Zoning Laws Suffer From The Fixed Window Fallacy

The Fixed Window Fallacy is an error in reasoning whereby people believe they know or can know what is nice/preferred/optimal. This line of thought is based on unimaginative, linear-thinking and further held back by the Local Maximum Problem. 

It can be summarized as a thought process that goes: "We know what is best. We/they can afford what is desired (after all, it is usually for our/their own good). Therefore, we should make ourselves/them provide it." 

Both premises are false, and the conclusion is fallacious (non sequitur) as it ignores the critical questions: do we have a right to do this, and can we successfully do this? 
The only constant is change, and it comes in two types. 

1. Depreciation, which is the natural condition, difficult to counter, and mostly objective.
2. Appreciation, which is the abnormal condition, difficult to achieve, and highly subjective. 

Attempts to stop depreciation such as zoning laws are never done in a vacuum. They are not single events where good replaces bad, and we move on to the next decision. They are part of economic evolution where decisions made affect trend trajectories with uncertain net outcomes and unpredictable magnitudes. 

Similarly collective action attempts to realize appreciation such as subsidizes for development and master plans are fraught with captured interest risk bringing asymmetric outcomes adverse to the presumed collective goal. In other words the rent-seeking developers and their friends in power do what is good for them and costly for society. For those cases where everyone has the best of intentions, we still have the knowledge problem. When artificial outcomes are engineered by those who do not bear the full risk, bad ideas do not get properly punished and good ideas do not get properly rewarded. 

Back to zoning, trying to stop people from doing things they want to do is prohibition. People and markets work to thwart prohibitions in proportion to how much they desire that which is prohibited. The less morally sound the prohibition, the less compliant are those working against it and those third parties who have no dog in the fight. Fortunately the long-term trend is for less and less prohibition. Unfortunately working against a prohibition is costly as is the administration of a prohibition. 

Whether it is in icky markets (e.g., sex work, recreational drugs deemed illicit, kidney transplants, etc.) or in we-know-better markets (e.g., zoning), an underlying force supporting the prohibition is not in my backyard thinking. In fact I believe NIMBY is the last vestige of prohibition rationalization.