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Ask HN: Since when is everything a scam?

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Re: Ask HN: Since when is everything a scam?

#71

Post by laserdancepony »

churchill wrote: post #38
user-extended wrote: post #31

Since house prices started to become unattainable for the average individual without going 40 years into debt. Remove the problem of earning money to achieve independent housing, remove 75% of the hussle for most people to participate in scams.

I have this pet theory that no matter what goes wrong in the world - whether it's a pandemic, climate change, or the threat of nuclear annihilation, HNers will find a way of blaming it on housing prices. Do you all live in California?

Rural Germany, where until a few years ago no one except the indigenous would have wanted to live. Now foreign investment firms, mainly chinese, are buying up everything they can get a hold of. Prices for a single family home before the rush about 350k, now 1.5m.

Thanks globalization to make it possible for a chinese billionaire to own property in Schneizlreuth, BY.

Re: Ask HN: Since when is everything a scam?

#72

Post by ManlyBread »

churchill wrote: post #38
user-extended wrote: post #31

Since house prices started to become unattainable for the average individual without going 40 years into debt. Remove the problem of earning money to achieve independent housing, remove 75% of the hussle for most people to participate in scams.

I have this pet theory that no matter what goes wrong in the world - whether it's a pandemic, climate change, or the threat of nuclear annihilation, HNers will find a way of blaming it on housing prices. Do you all live in California?

In my country it would take 17 years of minimum wage salaries or 10 years of average national salary to buy an apartment. Mind you, this is a calculation where the assumption is the 100% of the salary for that time goes only into housing and that the house prices stay as these are today.

It is ridiculous.

Re: Ask HN: Since when is everything a scam?

#73

Post by ninethirty »

stuaxo wrote: post #20

Tangent - Reviews are basically useless. It's next to impossible to get good information to choosing some a local business / service on the internet.

Consequence of gamifying things (reviews, stars, upvotes, retweets) means everything is gamed.

I'm reminded of a post from a few months ago: a guy had a massager who got annihilated by Chinese competition because they knew how to exploit Amazon's systems.

Re: Ask HN: Since when is everything a scam?

#74

Post by BulgarianIdiot »

esperent wrote: post #26
BulgarianIdiot wrote: post #18

Society is visibly decomposing before our eyes. You can tell because trust no longer exists. And those who trust, get burned, because they're taken advantage of. The issue is without trust, society does not exist. What's coming is frankly scary to me.

I think it depends on the country. I'm from Ireland and live in Vietnam. Both of these countries are doing ok. Of course they are not perfect, some things improve and some get worse just as they ever did. But visibly decomposing? No. We're doing ok, as is much of the world, especially considering that we're at the tail end of a pandemic that massively disrupted the social order. I think we're doing pretty well when I…

The problem is that we're highly interconnected. Even when global trade suffers, we're connected through the Internet. So the sentiments flow and spread globally. I agree some countries may be doing better, but for them to keep doing better they'd have to be paradoxically culturally isolated, and yet economically open (because production costs would skyrocket otherwise), and the latter almost implies Internet these days, which on its own turn implies cultural exchange.

It's messy.

Re: Ask HN: Since when is everything a scam?

#75

Post by gambiting »

user-extended wrote: post #68
gambiting wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sister just bought a house in Manchester(one of the larger UK cities) for £150k - she only needed a 5% deposit(so £7.5k) - she was able to save that within two years, working as a (rather poorly paid) photographer. I myself bought a house in Newcastle(not major, but not a tiny city) two years ago for £180k, we needed a 10% but me and my wife are in IT so we saved that in a year. My point is that yes - it's a globa…

>she only needed a 5% deposit(so £7.5k) LMAO, this is not normal anywhere else in Europe. Also, I bet she either has a lot of money saved up somewhere else, had her mortgage cosigned by someone else with a lot of income, etc. this is not normal at all. I am not from Germany, but take Germany as an example: https://n26.com/en-eu/blog/cost-of-buying-a-house "A good rule of thumb is to have at least 35% of the estimated…

>>LMAO, this is not normal anywhere else in Europe. Also, I bet she either has a lot of money saved up somewhere else, had her mortgage cosigned by someone else with a lot of income, etc. this is not normal at all.

In UK 5% mortgages are readily available to first time buyers. It's a completely normal thing here in UK. And I can assure you she doesn't have a lot of money and the mortgage wasn't cosigned by anyone else lol.

>>A good rule of thumb is to have at least 35% of the estimated cost.

