BC SOCIETY
Saved by @Mollyycolllinss

1/OK, so. Let's talk about Left-NIMBYism.

We all know about Right-NIMBYs, rabidly protecting their white-flight suburbs from Those People. And there are plenty of liberal NIMBYs too.

But NIMBYs of the Left are also a force to be reckoned

 2/Left-NIMBYs have developed a canon of interlocking, mutually reinforcing beliefs about housing and urbanism.

These beliefs are mostly false, but they form a powerful "canon" that quickly ossifies into a hardened worldview.

It looks something like this:
3/Fortunately, Nathan J. Robinson of Current Affairs has written an article that perfectly encapsulates the Left-NIMBY worldview (and quotes me in it!).

So this is a teachable moment.

https://t.co/nvFJryQZGi
4/Robinson selectively quotes a Bloomberg article of mine (https://t.co/iamRrW6oei).

Look at the part he quoted, vs. what I actually wrote!

Pretty different, eh? 😉
5/In fact, as I wrote in the article that Robinson failed to read more than one line of, it's theoretically possible that Left-NIMBYs COULD be right that allowing market-rate housing drives up local rents.

I take that possibility very seriously, as do YIMBYs.
6/But as always in economics, we need to look at the EVIDENCE, not just theory!

And although there isn't a mountain of evidence on market-rate housing yet, some evidence is starting to pile up.

And it doesn't look great for the Left-NIMBY theory.
7/For example, here's a 2016 paper by Xiaodi Li about what happens to nearby rents when you build market-rate housing.

https://t.co/AwrJTJK2lY
8/And here's a brand-new paper by Kate Pennington about what happens to rents and to gentrification when you build market-rate housing in San Francisco:

https://t.co/8GCbE1jNOC
9/And here's a 2019 paper by Brian Asquith, Evan Mast, and David Reed, about what happens to rents and to gentrification when you build market-rate housing:

https://t.co/6YPHc38NDF
10/There are others (https://t.co/Hp3ecU9Ly0, https://t.co/AjipSyRSOy), but the general result here is starting to become clear.

Market-rate housing lowers nearby rents while drawing high-income people away from low-income neighborhoods.
11/In fact, reality looks very much like my "Yuppie Fishtank Theory" (which is really just a segmented markets model).

It's an explanation of why YIMBYism doesn't need Econ 101 or Supply-and-Demand:

https://t.co/8o6V0L4Wbv
12/But Robinson gets things even more wrong when he claims that YIMBYs are Randian shills who hate public housing and demand that market-rate housing be the only solution.

Here's what he writes:
13/Robinson singles out three YIMBY organizations for his accusations:
California YIMBY
YIMBY Action
Open New York

Let's see what each one has to say about public housing, shall we?

Here's Brian Hanlon, co-founder of California YIMBY.

https://t.co/hU4hWQh1Px
14/Here's Laura Foote, executive director of YIMBY Action:

https://t.co/M52O8R67St
15/Here's Ben Carlos Thypin, founder of Open New York:

https://t.co/OxII8YxxKh
16/Robinson simply failed (or refused) to do his homework. His characterization of these YIMBYs is utterly wrong. In reality, they're just a bunch of lefties who want to build ALL types of housing instead of insisting on just one.
17/In fact, I think the conflict between YIMBYs and Left-NIMBYs is not fundamentally about evidence, or about public housing.

It's about preservationism vs. growth and change. Left-NIMBYs want to stand athwart urban history, yelling Stop.
18/Whereas YIMBYs recognizes that cities will always grow and change, and we can't preserve them in amber. Instead, we have to shape their growth into something equitable and inclusive.
19/Left-NIMBYism is not confined to the West Coast; you see it popping up in cities across the nation. It's wrongheaded, but it's something we're going to have to deal with as we fight to make American cities livable for everyone.

(end)

https://t.co/05c6IMSc4y
Anyway, if you like this sort of thing, you can sign up for my free email list, and have my posts delivered directly to your inbox!

https://t.co/FGppA1M8W6

More from Noahtogolpe 🐇

Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
This is so dumb and incorrect and wrong it's unbelievable.


Facts.


Facts!!


FACTS FACTS

Moar
ALL
Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
Krugman is, of course, right about this. BUT, note that universities can do a lot to revitalize declining and rural regions.


