The Exponential Function

[RE]

Reading this story about the Housing Crisis in the EU, I had an epiphany.  Along with many other analysts, I have attributed the lack of affordable housing to banking practices which have used real estate as an asset class and home ownership as a way to build and store wealth, rather than as a fundamental human right.  This is a part of the cause, but it's not what truly is driving this, in fact it is a consequence of the Exponential Function.

Lets say the doubling period for the population is 20 years.  Start in 1960 with a population of 1B people.  20 years (next generation) you need 2B housing units, so you had to build 1B new units assuming you lost none of the old ones.  Now it's 1980, and in 20 years you will need 4B units, so in the same time period of 20 years, you need to build 2B units instead of 1B.  So you have to build twice as fast.  Now it's 2000 with 4B so by 2020 you need 8B units, so you needed 4B more.  In 2040, if this continued, you would need 16B units.

You see the problem I trust.  Even if they didn't treat housing as a wealth storage medium, they can't build enough units fast enough to keep up with the exponential growth!  This also explains the collapsing fertility rate.  It's a direct consequence of population overshoot!  If it wasn't for the fact birth rates have been falling for the last decade, the problem would be even worse than it is.

It also means there is about no way that the affordable housing or homeless crisis will improve, it's going to continue to get worse and what we see now is just the tip of the iceberg.  Its not going to improve until death rates start growing as quickly as the birth rate is dropping.

Coming soon to a theater near you.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/article/2024/may/21/young-adults-forced-by-eu-housing-crisis-to-live-with-parents

'I'm screwed': young adults forced by EU housing crisis to live with parents

RE

[K-Dog]

'I'm screwed': young adults forced by EU housing crisis to live with parents

RE

The 25-year-old did move out briefly last year – a friend had a room for let – but the steep rent meant Connor quickly returned home. While he and some of his friends are saving for a deposit, high property prices meant others had little hope of doing so on their salaries, he said: "Some say, 'I'm screwed, I'm going to be living with my parents for ever.'"

I see no mention of parents thinking the situation is fucked. 

Children who do not leave home do not contribute to maintaining the home or offsetting expenses.  There is no magic moment when they have an epiphany telling them it is time to stop being a useless eater and pull their weight. 

The article mentions the situation does not indicate lack of ambition on the part of youth.

Bullshit.  It is visits to friends and comedy clubs every night and sleeping in.  Anybody too lazy or to entitled to work for twenty bucks an hour is considered to be making a statement.  It is individual expression like a first amendment right.  Freedom.

In the 70's, protest about 'working for the man' was common.  But not working was not an option.  Men did not want to spend their adult life as a baby.  Men contribute, work, and build.  It is what a man is.  That is what a man does.  It is a law of the universe. 

You did not bitch about working for the man without having a job to bitch about 'in the day'.  Now work is considered to be a lifestyle choice.  Optional.  An elective activity.  You can bitch about work without having dirty fingernails now.

Working was normal once.  Now cutting your dick off and moaning about the pain of the world is normal if you are entitled enough.  Work became an optional oppression.  Work was not something only Mexicans did the way entitled game playing button pushing thumbs think of work now.  Yes America is racist that way.  And more racist than it used to be.

The day I realized I was not 'special' was an important day in my life.  Much of what is adult in me was born that day.  If I had never left home I'm not sure I would have reached that maturity.  Certainly not as quickly.  A child needs a good home life, but someone who never leaves home remains a child in many ways.  Adult children do not learn that what you do, or not do, is on you.

I'll give some sympathy to the suffering parents.  Nobody else will.

The exceptions, children who are responsible and recognize they might actually be a hardship on their parents make my case.  You have to look hard for them.

* The article is about Europe.  In America a Pew Research Center survey found that around one-third of U.S. adults ages 18-34 live with their parents. Financial independence varies significantly within this group; while some are employed, others are not fully independent or are receiving financial support from their parents.

** Half of that third is as happy as a clam in mud,  having no desire to wake up early and change the situation.  I figure the author knew that saying such a thing directly would not make it across the edit desk.  Hence 'some are employed others are not'.  Mainstream articles have to be all happy happy joy joy.  But this is the Diner and we are shadow banned in Google searches.  There is no reason not to speak our mind.  And be honest.

