The SEC seems to bring about 2 or 3 crypto enforcement actions per month.[1]
They're still working down the ICO backlog. Mostly they've been going after issuers and out and out theft.
After FTX, political support for crypto deregulation dropped to near zero. FTX, remember, was lobbying for a bill that would allow all the things for which Kraken is now in trouble. That is going absolutely nowhere now.
Also, the SEC, CFTC, and Main Justice now have their act together on cooperating to deal with crypto scams. There used to be jurisdictional issues. Now, it's just treated as crime.
You're not wrong (and I upvoted you because your comment doesn't deserve to be so negative), but I don't think the previous regime was all that friendly toward crypto either...
Because the of political agenda of Elizabeth Warren and other Democrats who want to protect Wall Street establishment. Prior to this political agenda, the SEC did not care. Now is good time, because the SEC has the required political backing.
I do think vision habits matter for near sightedness. The human eye, like all mammal eyes, seems adapted for far vision. To bring the focal point in, the ciliary muscle must contract to change the shape of the eye. When it relaxes, the focal point goes back out far away.
In the environment for which we are adapted, most time was spent focusing far away. In the modern world, a person may spend all day, every day, for years on end, focusing on things close up like books and screens. If the ciliary muscle is always contracted, it can get stuck; over time, even change the shape of the eyeball from constant pressure such that the cornea focuses too far in front of the retina, making the image blurry.
Perhaps I was too quick to get glasses when things first started looking blurry. If I had known, I would have tried to get the ciliary muscle to relax by focusing on things far away for at least a time every day. Instead, I went right to the minus lenses but kept my lifestyle of close up work all the time. This led to hyperopic defocus, meaning my ciliary muscle had to continue to contract to focus on near objects through the minus lens.
About 7 years ago I had the thought of improving my vision habits. I will spare HN the details, but my vision (optometrist confirmed) has improved from about -3.5 diopters to -2.25 diopters. I can now do things without glasses including working on the computer, cooking, and reading, for which I am grateful.
I wore glasses for 20+ years before adopting contacts at age 30. I had to learn how to change focus because the depth of field is less compressed than it is with glasses. It was a notable effort for the first few weeks until my eyes adapted.
Now I have early stage presbyopia which is only an issue for reading small text. I'm grateful I can just pop out the lenses and get spectacular near vision when I need it. It's great for watching video on a 5" cell phone because you can hold it close enough to fill your field of view and don't have to support the mass of a larger phone when lying down.
~possible but I've read a research that the most impact for children is simply more outdoor time. There's a pdf of a Piano Tuner Association recommending the use of reading glasses when working in close distance.
I believe there should be wider recommendation to strongly discourage using myopia glasses for computer/reading. I've been wearing it since I was 7 (> 15 years) with a lot of reading, phone and computer usage, no ~big changes in my myopia but not better too. (Disclaimer, my glasses have always been pretty weak (<2))
I've also mistakenly overcorrected my latest pair, so I'll experiment with a astigmatism-only pair to see how much I need correction.
probably not a good idea because it would introduce more problems related to convergence and accommodation, better to just let the eyes work naturally and keep better habits.
I just don't understand why cities in California won't let go of single unit zoning.
Single unit is the most expensive and least efficient zoning rule. Getting rid of it would bring housing costs down.
Ever visit a beautiful city like Paris, Copenhagen, Milan and wonder why we don't have that? It would be illegal to make the buildings they have under our zoning code and parking mandates!
>Getting rid of it would bring housing costs down.
You answered your own question. Housing costs coming down is a good thing for people who need housing, but it's not really a good thing for people who own valuable homes, and people who own valuable homes tend to have much more political power.
I feel that's mostly true, but there may be many other similar factors. If you make "affordable" housing ("for who?" is the correct question), then you have more people that can't afford to spend as much, while pushing out the people that spend more.
Someone else stated it simply as "undesirables", which I think is the quick summation of your statement and other similar reasoning. It all comes down to "I get that people need a place to live, but they can find that somewhere else" or "we've got a good thing going here (for me, the politician)".
Zoning usually gets decided on on a very local level. The people who show up to community meetings tend to be older, white home owners who don't want the value of their home to go down. Fear of "undesirables" of course also likely plays a role and when I've heard it in person, even that gets wrapped in fear of that bringing down home values and schools.
Perhaps more white owners show up in majority white neighborhoods, but what evidence is there that white owners disproportionately show up to these meetings? I assume you can provide it based on this comment.
Do they own valuable homes or do they own valuable land? I can see the land value increasing because it is now rezone-able and you can build multiple units worth on it.
