Going Cold Turkey in our Addiction Economy

We're prone to addiction, and addiction is highly profitable. They know it, and we know it.

We inhabit an Addiction Economy. We all know the cure for addiction is to go Cold Turkey: drop the denial and delusion of control, and excise the source of the addiction from one's life.

This is of course not easy; it's agony on multiple fronts, for we've come to depend on the source of addiction for dopamine hits, pain management, and distraction from our troubles and travails.

Sources of addiction that tie into our identity and need to be recognized and valued are especially pernicious, as these are what make us feel that we exist in a meaningful way.

We're talking of course about social media as the source of our most compelling and tenacious addiction, for social media is the means by which we say "I exist, my opinion matters, I matter, and here is the tangible evidence, everyone can see my selfie, photo, tweet, post, note or comment, and since everyone has a device to access my opinion, I can imagine multitudes seeing it, for I can see it."

In a physical world where we're invisible and don't matter, the universal, tangible visibility of social media is addictive, for there is no substitute for it in the real world in which we're anonymous and invisible. Try getting your photo or opinion in the Mainstream Media, on network TV or in a mass media publication. Unlike these rigorously gated forms of media, social media is open to all, an irresistible opportunity to stake a claim to becoming visible.

There is nowhere in the real world to express oneself with such ease. Shouting on a street corner will get attention, but not the sort most desire. Standing up in a public hearing will provide three minutes of public exposure, but this only whets the appetite for a wider audience and a more substantial self-confirmation.

But this confirmation of selfhood is a chimera. That others see our selfie, photo, opinion or post is no substitute for relationships in the real world, and the relationship we have with ourself, in which our integrity and actions earn our self-respect, regardless of what others see or don't see and what they think or don't think about us. Our worth has nothing to do with visibility, and neither does our identity.

Let's stipulate that the phone is a mechanism of addiction, but it can be used sparingly for non-addictive practicalities. Sales people may well spend much of their day on their phone communicating with clients and making cold calls. Brief SMS texts serve as efficient communications, as do quick emails and phone calls.

The iPhone software identifies this communication as social, which confuses it with social media. Practical communication isn't social, it's communicating essential information in the most efficient manner.

The mobile phone also serves as a business tool--doing a bit of online banking, mapping a route, etc.--and as a modest platform for creating content: recording an idea or melody, sharing an idea for a podcast, etc.

But how much of our staring at the little screen is essential communication and creation, and how much is time wasted on social media or other distractions? Here are two screenshots of our household phones. The first records total use through mid-afternoon (3:14 pm): 3 minutes. The workday is largely done and essential communication took a few minutes.



Here's a weekly total: 2 hours and 22 minutes for the week, or 20 minutes average per day. Some days might require a long phone conversation, or numerous texts, but others don't require much in the way of essentials.



The phone's addictive feature is its constant pinging, demanding "look at me!" as apps notifications are constantly nagging us to generate income for the platform by opening the app and giving it our attention, for the Attention Economy depends on our engagement as the source of profit.

So Cold Turkey the notifications: delete the apps, turn off notifications, mute the device.

Also delete / Cold Turkey the social media apps and notifications. Consider social media as a snack designed to addict you to something that tastes good but is ruinously toxic, even as it generates billions of dollars in profits for the pushers / dealers.

Technology is a useful servant but a terrible master. Addiction itself is slippery; we deny we're addicted (I can stop any time), and maintain the fiction that we're in control even as we compulsively stare at our phone dozens (or hundreds) of times a day.

The phone and every app are engineered to be addictive. For each of us, it's our rational understanding of the mechanisms of addiction and our will versus thousands of people working feverishly to break down our rationality and will by appealing directly to our insecurities and dopamine circuitry.

Social media is intentionally designed to reward our addictive behavior because this behavior generates tens of billions of dollars in profits for the purveyors. The algos track what you click on, and give you more of that, notify you when a "friend" posts anything, cheer you on when your post gets a "like," and so on. The mechanisms of addiction are all in plain sight but we fall for them anyway because our insecurities and dopamine circuitry are so easy to manipulate.

The endless feed / scroll is addictive. They know it, we know it, but we're snared anyway. The way out is Cold Turkey.

