CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

The Real Abundance Agenda: Weakening Patent and Copyright Monopolies

I know I promised inflation talk, but I forgot to check the timing of the release of the Import Price Index, which will not be out until Tuesday. So, I’ll talk abundance today.

The immediate motivation is an American Prospect piece about how big buck Silicon Valley types are tossing huge money at Democratic politicians who will back their abundance agenda. This seems to be largely about reducing or eliminating zoning and environmental restrictions on building and attacking public education, and especially teachers’ unions.

As I have said in the past, I am sympathetic to at least part of this story. Excessive zoning restrictions have made it extremely difficult to build in places like San Francisco, New York, and other very expensive cities. But there are both political and practical problems that make progress in this area difficult.

The political obstacles are obvious. The NIMBY crowd makes it very difficult to increase density in most high-priced neighborhoods. But the issue is complicated by the fact that in some places they have a case. Places like San Francisco and Paris have huge tourism industries. My guess is that they would attract far fewer tourists if their old neighborhoods were torn down and replaced with mid-rise or high-rise buildings.

If they were less vibrant cities, rents would be lower both because they have more housing, but also because fewer people want to live there. Rent is cheap in Peoria, Illinois, also.

There is also the important point that I have made many times; on a national level, the shortage of housing is the story of the housing bubble and subsequent crash. We were building plenty of housing in the first six years of the century.

Construction then plummeted in 2008 and........

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