logoalt Hacker News

somepersontoday at 3:18 AM1 replyview on HN

There a lot of desirable areas in a country and a fixed amount of people.

The equilibrium between demand and supply has the supply curve impacted by a whole host of policy choices.

Eg housing is impacted by cost of permitting, regulations, cost of materials and labor etc.

All of these things can be improved by policy.

There's a strong argument that especially infrastructure but housing should be built with people on work visas.


Replies

seanmcdirmidtoday at 5:18 AM

Water is the primary limiter on city population sizes in the west. I wouldn’t be surprised if San Diego wasn’t at its limit already with respect to water resources, but I haven’t looked into it. Desalination could improve that.

If we could have Chinese work crews come in and build housing, especially 30 story concrete towers that are popular in Asia, we could build fairly cheaply, that isn’t really the limitation (it’s easier to solve than getting water to those new units for expanded population).

show 2 replies