I own a single family home in the Palo Alto. If I wanted to living in a city like Paris, I would. I like it here.
I don't care about the price of my house, since I do not plan to sell it this decade. I care a TON about my neighborhood. I love that my neighborhood is quiet, not crowded, and has easy parking. I will vote against any proposals or elected officials who represent me that would make that worse.
I get I represent NIMBY-ism, but these tradeoffs are real. I often see people strawman them like there are easy/obvious solutions to shared problems. There aren't.
This is why the only real solution is to not have total local control of zoning.
Given the choice, many will vote to restrict what other people around them can do with their property to benefit their own interests - financial, quality of life, etc. While externalizing the costs (higher housing costs, pollution, etc) across a large number of people who aren't allowed a vote. Hoping people will do otherwise isn't going to get results.
But given that the zoning impacts have just as big an impact on the low-paid worker who has to commute hours to the local hospital to work, it is entirely reasonable to allow those impacted parties a vote by moving zoning away from total local control up to a larger level. Recent legislative steps in CA are a move in the right direction, but need to go much farther to create more meaningful changes.
Basically, if you want a quiet neighborhood with large plots of land, you should be required to bear the full cost of that, rather than voting to externalize the majority of those costs across the larger population.
FWIW, I am happy to pay a premium for the living situation I want. I do that today across high housing costs / taxes / cost of local goods/services. I'd happily support paying for other externalities (e.g. carbon taxes).
The premium would be really large though. The difference is only in degree between current zoning and something like "I have a nice view from my window and therefore my neighbors should not be allowed to build up the 2nd floor or plant trees in a way that would block it, and nobody should be allowed to build tall buildings in downtown between me and the mountains". The current zoning just happens to be status quo. Both unreasonably restrict what others can do with their property, and the only fair way to really "pay the premium" to enforce either is to buy the land (or at least, pay some large fraction of market rent, to offset the loss that owner incurs by not e.g. building and renting out more units). Well that or NIMBYism, which is a nicer name for regulatory capture, i.e. corruption.
The easy solution is that your quality of life should not infringe on the rights of millions of people to housing that doesn't cost 90% of their monthly income to pay for. And the state is going to drag local cities kicking and screaming to where we need to go, like it or not.
I make well into 6 figures a year and I can't buy a shack in Fremont because of people like you.
Without knowing them exactly I imagine property owners actually do have rights in this situation. Where does the right “to housing that doesn’t cost 90% of their monthly income” come from?
It's more afforable compared to an apartment in New York where a townhouse can set you back 15 million.
Density isn't the issue demand is. You want to live in a place everyone else does.
At 1.3 million on average you could buy 100a property on prime farmland or you could buy an apartment in New York or a house in Freemont. Wanting Freemont to be zoned like New York property would probably make it more popular with new hot properities and it will price you out further. The truth is there are a lot of people making more money who want housing in Freemont.
Funnily enough buying a house close enough to work in NYC is actually cheaper, because Jersey City is viable and NY/NJ don't have Prop 13 to inflate property values. I could buy a 5bdr luxury home in a nice area with great schools in NYC in one of the outer boroughs or a high end luxury new construction in Jersey City. That same cash gets you a shack in a shitty part of the East Bay.
> make it more popular with new hot properities and it will price you out further
It's a common NIMBY misconception that adding more supply increases prices. Basic economics says this is obviously wrong.
> The truth is there are a lot of people making more money who want housing in Freemont
I'm pretty sure my income puts me in the top 10% of income in the Bay and definitely top 1% nationally. You're saying that less than 10% of the population should be able to purchase a starter home (what I mean by a shack). Do you not listen to what you're saying?
Top 1% nationwide is: 538,926
Top 10% in bay area: 534,600
If you make only 100k with no savings or partner you might be priced out of that 6000ft average home. Most people will buy as a couple, have a down payment and get help from parents which puts you at a disadvantage but it is still possible.
No idea if a 5 bedroom NJ home is equal to a 3 bedroom 6000 ft home in Freemont. Not sure one location has more value. I would choose Freemont over NJ.
I see you are out of touch with the housing market. Zillow doesn't give an average but most of the homes listed in Fremont there are above $1.3M, more like 1.5-1.8M if you want something bigger than 1200 sqft. If you filter by >1500 sqft everything starts at 1.5M+. So no, there's no 6000sqft "average" home, these are all starter homes averaging 1.5-1.8M. Then factor in that most houses get 100-200k over asking price during the insane bidding process.
> If you make only 100k with no savings or partner you might be priced out of that 6000ft average home. Most people will buy as a couple, have a down payment and get help from parents which puts you at a disadvantage but it is still possible
Do you listen to what you're saying? A top 10% earner in the region needs to buy as a couple and get help from parents to afford a _starter home_? So everyone else that's under the 90th percentile is just screwed?
