> NIMBYs are doing great, I’d say.

NIMBYs, or just typical anglo incompetence? How can you tell the difference? It's easy to blame other people for systemic dysfunction.

This sort of construction failure is present everywhere where the public is allowed to make extensive inputs into what gets built. It is not just a US-specific reaction to urban engineering by Robert Moses.

We've let the pendulum swing too hard and instead of a dictatorship of technocrats, we have a dictatorship of vetocrats. A relatively small group of people, sometimes one single individual, can make new construction more complicated than lunar exploration, and there are indeed neighbourhoods whose permitting process took longer than the entire Apollo project.

I live in a house built on a former brownfield, 32 semi-detached houses in total. The whole project was delayed by four years by one dedicated octogenarian who didn't like the idea of new people in "his" neighbourhood and pulled out all stops he could (or even couldn't).

What do you consider to be anglo incompetence in dwelling construction that isn't NIMBYism?

Owning land. Whoever came up with this idea needs to be hung and revived a million times, and then tortured to death a million more. Our society has been mutilated as a result.

I think you could ascribe this to either NIMBY or YIMBY harebrained thinking. We need a third option that's pro-human.

We need public fucking housing.

Most of NIMBY legislature and processes that block private construction also block public construction. So most YIMBY arguments to improve the situation apply to both public and private constructions. (Not to mention that public construction has a plenty of problems specific to it.)

There is no trade-off or contradiction between public housing and YIMBY deregulation to allow more private development. I want both. They are complementary.

There's also overlap between YIMBYs are Georgists, they share some skepticism around private land ownership.

> There is no trade-off or contradiction between public housing and YIMBY deregulation

Sucking off developers removes all air from the room.

This is a fictitious trade-off. Deregulation (of parking minimums, height limits) helps ensure public housing is affordable for the taxpayer and environmentally friendly. If it also helps private developers as a side effect, and that is no loss for public housing.

You seem fairly keen on building public housing. Wouldn't that qualify you as a YIMBY? The YIMBYs are the lobby that tends to be pro-new-buildings.

If you want to build public housing, only the NIMBYs would really oppose the idea.

> Wouldn't that qualify you as a YIMBY?

YIMBY is the pro-private-development lobby, as best I can tell. PHIMBY is the term I've seen.

> If you want to build public housing, only the NIMBYs would really oppose the idea.

I suspect most who go by YIMBY would also oppose this.

> I suspect most who go by YIMBY would also oppose this.

Well I'm not sure what you're proposing but if it can be characterised as "mass public housing" it sounds like a terrible idea on the face of it, and most people would probably oppose it on that ground. But the YIMBYs would have to agree that you're allowed to try it if you want, otherwise they'd be NIMBYs, on the basis that they are telling other people they can't build on their land.

We get it, you're a commie. No need to constantly repeat that you want public versions of everything that already exists.

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You can tell the difference by observing that, intra-city (not inter-city, inter-state, or inter-country, which introduces confounds), the suburban locations with the highest land values build the least. Enclaves like where Marc Andreessen lives, where his family unit has been involved in successful NIMBY activism. That is an outcome that can only be explained by asymmetric government interference due to more effective lobbying from politically active NIMBYs.