YIMBY land-use policy isn’t among the very top problems of the whole world—it isn’t as important as AI alignment, biorisk & nuclear war risk mitigation, global development, etc. That’s why it’s usually not considered a core EA cause area.
But, in many western first-world “superstar cities”, I believe that YIMBY/housing issues are indeed the #1 economic issue holding back growth in those cities. It’s not just young people complaining about first-time homebuying; it really is a massive economic distortion that causes many tragic problems and inefficiencies. So, when people living in cities like London apply an “EA mindset” to prioritize /among local political issues/ instead of among all possible causes, they correctly realize that housing restrictions are a huge problem sabotaging their homeland.
I would guess (although I’m not sure) that in most LMIC, it would be rare for san-fransisco-style land-use overregulation to be the #1 most important obstacle to development. Personally, I am both a big fan of EA and a big fan of YIMBYism. But if I lived in Turkey instead of California, I’d probably spend less time thinking about how to fix housing and more time thinking about how to fix inflation & bad monetary policy. Each nation is unique, so I think there is a huge amount of benefit from applying an “EA mindset” to the issues of your local politics (see for instance Zvi Moshovitz’s vision of EA inspired political analysis: https://thezvi.substack.com/p/announcing-balsa-research), even if those local issues aren’t as globally important as AI, nuclear war, climate change, etc.
(PS, on a separate note I am totally enthusiastic about the potential for work-from-home to mitigate housing problems, by breaking the monopoly of the few top cities and promoting more “governance competition” as cities are forced to compete more to attract residents! Also excited about the potential for “virtual immigration” and people working remotely across national borders. I agree than more people should be excited about this; for more info you might enjoy my entry in a sci-fi worldbuilding contest where I talk more about these ideas: https://worldbuild.ai/w-0000000088/.)
Echoing Nathan:
YIMBY land-use policy isn’t among the very top problems of the whole world—it isn’t as important as AI alignment, biorisk & nuclear war risk mitigation, global development, etc. That’s why it’s usually not considered a core EA cause area.
But, in many western first-world “superstar cities”, I believe that YIMBY/housing issues are indeed the #1 economic issue holding back growth in those cities. It’s not just young people complaining about first-time homebuying; it really is a massive economic distortion that causes many tragic problems and inefficiencies. So, when people living in cities like London apply an “EA mindset” to prioritize /among local political issues/ instead of among all possible causes, they correctly realize that housing restrictions are a huge problem sabotaging their homeland.
I would guess (although I’m not sure) that in most LMIC, it would be rare for san-fransisco-style land-use overregulation to be the #1 most important obstacle to development. Personally, I am both a big fan of EA and a big fan of YIMBYism. But if I lived in Turkey instead of California, I’d probably spend less time thinking about how to fix housing and more time thinking about how to fix inflation & bad monetary policy. Each nation is unique, so I think there is a huge amount of benefit from applying an “EA mindset” to the issues of your local politics (see for instance Zvi Moshovitz’s vision of EA inspired political analysis: https://thezvi.substack.com/p/announcing-balsa-research), even if those local issues aren’t as globally important as AI, nuclear war, climate change, etc.
(PS, on a separate note I am totally enthusiastic about the potential for work-from-home to mitigate housing problems, by breaking the monopoly of the few top cities and promoting more “governance competition” as cities are forced to compete more to attract residents! Also excited about the potential for “virtual immigration” and people working remotely across national borders. I agree than more people should be excited about this; for more info you might enjoy my entry in a sci-fi worldbuilding contest where I talk more about these ideas: https://worldbuild.ai/w-0000000088/.)