Matthew Yglesias – Straight Talk on Gasoline on drilling and how conservative deviation from free-market principles has hurt the environment:
Meanwhile, take something like the accessory dwellings issue. Here you have a bunch of regulations that make it illegal for people to live more densely. Illegal, in other words, to build the kind of communities where the gas price issue wouldn’t hurt so much. But there’s a movement afoot to change things. Similarly with minimum parking rules — regulations that interfere with the operation of the free market in such a way as to make it more difficult for people to live energy efficient lives. And again, there are people trying to change this. These things are regulatory barriers to solving our energy problems every bit as much as the ban on offshore drilling is. And conservatives are against regulation, right? Except the anti-drilling regulation is good for the environment and for coastal economies whereas anti-urbanist regulation is economically inefficient and environmentally destructive. Naturally, conservatives have chosen to aim all of their fire at anti-drilling regulations. And that’s the sort of thing that makes the conservative movement hard to take seriously — it’s an organized defense of existing power and privilege that now and again adopts principled rhetorical modes of various kinds but basically can’t be moved to act unless some lobbyists pay them too.
Similar arguments could describe progressives too, but that (and drilling for oil) is a topic for other blogs…
I agree about the inconsistent anti-market sentiments of conservatives when it comes to urbanism. Conservatives tend to embrace socialism when they can abuse government to create barriers that exclude others from their communities, but not when others benefit from socialism. (Public schools, free parking, government roads, exclusionary zoning, community centers, etc…) They are just fighting over different crumbs than progressives.
This will start somewhat off-topic, but will end with blinding relevance.
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.
This will start somewhat off-topic, but will end with blinding relevance.
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.