In general, I'm against govt interventions like this, but in the case of housing, I agree with you. For a society to function in a healthy way, it can't be divided in social class "gettos". It is the responsibility of the State to spend public funds to avoid that. This is not about fairness and equality. It's about the long term survival of a society.
Even further: extremely affordable technology now exists such that the leaders of our "democracies" could ask the public's opinions on such matters in a wide variety of fine-grained ways, or even better: facilitate a high quality moderated public conversation that actually involves the public on these and other matters. This may even be a requirement for a healthy society.
Unfortunately, current styles of "democracy" not only do not do this, they instead engage in deceptive propaganda to make it appear like they do this and more (how you can tell: observe how people praise "democracy", based on clearly silly memes). I often wonder if the quality of these institutions in an absolute sense (as opposed to a relative comparison to literal fascist dictatorships, the only other option dontchaknow) may have something to do with some people thinking they should be eliminated and replaced, a sentiment which is always and without exception represented as being dumb/etc.
Note also that these institutions also control school curriculum, which "denies" the public the skills needed to realize any of this is going on, how utterly riddled with error and deceit/delusion the public conversation is, etc.
take how Hidalgo is deprioritizing private automobiles on the streets of Paris
most of the public was passionately and intensely opposed to that, but she did it anyway
now, people can't imagine ever going back to how it was before - families being able to walk and ride bikes along the Seine and Rue de Rivoli is too nice
= asking for peoples opinion on stuff in lots of cases is just going to result in locking in status quo because people don't really know what they want, but they're usually pro status quo and opposed to change
It depends how you do it. For example, if you ask their opinion and then carry out that opinion without thinking about it, it would probably not yield optimum results, because humans almost always hallucinate (our culture teaches them this behavior). But with patient guidance I believe it is possible for people to improve over time.
As it is, we are at the mercy of bureaucrats with questionable ethics and goals, who also also always hallucinate (again, because of culture), so this is not a fantastic position to insist on maintaining either.
It has been well demonstrated that under very specific conditions, humans can achieve a state of high coherence. We've only managed this in a few select domains so far, because of hard work and counter-cultural attention to detail, and mainly: because a few individuals thought it seemed like a good idea, and made it happen against the odds. I personally think we can make it happen again, but not if no one tries.
> now, people can't imagine
Not quite. In fact, people cannot stop imagining, the problem is that they do not have control over it, or realize they are doing it. But we are in luck: we have children and teenagers, who have yet to fall victim to the hypnosis/Maya that has spread throughout the adult world. They could teach adults how to do it in a controlled manner, as we could in the past, or ideally even better (children and teenagers have never had enough say in decisions if you ask me, they are waaaaaaaay better than adults at specific forms and domains of thinking).
> asking for peoples opinion on stuff in lots of cases is just going to...
Local democracies on housing questions are extremely consistent the world over: no more people near me. If there absolutely must be more people near me, they better be exactly like me.
I agree. But then on the other hand, there is a wide variety of ways that can be brought to bear to "encourage" humans to change their minds.
Alternatively, we could [1] consider waking up for even a short period of time and put some mental effort into considering whether our most sacred operating system may not actually be what it is advertised (and thus: believed) to be.
Is it not rather funny that thousands of incredibly smart programmers, systems analysts, etc are not able to even consider whether the system that controls our lives and well being, not to mention the literal continued existence of many thousands of innocent people throughout the world could maybe be substantially improved?
Day after day we engage in the pointing of fingers, funny how the fingers never get pointed at ourselves.
[1] Well, I am speaking a bit loosely: the laws of physics in this environment support it, but that does not guarantee that it is completely supported.
Massive quantities of evidence exist demonstrating that human beings have at least some capacity to believe that they have concern for the well being of other humans.
Prime example: do you remember that big pandemic a few years ago? Do you remember how passionate most people were that everyone should go get their vaccinations, to protect each other? I sincerely think that these people genuinely believed that the feelings they were experiencing were sincere, and human belief even if non-genuine is an incredibly powerful force, maybe even the most powerful of all forces.
The charitable impulse in municipal housing politics gets you a cluster of tiny trailer homes on a parking lot surrounded by a 8 foot fence in an industrial part of town far away. Maybe, if you are feeling especially magnanimous, a servant’s outbuilding in the shadow of your house.
It’s not in human nature to give charity that would elevate others to the same or, God forbid, higher status as compared to the benefactor.
Wherever a young person, newcomer, or upstart has a reasonable chance of attaining what the incumbents enjoy, you’re probably going to find them taking it through market competition, not having it allocated to them by a vote of the incumbents.
