The only problem is that in the US, if you let apartments and townhouses to be built, homeowners will get muscled out by large builder concerns and single family homes will be converted into dense housing--which sounds great, until you realize there's no way those housing concerns will SELL those units--they're going to be rented forever. There's no incentive to actually sell those to people and every reason to keep them as rentable apartments forever.
So you have attractive locations being completely dominated by rentable corporate owned housing and the net outcome is that people are completely boxed out of home ownership. There's no way pricing comes down because they do this in areas where people are willing to pay top dollar to live.
I live near Ann Arbor and we're seeing it play out right now--more dense housing in the inner core is being allowed (as current thinking says should be done) and whats happening is that smaller old-timey landlords and homeowners are being pushed out and their homes and apartment buildings are being replaced with brand new high dollar rentals. Not condos (although there are some of those as well, but fewer), rentals. And the rental prices are going up! Normal people get pushed further and further from the attractive areas to live, and pressure from these people moving out pushes up rent in the surrounding areas.
Usually it means that supply gets bought up and converted (and leaves the supply, often).
The desire is that a row of single family homes (say a block has 10) get slowly redeveloped into a row of brownstones or similar density - but they're still single family and owned by the residents, but now you have 20 in the same space, or 30. You can triple the density and not really change anything else.
But what ends up happening is that the single family homes remain single family, get slowly bought up by a developer and rented, and then the entire block gets turned into an apartment complex, perhaps with the same or even more units, but they're all rentals forever.
This might be fine, and perhaps even encouraged in some areas, but it does reduce the supply of homes to buy.
I mean, they could, but there's no incentive for the builders to sell them. You can make way more money with rentals (if the demand is there) then you can with condos. Condos are a way time hit of money, rentals are smaller profit, but comes reliably.
Right now holding rental apartments is a "good deal" and they'll have buyers for that (the builders don't want to hold anything usually, they want to sell, sell, sell and get building the next thing) - just larger institutional buyers.
When the market turns around (and every time in the past it was "only going up" it eventually ended) then suddenly you have apartment complexes turning into condos to sell off capital and stop the bleeding.
The problem for people "on the ground/in the rentals" is that can force you to act when you're not financially prepared to - it's easy to find situations where someone can afford the rent; even afford the mortgage to BUY the apartment as a condo; but cannot afford the downpayment (or otherwise qualify for the loan).
You're right. It doesn't matter though. People love 'big fixes', the reality of systemic change is hard to present in a 2 minute sound bite or Instagram reel. This is the kind of 'fix' that gets implemented, then when things don't magically improve people will just give up.
They’re already straining to truck in enough water for survival now WITH some of the wells still working. If the ability to source water locally stops the people of Tehran will either need to move or die. With aquifers running dry from iran to Afghanistan they’ll have to migrate even further. I think we could see the entire region plunge further into chaos as the water crisis worsens.
That's just a Western pipe dream. The water crisis could trigger a revolt but the fundamentals for such revolt have to be there rather than the water crisis being the sole reason.
> people of Tehran will either need to move or die
No. I've lived (along a million other people) without water for many months during a hot summer episode. It was a major lifestyle degradation (and major doesn't even begin to describe it) but death was not a threat (though there was fear of disease spread due to possible degradation of sanitary conditions but that didn't happen either).
In 10 years there won’t be a regime in Iran because Iran won’t exist as it does today. With the collapsing water table people are going to be forced into either death or migration.
I don’t want to be a doom and gloom guy, but the climate change collapse is starting to happen in front of our eyes—and not just in a far off ‘eventually this will be a problem’ way.
A major factor, but also include aging infrastructure and population growth. The giant data centres around the world are going to use up high amounts of water and electricity.
“The government blames the current crisis on changing climate [but] the dramatic water security issues of Iran are rooted in decades of disintegrated planning and managerial myopia,” says Keveh Madani, a former deputy head of the country’s environment department and now director of the United Nations University’s Institute of Water, Environment and Health.
...
While failed rains may be the immediate cause of the crisis, they say, the root cause is more than half a century of often foolhardy modern water engineering — extending back to before the country’s Islamic revolution of 1979, but accelerated by the Ayatollahs’ policies since.
There is more water in Iran than before global warming, not less. Oh and in other places where there is less water due to global warming, like Spain, there is no water shortage.
Sorry but this one is just 100% the fault of the government involved. It could have easily been prevented and it was known to the month when it would happen decades in advance, nothing was done.
It’s because this is a very simplified view of a classroom. What is presented above is the best case scenario, not a realistic one. For example, there’s no consideration of costs associated with any sort of handicapped student, or student with special education needs.
Real world costs completely spiral out of control when you look at the actual system—for example, the buildings are all built during the rapid expansion of the country so are now old enough to need expensive maintenance, and there isn’t money or interest from the community to tear them down and build new ones.
