Seizing Power Vs Seeking Outrage

Ezra Klein writes:

In his 2020 book “Politics Is for Power,” Eitan Hersh, a political scientist at Tufts, sketched a day in the life of many political obsessives in sharp, if cruel, terms.

I refresh my Twitter feed to keep up on the latest political crisis, then toggle over to Facebook to read clickbait news stories, then over to YouTube to see a montage of juicy clips from the latest congressional hearing. I then complain to my family about all the things I don’t like that I have seen.

To Hersh, that’s not politics. It’s what he calls “political hobbyism.” And it’s close to a national pastime. “A third of Americans say they spend two hours or more each day on politics,” he writes. “Of these people, four out of five say that not one minute of that time is spent on any kind of real political work. It’s all TV news and podcasts and radio shows and social media and cheering and booing and complaining to friends and family.”

Real political work, for Hersh, is the intentional, strategic accumulation of power in service of a defined end. It is action in service of change, not information in service of outrage…

But fury is useful only as fuel.

…Steve Bannon has made it his mission to recruit people who don’t believe in democracy to serve as municipal poll workers.

…I’ll say this for the right: They pay attention to where the power lies in the American system, in ways the left sometimes doesn’t. Bannon calls this “the precinct strategy,” and it’s working. “Suddenly, people who had never before showed interest in party politics started calling the local G.O.P. headquarters or crowding into county conventions, eager to enlist as precinct officers,” ProPublica reports. “They showed up in states Trump won and in states he lost, in deep-red rural areas, in swing-voting suburbs and in populous cities.”

The difference between those organizing at the local level to shape democracy and those raging ineffectually about democratic backsliding — myself included — remind me of the old line about war: Amateurs talk strategy; professionals talk logistics. Right now, Trumpists are talking logistics.

“We do not have one federal election,” said Amanda Litman, a co-founder of Run for Something, which helps first-time candidates learn about the offices they can contest and helps them mount their campaigns. “We have 50 state elections and then thousands of county elections. And each of those ladder up to give us results. While Congress can write, in some ways, rules or boundaries for how elections are administered, state legislatures are making decisions about who can and can’t vote. Counties and towns are making decisions about how much money they’re spending, what technology they’re using, the rules around which candidates can participate.”

Posted in Politics | Comments Off on Seizing Power Vs Seeking Outrage

Regrets (1-10-22)

Posted in Personal | Comments Off on Regrets (1-10-22)

Heads Up, California: Sydney Has Figured Out How to Get the Rents Down

From Reason.com:

Sydney, Australia, may not be New York or London or Los Angeles, but it’s a big city with a population approaching five million. It’s got more people than the San Francisco area.

But unlike San Francisco (or Los Angeles, or several other major American cities), rental prices in some parts of Sydney are seeing a massive decline—as much as 100 Australian dollars a week in some places.

It is not some magical mystery as to why Sydney’s rental prices are declining. And it’s certainly not due to rent control. It’s because Sydney’s seeing a building boom. The size of Sydney’s apartment market has doubled in two years, and landlords have had to drop rents in order to get tenants.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported over the weekend that the city has seen more than 30,800 multi-unit dwellings built last year, a record for any Australian city. And there still are nearly 200,000 additional dwellings in various stages of development. The city is seeing a glut driven by investors. And those investors are now leasing out the apartments.

This overabundance in rental properties has spread across the economic spectrum. Median rents in some more expensive parts of the city range around $1,400–$1,700 a month (in U.S. dollars). But there are parts of town where the median rental price is $850 a month, thanks in part to the oversupply. The glut ranges from simple apartments to townhouses, highlighting an outcome understood by those who are simply begging cities to allow more housing of any kind to be built: An increase in the supply of middle- and upper-class housing will give better choices to people moving up the economic ladder, freeing up older housing and making it more accessible to people with lower incomes.

Compare these numbers to San Francisco and its stagnant housing market. In June, median rental rates there for one-bedroom apartments passed $3,600 a month.

A policy expert for Tenants Guild of New South Wales makes it clear to the newspaper that he understands exactly why rents are coming down: “At a city-wide level, we’ve had rent prices set by restrictive supply for at least 14 years, probably longer. It will take more than a few quarters for prices to correct to equilibrium.”

Rent prices set by restrictive supply, you say? And yet, in California, attempts to bring down sky-high rents by allowing more housing developments keep hitting walls from entrenched interests with a financial stake in keeping things the way they are. That includes current property owners who benefit from the high rates, and it includes construction unions that want their slice of the pie and are willing to abuse the legal process in order to get it.

Posted in California, Sydney | Comments Off on Heads Up, California: Sydney Has Figured Out How to Get the Rents Down

Did January 6 riots threaten our democracy? (1-7-21)

Posted in America | Comments Off on Did January 6 riots threaten our democracy? (1-7-21)

Top 10 Aussie sayings to restore homeostasis (1-6-21)

Posted in Australia | Comments Off on Top 10 Aussie sayings to restore homeostasis (1-6-21)