Local governments are structurally incapable of solving the scarcity they’re rewarded for maintaining.

Housing markets have become regulated cartels of scarcity. The wealth looks “earned” on paper but is largely transferred from newcomers and renters to long-time owners. Housing markets are anything but free markets. The bottom 1/2s biggest expense by far inflated greatly by

M.A.C.H.I.N.A. (Make America Crush Hostile Industrial Nations Again)

Most of the increase in power costs in the western United States is due not to data centers, but to fire risk and the fact that we've made utilities bear most liability for really crappy land use decisions. Pacific Northwest Lab has a companion report to this great LBNL piece.

Union Pacific & Norfolk Southern are looking to merge. This may be a good thing, continuing a 45-yrs of economies of scale. Evidence shows trains follow Bertrand Competition, lowering the price to cost w just 2 firms. After deregulation, inf adj prices have fallen 40%! Link🧵

"Residents of a tiny unincorporated community outside of Los Angeles have trounced a giant battery project in court — and in the process seem to have blocked energy storage projects in more than half of L.A. County, the biggest county in California."

4 plex stock plan legal by right in nearly every US neighborhood pre 1927 🇺🇸 Where did we go wrong? 🇺🇸

How dare you to be so amazing? I am constantly told books are not perfect, yet, I see an exception in this rule

America has a housing crisis in large part because (a) local governments control land use policy, and (b) homeowners over the age of 65 who dislike neighborhood change are WILDLY overrepresented in the electorate for off-cycle local government races.

Consumption inequality is probably the best way to measure economic inequality generally so it’s kinda weird it ends up being more focused on income/wealth

Hoo boy. Longstanding Californian ways of knowing and being [baldly lying to the state about your Housing Element] and structuring society in really antigrowth ways just got blown up in court

"Don't go into manufacturing, robots are going to do everything soon, learn to code instead"

Has Measure ULA created 10,000 quality union jobs? Nope. Totally made up numbers, parroted by the Citizens Oversight Committee -- which is supposed to be a watchdog, not a cheerleader. Here's LAist's excellent deep dive, featuring Michael Manville : laist.com/news/housing-h…

I wrote something about the current state of L.A. infrastructure, politics, budget, and how to give Angelenos the world class city they deserve: michaelschneider.medium.com/la-spends-more…

Moka pot speedrun (we can pump 4kW into a tiny moka pot)

Municipal employees when you ask them how literally any other city in the world solves some problem