My job is to watch dreams die (2011) • Hacker News Board

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#171

Post by fred_is_fred » Sat, Sep 07, 2024, 12:55 PM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #158

Borg3 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy shit... That property tax is awfull thing. It should never ever happen. Not to simple people, owning one property, aka home. So much freedom, country of dreams...

Without property tax, who pays for the infrastructure and first responders? The no taxes, no rules, and no local government services thing was tried many times without success: in one New Hampshire town, they got overran by bears[1] - who could have guessed regulations on trash handling and animal control might be good for something? 1. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-...

Somalia tried it also. I don’t see any HN libertarians lining up to move there.

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#172

Post by perilunar » Sat, Sep 07, 2024, 1:06 PM UTC

Borg3 wrote: post #136

rufus_foreman wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Having been able to pay off my house has had the most tremendous postive impact on my mental health I think Agree on that. I own my house with no mortgage since before the pandemic and it doesn't make much financial sense to pass up a 3% mortgage but it makes mental health sense. Yes, I owe property taxes. Yes, the city could raise them. If I completely stopped paying them today, it would take them a decade to kic…

Holy shit... That property tax is awfull thing. It should never ever happen. Not to simple people, owning one property, aka home. So much freedom, country of dreams...

Land tax is better than income tax, accordion to Georgism at least.

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#173

Post by michaelcampbell » Sat, Sep 07, 2024, 1:55 PM UTC

The subject is heartbreaking, but the writing is superb.

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#174

Post by pfdietz » Sat, Sep 07, 2024, 7:08 PM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #77

crooked-v wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, you know, just actually build enough houses for people to live in. I feel like that would be a better start than suing people into bankruptcy because they made 5% off a house sale instead of of 4.5%. Houses are only an attractive investment vehicle in the first place because there is a massive shortage of housing.

Which, like, subsidies for building housing is the way out.

No, just getting rid of obstacles. Zoning is a cancer.

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#175

Post by valval » Sun, Sep 08, 2024, 5:24 PM UTC

dmd wrote: post #93

hunter-gatherer wrote: post #33

I've had a handful of lemons thrown at me during my life. One of the most impactful ones as far as I can tell is that through a weird chain of coincidences I ended up first in line to purchase a foreclosed home. From what I understood, the couple was going through a nasty divorce and couldn't agree on who would get the house and ultimately didn't pay anything for a while, so I picked it up for 80k, which back then wa…

> a handful of lemons I'm having trouble parsing this. A lemon is a bad thing that happens to you, but this seems like it was a good thing for you?

I also found it funny the amount of verbal gymnastics GP did in order to convey the message of “I’m not actually a dick who hunts foreclosure homes”

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#176

Post by lobsterthief » Mon, Sep 09, 2024, 1:19 PM UTC

nunez wrote: post #151

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in that era where they reorder transactions to really turn the screws I cannot come up with the words about how absolutely evil someone had to be to make transactions work that way. How utterly fucked up and sociopathic do you have to be to steal money from the poor?

I mean, it's complicated. On one hand, payday loan services and buy here pay here auto dealers are providing capital and transport to people that can't afford it and absolutely need it. On the other hand, the risk of not seeing their money or vehicle back is insanely high. That said, the transaction reordering that BoA/other banks did was insanely cruel. I was affected all of the time by this during college before I…

I was a victim of that transaction reordering scam in college. It made BoA lose a [later financially successful] customer for life.

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#177

Post by lobsterthief » Mon, Sep 09, 2024, 1:21 PM UTC

leobg wrote: post #170

sandspar wrote: post #19

I've seen a few sides of money. Raised upper class, lost it all and became underclass, then made it back. I'm always amazed at how limited rich people's worldview is. The average software developer, coastal liberal etc. They've never felt terror, the visceral feeling of being terrified. They've never been predated upon. They've never been used and discarded. The underclass lives with this stuff every day, 24/7, and r…

Curious: How does that make you feel about JD Vance as potential vice president? From what I read (I’m German), he “was there”.

Vance lies a lot. And changes his political stance to adapt to whatever gets him power. So take his story with a grain of salt.

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#178

Post by veunes » Mon, Sep 09, 2024, 1:27 PM UTC

hunter-gatherer wrote: post #33

I've had a handful of lemons thrown at me during my life. One of the most impactful ones as far as I can tell is that through a weird chain of coincidences I ended up first in line to purchase a foreclosed home. From what I understood, the couple was going through a nasty divorce and couldn't agree on who would get the house and ultimately didn't pay anything for a while, so I picked it up for 80k, which back then wa…

The fact that you've paid off your house at a young age is an incredible achievement, regardless of its size or condition

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#179

Post by albrewer » Mon, Sep 09, 2024, 3:06 PM UTC

nothercastle wrote: post #146

This reads like way before 2011. Just the mention of phone books puts the time frame into the late 90s early 2000s. I haven’t seen a phone book for at least 20 years.

I grew up in a poor "rural" area (it was a 5 min drive to a 300k pop. city). Most technology is about 10-15 years behind "the times" when you leave the city. Most people I knew didn't have cellphones until ~2007-08. Home broadband was an extravagance until ~2009 when landline DSL prices came down enough.

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#180

Post by BehindBlueEyes » Sat, Sep 14, 2024, 2:12 PM UTC

immibis wrote: post #163

frmersdog wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is really a problem that so many people in America make a living - what they consider a decent, respectable, fulfilling living - in positions where it's their job to make someone else's life worse. I don't think we've fully considered the deleterious social effects this has. It's not just rent-seeking, with all the perverse incentives that entails. It's rent-seeking on widespread suffering, with all the perverse i…

there is no "we" - no overarching moral force that makes these decisions. Banks ruin people's lives for money just because they can . Those people could retaliate on banks, but they choose not to because they were taught morality, which puts them at a disadvantage.

i'm not convinced the people whose lives are ruined by banks are in a position to retaliate.

we is in theory the government chosen by the people to give direction to society and enforce it. In practice, i think the political systems in place fail to serve that purpose unfortunately (regulations too easily manipulated by lobbying/propaganda, fake choices to vote on, largely self serving to maintain a hierarchy of exploiters vs exploitees)