At first, I came here to talk shit, but it turns out that the music companies are one of the few sectors more evil than telecoms. I’m pulling for Cox.

Get alienated, idiot

Okay, are we all here? Let’s discuss Jeb Blinkersen, 29, of 39 waukee way, Minnesota. Have we done anything to ruin his life lately? Looks like he got a raise recently, shit, we’ve got to get ahead of this NOW. Johnson, I want you to breed up some samples of that bat-whale-bear virus we’ve been incubating in RFK, and make sure there’s an accident. Stevens, call his boss and tell him to send the factory to China OR ELSE. Yeah, they probably won’t like the higher profit margins, but make it clear they have no choice. We’ll show Jeb to let his guard down. Good meeting everyone, let’s meet again next week about Amanda Hugenkiss, priority omega seven; Zuckerberg says she seems actually happy and she might be trying to leave Facebook.

Basically, these Bozos think Trump is a class traitor.

It’s worth noting that there just isn’t enough supply that’s actually in play in the market to rent or buy. Housing has two levels of demand because shelter is a need: there’s the inelastic demand (I need shelter and I’ll pay almost any price to make sure I have it) and elastic demand (I want to buy a house as an investment or a vacation property). This bubble isn’t going to pop because it’s not a true bubble; the supply of housing is below the need for housing that manifests as demand (the inelastic demand), which has sent the price skyrocketing because you’ve got people trying to satisfy a very deep inelastic demand with very shallow inelastic supply. That’s had the knock-on effect of making it so that now the people just trying to find shelter are directly competing against people trying to find investments, and while the investors almost always have more money than you do, it also means that the price ceiling (the absolute maximum anyone is willing to pay for that property) gets raised even higher.

The reason why we got here, why the supply got so low on the first place, is because we basically stopped building houses after 2006. Even when we did start building houses again, I think the rate at which we’re building them never fully recovered. There’s a few other problems I’d be happy to get into, but here’s the gist: the only housing really getting built without federal grant money is single family homes. We are NEVER going to solve the housing crisis by building not quite enough single family homes year over year. It just takes too much time and money to build too little capacity. So, what can you do about it?

Well, there’s great news. If you live in a city or even a modest size town, and most people do, there’s a really good chance you have a city council that meets regularly. This council has A LOT of control over what gets built in your city or town! In fact, they can control the zoning, and if your city is like mine, it’s probably 90% exclusionary low-density single family home zoning by surface area, and probably has outrageous parking minimums that all but guarantee both a housing supply shortage and a lack of services (groceries, small cafes, etc) in those neighborhoods (which also raises your cost of living because now you NEED a car). They always have a public comment period so that people can raise issues that they feel are important.

Go to these council meetings and tell at them about how there isn’t enough housing being built. They will cry about how they can’t control the free market, but they can and do via zoning codes. If you keep the pressure up over time, you can make progress. If you meet other like-minded people there and network with them, you can make progress. You can get out there and make this change, it is within your reach.

You’re right, and I think that it’s putting the cart before the horse. Marxist theory wouldn’t exist for another century, and a lot of Marx’s observations that led him to his theories were contingent upon the world that the enlightenment brought about. Had Marx been born 100 years earlier, he probably would have been a Republican (in the Jacobin sense, not the modern US party sense).

Maybe, idk if that’s really true. I would say that in its context, the revolution was about as good as it possibly could have been. The articles of confederation had some actually good shit in it like automatic citizenship for first nations peoples, and the constitution that replaced it was wildly left for its time. The lack of a monarch definitely had much of colonial Europe clutching its pearls. It’s basically been downhill ever since, though.

The best time was forty years ago, under Reagan. The second best time is now.

Implying our cities suck because they lean left and not because they’ve been built for cars instead of people

I mean… What’s worse, what you’ve described, or paying 50% of your income for a basic apartment or else run from bulldozers as a homeless person? At least people had shelter.

I think this is where the accelerationists are coming from, and I don’t think they’re wrong, at least in terms of identifying a problem. From their point of view, the system is the problem; it both inevitably trends towards fascism and actively and forcefully resists reform due to a network of entrenched interests. Thus, whether it arrives today or tomorrow, fascism IS coming, and the net violence could be decreased by just ripping off the band-aid and letting the whole damnable thing burn so that something new can take its place.

I don’t think I agree with the solution; there’s no guarantee that what replaces it won’t be worse. The problem statement makes a lot of sense, though. It certainly feels truthy.

Tbh, I think the democrats are at least partly responsible for perpetuating this idea in the US, because they benefit from being the adults in the room relative to the republicans. Basically since '16, a huge chunk of their pitch has been “we’re not the republicans”. They’ve relied on the republicans being fascist to make the sell for them, and I think that the centrist auth Dems really love it because it means that they don’t have to really make any big, challenging promises that would piss off their corporate or billionaire donors, they don’t have to walk back any authoritarian power grabs, they just have to point at the fascists and say (correctly) “these psychos want to kill you, I don’t.”

If the democrats get elected, they get a mandate to just kick back and not implement fascism. If the Republicans get elected, then the democrats get a sudden boost of engagement and cash as the fear fatigue is replaced by real, actual fear. In either case, the centrist auth faction of the democratic party aren’t going to be rid of their fundraising cow, thank you very much, even if the cow is actively planning to murder them.

Be me

Moran (sic)

“Lmao, when the US collapses, they totally won’t make it everyone’s problem”

Yeah, I think you’ve got a good handle on it.

I imagine that Kamala could at least win an argument with a potted plant, which is more than you could say about Biden at this point.

Yeah, I don’t get it. I was confused and not happy when I saw he was running again. He could’ve gone out like a heavily watered down LBJ, instead he’s going to be forever remembered as the lost nursing home patient who wandered onto the debate stage. This is an unmitigated disaster, and the only way forward I see now is have Joe step down and let Kamala be the president. I’m not excited for that prospect, but I assume she can at least win a debate against a potted plant.

Yeah, it reminded me a lot of the Carter/Reagan debate, only if Carter had a massive concussion.

And when he said he beat medicare

I would vote for a wet sandwich before I vote for Trump, but Jesus Christ, it would be nice if the democrats fucking tried.

If only. Dude looks and sounds like he’s about drop dead. I cannot begin to express how enormously frustrated with the democrats I am.