looping__lui

Your statements are total nonsense. What you state is factually incorrect.

Go read the public filings from the big real estate companies in Germany - Vonovia, LEG and TAG: https://irpages2.eqs.com/download/companies/legimmobilien/An...

https://report.vonovia.de/2022/q4/app/uploads/Vonovia-SE_Ges...

https://www.tag-ag.com/fileadmin/content/geschaeftsberichte/...

There is no single company that dominates a city or market enough to “profit from keeping rental units vacant at scale”. Vacancy rates and driving them down is a massive talking point in investor calls. High vacancy is bad because investors mainly care about rental income. The aforementioned companies achieve 3% or so organic rent growth - which is LOWER than inflation.

You have very little understanding of how the business world works and I’d recommend to take a couple of courses or classes in that field. It’s the same suggestion you would give an MBA type posting his opinion about programming or ML on Hacker News I suppose.

There are strategic investors though that buy run down buildings without any intention of renting them out ever but holding them for speculation. This is wrong and harms society. Land zoned for urbanisation is a right that is granted by society and has implicit value only from society granting these rights. Speculations on these artificially (by said society) limited building permissions needs to be eliminated. The space does not have much “inherent value” in itself (e.g., assuming no building for the ease of argument) - but only gains value by being artificially limited in quantity by society.

“ so i highly doubt that more rental units will automatically lead to lower rents.”

They will IF landlords can expect positive returns on their investments given a certain price level. You can dig into the public filings of companies like LEG, Vonovia and TAG who publish the average rental prices and the occupancy. In cities with supply exceeding demand, rents are lower (e.g., high vacancy rates). Example: https://irpages2.eqs.com/download/companies/legimmobilien/Qu..., page 5.

There is of course also a big callout with respect to “correlation does not imply causation”, e.g., it is very likely that there is a hidden confounder (economic prosperity) that drives down vacancy rates and drives up rents which ties back to my earlier argument that capping rents doesn’t make sense if the cities, politicians and bureaucrats fail miserably at their jobs.

Maybe get a business degree or learn something about it. Your statements make me cringe very much the same way an MBA explaining LLMs to you may make you very miserable.

Rent control in Germany also fixed the housing shortage and creates great incentives for new construction. In 2022, Germany had a record in new apartment and buildings finished - 2023 will probably even better. The new ECB interest regime of 4+% actually had very limited effect on the market in this respect thanks to rent control.

Like honestly, rent control is just beyond dumb. There are like 1000 ways that actually solve the problem - but unfortunately they require cities and bureaucrats to work instead of just passing a law. Supply and demand. If it takes LONGER to get a building permit that to actually build a housing complex… When cities are not planning ahead creating new space (argh, infrastructure, public transportation, this sounds like work…

It might be tied to scenarios where the engineers producing said piece of software expected no compensation whatsoever (more or less).

Well, as a beekeeper if you wanna sell some honey you need to buy some bees first, no? You’d probably spend more money getting tools and equipment for a one-person neighborhood lawn mowing business…

I don’t agree with how you measure market share in order to try and argue that we do not see an abuse in negotiation power by Meta et al.

Here is another oil&gas comparison: OPEC countries aren’t distorting the market in their favor, because oil is just a fraction of the total energy market (e.g., nuclear, wind, solar,…)

Worse is correlation break-down in a sense - e.g., that black swan event happening across an entire asset class because of liquidity squeeze, margin calls, etc.

But it isn’t efficient; banks like overcharge you absurdly especially for OTM options.

No, there are more. But auditing an S&P500 corporation is pretty complex. I am not in the auditing S&P 500 corporation business and it looks like there may be six - but the Big4 literally seem to do 491/497 companies. I’m not sure I am too concerned about the auditing quality of the Big4 tbh though…

Enron’s problem was the “consulting AND auditing” mess with conflict of interest if I am not mistaken.

Moody, Standard & Poors and Fitch are RATING agencies.

RATING agencies are different from AUDITING companies different from CONSULTANCIES.

Rating agencies were somewhat restructured after 2008 (but are still kind of edgy) - because they did literally write AAA on a piece of paper for money. But there ratings were opinions and had no real legal meaning.

With governments having like 30-50% GDP share of the economy (e.g., tax versus GDP) - we are gonna have a hard time banning literally everything based on that…

That I do agree with.

BCG and McK don’t offer auditing.

So the public sector should not hire private contractors in general. State it like that then.

How is a mismanagement of consultants by public sector entities a justification to “ban” an entire sector?

No. The article this hate comment responded to talked about auditing.

McK and BCG do consultancy and don’t do auditing.

The one certifies your car is safe on the street and is held liable if they didn’t inspect properly.

The other is a car tuning operation that doesnt certify anything but gives you an edge on the racetrack. Or you hope it does.

No. This is nonsense.

You audit accounts that are falsified and give thumbs up: you close shop, are held liable for damages and could go to prison.

Auditing companies are crucially important for a working economy. Bank loans, bonds, equity markets would all be chaos and fraud mayhem without them.

McKinsey and BCG do not audit companies. They are consultancies and do not certify accounts to be “correct and legit”. Think of auditing companies a little bit like of vehicle inspection shops certifying your car is safe for the road.

Consultancies are not doing that.

I’m not sure why certain businesses should be “banned” because YOU believe they do not add value. Do you pay them? No.

It’s not correct that they are proxies for decision making that mangers don’t want to be responsible for. Neither McK nor BCG could run at the scale they do for five decades if that was the case.

But I suppose that was just your happy Sunday rant of the day to let off some steam.

Wow, that I did not know - but totally believe

I was relating an example from oil oligopolies with the Ads market.

