> Unless you have the government artificially constraining the housing supply, in which case you need to fix that. And the same thing for medicine and education.
That is the meat of it. Zoning laws are why every city doesn't look like Hong Kong, even if it cost $1 to make a sky scraper. There are artificial limits on supply of doctors, and we don't pay teachers enough which is a whole other topic. If that's what we have to fix in order to make progress, I'm suddenly doubtful of how much progress will really be made in the face of the singularity.
> Zoning laws are why every city doesn't look like Hong Kong
The reason every city doesn't look like Hong Kong is that Hong Kong has a population of 7.5 million and a US city is considered "large" if it has 50,000 people.
Zoning laws are why every city doesn't look like Lubbock or Boise, which is hardly a problem.
> If that's what we have to fix in order to make progress
That's what we have to fix in order to make progress. It is what it is.
That is the meat of it. Zoning laws are why every city doesn't look like Hong Kong, even if it cost $1 to make a sky scraper. There are artificial limits on supply of doctors, and we don't pay teachers enough which is a whole other topic. If that's what we have to fix in order to make progress, I'm suddenly doubtful of how much progress will really be made in the face of the singularity.