> How did we get out of this Malthusian malaise? (dark age economics)

IIRC, the dark age cliches are opposite of "Malthusian." Malthusian is about exponential growth of populations, economic activity and such while food, resources, and labour compensation cannot keep up.

This is a good example of where these grand theories of Economics, Civilisation and Everything go wrong. We have been doing these obsessively for 200 years. It's notable how we are still bad at it in the same ways.

Malthus, Marx or Milton Friedman and all the rest failed hard, ultimately. Their "schools" become endless apologetics machines, tasked with complexifying ideas originally appealing for simplicity and generality...

For me... I want see questions. I want to see odds and chances. I want to see actual engagement with real tensions, contradictions and problems in both reality and theory.

Private infrastructure? OK... Maybe. Have you examples of private infrastructure abundance? Are there any problems private infrastructure can't solve? Problems private infrastructure creates?

Same for "housing." At this point, pointing to NIMBYism is cliche. It's like blaming problems on corporate greed, inherent government inefficiency, worker laziness or whatever one-liners go do well in your circle. It's not insight, even if it is true.

To be interesting, you need to get much grittier than this. NIMBYism is not limited to real estate, for example. There's plenty of analogy in industry, agriculture, financial services, intellectual property. The rights, desires and demands of existing players conflict with the needs of growth, of newcomers and such.

I'm not saying authors' conclusions are wrong. I'm saying that the questions are contrived to be resolved by preselected answers. They're not curious questions.

Staying with housing and NIMBY... Lets start with a recognition of the central tension. When house prices go up... homeowners, banks, realtors and builders are financially strong. When house prices go down, homeowner wealth recedes.

For newer, younger or poorer homeowners housing price recession is a wipeout because the mortgage/leverage puts a multiple on losses and their wealth is likely concentrated in housing. Banking/finance also comes under stress, because finance is also leveraged and likely concentrates risk. Runs, bailouts, etc. Even if banking is robust, negative price growth means a tight lending market... a local deflation of money.

Even if your mayor had a housing price dial... it's not clear that we'd turn it to "abundance." Affordability would improve. Middle class wealth might tank. Banking might collapse.

Meanwhile.... how "solved" is housing affordability in NIMBY afflicted markets, once NIMBYism is wiped out? It's extremely doubtful, IMO, that YIMBY affects affordability in cities like SanFran or Munich apart from (perhaps) enabling smaller houses/sites. That is affordability though, not abundance, and it is marginal.

This is where econ101 guys tend to fail basic econ101 test. The proverbial Econ101 model is a model. What does YIMBY do on the model? X is quantity. Y is price. Demand trends down with price. Supply trends up. How does this look for real estate? How much does YIMBY add to total supply? 0.1, 1%, 5%?

IRL the supply of housing in expensive, established cities usually doesn't change enough to meaningfully affect prices much. Not in theory, or in practice. The demand curve, OTOH, is heavily affected by interest rates, lending practices, buyer confidence in real estate as an investment. Very heavily. Stop lending, crash house prices. See Ireland, 2009.

That's affordability "solved." Or rather, that's "price" solved. Except... rent hasn't decreased. Mortage payments haven't decreased much or for many. Investors are buying everything and homeowners can't get financing. Prices are lower.

We need more intelligent discussion. Not this time magazine, political pamphlet, feel good simplifications. There are real, difficult, tensions. Real trade offs. Real problems that need real tactics. Chalkboard rhetoric based on generalities is pointless. It was interesting in the 19th century, destructive in the 20th and foolish in the 21st.