Are they always morons though? On the one hand when I was in grad school in NY people in the neighborhood used to hate everything the school did, including tearing down its own buildings to build new ones in their place as if the neighborhood would stay stagnant if the school wasn't there. They also complained about a campus bus service that shuttled people who lived in dorms further away from the main campus because of noise. They were literally saying that the bus was creating too much noise. In NYC.
On the other hand if you bought a home in a sleepy suburb and someone decided to build an entertainment district in your sleepy suburb are you really a moron for not wanting that? Like are the people in Arlington Heights who are opposing the Bears stadium plan really morons for not wanting an 80K stadium and the associated crowds coming to your town every time there is an event? Even if you love football and the Bears you might still not want that where you live.
Everyone who lives in a tax district where there
isn't a stadium is basically a NIMBY until proven otherwise. When you say to someone "Let's turn this sleepy district you're living in around!," it's a bit of slap in the face to that person as though they don't already voluntarily live there because they
like that it's sleepy. It's often this arrogant assumption: "But don't you
want all this hustle and bustle?"
But then again, it serves up an ethical debate about how wide a swath of geography you should ask anyone to chip in something. For e.g., I'm never bothered by a NIMBY type who lives in a middle-of-nowhere-suburb adjacent to an only-slightly-less-middle-of-nowhere town. In that scenario, everyone is kind of all agreeing that there are certain amenities we all just aren't going to have.
The NIMBY that annoys me is the one that loudly professes their love for living in a major metro area and expects, nay sometimes demands, amenities like pro sports to make said metro area "a real city".....but then doesn't want to volunteer their specific neighbourhood for it, nor volunteer any solutions to ease traffic to/from said neighbourhood and in many cases expects someone else to pay for it.
I often ask people like this: "Do you want to live in a city or not? Because there are 56 counties in Montana that would be happy to have you..."