Port of Dieppe,c.1919 by Elisée Maclet (French, 1881-1962)

Port of Dieppe,c.1919 by Elisée Maclet (French, 1881-1962)

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Groaning Oldies

From Friar's Club Encyclopedia of Jokes by Barry Dougherty.

What do you call a missing parrot?

A polygon.

First there was a crisis and then there was no crisis. Then there is.

We seem to be at a weird point, a turning of the tide.

For months now there has been a trumpeting by the mainstream media about the spiraling cost of housing and rising rental rates.  And that has indeed been real.  Housing prices rose as did cost of rentals.

But that was not ever particularly much the focus of the conversation.  Among the chattering class (academics, advocacy, journalists, etc.), everyone wanted to talk about the need for government to institute rental controls.  There was chastisement of the  deep evil of people living in single family residences.  Of the heinous NIMBY people.  Of the importance to build more housing (especially dense housing, preferably multi-unit housing).  Of the desire to fundamentally remake urban spaces into dense walking environments.

There was even a lot of talk about a mythical YIMBY (Yes in my backyard) movement.  As far as I can tell no actual long-term property owners were involved.  The most strident YIMBYs seemed to be renters, people not living in the jurisdiction, or people who demonstrated no long term commitment to the neighborhoods.  

There was even, sotto voce, some occasional discussion about the need to reform the construction permitting process in cities.  While clearly a mechanism of great government control, it is also enormously expensive and time consuming.  The most expensive cities also have the most complex zoning processes.  Expensive and time consuming construction permitting means homes and multi-unit residences are going to be more expensive.  

Basically, the statists wanted to institute more regulation and get government more involved in housing construction.  Never a solution with material benefits.

The tide of statist authoritarianism came sweeping in.  

And part of this was all just noise in the system.  Closing the economy for a couple of years caused massive population movements out of cities into suburbs and small towns.  As the cities opened up again, there was two-year postponed demand to get through, complicated by no one having a clear visibility as to the nature of post-covid work patterns.  Will people continue to stay away from cities?  Will companies let people work more from home?  How will demand for property in cities be affected by the dramatic increase in crime and violence in cities over the past two years.   

We simply don't know but there are a lot of people out there whose lives have been on hold and their demand pent up.  That demand and the associated population movements have caused very local property cost effects, primarily in select big cities.  

Now, there is the countervailing tide.  With inflation up, real incomes down, mortgage costs shooting up, demand seems to be dramatically weakening.  Housing sales are down.  Unit prices are down.  Rentals don't seem to be coming down yet but that likely may be a matter of time.

Six months ago all the headlines were about the shortage of housing and the drastic political interventions needed to address that.

Now I am beginning to see the opposite headlines - sales are crashing, property market is weak, prices are falling, demand is uncertain.  In another couple of months will this then be the crisis de jour?

The attempt to make the normal adjustment to a market disruption (demand for properties changed under lockdowns) into a crisis is now being mirrored by an effort to make that adjustment (weakening demand) also into a crisis.

Mainstream media is in the business of selling crises because that is when power can be seized and when money can be made.  We have bad macro economic policies which are driving a lot of negative macro-economy outcomes and we have a lot of demand sensitivity owing to lockdowns and to some smaller degree to housing stock inventory.

In terms of real estate though, there is no crisis.  Just market adjustments which will play out along roughly anticipated lines over the next twelve months.  No need to fundamentally transform the economy of interject government into the process.  Everything reverts to mean.

History

A selection of fruit seeds, stones, & pits recovered from the drainage system of the Colosseum in #Rome, remains of the snacks eaten by #Roman spectators watching the games in the arena up to 1900 years ago #RomanArchaeology pic.twitter.com/qrSSRQUIYB

— Dr Jo Ball (@DrJEBall) July 2, 2022

 

Deep roots of hypochondriasis

The past couple of Covid years have been characterized by a manic authoritarianism seeking to overturn human rights in combination with hysterical hypochondriasis.  Authoritarianism has always been a flaw in the human condition.  The following poem, from 1919, highlights that hypochondriasis is also a semipermanent condition for some portion of the population.  

Strictly Germ-Proof

by Arthur Guiterman (1871-1943)

The Antiseptic Baby and the Prophylactic Pup

Were playing in the garden when the Bunny gambolled up;

They looked upon the creature with a loathing undisguised;

It wasn’t disinfected and it wasn’t sterilised.

They said it was microbic and a hotbed of disease;

They steamed it in a vapor of a thousand-odd degrees;

They froze it in a freezer that was cold as banished hope

And washed it in permanganate with carbolated soap.

