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The frustration of trying to invest in my hometown

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Re: The frustration of trying to invest in my hometown

#131

Post by lazyjones »

dlkf wrote: post #130
lazyjones wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> yet the public does bail them out Involuntarily, due to corruption of public officials. Don't read too much into it. There have been some attempts to run banks in an "altruistic" manner. I don't know of a successful one, just failures.

> Involuntarily, due to corruption of public officials. Don't read too much into it. Haha! "Please disregard any obvious counterexamples to my broken ideology."

The "counterexample" is an interpretation of events based on wishful thinking, I was stating known facts. How is governments saving banks proof of their higher purpose or morals? Saving them saved a few rich clients and shareholders while distorting the market by rewarding badly managed banks.

Re: The frustration of trying to invest in my hometown

#132

Post by reportgunner »

kiplkipl wrote: post #128
reportgunner wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What interest are you talking about? The article said he had money to pay for 8 buildings in cash and he wanted to loan to renovate them. I suggested that if you can't get a loan you should tune down your ambitions a bit. There are many white people who can't get a loan too, tune it down with the racist us vs them thinking. It's not like all white people gain from that one person getting more leverage. I was talking…

I know what the article says. A person who can't get a mortgage on 8 won't be able to get a mortgage on 4 at the same rate as another person who can get a mortgage on 8. >I suggested that if you can't get a loan you should tune down your ambitions a bit. This is not about the ambitions of the individial in the link, it's an issue of structurally unequal differences that make it harder for black areas to see investmen…

> A person who can't get a mortgage on 8 won't be able to get a mortgage on 4 at the same rate as another person who can get a mortgage on 8.

Sure, but since he had cash to pay for 8 I assume that he would not need a loan if he bought 4 instead.

> it's an issue of structurally unequal differences that make it harder for black areas to see investment

Yes and I've suggested a way to fix these differences. Stop risking so much and support each other as a community to reduce the rate of bankrupcies.

> Please stop telling me what I'm thinking.

OK, no problem.

Re: The frustration of trying to invest in my hometown

#133

Post by macspoofing »

hannasanarion wrote: post #98
macspoofing wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every policy you can create will have differential impact on any group you create. The question is, was the policy created with the intent of racism. And this is for policies in the abstract. Debt is an incredibly dangerous tool. It is not charity to give someone a loan they cannot afford - I've personally experienced it and I've personally seen it destroy lives. When I see someone get denied for a loan or a mortgage…

Who cares about intent? Can I cash in a banker's "good intentions" elsewhere to get a loan for my business that I would otherwise qualify for if not for my name, zip code, alma mater, or my dialect? Can I pay the rent with the banker's "good intentions"? The idea that racism exists exclusively inside the heads of racists, and that the actual physical material and financial harm it does to disadvantaged groups is unim…

>Who cares about intent?

If you're human you care. There is an extra level of malevolence when there is explicit intent. It makes a difference to people.

> I would otherwise qualify for if not for my name, zip code, alma mater, or my dialect

And where are you getting all that from? Loans are given based on personal attributes, like past ability to pay back debt (i.e. credit score), income, savings and collateral. Nobody gets a loan because of their zip code or dialect. What are you even talking about? Also, business loans are impossible to get for almost anyone. Banks just do not lend money for high-risk ventures like starting a business unless you put up collateral.

Also, debt is an incredibly dangerous tool. Do not treat it like charity. I've seen debt destroy people and here everyone is treating it like it is a human right. I get the sentiment behind it (everyone should get screwed with debt equally), but the actual mechanism (i.e. debt) is terrible.

>Can I pay the rent with the banker's "good intentions"?

You don't need anybody's good intentions to pay rent. What are you talking about? Who is preventing anybody from paying rent?

>The idea that racism exists exclusively inside the heads of racists

Where else would it live? This distortion of a simple concept does not advance anything. It makes everyone confused.

>Imagine I burn your house down by pointing big fireworks directly at it.

Oh stop with these idiotic hypotheticals. Nothing about what we're talking about is like arson.

Re: The frustration of trying to invest in my hometown

#134

Post by macspoofing »

kiplkipl wrote: post #92
macspoofing wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every policy you can create will have differential impact on any group you create. The question is, was the policy created with the intent of racism. And this is for policies in the abstract. Debt is an incredibly dangerous tool. It is not charity to give someone a loan they cannot afford - I've personally experienced it and I've personally seen it destroy lives. When I see someone get denied for a loan or a mortgage…

>The question is, was the policy created with the intent of racism. That's convenient for the people it doesn't affect. Not only do you not have to worry about the policies: by choosing not to be racist, you absolve yourself of blame or privilege for benefiting from them. It also depends on you being able to infer another person's intentions. Intentional racists have always been in favour of covert racism in the form…

>That's convenient for the people it doesn't affect.

