I think there's a question about zero-sum 'thinking', and also a question about whether policy or reality has genuinely made a situation closer to zero-sum. If you restrict the supply of the housing types that people actually, statistically, want (which is happening most places in southern Ontario in the name of fighting sprawl), the only question left really *is* who gets it.
There's an obvious, positive-sum, solution if housing was the only goal: build to meet demand, including of the same types older generations enjoyed (or at least things that people consider a close substitute). That solution has mostly been taken off the table. People can reasonably have an opinion that growth restrictions are either necessary, or the best way to achieve other goals, but it doesn't change that it's created scarcity of the low-density housing (detached/townhouses/rowhouses/etc) people on average want to raise families in that is not just in people's heads. It's not genuinely zero-sum: building tons of housing that is worse (smaller, more expensive for the same size, not of the types people prefer) than other people still enjoy is better than doing nothing. But the scarcity is not imagined either.
Both climate change and climate adaption are going to create at least some actual scarcity. I think there's a hard balance between avoiding zero-sum thinking when there is lots of room to 'lift all boats', and a fear of zero-sum thinking letting people wriggle out of a question about whether they are taking more than their fair share when there is either actual scarcity or a necessity to act like there is. The positive (!) side of acknowledging scarcity where it actually exists is that people at our best are capable of thinking about fairness, too, and not just taking the most we can get.
I think there's a question about zero-sum 'thinking', and also a question about whether policy or reality has genuinely made a situation closer to zero-sum. If you restrict the supply of the housing types that people actually, statistically, want (which is happening most places in southern Ontario in the name of fighting sprawl), the only question left really *is* who gets it.
There's an obvious, positive-sum, solution if housing was the only goal: build to meet demand, including of the same types older generations enjoyed (or at least things that people consider a close substitute). That solution has mostly been taken off the table. People can reasonably have an opinion that growth restrictions are either necessary, or the best way to achieve other goals, but it doesn't change that it's created scarcity of the low-density housing (detached/townhouses/rowhouses/etc) people on average want to raise families in that is not just in people's heads. It's not genuinely zero-sum: building tons of housing that is worse (smaller, more expensive for the same size, not of the types people prefer) than other people still enjoy is better than doing nothing. But the scarcity is not imagined either.
Both climate change and climate adaption are going to create at least some actual scarcity. I think there's a hard balance between avoiding zero-sum thinking when there is lots of room to 'lift all boats', and a fear of zero-sum thinking letting people wriggle out of a question about whether they are taking more than their fair share when there is either actual scarcity or a necessity to act like there is. The positive (!) side of acknowledging scarcity where it actually exists is that people at our best are capable of thinking about fairness, too, and not just taking the most we can get.