All of My Guest Posts for Volokh Conspiracy

Last month, I guest blogged on Build, Baby, Build for Reason magazine’s Volokh Conspiracy. Here’s what I wrote, with highlights.

• Trillions. Highlight:

  Even better, deregulation will deliver these gains beyond a reasonable doubt. Laissez-faire in housing is not a futurist Libertopia. A hundred years ago, U.S. housing markets were close to laissez-faire, and the least-regulated regions of the U.S. are still close to laissez-faire. Furthermore, we don't have to blithely assume vigorous competition will arise, because vigorous competition in the construction industry already exists. The total number of builders is immense, and even in our regulated world, many are champing at the bit to expand.

• Build, Baby, Build: My Most Inexcusable Omission. Highlight:

  Large-scale privatization of government land is a wonderful opportunity for domestic charter cities. Want to start a new U.S. population center? Buy a few hundred square miles of uninhabited federal land and try your ideas. "Build it and they will come" overstates, but visionary billionaires like Elon Musk could plausibly build new metropolises from scratch.

• The YIMBY Napkin. Highlight:

  Recently, however, I started wondering what a quick "back-of-the-envelope" or "napkin" calculation would reveal. When I teach the economic effects of immigration, for example, I normally start by multiplying rough estimates of (a) gains per immigrant by (b) total number of immigrants. In principle, one could do the same for domestic migration. Why not give it a try?

• Build, Baby, Build: Responses to the Best Objections. Highlight:

  Whenever you see birth dearths in cramped quarters, the fundamental question to ask is: "Why do these people consume such a small quantity of housing?" Our default answer should definitely be: "Because housing is expensive." If 4000 square foot apartments in Manhattan skyscrapers cost $1500 a month, would critics really still expect their occupants to have low fertility?

Thanks again to Ilya Somin for making my guest stint for Volokh possible.