It's not convenient because it allows for conspiracy theories like yours to take hold.

Tell me, how do you decide that a policy which makes no reference to race, and is implemented in a regulated environment that makes racist policies illegal, is actually racist?

To me, it seems like the only yard stick you have is if the policy has differential impact on some group. That is as low a bar as you can have and it completely dismisses personal attributes that are actually used to qualify for loan. It's also lazy, and malicious.

>The only assumption that OP made is that cheap credit makes it easier to make money, and that makes it easier to get cheap credit. That's not especially controversial.

Yes it is controversial. It's also idiotic and dangerous. Interest rates are low now, max out your HELOC and go make money with it - see how easy it is ... alternatively, try getting a business loan without collateral and see how fast you're rejected. Nobody is going to care that you are in a 'privileged' class.

Re: The frustration of trying to invest in my hometown

#135

Post by vladTheInhaler »

b112 wrote: post #7

This could be a chicken and egg problem, too. Banks lend on statistics, just as insurance companies have rates based upon the same. And insurance companies, for the most part, can assign rates based upon average accident rates, for identifiable traits. Like one's sex. Or where they live (a common way to get statistics without 'race/colour'). So what do I mean by the chicken and the egg, here? Well, imagine that black…

I saw a comment on HN a while ago that this reminded me of. It made the argument that the primary value of a lot of machine learning models is essentially to "launder" information about protected classes so that it becomes harder to discover when you have been discriminated against, and harder to assign blame to a specific entity when that's the case. For instance, using a complicated nonlinear combination of address (e.g. predominantly black neighborhoods), educational history (e.g. historically black colleges), work history, credit rating, and who knows what else, might simply allow a model to recover a feature (ethnicity) which is correlated with likelihood to repay a loan in historical data.

Like you pointed out, that would lock us into a positive feedback loop where people are being denied loans based on "statistical, race-blind models based only on data", but the data only looks that way because of existing racism, which is now being further enshrined and legitimized.

But the thorniest issue is that the model reflects an actual, true, relationship in the world, so asking banks to ignore it would be asking them to leave money on the table until such a time as society has eliminated the structural inequalities that cause those correlations. How do we get them to do that, instead of just engaging in more and more sophisticated data laundering like above? Would we have to create an approved list of features that can be used for loan approval, which provably cannot be used to discover race? How would we even know that such a rule was working?

Re: The frustration of trying to invest in my hometown

#136

Post by hannasanarion »

macspoofing wrote: post #133
hannasanarion wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares about intent? Can I cash in a banker's "good intentions" elsewhere to get a loan for my business that I would otherwise qualify for if not for my name, zip code, alma mater, or my dialect? Can I pay the rent with the banker's "good intentions"? The idea that racism exists exclusively inside the heads of racists, and that the actual physical material and financial harm it does to disadvantaged groups is unim…

>Who cares about intent? If you're human you care. There is an extra level of malevolence when there is explicit intent. It makes a difference to people. > I would otherwise qualify for if not for my name, zip code, alma mater, or my dialect And where are you getting all that from? Loans are given based on personal attributes, like past ability to pay back debt (i.e. credit score), income, savings and collateral. Nob…

Racism isn't bad because it's done by bad people. It's bad because it hurts people. Racism done by "good people" is still racism, and it's still bad for all the same reasons.

Nobody cares about racist intentions. Despite what fox news tells you, antiracists are not interested in prosecuting thoughtcrime. Have racist thoughts all you want, nobody gives a fuck. The problem that antiracism and all other egalitarian movements are interested in solving is racist/sexist/homophobic/whatever EFFECTS. Intent doesn't matter. Actual material harm matters.

Re: The frustration of trying to invest in my hometown

#137

Post by wegs »

tomcam wrote: post #119
wegs wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Racism has nothing and everything to do with it. The word 'racism' has several very different meanings, depending on which dialect of English you speak. * In my hometown, racism would have nothing to do with it. The math doesn't work out for the investment, he was denied, case closed. * In my current town, racism has everything to do with it. We've set up structural barriers to success, which correlate strongly with…

Nothing stopping you from such investments. I put my money where my mouth is.

