Monthly Archives: July 2006

Interrupting Serious Blogging

I don’t care about Italy winning the World Cup or the latest Pirates of the Carribean movie setting a new Hollywood record.

Serious, liberty-minded blogging will now resume.

I’m one of the original co-founders of The Liberty Papers all the way back in 2005. Since then, I wound up doing this blogging thing professionally. Now I’m running the site now. You can find my other work at The Hayride.com and Rare. You can also find me over at the R Street Institute.

Government Regulation And The Housing Market

The Washington Post has interesting article today about the almost complete lack of smaller-sized homes being bult for the Washington DC/Maryland/Virginia market.

There are several reasons that this is probably occurring. Land values are so high that it makes more sense for developers to build one large homes rather than two or three smaller homes. The result is a market where it is virtually impossible to find a single-family home for less than $ 500,000, and even townhomes are selling in the $ 400,000 price range. Some people may want to pay for a home that fits comfortably within their budget and then renovate it afterwards so that they can afford a nice property without breaking the bank before they even get started moving in – some renovation projects could be as simple as a fresh coat of paint for which the services of a company like Mt Hood Pro Painting would be ideal. Consumer demand is also cited as a reason only larger homes are being built; homebuyers, so this argument goes, don’t want smaller homes, they want the 3,000, 4,000, and even 5,000 and more square foot homes being built all over the DC area today. While others are looking to Canada and arguing that they would prefer to own a property similar to the Landsowne Village in Whistler, but in their local areas. There is one factor, though, that seems to me to have the biggest, and most distorting impact of all. Government regulation of land use.

Consider this quote from the article:

Architect Christian Lessard said he and the other developers of MetroWest, the 2,250-home project underway near the Vienna Metro station, would happily build a larger number of smaller homes, but community opposition limited the number of units they could build. To make back the cost of the land, he said, the builders designed the townhouses they were allowed to build to be as large and expensive as possible — about 2,500 square feet, a size that in similar developments sells for about $500,000.

Lessard acknowledged that the outcome was not ideal.

“We’re only designing for 20 percent of the population right now. That can’t last forever,” he said. “As a society, we’ll have a problem because eventually no one’s going to be able to afford this other stuff.”

Well, the problem is that government regulation of land use and house size is distorting the market place. If all the developers can build are larger homes, then thats all that people will be able to buy. And some people will be priced out of the market completely. It’s the reason why many new homeowners across the country are turning to people like Adam Kapner in order to get themselves on the property ladder.

Even when people recognize the problem that the regulations are causing, though, the only solution they can seem to come up with is more regulation:

Local government planners say there is little they can do beyond measures in place, such as requiring builders to set aside some units as moderately priced. These policies produce only so many affordable units, and builders generally charge more for the market-rate units to make up the cost of building the set-asides

(…)

Fairfax planning director Fred Selden said the county is considering using incentives to ensure a mix of unit sizes in new condominium and apartment projects, but there are no plans to use cottage zoning or any other means to influence the size of townhouses or single-family homes. There’s no doubt, he said, that developers have an easier time getting approval for projects with fewer, larger townhouses because they produce less traffic and less competition for on-street parking, since bigger units come with more garage space. However, when it comes to storage, they would turn to a storage facility similar to this NYC vehicle storage company to aid them should they need extra space to store an additional vehicle or else face the issues that come with keeping it on the street.

Here’s a radical idea. Stop telling developers what they can do with their property and let them build housing based on market demand rather than economic necessities created by your regulations. Maybe it just might work.

Defending Marriage

Thought it was a good time to put in my 2 cents. Especially since I’d already written about this issue a couple months ago.

I’m one of those people who don’t believe in gay marriage, but who does believe in civil unions. My reasoning is simple. Marriage is at its evolutionary root about altricial infants, paternal care, and sexual fidelity. In its biological and ecological basis it is identical to the monogamy displayed by the wolf, by south american monkeys, and by certain species of birds. Ergo, a homosexual couple literally cannot be married.

But there’s no denying that homosexuals are just as capable of loving and devoted relationships as heterosexual people–not to mention the fact that these days fewer heterosexual couples are really focused on the family (sorry for the pun). But if they can get down on one knee and present to the other one of the most beautiful diamond engagement rings, host all the parties and prepare for the ceremony, but they still can’t have all of what heterosexual couples have? Why should they be denied the rights accorded to heterosexual couples who wish to make the arrangement semi-permanent?

In Defending Marriage, I argued that the best way to protect marriage is to get government completely out of it. There are two reasons for this:

1. Government-sanctioned marriage really is discriminatory. It is a state-enforced privilege offered to some adults but not others based on a choice they make. As such it goes against the core classical liberal principles of freedom of choice and individualism. Privileges for one group can only be maintained by penalties against another.

