Another possibility that would reduce the effective cost of housing would be small scale distributed manufacturing (I’m thinking Drexler/Merkle nanotech here). That would mean that most goods would not need to travel, they would be “printed” locally. There are exceptions for goods which require uncommon atoms, which would still need transport. (To be a bit more explicit: I’m trying to weaken the “near other people” restriction. As is, a lot of what we exchange with other people is information, and we ship that around globally today. Goods are another major category, which I commented on above. Physical contact is a third category, but a lot of that is limited to family members in the same household anyway.)
One factor which hasn’t been directly discussed, is that housing, while partially designed to protect us from weather, is also partially to protect us from other people. The former function can be reduced in cost by better or cheaper materials. The latter is to some extent a zero-sum game. (There is a whole range of interacting social issues involved. Some of the protection is from thieves, some from obnoxious neighbors, some from intruding authorities—and these groups differ greatly in their ability to bring greater resources to bear, and also differ in their interest in doing so.)
Another possibility that would reduce the effective cost of housing would be small scale distributed manufacturing (I’m thinking Drexler/Merkle nanotech here). That would mean that most goods would not need to travel, they would be “printed” locally. There are exceptions for goods which require uncommon atoms, which would still need transport. (To be a bit more explicit: I’m trying to weaken the “near other people” restriction. As is, a lot of what we exchange with other people is information, and we ship that around globally today. Goods are another major category, which I commented on above. Physical contact is a third category, but a lot of that is limited to family members in the same household anyway.)
One factor which hasn’t been directly discussed, is that housing, while partially designed to protect us from weather, is also partially to protect us from other people. The former function can be reduced in cost by better or cheaper materials. The latter is to some extent a zero-sum game. (There is a whole range of interacting social issues involved. Some of the protection is from thieves, some from obnoxious neighbors, some from intruding authorities—and these groups differ greatly in their ability to bring greater resources to bear, and also differ in their interest in doing so.)