Some folks on here have been repeating this garbage as well
that home itself is a form of capital in the first place
Technically true, but of no greater capital utility than the tent. The home carries some capital premium as it should have a longer lifetime, but what’s that? Even if you bought a new tent every week, that’s, what, maybe $200,000 over the course of your adult life? So if you accept paying much more than $200,000 for a home you’re being economically foolish.
And, to be fair, I suppose an economy should allow people to be foolish. You have to have some fun sometimes. But is a house really where you want sink your fun? I can think of a long list of things that are more fun that erecting a structure that then becomes a job to maintain forevermore.
Where’s the equality when one Wallmart took over two dozen family businesses?
Exactly. Walmart could not exist without some level of urban density. There is good reason you don’t see them setting up in the middle of the Boreal forest. We are sparse enough that there is some, albeit limited, room for others to sell similar goods, but if you crank up the density there will be no need and all you will have is Walmart.
As before, we’ve chosen to walk the middle road by being sparse, but not extreme countryside sparse. We want some wealth inequality. We don’t want total wealth inequality. We like to have the Walmarts of the world. But we also want to give some opportunity to others.
Most Walmarts are in suburbs. They actually don’t do as well in heavily urbanized areas. At the very least, I’ve never seen one in downtown Toronto. The taxes for the amount of land they need alone destroys their profits, but in the suburbs they can take an entire block at next to zero cost and serve a good 10-20km radius because who cares about going an extra km if you can do all your shopping in one trip than two, whereas if everything is in walking distance, who cares about walking an extra block to get one little thing while you’re out doing something else like working.
I’m talking about being against suburbia and for high density urbanization. Did you know that bike lanes actually increase profits of small local businesses compared to increasing the lanes of roads? You can’t have bikes in suburbia because everything is too far away to bike to. But in high density urban environments, biking is far preferred to cars.
And also, you argue tents for cost, but did you know the average home in downtown Tokyo is only $300k? Few places are denser than Tokyo, yet some of the best parts of it you can buy four detached houses for the cost of a house in Toronto. I know I’m going all over the place, but frankly speaking, all the problems we’re dealing with in Canada with housing and life affordability are things that have been solved in other places, and we can easily learn from if there was the political will to do so.
Few places are denser than Tokyo
Laughable. Tokyo only has 6,000 people per square kilometre. Slightly less farmer field than Toronto, but only just. In fact, fewer places are more sprawling than Tokyo. Have you not seen how much land it wastes?
Kowloon Walled City has 1,346,000 people per square kilometre. Now that’s a city! Manila has 70,000 people per square kilometre. Small town numbers, but at least respectable.
4-6,000 people? You’re not even in the running. That is only just slightly more populated than a rural area.
I was talking about Tokyo city. Not the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, or the Tokyo District. They’re pretty different things, and is like talking about the GTA or Southern Ontario when talking about Toronto.
And Kowloon Walled City was a dystopia caused by people not being allowed to leave for generations. That, and it doesn’t exist anymore. There’s no point on using it as an example when it makes every other high density city look like farmland in comparison. And being the single only example in the same ballpark.
Anyways, of all the things to respond to, you chose that. How reductive.
