Conversation

There are only like a handful of good reasons for high-density living 1. Energy efficiency 2. Social/dating life for young singles 3. Tribal life for sports/music fans 4. Superlinear economic/cultural effects (Geoffrey West) 5. Economies of scale for provisioning shared services
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That’s in order of societal importance. Personally I don’t give a crap about 2 and 3. 1 is an innovation problem. A properly high-tech green mansion with a lot of local production and renewable energy can probably be net carbon negative. 4 is actually in doubt now 5 is hardest
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5 = things like hospitals. I think it can be solved by triage+decentralization. Cases where you need to go to a large city hospital or something should be made rare enough not to be a factor in how lifestyles are arranged. Stuff like better DIY culture, telemedicine etc.
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Just to be clear I’m not advocating for low density as in single family homes in cities or suburbs. I’m advocating for literal mansion-scale building in “countryside”. Reclaim the countryside for blue postmodernity. Right now it’s big-ag-cloud plus 1950s larping magas.
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For different reasons, both left and right like dense, close-up living. Left likes large dense cities with highrises, right likes small, dense towns and villages where everybody knows each other. Me, I'd like a mansion, with authoritah over the grounds, mean dogs on the grounds.
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Left hates this because it is unseemly ostentation that goes against humble, collectivist values of sharing in scarcity. Right hates it because only the divine king should live in such ostentation, and it's basically middle class++
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Not talking high-end mansions like Downton Abbey. Just mansion-ey enough that you don't have to deal with or even see neighbors, and can set up your own local reality distortion field that others must respect if they get past the guard dogs.
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