Matt Paris

Actor. He/him. You can’t be neutral on a moving train

[Matt Paris @MattypNYC]

My friend got Brian Cox to tell me to fuck off. If you don’t watch Succession, you won’t get it. So fuck off.

[Dan Graca @DanGraca]

If this isn’t peak Mets, I don’t know what is. Holy hell 🤦🏻‍♂️

[Cassie Pritchard @hecubian_devil]

Seeing my more libbed-up YIMBY friends upset about the NYC rent freeze, predictably. But the arguments are not good.

I like and agree with my many liberal friends when they say "hey! There are tradeoffs! Let's be honest about them!" But the libs subsequently fail, almost always, to make a persuasive case about why we should always choose the efficiency-maximizing resolution to those tradeoffs.

Restrictive zoning is a bad tradeoff. It costs us new housing, and what we get in exchange *is also bad*. Concentration of wealth, segregation, and car-dependent single-family neighborhoods are the *benefits* in the eyes of the people advocating for that kind of zoning, and those things suck! That's why I'll always defend maximal upzoning.

Environmental review is a tradeoff that might seem appealing in principle, but in reality, as implemented, it's been a gigantic drag on construction without delivering meaningful environmental benefit--in fact, by hampering infill density, it has actively made environmental harm *worse* in many ways. Bad tradeoff.

But rent control *is* different. It offers stability in housing for residents, which is a genuine good. People really dislike feeling precarious in their ability to secure shelter, and rightly so. Shelter is actually a real, universal human need, and anxiety about its precarity is an unavoidable psychological response. If we actually care about hedonic utilitarianism or something like it, this is an intrinsic and unavoidable source of fear and despair *not* fully resolvable simply through increasing output.

The tradeoff of rent control is that it does dampen new supply, to a variable extent, heavily dependent on the specific implementation. There are ways to lessen or increase the costs of this tradeoff, and they may or may not correspond substantially to the benefit gotten in exchange--stability in housing access for rent-controlled tenants, freedom from the innate human fear of loss of the home.

This is a tradeoff that actually demands to be taken seriously. If there are other ways to resolve it that are more efficient than rent control, great, but what people like about it is that it allows them to anticipate the future in a way that market-rate housing does not.

Even in a healthy private housing market with lots of construction that keeps rents relatively low, that process only looks smooth when zoomed out. In the micro, it involves economic cycles of increasing rents, overbuilding, falling rents, underbuilding, repeat.

People dislike these cycles, for deep and innate reasons of human psychology. We like stability, predictability, and we really like it where it concerns our deep and innate needs, like for shelter. You can't just brush that off.

Is the point of policy just to always maximize output? Or is it to address human suffering, and secure human happiness? If the latter, we must pay attention to "irrational" features of human psychology, like strong preferences for predictability, when we craft policy.

[Lyndon Baines Johnson @lyndonbajohnson]

Israel is no longer a friend with a drinking problem, its a person you know with 14 DUIs who's mowed over people on the sidewalk while drunk. Naturally some consideration of what future relationship you have with such a person if any at all is warranted. -OS

[Acyn @Acyn]

AOC: They come in the right way, they fill out their paperwork, they have gotten a job, they’re participating in our economy, they’re paying taxes, and now we’re going to endanger and possibly put people on a track to deportation who are gainfully participating in their communities and in our economy at a time when, frankly, even just economically and socially, we need these folks now more than ever.

Video: @MattLaslo

[Ryan Kearney @rp_kearney]

she’s already been in Congress for 8 years, already has the name ID + issue fluency you get from the Senate, has the clearest+ most compelling + relevant policy vision/worldview, and has a completely wide-open progressive lane with 17 center-left politicians splitting that vote?

[. @GIOOCVMPO]

This scene is a masterpiece, it’s basically a textbook depiction of ego death. The shattering of a grand illusion, that desperate final attempt to prove the lie right and then the total psychological collapse. Essential viewing.

[CLAUDIA MORALES @CLAUDIAPOSTING]

yeah

[ettingermentum @ettingermentum]

Zohran Mamdani

[Emma Vigeland @EmmaVigeland]

CLAIRE VALDEZ

[(not) will @notwillnoway]

this appears to be a beat-for-beat remake of the classic Simpsons episode “a streetcar named marge” and I’m absolutely fucking thrilled

[OnStage Blog @OnstageBlog]

Happy Father’s Day!

[Matt Paris @MattypNYC]

@that_bald_bro @EvanRobertsWFAN @EvanRobertsWFAN @EvanandTikiWFAN ^^^

[B.W. Carlin @BaileyCarlin]

Good lord this edit. Insane.

[CTRL the Narrative @ctrlnarrative]

Knicks fans watch this without tearing up challenge

[jack @actionjack69]

“like Bilal Powell, carrying the offense on his back through some of the franchise’s leanest years. Like Quincy Enunwa breaking free for long TDs against the Ravens. Or Kelvin Beachum, who showed us that even a short left tackle can cast a very large shadow”

[Matt Paris @MattypNYC]

That’s my fucking Mayor babyyyyy

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

here is Mamdani's entire speech at the Knicks parade, which is easily the best speech I've ever heard at an event of this sort

[NBA on ESPN @ESPNNBA]

KAT and NYC Mayor Mamdani hit the "lean back" 😂

[Will Steakin @wsteaks]

Millennial representation in politics