I dislike twitter, to a significant extent because it is suited for “real time” communication, whereas I want information to be indestructible (and easily accessible). Josh Barro uses it a lot though, including in a recent argument about the defects of local government. I wanted to reference it in a discussion with mtraven, but just passing along one link wouldn’t cut it. The relevant comments weren’t that numerous or scattered though, so I figure I’ll compile them here.
Josh Barro:
Libertarians who love hyperlocal governments should take a hard look at planning. Low levels of government are often the most tyrannical.
Tiebout competition doesn’t stop local planning malevolence for two reasons. First, you can’t take your real estate with you.
Second, bad planning acts are often cartel behavior, enriching owners of improvements within the jurisdiction at the expense of outsiders.
Will Chamberlain:
@jbarro @willwilkinson you’re massively discounting the importance of exit and the relevance of the tiebout model. @thousandnations
Josh Barro:
@willchamberlain see my subsequent Tweets. Tiebout competition is of limited use for planning and zoning.
James Poulos:
@jbarro Even lots of petty local tyranny has weaker impact on things libertns care about than 1/2 as bad a tyranny at state or natl levels.
Josh Barro:
@jamespoulos I disagree. People understate how important land use policy is. It’s one of the main ways govt controls what we do.
James Poulos:
@jbarro Yes, but Kelo.
Josh Barro:
@jamespoulos isn’t that exactly my point? The bad actor in Kelo was a municipal government.
James Poulos:
@jbarro Thanks to national-level government one bad actor’s actions became the law of the land?
Josh Barro:
@jamespoulos I don’t like the Kelo decision, but it’s a decision about the powers of local governments.
James Poulos:
@jbarro local tyranny is bad, but its effects are…localized
Tim Carney:
@jbarro but local tyranny is the easiest to exit. That’s huge.
Josh Barro:
@TPCarney this is a good argument for local control over many issues, but not planning, for two reasons I laid out in later tweets.
@TPCarney the first is that your real estate can’t exit with you.
@TPCarney the second is that bad planning policy is often cartel behavior by the voter base inside a municipality.
January 4, 2012 at 1:41 am
I post this as a radical decentralist, it’s an argument I should take seriously. I have previously mentioned Bryan Caplan’s Tiebout paper, although his argument relied on electoral effects. Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy has made arguments similar to Barro in that real estate is special because it is immobile.
I remain a decentralist because giving the national government power to prevent local governments from making bad policy means it could also prevent them from making good policy (or imposing good policy implies the power to impose bad policy). Is there a general reason to expect asymmetry? I haven’t heard it. Over the long run I expect people to “vote with their feet” into places with better policy. If they already bought property in a region which subsequently enacted bad policies, then yes they may have to eat that loss on the selling price of their property.
January 4, 2012 at 4:16 am
Josh’s arguments are weak. It may be expensive to exit a town after having bought a home there, but it is functionally impossible to leave the United States for another country. I’d do a visualization showing immigration/emigration from state to state compared with a chart showing the number of people who renounced their US citizenship. And that’s a generous comparison! A person has to give up a lot more to move from state to state, than from city to city. And tons of people still do it every year!
Second, his argument about cartels is a “no shit, sherlock,” argument that applies to not just all governments but all democratic organizations and monopolies. Competition is what checks all this stuff back.
Finally, his empiric sucks. Some NIMBYs in San Francisco making it hard to remodel your home isn’t a libertarian dream, but hyper-localism doesn’t have to be utopia do be a major improvement on the squo.
January 4, 2012 at 8:48 am
Barro doesn’t know how the real world works. Planning, at least commercial planning, can rarely stand up to a strong lawsuit. The advantage of local government is its ability to raise money is limited.
January 5, 2012 at 12:14 am
I am completely ignorant of the ability of commercial planning to withstand lawsuits.
January 5, 2012 at 8:51 am
If you’re a big enough developer, you can take a city to court until they cry uncle.
January 9, 2012 at 12:05 am
I suppose Barro is talking about people who aren’t big developers. A lot of the development horror studies like Kelo and Atlantic Yards are about government using eminent domain on behalf of rich interests. Although “blight” is also used to push out poor people even if there isn’t a developer ready to gain.