The other common addiction based on products engineered to be addictive is our addiction to junk food, snacks and fast food. Once again, thousands of people are tasked with engineering and marketing these products to light up our dopamine / pleasure circuitry as the means of maximizing private profits. Our health is being ruined, slowly but surely, as the inevitable consequence of milking our dopamine circuitry for profits.

Once again, the only real solution is Cold Turkey: eliminate all junk food, snacks and fast food from our lives. If there are no snacks in the house, we won't consume them. It's that simple. So go Cold Turkey on buying bags of addiction like this:



And only have real food like this in the house. Need a snack? Then have a banana or apple or carrot or a few unprocessed peanuts.



Everyone complains that there's no time or energy to prepare a real-food meal. Yes, modern life is a pressure cooker. But how much time do we spend every day compulsively staring at a screen, not for essential communication but for all the other digital snack food we're being prompted to consume?

It's not going to make the cover of a magazine, but a can of plain black beans, some corn tortillas, a jar of salsa, some chopped up lettuce, a few olives and carrot sticks is a taco / burrito meal of real food that we control, unlike an ultra-processed substitute. Preparing a meal isn't a substitute for staring at a screen; it's the real world. There is no substitute for real food and the real world.

Preparing a stir-fry meal is pretty quick. Yes, it take some prep, but the process of prepping meat, onions and vegetables is a form of meditation on the real world that heals our compulsions and addictions. We could sit and meditate to clear our minds or we can prepare a meal, which serves the same purpose.

One of the most perniciously addictive qualifies of engineered, ultra-processed junk food is that it ruins our taste for real food. Junk food / snacks are addictive because they're loaded with completely unnatural concentrations of sugar, salt and low-quality fats. An apple is sweet, and so is a fresh carrot. But are they as sweet as breakfast cereal? No.

Everyone says real food is too expensive. Yes it is, but what are your life and health worth? We complain about the cost of food but manage to throw away a significant percentage of all the food we buy. We also tend to eat too many low-nutrition calories. Buy on sale, waste nothing, eliminate low-nutrition calories, and costs become more bearable.

We're prone to addiction, and addiction is highly profitable. They know it, and we know it. The only real way out is to go Cold Turkey and eliminate the sources of addiction from our lives. This is painful, as the pushers and dealers know oh so well, as we've lost our taste for real food and the real world. To recover our taste for real food and the real world, there's one path: Cold Turkey.

The pushers and dealers insist it can't be done. Of course they do. They're terrified by the prospect of their tens of billions of dollars in Addiction Profits slipping away as those whose health they're diminishing choose health over addiction.

Cold Turkey (Plastic Ono Band, 5 min)

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


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The Stoicism of the Caregiver

These are difficult realities without Hollywood cliche answers.

Caregivers and the costs of caregiving don't get much attention. They're not part of the news flow, and the day-to-day grind of caregiving doesn't lend itself to the self-promotional zeitgeist of social media. Look at me, helping Mom on her walker is not going to score big numbers online.

The burdens in human and financial terms are often crushing. These realities are generally obscured by taboos and Hollywood cliches: it's considered bad form to describe the burdens of caregiving, and anyone who dares to do so is quickly chided: "You're lucky your parent is still alive so you can spend quality time together."

Meanwhile, back in the real world, 4 in 10 family caregivers rarely or never feel relaxed, according to a 2023 AARP survey, as an integral part of caregiving is being on constant alert for something untoward happening to the elderly person in one's care.

The demographics are sobering: we're living longer, often much longer, than previous generations, and in greater numbers. This means 65-year olds are caring for 85-year olds and 70-year olds are caring for 90+-year olds. I've logged 8+ years of caregiving (5+ years here at home) from age 63 to 70 caring for my mom-in-law, so I have personal experience of being old enough to "retire" but retirement is a fantasy for caregivers. Our neighbors are 80+ years of age and they're caring for her 102-year old Mom. What's this retirement thing people talk about so cheerily?

All these realities are abstractions until they happen to you.

These burdens are seeping down to Gen X and the Millennial generation. 'It's a job, and a tough one': the pain and privilege of being a millennial caregiver.

The financial costs of care are staggering. A bed in private assisted living is around $75,000 and up a year, a private room in a nursing home is around $150,000 a year, and round-the-clock care at home costs from $150,000 to $250,000+ annually.

