SterlingVapor

joined 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

It all comes down to "well, sure we might have plenty, but if not for capitalism how could we decide how to divide it?"

But any solution has to promote self-interest as a virtue and can't take things away from people who currently own them, and also must conform to a bunch of myths we have about "how the world works"

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (5 children)

Some estimates put the number of vacant homes upwards of 30% a few months back, and it's been climbing

It's not about a lack of supply, it's about homes being both an investment and a basic need - someone like Black Rock can go into a small town in Georgia, snap up every property that goes on the market, then dictate rental prices while jacking up the house prices by bidding on everything. Even if they greatly overpay, by doing it a few times it drives up the valuation of the entire area, overall making their net profit grow

And it's not just Black Rock, it's a bunch of investment companies doing this everywhere. They have the same goal and their interests are aligned - they're not competing for tenants, they just want to jack up the values and use homes like stock investments

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Some estimates put the number of vacant homes upwards of 30% a few months back, and it's been climbing

It's not about a lack of supply, it's about homes being both an investment and a basic need - someone like Black Rock can go into a small town in Georgia, snap up every property that goes on the market, then dictate rental prices while jacking up the house prices by bidding on everything. Even if they greatly overpay, by doing it a few times it drives up the valuation of the entire area, overall making their net profit grow

And it's not just Black Rock, it's a bunch of investment companies doing this everywhere. They have the same goal and their interests are aligned - they're not competing for tenants, they just want to jack up the values and use homes like stock investments

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

They made a bunch of mistakes that were callous and might've smothered a couple guys starting out.

But then the lack of empathy - "it was a bad product, no one should ever buy it, and so my fundamentally flawed testing is actually valid", "yeah they asked for it back multiple times and we auctioned it, but it was for charity so it's fine", "we agreed to compensate them, but it's been months and we did that real quick after we got called out, but we're going to make it seem like we didn't need a scandal to do the bare minimum"

It's all excuses, it's all justification for why "this looks worse than it is, and actually we're still the good guys". It's narcissist mental gymnastics, he still just doesn't understand what he did wrong - besides being mostly excuses, every "apology" is totally off base on what they did wrong

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (18 children)

You sure as hell do when you put 80% of it outside your borders, outside US borders no less

This kind of thing could spark a war in different circumstances - imagine the Mexican army goes to dismantle the buoys in their borders, and one of several possible groups from Texas confronts them and it leads to a skirmish

Mexico would be entirely within their rights - it's on their property and it's suspected to be leading to deaths