> Top 1% nationwide is: 538,926 Top 10% in bay area: 534,600
90th percentile income in 2018 in the Bay was $384k [1]. Someone in the top 10% of incomes should not be struggling to afford a basic home with 3 bedrooms in a mediocre area.
The 1450+ feet one for 1.2 seems nice. The 760 one seems within reach.
The prices are similiar around the world. 1.5-1.8 is the average house price in Toronto. If New York/NJ is under valued and you can get a similiar home for less I would probably make the move.
> The Bay area numbers I gave are from 2021 source included.
That's household income. But sure, put me in the top 20% instead of the top 10%. Still incredibly ridiculous that an 80th percentile earner cannot afford a basic home.
> Here are some current prices
What you linked are apartments/townhomes. These have much higher HOA fees and are priced accordingly. The sticker price seems lower but the monthly payments end up the same as more expensive SFHs. To boot, most of them are really small - everything over 1500 sqft is over 1.3M which is ridiculous. So no, that's not really more affordable. Density doesn't mean everyone lives in a shoebox, it means building taller so the same land can fit 5x more people.
> The 760 one seems within reach
Again, if a 800sqft apartment that looks like it was built 70 years ago is all that's within reach of an 80th percentile household then you need to re-evaluate housing policy.
> The prices are similiar around the world. 1.5-1.8 is the average house price in Toronto
No, it's only similar in places with similarly dysfunctional real estate markets and NIMBYism as CA. Toronto and Vancouver famously have terrible SFH zoning policies. When you look at places like Atlanta, Miami, Austin, Chicago, etc. they are nowhere near the levels seen in CA.
> If New York/NJ is under valued and you can get a similiar home for less I would probably make the move
Or I can keep voting against NIMBYs and vote for densifying the Bay.
Downtown SF manages to have tall buildings. And there are a ton of 5+1 or 6+1 units going up, which in itself will 3-4x density from height and from smaller setbacks.
> Density means accepting smaller
Strongly disagree. You can still have 1200+sqft apartments. Most of the 2 and 3bd luxury apartments near me are around 1000-1100 sqft.
> An 800sqft apartment is larger than any apartment I've rented.
Not sure what kind of apartment you're renting... (or maybe you're out of touch with the market?) 500sqft is a studio and you're not fitting much more than a bed and desk in there. You have to remember that square footage includes things like bathroom, closet, washer/dryer if they're in unit, etc. And that realtors exaggerate so in practice an apartment advertised as 500 sqft is more like 350.
Please just take a look at Zillow/Redfin for one moment and tell me where you see 500sqft condos that look like actual condos rather than studios.
It's a tough problem to solve when you need to house 70,000 people per square mile (similar to Manhattan) in order to not leave people on the street, but also not allow more than 6,000 people (San Francisco) per square mile.
I have lived in areas with only single family dwellings(Tempe AZ, density 5,203 people per square mile.) and in areas with high rises(Hoboken NJ, density 41,038 people per square mile) and I can attest that most noise is from the cars on the main roads of the city, which largely depends on urban design, e.g. Hoboken has only 2 main arterial roads(Washington Street and Observer Highway) which excludes most of the noise from the interiors.
> not crowded
By what metric? I can walk my dog outside easily, travel easily in the train to manhattan, and get reservations to any restaurant on the day in Hoboken. I don't think most places are as crazy crowded as Manhattan (Brooklyn, Queen and Bronx are much lower density) where the dynamics are different because work and tourism.
Are most single family zoned places in California work building heavy areas and touristy destinations?
> easy parking.
I can find parking for ~200$ per month here. So it is kind of expensive, i'll give you that.
I think my use of "quiet" and "crowd" was not very clear. For me quiet is the absence of hustle and bustle.
When I down my street, I'll see at most 1-2 people out and about. To me, that's a more relaxing environment than even the best urban environments where I'll see dozens of people.
Unless I live next to a major road/highway, the occasional car noise is less bothersome to me personally than noise from people. To me car noise feels like white background noise, but voices trigger some active part of my brain.
I'm not arguing that's a completely rational way to feel / belief, but it totally how I feel.
And. Bay Area neighborhoods will still be full of cars because public transportation is not going to materialize overnight.
> Cars go into underground parking garages
Then we add a restriction that any multi-family unit should come with an underground parking garage. Good luck seeing that through.
> There, done.
Not done, really.
> but NIMBYs really are selfish and shallow people.
