How much time are you on social media? Reading the news? Do less of that, delete the apps. Chances are, you'll find yourself going to check them several times a day if not several times an hour.
Well at least the CIA never talked about killing him [1] and they haven’t had access to unconventional weapons to make murder look like natural death for decades [2].
I've read through your thread, and your takes are super interesting and I'd love to learn/read more. If you have a dog blog/newsletter or anything I'd love a link, and if not I'd encourage you to make one
> If the market could build its way out of this, it already would have
I believe the author mentions that there was a proposed large apartment building (250 ish units) that could, presumably, have alleviated some of the demand but that it was voted down by nimby types to avoid CB “becoming aurora”
I’d think then that it’s less so the market preventing building than it is voters and activist home owners
The free market is precisely what gave this particular makeup of voters and activist home owners the keys to the kingdom. If you can't afford to pay to play in that municipality, you don't get to vote.
The "free market" didn't give those activists the right to veto development, the political processes and rules of their communities did. It's silly to treat that veto as a natural result, it's just as contingent as any other political rule.
How did they get to be able to vote? As TFA describes, they could afford property within the incorporated propery of CB, unlike those forced to find places to live outside it. Their wealth gave them access to the vote, and they are using their votes to further their own interests.
Being able to buy whatever you want for whatever price works for you and the seller sounds quite a bit like a "free market" to me.
Neither is voting a law of nature, and nor is property ownership. So what's your point? That we don't have to do it this way? Well, sure. But what's the actual alternative?
It's not really weird at all. It's a big enough country with enough different conditions that it does make some amount of sense that there is a heirarchy of levels of control. That looks something like:
|+-- incorporated municipality
Federal -> state -> county -+
|+-- unincorporated land
In the case of an incorporated municipality, the people who live there have a political process to make decisions about planning/zoning/construction, but these (in general) cannot override the rules from the county, state and federal levels.
In the case of unincorporated land, the county makes the rules, and so these are controlled by a political process involving the entire population of the county, rather than just those who live on a particular piece of land (because "there is no there, there"). Again, the county generally cannot override rules from the state and federal level.
In general, the state doesn't really set planning rules that affect specific placement of things. There may be environmental and health regulations that would prevent X being built in a particular location, but the state doesn't normally control whether single family only zoning (as an example) should be used in a given neighborhood - that's up to the incorporated municipality to decide.
The federal level really doesn't set any planning rules other than high level environmental and health regulations.
Inflation is a "tax" on owning money, an equalizing force if you will. Deflation is a "tax" imposed that benefits large holders of the currency on people who hold less or none of that currency.
There is ofcourse also the moral argument for inflation: society pays you because you it values what you sold or did. That valuable service is not going to be worth as much 50 years into the future, so inflation is the cost imposed on withholding that money from public circulation for your private benefit of being able to decide 50 years later what you do with that money for a thing you did back then.
Inflation is a tax for poor people who don't and often can't hold assets that appreciate with time. It not only makes their savings worth less, but also makes their fixed salary have less buying power.
The wealthy love inflation since it's just going to pump their assets and redistribute money from the poor into their pockets.
Inflation doesn't just negatively affect holders of the currency.
It also negatively affects earners of the currency.
When your salary is constantly getting devalued, employers effectively get to constantly cut your salary while saying with straight face that they haven't done anything.
Now, everyone on this forum is well educated and valuable enough to be able to regularly negotiate salary increases. It's poor and uneducated people who get most taken advantaged by it.
Just look at how minimum wage is a never ending fight.
Inflation gives employers and the holders of capital the high ground fighting to maintain the status quo of wages and forces the poor and desperate to take time out of their personal lives to fight for more pay.
> Inflation is a "tax" on owning money, an equalizing force if you will. Deflation is a "tax" imposed that benefits large holders of the currency on people who hold less or none of that currency.
The problem is that these “large holders of currency” are the poorest people. Rich people have their wealth invested in various assets, e.g. stocks, bonds, land. The poorest people live paycheck to paycheck and can’t possibly invest in anything.
