Stuck

Podcast, book

Appelbaum posits that the decline in American mobility is the most important social change in the last fifty years and that it’s the fault of the progressive movement.

I found it fascinating to learn how high mobility was in the past and in particular about “moving day” each year where all the leases¹ expired simultaneously leading to musical chairs situation where everyone moved at once while the Europeans came over and spectated. Apparently it still happens in Quebec; I should go gawk.

Appelbaum argues that this is mobility was unprecedented in world history and led to a new permissionless society: if you didn’t like your current situation you could up and move, reinvent yourself, and knock on your neighbors’ door to reestablish community.

As someone who has moved several times for opportunity this resonated with. I was born in the growing city of Charlotte where almost everyone had moved there and community was easy to establish as everyone was looking for it. As families grew the children continued the pattern of mobility dispersing to chase their individual dreams.

But of course that freewheeling state of affairs wouldn’t last long: someone always wants to object. This is where zoning laws came in. And the ever lurking villain behind them: racism aimed at Chinese Americans in California and Jewish Americans in NYC. But those laws were blatantly illegal unless they could get enough similar laws on the books that it was simply standard practice. And they suceeded: zoning and NIMBYism were born.

The twist came when Appelbaum suggested that progressive policies in the 70s metastacized the zoning cancer. In particular progressives loved adding citizen suit provisions to their laws enabling individuals without traditional standing to sue in the public interest. Well intentioned but inevitably the “public interest” for some turns out to be a thinly veiled desire to limit housing development. So now instead of racist city boards saying no to housing for disfavored groups; anybody gets to say no to anybody.

Without reading the book I’m not sure I trust the causality. Effectively Appelbaum argues that progressive governance lead to heavy interference in housing markets causing high housing costs and points out that the most expensive cities to live – the Bay Area or New York City – are reliably democratic. There’s too much confounding here for me to take this at face value; for one both cities are fairly geographically constrained. I could even argue the other way: high housing costs filter for a richer/more educated populace which results in progressive governance.