alt Hacker News"Effectively impossible" does not mean "impossible."
Yes, Vienna's housing policy is effective... It's also the only place in the world that manages it. I would argue that it is ideal, but nearly impossible to implement. We can't escape the fact that Vienna operates what is effectively a sovereign wealth fund to create all that housing, which works with the subsidiaries of Austria's actual sovereign wealth fund in development. It's a nice system to be born into, it's nearly impossible to bootstrap.
>the highest birth rates globally occur...
Nobody is suggesting returning above replacement rate births. Falling below replacement rate is only a problem long term because it happens slowly, but exponentially. It will cause a displacement crisis that will rival climate change. Lowering world population would probably be a good idea, theoretically, but again, there's a difference between a linear decline and an exponential decline.
>In developed countries, the state can at least leverage accumulated wealth to bankroll healthcare and social services required by a rapidly aging population.
I don't see how this is relevant. One can be both for "abundance" and taxes on wealth.
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Exponential decay isn't impossible to manage if the exponent is reasonable (i.e. closer to 1, i.e. if the average number of children per woman was closer to 2.1). It's just going down too fast.
Not to repeat myself too much here, but Japan also handling housing very well for two reasons: (1) NIMBYism does not exist by law (and practice) and (2) there is almost zero protected homes for historical/architectural reasons. As a result, you can build and build and build in Japan. There are few limitations except a uniform national building code. Tear down and rebuild (bigger) is constant in big cities in Japan.