Social media making $$$ whereas the companies buying Ads barely breaking even is not equal to an “open efficient and free market” as the initial thread suggested.

Theres OPEC, theres Russia, theres Iraq, …

These companies have margins >>20% whereas the advertisers barely break even.

With only one seller ;-) That’s usually kind of what you call a monopoly. A bit like just a single entity selling oil and then arguing “oh this is a free market because we auction of the oil…”

I don’t think this is a case of “nearly perfect competition driving prices down so nobody makes a profit” (e.g., you working for a social media company trying to argue how perfect competition this is ;-) ) - BUT potentially rather a case of “monopoly power of social media charging so much for customer acquisition that it drives profits to zero”; so rather a shift in profit from high prices from the manufacturers pocket to Zuck et als pockets…

Not sure how to put it: if you built a model and simulation that has proven something that claims a certain approach might work - but fail to include a realistic plan of execution and “real life” into it: it’s not worth anything and “science” is abused for ideology “look the numbers show it will work”.

Well, today it doesn’t and tomorrow it won’t either.

I’ve seen my fair share of “objective projects/engagements where the wanted outcome was communicated very clearly” by German government bodies.

I love the idea of decentralised and local energy generation; energy efficient housing/living. I spent $$$ on it.

But Germany has an industry that is so hungry for a constant supply of electricity that I see no realistic viable path in renewables for that. People like you have claimed for two decades there is - yet, here we are: running coal full steam at night.

Idealists like you destroy our planet.

Well, how should it be done then? You just explain what doesn’t work and explain that “nuclear for sure doesn’t work either”. You offer no viable path how to “go renewable”.

“ In simulation, it turns out that large distance grid connectivity (which is better for the resilience anyway) and some storage (which was at the time (and still today) way more room to progress than some nuclear technology) are fixing the "no wind night" challenge quite effectively.”

Not in reality it seems though. I take a look at April 3, 7 am: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE Solar was zero. Wind dropped to 20% coal was increased to 30%. April 2nd at 3 pm, wind stood at 37% and coal stood at 13%. So, where after two decades of “going renewable” is this even remotely speaking yo your ideological dream world? Let me reiterate: wind dropped by 50% and they had to increase coal by 100%. At night.

I want renewables to work. I put my money where my mouth is. But after two decades or so of “trying” we are only showing data demonstrating they can’t work for Germany the way people like you want us to believe.”

Ok, you read the studies and are better informed than me. Just lay out how exactly this system would work, if: 1) Nuclear is phased out 2) Coal is phased out 3) We could at any time phase out gas as well because we semi-listened to the US that warned us we gave Putin the switch to our electricity grid

If I look at https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE and see patterns like 50 GW at 3 am and 60 GW at 1 pm I wonder: how can you ensure providing the base output 24/7 entirely with renewables? I have seen facilities within industrial complexes that literally required more electricity than a whole city 24/7. The demand of electricity that needs to be provided 24/7 is enormous.

There is in addition a huge challenge to manage loads in a grid (that was never designed for it) for regional variance and unpredictability in energy production (e.g., sunshine in the north and wind in the north but no need there) and the consumption (e.g., industry in the south).

In classical “German ideology” fashion laws are passed, one-way door decisions are made, “experts testify” that everything works and 10 years later the thing blows up.

And it’s not just me who “brilliantly came up with this assessment” - but I borrowed it from publicly shared opinions of industry leaders: https://www.manager-magazin.de/unternehmen/industrie/nikolas...

So, why does it work out and I have it all wrong? What were the evil forces that sabotaged this very well thought through idea? Because I went all PV and geothermal heat pump and energy efficient housing. What have you done?

Do you have any idea how enormous the electricity consumption of our industry is where 24/7 production just is going on and on? Take a look here: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE

If I eyeball the electricity consumption correctly, the lowest consumption was like 50 GW at 3 am in the morning and the highest was 60GW (+20%) at 1pm.

Our freakin grid is NOT capable of managing an additional load for EVs as of today or any time soon. We cannot produce enough electricity to move gasoline driven cars to EV because we right now barely manage to keep or industry alive and geothermal heatpumps and whatnot will strain it further. So regarding 1) its BULLSH*T its a massive problem.

2) Where do you live that you believe Germany can store electricity in hydro? Why do you believe there is demand shaping when we literally need a constantly high load (see 1)???

3) Yes, I understand. Easy peasy. If i get a battery for my solar panels, the investment costs are effectively above 30cents/kWh which is bogus. Yes, you can just turn off that aluminium smelter or chemical plant running a continuous process.

You clearly have never been close to an industry complex, worked in anything remotely related to “Germany’s industrial backbone”. It’s ideological wishful thinking.

You need a viable military in an advanced and wealthy society. If you disagree you are imho naive.

A military coup is one of the largest risks to any society. The “best” people to serve the military are the young people that stand to lose their country and have a million things that they get excited about - except going to war and fighting.

A society itself needs to protect itself.

How would you technically replace nuclear with renewables? How do you manage excessive/insufficient supply?

Enlighten me how. 1) What do you do at night? 2) What do you do if there isn’t sufficient supply? 3) What if there is too much supply?

Maybe because it’s not a transition but an ideology driven f** up? I live near the coal plants they are firing up again. I’m all pro PV (have one), I heat my house on geothermal, I spent a ton on energy efficiency for my house. But this entire “renewable transition”, “getting out of nuclear” and coming up with other random ideas in a industry focused economy is just bogus in execution.

You cannot replace nuclear with renewables in Germany. You cannot shut down production if the sun doesnt shine or there is no wind. There is a non-trivial amount of electricity that needs to be available 24/7 and there needs to be a source of electricity that can be ramped up quickly when demands spike or renewable isn’t delivering.