Abundance, YIMBY, neo-liberalism and libertarianism
Taking the win on supply-side progressivism
Meme credit: Jamie Bosanko @banjoeskimo.bsky.social.
Inflection Points is a new online publication 'focused on long-form writing and research that engages with the institutions, analysis, and reforms required to build a bigger, better Australia.' It is a project that comes out of the YIMBY movement, and the first issue features an excellent piece by Jon O'Brien from Melbourne YIMBY on the role of the planning profession in Australia's chronic housing shortage (The Problem with Urban Planning: A professional monopoly is gatekeeping our growth).
These initiatives are local manifestations of the 'abundance' and progress movements that have been given additional impetus with the publication of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's book of the same name. The book has resonated in Australia, including with some in government.
The local YIMBY movement is notable as a grassroots and largely volunteer rebellion against the planning system that restricts new dwelling constructin. Melbourne YIMBY also has the backing of Open Philanthropy as part of its Abundance and Growth program, as well as Emergent Ventures, which I am assuming is backing Inflection Points. There are obvious similarities with another Emergent Ventures project, Works in Progress magazine.
As in other countries, the motivating force behind the local YIMBY movement is the shortage of housing, a problem that has a very straightforward fix: in the words of a former Australian labour union leader, 'build the fucking houses.' The median dwelling price in Sydney is over $1 million. That is a massive policy failure, one that is increasingly spilling over into other areas of public policy, like higher education and immigration. The demand-side of the housing market is increasingly being socialised through increased rental assistance, assistance to first home buyers, and government lending guarantees in an effort to mitigate the impact of the underlying shortfall in new housing construction relative to demand. It is a dynamic that the Niskanen Center has labelled cost-disease socialism.
It is not surprising that young people in particular should question why we have failed to produce enough of something as basic as shelter. It was inevitable that some of them would correctly identify the source of the problem: we have made home building illegal unless expressly permitted by an expensive, discretionary planning and zoning regime. The local YIMBY movement has taken it into their own hands to fix the problem. This has included going to local council meetings to support the building of new homes and encouraging planning reforms. These efforts have met with some success, including planning reforms in the state of New South Wales. I am a member of Sydney YIMBY, and you too can join here.
If you subscribe to the housing theory of everything, then there is simply no more important domestic policy issue. When I wrote about housing affordability for CIS more than 10 years ago, one of the myths I tackled was the very pernicious but all too commonly heard idea that housing investment is unproductive. I argued that high house prices were an indication that we were not investing nearly enough in new home building (in real terms). Once we appreciate that cities are labour markets and labour productivity has an important spatial component it becomes apparent that new dwelling construction is one of the most productive investments we can undertake. For the most part, it comes at no cost to the budget, in contrast to measures taken to mitigate the shortfall in housing supply, such as socialising the cost of housing finance.