I'm going to risk a political statement and say that this is why I'm mostly hopeful about DOGE, even if parts of it are a shit show.
Building civilization comes with a hefty dose of institutional entropy, which keeps accumulating, despite (or often because) good intentions and competence. Everybody is improving their piece of the map, but this means you get stuck in a lot of spots of local maxima. Some can be fixed from a level above, but some need a round of creative destruction every 10 years or so.
I've read this yesterday: https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/why-japan-succ...
It's a good read and a good blog for many reasons, but the relevant part to this conversation: Japan managed to keep a very high level of living even through decades of economic stagnation and aging population in large part by having a sane zoning system. Yes, that simple. They have 12, nation-wide, mostly inclusive zoning types. This means the permitted building types carry over as you move up the categories, allowing mixed-use development by default.
And indeed, you can actually go to Japan and buy a house for about the price of a decent car - which coincidently used to be the case in most of the world, before the double pressure of zoning/coding on one hand, and migration towards urban centers on the other squeezed the housing pricing way above what actual costs would have it be.
For instance, would you fire doctors to reduce bureaucracy in medical services?
Musk seems to want things to scale; fewer people to achieve more productivity. People that already fall through the cracks aren't going to suddenly find themselves better off via a system that scales better, because better scaling actually creates wider cracks.
The median flows better, at the cost of the fringes.
Your comments regarding Japan are interesting. Japan's definitely an interesting example to use due to the odd, unenviable economic situation, but that makes your point stand out more rather than less, I think.
[1]: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_homeless_relocation_pr...
[3]: https://atlantablackstar.com/2025/02/14/elon-musk-faces-back...
So good luck with that.
Zoning as a silver bullet? When you have a huge economic difference as a conflating factor? If the US had had decades of economic stagnation the housing price pressure caused by the beneficiaries of many sectors of the economy NOT stagnating, but instead of booming at more-than-anywhere-else-in-the-world-levels, seen in SF in particular, would be far less.) Look at housing prices in hollowing-out former industrial towns in the Midwest. Economic stagnation and lower cost of living go hand in hand. Japan stagnated at a pretty high level, quality-of-living-wise. That doesn't seem like a bad thing. It's certainly not comparable to Nigeria, Pakistan, or Chile. It's also not comparable to the US. And do you know who else doesn't want the US to stagnate like that for the elite professional class? Elon Musk. (And Japan's economic situation has more than a few darker aspects to it.)
(Republicans also fucking love zoning, so..... again... wtf)
Trump's campaign platform was verbatim in favor of single family zoning according to his website. Harris's official platform was to ease permitting restrictions and provide incentives to states to reduce these regulations, according to their website and the multiple times they discussed this on the campaign trail.
Look past the marketing hype of DOGE and see that it's not actually deregulating anything that matters. The regulations that are blocking housing and energy are only going to be accelerated under this administration -- wilfully so.
The technocratic center-right have at times embraced deregulations like this, but not the new populist-right. The populist-right, if anything, see these regulations as useful because it empowers the immigrant scapegoat tactic as an explanation for housing costs.
That is more or less how it works all around the world except the US. Or rather: mixed use is the default, outside of specific cases
But how does fixing our zoning issues translate to, for example, firing thousands of IRS workers?
But the article isn't wrong though. Zoning things like Tokyo in San Francisco would be a silver bullet to the woes there and it would go a long way to making people feel prosperous. If you live in the bay area, you'll be shocked to see people with quite large net worths, feel like they have nothing because the only place they can afford near their workplace is $1M or more and we're talking about condos here.
Those of us that want to can move to San Francisco or New York.
The state i live in has fewer people than metro Los Angeles. What works for them for housing is unnecessary for us.
However, it's hubris to assume that everything is bloat. There is the adage of Chesterton's fence, which reads: "...reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood." Many things that appear to be bloat that serves a useful function, and tearing them blindly is going to do irreparable damage.
At a high level, the current administration is seeking ways to cut tax for the wealthy and pay and conditions for workers. As a property developer, Trump has a literal vested interest in maintaining high property values.
Its really difficult to see how this will translate into more affordable housing for poor people.
But he we are three years later and twitter is still running and still top dog in the message-post space.
I can't help but feel that in the presence of lots of money, organizations just bloat and bloat and bloat, and all that bloat will be sure to have a long winded explanation for why it is _critical_ to stay in existence.
The problem is if you want lower bureaucracy you have to change laws and not fire people.
There is plenty of pressure on the organizations to be efficient, the American people never saw a tax cut they didn't like.
I would expect this to be a particularly low point. Can you link some data?
There is plenty of pressure on the organizations to be efficient
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/banks-sell-down-55-...
so I was wrong to say they were as low as 40 cents, but the point stands that twitter's financials have improved a great deal
And it's not a charity either. So get rid of these wasteful programs that redistribute other peoples money that don't even work.
The trend of stealing money from New York, shutting down the Department of Education, and FEMA would make me think otherwise.
He just hasn’t finished the job.
SF and LA have a lot less "living above a restaurant" because of those.
To put it in software terms, this is like doing a refactor without knowing what the current code base does, what the intended functionalities are and without having a design. Instead, someone just goes in to delete chunks of code based on the file name and see what happens.
With a random CRUD app that might be ok to some extent, but we're talking about people's livelihood, national security matters, environmental and consumer protection and such. The current DOGE approach using the most charitable take is either reckless or hubris.
But for the most part, the things I expect the SF city government to do, get done. The roads are paved, the schools function, crime is kept in check, elections are held, permits are issued, inspections get done, etc. All to varying degrees of course. And the people get to change leadership if they feel things aren't going well (as they did in the last election).
I don't know what you mean about crime being kept in check. Right now there are several cars on my street with expired registration. Two of them have no license plates at all. I doubt they are insured. I have been the victim of crime in my home.
There are people openly selling illegal drugs on the street, with no fear of arrest or prosecution.
The schools spent $27k per student per year (i.e. $500k per classroom), and FEWER THAN HALF of students meet grade level standards in math and English.
It takes many many permits to open a restaurant, and many would-be restaurant owners give up part way through the ordeal. 'Permits are issued' doesn't indicate efficiency when the number of permits required is beyond what's reasonable.
The expectations we have of the government have to be related, to some extent, to the resources it takes from us.
If you spend $27k per student per year, yes I expect schools to run efficiently enough such that students graduate high school able to read and write.