quote:
I can acknowledge, on one the hand, the greatness of NYC while, on gone other hand, recognizing how the manipulated real estate market in hyper-urban areas is a significant risk to the American economy.

yeah there are 2 big things that are being confused by people making real criticisms

1. NYC isn't a shithole and is an amazing place and a great place for some people to live. criticizing hyper urbanity doesn't mean that you have to criticize the area itself. i think a good way to frame the commentary is to change "i don't want to live there" into "i don't need to live there". assuming economics work, i could live in NYC, but i don't need to.

NYC has a lot to offer and has real industries there to keep it going, even if the bubble pops. it will just take some adjusting and deflation and, in time, it will keep going. like i said earlier, if SF/SV goes down, the entire US economy is going down. LA and chicago are also major centers that have stood the test of time, even before they grew too big for their britches. talking about dying cities and true "shite holes" is a whole different discussion.

2. my comments aren't about Austin or Nola or whatever small-major urban areas people love to defend. i'm talking about the hyper-urbane, like NYC, LA, SF, Chicago, etc. these areas have a bad combination of political forces, business forces, culture, planning, NIMBYs, and geography to make satisfactory cost growth possible. these areas have artificially high RE markets, through various factors (restrictive zoning, intentional stays in development, foreign investment, etc) creating bubbles or bubble-like economies. bubbles create a false sense of progress/success in economic terms which is why their cost becomes so prohibitive.

since economics is built so much on psychology, this isn't shocking. it's also not shocking why the hyper-urbane culture has grown around these economic manipulations b/c it takes a lot of sheep to keep the facade going. the problem is that any outside stimuli can utterly destroy the psychology, which will shatter the bubble.