Well now that's absolutely nuts. Here in UK 10% deposit is normal, 15% is high, and I don't know anyone who paid 20% or more - and everyone in my group of friends(we all just turned 30) bought a house recently.

>>The average UK price house is 256k

Yes, because London destroys the averages completely. Like I said, my sister just bought a 3 bed house with a garden and driveway for £150k, and it wasn't particularly cheap, neither for the street nor for the area .

Re: Ask HN: Since when is everything a scam?

#76

Post by rowtheway »

freedom2099 wrote: post #70
rowtheway wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Broadly speaking, the community-oriented left in places like the US support bureaucratic government welfare programs, while community-oriented conservatives support more organic, often religious, and non-government charitable organizations. My preference runs toward the latter, for reasons best explained by John Carmack: https://archive.ph/0tHg4

If you don’t see the issue with “often religious” then nothing I say can change your mind! Religion as a moral compass is horrible! Religious communities are often the most toxic ones!

I am an atheist ex-Catholic. The big atheist-leftist crowd in my college town are intensely more violent, toxic, and racist than local Catholics or Lutherans. Lack of religious belief is no guarantee of kindness or rationality, nor is the presence of faith a strong signal of evil.

Re: Ask HN: Since when is everything a scam?

#77

Post by vt85 »

John23832 wrote: post #14
mdp2021 wrote: post #7

In some areas a "community" culture¹ of "you shall behave - you will behave" has declined into a sort of anarchy of "everything passes"; once you were corrected, and now you are no more; once people would stand and say "wrong behaviour" directly, today such framework is greatly weakened, which causes all kind of deviations. Such weakening encourages abuse and exploitation. ¹Note that said community culture was not re…

I totally agree with this. The active removal of any (even semblance) of community in society, to be replaced with radical individualism, has been horribly detrimental. There is no shame, there is no right or wrong, there is no responsibility to others. And this extends to both sides of the political spectrum. The right glorify this "Don't step on me", "I don't care about others that don't exactly fit into my in-grou…

[dead]

Re: Ask HN: Since when is everything a scam?

#78

Post by rowtheway »

cmoski wrote: post #69
rowtheway wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Broadly speaking, the community-oriented left in places like the US support bureaucratic government welfare programs, while community-oriented conservatives support more organic, often religious, and non-government charitable organizations. My preference runs toward the latter, for reasons best explained by John Carmack: https://archive.ph/0tHg4

"more organic, often religious, and non-government charitable organizations" Or none at all. Or ones for people in a select group. Most people live in towns, cities, states and nations, not communities. State and national governments cannot rely on the good of the neighbour. Larger, more equitable systems need to be put in place.

> Or none at all. Or ones for people in a select group.

Bureaucrats do this too. See the history of communism in Europe, or present state of communism in China. Centralized welfare is a centralized system of control in the hands of politicians.

Re: Ask HN: Since when is everything a scam?

#79

Post by user-extended »

gambiting wrote: post #75
user-extended wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>she only needed a 5% deposit(so £7.5k) LMAO, this is not normal anywhere else in Europe. Also, I bet she either has a lot of money saved up somewhere else, had her mortgage cosigned by someone else with a lot of income, etc. this is not normal at all. I am not from Germany, but take Germany as an example: https://n26.com/en-eu/blog/cost-of-buying-a-house "A good rule of thumb is to have at least 35% of the estimated…

>>LMAO, this is not normal anywhere else in Europe. Also, I bet she either has a lot of money saved up somewhere else, had her mortgage cosigned by someone else with a lot of income, etc. this is not normal at all. In UK 5% mortgages are readily available to first time buyers. It's a completely normal thing here in UK. And I can assure you she doesn't have a lot of money and the mortgage wasn't cosigned by anyone els…

From this map, no:

https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/dk-graph...

Re: Ask HN: Since when is everything a scam?

#80

Post by user-extended »

laserdancepony wrote: post #71
churchill wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have this pet theory that no matter what goes wrong in the world - whether it's a pandemic, climate change, or the threat of nuclear annihilation, HNers will find a way of blaming it on housing prices. Do you all live in California?

Rural Germany, where until a few years ago no one except the indigenous would have wanted to live. Now foreign investment firms, mainly chinese, are buying up everything they can get a hold of. Prices for a single family home before the rush about 350k, now 1.5m. Thanks globalization to make it possible for a chinese billionaire to own property in Schneizlreuth, BY.

And remember, it's gonna be like that forever from now on. The genie is out, people will cling into housing forever and ever. Unless thermonuclear war happens, housing is and will be the number 1 investment forever.
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