The Crushing Financial Burden of Aging at Home (WSJ.com)

"Christine Salhany spends about $240,000 a year for 24-hour in-home care for her husband who has Alzheimer's. In Illinois, Carolyn Brugioni's dad exhausted his savings and took out a home-equity line-of-credit to pay for home healthcare."

More than 11,000 people in the U.S. are turning 65 every day and the vast majority--77% of Americans age 50 and older according to an AARP survey--want to live as long as possible in their current home. At some point, many will need help. About one-fourth of those 65 and older will eventually require significant support and services for more than three years, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

About one-third of retirees don't have resources to afford even a year of minimal care, according to the Boston College center.

"The new inheritance is not having enough money to give to kids but to have enough money to cover long-term care costs, says Liz O'Donnell, the Boston-based founder of Working Daughter, an online community of caregivers.

The costs of home care are so high that not just inheritances are exhausted; the home equity is also drained. $350,000 sounds like a lot of money but that might cover two years in a nursing home but not be enough to cover two years of round-the-clock care at home.

The cost of maintaining the home doesn't go away: property taxes, insurance and maintenance expenses must be paid, too.

Those without monumental financial resources make do by doing everything themselves. Depending on the resources available in the community, there may be some minimal assistance such as weekly visits by a nurse, meals delivered, and adult day-care facilities, but there are no guarantees any of these are available or that the family qualifies.

In other words, the idea that the retired generation will leave ample inheritances is increasingly detached from reality. As noted, the new inheritance is to get through the years of caregiving without acquiring debt.

The human costs are high, too. In the Hollywood cliche, everyone adapts and makes the best of it, and there's plenty of Hallmark moments that make it all worthwhile. Yes, there are Hallmark moments, but the elderly person misses their independence and may feel resentment that they no longer control how things are done. The caregivers are often exhausted--especially if they're 65 or older--and despite their best efforts may feel resentment at ending their careers early and sacrificing their own last best years caring for a decidedly unstellar parent who doesn't seem to appreciate the immense sacrifices being made on their behalf.

The indignities of extreme old age weigh on the elderly, and the 65+ caregivers worry that they can't pick Mom or Dad up now that they're so old that they have their own infirmities.

The responsible parent frets at the expense and feels bad they won't be able to pass on much to their grandkids. They may express guilt at being a burden, though that is beyond their control. The responsible adult child is burning out trying to juggle three generations and keep themselves glued together enough to keep functioning. They can't help but want their own life back, but to say this out loud is taboo because if life gives you lemons, make lemonade. In other words, tell us a happy story, repeat an acceptable cliche or say nothing.

Nobody wants to hear any of this, and so the caregiver develops a self-contained stoicism. Everyone with no experience of caregiving wants to hear the Hollywood version, and so conversations with other caregivers are the only moments where the truth can be expressed and heard. In the rest of "normal life," the caregiver quickly learns to say what's expected: "We're managing. Life's good."

This cultural taboo means the difficult realities that will multiply as 68 million Boomers age will come as an unwelcome surprise. Everyone wants to end their lives at home, we all understand this. While the fortunate elderly die peacefully at home after a brief illness, the less fortunate require levels of care that soon exhaust people and bank accounts.



The burdens of caring for the remaining Silent Generation are high, but what about the 60 million retiree tsunami of the Boomer generation? As the general health of the American public declines, how many people will be healthy enough to care for their very elderly parents or grandparents? Who will do the often thankless work of caring for the very elderly at home and in nursing homes?

These are difficult realities without Hollywood cliche answers. The fantasy is that 60 million very elderly will be tended by robots, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. But this isn't realistic, despite all the giddy claims.

The American zeitgeist rejects problems for which there is no facile technological solution. But reality isn't a narrative, and the elderly person who fell and can't get up wants a bit of caring and sympathy, and the aging child wants to help their parent. That it isn't easy to do so requires a stoicism worthy of Marcus Aurelius.

"You have power over your mind--not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength."

"Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart."

"Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present."

All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace
by Richard Brautigan

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


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If We Set Aside Ideology, Is There Anything We Can Agree On?

Just the experiment of setting aside ideological certainties for a moment would be instructive.

Humans are hard-wired to prefer simplicity over complexity, and this is the foundation of ideology, which like mythology takes a complex world and radically simplifies it to an easily digestible construct. (I tease all this apart in my book The Mythology of Progress.)

