Away from the perma-misery of politics, wars, regulatory nonsense and so on, I came across this article on the Substack of the Rational Optimist Society (with a name like that, it is not a place to go for the doom-scrollers):
“Housing is arguably the most broken industry in the world, with tough competition from healthcare and education. It’s a gigantic market that affects us all,” writes Stephen McBride.
He argues that firms such as Cuby Technologies are doing for housing what shipping containers did for transportation and global trade, with massively positive effects.
Cuby’s product is the Mobile Micro-Factory (MMFTM). It’s a standardized, portable factory that turns homebuilding into a predictable manufacturing process. I can see that acronym MMF, in this context, getting the same visibility as SMR for “small modular reactors”, and tapping into the same idea of using economies of scale, mass customisation and fiendishly clever computer tech to produce lots of useful, not eye-wateringly expensive things for our homes, power generators, whatever. And I can see, in time, how this fits with still-developing tech such as 3-D printing (which has been around a while). It will of course give some folk the vapours, such as those in the construction trades, much as happened with other disruptive changes. But if, for example, ageing and other forces squeeze labour market supply of people in such trades, then business models such as the MMF one, able to churn out homes, will have a lot of appeal. Plus new jobs can be created around design and all the associated, value-add opportunities that can arise.
One aspect of all this is that if it lives up to the billing, the precision with which homes are built will be very high.
Also, there is an appeal, is there not, for the likes of Elon Musk in figuring out how to efficiently produce things for spacefaring and the settlement of Mars. I can bet he is following all this closely.
Final thought – for places that have suffered a devastating loss of housing (such as Southern California exactly a year ago because of the fires), being able to produce attractive homes at scale for people seems to have a lot of appeal. And, er, that’s where the horrible politics comes in. To date, only a fraction of the number of houses lost have been replaced. That is a shameful state of affairs, and one for which the local politicians deserve to pay a high price.
A fascinating article. However, I don’t think the Mobile Micro Factory is going to solve the underlying problem of housing affordability. The problem is not a lack of supply; I’m sure the conventional builders would build non-stop – if they were allowed to do so. Rather, the problem is a lack of permission to build.
Just an old man ranting here, but I would love to see part of the housing solution be to educate younger guys in how to repair and upgrade older structures. It helps build wealth through sweat equity but more importantly, doing things with your hands, and accomplishing something physical like a small repair or even a larger remodel, is good for the soul.
Doesn’t solve the problem for the millions of homes we need to build (if the “experts” quoted are to be believed!), but it could help. And I do like Cuby…but I wish their website showed a few actual houses they’ve built and sold. It’s all AI as far as I can tell!
One quibble with a Cuby house: with steel framing, modifications would be hard…I think? Maybe that’s one of the transitions: instead of calling a carpenter to make structural changes, you’d call a welder? Nothing wrong with that, but I want to also be able to do as much as possible myself
And yes, Jonathan, I hope Elon is watching! Whatever the economics of Cuby, Elon would likely improve on them.
Another bit of rant: the complaints about not being able to supply enough homes compared to say 50 years ago ignore the fact that we now want 100% more square footage (>2000 SF vs ~1000SF 50 years ago, for a 2-3 BR home). And everyone gets their own room, their own screens (multiple), streaming services, etc. …all while complaining about “affordability”. How many of the poor or lower middle class had a supercomputer in their pocket 50 years ago?
“We don’t have enough” completely depends on the definition of “enough”
Trying to solve a problem created by mass immigration by building more houses is putting the cart before the horse.
What is needed is remigration – not destroying what remains of south eastern England by building yet more housing estates.
By the way – anyone who actually goes about England and sees the houses and flats being built around almost every town, knows that the
statistics cited by London based organisations (which claim that hardly anything is being built), are fake.
But YES prefabs (factory created houses – a 1940s idea) have their place – I am NOT opposed to the idea. It just ignores the real problem -the mass immigration and the natural increase of these populations.
On the non British position – I agree with Johnathan Pearce. Both on modular nuclear reactors and on cheaper (prefabricated) houses.
The situation in California is terrible – whether it is just incompetence, or (as many people believe) a deliberate effort to drive out family owned homes and replace them with blocks of flats owned either by the government or “partner corporations” such as BlackRock – whose head (Larry Fink) is also head of the World Economic Forum – an organisation dedicated to destroying individual and family owned homes, and committed to destroying small business enterprises.
The international establishment are committed to creating a society where everything would be under the control of governments and partner-corporations “you will own nothing – and you will be happy” (if you are not “happy” – you had better pretend to be).
California is one of the States where policies of regulations and taxation are pushing hardest in this direction – very United Nations Agenda 21 (now Agenda 2030), with “land use” control making private property a legal fiction.
