Views (cont'd): Housing supply
Sep. 6th, 2017 07:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtbcHousing is very expensive in the UK; we still rent because incurring debt many times my annual income alarms me. (Our house in Ohio cost us little more than twice my annual gross salary at the time.) I am concerned that many others rent because they cannot afford to do otherwise: this may indicate movement toward the kind of inequality that most exercises Marxists wherein people derive significant income from the work of others.
Some parts of the country cannot easily support many more people: anybody trying to commute into London other than by air can testify to that. If more houses need be built elsewhere then I am inclined to support the creation of more garden cities, inspired by Milton Keynes to have local centers so that there is a good mix of zoning within each district, but more densely packed, especially vertically, so that inhabitants can enjoy cheaper heating, better public transportation and shorter journeys, etc. To be sufficiently attractive they also require good inter-city transportation links.
In contrast to the design of Milton Keynes I would like Britain to depend less on cars, in part for environmental and safety reasons. Sufficiently dense cities make it entirely workable to depend on foot, bicycle or public transport for most journeys and on car clubs and rental agencies for obtaining an appropriate car for one's occasional true need. Government can help to make this viable: for example, in Massachusetts it did not seem possible to purchase a non-owner car insurance policy which was unfortunate as the insurance that came with Zipcar membership was hardly generous.
Many other social changes are needed to enable less car travel. For instance, doctors really need not summon patients back to the practice or hospital just for delivering results: very often I hear of family members making a non-trivial journey for a meeting that is actually quite trivial or that perhaps needs associated phlebotomy that could be done at some local walk-in center. Similarly, much adult education could be delivered remotely but that is still the exception. I telecommute very effectively but it is hard to find employers who encourage routine telecommuting despite the overhead of providing office space.
Trying to reduce travel and increase telepresence raises the specter of globalization: competing in a worldwide labor market. I suspect that there is some inevitability here that is best faced. Nonetheless, with the general liberalization of international trade, such agreements remind me to come back to the Marxist issue of income arising from actual work rather than from assets. While I am fine with intellectual property protections in general, I am less convinced that society benefits from their extending for many decades as creators and their heirs continue to receive income for work that was completed long before. With significantly curtailed periods of protection it may be worth correspondingly increasing government funding for artists or non-profit pharmaceutical research or whatever other activities society judges to warrant support.
I think that these seven recent entries on my political views have now covered a good range of policy areas. It may have been useful for me to articulate these opinions publicly, at least to throw more light on my other entries on politics, but I do not claim that these views are all sincerely held and well-justified. I am used to differing with friends and sometimes being wrong.
Some parts of the country cannot easily support many more people: anybody trying to commute into London other than by air can testify to that. If more houses need be built elsewhere then I am inclined to support the creation of more garden cities, inspired by Milton Keynes to have local centers so that there is a good mix of zoning within each district, but more densely packed, especially vertically, so that inhabitants can enjoy cheaper heating, better public transportation and shorter journeys, etc. To be sufficiently attractive they also require good inter-city transportation links.
In contrast to the design of Milton Keynes I would like Britain to depend less on cars, in part for environmental and safety reasons. Sufficiently dense cities make it entirely workable to depend on foot, bicycle or public transport for most journeys and on car clubs and rental agencies for obtaining an appropriate car for one's occasional true need. Government can help to make this viable: for example, in Massachusetts it did not seem possible to purchase a non-owner car insurance policy which was unfortunate as the insurance that came with Zipcar membership was hardly generous.
Many other social changes are needed to enable less car travel. For instance, doctors really need not summon patients back to the practice or hospital just for delivering results: very often I hear of family members making a non-trivial journey for a meeting that is actually quite trivial or that perhaps needs associated phlebotomy that could be done at some local walk-in center. Similarly, much adult education could be delivered remotely but that is still the exception. I telecommute very effectively but it is hard to find employers who encourage routine telecommuting despite the overhead of providing office space.
Trying to reduce travel and increase telepresence raises the specter of globalization: competing in a worldwide labor market. I suspect that there is some inevitability here that is best faced. Nonetheless, with the general liberalization of international trade, such agreements remind me to come back to the Marxist issue of income arising from actual work rather than from assets. While I am fine with intellectual property protections in general, I am less convinced that society benefits from their extending for many decades as creators and their heirs continue to receive income for work that was completed long before. With significantly curtailed periods of protection it may be worth correspondingly increasing government funding for artists or non-profit pharmaceutical research or whatever other activities society judges to warrant support.
I think that these seven recent entries on my political views have now covered a good range of policy areas. It may have been useful for me to articulate these opinions publicly, at least to throw more light on my other entries on politics, but I do not claim that these views are all sincerely held and well-justified. I am used to differing with friends and sometimes being wrong.