Being social animals, humans are also hard-wired to quickly form loyalties to groups and gravitate to one camp. Very few football fans (if any) have zero loyalty to any team and have zero emotional stake (i.e. there's no team they hope loses and none they hope will win).

Uncertainty generates anxiety, and so we settle the real world's many uncertainties with internal certainty: an ideology is a simple sketch of how the world works, and we will defend this emotionally powerful construct even as evidence piles up that it doesn't accurately map all of the world's complexities. We will deny, rationalize and cherry-pick examples to "prove" our ideological certainties map the real world.

The problem with radically simplified constructs like mythologies and ideologies is they cannot possibly map the world accurately as complex, interactive systems don't reduce down to a simplified construct. So every ideological construct ends up denying, rationalizing and cherry-picking examples to cover the inherent weaknesses of simplifying the world into bite-sized constructs.

Our intense drive to establish and nurture loyalties leads to emotionally satisfying but often counter-productive convolutions, such as any enemy of my enemy is my friend and any friend of my enemy is my enemy.

The problems with ideological constructs are magnified in tumultuous times as ideologies map a rapidly shrinking share of the real world. The internally coherent ideology drifts further into incoherence, and our natural defense is not to become more open-minded (i.e. actively embrace uncertainty and entertain new ideas) but to cling even harder to the simplified certainties that generate our internal sense of self and certainty.

Since the faithful of competing ideologies are pursuing the same strategy to reduce anxiety, our loyalties clash with increasing intensity. That possibility that all the ideologies claiming to map the real world are increasingly detached from real-world dynamics doesn't occur to any true believer in any camp, for each believer remains confident (and when pushed, becomes ever more adamant) that their ideology is the one true construct that faithfully maps all of the real world's immense complexity.

Such is the power of these internally coherent constructs that we don't see them as belief structures, we see them as the bedrock of truth. We don't recognize our ideological beliefs as beliefs open to question, and so when challenged, we respond defensively: Ideology? What ideology? What I'm saying is the truth. Yes, true to us, but an accurate account / map of all the world's complexity? No.

To each believer in an ideology, the problem isn't that their ideology is not mapping the real world with sufficient accuracy to successfully navigate increasingly stormy seas. The problem is the other ideologies are obstructing our solutions, which are guaranteed to work if pursued with absolute purity. Compromises introduce fatal impurities and so of course they fail to fix what's broken.

If only all those misguided souls abandoned their wrong-headed beliefs and joined our temple, then we'd clear up all the real-world problems in no time. But alas, the fools insist on clinging to their completely misguided faith in false gods.

In this increasingly bitter environment, up becomes down and vice versa. Common sense--by definition, an attempt to map real world complexities based on practicalities rather than internally coherent constructs and loyalties--is tossed aside in favor of doubling down on the simplified precepts of the ideology.

We end up arguing about internally coherent simplifications, none of which do a productive job of mapping the real world, and accusations and raw emotions replace rationality. We are raging, spittle flying, demanding everyone agree with us that 100 angels can dance on the head of pin, not 10 and not 1,000.

How can we trust anyone who so adamantly clings to such wrong-headed ideas? We can't, so social trust plummets accordingly.



Those without any ideological faith watch the emotional fireworks with stunned amazement. So you think Dallas should be nuked because you hate the Cowboys? Um, okay.... But does nuking the Cowboys really clear your team's path to the Super Bowl?

The more the real world unravels into complex uncertainties, the greater our need to cling to certainties as the source of our internal security and hope. Rather than see the failure of all internally coherent but increasingly incoherent constructs to map the real world as the core problem, we see those with different ideological beliefs as the problem.

If we managed to set all ideological beliefs and constructs aside for a brief moment, is there anything we might agree on? As a thought experiment, imagine an AI project tasked with providing solutions to the core threats to our future stability and security. Is there anything the program might suggest that we could agree on?

How about accountability and transparency? Can we agree on the practical value of making those wielding power accountable for their actions and decisions? Can anyone contest the practicality of demanding an honest, transparent, accurate accounting of public funds and publicly traded private-sector enterprises? Can anyone contest that transparency is the foundation of sound decision-making?

