This is the paradox of housing development in Los Angeles and so many other cities: The politics of the affordable housing crisis are terrible.

The politics of what you’d need to do to solve it are even worse.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/23/opinion/los-angeles-homelessness-affordable-housing.html

-- Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) Mon Oct 24 14:16:02 +0000 2022

As part of my dive into how “affordable housing” came to cost almost $600,000 per unit in Los Angeles, I had a conversation with @HeidiEMarston that I’ll be thinking about for some time.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/23/opinion/los-angeles-homelessness-affordable-housing.html

-- Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) Mon Oct 24 21:11:16 +0000 2022

Replying to @ezraklein

What does it mean to trust an agency? One answer is that you can trust an agency that is transparent, heavily audited, tightly bound by rules and regulations, highly accountable to the public or other overseers.

Let’s call this trust-through-transparency.

-- Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) Mon Oct 24 21:11:17 +0000 2022

Replying to @ezraklein

We often talk about ideas like that as ways of increasing trust but in practice they're ways of not needing to trust.

It's really transparency as a substitution for trust.

-- Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) Mon Oct 24 21:11:17 +0000 2022

Replying to @ezraklein

Another version is that you can trust an agency that gets the results you want. That might mean giving the agency a lot of discretion to spend money, interpret rules, do unpopular things that they think will pay off later, etc.

Let’s call that trust-through-outcomes.

-- Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) Mon Oct 24 21:11:18 +0000 2022

Replying to @ezraklein

Trust-through-transparency has become very popular. And not only for government.

You see this *a lot* in blockchain thinking — if everything is trackable, visible, verifiable, then institutions will work better.

@vitalik and I talk about that here: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/30/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-vitalik-buterin.html

-- Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) Mon Oct 24 21:11:18 +0000 2022

Replying to @ezraklein

But there’s a big failure loop. An institution falters, or becomes unpopular. Transparency, audits, rules and oversight are applied. The agency has more trouble acting agilely under the new burdens. Outcomes degrade. More oversight and management is applied. Outcomes degrade. Etc

-- Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) Mon Oct 24 21:11:19 +0000 2022

Replying to @ezraklein

Sometimes it’s not about the agency. Sometimes it’s funders who are trying to justify how they spend their money to donors. Sometimes it’s politicians trying to show they’re tough on budgets.

In many, maybe even most, cases the intentions are good. But the outcomes are bad.

-- Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) Mon Oct 24 21:11:19 +0000 2022

Replying to @ezraklein

There's a bit of an analogy to social policy here. Maybe it's top of mind because i'm married to the author of "Give People Money" (Hi @AnnieLowrey!), but attaching all kinds of conditions to cash is much worse for most outcomes than just...giving people cash.

-- Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) Mon Oct 24 21:11:20 +0000 2022

Replying to @ezraklein

I think the same thing is true for a lot of government work. We should give agencies/nonprofits/etc money and let them do their jobs. If the outcomes are bad, we should replace the leaders. But micromanaging the money doesn't work.

-- Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) Mon Oct 24 21:11:20 +0000 2022

Replying to @ezraklein

Easier said than done. But we've been on a multi-decade kick of increasing transparency and rules and oversight throughout government. Is government more trusted? No, just the opposite.

-- Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) Mon Oct 24 21:11:21 +0000 2022

Replying to @ezraklein

That's not to say agencies should be a black box of spending. But I suspect the pendulum has swung too far towards transparency, and the next era of government reform is going to have to be about restoring enough discretion to get better results.

-- Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) Mon Oct 24 21:11:22 +0000 2022

Replying to @ezraklein

Or, you know, we can just keep utterly failing to solve the problems that are topmost in voters' minds: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/23/opinion/los-angeles-homelessness-affordable-housing.html

-- Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) Mon Oct 24 21:11:22 +0000 2022

I’m writing a book with @DKThomp!

It’s about Abundance — how we lost it as a vision, how we can make it a reality. It will build on my work on supply-side progressivism and his on abundance — but where we’re going with it will be fun.

From @AvidReaderPress in 2024...

-- Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) Mon Sep 19 19:14:40 +0000 2022

Replying to @ezraklein

Still very much in the learning phase though, so if you have books we should read, critiques we should hear, case studies we should look at, people we need to talk to — get in touch!

(I'm not on Twitter much, though -- ezra.klein@nytimes.com.)

-- Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) Mon Sep 19 19:18:33 +0000 2022

I’m writing a book with @DKThomp!

It’s about Abundance — how we lost it as a vision, how we can make it a reality. It will build on my work on supply-side progressivism and his on abundance — but where we’re going with it will be fun.

From @AvidReaderPress in 2024...

-- Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) Mon Sep 19 19:14:40 +0000 2022

Replying to @ezraklein

Still very much in the learning phase though, so if you have books we should read, critiques we should hear, case studies we should look at, people we need to talk to — get in touch!

(I'm not on Twitter much, though -- ezra.klein@nytimes.com.)

-- Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) Mon Sep 19 19:18:33 +0000 2022

On the podcast, I've talked around this experience, and how it changed the way I see pregnancy and reproductive choice. But I've tried not to say too much, because it was @AnnieLowrey's story to tell.

Now she's told it, at least some of it. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/pregnancy-birth-complication-abortion-life-of-mother/671006/

-- Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) Mon Aug 01 17:31:55 +0000 2022

Replying to @ezraklein

I'll only add: The idea that any legislator would force her, or anyone else, to undergo this much agony and this much danger, is unthinkable to me. But it's the reality now in much of the United States.

-- Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) Mon Aug 01 17:31:56 +0000 2022

Replying to @ezraklein

One more thing, while I'm breaking my Twitter silence. Something you learn, being near a truly horrible pregnancy, is how common such pregnancies are, because when people know what you've been through, they begin telling you what they've been through.

-- Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) Mon Aug 01 17:34:52 +0000 2022

Replying to @ezraklein

There is, rightly, a lot of focus on the number of women who die in pregnancy or childbirth. But those numbers say nothing about the intense suffering, and lifelong damage and disability, so many more experience.

-- Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) Mon Aug 01 17:34:52 +0000 2022

On the podcast, I've talked around this experience, and how it changed the way I see pregnancy and reproductive choice. But I've tried not to say too much, because it was @AnnieLowrey's story to tell.

Now she's told it, at least some of it. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/pregnancy-birth-complication-abortion-life-of-mother/671006/

-- Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) Mon Aug 01 17:31:55 +0000 2022

Replying to @ezraklein

I'll only add: The idea that any legislator would force her, or anyone else, to undergo this much agony and this much danger, is unthinkable to me. But it's the reality now in much of the United States.

-- Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) Mon Aug 01 17:31:56 +0000 2022

Replying to @ezraklein

One more thing, while I'm breaking my Twitter silence. Something you learn, being near a truly horrible pregnancy, is how common such pregnancies are, because when people know what you've been through, they begin telling you what they've been through.

-- Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) Mon Aug 01 17:34:52 +0000 2022

Replying to @ezraklein

There is, rightly, a lot of focus on the number of women who die in pregnancy or childbirth. But those numbers say nothing about the intense suffering, and lifelong damage and disability, so many more experience.

-- Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) Mon Aug 01 17:34:52 +0000 2022