> if the town is set up on the premise of being a home for rich people
Yes, the fundamental political argument here is whether “setting up a town such that some small group gets to decide what kinds of buildings a property owner can build” should be a thing. There are clearly other premises that nearly everyone agrees cannot be enforced by a town (say, “a town set up for white people only”), so it’s not good enough to simply provide a premise and say “we’re a country of laws therefore the premise shall be enforced.”
No, the focus of the article on the individual, Marc Andreessen and vilifying him for arguing for density in cities like San Francisco while voting against density in his suburban town. The underlying idea is that billionaires should opt for the exact same living standards as people who make orders of magnitude less than them if they write articles commenting on housing, and if they do not do so, they are hypocrites, while conveniently ignoring the fact that these very same billionaires single-handedly sway government revenues because of the taxes they pay and drive ginormous GDP increases that enable governments to solve housing problems, for example, by creating efficient transportation networks, or providing incentives to companies to locate themselves in ways that alleviate or avert housing crises.
The real culprit is not Andreessen complaining to his mayor, but the Bay Area and California politicians who have squandered the enormous revenues of the past 10 years and have literally nothing to show for their housing efforts.
Yes, the fundamental political argument here is whether “setting up a town such that some small group gets to decide what kinds of buildings a property owner can build” should be a thing. There are clearly other premises that nearly everyone agrees cannot be enforced by a town (say, “a town set up for white people only”), so it’s not good enough to simply provide a premise and say “we’re a country of laws therefore the premise shall be enforced.”