In this thread, your arguments seem shallow to me without addressing any real concerns of the bay area homeowners. You seem to be selfishly imposing your political ideology without considering all the costs which you won't be incurring anyway.
I used to think most of NIMBY was shallow. Then my city tried to approve four simultaneous development projects in one city block near me. The projects had tower heights of more than double the zoning. The traffic studies ignored all other development in the area and assumed a much higher use of public transit then is reasonable for an area poorly served by public transit. There were numerous other issues. I think many people (including myself) are not opposed to all development and see the need to build condos even in our own areas. We just see the shit we are expected to swallow from developers and want them to do far better.
Happy city dweller here...no, cars are indeed loud, but so are cities. People, trains, the buzz of lights, the rumble of skateboards, chatter, endless motion at all hours, etc. That's part of the charm.
My parents bought a house in an almost-rural region of southern California in 1991. It was difficult to lose the beautiful field across the street when a housing development went in, but they shrugged their shoulders and moved on -- no biggie.
But more recently, the tiny empty lot next to theirs has been sold and 3 really ugly apartments just went in that are totally out of character with the rest of the neighborhood. If they could have blocked this from happening, they would have -- and I don't think that's selfish NIMBYism. Your next-door neighbors' behavior affects your life profoundly, and when they do dumb stuff like building ugly, stuffed-in apartments that don't fit in with the houses next door, it will affect you negatively.
All to say, NIMBYism gets a bad rap, but having a basic standard of caring about the quality of one's neighborhood (especially next-door lots) isn't selfish or shallow.
By extension, you'd have to say it's "selfish and shallow" to pay more to not live in a bad part of town... is it really?
To those who disagree, would it be right to just let every developer's plan go through without review? I'm not saying "no development", I'm promoting the equivalent of code reviews on PRs before merge.
Housing developers shouldn't have free reign to maximize their profits regardless of costs to a city.
> I just don't understand why cities in California won't let go of single unit zoning.
People like to live in single family homes and live next to single family homes.
> Ever visit a beautiful city like Paris, Copenhagen, Milan and wonder why we don't have that? It would be illegal to make the buildings they have under our zoning code and parking mandates!
You won't get a beautiful city like those with any kind of [realistic American] zoning. It's too expensive. You'd get flimsy modern cookie-cutter buildings and maybe some brutalist concrete hulks.
>People like to live in single family homes and live next to single family homes.
Then those people should buy a single family home and the single family homes around them and keep them that way.
>You won't get a beautiful city like those with any kind of zoning. It's too expensive. You'd get flimsy modern cookie-cutter buildings and maybe some brutalist concrete hulks.
The current restrictions that have created suburbia are already yield expensive, cookie cutter and flimsy housing, so even if your arguments were taken at face value (Which I disagree with), nothing changes for the worse.
> The current restrictions that have created suburbia are already yield expensive, cookie cutter and flimsy housing, so even if your arguments were taken at face value (Which I disagree with), nothing changes for the worse.
I'm not disputing that. What I am disputing is denser housing would get us "a beautiful city like Paris, Copenhagen, Milan..." It's false advertising.
The only thing you'll get with density is density.
>That's what we did. Now people like you are saying me and my neighbors are NIBMYs and want us to change.
You bought a single family home and all surrounding single family homes around it? If that's the case, no one is asking you to change anything. They're literally your backyards and you can choose to not build any further. If your neighbors don't want to build more units, they should be free not to as well.
What needs to change is neighbors restricting housing units on property they do not own. No one is advocating for completely abolishing all zoning, but the current approach isn't working as housing prices skyrocket everywhere that housing production can't keep up — often because of zoning restrictions.
> >People like to live in single family homes and live next to single family homes.
> Then those people should buy a single family home and the single family homes around them and keep them that way.
And when they do (as an upstream commenter has done), they're attacked by the good people who blame single-family houses for what's wrong with California.
Agreed, if you look at Alameda, CA it is a town with many beautiful victorian homes. In the 70s and 80s they were tearing them down as fast as they could and building ugly apartment buildings in their place. Then they changed the laws so you couldn't tear down the old homes and now many of them are restored to their beautiful original state.
> People like to live in single family homes and live next to single family homes.
People like living in walkable neighborhoods with public transportation more, as proven by housing prices, but those are mostly illegal to build.
Also I think that society is now much more complex than the single family American dream of the past. And the US should wake up to the reality that in their society the poor are subsidizing the rich in almost everything, especially in housing.
> Are you claiming those cities don't have zoning?
