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The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

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Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#121

Post by njarboe »

thereisnospork wrote: post #111
ColanR wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it seems like you're making an assumption about the 'opportunity cost' of building/operating the apartment building, that it's grown far less than the wages. If your argument (that rental costs are too high) rests on that assumption, seems like it should be addressed and backed up. I am curious, though, about the artificial constraint you mentioned. Don't know what you're specifically referring to, would like t…

My analysis is a top-down one, In summary: rents in SF/Bay area are 3-4k for new construction 1 bedroom, which is say double Chicago or Houston, and much more even than the Bay Area 10 or 15 years ago. So it reasons that at the prices being paid, people should be able to build profitably. That they aren't implies they can't or have onerous restrictions. For fun, take a (google maps) walk around SF or downtown Oakland…

You should take a walk around downtown Oakland. Most of the parking lots have turned into construction sites over the last 3 or 4 years. Not many tear downs happening yet(a few, like an Acura dealership across from Whole Foods getting torn down and a ~20 story apt building going up in its place), but this boom has gone on so long that the NIMBYs have finally gotten tired and thousands of apartments will be coming on the market in Oakland pretty soon.

As a long time home owner in the area I like how this is finally happening after decades of people thinking an Oakland revival was just around the corner. Most of the companies doing the construction are from out of state. Maybe they just didn't know it was impossible to build in Oakland, saw the huge potential profits, and went for it.

Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#122

Post by darkpuma »

whack wrote: post #93
nkurz wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than "for what it's worth", that's an important difference. The full quote puts a very different spin on Churchill's position. The article: "When some British officials objected to his proposal for “the use of gas against natives,” he found their objections “unreasonable.” In fact he argued that poison gas was more humane than outright extermination: “The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life shou…

If the use of gas is so reasonable, one wonders why he only supports using it against "uncivilized tribes".

Churchill advocated for the use of weaponized anthrax against Germany, so I don't think you can say he was biased in this respect.

Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#123

Post by mikhailfranco »

darkpuma wrote: post #122
whack wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the use of gas is so reasonable, one wonders why he only supports using it against "uncivilized tribes".

Churchill advocated for the use of weaponized anthrax against Germany, so I don't think you can say he was biased in this respect.

As tested on Gruinard Island, just off the coast of Scotland:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruinard_Island

Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#124

Post by landryraccoon »

ColanR wrote: post #74
landryraccoon wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What about the benefit of actual living quarters for the tenants? Would you argue that patents and copyright should last infinitely long because the world is richer forever due to the one solitary act of the inventor? Landlords hold a monopoly over the land they own as much as copyright holders own a monopoly on the IP they own. I think it's quite reasonable to ask if that monopoly deserves to be forever. I agree w…

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're advocating for the landlord to lose ownership of their property? If so, question of my own. The landlord worked and spent resources (time, money) to increase his assets (develop the property). You, at your job, worked and spent resources (time, etc.) to increase your assets (e.g. size of your bank account). Do you think you should have indefinite ownership of your bank accou…

> If so, question of my own. The landlord worked and spent resources (time, money) to increase his assets (develop the property). You, at your job, worked and spent resources (time, etc.) to increase your assets (e.g. size of your bank account). Do you think you should have indefinite ownership of your bank account?

The landlord earns rent from his property. I earn a salary from my job. The landlord and I are on equal footing as far as being able to keep the proceeds of our labor - nobody is threatening to take rent he has already collected, and nobody is threatening to take the cash from my bank account.

So far we are even, and our bank accounts are safe. However, my employment at my job depends on me continually adding value to society. The moment I quit working, I stop collecting salary.

The landlord here has an advantage that has no analogy in labor. He can quit improving the property and continue to collect rent. In fact, he can just rent out just the land with no improvements (for example if it's farmland) and collect rent forever with no labor.

So your analogy fails. Land and a job are nothing alike. In fact, I can lose my job at any time, due to employment at will, with no recourse. Yet if someone inherits a large quantity of land and rents it out (not directly using it themselves), I am supposed to think it is some grevious evil if their control of that land is limited? You'll forgive me if I don't see the outrage in saying that maybe society should look into whether that ownership should be perpetual.

Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#125

Post by Mikhail_Edoshin »

roenxi wrote: post #101
kbutler wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property taxes? At least where I live, land values are assessed annually, and the owner is obligated to pay a percentage of that value. Those tax funds are used for the very improvements mentioned, as well as usage-based utility fees for the services.

I really like property taxes in principle, so I want to expand on the argument for why they are a good idea. Ignoring the built property, land is an asset that basically doesn't decay with time, can't be physically carried away, provides its own storage and there is always someone who could be using it (in cities). Most of the value isn't in the land either, it is the services, infrastructure and community around the…

This should then apply to intellectual property as well.

Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#126

Post by unmole »

rcpt wrote: post #22

You may not like what he said around WW2 but anyone who recently moved to the Bay Area will love his take on landlords, from 1909: > Roads are made, streets are made, services are improved, electric light turns night into day, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains -- and all the while the landlord sits still. Every one of those improvements is effected by the labor and cost of other pe…

Article about the villanous side of a Western "hero" and the top comment is cribbing about rents in the Bay Area.

This is peak Hacker News.

Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#127

Post by [deleted] »

towaway1138 wrote: post #57
DFHippie wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can ignore any villainy by this formula. "All leaders are villains, so I'm turning my attention elsewhere." As Edmund Burke or someone said, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Also, it relies on equating hard moral choices with villainy. A hard moral choice is making citizen A hungrier so citizen B doesn't starve. Villainy is robbing citizen A to enrich citizen B becau…

As a single individual, it's probably more effective to work on local ethical issues than to try to do something about global villainy. There are a few people in very special places and times who have the ability to make a global effect (Wikileaks comes to mind), but that's quite rare. Yes, we can denounce villainy that occurs on the global stage. But in truth that's almost entirely virtue signaling. We look good, bu…

[deleted]

Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#128

Post by ben_w »

pjc50 wrote: post #73
ben_w wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find most curious is that exactly one of the groups the Nazis systematically slaughtered went from being widely regarded as an acceptable target for racist degradation to being given a country, despite ~2,000 years of being treated as literally the servants of Satan, while the other groups the Nazis targeted only gradually gained equal rights. What’s up with that? I wish we could give every disadvantaged group…

The Israelis weren't entirely given Israel, they took it at gunpoint ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947%E2%80%931949_Palestine_wa... ). Anti-semitism is still a real problem and there are plenty of people willing to claim that the k word is "acceptable". What was unique was the coordination of the diaspora to achieve the founding of the Jewish state.

As always, the world seems to be messier and more complicated than I realise.

Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#129

Post by repolfx »

BlackJack wrote: post #23

The article says: "Thanks to Churchill’s personal decisions, more than 3 million Bengalis died of hunger in a 1943 famine. Churchill deliberately ordered the diversion of food from starving Indian civilians to well-supplied British soldiers and even to top up European stockpiles, meant for yet-to-be-liberated Greeks and Yugoslavs. “The starvation of anyway underfed Bengalis is less serious” than that of “sturdy Greek…

That seems ridiculous and wildly over the top. Hitler took a peacetime situation and started a war because he wanted to rule the world and abolish democracy everywhere. Churchill was one of the key men who stopped him, was forced into the situation of defence and had to make many hard decisions along the way. If there had been no Hitler then Churchill would never have been in the position of having to decide what to do about the famine and it might never have happened at all. Moreover the British Empire dissolved itself in India and converted it into a democracy for the first time ever - the exact opposite of what Hitler wanted.
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