would you work in coalition with Steve Bannon to vanquish Elon Musk?
@BenRossTransit @n8chz@queer.party i'd definitely equate Prop 13 with financial gain, or financial loss avoidance. yes, loss avoidance helps stabilize residence, as rent control also does.
Prop 13 is financial, though, and is a source of supply restrictions in CA. housing is a perishable asset to local tax authorities, where other activities bring perpetual real yields, so the game becomes approve workplaces and commerce here, shift housing approvals elsewhere. 1/
@BenRossTransit @n8chz@queer.party i agree, though, that resident NIMBYism is largely nonfinancial, people who simply want to preserve what they struggled to secure, the life and neighborhood they like, and don't want to roll the dice on big changes.
i don't agree, though, that residents are going against financial interest. yes, some properties would gain value as neighborhoods change, but some might well lose, and people are wisely risk averse about their largest economic asset. /fin
Prop 13 is rent control for homeowners. And its supply effect occurs where constraints actually bind, at the decision-making of local government, where in supply-constrained CA jurisdictions rents have usually been more than high enough for new construction to pencil absent non-price constraints.
some punters cheer, some moan, over where the ball has rolled just now. but the wheel very much is still in spin.
tech took a tongue lashing in the tech lash so they bought all the tongues.
people think philosophy is obscure and all, but the most urgent crises we face now are basically problems of epistemology.
what you want is people who lie a lot are amplified less.
what you have is people who lie a lot are amplified more.
You are receiving this e-mail because you have been cursed.
@jawnsy those are devastating.
@jawnsy anything wafer thin.
the best way to recover from the *blah* that comes from eating something much too heavy is to immediately go and eat something light.
@light it’s a subtoot of Elon Musk of course. This kind of thing. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/us/politics/elon-musk-trump-economy-hardship.html
people who speak ostentatiously about their ambitions to serve humanity often act with brazen unconcern about what their projects might do to actual humans.
the Biden Administration was just too mean to billionaires and their surveillance monopolies.
the poor dears. they are very manly.
@light it suggests that in the absence of institutions that work to combine and balance information to come up with tentative truths—however flawed and biased those institutions may be (they always are, but degrees do matter)—we'll somehow, naturally converge upon the truth. that is what a lynch mob is, a convergence on "truth" without any sort of institutional structure that would prevent, say, information cascades. that's the institution Thiel implicitly endorses. 1/
@light if he thought simply tearing down flawed institutions of analysis and consensus lead to the real, true truth, he'd be an idiot. but he's not actually an idiot. his actual project is to build institutions whose conclusions he finds more agreeable, "truer" perhaps from his perspective. 2/
@light but the thing about truth is its always contested. if Thiel openly said he means to replace "media organisations, bureaucracies, universities and government-funded NGOs" with his own successors, which he does in fact mean, it would invite scrutiny, backlash. So he pretends magically the truth emerges if you just take away these things. He pretends the lynch mob is courtroom enough. /fin
@arthegall those words were attributed to an “aide” of GWB, but it’s thought to have been Karl Rove. who’s now i think a Never-Trump-er. but these currents go back a long way in the political community that finds expression in the Republican Party.
@arthegall “when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html
When you’re the President, they let you do it. You can do anything.
@phillmv of course it wouldn’t be random. these people pretend like they are innocents seeking truth. their man Trump was, according to Epstein, his best friend for some time during his period of peak activity. Thiel wants to deploy a selective wrecking ball to harm his enemies, and call it transparency and truth. the “twitter files” is the template.
@phillmv how was he harmed? why the grievance? a thing we’ve learned is people who think the world is theirs to rule are remarkably thin-skinned about anything that resists them or withholds the adulation they are quite sure they deserve. Thiel lives under a theory of libertarian utopia, under which he is a world-historical protagonist. only villains would stand in his way. he has been viciously attacked. “reconciliation” is an act of profound generosity from this perspective.
@realcaseyrollins @BenRossTransit no. i think natural conditions (in part altered by human activity) caused the wildfires, but the kind of development we’ve been doing adjacent to those conditions doesn’t resist the foreseeable wildfires. so we should do a different kind of development, rather than reproduce what we know does not resist. zoning is only relevant as one factor forcing ill-advised reproduction. terms of insurance are another.