Rihanna loves it, Marie Antoinette tried to give it away, and everyone eats too much of it.

But here’s the thing about cake that we keep forgetting _{cliche coming in hot} — you can’t have it and eat it too.

Nothing is new here. We believe in the “evil” of tech companies while handing them our faces, fingerprints, and real-time location. We demand deep connection AND hugely convenient and easy swiping on dating apps. We want $25/hour factory jobs for all AND $10 t-shirts from Walmart.

Society is full of people who want the fully-functional version of whatever their choosing, but without the tradeoffs that make their desired outcome possible. A zero-consequence world as an overarching goal. Whether it’s housing, public services, or global economics, everyone wants the benefits without the cost, the mess, or the contradictions.

Not everyone wants to live in a city; not everyone wants to live in a suburb. That's fine! People should live where they want.

The problem is when people want mutually exclusive, incompatible realities in the same zip code.

People want charming, walkable, vibrant cities, but without noise, renters, shadows, scaffolding, or construction cranes - all the things that make them possible. They’re drooling for Milan vibes with Idaho prices; Manhattan energy without Manhattan density. Lovely, bustling neighborhoods, but god forbid someone builds an apartment building that casts a shadow at 3:47 PM on their newly-planted heirloom tomatoes.

The dream is progress without change, growth without growing pains. Cities that evolve for everyone else while staying frozen in amber for them.

But as they say, the only constant is change, which is especially true for cities. That’s all they are! The generations cycling through, cultures colliding, nations of people coming and going, old making way for new. People move to cities for that reason. Your dentist, doctor, barber, favorite bar, restaurant, and park - all within a few glorious blocks of each other. The access — the action — is the point. People move to suburbs for the opposite. Both are valid, but neither is static.

There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs - Thomas Sowell

At the root of our current housing shortage is essentially people’s hatred of tradeoffs, and a lust for an immutable, personalized paradise, which manifests in its final form as NIMBYism (not-in-my-backyard): "I want my neighborhood exactly as it is, with all the amenities of a thriving city, appreciating property values, AND affordable housing for my kids. But also, no new construction, especially not next to me."

The main issue is not corporate greed, immigration, or interest rates. If it were, these factors would affect all housing markets equally. Do not be deceived.

We simply don't build enough housing. Why? Because NIMBYism has taken our country by storm.

So we must build MORE, irrespective of whether it comes in the form of single-family suburban homes or luxury condos. We, no pun intended, don’t have the luxury to choose the exact kind of housing we want. We have to build. Now.

These NIMBYs are the same people who are shocked — SHOCKED!! — that median home prices have skyrocketed. And the real irony is that the "gentrification" they're protesting (aka building housing) is exactly what would help the people they claim to protect with their virtue-signaling.

Obviously regulations play a role too: parking minimums, height restrictions, single-family only zoning. But fundamentally, we don't build because everyone's holding out for their personal utopia.

Everyone wants the cafés of Vienna, the rent of Arkansas, and the nightlife of Berlin, with zero disturbance to their current lifestyle.

But you have to choose your tradeoffs.

Christopher Hitchens once said: “In life, we must choose our regrets.”

And NIMBYs need to choose: perfect neighborhood preservation, or housing the next generation?

And if you think America’s off bad, get a load of the rest of the Anglosphere. The NIMBYs are everywhere.

From the Tea Party rallies to the "Don’t Tread On Me" bumper stickers, it feels like there’s a uniquely American fantasy that we can have world-class everything while paying nothing for it.

They cry "Taxation is theft!", while complaining about potholes, underfunded schools, and bad public transportation.

Look, there’s a fine line to all of this - I get it. No one here is advocating for infinite taxes or communist utopia.

It’s not a clean relationship either, as in, increasing taxes doesn’t automatically yield better public services. But we do know that you can’t have proper public services without a solid tax base. How? Simple: think of any country whose public services and developments you admire - France’s trains, Spain’s cities, Japan’s healthcare. They built them on top of public-private partnerships with **dah dah dah dahhhh** taxes.

Take American public schools. Following state funding, property tax revenues are the second largest source of their funding. Property tax revenues correlate strongly with student outcomes. Poor areas often have worse schools not because teachers suddenly forget how to teach at certain zip codes, but because there's no money for materials, supplies, and the up-keep of facilities.

This especially goes for developed vs. developing nations, as “developed countries collect almost twice as much as developing countries in tax revenue.”

And the beautiful irony is that the loudest anti-tax crusaders often hail from red states that are net federal welfare recipients, relying on blue states’ higher tax revenues. Between 2018 and 2022, it was a “7% differential that in effect equates to a more than $1 trillion transfer payment from blue states to red states, amounting to $4,300 per capita..”

The red state Boomers cry “get government out of my life!" as they cash their Social Security checks funded by the dreaded blue state liberals.

You simply cannot order the Euro-style infrastructure menu on a tax-free budget.

Much of politics, left or right, benefit from selling you a zero-sum world. It’s often much easier to unite people against a common enemy than around a common good. Enemies are simpler than solutions.

This is very obvious in the current trade policy, which demonstrates that the current administration believes America can stay “#1” while committing civilizational suicide.

A callback to my intro: they’ll wear "MAGA" hats made in China, while also demanding good ole $30/hour factory jobs for low-value goods AND $10 t-shirts. The math has never mathed.

In reality, here's what our global trade position actually bought us, post-WW2:

Warning: I'm not saying we shouldn't strategically re-shore (build up domestic manufacturing) industries that are considered critical for our national defense. The Biden administration was actually doing this — semiconductors, clean energy, rare earth processing.

Then Trump arrived like a bull in a china shop _{see what i did there}, cancelling tax credits while threatening random tariffs, creating so much uncertainty that nobody knows whether to build here or run!

The administration seems to believe we can crash out and rage-quit global trade without consequences. Just tariff everything and somehow prices will... go down? Manufacturing will return overnight? The dollar will stay strong? EZ PZ.

The hubris is bewildering, quite honestly. Trump’s just burning through American political capital, like his first few marriages (which took decades to accumulate - the former, not the latter, btw).

Ironically, and good news for all of us, Americans are becoming MORE pro-trade amidst the chaos.

The underlying connection between all of these delusions is that we want to live in a consequence-free universe where every choice only has upsides. A world of infinite cake.

Sadly, we can’t select “all the above” on everything. At some point, the bill comes due.

Thanks for taking the Pack,

Zach

_{The vibe-killer disclaimer: The opinions in this post and all other posts only represent myself and do not represent the opinions of my employer or any groups I am a member of.
This is not financial advice or recommendation for any investment. The Content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice}