Highlights: #211 – Sam Bowman on why housing still isn’t fixed and what would actually work

2025-01-06

Economist and editor of Works in Progress Sam Bowman isn’t content to just condemn the Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) mentality behind rich countries' construction stagnation. He wants to actually get a tonne of stuff built, and by that standard the strategy of attacking ‘NIMBYs’ has been an abject failure. They are too politically powerful, and if you try to crush them, sooner or later they crush you.So Sam lays out three alternative strategies in our full interview with him — including highlights like:Rich countri...

Economist and editor of Works in Progress Sam Bowman isn’t content to just condemn the Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) mentality behind rich countries' construction stagnation. He wants to actually get a tonne of stuff built, and by that standard the strategy of attacking ‘NIMBYs’ has been an abject failure. They are too politically powerful, and if you try to crush them, sooner or later they crush you.

So Sam lays out three alternative strategies in our full interview with him — including highlights like:

Rich countries have a crisis of underconstruction (00:00:19)
The UK builds shockingly little because of its planning permission system (00:04:57)
Overcoming NIMBYism means fixing incentives (00:07:21)
NIMBYs aren't wrong: they are often harmed by development (00:10:44)
Street votes give existing residents a say (00:16:29)
It's essential to define in advance who gets a say (00:24:37)
Property tax distribution might be the most important policy you've never heard of (00:28:55)
Using aesthetics to get buy-in for new construction (00:35:48)
Locals actually really like having nuclear power plants nearby (00:44:14)
It can be really useful to let old and new institutions coexist for a while (00:48:27)
Ozempic and living in the decade that we conquered obesity (00:53:05)
Northern latitudes still need nuclear power (00:55:30)

These highlights are from episode #211 of The 80,000 Hours Podcast: Sam Bowman on why housing still isn’t fixed and what would actually work. These aren't necessarily the most important, or even most entertaining parts of the interview — so if you enjoy this, we strongly recommend checking out the full episode!

And if you're finding these highlights episodes valuable, please let us know by emailing podcast@80000hours.org. (And you may have noticed this episode is longer than most of our highlights episodes — let us know if you liked that or not!)

Highlights put together by Simon Monsour, Milo McGuire, and Dominic Armstrong

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