Green: The Color of Money -- and Jealousy (Part One)
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When I visit my parents, who retired to Las Vegas two years ago, I fly America West, which offers a neat program where, if seats are available, you can upgrade to First Class the day of your flight for only $150. I do it whenever possible, including this past weekend.
So while I was watching an atrocious 60 Minutes piece on so-called "McMansions," with a parade of would-be central planners (including bitter neighbors and of course the omnipresent anti-luxury socialist, Robert H. Frank) lamenting that people are tearing down "perfectly good" homes in order to build larger ones, something occurred to me: What exactly is the difference between --
(a) people unable to afford McMansions seeking to ban them via zoning restrictions under the rationalization that they are somehow "unnecessary and wasteful," and
(b) people unable to afford First Class plane tickets demanding that the government ban First Class travel under the rationalization that it is somehow "unnecessary and wasteful"?
How can someone like Frank assert that the "psychological defect" in the McMansion debate lies not with the jealous and disgruntled resident who is so "hurt" by his neighbor's opulence that he tries to outlaw it, but rather with the McMansioner who spends his own money the way he sees fit, regardless of what his neighbors think?
Since when is jealously considered a legitimate emotion (legitimate enough to craft public policy based on it), while it is simultaneously an illegitimate and "unhealthy" desire (illegitimate enough to proscribe legislatively) to satisfy one's own needs and wants, literally in the privacy of one's own home?
This is not flawed economics, this is anti-economics. And its leading advocate is, of course, an economics professor. Go figure.
These would-be central planners and petty brat neighbors are collectively becoming the Boy Who Cried "Externality!" It's one thing to say you shouldn't have to live next to a factory, or a pig farm, or a brothel. But to claim that your own infantile insecurities should give you veto power over your neighbor's building plans, because his proposed house is so big that it "hurts your feelings," is to reject the American Dream itself. That such a twisted illogic is gaining traction in America's suburbs is both disturbed and disturbing.
Whatever happened to "A man's home is his McMansion..."?
Tomorrow: Green is also the color of the Xbox.
So while I was watching an atrocious 60 Minutes piece on so-called "McMansions," with a parade of would-be central planners (including bitter neighbors and of course the omnipresent anti-luxury socialist, Robert H. Frank) lamenting that people are tearing down "perfectly good" homes in order to build larger ones, something occurred to me: What exactly is the difference between --
(a) people unable to afford McMansions seeking to ban them via zoning restrictions under the rationalization that they are somehow "unnecessary and wasteful," and
(b) people unable to afford First Class plane tickets demanding that the government ban First Class travel under the rationalization that it is somehow "unnecessary and wasteful"?
How can someone like Frank assert that the "psychological defect" in the McMansion debate lies not with the jealous and disgruntled resident who is so "hurt" by his neighbor's opulence that he tries to outlaw it, but rather with the McMansioner who spends his own money the way he sees fit, regardless of what his neighbors think?
Since when is jealously considered a legitimate emotion (legitimate enough to craft public policy based on it), while it is simultaneously an illegitimate and "unhealthy" desire (illegitimate enough to proscribe legislatively) to satisfy one's own needs and wants, literally in the privacy of one's own home?
This is not flawed economics, this is anti-economics. And its leading advocate is, of course, an economics professor. Go figure.
These would-be central planners and petty brat neighbors are collectively becoming the Boy Who Cried "Externality!" It's one thing to say you shouldn't have to live next to a factory, or a pig farm, or a brothel. But to claim that your own infantile insecurities should give you veto power over your neighbor's building plans, because his proposed house is so big that it "hurts your feelings," is to reject the American Dream itself. That such a twisted illogic is gaining traction in America's suburbs is both disturbed and disturbing.
Whatever happened to "A man's home is his McMansion..."?
Tomorrow: Green is also the color of the Xbox.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Wasn't This a Parable in "Atlas Shrugged"?
- Green: The Color of Money -- and Jealousy (Part One)
Posted by Kip on
27 November 2005
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