In 2023, no rational person would have the idea that any developer should be permitted to build anything anywhere of any size at any price point. After local, national, and global inequality have increased for decades, no rational person would believe that local people must abandon local government control over their neighborhoods and surrender to the realization that multinational Real Estate Investment Trusts with anonymous foreign investors are the ones who should control the future of their community.

NIMBYs are selfish idiots. YIMBYs are dangerous idiots.

People with brain cells recognize that we live in a complex world where individual people will always want as much control over their lives as the systems in place will allow them to have. Some renters have opinions about shadows at 5:30 am. A fantasy-land where multi-millionaire NIMBY homeowners and multinational REITs are the only ones with power who participate in local government is a land where renters are one step away from being nothing but vermin to be controlled or exterminated.

This opinion piece gets almost everything right by providing realistic appraisals of a complex system, unlike a huge number of braindead morons with overly simple agendas who post here. This opinion:

1. is anti-NIMBY. The basic solution is simple: build more housing, in line with the economic theory that increased supply will bring down the cost of buying or renting...[by] reducing the power of local officials to thwart development. If you're anti-NIMBY, be happy about that.

2. is anti-YIMBY. “We don’t start from the premise that adding housing is a negative,” said Driscoll. “That doesn’t mean build anywhere, any how, any size.” If you're anti-YIMBY, be happy about that.

3. identifies who is genuinely at-risk. In an ideal world...low-income tenants in triple-deckers benefit from new housing construction too; build enough new housing and the economic incentive for landlords to evict tenants and turn their homes into condos disappears. But it will take years or decades for the market to stabilize. In the meantime, the state will need to take steps to protect those low-income renters and provide more rental assistance and subsidized rental housing. If you're against the people who believe government should never do anything to protect voters against unstable markets, be happy about that.

The Boston area is home many research universities and textbook publishing companies in addition to strong technology and pharmaceutical sectors. That's why I think the kind of woo-woo you're describing really isn't popular here compared to the popularity of the reality-based community.

My first point:

> the key to helping working class folks is systemic change that intentionally decreases the Gini Coefficient

Your blathering idiocy:

> Try explaining to a single mother buying diapers why she should care enough about the Gini coefficient to go spend more money somewhere else.

My second point:

> If you don't even know what systemic change is then don't waste pixels arguing against it.

You think my first point didn't stick because you don't seem able to read for comprehension.

No hard plans.

There's a Wikipedia article.

As for the old grand junction railroad, there's the CT2 bus.

Oh it's all so very complicated when wealthy investors from faraway lands with authoritarian rule put some of their wealth into NYSE:WMT instead of investing it all in nearby oppression. What those investors with connections to Erdogan's AKP party in Turkey or to the Qatari government want is for Walmart to help local working class folks in small-town USA because that's the community they care about, right? It's all about those benefits that you can't get at small businesses. Consumers like me should be so grateful to foreign investors when a big box store pops up nearby. What a great point. It's all so complicated. When will I realize that business owners who live near me is a bad thing because they deny these opportunities for people far away to have a diverse investment portfolio?

Yes, with modern systemic hypercapitalism and citizen powerlessness in the US, corporate leadership is paid too much. That's one part of the story. You forgot every other part of the story.

Investors and venture capitalists are also paid too much, and workers are paid too little. Those are other important parts of the story.

But the most important part of the story you forgot for your particular example of explanations to a single mother buying diapers about why she should care about the Gini coefficient is the complete absence of cash benefits in the US for being parents. Luxembourg, Belgium, Austria, Germany, Canada, Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, and France ALL pay THOUSANDS in cash each year to single mothers for being single mothers in addition to the free child care and the huge period of paid time off they receive if they choose to raise their kids in their own home without using the free child care.

Do you believe the single mothers in those civilized places are upset when they see American mothers paying a few pennies less for diapers in Walmart than they pay for local products when their local governments support them as parents instead of abandoning them?

Idiot.

If you don't even know what systemic change is then don't waste pixels arguing against it.

My view is that you're only considering primary effects with no consideration of secondary and tertiary impacts. In addition to not having any Walmarts around here, local governments should do all they can to not welcome or get rid of other big-parking-lot monsters from the last century like Home Depot and BJs Wholesale Club. They all have the net impact of delivering wealth from the poor to the already-super-rich.

How many decades does the local, regional, national, and global economy need to suffer from increasing inequality before people like you finally figure out that the key to helping working class folks is systemic change that intentionally decreases the Gini Coefficient instead of giving people the so-called-freedom to only throw money at the rich for daily essentials after all other options have disappeared?

Cod jerky makes a great stocking stuffer. Just be sure it's the local kind and not that Scandinavian or Asian crap. This is a gift for a dog, right?

Give a kid aged around 8 to 11 an old fashioned paper map of the state showing every secondary road. Draw a dot on Somerville and a dot on Amherst. Tell him or her to create a route that goes north of Quabbin Reservoir and avoids cities outside the Boston area and avoids interstates and highways and avoids routes 2, 3, 9, 20, and 30 as much as possible. Then let the kid be your navigator. If you don't have a kid, find an adult who can pretend to be a kid. Enjoy!

I don't think reddit has engaged in the monopolistic and anti-competitive tactics of google and amazon.

Instead of governments at varying levels regulating services similar to utilities, it should own them. This doesn't just apply to ISPs but also to cable TV, electricity, gas, telephone, cellular telephone, everything. The federal government should also own and operate google and amazon.

I'd ask the Cuban Embassy in Washington DC for the most recent details about exactly what will be accepted.