
The Show Horse and the Work Horse - pavel_lishin
https://granolashotgun.com/2019/07/22/the-show-horse-and-the-work-horse/
======
burlesona
Not emphasized in Johnny’s post, there’s also a ton of neighborhood pushback
against flea markets and such in many communities. Basically the wealthier
folks don’t like the aesthetics of these things, and will argue that they’re a
nuisance or crime-magnets or whatever, a thin veneer over the discomfort they
have with anything that draws a low income crowd.

You’ll see things like the “Sunday Farmers Market” that closes a block of a
street somewhere because temporary event permits are much easier to get and
harder to block, but the kind of semi-permanent marketplace described in the
article remains rare.

And he’s right, cities don’t have a lot of incentive to try and make space for
these sorts of entry level incubator environments because in most cases they
can’t skim any tax off it - the underlying property is still just a parking
lot and they usually can’t reassess the value for impermanent activities
happening on top.

~~~
jimmaswell
Maybe we should work on making cities less greedy about tax revenue and
instead care more about benefiting the people who live there.

~~~
Angostura
The problem is that's a lovely sentiment until there isn't enough money to
keep the libraries open.

~~~
jimmaswell
Tiny rural towns manage to have libraries. Cities are just addicted to tax
revenue.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Tiny rural towns manage to have libraries.

Often, when they do, it is either:

(1) Because of state funding specifically for rural counties, which amounts to
a revenue transfer from urban counties, or

(2) Because the rural town is in a county with, and deriving revenue from, a
city, funding county libraries in the rural town as well as the city.

Even more often, tiny rural towns _don 't_ have public libraries, and you have
to go to a neighboring town or the nearest city.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
In my experience most small towns big enough to have any services have a
"library" that is comprised of a few rooms in the shared town
hall/police/public offices building that is run by some (usually senior
citizen) volunteer(s) and has a fairly poor collection of books but can get
anything you want on loan as long as you don't need it that day. If they don't
have a library they probably have some other "nice to have but not essential"
type service that's run in the same manner. My experience is limited to the
rural northeast. I suspect the rural midwest is even more likely to have
libraries because of how those towns were planned out back in the day.

I think your bias is showing.

~~~
nitrogen
The parent comment would work better without (or rewording) the remark on
bias.

I have lived in rural, suburban, and dense urban areas in my life (currently
high density urban), and there is a bias on HN toward the idea that rural
communities are unsustainable on their own and mere leeches on the city
dwellers. That's likely true in some places, but not universally. Sustainable
rural communities have exports of resources, housing, and/or tourism, that
outweigh their cost.

As the parent comment describes, one model for remote communities is
volunteers who work at the library because they care. The cost of everything
is lower -- labor, food, matetials -- so what looks too expensive for a town
might actually be fully sustainable.

~~~
Qworg
I wish we could get some numbers on this, as I've lived in the same spread of
places as you and I agree with the GP. I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

The sustainable rural community is exceedingly rare - most are propped up by
ag subsidies and state aid. For much of the central part of America, there's
no housing benefit or tourism to speak of, just resources (corn/soy in
general, maybe livestock).

------
idreyn
The armchair planner in me was a little taken aback at first by the
description of the flea market as "amazingly good urbanism" \-- good urbanism
looks like bike lanes and trees and mixed-use development, not parking lots!
-- but of course that's falling into the very thought trap illustrated by the
post.

Parking lot flea markets are exactly 'tactical urbanism' in the same mode as
pop-up bike and bus lanes -- the repurposing of car storage for more
economically valuable and human-centric use, and (us) urbanist types should
talk about them more often!

~~~
phkahler
It turns out that the most financially sound communities are higher density,
where you get the most economic activity per unit of infrastructure.

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Animats
Oh, it's worse. Some expensive houses now have a show kitchen and a work
kitchen.

Why would someone make counter tops from permeable stone? That's idiotic.
There are stone materials like granite that are impermeable. Besides, why is
marble high-status? You can get that stuff at Home Depot.

My own countertops are inch thick glazed fired ceramic tiles, from the 1960s.
Same material as those indestructible walls schools and gyms used to use.
Fifty years of use have not marked them, they can be cleaned with strong
cleaners, and they are unaffected by contact with hot pans.

~~~
i_am_nomad
Good lord... a show kitchen? Not to doubt you, but I have never heard of this.
Clearly I don’t travel in rarefied circles. But, it’s hard for me to imagine
being held hostage to the psychological drive to own such a thing.

~~~
lqet
The living room in my grandparent's house was basically for show and never
used, and they were by no means affluent. It was (and still is) a collection
of antique and early-sixties furniture, often inherited, thick carpets and
baroque wallpaper. They gradually stopped using the room and converted the
dining room into a second living room after their children were out of the
house, and by the time I was a child, the room was basically a museum where
children were not allowed. My grandpa is 90 and lives in the house alone now,
he still never uses the room. There even is an alibi television set in there
that was last used in the 70ies.

~~~
jacobush
My grandparents had a room exactly like that!

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lifeisstillgood
What is being described here is a working multi-functional town centre - a
place to walk to, make necessary purchases and hang out and even eat out.

We know how to build more and more of these "town centres" \- we used to find
them at the centre of almost all towns. The problem is it's not something
governments can do or force - it's something they allow, and don't strangle.

It's waaaaay harder.

It is what evolves naturally until it is stretched out of existence by roads
and car journeys, or bored to death by same-old franchises that suck revenue
back to HQ

It involves ending the nice suburban compromise ( ala StrongTowns) and that is
probably a bigger change to modern Western lifestyles than almost anything.

How could we all move back into city-level densities?

