If You Build It, They Will Come, But Only If They’re Allowed to Build More Stuff

Submitted by Simon Black of Sovereign Man blog, In 1919, a prominent socialist named Nicholas Klein addressed the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America Convention. And in describing their struggle, he told the crowd: “First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.”

Before Queen’s Park asks residents to dish out more money for transit expansion, it needs to “root out waste” at the provincial government, says Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak.

READERS may know that I have an interest in urban development issues, and in particular in the economic costs of restrictions on growth. I think that those most involved in city planning are beginning to have a greater appreciation for those costs. Yet the presumption is still that one has to make a positive case for more building in order to justify greater allowance of density. Consider this paragraph by Emily Badger, writing at Atlantic Cities:

A Greater Greater Washington reader named thisisbossi dreamed up an impossibly ambitious scheme for expanding WMATA’s heavy rail network:

I think it’s great that the newest Pentagon auxiliary structure will be the DOD’s greenest office building yet but if they really wanted to be environmentally conscious they wouldn’t have located it “a mere 7 miles down I-395 at Mark Center,” they would have put it right next to the Pentagon where currently a gigantic open-air parking lot is occupying some extremely valuable land:

Maps are powerful ideas. A map once drawn can be viewed as a contract, a promise to build something. We live with the ghosts of maps drawn long ago. Unbuilt highways queue-up to get built, even when their rationale has disappeared. But lines remain unbuilt for a reason, people perceived the benefit did not outweigh the cost. Of course, conditions can change, a line which once failed a benefit-cost test may now pass it, or vice versa.