It can be good, and there are parts of the developed world where public housing is not only abundant, but decent. And it has a cooling effect on the housing market, making all housing more affordable for everyone.
If we provide, decent, low cost housing to enough, everyone that needs housing prices to come down benefit.
That’s the crux of the matter. It’s easy to say “there’s no reason it has to turn out that way”, but there actually are some reasons for that to be the case. There’s a theory about how that works and that theory’s predictions hold up pretty good in reality.
More importantly than the theory (which involves modeling people as responding to incentives), imo, is the basic understanding that the world is far more complex than any person understands. This means that statements of the form “There is no X” aren’t very well founded.
Saying “There’s no reason that it has to be” is one of those statements, which asserts the non-existence of a thing, as if the entire space where that thing might exist has been thoroughly explored and mapped.
The way politics and society are presented in school, it’s often like a empty room. One could say “is there a chair in this room”? You look around the room. Potted plant, small rug, bicycle, no chair. Done.
But reality is more like a room of unknown size that’s absolutely full of stuff. You can’t see very far, you can’t inventory the room without massive undertaking to move all the stuff.
Saying “there’s no chair in this room” is less well-founded in that second room. It’s less wise to say that in that second room, where you can’t see everything.
Well, society is ultra complex. Group behavior is ultra complex. Construction projects are ultra complex. Politics is ultra complex. You shouldn’t just glance over all that complexity and say “nothing in there that behaves like X, no sir”.
So (a) some people think there are very concrete and predictable reasons why it has to be bad, and (b) others don’t know what reasons are operating, and accept that it’s beyond their comprehension, but look at the outcomes so far, and it certainly looks like there’s a reason it has to be.
Except there’s no reason it needs to be.
It can be good, and there are parts of the developed world where public housing is not only abundant, but decent. And it has a cooling effect on the housing market, making all housing more affordable for everyone.
If we provide, decent, low cost housing to enough, everyone that needs housing prices to come down benefit.
That’s the crux of the matter. It’s easy to say “there’s no reason it has to turn out that way”, but there actually are some reasons for that to be the case. There’s a theory about how that works and that theory’s predictions hold up pretty good in reality.
More importantly than the theory (which involves modeling people as responding to incentives), imo, is the basic understanding that the world is far more complex than any person understands. This means that statements of the form “There is no X” aren’t very well founded.
Saying “There’s no reason that it has to be” is one of those statements, which asserts the non-existence of a thing, as if the entire space where that thing might exist has been thoroughly explored and mapped.
The way politics and society are presented in school, it’s often like a empty room. One could say “is there a chair in this room”? You look around the room. Potted plant, small rug, bicycle, no chair. Done.
But reality is more like a room of unknown size that’s absolutely full of stuff. You can’t see very far, you can’t inventory the room without massive undertaking to move all the stuff.
Saying “there’s no chair in this room” is less well-founded in that second room. It’s less wise to say that in that second room, where you can’t see everything.
Well, society is ultra complex. Group behavior is ultra complex. Construction projects are ultra complex. Politics is ultra complex. You shouldn’t just glance over all that complexity and say “nothing in there that behaves like X, no sir”.
So (a) some people think there are very concrete and predictable reasons why it has to be bad, and (b) others don’t know what reasons are operating, and accept that it’s beyond their comprehension, but look at the outcomes so far, and it certainly looks like there’s a reason it has to be.