Also something else that isn’t being covered is that involved parents are pulling their kids out for home schooling, and well behaved kids are increasingly being pulled out and put in charter sschools. This is leading to a rapid collapse of the school system. Public school is being left as a place for students who’s parents don’t care enough to do anything with them, or with enough behavioral or special needs that charter schools won’t handle them.
I’m an American and I can safely vouch that myself and most of the people I know deeply believe in the American ideals that have been presented as gospel for decades—fair play, hard work, rule of law, loving our neighbors (regardless of legal status), and to a one, believe that as soon as you swear your oath at the immigration court, you’re an American, regardless of the circumstances of your birth.
The situation we find ourselves in is that the American of today does not represent us well. I have hopes for the future, but time will tell.
> and I can safely vouch that myself and most of the people I know
That's great, too bad none of those people sit in positions of power or anywhere near your government, because from the outside for the last two decades or more, those ideals are not visible to us at all, neither when we look at the foreign policy nor internal.
I'm sure the tides will eventually turn, but we're talking decades more likely than years, since it's been turning this direction for decades already, and I don't see it tipping the balance in the other way even today or the near-future. GLHF at the very least, I do hope things get better for everyone.
Yeah, that is something I don't get. You can hear all around the Internet "we did not vote of this!" yet you don see any visible reaction to all these bad decisions lately - no protests in the streets, no real attempts to block these things, people resigning rather then implementing bad decisions.
I just don't get it - unless all those ideals were just a show from the start.
I'm not sure what the purpose is to go out on the streets for half a day, then everyone goes back inside and continue like nothing ever happen?
Go out, stay out until change is enacted. It's called striking, and if you had any sort of good unions, they'd be planning a general strike for a long time, and it should go on until you get change.
You know, like how other "modern" countries do it when the politicians forget who they actually work for.
I'm not sure if you're mixing things, or if I missed anything, but the "No Kings" things were protests, not a "strike" and very far from being a "general strike". Those practices are very different from just "protesting".
Employers can fire you in the US for general strikes. You're only protected if you're striking for grievances against the company, not for solidarity actions. Indeed, unions can be dissolved for it.
Add in how large the US is, it's population size, distribution, how far most people live from Washington D.C. and a cultural knee-jerk response to anything remotely seen as bullying of digging their heels in or fight back means they're far, far more difficult to do effectively here than in "modern" countries.
> Employers can fire you in the US for general strikes. You're only protected if you're striking for grievances against the company, not for solidarity actions. Indeed, unions can be dissolved for it.
Yeah, but thankfully, solidarity kind of solves that, as people fired from their jobs because they're striking would be supported by the community. But, if the country doesn't have a history of having built such a community, often with big help from socialist and left-leaning groups, the options you have available today are kind of few.
But best day for it is today, even if yesterday wasn't very good.
The "No Kings" protest had absolutely no subject or issue other than repeating Trump's name. What would it have meant for it to have been successful? What I mean by that is what could "X" be in the sentence: "If X policy had changed, the No Kings rallies would have accomplished one of their goals"?
It was just an astroturfed Democratic party rally that drummed up participation by mass text spam from Indian call centers. The turnout was positively geriatric.
Incidentally, the Democratic Party has started running into a severe issue with text spammers and fake orgs asking for donations and raking in millions, and the people doing it are people who are actually involved with the party.
Those Constant Texts Asking You to Donate to Democrats Are Scams
People in the US seems allergic to unions and any sort of solidarity movements, so now you have all these individuals believing them to be the strongest individual, not realizing you need friends and grass-root movements to actually have any sort of civil opposition.
There does seem to be some slight improvements of this situation as of late, video game companies and other obvious sectors getting more unions. But still, even on HN you see lots of FUD about unions, I'm guessing because of the shitty state of police unions and generally the history of unions in the US, but there really isn't any way out of the current situation without solidarity across the entire working class and middle class in the US, even if they're right, left, center or purple.
> The situation we find ourselves in is that the American of today does not represent us well.
The thing the person you're replying to points out is that, while you may be earnest in your comment and representative of a majority of US citizen, that is not how the US as a country has worked for a very long time, and it was possible because you and your fellow citizen were either too ignorant or not involved enough.
I'll simply point to the history of Central and South America as evidence of my claim.
Look, we can all acknowledge that there were, and are, many Americans who wish for this to be true. But at no point in America's history did that "many" ever constitute a majority. Or even close to it.
Which is why, from its very inception, the US has employed mass genocide at home, invasions & regime changes in the America's, then post-slavery apartheid at home, with invasions & regime changes in the rest of the world.
That's not anti-American rhetoric. That's just historical fact.
So, commingled with those facts, where does "law, love & fair play" come in. If you're honest, THAT was the propaganda. And the above realities, that was the truth.
The America of today IS the America it has always been. Its just that the propaganda mask can't be reattached with more duct tape. America started by geniciding non-whites at home, and rounding up & dragging non-whites TO America, in chains.
Now it's genociding non-whites abroad (primarily the Middle East), and rounding up & dragging non-whites FROM America, in chains.
