Comment by fidotron 3 days ago
Tangentially:
> The vision was meant to use the trade facility and urban renewal as tools to clear and revitalize what had become a “commercial slum”.
What this refers to is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Row#New_York_City
Basically you cannot have Akihabara or Shenzhen style electronics markets because the sort of people that built the WTC don't like their chaotic appearance.
> It had the most valuable real estate in the world. Radio Row was a poor use of real estate.
So why did they force a sale price on the people there?
If as finance people we believe in market forces they should have bought the stores out at market prices.
It's another heads-we-win-tails-you-lose situation.
The Wikipedia article hints that it went through the courts. Probably the only legally recognised rights were of the property (real estate) owners and those rights didn't include using the sidewalk as a display area and blasting out announcements on loudspeakers.
So $30,000 in 1962 was probably very generous, but these business owners held the WTC project ransom by demanding unreasonable payouts.
The wikipedia article mentioned that it went to court.
The White House and Central Park are a poor use of real estate as well. Imagine how much money you could make if you developed it into a new Kowloon Walled City!
Besides, didn't the Twin Towers have a massive occupancy problem? I recall that being the reason why so many government entities were forced to move there...
> It's not about looks but efficient use of land
Right, confiscation from private owners to use it for erection of a building no one needs is a very efficient use of land. The project will require astronomical up front expenses, will stay vacant for almost 2 decades, and have endless problems until its last day (fires, terrorist acts, issues with the structure). But who cares, it's efficiency we are talking about.
> because the sort of people that built the WTC don't like their chaotic appearance.
And their counterparts in government hate it because chaos is inefficient (because people have rights) to impose their will on (regulate) so even if you don't build WTC there becomes a regulatory environment where nothing organic can grow.
Thanks for that. We seem to have lost sight of the importance of "commercial biodiversity" in the past 40 or more years of continuous M&A concentration.
Happily, I saw a little discussion of it in 2008 when the advocates of letting the auto companies fail were pushed back by statistics showing how many second and third tier suppliers would be destroyed. But the fourth tier, the shenzhen / radio alley-type stuff is still ignored. Very similar to how most companies want to simply hire skills and assume that they will magically appear when in years past, companies took an active hand in creating them by having a career development path in-house.
Perhaps the AI bubble will be viewed in the future as the last gasp of companies that depleted the soil that they grew in and now struggle to survive without anyone that knows how to do the work anymore. Maybe LLMs will be all that remains, our Moai.
It's a shame the same logic wasn't applied in maintaining a healthy root-level auto company ecosystem. Having a single megacorp at the top inevitably makes it too big to fail. On the other hand, if there are dozens of smaller car companies, the failure of any one of them is insignificant to the wider ecosystem.
A company that knows it is too big to fail will inevitably lead to mismanagement. After all, why bother saving for a rainy day when you can count on corporate welfare handouts? Why bother reducing your risks when you can always rely on a bailout? You can never lose, so the obvious thing to do is to bet as big as possible in an attempt to create as much short-term "shareholder value" as possible.
I can't think of a way to have dozens of smaller car companies, all competitive and all viable long term without ongoing and adaptive regulation.
With Chevron doctrine dead and Congress struggling to pass a budget, I can't see how it is possible to have any meaningful regulation in the US in the short to mid term.
Even the mainland China model of pitting province and local governments against each other to foster competition might not work in the long term (it is still early days). We already see specialization in provinces which to me indicates that there is a defacto province government who wins auto manufacturers in the long run.
I think you can expand this to “finance” more broadly. This essay by the CCRU from 30 years ago is really interesting and basically explores the phenomenon of marketplaces turning into organized financial spaces as a space becomes more capitalistic. Let’s not forget what the WTC is/was: a major focal point of global capitalism, not just another building.
http://www.ccru.net/archive/markets.htm
In 'highly developed' economies the anarchy of concrete market-places has been replaced by the securitized space of the shopping mall (interiorized, guarded, and surveilled). Instead of dark and crowded alleys, lined by open stalls - which encourage a multiplicity of tactile interactions - the mall substitutes shop windows and brightly lit retail displays.
It's not about looks but efficient use of land: Manhattan was (and still is) the financial capital of the world. It had the most valuable real estate in the world. Radio Row was a poor use of real estate.
Before the Chinese traded electronics in Shenzhen, they traded it in Hong Kong. Yes, as Hong Kong transformed into a financial center, it got rid of the electronics traders.