[RE]

No doubt, there are deadbeat, ne'er-do-well bums in every generation who never move out and remain as parasite on their parents for their entire lives, not just in their 20s.  This article isn't about them.  It's about 20 somethings who went to college, have jobs and STILL can't afford to move out.

RE

[K-Dog]

I make a separate post to comment on exponential housing.

The number of commercial buildings which have been built in the last ten years have enough floor space to house all of WA States homeless population.  I am not saying the space should, this is a raw observation about floor space only.  A measurement.  A measurement which says the physical ability to keep up with housing needs is not a material consideration.  It is a political issue and exponential growth has nothing to do with it.

The floor space I mention uses polished concrete metal and exotic woods.  Metal studs are used in the walls and high end HVAC moderates climate.  This is expensive floor space and not the kind of floor space that is used in residential construction generally.  However high end Seattle Homes are built to the same standards now.  It is what inequality does don't you know.

Working every weekend enterprising men used to build their own homes in about five years.  Every weekend and after work.  As soon as part of it was habitable a family would move in.  Building homes that way keeps up with exponential growth because everyone builds their own home.  All excess money went into building materials, but in the 70's building materials were cheap enough that a working man could buy building materials almost as fast as he could use them.  Sometimes work would have to pause while money was earned.

Without subsidy no way does a working man earn money to buy building materials now.  A particular demographic used the build your own trick.  Clock punchers who did not have regular overtime and earned a union wage.  Salaried people had a hard time finding the time.  Building your own was not something everyone could do, but some could and that is my point.  Human labor can keep up with housing needs.

In a rational society.

[K-Dog]

No doubt, there are deadbeat, ne'er-do-well bums in every generation who never move out and remain as parasite on their parents for their entire lives, not just in their 20s.  This article isn't about them.  It's about 20 somethings who went to college, have jobs and STILL can't afford to move out.

RE

I understand what you are saying but I have a dimmer view of human nature than you do so I do not agree.  The average person is about as creative as a 180 lb parrot.  Monkey see, monkey do defines human behavior.  Deadbeat, ne'er-do-well bums now hide in plain sight in a way which would have been intolerable in the past.

Thrill seeking is a mark of the ne'er-do-well, and America society in general has been reduced to thrill seeking.  Thrill seeking does not have to be as dramatic as parachuting out of airplanes.  It can be as simple as keeping a bar stool warm every night.  It can be as simple as having a 'bucket list'.  It is endless pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of responsibility.  It is consumerism.  I am what I use, and the experiences I have.  That is all and there is no more be their motto.

In this post I point no fingers at the ne'er-do-well.  Society in general has lost its way and the sad fact is most people, all of us at some time, need leaders.

People need structure.  It is a fact and some need more structure than others.  If the social goal is to live no differently than the ne'er-do-well at the end of life, more of the ne'er-do-well we shall have.  People copy, it is what people do.  Give them bad shit to copy and that is exactly what they will do.

Give them a bad leader and they follow.

Adolph before he fell with his fellow misfits was a total slacker who never had a job.  All he could do was couch surf.  As fate would have it, his talent as a speaker made him spokesman for a movement.  He never actually did any work himself.  Hitler wrote Mein Kampf with a guidance pressure and help.  The way Trump would write a book.  The following photos show Hitler in prison when he told 'his story'.  Hitler was not capable of controlling himself enough to write Mein Kampf by himself.  He had to be kept on track.

 

Prison was a well kept apartment with visitors.  He was given a typewriter and shown how to use it.  Hitler was in truth, a deranged slacker with mental issues.  A magnet that attracted other deranged, with unfortunately far more actual talent.

Talent enough to sell a promise.  It was propaganda.  German factories were tooled for the military.

No German family would ever buy one.  Collapse came first, but that is not really the half of it.  The NAZI three ring circus was built on credit and the only way to not pay the bill was to start a war.  The bill was coming due.  The parallel money system which fueled military build up (and stimulated the economy) required redemption or the industrialists would not continue to welcome Nazi script.  Propaganda hid the working poor.  The war had to be started before everything was in place.  Before the NAZI Ponzi was exposed.