See this thing that @lymanstoneky wrote:

And see this thing that I wrote:

And see this book that @JamesFallows wrote:

And see this other thing that I wrote:
SOCIETY
Advertisement
Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
Very interesting new report about how America's economic geography has changed since the great recession: https://t.co/l3YE4WzgKx

Short version: Places with lots of skilled workers are doing great, other places aren't. But more people are moving to the former, which is good.

And here are cool interactive maps to go along with the

Report is via @LettieriDC, who is doing great work on struggling places.

A bit of good news: People are moving from economically bad places to economically good places, though probably too slowly.


Rural America continues to languish.
ALL
Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
1/Politics thread time.

To me, the most important aspect of the 2018 midterms wasn't even about partisan control, but about democracy and voting rights. That's the real battle.

2/The good news: It's now an issue that everyone's talking about, and that everyone cares about.

3/More good news: Florida's proposition to give felons voting rights won. But it didn't just win - it won with substantial support from Republican voters.

That suggests there is still SOME grassroots support for democracy that transcends

4/Yet more good news: Michigan made it easier to vote. Again, by plebiscite, showing broad support for voting rights as an

5/OK, now the bad news.

We seem to have accepted electoral dysfunction in Florida as a permanent thing. The 2000 election has never really
POLITICS
Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
Bloomberg Ideas conference now starting! I will be live-tweeting it. You can watch on our Facebook or Twitter pages (links below)!


Our first panel is about cryptocurrency! We have @matt_levine, @tylercowen, @eiaine, @nirkaissar, and Camilla

Ou: Crypto will be useful for the unbanked.

Cowen: Crypto has to compete against a bunch of other emerging payments technologies. Bitcoin is too inflexible.

Cowen: I'll bet on the payments companies over crypto.
ALL

More from Society

Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
Remember: Just because an idea is old doesn't mean it's good.

Knowing whether old ideas are more likely to be good requires understanding whether conditions have changed in important ways.

Horse archery was an amazing method of warfare for over a thousand years...then people invented guns, and suddenly this great idea that had stood the test of time became obsolete.

Then again, when underlying conditions don't change much, tried-and-true approaches are probably better.

"Learning the lessons of history" usually just means assuming ergodicity and stationarity in an informal time-series model...

(end)
SOCIETY
Arielle Selya
Arielle Selya
@ArielleSelya
1/14 How do e-cigarettes (ECs) affect cigarette smoking among youth? My new paper with @FloeFoxon simulates each scenario and finds out which one best matches actual trends... https://t.co/dBB7kcnTls @jgitchell @mikepesko @SwitchFinder @jkelovuori @TobPolicy @Clive_Bates

2/14 First, let's talk about why this question is so difficult to answer: COUNTERFACTUALS. We can't know the alternate-reality answers, like which smokers would have never started in a world without ECs, and which nonsmokers would now be smoking without ECs as an option.

3/14 So, the best we can do is use fancy/sophisticated methodologies to estimate what would have happened to youth smoking rates in the absence of ECs. In our case, simulation modeling


4/14 First, we look at the declining smoking trends *that were already happening* before ECs came (~2010), and project them into the present. This is our BASE-CASE SCENARIO about what smoking trends would be if ECs were never invented. Actual trends were LOWER than this base-case


5/14 Side note about terminology: We use the term “catalyst” instead of “gateway,” because “catalyst” is more precise about the claim we are modeling (that ECs are used first, and then causally lead to smoking). Whereas "gateway" can include other mechanisms like renormalization.
SOCIETY
Advertisement
Robert #Resist Sandy
Robert #Resist Sandy
@frodofied
Real talk.

The right as spent years trying to paint @NancyPelosi & @HillaryClinton as extreme leftists who will take your guns, sterilize your sons, outlaw Christianity, and tax you at 80%.

Meanwhile...

The far left has tried to insist that they were both Republican-lite.

1/

Some on the far left call them war mongering neoliberal corporate owned whores.

That's on a good day, for both.

None of these charges, by either side, are remotely true of course. Not that this matters to the people putting this shit out there.

2/

The facts are these.

@HillaryClinton and @NancyPelosi have been fighting people, usually white men, for tnings their entire lives.

With little respite.

At times they have had to make impossible choices and compromises just to beo let in the door. Most women have.

3/

It must be easy to be some 26 yo white dude who has never had anyone tell him no his whole life to sit in judgement of women like them.

"How dare she..."

...do what was necessary to get a place at the table.

...do exactly what men have been doing w/o your disapproval.

