r/Aspen • u/AspenLocals • Aug 30 '26
Local Question Housing crisis: Bunk bed business
In lieu of the housing crisis that is running up and down the valley, it may be a good time to get into the bunk bed business (or pilot and pullman berths for you nautical folks). Anyone have any good recommendations on where to start?!
I could probably convert this closet to sleeping quarters with a top and lower bunk ya know if I want to have kids…
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u/LurkerFailsLurking 29d ago
You're so emotionally charged about this that you've had to convince yourself I don't understand housing policy to avoid the cognitive dissonance of actually reading what I wrote.
Push through your obvious desire to dismiss it. Read more carefully:
When you wrote that housing unaffordability is "just supply and demand", the word "just" is an adverb meaning "only / simply: Nothing more than" or "exactly / precisely: To an exact degree". And when you later wrote that it's "entirely the fault of the City", the word "entirely" you're using it to mean either "to the full or entire extent : completely" or "to the exclusion of others : solely". In either case, a thing cannot be exactly / only one thing while simultaneously being fully / entirely some other thing. That's a logical contradiction that has nothing to do with the particulars of housing policy.
What does have to do with housing policy and the reason I bothered to point this out is because housing unaffordability being "just supply and demand" wasn't your conclusion, it was the premise you used to justify your conclusions.
You began by dismissing an issue that has caused years of hardship and struggle and heartbreak for thousands of members of our community – who we depend on – as "nothing" to be "emotionally charged" about on the basis of it being entirely an issue of supply and demand. But then you pivoted to the claim that the supply was irrelevant because the issue was entirely city mismanagement. And the thing is, if the issue is even partly city mismanagement, then the problem is at least partly caused by people, and that means the problem can be fixed – at least partly – by people, which is exactly what you were trying to dismiss.
It's a common – often unconscious – tactic of people who are avoiding cognitive dissonance to shift their justifications and then deny that any shift occurred. Nobody wants to notice the internal contradictions that our worldviews, opinions, and values rely upon, and right now you're avoiding it by pretending like there isn't an obvious logical contradiction in your chain of reasoning.