When you focus on the common threads throughout American history, and strip away the fluff, you realise ... that's the real America (which still has the largest slave labour force in the world, through indentured workforces via its prison system).
I'm not even sure it was never a majority. I'm not even sure it's not a majority now. It's more that the system is not set up to be good, even if the majority wants it to be.
I think both can be true. The problem is that there are many people who believe as you do, but the system is set up in such way that those people are dissuaded from gaining power and influence, while the most machiavellian and amoral find an easy path.
As a seventh generation American, war veteran who has been in public service for 22 of my 25 working years and mixed race person, America has literally never organizationally been any of the things you describe.
We are a nation of selfish, narcissists that have no concept of consistent long lasting care based communities.
What little care we give each other is mediated through transactions or cult based social alignment.
Any nation made up of human beings is going to be flawed. The way forward is via incremental change and compromise. Forcing societal change does not, and never has, worked.
It looks like Musk was able to buy Twitter and, together with the other media magnates, force a massive societal change in USA. At least from the outside looking in, before this year USA seemed to be a democracy (with some factions doing their best to subvert that) and the Constitution seemed to be a widely supported basis for that democracy. But now, the Constitution has been torn to shreds and seemingly with massive support from people who will call sand wet and water dry if Trump tells them communists don't agree with it and that his clever uncle told him so.
The fallacy is believing the country has ever perfectly embodied the principals of its people. Unlike your and others dismissive talk of my 'bright eyed idealism' I and the people that I interact with fully understand the missteps and failures of our country.
That does not stop us from working towards making the nation a better place. I'm stubborn and loud and I talk to politicians and others when I see things that I don't think are right. Maybe (probably) I'm tilting at windmills. But I'm not giving up on what I think the United States should be.
The fallacy is believing that people have principals. A country is in essence people and the failure of a country is atomically identical to failure in people. When you blame the "country" you are blaming people, aka yourself.
The bright eyed idealism I refer to is the failure to recognize that when you look at your own country you are looking in a mirror.
It's not only that. The type of patriotism that people have in the US is unlike any other. No offense but the only word I can use to describe it is utter arrogance, like the US is a synonym for Utopia and the US is humanities best attempt ever at it. You see patriotism in other countries in the sense that "I love my country" but you don't see it in the sense that "My country is the greatest" like you see with Americans.
I mean to be fair you do get governments who try to get people to think that their country is the greatest but none of the citizenry really buy into it (think: North Korea). But for America, a large number of people literally think America is the greatest and this is what is unique about American patriotism. You embody it.
I assume marketing. I’m wondering what will happen when they force the afghan refugees back over the border into Afghanistan since they don’t have the water to give them.
Climate change and bad decisions from the last 50 years are starting to bite now. It’ll just get worse. Expect migrations and countries collapsing as millions of people are pushed to migrate for survival.
The drinking water is just part of the issue (as you said). Water is used in countless industrial processes, farming, EVERYTHING. if the water goes, so does everything else.
And it’s not just water going away—it’s impingement by salt as well.
> Drinking water is such a tiny proportion of total water use
A lot of water infrastructure needs minimum levels to function. Drinking water may be a small fraction of use. But if the big users deplete a reservoir below its minimum operational level, the fact that the dead water is enough to keep Tehran alive is more trivia than solace.
> Climate change and bad decisions from the last 50 years are starting to bite now. It’ll just get worse. Expect migrations and countries collapsing as millions of people are pushed to migrate for survival.
For those unfamiliar, climate change and drought are believed to be one of the major causes of the bronze age civilization collapse
People speculate climate change and drought are one of the causes for every major collapse in history. It's even likely, because people keep fighting the collapse until something forces their hands, and that's one recurrent big thing to trigger change.
That said, we never had the climate change that strongly on history.
In Iran the cause of the water shortage is at least 99.9% the current government's policies. If global warming accelerated matters it was by days or weeks probably.
But you have to admit it would be very funny if a theocracy was forced to abandon it's capital by forces of nature.
Old techniques like Qanats and Shabestans aren't going to help Iranians deal with effluents in the water, or straight-up water misuse by businesses controlled by the Ayatollahs.
Look, I know they didn’t fare well against Israeli F-35s and American B-2s, but the tech disparity isn’t quite as bad as them using Super Soakers for air defense.
Ten million civilians are about to deeply suffer. A multi-year drought is a key contributor.
So you have attractive locations being completely dominated by rentable corporate owned housing and the net outcome is that people are completely boxed out of home ownership. There's no way pricing comes down because they do this in areas where people are willing to pay top dollar to live.
I live near Ann Arbor and we're seeing it play out right now--more dense housing in the inner core is being allowed (as current thinking says should be done) and whats happening is that smaller old-timey landlords and homeowners are being pushed out and their homes and apartment buildings are being replaced with brand new high dollar rentals. Not condos (although there are some of those as well, but fewer), rentals. And the rental prices are going up! Normal people get pushed further and further from the attractive areas to live, and pressure from these people moving out pushes up rent in the surrounding areas.
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