4/

Let's face it, most men suck when it comes to issues that don't pertain directly to their own self interests. White men are even worse. We just are.

Most men especially suck when it comes to women's issues and I mean really suck.

How many left leaning men fell to #MeToo?

5/
SOCIETY
Yet Another Columnist
Yet Another Columnist
@Sime0nStylites
One wonders how long Lord Frost will retain his new position. The personnel decisions made by the PM are nothing if not frequent, ruthless and mercurial.

The whole affair is very curious. While I am sure that Lord Frost’s elevation owes much to his relationship with the PM and the perceived success of the Brexit negotiation, it is very curious indeed that allegedly it took a threat to resign to secure this new role.

A role which is needed (although might have been structured differently) but was to a large effect previously undertaken (with reasonable success) by Michael Gove who one might imagine may not be entirely happy with this diminishment of his responsibilities.

What might have happened to have resulted in this dramatic and to some extent destructive move (which appears to have been played out in the context of a wider struggle that saw Oliver Lewis (previously Lord Frost’s (LF) negotiation deputy)?

The original sin, of course, is the agreement to the Northern Ireland Protocol. Who knows who did what to who or thought what about what but my speculation is the PM either did not understand the consequences of the Protocol or was assured they could be successfully addressed.
SOCIETY
Rob Ford
Rob Ford
@robfordmancs
Two things can be true at once:
1. There is an issue with hostility some academics have faced on some issues
2. Another academic who himself uses threats of legal action to bully colleagues into silence is not a good faith champion of the free speech cause


I have kept quiet about Matthew's recent outpourings on here but as my estwhile co-author has now seen fit to portray me as an enabler of oppression I think I have a right to reply. So I will.

I consider Matthew to be a colleague and a friend, and we had a longstanding agreement not to engage in disputes on twitter. I disagree with much in the article @UOzkirimli wrote on his research in @openDemocracy but I strongly support his right to express such critical views

I therefore find it outrageous that Matthew saw fit to bully @openDemocracy with legal threats, seeking it seems to stifle criticism of his own work. Such behaviour is simply wrong, and completely inconsistent with an academic commitment to free speech.

I am not embroiling myself in the various other cases Matt lists because, unlike him, I think attention to the detail matters and I don't have time to research each of these cases in detail.
SOCIETY

You May Also Like

V\u0936\u0941\u0926\u094d\u0927\u093f
Vशुद्धि...
@V_Shuddhi
The first ever world map was sketched thousands of years ago by Indian saint
“Ramanujacharya” who simply translated the following verse from Mahabharat and gave the world its real face

In Mahabharat,it is described how 'Maharishi Ved Vyasa' gave away his divine vision to Sanjay


Dhritarashtra's charioteer so that he could describe him the events of the upcoming war.

But, even before questions of war could begin, Dhritarashtra asked him to describe how the world looks like from space.

This is how he described the face of the world:

सुदर्शनं प्रवक्ष्यामि द्वीपं तु कुरुनन्दन। परिमण्डलो महाराज द्वीपोऽसौ चक्रसंस्थितः॥
यथा हि पुरुषः पश्येदादर्शे मुखमात्मनः। एवं सुदर्शनद्वीपो दृश्यते चन्द्रमण्डले॥ द्विरंशे पिप्पलस्तत्र द्विरंशे च शशो महान्।

—वेद व्यास, भीष्म पर्व, महाभारत


Meaning:-

हे कुरुनन्दन ! सुदर्शन नामक यह द्वीप चक्र की भाँति गोलाकार स्थित है, जैसे पुरुष दर्पण में अपना मुख देखता है, उसी प्रकार यह द्वीप चन्द्रमण्डल में दिखायी देता है। इसके दो अंशो मे पीपल और दो अंशो मे विशाल शश (खरगोश) दिखायी देता है।


Meaning: "Just like a man sees his face in the mirror, so does the Earth appears in the Universe. In the first part you see leaves of the Peepal Tree, and in the next part you see a Rabbit."

