I think I got what you were saying about the story exactly backwards, sorry.

Reading Comprehension roll: Nat 1.

> Housing cost crises everywhere from Vancouver to NYC to Tampa to London are far too sharp, far too recent, and far to correlated with the concentration of assets at the top of the wealth distribution to be “because we need to build more housing”.

This isn't recent at all. London workers literally have got paid more than non-London workers for at least the last 20 years due to housing costs. That, of course, only sends housing prices upward, but then many other factors do to.

London population's gone up by 1.7m people since the year 2010[0], and housing has gone up by 280000 dwellings in that same period[1].

To cope, rent and prices have gone way up, and large homes have been divided into several smaller ones, and there are HMOs as well, as the market reacts to that massive pressure.

> The idea that the person at the median is doing as well as they were ten years ago is a weird religion, the idea that they’re doing as well as their parents is a cult.

It's true for almost everything except housing, which can be explained by the above.

[0] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/22860/lond...

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/788390/number-of-dwellin...

> Housing cost crises everywhere from Vancouver to NYC to Tampa to London are far too sharp, far too recent, and far to correlated with the concentration of assets at the top of the wealth distribution to be “because we need to build more housing”.

And yet Austin actually *has* built more housing, and prices have come down.

Maybe in five or ten years it'll look more like you describe, but it sure doesn't yet.

Sounds pretty good compared to the current state of things in many places for many people. At least they 1) don't need to slave away at grueling, pointless jobs, 2) have their own housing, and 3) aren't starving.

But relative inequality matters in the social realm. It limits poor people's access to mates and allies. Also it could be that relative wealth is more important than absolute in terms of people's well being

The line that people have it so much better than previous generations or other countries is almost always aimed at the lower ranks of society. Nobody tells the billionaires how good they have it.

Inability to save, class immobility, and insecurity of both food and housing are identical problems regardless of whether smartphones have been invented. It's telling who, specifically, advances claims about the notional fabulous wealth of the impoverished in the US.

In any case the assertion that poor communities are in any way better off than their predecessors is only accurate if you push you compare cohorts ~80 years or more apart. After the advent of social safety net programs in the US the working poor were (at least for a time) significantly more able to eventually join the middle class. Modern limitations on earnings and savings that have been applied to these programs has provably reduced this kind of class mobility.

Additionally, the combination of hyperconcentration of wealth, deregulation, and globalized trade have all played a part in the near total elimination of economic opportunity in rural communities.

How can a society ever not be Turing complete when even an isolated human already is?

Who selects the questions people vote? What happens when they get something like this in the screen in the middle of a football match:

> We have preliminary evidence that XYZ is a terrorist and we are sending him to a nice special house with a swimming pool to protect everyone until the investigation finishes. [OK] [Ask me later]

There are nations and societies very different from the United States. In the United States, we can see the distrust in our neighbors play out politically, contrasted with other societies trust. You can even see it play out across various states and regions. Perhaps they’re not mountains imposed by human nature, but our perception of society.

Other nations have socialized healthcare, where anyone can be treated. Other nations have calm safe and clean public transit. Other nation’s redistribute wealth and provide strong safety nets. Other nations don’t have mass violence. Other nations guarantee retirement and pensions. Other nations trust their governments.

The fantasy physics aren’t what’s holding people back.

Why is innovation and sharing mutually exclusive?