Something is stopping me. If your analysis is correct, I'd lose money.

Given you reading comprehension skills, though, I'm beginning to question your analysis. If you can't understand a 6-paragraph post, I can't imagine why you'd be qualified to analyze ROI for an investment.

Go back and re-read what I wrote a few times until you understand it, and then we can talk.

Re: The frustration of trying to invest in my hometown

#138

Post by macspoofing »

hannasanarion wrote: post #136
macspoofing wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Who cares about intent? If you're human you care. There is an extra level of malevolence when there is explicit intent. It makes a difference to people. > I would otherwise qualify for if not for my name, zip code, alma mater, or my dialect And where are you getting all that from? Loans are given based on personal attributes, like past ability to pay back debt (i.e. credit score), income, savings and collateral. Nob…

Racism isn't bad because it's done by bad people. It's bad because it hurts people. Racism done by "good people" is still racism, and it's still bad for all the same reasons. Nobody cares about racist intentions. Despite what fox news tells you, antiracists are not interested in prosecuting thoughtcrime. Have racist thoughts all you want, nobody gives a fuck. The problem that antiracism and all other egalitarian move…

>antiracists are not interested in prosecuting thought crime.

Come on. Nobody believes that. It is a practically a religious tenant that racism is hiding in the brains of people unbeknownst to even them even ready to strike at any moment and therefore you need to root it out! Where do you think the idea of 'implicit bias' and 'implicit bias training' comes from?

>The problem that antiracism and all other egalitarian movements are interested in solving is racist/sexist/homophobic/whatever EFFECTS.

No. The problem with antiracism all related movements is the same problem as with all ideologies. Everything is framed as either stemming from racism, or being racist. It's like a conspiracy theorist that sees everything as the work of the illuminati. Or a Marxist that sees everything as a class struggle. Or a Libertarian that sees everything as a collectivism vs individualism. Or a Feminist that sees everything as a result of patriarchy. Ideologies are blunt instruments that are occasionally useful but are disastrous when applied universally. There is never any reflection on false positive identification of racism. There is never reflection on whether some policy (for example, differential mortgage approvals) is the result of racism or other factors (hint: it's always racism) - maybe racism comprises 5% of the differential mortgage approvals and the rest is dominated by other factors? There is never any nuance. There is no evidentiary support for vast majority of claims, and counter-evidence is ignored or disparaged (for example 'implicit bias' and associated training has been discredited for a long time now, but no matter!).

Re: The frustration of trying to invest in my hometown

#139

Post by tomcam »

wegs wrote: post #137
tomcam wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing stopping you from such investments. I put my money where my mouth is.

Something is stopping me. If your analysis is correct, I'd lose money. Given you reading comprehension skills, though, I'm beginning to question your analysis. If you can't understand a 6-paragraph post, I can't imagine why you'd be qualified to analyze ROI for an investment. Go back and re-read what I wrote a few times until you understand it, and then we can talk.

Good for you. It’s always, always smart to question any analysis. Your writing isn’t interesting enough for me to spend anymore time on that post, however. My sincere best wishes on your journeys.

Re: The frustration of trying to invest in my hometown

#140

Post by mturmon »

macspoofing wrote: post #51
Traster wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I say you have to be 5'9 to get a loan, I'm not discriminating based on gender. It's just a total coincidence that more than 50% of men qualify and less than 10% of women qualify.

Every policy you can create will have differential impact on any group you create. The question is, was the policy created with the intent of racism. And this is for policies in the abstract. Debt is an incredibly dangerous tool. It is not charity to give someone a loan they cannot afford - I've personally experienced it and I've personally seen it destroy lives. When I see someone get denied for a loan or a mortgage…

> The question is, was the policy created with the intent of racism.

This sounds reasonable, but this is not how US Federal law works.

One key concept is strict scrutiny [1] -- when a regulation that infringes fundamental constitutional rights (such as equal protection under the law), or when a law pertains to a "protected class" like race or national origin, the standard is much higher.

In particular, in such cases, you do not have to prove, for example, racist intent to strike the law down. See the link for more. The obvious reason is that it's very hard to prove intent.

The current administration did manage to be blatant enough in its attempt to add a question to the census to suppress counting of people it does not like, that it did indeed reveal intent. [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_scrutiny

[2] https://www.aclu.org/blog/voting-rights/trump-administration...

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