6 Comments

Are the US' housing laws unique in the world?

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This is a great question that I will have to do more research into. I know that Europe has pretty similar levels of restriction, but with more focus on historical preservation. In less developed countries the regulations may be there but there is lots of informal development outside of the regs.

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Coleman Hughes spoke about some cultural trends in black communities such as looking down on education and poor personal finance (eg: higher likelihood to spend in jewelry or sports car vs non-blacks in the same income bracket).

Do you have any data or intuition on how big of a contribution could these have? What about other major underlying causes?

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Coleman Hughes is certainly more qualified than me to speak about African American culture so I won't say too much about the specific qualities of it.

The problem with these sorts of cultural arguments, in my view, is proving whether they are the chicken or the egg. Do black communities have an deep rooted cultural propensity to flashy spending or is it a consequence of the organization of the illegal drug trade imposed upon them by the US government?

This is why I like to focus on geographic mobility as a major underlying cause. When a culture has some damaging aspects, allowing for easy exit is a way for anyone to choose a new life for themselves without assigning blame to any particular cause or trying to directly impose change on that culture.

Thank you so much for reading and commenting!

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This is better than anything I wrote in college. Keep it up Max. Hope to see you apply your knowledge of housing regulation to the next 1729 prompt.

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I'll try my best. Thank you so much for your kind words!

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