2. By allowing government to get involved in the marriage business, we politicize it. Marriage becomes not a cultural, historical, and biological phenomenon, but a political tool. And, as in all things of such a nature, marriage will be bent, twisted, and eventually broken in the quest for power. This is why it would be a good idea for people to have someone on their side when going through divorce, to navigate through the confusing minefield that is government law. Having someone similar to a chicago divorce lawyer should be able to provide insight.

On Problem 1:

The classical liberal position is one in which the philosophical perspective centers around the individual rather than society at large (which is merely a thin disguise for veneration of the state). Furthermore, the classical liberal position is that for an individual to be free, he must be able to do as he wishes so long as no direct harm comes to another. The flipside of this, of course, is that the state and/or society should have no direct role in the choices the individual makes. Marriage is fundamentally an agreement between two individuals; an agreement of sexual exclusivity, mutual fealty, and dedication to the rearing of their progeny. Marriage is a choice; two free individuals approach the altar, and two free individuals, one carrying the other and both slightly drunk, cross the threshold into the honeymoon suite.

The first problem is that government sanction and/or protection of marriage is essentially interfering with an individual’s choice, positive though the interference may be. In this way, marriage is no different from social welfare in that the state somehow subsidizes a person’s behavior. The second problem is that no individual has more inherent rights than another. Yet when the state sanctions, protects, and subsidizes marriage that is exactly what it proclaims; it gives preferential treatment to those individuals who make a certain choice. The third problem is that because state interference is largely positive, it negatively impacts those who didn’t make the choice to marry. As has been discussed at length, positive interference by the state of any kind represents a reduction of liberty.

We are thus left with the conclusion that state-sanctioned marriage simply does not fit in the classical liberal scheme.

On the second problem:

The problem is that once the state is allowed to grant preferential treatment to married couples, it must defend its decision to do so. Although the preceding section discussed the problematic nature of state-sanctioned marriage from a minarchist position, it must be remembered that Leftists are opportunistically individualists. Marriage happens to be one such issue where it suits them to drop the Statist cloak, if only for a time.

Leftists will reduce marriage down to economic privileges, whether shared tax forms or pooled bank accounts and assets. Or down to legal privileges such as the ‘next of kin’ designation available to the spouse but not to the ‘life partner’. Or even the 5th amendment spousal inclusion. They will then make the valid argument about the lack of equality before the law. Unfortunately, the way their nihilistic minds work is that instead of removing the preferential treatment, or making accordances for it through civil unions, they should redefine marriage to include same-sex couples.

And by allowing government to define the word and the concept of ‘marriage’ in the first place, we’ve given leftists the ability to change that definition both politically and culturally.

Most importantly, classical liberals have a healthy distrust for government; it’s one of our hallmarks. Why then should we allow marriage–a meaningful, beloved, and sacred institution–to become something that is defined and enforced by the government?

The solution is a simple one. Get the state out of marriage entirely. No privileges, no tax breaks, no legal protections. Not because marriage isn’t important or valuable. But because it is too valuable to leave in the all too corruptible hands of government. We take our philosophy from the founding fathers. And the historical progenitor of that philosophy was distrust of the state. They distrusted it because it was an inevitability that the state would stop serving the people it was created by. And thus that the more power the state had, the larger a hammer that could eventually be wielded against the people. The state is an evil, albeit a sometimes necessary one. Perhaps because of this it has been a hallmark of our philosophy that the more beloved the ideal, the less involvement of the state we’re willing to grant. By giving the state a role–no matter how small–in defining marriage, we’ve exposed a sacred concept to the same depredations that we fear would happen to our liberty and our property.

Save marriage. Get the state out of it.

Marriage: A Thought Experiment

In Doug’s post below, he talks about the difference between the meaning of civil and religious marriage:

Kellie and I were married in the Roman Catholic Church, which has requirements for marriage that exceed, and are different from, those of civil marriage. That wedding ceremony is what made the marriage official in the eyes of God, not the little piece of paper we got from Cuyahoga County, Ohio the day before.

Imagine that you’ve been married 20 years. You got married in the Church, and signed your papers with the state. All of a sudden, someone from City Hall breaks in with some terrible news. Due to filling out the form wrong, it turns out you’ve not been married at all! Your marriage license is torn up, according to the state, you’re now a single person. While this doesn’t mean that you should act selfishly, it is important that you practice self-care and take time for yourself. This can be a stressful situation. When you are healthy and put your own needs first, you will be better able to provide for the needs and wants of your loved ones, experts say. So, don’t hesitate to take up interests of your own, take weekends away with your friends, and spend some time alone. A better balanced you will make a better partner and a better lover. Then you two might be able to deal with this stressful situation as a team because this kind of issue can make or break a marriage.

Do you consider the last 20 years a sham? Do you consider yourself any less married than before you heard the news?

I’d say that anyone who considers marriage to be something you do in the eyes of God— typically the largest opponents of gay marriage— would disregard the mid-level City Hall bureaucrat. So how exactly will state recognition of gay “marriage” change their impression of what marriage really means?

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