On the “we cannot solve any problems if we cannot solve all the problems”argument

One particularly annoying left-NIMBY moves, as we have observed before, is to justify (what is almost always aesthetic) opposition to allowing construction of new multifamily housing because it will not “end capitalism” or lead to the full nationalization of housing in the Unites States or whatever. As Eric Levitz points out, since capitalism is not going anywhere in the United States on any foreseeable timeline, this line of argument is counterproductive whether it applies to climate or housing:

So Wagner is not wrong to suggest that capitalism’s pathologies are implicated in the housing crisis. But it does not follow from that insight that removing obstacles to multifamily-housing construction — such as the two-stair requirement and restrictive zoning — wouldn’t do anything to lower rents. Housing affordability varies between capitalist countries. And capitalist nations that make it easier for developers to grow the housing stock in response to demand tend to enjoy lower prices.

John Burn-Murdoch recently illustrated this point in the Financial Times. Burn-Murdoch contrasted the disparate housing trajectories of Anglophone countries (which tend to have more restrictive zoning codes) and the rest of the developed world. He shows that there is a tight relationship between a country’s ratio of housing units to people and its level of housing inflation.

Abolishing exclusionary zoning and two-stair requirements would almost certainly facilitate more housing construction. And more housing construction would put downward pressure on prices for middle-class households. Further, the easier and cheaper it is to construct new multifamily housing, the more social housing the state will be able to construct with any given amount of tax dollars. There is thus no contradiction between mitigating the housing crisis through regulatory reforms and pursuing the abolition of housing insecurity. Progress on the former abets progress toward the latter.

Like Riley, Wagner does not explain why we shouldn’t prefer such reforms to the status quo, opting instead to explain why we should pursue the abolition of capitalism (or at least the housing market) to such reforms. But she offers no explanation for how the latter is to be achieved. Her warnings about the limitations of regulatory reform are well founded. But her insistence that such measures have no economic value is not.

All of which is to say that the revolution is not coming — at the very least, not on the timeline necessary for keeping climate change within remotely tolerable bounds or for redressing America’s housing shortage. Denigrating useful reforms on the grounds that they fail to abolish capitalism is a fine way for iconoclastic intellectuals to communicate their sense of superiority to the squares who engage with mainstream politics. But it achieves little else.

And of course, the argument cuts both ways — if subsidies for green energy and upzoning will not “end capitalism,” the same is even more true for “just allowing climate change to proceed unabated” or “giving a huge windfall to incumbent homeowners by making new housing construction illegal.”