This is often touted, but I just doubt that electricity, water, and sewers are more expensive outside of the city.
My father managed several factories in the LA area. Upgrading the electrical for new equipment in the close to downtown factory was going to cost something like a 6 to 7 figure sum. The factory in the boondocks upgrade was a quarter of the price.
Do you think they build skyscrapers and two-story houses the same? That's like saying Honda Civics and Abrahams tanks are built the same because they're both vehicles.
That's probably the cheapest upgrade in the history of the state. PG&E claims the average service upgrade in California is costing somewhere between $8k to $25k.
>but that was never actually an economically viable product
It is the most economically viable product, which is why they dominate.
>for four to sixteen units that seems like it could be fine?
Those costs have also skyrocketed because now you have additional requirements like fire, egress, additional structural when going over two stories, etc.
It's why most new apartments are "luxury" apartments. The costs have grown so out of control that the only way to break even is to make them outrageously priced.
This Twitter thread hits the nail on the head. Imagine this process in California, where just working with PG&E to get utilities to the site may be a six figure adventure, then another $40-60k for an electrician to wire the house. That could be close to $200k for electrical alone. This could be for a 1,000 square foot shed in Oakland, not somewhere around Malibu.
Add on the planning costs that the Twitter author goes on about, and your "affordable housing" is now near a million dollars. Is that really affordable?
>I would think technology did far more work pulling people out of poverty
Thanks to capitalism!
>And capitalism is only like 250 years old.
And the rate of humanity leaving poverty in that time span is greater than any other time in history.
>You could have made your same argument 500-1000 years ago about feudalism pulling people out of poverty
Err, no? If anything, that pushed even MORE people into poverty. No one sane would ever make that argument.
>yet I doubt anybody would be all that happy to switch to a feudalist system and would heavily criticize any claims that feudalism was the main driving factor behind improvements in technology and living standards.
Because you're inventing a fictional strawman. Feudalism did the opposite of your claim.
China and Malaysia are capitalist, and none of those aforementioned countries are in the top 25 for life expectancy. China isn't even in the top 50, and Cuba is ranked below the US. Swing and a miss.
>Then using HashiCorp Vault isn't the silver bullet
Except it practically is.
That's like saying Linux isn't a silver bullet because ls doesn't make filesystems... You wouldn't use Vault to create SSH keys, nor should it. You wouldn't use ls to make filesystems, nor should it.