Hello Mr. Wolf, won't you please sit down?

[gtill]

Shut down the building permit system would shut down most mansion and standard development, but coming over to move onto your own property without the blessing of the county? how?

And kids finishing college and wanting to return? Retiring from the military or a mainland job, all born here?

Mabe only born here or in Hawaii can return and build? Mabe only use isle manufactured or grown wood and labor! All imports have a major tax.

Of course any of the above would probably cut off federal spending, which is excessive already.

[JWFITZ]

I'm sure all these issues were raised on Easter Island a few years back. . .will we be more forward thinking than that?

[Rob Tucker]

You as an individual can always, of course, declare a building moratorium on your own land.

The problem is that getting everyone else to agree to a building moratorium on their land. Usually building moratoriums are presented by people who have built on their land and want to prevent others from building. So while a building moratorium might sound like a simple and elegant solution I have trouble imagining it actually being approved by the citizenry. But that does not mean it can't be done or in the eyes of some need doing. It takes a lot of energy to accomplish a 180 degree change of course for a society.

Easter Island may indeed ultimately be the planet's future. If I had to bet on it over time it would probably be a good bet. What we can accomplish in a practical way in the here and now concerns me. Small battles like getting the PCDP approved and implemented are very time and energy consuming. Radical theories such as roundabouts take up a lot of air but have little traction with the powers that be. Why build things that do not require electricity? Radical.

If you have ideas that you believe are solutions then the burden is on you to bring it to pass. Jay appears to operate on his ideas. It is not easy to get progressive things done here.

The single most important Hawaiian lesson I've been taught by my 93 year old neighbor has been "little by little".

[PaulW]

"Surely no one will argue that building new houses, encouraging immigration .... makes things better."
I will argue that. Immigration is a sign of economic health. I welcome new arrivals.

"In any 100 level physics class one will learn that expansion in any physical system is ultimately limited and degrades to disorder."
I assume you mean the second law of thermodynamics. That applies to a closed system. That's not the case here.

"the Malthusian nightmare"
Malthus' theories have been proven wrong. Thanks to technology, food production easily outstrips population growth. He couldn't have foreseen what has become apparent - that increased prosperity ultimately leads to a lower birth rate. Subsistence farming leads to poverty, which would lead to population growth.

And getting back to your 500 trillion of bad debt, that's nearly US$100,000 for every man woman and child on this planet. Not a realistic number, in any scenario.

[MarkP]

It is not possible to continuously increase food production for ever. Even the increases we have gained in the last century have come at a cost, primarily loss of genetic diversity in seed stocks, and I am not even talking about GMOs, but also in terms of increased dependence on fertilizer and pesticides. Over the long haul the death rate and the birth rate will be equal. I prefer to adjust the birth rate down. The other alternative is that the death rate will increase.

What sets us apart from animals is the ability to speculate about the future and take meaningful action to modify our future. It's a little depressing but if I were to learn of a "miracle" crop that could feed twice as many people as we currently feed, I would not consider that any progress had been made because I can see already that without any other measures being taken the world's population would eventually outgrow that level of production too. I don't have to live long enough to see it happen in order to know that it will happen. I really want to make this point; that increased food production means nothing. Population control is necessary.

The archaeological record seems to show that population control has happened more than once in the past althogh all the evidence indicates that it was not concious or voluntary.

[PaulW]

What exactly is "population control"?

[JWFITZ]

Famine: In this case caused by drought and destruction of agricultural lands worldwide. Which was the point of the post before we got off on the PCDP tangent.

This morning, as you head to work in the traffic from Pahoa, past the god awful hideous spec built houses, many empty, on bombed out a'a lots--but sure to chant to your self the required mantra--Growth is Good! Growth is Good! Growth is Good!

Sure was good for the US economy, as we're currently witnessing. Sure was good for most people's 401k. Remember you still owe taxes on all that. . .

Sure was good for a few people, but most got sold up the river and their future destroyed to boot.

[Rob Tucker]

Unless you can impose a way for people to stop making babies then you will have to face the fact there there will be growth. It is not a case of growth is good or growth is bad, there will be growth.

My family lived for a century in a small Connecticut town whose population did not change measurably for 300 years. Life was good there. I came away convinced that growth was not required to maintain a good life, despite what the financial mantra said.

Here in Puna though, unless and until the present system of laws might change, we are faced with 50,000+ lots that each individual owner has a legal right to build on. That included me and Jay. We built on our properties and I have reasonable expectations that more will continue to do so. That was one of the basic concepts of the PCDP. We couldn't figure out a way to turn back the clock to 1959 and undo what had been done. So we had to work with what is here. On my part I chose to recycle a lot instead of clearing new ground and I did this by buying an old home site with a tear down plantation house.

I am not pleased with the speculation in housing and have seen successful efforts to control and contain outside speculation in other states. I did note that during the real estate run up here that many, if not most, of the spec houses were built by locals trying to cash in. It's not all outside speculation though I believe some of the worst examples were done by mainland speculators.

It has always bothered me that in U.S. capitalism that manipulators of wealth are rewarded far beyond what creators of wealth receive. Creators of wealth produce something. Farmers, manufacturers, builders. Manipulators mostly push paper back and forth and really add little to the human condition.

[punafish]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rob Tucker

It has always bothered me that in U.S. capitalism that manipulators of wealth are rewarded far beyond what creators of wealth receive. Creators of wealth produce something. Farmers, manufacturers, builders. Manipulators mostly push paper back and forth and really add little to the human condition.

---

You nailed it.

[Bullwinkle]

"This morning, as you head to work in the traffic from Pahoa, past the god awful hideous spec built houses, many empty, on bombed out a'a lots--but sure to chant to your self the required mantra--Growth is Good! Growth is Good! Growth is Good!"

OK here comes the sermon:

Individuals:
The key is mitigation. Not all of us drive the rush hour, exploit services and impact the community other than in a positive way. Hopefully we as individuals know and care enough that our impact is zero sum.

Government:

We can’t stop growth, being in Santa Barbara California in the early 60's (UCSB was a cool place to be during those days of rage)

I saw the same issues arise as are presenting themselves in puna today. We had a population of 50,000 folks and MacDonald’s wanted in to town. We had just passed a slow growth agenda manipulating growth by using updated zoning codes. The new rules required a Spanish tile roof - and no arches! on the mcducks building

Mcducks went to court and lost, consequently every new roof in Santa Barbara was to be Spanish tile all building Spanish style and many more very restrictive development rules came into effect.

Fast forward 50 years and the town is picture perfect, all the structures Spanish style and the resultant slow growth due to increased costs arising out of managed development in evidence. Lots of open space keeping that 50's feel are the norm. Even though population has quintupled. Mitigation has kept the small town feel. Values (driven by cost and scarcity) however went through the roof and affordability down the tubes. Tradeoffs the city had no problem with as it did do wonders for the tax base.

Careful what you wish for.

Me thinks Zoning and planning are the best weapons we have to manage growth, we do need to be very careful how we as an island use those tools, as they could have unintended consequences for developers, current residents and future residents. In this case priority would have to be to expand, preserve and foster production on the ag lands to bring this post back on topic



Meanwhile I’ll keep tinkering away at my zero sum concepts as a way to keep my conscience clean