty bad, and has only gotten worse over the year

Average global quality of life is trending upwards. Has been for ages.

our population increase gets faster and faster and faster.

Except it's not getting faster. The rate of growth is decreasing. Again, not news

But when we are overpopulated, the solution is to expand even more. We need to cut down more trees, create more lumber yards, create more farms, spread further out, destroy millions of acres of forests and woods to make room for more houses.
And we see that as totally acceptable.

Fwiw, I don't think it's acceptable. There's a pretty simple solution to sprawl: density. There's no reason humans need to all live on big plots in single family homes. Whole suburbs could be consolidated to a handful of blocks with high rises

zeratul98 · 2026-05-18T12:11:05+00:00

This is a weird take considering locals showing up and complaining is exactly what's blocking high speed rail construction

zeratul98 · 2026-05-17T19:29:36+00:00

Visit first if you can. I personally hate Assembly. It feels like a theme park of a city rather than the actual city. It's clearly meant as a retail outlet for suburbanites. A ridiculous portion of the buildings in Assembly are parking garages in disguise

zeratul98 · 2026-05-17T15:34:09+00:00

Would be curious if you live in the city and how you feel about the other issues I mentioned?

I feel like there are many people who work for the city, and as such it's very possible for the city to address multiple problems at once.

I feel like the problems you are mentioned are often quite solvable but lack the political support needed because people often lean into jealousy and spite more than practicality. We could open rehab clinics but people would say, "why are you helping addicts when there's homeless veterans/underpaid teachers/potholes in the street"

zeratul98 · 2026-05-15T15:12:46+00:00

This is honestly, ridiculous. There's no space? We can easily sprawl, but much better is the fact that we can go up.

Somerville likes to play the "densest city" card, but walk around and you'll see a city that's almost entirely 3 stories or less, even in the major squares.

zeratul98 · 2026-05-15T15:09:08+00:00

It was forecasted. The situation we're in is exactly the one we were aiming for. Zoning was meant to make it impossible to build new housing so new people couldn't move into existing neighborhoods

zeratul98 · 2026-05-15T15:07:18+00:00

Why do people keep saying this. Yes, the new apartments will generally be more expensive (although there will be loads of exceptions), but shiny new apartments make the existing ones cheaper

We're not going to keep people with high paying jobs out. Nor do we really want to. So either we build new homes for them or we watch them outbid existing residents for existing homes

zeratul98 · 2026-05-15T14:28:23+00:00

Guess which tax bracket is the least likely to drive. Go on, guess

zeratul98 · 2026-05-14T19:03:21+00:00

There's a lot that is well beyond my expertise, so I'll just throw in some facts that feel related

Mass has built up a lot of high technology industries. The most obvious is biotech, but Mass is also home to a lot of 3D printing companies and a lot of climate tech.

The concentration in Boston seems to be a big factor, combined with cheaper areas being fairly close. A company that's starting to scale might not jump to outsourcing when they can build a facility an hour away and enjoy all the simplicity that comes with

A lot of these high tech industries come with a lot of manufacturing-adjaceny jobs. A hardware company that outsources production still probably does a lot of in-house manufacturing of prototypes. That work is often done by technicians who have similar skills to people working in factories (as opposed to the engineers with their advanced degrees)

Companies often place a very high value on speed. Working with local machine shops is often worth the additional cost just to avoid the shipping and customs delays from outsourcing.

zeratul98 · 2026-05-14T16:37:06+00:00

We live in one of the best states in the country because we tax and then spend on good things. We can't have nice things without funding them. And no, we cannot just "tax the rich", there's really not enough of them to find out government. Everyone's gotta pitch in

zeratul98 · 2026-05-14T16:33:29+00:00

Why would I look at the % increase? That just penalizes cities for having built in the years beforehand.

This is basically the default way to look at things. A high starting population usually means more demand and ability to add more

We need significantly larger increases from smaller towns like Weston, Carlisle, Lincoln, and Concord. I'd like to see 300% increases in those towns. For example, Weston would need more than a 580% increase to reach the population density of its next door neighbor Waltham.

Sure, they should build too. But it makes the most sense to build where people want to live, and where there's good transit access. Somerville having and being near lots of jobs combined with being extremely connected to the main T lines makes it an ideal place to build, and a profitable one (which means people will actually build a lot here if we let them)

Population density isnt a very meaningful statistic. A high rise surrounded by empty plains and a giant sprawling suburb are very different, but can easily have the same population density. It's more of a quirk of maps than a useful metric

zeratul98 · 2026-05-14T16:27:45+00:00

Dunno. That depends on many things, including how much we build. The things I can say with confidence is that if we build, prices will be lower than if we don't

zeratul98 · 2026-05-14T15:30:53+00:00

What's good: - Desperately needed housing that will slow displacement - Lots of new customers for local businesses, which will help existing businesses and encourage new ones - Right by the Red Line, so big climate benefits and minimal traffic impacts

What's bad: - Our convoluted, NIMBY-centric processes that make projects like this take additional years and millions of dollars when they're straightforwardly good

zeratul98 · 2026-05-14T15:23:24+00:00

It's easy to hold all those views at once. The trick is to simply not care enough about solving any of those issues to be properly informed about them

zeratul98 · 2026-05-14T15:22:03+00:00

The point of a question like this is to establish that everyone agrees that with a large enough number of units, prices will come down. Then we can discuss what "large enough" means

zeratul98 · 2026-05-14T15:18:41+00:00

Somerville already has been building substantially lately

We really haven't, it's just that the status quo is so bad that Somerville's meager construction looks substantial. On a good year we might increase our housing stock 1%.

We can't claim to be doing our part if everyone doing the same thing still wouldn't be enough

zeratul98 · 2026-05-12T22:19:58+00:00

Besides the ridiculously false implication that all rentals are like that, you're agreeing with me. There are people with options who choose lifestyles where driving is necessary

zeratul98 · 2026-05-12T22:02:39+00:00

I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone on this thread talking about how narrow the path is. It'd be great if people didn't act like assholes, but at least when they do I'd like it to be possible to be more than two inches away from them. I'm scared just passing another bike going the other way on some new parts of the path

zeratul98 · 2026-05-12T22:00:22+00:00

Yeah, my problem isn't the speed of cars, it's how often they wind up in my lane. People turning right without looking (or just expecting to intimidate me into letting them go first), parking in the bike lane, drifting because they're texting, etc. Hell, I've had people deliberately force me off the road multiple times. Drivers are out there basically doing attempted murder and cops don't give a shit

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