Just the experiment of setting aside ideological certainties for a moment would be instructive. The irony here is the more the real world changes in ways that don't map simplistic ideologies, the greater our urgency to cling even harder to the simplicities we've invested with our identity and loyalty, and the stronger our instinct to lash out at anyone who disagrees with us, as if their disagreement is the problem, rather than the real-world complexities that no simple construct can map with any functional utility.

Rather than nuking Dallas, maybe finding some sort of practical, common-sense middle ground might be the wiser course, even though it goes against every fiber of our hard-wired instincts to circle the wagons to defend the one true construct and declare those who disagree as the problem.

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


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Subscribe to my Substack for free

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Three Ways to Restore Housing Affordability

The choice is simple: housing is either shelter for citizens, or it's just another interchangeable speculative asset in the global financialization casino. It can't be both.

We tend to think of housing becoming unaffordable as a matter of land prices, zoning and the cost of 2X4s, but it's fundamentally a matter of values. Subscriber John summarized this in an insightful comment on Substack:

"For me, this issue is a reflection of the values of our culture.

1. Lack of value placed on community means that a house is primarily a financial asset, not a home.

2. Lack of valuing community, means that we have not supported local business / industry and allowed these to be centralized or outsourced.

3. Lack of valuing self-sufficiency means that the only way we can view a house as an asset is when it increases in value. How much income does your house generate every month? (even if you count that income in tomatoes).

Most of the housing being built is nothing more than boxes with a roof no matter how fancy the box. There is no awareness of how that housing is a part of the ecology that it is built in."

This boils down to a simple choice: either housing is shelter for the citizenry, or it's just another asset class to be snapped up for private profit / gain by global capital. Choose one. This is one of the many pernicious consequences of glorifying Financialization as the most important dynamic in our economy and society.

Once an economy has been financialized, everything becomes a commodity in the global marketplace to be bought and sold as an interchangeable asset. A flat in Bangkok, a flat in Barcelona, a flat in Miami: they're all the same to global capital, which includes trillions of dollars of non-U.S. wealth sloshing around seeking profitable places to park surplus capital, and domestic wealth doing the same thing, moving wealth around interchangeable assets to maximize private gain.

This is the iron logic of Financialization and Globalization: housing is just another asset class to exploit. What effect the tsunami of wealth has on the communities being shredded is of zero interest to non-resident owners, corporations and speculators. Buying up houses to rent as short-term vacation rentals (STVRs), or simply left empty is just like buying a corporate bond: you move your capital around to maximize private gains, there's no difference between housing, shares in a mining company, bonds or any other financial commodity.

This is how you end up with entire residential buildings having only a few residents, as 90+% of the owners don't live there, they just own the flat or house as a place to safely park surplus capital or visit a few days of the year on vacation. This is a global reality that anyone can observe who cares to open their eyes.

Is housing shelter for citizens or is it a commodity asset one buys for profit as a mini-hotel? In popular tourist areas, consequential percentages of the housing has been snapped up by the wealthy as STVRs, short-term rental housing, the vast majority of which are owned not by hosts who live in the house as their sole residence but by absentee hosts who live half a world away and who have zero interest in the locale or community their interchangeable rental happens to be in.

Restrictions on new housing serve the self-serving interests profiting from locking down the status quo. Anything that might negatively affect valuations is resisted. This urge to pull the ladder up behind us is natural, but is it fair to the generations behind us? As for all the restrictions, regulations and permitting--has anyone looked at this mass of costs with fresh eyes, asking if it's truly serving the citizenry? Or can much of it be stripped away as bureaucratic clutter or lobbying imposed by self-serving interests? We need to ask cui bono-- to whose benefit?

Everyone is for solutions to housing unaffordability that don't diminish the value of their house. But the price is the problem. As I explained in Housing: The Foundations of the Middle Class Are Crumbling, turning housing into just another table in the financialization casino has inflated a bubble of unprecedented proportions that has distorted not just affordability but the fabric of society.

Those who bought homes long ago are now wealthy not from genius but simply from timing. Buying in before the bubble inflated has generated generational and regional divides of the haves and the have-nots that are corrosive to the economy and society.

Let's start with housing affordability. It's in the basement.



