the thing is, the whole yimby/abundance/zoning law reform thing *could* easily be framed in economic populist terms. i've said before that "populism" isn't so much an ideology as it is a framing that can be applied to various wildly different ideologies, and you could easily frame zoning law reform in terms of "taking down the fat-cat wealthy suburban nimbys". and sometimes people like Ezra Klein will seem like they're setting up this kind of framing, by criticizing the democrats for "no longer being the party of the working class"
AND YET when abundance types actually talk about their own policy ideas, instead of framing it as a form of economic populism, they frame it as the *antidote* to economic populism, and go out of their way to avoid a populist framing of their own policy, even in ways that don't make sense. see this:
if you're a renter your neighbors are probably also renters and are probably not homeowning "nimbys". presenting them as "your neighbors" is the kind of framing you'd use to *defend* them, and is completely counter-productive to presenting them as the villains. presenting nimbys as distant wealthy elites would be both more accurate and more persuasive- use such an unappealing framing here?
well, the structure of the article is a hint. the headline isn't "it's the nimbys who are ruining the housing market" it's "blackrock is not ruining the housing matket". the article isn't centrally about attacking nimbys, it's about defending housing speculators and landlords.
(and another rhetorical slight of hand in how blackrock is being used here- "blackrock isn't single handedly destroying the housing market" is implied to mean "housing speculation isn't destroying the housing market" when in fact housing speculation *is* destroying the housing market)
and this is why socialists can include zoning law overhaul within a broader framework if definancialization of the housing market, while "abundance" libs cannot incorporate definancialization into their agenda, because their agenda is, *at it's core*, about defending housing speculators, much more than it is about zoning law reform.
abundance libs keep pushing a narrative that socialists are irrationally opposing zoning law reform, see this excerpt from yesterday's thread:
which consists of angrily accusing left-wingers of being against zoning law reform, with the only evidence of this being an anecdote about how they totally supposedly met tons of these people, #trustmebro.
they have to manufacture this conflict out of nothing because in actual real life most socialists are supportive of zoning law overhaul. reformist social democrats like mamdani support it, radical marxists like myself support it, the "nimby socialist" is largely a myth. (for what it's worth i'm pretty critical of reformist "socialists" but I obviously prefer them to abundance libs)
abundance libs like to claim socialists are irrationally rejecting zoning law reform for ideological reasons, but actually it's abundance libs irrationally rejecting definancialization for ideological reasons.
regarding mamdani, that's the great irony here right? "abundance" libs like to talk about how socialists need to get out of the way so the abundance libs can enact zoning law reform, since the abundance libs are "more electable", but then democratic socialists like mamdani are the ones actually enacting zoning law reform, because they're the ones who can actually get elected. looks like "turn against your neighbors" isn't actually a winning message at the ballot box!
and of course I think we need to think outside the ballot box entirely, but that's a discussion for another time.
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