Why it’s not Agenda 21 that should worry you
Randal O’Toole of the Cato Institute was in town today offering a novel explanation for the housing bubble that resulted in the 2008 financial panic and subsequent Great Recession. O’Toole argued the culprit was not loose monetary policy, complex derivatives, greed, poor lending standards, lax government regulation, shoddy ratings for mortgage-backed securities or any of the other usual suspects.
Instead, he said strict land-use policies in certain states made housing prices begin skyrocketing in toward the end of the 20th century, to levels that were ultimately unsustainable. He said it was the burst bubble in those states, circa 2006-07, that led to the financial crash of 2008 — and, following that, depressed housing prices in states without so strict land-use policies, such as Georgia, beginning in 2008-09.
I’ll offer a more thorough explanation of O’Toole’s argument after I’ve read his new book and, in the interest of fairness, I urge you to refrain from trying to shoot down his argument before you’ve heard the whole thing. But I wanted to go ahead and draw your attention today to his thoughts on the popular contemporary bogeyman for strict land-use policies: the United Nations’ Agenda 21.
Agenda 21 is a document drawn up at a 1992 U.N. conference in Rio de Janeiro, and it has become a popular target of ire for some people who believe it is an attempt at social-engineering on the local level by a transnational, unelected quasi-government. It was the subject of a presentation at the Georgia Capitol hosted by then-Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers, for which the since-resigned Rogers took much grief.
But O’Toole explained today that it’s “not really true” that Agenda 21 represents a novel threat.
“These ideas go back to 1961,” he said. “They were in the playbook [for urban planners] for 30 years before Agenda 21″ was written.
(In this paper published in December 2007, O’Toole not only listed on page 10 some of the pre-Agenda 21 laws to which he referred today. He also described the way land-use policies were creating a bubble; interestingly, he cited a 2005 New York Times column by Paul Krugman that noted housing prices had risen the fastest in what Krugman called “the zoned zone.”)
While O’Toole disagrees with the goals of urban planners expressed in Agenda 21 — regulating land use to force more Americans into high-density housing, for example — he pins the blame on the urban planners themselves.
“I don’t regard the United Nations as the threat at all,” O’Toole said. He further suggested that people who, like him, oppose such land-use policies do themselves and their cause a disservice when they invoke a globalist conspiracy to explain policies born much closer to home.
– By Kyle Wingfield
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218 comments Add your comment
Normal Free...Pro Human Rights Thug...And liking it!
February 20th, 2013
7:39 am
And here I am, thinking that Agenda 21 was a ploy to ban Black jack…
md
February 20th, 2013
8:49 am
“And this is what I don’t understand. How alcohol can be legal but weed isn’t. What, pray tell, is the difference?”
One is legal and one is not? Sorry, couldn’t resist.
For starters, go back up the page and answer my question on testing. Alcohol leaves the system fairly quick while mj does not. How do you test your airline pilots, bus drivers, etc that may be using? Sorry, but I don’t want some super mellow individual trying to get me out of the sky in one piece. Cheech and Chong can drive their van but don’t let them work for Greyhound.
On a separate note (and disclaimer as I “experimented” with the best of them), there is one very big question folks should be asking themselves. Since all drugs are basically reality changing substances, what is wrong with one’s reality if they feel the need to escape from it?
Some of the happiest people on the planet are children……and they aren’t altering their realities….think about that.
Aquagirl
February 20th, 2013
8:59 am
How do you test your airline pilots, bus drivers, etc that may be using?
The Cheetos test: place an open bag in front of them for five minutes.
Okay, seriously, that is a legitimate complaint. They’re trying to develop a test that will tell how long ago somebody smoked. It doesn’t give a blood level like alcohol but we could set a standard time limit for various situations.
Frankly I’d rather have a pilot who smoked his last doobie 18 hours ago than a hungover pilot who grabbed five hour’s sleep after a binge.
http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/180490/states-developing-a-marijuana-breathalyzer-for-stoned-driving/
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
February 20th, 2013
9:23 am
md – I’m talking more of the law enforcement issue then anything, it makes no sense that people can get raging drunk but they can’t mellow out without taking the risk of getting a criminal record and facing hefty fines. As far as your question, it’s the same as drinking and driving, if you are an airline pilot you have a certain number of days to decrease the level of THC in your system, it comes with the responsibilities of your job. If you gonna fly da plane, don’t light up the mary jane.
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
February 20th, 2013
9:33 am
The head of US tyre manufacturer Titan International told the French government Wednesday that his firm will not take over a loss-making Goodyear factory because the unions there are “crazy” and its employees “only work three hours a day”.
“How stupid do you think we are?” Titan Chief Executive Maurice Taylor asked French Minister for Industrial Renewal Arnaud Montebourg in a letter published by French business daily Les Echos [in French and English].
“I have visited that factory a couple of times. The French workforce gets paid high wages but only works for three hours.
A Titan commercial shows its CEO Maurice Taylor expressing his opinion of the French.
“They get one hour for breaks and lunch, they talk for three and they work for three. I told this to the French union workers to their faces. They told me that’s the French way!”