In sulphurated hydrogen they steeped its wiggly ears;

They trimmed its frisky whiskers with a pair of hard-boiled shears;

They donned their rubber mittens and they took it by the hand

And ’lected it a member of the Fumigated Band.

There’s not a micrococcus in the garden where they play;

They bathe in pure iodoform a dozen times a day;

And each imbibes his rations from a hygienic cup —

The Bunny and The Baby and The Prophylactic Pup.

An Insight

Well I mean, one might ask, if a super-majority of citizens want ALL those things, then why do Republicans get on average roughly half the vote. https://t.co/DEK4UHaxDr

— Xenocrypt (@xenocryptsite) July 3, 2022

 

I see wonderful things

My favorite part of the Alameda 4th of July parade: the Sikh Bikers of America. So damn American. pic.twitter.com/cFwlewuGH4

— Misha Chellam 🇺🇸 🏗️ (@mishachellam) July 4, 2022

 

Offbeat Humor

No wonder the young people in America are so confused pic.twitter.com/KUd71gjrvU

— Terrence K. Williams (@w_terrence) July 3, 2022

Four ideas of freedom

From Ayn Rand and American Culture by Peter Saint-Andre, a 2004 book review.  It includes this synthesis of David Hackett Fischer's argument in Albion's Seed.  

In broad brush, there were four main emigrations from England to America before the Revolution:

• Dissenting Puritans from East Anglia to New England (1629-1641)

• Low-Church Anglican Cavaliers and indentured servants from Wessex and Sussex to Virginia and the Carolinas (1642-1675)

• Quakers from the North Midlands to the Delaware Valley (1675-1725)

• Presbyterians from Ulster and the Scottish-English Borderland to the Appalachian backcountry (1717-1775)

In Albion's Seed, David Hackett Fischer argues persuasively that these four comprise the founding cultures of America, and that American culture did not emerge full-grown from the head of Zeus or develop without precedent through the "frontier experience", but instead that American culture can best be explained through reference to the cultures of its founding residents (Fischer 1989). Part of what makes his exploration so persuasive is the detailed information he provides regarding each culture's social and regional origins, religious beliefs and behaviors, speech patterns, architectural styles, family ways, marriage customs, gender relations, attitudes toward elders and toward death, educational approaches, food and dress customs, ways of working and of recreation, use of time, attitudes toward wealth, division of labor, societal orders and social rankings, patterns of settlement, and relations of power -- culminating in each culture's ideas about freedom and liberty. These details are fascinating and telling, providing connections both back to the cultures of four distinct English regions (which in turn had deeper roots in the migrations to the British Isles of the Angles, Saxons, Scandanavian Vikings, and Celts, respectively), and forward to our own times and to the regional and cultural tensions evident throughout American history.

Consider, for example, child-rearing. The intent in Puritan New England was to break the child's will for the sake of social and religious conformity in small-town democracies; the intent in Cavalier Virginia was to bend the child's will back upon itself for the sake of a kind of Stoical leadership in the "Squirearchy" of the coastal plantations; the intent in Quaker Pennsylvania was to enlighten the will for the sake of personal and familial fulfillment in strong meetinghouse communities; the intent in the mainly Presbyterian backcountry was to build up the will for the sake of a fierce, stubborn independence in a shifting, warlike culture on the frontier between civilization and chaos.

These founding folkways, and much else besides, led to quite distinct, and often diametrically opposed, ideas about liberty. Fischer calls the New England idea "ordered liberty" (freedom to determine the course of one's own society), at worst exemplified in the stifling, moralistic conformism that we still associate with the word "Puritan", at best in the strong town-based democracies (and suspicion of anything but local power) still evident in parts of northern New England. The Virginia idea was that of "hegemonic liberty" (freedom to rule and not be ruled), at worst exemplified in the hierarchical "Slaveocracy" that valued freedom for those at the top but not for poor white trash or black slaves, at best in the aristocratic excellence of men such as George Washington. The Quaker idea was that of "reciprocal liberty" (freedom for me and for thou), at worst exemplified in the pacifistic pursuit of commerce without regard for nation or principle, at best in a quite modern-sounding respect for all human beings to pursue their own fulfillment. The frontier idea was that of "natural liberty" (a freedom without restraints of law or custom), at worst exemplified in the violent and often-emotionalistic chaos of life beyond the reach of civilized norms, at best in eternal vigilance with regard to the sovereignty of the individual.

Data Talks

Each wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of non-recyclable plastic to build. They have a lifetime of only 25 years, and need up to 700 gallons of oil for the gears and hydraulic systems which must be replaced every year.

— David Kurten (@davidkurten) July 3, 2022