

Comrades raise your pitchforks and take back the neighborhood - nickl
http://web.mit.edu/cultureshock/fa2006/www/essays/mcmansion.html

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Semiapies
Welcome to the 1990s, here's your Discman.

Of all the things to get worked up about in one's community, the fact that
some people have large, dull-looking houses is about the lamest, laziest, and
least politically cognizant.

Or put another way, if the biggest problem in your community really and truly
is that some people have McMansions...count your damn blessings.

And citing zoning variances? _Really?_

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middlegeek
So what? If they have the money and the land, go ahead and build what you
like. That is what makes America free. This article is quite an example of
class-ism.

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dbingham
Money is power and with power comes responsibility. Houses like this are
wasteful and irresponsible on many, many levels.

It’s true, focusing on this of all the problems facing us today is a little
silly. And I don’t think it is the government’s place to discourage this. But
it is our place to discourage it. This is something culture has to change. It
should not be culturally acceptable to purchase McMansions. The owners of
McMansions shouldn’t have the respect, envy or admiration of their neighbors
and peers. They should face scorn and derision. Eventually people will stop
wanting them and stop buying them. And they will stop being built.

Instead, we should encourage those with the money to build and purchase homes
that have been built as sustainably as possible. You shouldn’t be trying to
one up the Joneses with a home that is bigger, more wasteful and more
ostentatious. You should be trying to one up the Joneses with a home that has
a smaller environmental footprint, that makes better use of the land it sits
on, that is more off the grid and more carbon neutral.

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Semiapies
Or you should just build the house you actually want and then worry about more
important things. Your car(s) will do much more ecological harm than your
house.

Worse, spending effort on reducing the ecological impact of expensive homes to
an absolute minimum is a game of diminishing returns. It wastes resources that
would be better spent encouraging more modest levels of change at far broader
levels that would lead to a much greater reduction of the _total_ human
footprint.

This is why these objections are much less about the _natural_ environment and
simply NIMBY reactions to a change to the _social_ environment.

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sp332
Can we give developers some incentive not to do this? Is there some better
configuration of homes that will give them more money (higher margins), or can
we change the culture so that people won't buy these houses? Or maybe
regulation is the only way to prevent this?

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flogic
There really isn't anything we should do. It's not really a problem. The
entire thing is a rant about how he doesn't like the style. He makes a couple
vague references to build quality but that's beside the point of his main
rant. Nothing good came come of legislating aesthetic values.

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PaulHoule
It amazes me that people have a lot of $ but no class. If I had a few mil to
drop on a house, I'd build or buy something special and cool, I wouldn't want
to live in an expensive subdivision.

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protomyth
Cool and the local Homeowner association (HOA) generally don't go together,
you would need to live outside a subdivision.

~~~
Semiapies
Taste is a funny thing. Someone who's had a McMansion built probably thinks
that it's "cool", too.

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segy
I'm not your Comrade dude.

