The Nanny State

In some ways, the United States seems like one giant nanny state. The FCC will restrict content shown on over-the-air television, New York City is seeking to restrict the size of a soda that can be sold to a citizen, and vices such as gambling and prostitution are mostly outlawed. Australia, on the other hand, is far less concerned about what decisions adults make for themselves.

I lived walking distance from a mega casino on the bank of the Yarra river. On any given weekend, thousands of adults came, consumed alcohol, and lost money. Yet the casino did not seem to cause any societal harm. I took the kids to the movie theater and some of the restaurants located inside the casino many times. Gambling was advertised during footy games and it was possible to place bets, with moving odds, at any time during the game off of a smartphone. I even got in the spirit and made $25 off a $10 wager during last year’s Grand Final. Sadly, I squandered most of the profits on a bad bet during the Melbourne Cup.

I have walked past brothels with the kids and never really had to explain what was going on. They were tastefully (well, for brothels) marketed. For the record, I was not interested in going inside, but the legal brothels eliminated street walkers (for the most part), reduced incidents of STD outbreaks, and protected the women who chose the oldest profession.

The availability of gambling and sex sins were somewhat shocking to me at first and then I kind of stopped noticing it. At some point, the only reason I brought it up was because there was such a lack of adverse affects on society in general that the way we handled it back home seemed downright puritanical. So it would seem that Australia is freer. However, I would argue on issues that make a huge impact it is not.

Yes, the States acts a bit behind the times when it comes to gambling or sex. However, I am told and have no firsthand knowledge, that there are a bevy of free porn sites readily available to make up for the free-to-air softcore stuff shown in Oz. While the soda ban in NYC seems insane, I still have no problem buying a 44 ounce Big Gulp at the local 7-11 for ninety-nine cents. I wish we had legal brothels so I never had to see a street walker, but there aren’t any prostitutes in my neighborhood. As for gambling, I don’t seem to have a hard time making a friendly wager or finding a poker game amongst friends. Where the US is exceptionally laissez faire is in urban planning and development.

While Australians obsess over keeping their cities “livable” government entities strictly control how much land is released for development. Once released, an oligarchy of developers purchase the land for pennies on the dollar and then sit on it. Meanwhile, the cost of a home in Sydney and Melbourne is over eight times median incomes in a country that has nothing but land. While city planners may have the best of intentions, the results stink.

Since the Aussie planners have their way, the results are live “here” and work “there”. “Here” means an “established” suburb, or someplace close to the downtown area with public transportation, but not actually in the downtown area. So, how does that work out? Well, I lived for almost two years 3.75 miles from the heart of downtown Melbourne. Commuting to work by walking, public transportation, or driving my own private vehicle was time consuming and costly. Seriously, it took between forty-five minutes to an hour to commute to work no matter which tram, bus, or route I took. Parking would cost between $15 and $70 per day and public transportation was not necessarily cheap coming in at $7 minimum per day. I almost could not be closer to work and yet it was that inconvenient and costly to get there no matter which mode of transportation I chose.

Compare that to my adopted home of Seattle which is split it into two different communities do to the giant freaking lake between Seattle and the Eastside. Australians used to ask me how far my home was from the downtown area and the question used to catch me a bit by surprise - I couldn’t fathom why I would want to live next to the downtown area. Yet, in Melbourne, the geographic equivalent of living in Queen Anne and working in Seattle would equate to an hour of commuting each way daily.

Seattle is not planned and as a result there is sprawl. However, I have learned how to embrace the sprawl and realize that it is strangely good. The area considered to be Seattle goes from the port of Seattle and some of the San Juan Islands in the West, to Everett in the North, North Bend in the East (how weird is that?), and Tacoma in the South - this is a HUGE area. Because of the sprawl, I can afford to live in my house. Although firmly an Eastsider, my commute time to any major employer in the area is less than an hour. My current commute is roughly fifteen miles or 3.5 times the distance I used to commute and I can do it consistently in half the time for roughly the same price as public transportation. If I were to work over 20 miles away in Seattle, I could still make the commute in about forty-five minutes and that’s with a giant freaking lake in the middle and all traffic funnelled to a choice of two bridges.

So what does urban planning offer? Extremely small extremely expensive homes all crammed in next to each other with streets that are completely undriveable. It offers volatility in residential real estate and epic boom and bust cycles. While public transportation is nice, so is personal choice. Yet, if all of this is such an obvious result of urban planning, why don’t Australians demand an end to it?

I think there are two components to why this bad policy persists. First, change is difficult and Australians love their “established” suburbs that are extremely close to the downtown district. The level of prestige and envy that they can inflict upon each other by saying that they live in one suburb versus another is a birthright. In Seattle, there is no equivalent. Saying I live in Redmond does not conjure up images of either wealth or poverty, the suburb is fairly diverse. While those that prefer Seattle will look down on my Eastside existence, I am quite happy with it and Eastsiders and Seattleites have long ago come to some kind of truce and stopped trying to convince each other of the superiority of one over the other.

The second portion is that, even for those currently priced out of the housing market, houses still remain the only known road to riches. With bullshit like “house prices double in value every seven to ten years” constantly repeated to the average reader of The Age, the right to a perpetual motion machine that generates 7%-10% compound interest would be destroyed. To a certain extent, house price unaffordability and artificially constrained supply is seen as a positive. For those that dare to dream; virtuously saving a deposit, sacrificing to pay the mortgage, and patience will heap windfall profits upon them. Future homebuyers actually prefer this system as it rewards them and it is the only system they know.

Sadly, I think all of Australia’s problems would be far easier to solve. Abolish urban planning and let the market operate. Sure, there would be a devastating recession as a result of collapsing home prices and a lack of consumer spending that was based on continual refinancing, but it’s going to happen anyway. If one thinks I am being too harsh on my Australian friends, I readily acknowledge this semi-difficult societal change would be relatively trivial compared to the changes needed here in America in the form of sensible gun laws and low cost healthcare.