The generations who bought homes 25 or more years ago have accumulated most of the wealth. When houses increase in value ten-fold while wages rise by a third, this is the result:



Here's the National Case Shiller Housing Index. I've added long-term trendlines to clarify the two housing bubbles inflated by rampant financialization. A return to the upper trendline would require a 40% drop in current valuations, and a return to the lower trendline would require a 50% decline.



Since financialization inflated housing to unaffordable heights, the only way to restore affordability is to eliminate the perverse incentives and distortions of financialization by taking these steps to return housing to sheltering the citizenry:

1. Impose a national ban on all short-term vacation rentals except those hosted by full-time owner-occupants. Those caught cheating would be fined $10,000 per violation (i.e. each rental to a new vacationer), with no upper limit.

I know all the rationalizations, hut here's the thing: if you want to own and operate a mini-hotel, go build one in a resort / commercial zone. Residential housing is for residents, not a place for global capital to park surplus wealth or stripmine for private gain.

Those full-time owner-occupants who want to rent out a room in their house to vacationers, that's fine.

2. Impose national limits on non-resident ownership of housing. An outright total ban on non-resident ownership of housing would be best, but if that's politically impossible, then requirements for residency would be the next best thing: if the owner leaves the home empty for 6 months or longer, a $100,000 fee is imposed annually. Anyone caught cheating would be fined the current value of the home.

Once again, the choice is simple: housing is either shelter for citizens, or it's just another interchangeable speculative asset in the global financialization casino. It can't be both. Rationalizing excuses that it can serve both is why the few profiting from the rationalizations are so desperate to obscure this simple, fundamental choice.

The third solution is to open the locked doors of zoning, planning and industry standards to new types of housing that would be unconventional but affordable. Every locale will have to wrestle with the forces of keeping the status quo locked down and the need to loosen restrictions and free up experimentation in housing. There isn't one-size-fits-all; every community will have to establish what works best for their economy and populace.

One system builds communities, another destroys them. Take your pick, but choose wisely.

---

My recent books:

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The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


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Housing: The Foundations of the Middle Class Are Crumbling

Bottom line: with the loss of predictability, we've also lost any sense of future financial security.

Home ownership has been the foundation of middle-class stability and security for so long that it defines middle-class status as much as income. From the end of World War II in 1945 on, the deal was simple: buy a house and you'll build equity that's even better than a savings account because you get the tax break of deducting mortgage interest and you get a roof over your head at a cost that's equal to or even lower than renting a house. Once you've paid off the mortgage, the costs of ownership drop, enabling a secure retirement.

Every one of these assumptions has either crumbled or is now in doubt. A recent report in The Guardian sketches out the forces undermining housing as the source of security:

'I feel trapped': how home ownership has become a nightmare for many Americans Scores in the US say they're grappling with raised mortgage and loan interest rates and exploding insurance premiums.

"I've come to view home ownership and healthcare as destabilizing forces in my life," said Bernie, a 45-year-old network engineer from Minneapolis. To finance owning his and his wife's $300,000 home and saving for the future, the couple was foregoing medical and dental treatment of any kind and cutting back on expenses everywhere, he said, despite a pre-tax household income of more than $250,000.

Let's break down what's changed:

1. The non-mortgage costs of ownership are no longer predictable or affordable. For decades, the cost to insure one's home was modest and predictable, not changing much year to year. Now that insurers are losing billions of dollars as a result of increasingly extreme weather events, rates are rising even in places outside flood, fire and hurricane zones.

Insurance rates are doubling or tripling in a few years, and insurers are leaving markets entirely or increasing the deductible that must be paid by the owners before insurance kicks in, and reducing the coverage.

Property taxes are soaring in many locales. Property taxes were another cost that was relatively modest and predictable. Those conditions no longer apply in many locales: local governments are jacking up property taxes, and / or soaring home valuations are pushing taxes up to nosebleed levels. (I just looked up the annual property tax on a friend's house in California: north of $18,000 a year. And no, it's not a mansion in Malibu, and he bought it 20 years ago.)

The costs of home repairs and maintenance are also skyrocketing. The average age of homes in the U.S. is around 40 years, but closer to 50 years in slow-growth states. As the quality of materials and construction have slowly declined, even houses that are 25 years old or less may require costly repairs--especially if construction defects were undiscovered until major damage had been done.

