I honestly don’t know what “conservative” means in the political sense, and I am still waiting for someone to define it. Are these religious people? Are they for drug legalization? The draft? Troops in Iraq? I think we all know where “progressives” stand on these issues, but I don’t think there is a solid block of “conservatives” with the same predictable views.

Whenever I hear someone use the phrase “conservative”, I then to think that it is either:

A) The invented Satan that progressives must triumph over, or

B) An invented group that otherwise sensible people use when they want progressives to like them; i.e., “Hey, I’m not like you, but I’m not a bad guy. You know, I’m not a conservative. Or, perish the thought, a neo-conservative!”

I confess that I have a visceral revulsion for Mr. Yglesias; he strikes me as a humorless child who is quite full of himself.

But we know that he is not a “conservative” — especially since his above argument seems not so much directed at zoning regulations as it is towards pointing out that his nemesis, the fearsome conservative “movement”, is filled with hypocrites.

I wonder where Mr. Yglesias lives. And I wonder if there is a density that would make him go pleading for some of that exclusionary zoning. I assume he lives in an apartment. Perhaps his views would change if the remaining apartments in his building were converted to micro-dormitories for Haitian boat people? That would make him a hypocrite! And therefore he and his type are wrong! About everything!

All that aside, short of selling off every sidewalk and street to private entities — who will have the control to do as they please to maximize profits — zoning might be necessary. And that, I think, is because of the lack of property rights in the public domain.

In short, there are two issues here:

1. Who decides how land is used?

2. What are the “correct” controls to apply?

The public decision to permit high densities might be the right decision, but that does not make it a free-market decision. It can’t be a free-market decision because the decision is made by the govt by way of the political process.

Perhaps, in a free market, densities would be much higher. Or, maybe not. We don’t know. There are plenty of low-density areas where they “shouldn’t” be, but there is no guarantee that the owners would sell to high-density developers sans zoning restrictions. And that would be even more true with private restrictive covenants that prohibit such sales.

At best, we can only take a stab at what we think free-market outcomes would be and have the govt apply some zoning that we think will work.

For sure, though, free markets will adjust for whatever mistakes the govt does make in the process.