~~~
lonelappde
If state governments made suburbs pay their bills and externalities out of
current accounts instead of mortgaging the future and cutting up and poisoning
city residents with highways, the invisible hand of free market economics
would push people to live together in cities if they want to keep their highly
materialistic lifestyles. As it is, people make short term optimal, long term
bankrupt, and tragedy of the commons, pollution externalizing choices.

~~~
closeparen
I doubt you could build a public transit system without mortgaging the future.
If the pollution externalities are priced in, people will buy electric cars.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
What do they drive the electric cars on? I agree about mortgaging the future,
but roads + (electric) buses makes a perfectly sensible public transit system
for a lot of density levels.

------
apo
> This place [farmer's market/flea market] is a work horse. It grows small
> businesses from scratch without recourse to bank loans or government
> subsidies. It provides products and experiences that are genuinely needed in
> the community. And it costs almost nothing to create compared to the usual
> economic development model meant to induce artificial prosperity through tax
> holidays and subsidies for mega projects. ...

> So why don’t local governments embrace more of this sort of pop up grass
> roots mom and pop enterprise? Officials are in a trap that requires them to
> boost tax revenue to pay for all the attenuated infrastructure and municipal
> overhead that’s accumulated for decades. Highly functional flea markets
> don’t generate enough cash surplus to skim. So municipalities are obliged to
> search for show horses with all the associated prestige, complexity, and
> expense. ...

Those local governments probably bought into the Growth Ponzi Scheme and are
now trapped in an endless cycle of megacorp courthship that with each
iteration further destroys the means for the area to survive independently:

[https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-
scheme](https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme)

~~~
lonelappde
Why is the article assuming away the obvious solution? Tax the flea market and
everybody still wins. Or leave the flea market untaxed as a public good, and
raise property taxes to account for how the flea market cashlessly raises
quality of life.

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black6
This parallels my favorite Mr Money Mustache article, which happens to be
about work trucks[0]. There seems (to me) to be so much money ill-spent on
façades.

[https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/04/28/what-does-your-
wo...](https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/04/28/what-does-your-work-truck-
say-about-you/)

~~~
war1025
MMM has some great content. It's a shame he doesn't put out many articles
anymore.

~~~
benj111
He has a youtube channel that he started posting to regularly this year.

But yeah, unfortunately theres only so many ways you can get tell someone to
not spend money.

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mothsonasloth
In the UK there are a lot of flea markets, or "car boot sales" as we call
them.

You still have the same stigma attached with them, and being honest they are
sometimes not for the faint hearted. A lot of them are similar in they are
hosted in old car parks or industrial brown sites.

However a bargain can always be had; 24 pack of just expired Duracell AA
batteries, mahogony furniture from a house clearance, old style lightbulbs
etc.

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theandrewbailey
> Notice how any parking lot is instantly ADA compliant for people in
> wheelchairs who require a barrier free environment.

It's almost funny how any plaintext/simple web page like this one is the same
way.

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jcims
Probably not an HN-worthy comment, but when I read the title my mind
immediately went to the constitution of engineering teams. Now I'm curious if
there's a treatment of this anywhere that is worth reading. Seems like you
need a bit of both to maximize effect (or at least wear both hats to the
extent you're willing and able).

~~~
TeMPOraL
If I wanted to make an industry analogy, I'd go for neural networks in Machine
Learning being the show horse.

------
chiph
Something I've wondered is why people don't turn abandoned big-box stores (and
smaller malls) into flea markets. There wouldn't be any problems with the
weather. The merchants can rent by the month and not have to tear-down their
shops on Sunday evenings. Bathrooms would be available. Power could be run.

~~~
bluedino
Flea markets are an eyesore and typically sell low quality merch, attracting
ebay type resellers slinging phone cases, gold by the inch, stuff like that

~~~
chiph
But setting up an indoor flea market means they wouldn't be an eyesore, and
would put a property to productive use that would otherwise sit empty,
generating no tax revenue, possibly becoming a target for vagrants, arsonists,
and graffiti taggers.

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simple_elevated
If the goal of the renovation was to add resale value, as opposed to meal
preparation value, to the home they did the correct thing. Kitchens and
bathrooms are the "runway models" of real estate.

~~~
dragonwriter
Expensive nonpractical kitchen remodels are at the top of every list I've seen
of projects to avoid when looking to resale value because they usually add
less resale value than they cost to do.

~~~
benj111
The emphasis there is on the expensive though.

How many really well laid out kitchens have you been in, where you have
adequate prep space, and the fridge, cooker and sink are in sensible
positions?

Kitchens are generally designed to look nice, not be practical unfortunately.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The emphasis there is on the expensive though.

Right, but anything involving substantial marble surfaces in a ktichen, as in
the article, is both expensive and impractical.

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brownkonas
This like a good parallel story to the Cathedral and the Bazaar:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar)

The Cathedral takes decades to build and is fragile , while the Bazaar is
quick to assemble and resilient.

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crispyporkbites
> This particular municipality is often described as a food desert. A
> significant proportion of the population buys its food at gas stations and
> quickie marts where healthy fresh food isn’t usually on offer.

I’m flabbergasted by this comment. How can people accept living like this?

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ChuckMcM
This also applies to engineers, it is a universal concept.