Routine work such as trimming large trees that pose risks to houses now cost a small fortune. The Guardian article noted estimates for a new roof of $60,000, a sum that equals the construction cost of an entire new house two generations ago. Eye-watering costs of materials are now the norm.

Again, the major changes are not just in costs, but in the loss of predictability. What was modest in cost was not just modest, it was predictable. Now the costs are far higher and future costs cannot be assumed to be affordable.



2. Mortgage costs are also higher, and there's no guarantee interest rates will fall back to 3.5% mortgage rates. As this chart illustrates, the cost of servicing today's mortgages is significantly higher than in years past.



3. Those who locked in low mortgage rates are trapped in their current homes, as they can't afford to move and pay interest rates that are 50% to 100% higher than the low rates they secured years ago. The Federal Reserve intervened massively in the private mortgage market in the post 2008 era, effectively socializing the mortgage market as the means to push mortgage rates down to encourage "growth."

The Fed's intervention helped inflate Housing Bubble #2, just as the subprime excesses of the early 2000s helped inflate Housing Bubble #1. These distortions were intended to fuel home buying, but they also fueled massive increases in housing valuations.

4. The total costs of ownership--the monthly nut including mortgage and other costs--now exceeds the peak in Housing Bubble #1. Buying a house now is not a guaranteed pathway to financial security, it's a wager that valuations will continue to soar ever higher, generating capital gains that will offset the decades of higher costs of ownership.



5. The triple-whammy of soaring valuations, mortgage rates and other costs of ownership has made housing unaffordable in many locales. By any measure, housing affordability has declined to levels that equal or exceed the trough of Housing Bubble #1.



The Case Shiller National Housing Index offers a snapshot of Housing Bubble #2.



6. Land, materials and labor are no longer cheap. In traditional economics, the high costs of housing can be reduced by reducing demand or increasing supply. Increasing supply at affordable prices is far more challenging now than in the postwar decades. The easy-to-build land was built out long ago, and high-rise condominiums come with higher construction costs and the uncertainties of common-area expenses, which in some cases skyrocket to equal or exceed the costs of ownership.

Proponents of building more housing in urban / suburban areas--YIMBYs--yes in my back yard--face hurdles of geography, aging infrastructure, parking, and the high costs of insurance, mortgages, materials and labor, along with many restrictive zoning and planning regulations designed to maintain the status quo.

As for reducing demand: the population of the U.S. was 265 million in 1995, and it's now 345 million: an increase of 80 million people, roughly the same as the entire population of Germany (83 million).

7. The costs of housing have opened generational and regional divides. Boomers and Gen-Xers who bought homes decades ago in the 1990s or early 2000s locked in much lower purchase prices and had multiple opportunities to refinance mortgages at lower rates as the Fed interventions pushed rates down. Recent buyers have no equivalent set of built-in advantages.

Regional divides are increased. A modest home purchased in a middle-class urban area decades ago has increased 10-fold in some areas and not even kept up with inflation in others. The winners are now sitting on a million dollars in equity, a windfall the less fortunate did not reap.

As the urban winners cash in their equity and move to desirable towns, they quickly bid up housing to the point local residents can no longer afford to buy a home in their hometown. And since the wealthy also snap up housing as investment properties--short-term vacation rentals--households that would be considered middle-class by income are doomed to being renters.

"Middle class" is no longer middle-class, it's a seat in the casino that most exit as losers.

8. Renting is no longer a cheaper option. Rents have soared along with home prices, and once again, the predictability of future costs has vanished: rents can increase 30% overnight, just as insurance and property taxes can leap up far beyond anyone's projections.



Bottom line: with the loss of predictability, we've also lost any sense of future financial security. Buying a house is now a wager: a wager that the costs of ownership won't stair-step up to eat us alive, and a wager that valuations will continue to rise, offsetting the high costs of ownership with future capital gains.

Should Housing Bubble #2 pop--and all bubbles eventually pop--then homeowners will be dealt a future of ever-higher costs of ownership even as their equity diminishes. Those sitting on a wealth of equity now may find the assumption that this equity is predictably permanent is itself a wager.

The middle class was fundamentally defined by predictable financial security and social stability. Now everything is a wager with unknowable odds. Rather than being a source of stability, housing is now a source of instability for many--and potentially for every homeowner, should costs of ownership continue increasing as Housing Bubble #2 pops.

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My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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