A housing industry of endless one-offs is holding our society back
Far and away the biggest cost for housing in the West is <i>land</i>.  It&#x27;s almost 2&#x2F;3rds now.  We could all live in pre-fab boxes and barely shave 10% off.<p>See Josh Ryan Collins
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;RX-AzKgUEWk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;RX-AzKgUEWk</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ft.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;ffa66898-fe7b-11e6-96f8-3700c5664d30" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ft.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;ffa66898-fe7b-11e6-96f8-3700c5664...</a><p>My tldr on all this - since 1970 humanity has doubled in size - something comparabke only a couple of times in history (17C, 19C etc).  A d the massive growth economically had wide ranging effects.  One big one is there is a change in governmental models (autocracy to parliament, parliament to democracy)<p>The most obvious other effect is that land prices go up as cities grow.  And 80%+ of increase in house prices is increase in underlying land.<p>This is of course massively unequal and negatively affects incentives for business and production.<p>So to change society direction  create a long term (land) wealth tax (say 75 basis points a year) and plough that into education, entrepreneurship support and industrial banks greeen energy subsidies etc.