261–270 of 461 posts
California is not just SV for a start. What's the point of having all your workers in a high CoL area again?
Get a small office to appease VCs but have your workers somewhere else. Your money will go further as well
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Principled is a way of making it sound less terrible than 'restrained'. California is a perfect example of what happens when you let environmentalists handle housing policy, the poor suffer because environmentalism is classism in disguise in these social contexts.
This is literally the exact opposite of what an environmentalist would want in terms of urban growth and planning. Environmentally friendly planning means you have housing near where people work to avoid highly polluting long commutes. The problem is NIMBY bullshit in the purest sense. People will use every excuse in the book to prevent new housing in their neighborhood. While a fair amount of the time environmental…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A totally free market results in monopolies In cases where there is a natural monopoly (because economies of scale outweigh the deadweight costs of a larger firm), yes. Historically such cases are rare. Most historical cases of monopoly are due to government interference, not free markets. Indeed, the word "monopoly" originally meant a government-granted exclusive right to sell some particular good or service.
I'm not completely sure about the etymology of the word, but I do know that in the US, most monopolies were not government granted. They were achieved through aggressive M&A, market manipulation, and other abusive practices (much of which should be seen as a negative externality on the affected human communities). That is exactly why the government was granted significant power to restrain concentrated entities from…
If manufacturing semiconductors, with fabs that cost tens of billions of dollars isn’t a natural monopoly, why do we think anything is?
> The Myth ofNatural Monopoly Thomas J. DiLorenzo
> It is a myth that natural monopoly theory was developed first by economists, and then used by legislators to "justify" franchise monopolies. The truth is that the monopolies were created decades before the theory was formalized by intervention-minded economists, who then used the theory as an ex post rationale for government intervention. At the time when the first government franchise monopolies were being granted, the large majority of economists understood that large-scale, capital intensive production did not lead to monopoly, but was an absolutely desirable aspect of the competitive process.
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I don't think that's unique to environmentalists, turns out a big subset of everyone is selfish like that.
Yes, it may be selfish, but for environmentalists it is selfish and hypocritical. I'm specifically looking at the wealthy, anti-growth, green community on the SF Peninsula.
So-called environmentalists don't have a monopoly on hypocrisy, it's pretty much universal.
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This November a supervisor will lose re-election, since both the current incumbent Ahsha Safaí (who supported SB 50 as well as housing developments in his district) and the previously termed-out John Avalos (who opposed SB 50) are running for re-election in District 11 (Excelsior and Ingleside).
I think "re-election" generally refers specifically to an incumbent winning an election, rather than just any time someone wins more than one election.
“And once again, any US organization allowed to use a .gov domain loses yet ANOTHER notch of credibility, and confidence in their competence.“
Our “Governments“ are becoming obsolete... meanwhile we’ll continue to delegate more and more of the responsibilities to provide the utilities we need to technology companies.
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I guess at the end of the day those who own property will do what feels good for them. It’s funny to see non owners seem up of ways property owners could do with their ‘wealth’. Guess what, they own property in the hot Bay Area market by virtue of..wait for it..being here and working before most of us were born! So we can sit here on hacker news and think of all that they need to do to make us feel better, but it mea…
> There are no victims. What a ridiculous take. Besides, the problem of people wanting to remain in their existing homes is trivially solvable by deferring property taxes as liens against the property to be paid on the death of the owner. Average property tax in California is ~1%, so a person could live an entire lifetime without having to pay anything. But of course that was never the real reason anyone supported th…
When you want someone to part with their money or wealth, you have to give them a reason to do so. ‘We want what you have’ is not a good reason. It becomes a punitive tax and is based on coercion.
I see no valid arguments or offers that would make people agree to higher taxation.
The have-nots want to take more from the haves. This has happened many many times in the past. It comes from lack. Not logic.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A totally free market results in monopolies In cases where there is a natural monopoly (because economies of scale outweigh the deadweight costs of a larger firm), yes. Historically such cases are rare. Most historical cases of monopoly are due to government interference, not free markets. Indeed, the word "monopoly" originally meant a government-granted exclusive right to sell some particular good or service.
I'm not completely sure about the etymology of the word, but I do know that in the US, most monopolies were not government granted. They were achieved through aggressive M&A, market manipulation, and other abusive practices (much of which should be seen as a negative externality on the affected human communities). That is exactly why the government was granted significant power to restrain concentrated entities from…