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exterrestrial

12 karma · joined February 9, 2020

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exterrestrial··on California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build
Citing Japan only further proves my point. Property values don’t appreciate the same in Japan because, and one reason is that they don’t have a finance industry that allows them to. Land owners cannot get rich by mere property appreciation like they can here. I definitely think we should imitate Japan more, but this isn’t simply a matter of “allowing more housing”. Acting like that’s all there is to it is disingenuous.
exterrestrial··on California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build
As I said, rents are higher than ever before. Why should renters care if investors are exploiting them for as much profit as they originally wanted to? My point stands: rents are higher than ever before. Not lower.
exterrestrial··on California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build
When investors buy property, they almost always intend to raise it’s value to increase their profit. That’s how this works. They very often tear down affordable units and build luxury ones, because the YIMBY policies peculiarly never take issue with that.

Realize most property and real estate appreciates in market value on it’s own. This makes spec construction viable, and is why most new apartment buildings in expensive cities are ”luxury” units and rented for very high rates. The owners are happy to let them sit empty and starve the market to max out demand when they know there is enough jobs in the area that people are competing heavily to move there.

exterrestrial··on California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build
You can’t compare cars to real estate and property.

For one, most property and real estate appreciates in market value on it’s own. This makes spec construction viable, and why most new apartment buildings in expensive cities are ”luxury” units and rented for very high rates. The owners are happy to let them sit empty and starve the market to max out demand when they know there is enough jobs in the area that people are competing heavily to move there.

In addition, the markets are tiny compared with cars, which are easy to move to cars to other markets (cities).

exterrestrial··on Ask HN: What job can a “jack of all trades” look for?
>The first acquisition was funded by a loan from my parents for $44K.

Thanks for being honest. It might help to put this in the first comment though.

exterrestrial··on California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build
>It's good for the people "on the margins", those struggling to pay rent, or those at risk of homelessness, or those who might like to move to a more productive place for a better job.

Please cite at lease one example in which this has ever been the case. I do understand the theory behind your argument here, and I assume you are familiar with (leftist) counter-arguments, so this is not an attempt to open a debate. Rather, I want you to be right but until I see some solid evidence I am unconvinced.

>One of my prouder YIMBY moments was turning out 5 people on a weekday morning to speak to our state rep, who ended up voting in favor of HB 2001, which legalizes up to 4-plexes throughout most Oregon cities.

This is a great example of how it seems to me that YIMBYs are anti-NIMBY in the way Democrats are anti-Republican. Time and time again, it appears neither groups are actually doing any thing ‘good for the people “on the margins. Clearly, this policy benefits landlords more than anybody and the implication is that this is besides the fact of lowering rent prices. Fine. But it is not insignificant that all of these efforts primarily promote the perpetuation of rent-seeking.

I watched from the front row as investors bought up Portland. It has been about 6 years since it entered full-swing and rent prices are higher than ever before. This is not good for people “on the margins”. In fact, most of those people were not even on the margins before the investors came in. I am one of them. I should know.

Of course, history is littered with cases of YIMBY theory failing urban housing markets, so please show me an example of where your theories have actually succeeded.

exterrestrial··on Usenet – Let's Return to Public Spaces
Reddit is easily the best model for social media, if only the software was better. The key is prioritizing community over individuals. Subreddit admins have a ton of freedom, so long as a very small bit of their energy goes toward a few basic universal rules. This gives them a real sense of ownership.

Healthy social media must support and defend pseudonymity, because it’s the only way to juggle the fact that everything on the internet can be recorded by at least one other party. And the only way to defend pseudonymity is to treat every user the same. Twitter’s “approved” users violates this and Facebook violates it in many different ways, but Reddit just prioritizes communities over individuals. This is the root of the solution.

When people treat Reddit like it has some broad character or quality, I have to disagree. Those people just haven’t found a subreddit that they love, probably because they haven’t tried to. And I don’t think that needs to he changed or automated. If a Reddit-like site was the only social media, all these people would be motivated to create or build their own communities.

exterrestrial··on Ask HN: How do I find investors?
Have the right parents who send you to the right private school where you fit in with the right crowd.