Covid was also used as an excuse for such a “Reset” – with large corporations (such as the filth, and the word “filth” is well deserved, who make up “Hollywood”) given vast amounts of money, whilst individual and family owned business enterprises were forced to close (a third of the individual and family owned enterprises in California did not reopen – so the Agenda took one more stop to being “achieved”).
Such policies had nothing to do with fighting a virus – but the virus was used as an excuse for these policies.
Natural disasters (fire, flood and so on) are used in other States as a way of transferring land from individuals and families to public bodies and partner corporations – either by incompetence, or as a deliberate policy.
Greg WA – in Britain there is a high tax on repairing existing houses and other buildings, and lots of regulations on the practice.
The policy appears to be to get rid of old houses and other old buildings – under the mask of “protecting” them.
High Property Taxes also serve this purpose – as does rent control. In the United States rent control (in various places) applied to old properties, but not to new ones – so good buildings were destroyed and replaced by ugly buildings.
Replacing attractive buildings with ugly buildings was also the effect of the Federal Government “Urban Renewal” policy (on which so much money was spent) – whether this was just incompetence or a deliberate policy, I do not know.
Martin Anderson published “The Federal Bulldozer” in 1965 – but I think he was too moderate in showing the damage done.
People have a totally false view of American history – most people think that America went from from frontier “shacks” to the concrete, steel and glass blocks of today.
This is quite wrong – in reality there was a period of time when American towns and cities were beautiful, they really were.
In, for example, 1913 (or even in 1950) Americans did not have to go overseas to see beautiful towns and cities – they could just look around them. Look at old documentary films and newsreels – or even old post cards.
H.G. Wells in his short story “In the Days of the Comet” writes, almost in passing – and he gloats, about the future destruction of beauty – whether it be of houses and other buildings (to be destroyed) or old books, music and art.
This was the aim of the enemy, even back in the early 1900s – the British Fabians, the Italian Futurists, and so on.
I suspect that real agenda around the recent destruction of American statues was not “anti racism” – but was really about the destruction of beauty, as well as an agenda of the destruction of a sense of history.
They will not rest till all beauty is destroyed.
Interesting web site, I found this article “The Great Climate Climbdown” a lovely summary of the current state of climate catastrophe collapse (hey that alliterates 😉):
Might be worthy of a samizdata article especially given this:
It seems that the real climate catastrophe, this being a real one, is that the whole dishonest mess is being revealed and a lot of people getting fat off the lies are going to have to find a useful way of making a living.
Paul, blaming immigration for the lack of affordable housing doesn’t explain the whole picture. The US fertility rate is, according to this link, 1.6, below the 2.1 rate needed to achieve a steady level. Immigrants’ birthrates soon revert to the host country. And even so, assuming immigration does boost population numbers, if the immigrants are hardworking and enterprising, that’s hardly a problem, since w they add productive resources. (Obviously, the sort of problems as seen in parts of the US with immigrants on welfare is a bad thing, just as it is for native-born citizens.)
Before and after the Civil War, immigration was high, but what was different was a relatively accommodating legal system that wasn’t riddled with planning and zoning laws.
Trying to expel millions of people doesn’t fix the underlying problems of zoning restrictions, housing regulations, and decades of artificially low interest rates.
I can build a smallish 3-bedroom house, up to good standards, warm and dry and attractive, for less than $90k.
Planning and permitting people will not let me do so.
The value of the pre-fab lies in the pressure it puts on bureaucrats to pre-approve the design. It’s much easier to flippantly reject my one-off than to reject an entire design-line of homes.
The Fraser Orr: “… find a useful way of making a living”
Indeed.
Do they still sew mailbags in HMPs?
Johnathan Pearce, a secondary effect of expelling uninvited and unproductive immigrants might be that the remainder vote in more sane administrations, which would remove many of these restrictions.
Jonathan Pearce – treating immigrants as the children that Westerners failed to have is folly (terrible folly).
They are not our children – they are not interested in preserving Western nations or in paying for the old age of Westerners, and there is no reason why they should be.
As for the declining fertility rate – that is the direct result of Progressive economic and cultural (yes cultural – the “social revolution” was not some organic development, it was planned and carried out, profound social change is normally the result of “human design” – contra Hayek) policies.
So saying “we have got a low fertility rate – so we must have this mass immigration and the natural increase of these populations” (or words to that effect) reminds me of the old Russian saying….
“First they smash your face in – then they say you were always ugly”.
First the Progressives have undermined the nation – then they support mass immigration as a “solution” to the problem they created, when it is not a “solution” at all.
It is the death blow.
bobby b – as you may know, the last State not to have a Building Code was Alaska.
