71–80 of 173 posts
Can someone who has read the whole thing spoil it and tell me how someone illiterate wrote a big, long article for the BBC?
My grandfather, born in the back hills of West Virginia, was forced to leave school when he was around 6 years old to chop lumber so his family had enough to survive. After he left WV, he worked a press at a forge and was a landscaper at night an on the weekends. He never has learned how to read, and sadly he is in the early stages of dementia so I think that ship has sailed. But... he was always a whiz with finances…
> I can't imagine going through life like he did, how much I would hav missed. Yeah your granddads story is impressive. I cannot imagine not being able to read and write. > He was the kind of guy that can take a dollar on Monday and give you back $100 on Friday. He owns, I believe at this point, 8 properties including his own home. So he owned other peoples homes? Ugh I hate this system. Why is absentee ownership a t…
A landlord who takes care of building and maintainig the house etc. is not providing value?
You think that happens automatically?
I mean sure, it would be nice to live in a world where everyone is wealthy and capable enough to own and maintain their home. But there are actually people who like to rent to not have that responsibility. They just pay money regulary and have a home. And there are surely lots of sharks in the housing and renting market, but that does not mean renting per se is evil.
I still don't get it. How is it possible that he managed to go through the system.
Case and point: I wear glasses. In fact, I'm almost blind without them: my effective vision ends at about 3 feet. Though I am able to perceive distinction between large objects and people, everything dissolves into a fuzzy mess. In American public schools (in the northeast US, at least) in the early 90s, schools would test student vision every year during elementary/primary school years. They would use the traditiona…
The result was that I spent a few years not being able to see what was written on the blackboard. I had to mostly figure it out by myself. The worst were the tests that teachers only wrote on the blackboard. I'd inevitably have to quietly ask someone around me to tell me what the questions were. I don't think I failed a single test because of it even though talking was forbidden.
The funny part was that when my parents eventually took me to an optometrist they tried to convince me that wearing glasses won't be that bad. I distinctly remember that situation because I kept thinking "I asked for them years ago!"
Eventually my eyesight became bad enough again that the glasses I had didn't cut it anymore. I fell a little bit back into my old habits, but it wasn't as bad as before. Sitting closer and all of that helped immensely.
My grandfather, born in the back hills of West Virginia, was forced to leave school when he was around 6 years old to chop lumber so his family had enough to survive. After he left WV, he worked a press at a forge and was a landscaper at night an on the weekends. He never has learned how to read, and sadly he is in the early stages of dementia so I think that ship has sailed. But... he was always a whiz with finances…
> I can't imagine going through life like he did, how much I would hav missed. Yeah your granddads story is impressive. I cannot imagine not being able to read and write. > He was the kind of guy that can take a dollar on Monday and give you back $100 on Friday. He owns, I believe at this point, 8 properties including his own home. So he owned other peoples homes? Ugh I hate this system. Why is absentee ownership a t…
The more investment capital goes into real estate, the more impetus there is to expand housing supply, and thus the more affordable rental rates, which is the cost of having housing, is.
There are of course numerous other factors involved in determining housing costs, like the municipal government's permit processing efficiency, zoning restrictions on building density, accessibility of residential neighborhoods to job centers via road networks and public transportation, etc, but ceteris paribus, more investment increases housing supply and reduces rental rates.
Beware of the anti-profit bias:
https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/08/04/we-have-an-ingrained-an...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Owning a property has risk. By renting you are paying to defer risk.
Landlording is a weapon the property-owning classes use to get away with not doing anything. [1] It’s the same with the other type of property: intellectual property. Big companies buy patents and trade secrets to monopolize knowledge to starve the commons, imposing their non-modular single-use black-box products on the working class. Society would be so much more effective and beautiful if knowledge was free and lan…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Landlording is a weapon the property-owning classes use to get away with not doing anything. [1] It’s the same with the other type of property: intellectual property. Big companies buy patents and trade secrets to monopolize knowledge to starve the commons, imposing their non-modular single-use black-box products on the working class. Society would be so much more effective and beautiful if knowledge was free and lan…
Real estate is a man-made resource that is created through investment of capital. It doesn't emerge otherwise. Without the freedom to invest in property, there would be less housing, and higher housing costs.
I dream of having the confidence of a white man for only one day. Like, I’ve been writing code for twenty years, and I feel like an imposter still. I can’t even fucking imagine being able to wake up in the morning, living a lie like this, fucking up kids educations because your too much of a pathetic child to admit your own failings?! I find this article to be pretty disgusting to be honest.
> fucking up kids educations Please provide evidence. Last I checked most schools have exams, and teachers performance is monitored. You don’t become a teacher, and suddenly face no further professional evaluation.
At least you bigots are exposing yourselves instead of staying hidden. I appreciate it.
waiting for the next article, "I was CTO for 17 years, but couldn't code"