My NAZI shit takes the discussion in a different direction.  Returning to the slacker issue.  I go back to your original article.  Your original article ignores the corrosive effects of the situation in the same way that the corrosive effects of isolation on school age children during COVID was ignored.  We live in a petri-dish that produces dispossessed people by the millions.  Some shoot up schools if you do not believe me.  An article that only talks about economics regarding a social situation is brain dead.  Let that be your guide.

[RE]

Fair enough, that is a good point about CRE.  Also true is luxury housing is overbuilt.

However, if you look at Japan where the population has actually been shrinking, not just growing slower, they have the opposite problem, whole towns with empty, overgrown houses.  It's also true in Italy, where they're selling houses for €1 that have been sitting empty.

So there's definitely a correlation between population growth and housing availability.  Also true that the DIY housebuilder is a dying breed, though NF here bucked the trend with that building his Doomstead.  He is of course in the building trades as a profession though, and not a white collar corporate drone.  DIY at all levels has nearly vanished, planned obsolescence and increasing complexity squeezed that nearly out of existence.  Back in the 50s & 60s, guys spent all their time working on their cars, that's where the term "Greasers" came from, for Grease Monkey.  When they started dropping computer chips in cars and you needed expensive diagnostic equipment to fix it, you had to bring it to the shop.  Now with Teslas, the shops can't even fix the batts.  TV repair shops are gone, when your Big Screen TV dies, you buy a new one.

So, yes, there are choices involved which have made the situation worse, but it remains true that new housing isn't being built fast enough, because housing for poor people isn't profitable.  Population growth has resulted in many more poor people than new rich people.  Rich people have just gotten richer, there aren't more of them by percentage.

RE

[K-Dog]

New housing isn't being built fast enough, because housing for poor people isn't profitable.

That is my point.  A fact that is remedied by political will with material conditions regarding the ability to actually build shelter not being an issue.

Think of the cults that build big communal apartments.  While the preachers shares holy communion with the women, the the men build.



Before it was burned to the ground with people inside by the ATF.

Food and heat are more of an issue.

[RE]

True, but what is it that sapped Political Will from every last industrialized country on earth, from the FSoA to Oz, from the UK & Norway to France and Germany?  We had Political Will in the 60s for the Great Society, public housing was built in cities from NY to London to Paris.  Not very good housing, but it was built.  Could it be that Political Will is Directly Proportional to Per Capita Available Energy?  What is PCAE proportional to?  Population size and Resource availability.  Increasing Population & Decreasing Resources--->Decreasing Political Will---->Decreasing Affordable Housing.

Not only did it sap Political Will, it sapped the desire to procreate as well.  That's the psychological effect of over population.  Political Will has been decreasing at an Exponential rate as well.  The worse the problems get, the less will there is to make the changes necessary to fix them.  That's the Inverse Proportionality you get from population overshoot.

RE

[RE]

Here's an example of the inability to build enough infrastructure in a city built on the Suburban model and the use of the automobile with the rapid population increase.

Old cities like NY or Mexico City built before the automobile have had 8M people, and 20M in the surrounding Metroplex for decades.  DFW however is a sprawling metropolis of 2 cities combined, Dallas and Fort Worth all hooked together by ribbons of interstate highways and a ring road.



There's no real public transportation to speak of.  Distances are so vast even cycling around means you have to be a touring cyclist.  The city planning of ring road and N-S, E-W connectors was used all over the FSoA beginning in the 1950s with the Eisenhower Interstate. Atlanta, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Oklahoma City all have similar plans.  Here is Atlanta's famous "Spaghetti Junction":



There's no more room to widen roads to accomodate more carz.  They would have to make the main thoroughfares double-decker, but even that wouldn't work because the local roads would all be overwhelmed.  I drove all these roads in my big rig 30 years ago.  The traffic was bad then.  I can't imagine how bad it is now.

This is REAL Limits to Growth.

https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/dfw-cannot-build-out-of-traffic-troubles/3546490/

DFW Metroplex cannot 'build out' of traffic troubles

RE