I'm claiming modern construction isn't very beautiful. If you drop single family zoning for something denser, you're not going to get something like those beautiful cities that were cited above. It's false advertising to suggest that denser zoning would give us another Paris (at least not the parts people are referring to when they bring it up). You'd get McMansion Hell, 4-Plex Edition or The Concrete Hulks of Shanghai (e.g. https://aurelien-marechal.com/block#1).
I suppose you could have a zoning code that mandated "building them like they used to," but that would be too expensive.
There are many examples in the world of successful new city developments. I used to live near Java Island in Amsterdam, a newly developed neighborhood which is very densely populated (60.000 people per square mile) and quite popular. There are modern versions of traditional canal houses, which most people think look very nice. It is not inexpensive anymore, however.
I think in the US there are some comparable developments, where they also try building walkable neighborhoods with high density, having shops and restaurants mixed in. But that is still very rare in the US.
Ah, like that. Cities like Paris do still look like that because of such zoning laws, so it's not exactly impossible. IMO modern construction can be beautiful too, it's cheap (be it old or new) construction that's ugly.
It won't matter, apartments in Manhattan and London are not necessarily cheaper than single house in LA. Zoning is a way to make more property tax and will have nothing to do with low income affordable housing in the expensive area. It's the demand and supply, so long as there are enough wealth pour in the district the price will keep hiking.
SB-9 / "ADUs Everywhere!" passed last year at the state level effectively makes all property legally 2-3 unit.
Some people really want to live in lower-density suburban environments, though. I can't say I blame them, because the absolutely overwhelming majority of apartments/condos are strictly inferior in a number of ways. Sound transparency through walls / floors alone is a significant issue. Smells and ventilation too. And it's nice to have outside space you have access to / control over. Sure, units could be built to standards that mitigate those problems... but that costs money.
> It would be illegal to make the buildings they have under our zoning code and parking mandates!
More "costly" than illegal, if the LA neighborhoods I'm familiar with are any indication -- there's plenty of 3 story urban buildings with parking underneath (including one I recently moved out of), but of course that's a whole "floor" that could have been housing units, and the owner wants to recoup that with higher rents. $4250/mo for 2 bd last I checked.
> I just don't understand why cities in California won't let go of single unit zoning.
Give it time. The state government is hobbled and regional fiefdoms have far too much sway. That's slowly changing.
The state is in the middle of planning the long-term Regional Housing Needs Assessment. Regions across the state are responsible for coughing up realistic plans to meet the growth targets. If they don't come up with realistic plans to meet those targets, not only can they lose their precious single family home zoning, they can lose their zoning privileges entirely. There are even plans in the works for local governments to have state oversight officials appointed for them to completely take over their housing policy. Get your popcorn.
The article does suggest that housing density doesn't really solve the problem and that we should be more OK with letting "urban sprawl" happen.
Personally, I think we need both. Let the urban areas increasingly densify and let the people who want larger single family homes move into those types of developments that are farther out of the city centers.
Some people just don't want to live in apartment buildings, and as someone with a young child, I much prefer having my own home with a yard and parking space and garage for projects than living in an apartment building and parking on the street or in a garage. But when I was younger I wanted to be closer to restaurants and the like.
CA should invest heavily in opening up more land for housing developments and equipping them with schools and shopping close by, with transit for commuters, while prioritizing density projects in the urban centers.
Hopefully working from home is here to stay and gets wide spread adoption. Then we won't need to increase city density again and again. Smaller new towns with single family homes and nearby schools and shops, maybe a community co-working centre. If the population doesn't need to commute for work then the housing doesn't need to be in the city. Lots of smaller towns.
Replace some of that water intensive agriculture with small towns for people to live in.
Build cheaper housing farther outside of town where the land is cheaper and provide a bullet train to transport people into the expensive land areas. It might take time for the train to be built, but these areas have had decades to solve the problem while frittering away trying to build a few, token, and small small low cost housing projects. There really is no other solution for many areas like San Fran and New York … the land is simply not there and displacement of current landowners is expensive, impractical, and ineffective.
They need to bite the bullet … train … or some other effectively fast transport.
Unlike most places in the rest of world, California has plenty land space, there is no reason to think of California like Hong Kong, Tokyo or Mumbai, that'd be ridiculous.
Obviously housing cost is the tips of iceberg, and the result of state policy, resemblance to the development path often seen in middle and south America.
Yes, "undesirables", like young adults (millennials, ugh) trying to afford enough space to do society degrading things like building a home office or gasp starting a family.
You're not wrong, but it can be a fantastic experience if you do have your own self-hosted node. I run the geth node on a linux server and can connect to it to send blockchain transactions or retrieve information from the chain. Example: my tax prep software took my wallet addresses and found all my uniswap trades by querying the local node.