Well, now we know that Goodyear would never take over the American federation of government employees. Or the US teacher’s unions. “How stupid do you think your kids are?”
md
February 20th, 2013
9:52 am
Yep, and the Greeks are once again marching in the streets demanding their gov’t spend what it does not have and can not get considering no one will loan them any money………
Ignorance taken to a whole new level…….
http://news.yahoo.com/greece-hit-general-strike-against-austerity-105250631–finance.html
md
February 20th, 2013
9:56 am
As for legalizing, I could live with it either way, but I think we need to quit filling our jails with users. That makes no sense from an economic standpoint……people that use and abuse will suffer the consequences and don’t need to be getting 3 squares on our dime.
But, I also don’t want to see them standing in an assistance line with their hand out because they can’t hold a job while continuing the choice of using/abusing……….
Rafe Hollister preparing for an Obamanist America
February 20th, 2013
10:38 am
Legalize or not, the one thing that needs to be resolved is leveling out the penalties. In one state you can go to jail for possessing an ounce and if you cross the state line and get caught, it is a ten dollar fine. I don’t think it is much different from alcohol, don’t use anymore myself, so I don’t care other than hate to see kids ruin their lives over a toke or two. They get caught in a place with severe penalties and they have ruined their life much worse than a DUI, which is a much more severe crime.
As has been pointed out many times before, our justice system often is an injustice system.
Dusty
February 20th, 2013
10:43 am
So the blog IS working . I couldn’t get anything going after 6:30 last night. So I read a book by Maeve somebody. Waste of time. Anybody read a good book recently?
So who’s ahead today? Mr. O’Toole or Mr. O’Fool? Now reading here about drug use Seems we have some experts on the subject. Just another escape from reality I suppose. Yawn..
No artificial Flavors
February 20th, 2013
10:52 am
I wonder what the effect was on Houston Tx where there are no zoning laws?
I’m all for looser zoning in counties with the caveat that citizens quit bitching about having to pay higher taxes and utilities to cover the debt service for running infrastructure miles and miles outside of cities creating exurban sprawl that no one wants to pay for.
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
February 20th, 2013
11:06 am
Anybody read a good book recently?
I haven’t read it yet but Ann Coulter’s book “Mugged” looks pretty promising. It details all of the lies told by liberals about the civil rights movement. I’ll bet very few people know that the 1957 civil rights bill was brought by Eisenhower, a Republican, and had the enforcement procedures gutted out of it by Lyndon Johnson.
democrats are truly pitiful.
MarkV
February 20th, 2013
11:12 am
Dusty @10:43 am
Escape from reality? Dusty, don’t you know one should not throw stones in a glass house? Our recent discussion reminded me so much of words from a play you know, I am sure, so well.
Reading some of your posts made me ask: Is Dusty, perhaps, French?
“The French never care what they do, actually, as long as they pronounce it properly.”
Which could be paraphrased as a question: Does Dusty not care what she has written as long as it sounds well?
Dusty: “You don’t spend money when you don’t have any. If you are in debt, you don’t have any money to spend. “
Which, again, immediately evokes another line (without the gender implication): “Why is logic never even tried?”
A. “If you are in debt, you don’t have any money to spend.”
B. Fact: The US has had a national debt for most of her history.
C. Fact: The US government has been spending money for all of the country’s history.
Since B and C are documented facts, A must be false; logic has not been tried.
(And if one wants to carry this further, one can look at Tiberius’ babbling about “difference with your personal vs. government borrowing” and be reminded of still another line:
“Why don’t they straighten up the mess that’s inside?”)
One thing you can find solace in is the fact that you are not alone is saying things that sound well even though they are nonsense. How often one could read someone on this blog pontificating: “You cannot borrow and spend yourself out of debt.”
The answer to which must be, naturally: Yes, you can.
splavistic
February 20th, 2013
11:13 am
You just have to look at Arizona to see what a sorry republican governor can do to a state’s real estate value. horrible.
TBone
February 20th, 2013
11:13 am
Having worked in a resource extracting industry (forestry) for a number of years, the persistent attempts to develop more and more land use restrictive policies has been going on for a long time. Look at the Endangered Species Act, Wetlands and other policy that is sold for the greater good but severely limits what a land owner can do on their own land. Public lands are all but locked up and now they are coming for private lands.
splavistic
February 20th, 2013
11:13 am
Oh, yeah, don’t blame the Suburban Planners. All they’re responsible for is throw-away architecture and never-ending sprawl. Yum. Great job, guys. Really.
TBone
February 20th, 2013
11:43 am
Who are these suburban planners, who funds them and where do they come from?
Doug B
February 21st, 2013
2:13 pm
Many people go to the urban core. So planners have to figure out where they can all go so we don’t have complete chaos. Ergo, the planners are to blame for the high prices, not the many people who are all trying to buy the same land. Ridiculous.
bu2
February 25th, 2013
12:48 am
Its an interesting theory. Non-zoned Houston didn’t have much of a bubble at all. And compared to the rest of Texas which didn’t have much of a bubble either, Atlanta’s zoning laws are draconian. Unincorporated Dekalb County has something like 40 zoning categories. Atlanta is similar. And any changes have to go through neighborhood groups. Maybe its easier in the suburbs, but in-town is very difficult.
Now I don’t buy that it really caused the crash. It was pretty obvious to me in early 2008 that Atlanta was over-building and was due for a crash. But some heavily zoned areas did crash the worst.