Based on this shloka, Saint Ramanujacharya sketched out the map, but the world laughed
ALL
SK
SK
@sk_diary1
Kolaru Pathigam-Thevaram hymn composed by ThiruGnana Sambandar- #Thread

In Tamil Kol means planets,Aru means cut- set of songs in Kolaru Pathigam addresses all Navagrahas& last 2 lines of every song with end a plea to Bhagwan Shiva to reduce/erase the ill effects of Navagrahas


கோளறு பதிகம் - This pathigam was sung by Thirugnana Sambandar at Thirumaraikadu Kshetram -Vedaranyam,Tamilnadu

Thirugnana Sambandar & Appar(Thirunavukkarasar) travelled together to various Shiva Alayam to spread shivam & bhakti among people.They both reached Thirumaraikadu.


Thirumaraikadu(Vedaranyam) -
Appar & Sambandar were asked to enter the temple through side entrance.The main door was locked by Vedas many years ago.Appar&Sambandar sang devotional hymns praising Shiva, after which the gates opened & closed.After which main door opened for all.


After darshan of Bhagwan Shiva at Thirumaraikkadu,Sambandar received a message to travel to Madurai.
During that time, Samanam was on the rise in the Pandya Kingdom.The Pandya King converted to Samanam.The Queen Mangaiyarkkarasi was a staunch Shiva devotee and was upset.

Kularchirai Nayanar ,Chief Minister of Pandya kingdom was in agony by the turn of events.Queen requested Kulachirai Nayanar to escort Thiru gnana Sambandar to Madurai.Kularchirai Nayanar met Thiru gnana Sambandar at Thirumaraikkadu & requested him to visit Madurai.
ALL
Advertisement
Dr. Jane Clare Jones
Dr. Jane Clare Jones
@janeclarejones
So, on the subject of bonkers hyperbolic pretzeling over the Bell judgement, Grace 'destroy books I don't like & make inappropriate jokes about sterilising teenage girls' Lavery has some thoughts.

Tell me why my feminism is wrong Grace.

Oh

Well, if anyone thought the Bell judgment was going to make TRAs reconsider making massively overblown claims with no evidence backed up with nothing but a thick wadge of emotional blackmail.... HAHAHA, no one thought that.


A high court in the UK made a delimited judgment about teenager's ability to consent to puberty blockers. This puts all trans people everywhere in the world at risk.

Because if any human anywhere has any thoughts that deviate in any way from the rote line dictated by

the trans rights movement, this puts all trans people everywhere in mortal danger.

Let's be honest Grace. It doesn't put trans people at risk. It puts trans ideology at risk. Because trans ideology depends on the idea of innate gender identity, and the trans child is the

necessary material evidence of the ontology of gender identity.

That is, children are being medicalised to provide evidence to underwrite adults identities.

Nothing to see here.
LAW
Jaya_Upadhyaya
Jaya_Upadhyaya
@Jayalko1
GHATI SUBRAMANYA, DODDABALLAPURA (KAR)
#bharatmandir

One of the most important place for snake worship.
The murtis of Kartikeya and Narasimha are self-manifested.
There is an anthill which is opposite the shrine. Bhaktas pour milk on it as part of rituals.


Here Subramanya performed penance in the form of snake. He sought protection from Narsimha for Nagas from Sri Vishnu’s vehicle Garuda, known for his dislike towards serpents.
The Pushya Suddha Shasti is one of the biggest festivals here believed to be appearance day of Subramanya


It was in this region where Subramanya vanquished Ghatikasura, the demon. Hence called Ghati Subramanya.
Childless couples visit here to seek blessings for getting a child.
The installation of snake murtis near the shrine is believed to be an auspicious act.


The murti of Karthikeya with a seven headed cobra faces eastwards while Narasimha faces westwards.
To ensure that both are visible to bhaktas at the same time, a huge mirror is placed in the rear in the sanctum sanctorum.
ALL
Andrey \uf8ff Azimov
Andrey  Azimov
@AndreyAzimov
The best way to know if people like your product is NOT:

- Have a lot of emails in the waiting list
- Become #1 on PH
- Become #1 of HN or Reddit
- Have people that saing "I'll pay"
- Have a lot of free users

The best way to know if they're actually pay for it.

The only thing that matters is your product providing a value, and you can't know this until people will pay money for it.

We can have a first signal of a product/market fit after the launch by check how many sales we've got in the first 24h. Some scale:

200+ This has a high potential.
100+: This has a potential.
50+: Some people need it.
10+: People almost don't need it.
0+: People don't need it.

This is for a single time payment product. For a subscription probably it should be less because people hate subscription.

And obviously, you should have a lot of traffic like 3-5k+.

Here is a stat for my products (macOS apps) for the first 24h after the launch:
STARTUPS