Source: Law & Liberty
by Gary Winslett
“How does anything get built? What are the political precursors to development? Michael Munger has an interesting, and at times persuasive, argument that self-interest combines with particular institutional designs, such as public hearings, to create a prisoner’s dilemma where everyone knows that development is in aggregate desirable but wants that development to be in the next town over. This is, in many ways, the conventional story of NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) politics. That story isn’t wrong per se, but it’s missing a critical component: culture. … I argue that three cultural practices (growth orientation, property rights norms, and positive-sum attitudes) act essentially as gates. If a place fails on any one of them, it is very likely to underbuild. Development will thus, over time, gravitate toward places that can pass all three of these cultural tests.” (09/23/26)