First the left removed Governor Palin (by driving her to resignation – by endless, utterly groundless, court cases – which non leftist judges would never have allowed to come to court, eating up endless money and time, but Alaska has lots of leftist judges – due to the way that judges are chosen there, it is similar to how they are chosen in Britain), then they made having a Building Code a condition of getting Obama stimulus money – which the new Governor agreed to.
The last thing the left want is inexpensive family homes – owned by those families.
The agenda is (and has been for a very long time – going all the way back to H.G. Wells and so on) to make everyone tenants in government housing blocks.
Or the housing blocks of “non profits” or “partner corporations”.
The new head of housing in New York City (the largest city in the United States) often used to openly boast of such things – till she deleted her Twitter Account.
However, people kept screen shots.
One mistake people make is to assume that big corporations are the enemies of the left – with entities such as BlackRock this is far from the truth.
Being the “partner of governments” appeals to a lot of Corporate folk.
I am glad Mark Steyn is not on this thread – as it might give him a fatal heart attack, he has almost died from heart attacks already.
“We must have immigration because of the low fertility rate” is a line he refuted decades (yes decades) ago.
And he started when the American fertility rate was above replacement level – but then European cultural changes (having been imposed on European nations from the 1960s onwards) were imposed on most of America as well.
With hindsight – it just took a bit longer to undermine America (the attacks on American society also go back many decades – none of this is organic, it is all the result of human design NOT just human action).
“We can not deport millions of illegal immigrants”.
If (if) that is true – then the lines of Kipling are apt.
“When you lay wounded on Afghan planes, and the women come out to cut up what remains – then roll on your side, and blow out your brains, and go to your God like a soldier”.
But it is not “Afghan plans” anymore – it is Western nations themselves.
Do not leave yourself alive – in the hands of, say, MS-13, or other such gangs (which have thousands of members).
Druidd, I can only hope.
However, I get the impression that much NIMBY opposition to building new homes or replacing old ones comes from established citizens rather than relatively new arrivals, which doesn’t really advance your argument.
There’s an ageing population in many countries. So thinking about how to build things when labour is in short supply is why ideas such as the subject of my post are worth considering, whether there is net migration or emigration.
By all means comment on immigration, but for god’s sake try and actually discuss the topic of a post, however indirectly.
GregWA,
I second what Paul Marks has to say. I know this because I’m the warden of a Grade II listed building in a conservation area. The regulations are mind-bending. Add that into the taax-raid on small business…
They are not our children – they are not interested in preserving Western nations or in paying for the old age of Westerners, and there is no reason why they should be.
For sure, some immigrants may be the kind of monsters that you seem to think they are, but Mexican-born agriculture workers and car mechanics don’t seem to pose any more of a risk to the fabric of the US than Irish potato farmers in the 1850s. The problem is the welfare state and insufficient pressures for assimilation.
You mention “remigration”. What does this actually mean? Would it even mean deporting (due process be damned) anyone who does not look quite “Western” enough so as to reduce house prices? Is this really where you are now, in how you think of these sort of issues?
“We must have immigration because of the low fertility rate” is a line he refuted decades (yes decades) ago.
Where did I say we “must” have immigration? I pointed out that the indigenous birth rate has fallen, and that the birth rate of immigrants tends to fall one or more generations in. I then noted in the original post that labour shortages and other constraints explains why businesses such as the one I wrote about are worth looking at. Your approach is to deny that a problem exists, and if it does exists, it is about immigration, and this can be mostly solved by “remigration” – ie, kicking people out of the country, by whatever means you deem fit, and to argue that such immigrants are hostile to whatever country they live in.
In “the old days” you did indeed “manufacture” houses on site. You’d dig clay out of the site, and bake bricks on the site, to build the houses on the site. If you care to look, the country is littered with “former clay pit”s all over the place where urban development expanded in the early 20th century, typically as the development was completed they finished off by building the last set of houses in the former clay pit itself.
“I would love to see part of the housing solution be to educate younger guys in how to repair and upgrade older structures”
I can’t remember ever formally being taught anything like that, but that’s exactly what I’ve always done. The first few years in my first home involved rewiring and redecorating to my taste, putting in a shower, etc. Even as a tenant something like changing a tap washer was part of the chores of living somewhere, just as much as changing expired toilet paper or a dead light. But, yes, as a landlord I have had a tenant demand that I replace their expired toilet paper.
Johnathan Pearce – fair enough, we live in different worlds – that is not your fault (or my fault). So we will leave it at that.
Hopefully we will both be dead before the West has been totally destroyed.
jgh – quite so.
My father was like that – but I lack the practical skills.
But I do not ask people to replace toilet paper or light bulbs.
Just as “no one washes a rental car”, no one learns DIY repair and renovation in rental property.
Most housing reasonably offered now is rental housing.
“Expired” toilet paper????
Paul: you’ve not heard of Japanese toilets? 😬
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4-5DcqGRF4