I have a bit of subjective personal and professional experience with all of this (design, policy, politics, zoning, economics, etc etc etc...
It ALL comes to one thing: ECONOMICS.
And I don't mean a balanced budget - I am referring to greed and corruption.
One may thing that greed and corruption is rampant on a federal level; no just look locally: HOS and Municipal governments (city councils etc)
Did you know that many municipal government agents have been paid off by telco industry to literally write laws against a municipality installing their own data infra?
Alameda California is just one.
Did you know that a single family home must sit on no-less than a 2,000 S.F. lot regardless of size, and all homes (defined by the actual front-door-entrance), must have zero shared infra? (Sewer, water, power, etc)
The zoning laws are working actively against the building of smaller home-facilities -- and all the hedge funds are swooping in with dark money, dark legal and dark politics to fuck everyone over and in ten years we will see the actual impact - but it will be too late.
> all the hedge funds are swooping in with dark money, dark legal and dark politics
I'm concerned about this also. I wonder if this is something that can be mitigated somehow via referendum?
It seems wrong if the will of the people in a democracy has to take a back seat to hedge fund profits, especially when it comes to a place to live. it's tough though, current homeowners don't want there to be more houses...
Or maybe we'll luck out demographically, when the baby boomer generation dies they'll be less demand for housing.
It's more of a polyarchy. The U.S. system is unique (originally but unremarkable today) in two respects: written constitution, and not a monarchy. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. Madison
The argument against the first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, is that the federal government had essentially no power. The argument against the second, it it's effectively created a presidential democracy, or unitary executive. It's a model our diplomats expressly avoided when helping other countries write a constitution. It's fragile, and while it's so far been stable in the U.S. it's possible we've just been lucky so far.
But a polyarchy doesn't guarantee democracy, even representative democracy. It certainly wasn't pluralistic at its founding: white, male, land owners. It took a long time to unwind that and here we are with most states in one form or another trying to make it harder for people to vote. Can a democracy democratically undemocratize itself? Sure.
If it wants to weaken or even obsolete democracy, by any combination of action or inaction, that's what will happen. One of the classic examples is the principate period of the Roman Empire. It had the veneer of a democracy, including having a senate, but there was an emperor who had all the real authority. That period lasted over 200 years, so it's not like we'd necessarily see the end to elections, laws, casting aside the constitution, or any of the other institutions we think display proof of "democracy".
Recently I've been throwing around the word democracy as a way of calling out decidedly undemocratic political activity, because of the positive connotations the word has, given the narrative we're taught in this country that democracy is good, we are a shining beacon of democracy, spreading democracy to those who don't have it, etc. Perhaps trying to use the veneer were taught against those in power playing lip service to the will of the people? It's not as easy for people to shout down the idea of democracy as it is to argue with typical partisan positions.
I've been interested in Switzerland lately, where the people seem to have retained power over their representatives, being able to petition for referendums to add or remove any law they don't like, and with much smaller political structures, having cantons the size of U.S. counties that enjoy more independence than U.S. states.
It ALL comes to one thing: ECONOMICS.
And I don't mean a balanced budget - I am referring to greed and corruption.
One may thing that greed and corruption is rampant on a federal level; no just look locally: HOS and Municipal governments (city councils etc)
Did you know that many municipal government agents have been paid off by telco industry to literally write laws against a municipality installing their own data infra?
Alameda California is just one.
Did you know that a single family home must sit on no-less than a 2,000 S.F. lot regardless of size, and all homes (defined by the actual front-door-entrance), must have zero shared infra? (Sewer, water, power, etc)
The zoning laws are working actively against the building of smaller home-facilities -- and all the hedge funds are swooping in with dark money, dark legal and dark politics to fuck everyone over and in ten years we will see the actual impact - but it will be too late.