Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo • Hacker News Board

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#311

Post by rayiner » Fri, Mar 28, 2025, 1:15 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #299

rayiner wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People support the nice sounding abstract phrase until you tell them specifically what you mean by it. And I didn’t cherry pick anything. I quoted the portions of the article that said support depends on context, and then the paragraph discussing the college context and the employment context. The article itself happens to specify a percentage in text for one but not the other. Then I mentioned Prop 16 as a concrete…

You knew what it meant very clearly when you repeatedly stuck up for it here, so I think you could stand to be a little more candid about the point you're trying to make.

I’m being completely candid. I’ve always understood “affirmative action” to refer to having different hiring or admissions standards for different races: https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/nyu-website-defaced-a... (“Affirmative action is a policy designed to promote opportunities for historically marginalized groups, particularly in education and employment, by considering factors like race or gender in admissions and hiring decisions.”)

But people answering polls don’t necessarily know that. Which is why you need to look at polls that are worded more specifically.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#312

Post by lotsoweiners » Fri, Mar 28, 2025, 1:32 AM UTC

TexanFeller wrote: post #249

kashunstva wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> she couldn’t think of anything she would do differently than Biden when asked Which, though definitely suboptimal, would have been a pretty reasonable alternative to her opponent’s plan to self-cannibalize the government, threaten the sovereignty of long-standing allies, and chaotically disrupt world trade.

To be clear I didn’t support the winning candidate either. I feel this election was well characterized by that South Park episode in the 90s.

I had to look up when that episode aired since it is so applicable to many elections. It was 2004 so Bush vs Kerry. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douche_and_Turd

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#313

Post by NekkoDroid » Fri, Mar 28, 2025, 1:37 AM UTC

archagon wrote: post #298

Aloisius wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are now eight antitrust lawsuits against them by seven states + the DOJ. The DOJ and some states have started adding major landlords to their suits as well (since it is a cartel). Sadly, courts move slowly so it will probably be years before a decision.

Trump’s DOJ will side with capital.

I would only assume after they each individually had a $5mil 1 on 1 dinner at Mar-a-Lago

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#314

Post by Aloisius » Fri, Mar 28, 2025, 1:49 AM UTC

MajimasEyepatch wrote: post #50

Avicebron wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure the political group that can guarantee a quality National Health Service in the US will win

When the Democrats had a majority in the House and a supermajority in the Senate when Obama was elected, they couldn't even get a public option included in the Affordable Care Act, and the right so successfully demagogued "Obamacare" (their name for it) that the Democrats lost an incredible number of seats in the 2010 midterms. Bernie Sanders campaigned on Medicare for All (essentially what you're suggesting) in 2016…

> a supermajority in the Senate when Obama was elected

Obama wasn't elected with a super-majority. He had 58 votes, but Al Franken's race was contested, then Robert Byrd got sick, then Ted Kennedy died.

He did have one briefly for about 20 working days the Senate was in session about 9 months after he took office.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#315

Post by jakelazaroff » Fri, Mar 28, 2025, 1:55 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #310

jakelazaroff wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Further down in the article, it also cites a poll in which over 60% of people say racial and ethnic diversity is either extremely or somewhat important. People have a lot of conflicting opinions! The idea that the data here supports any sort of “overwhelming” consensus is just straight up not true.

That’s not a conflicting opinion. People support diversity, but oppose the principal approach to achieving diversity. Note that the questions for both admissions and employment specify diversity as the goal. For example, the options for the employment question are: > Only take a person's qualifications into account, even if it results in less diversity > Take a person's race and ethnicity into account, in addition to…

Setting aside the fact that if you ask people if they support affirmative action, they generally say yes…

> That’s not a conflicting opinion. People support diversity, but oppose the principal approach to achieving diversity.

That is a conflict! You are describing a conflict! I don’t see how the discussion proceeds from here.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#316

Post by lotsoweiners » Fri, Mar 28, 2025, 2:22 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #294

pclmulqdq wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly think this take on conservatives is pretty unhinged. It's completely baseless, too. Why not talk about one of the civil rights that they openly oppose? The number one civil right that American conservatives are after is your reproductive freedom. Number two is your right to access [medicine/drugs/foods] you choose.

> Why not talk about one of the civil rights that they openly oppose? They openly oppose black civil rights; that's what the war on “Woke"/”DEI” is about, its what the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act protections (also through the courts, but gets less attention than dismantling of abortion rights) is about, and there are many other aspects of it.

Being anti woke/DEI does not mean you oppose civil rights. Plenty of African Americans and other minorities dislike woke/DEI. They don’t want to be thought of as a diversity hire but still enjoy their rights to vote and use the same bathrooms as their white peers.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#317

Post by rayiner » Fri, Mar 28, 2025, 3:37 AM UTC

jakelazaroff wrote: post #315

rayiner wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not a conflicting opinion. People support diversity, but oppose the principal approach to achieving diversity. Note that the questions for both admissions and employment specify diversity as the goal. For example, the options for the employment question are: > Only take a person's qualifications into account, even if it results in less diversity > Take a person's race and ethnicity into account, in addition to…

Setting aside the fact that if you ask people if they support affirmative action, they generally say yes… > That’s not a conflicting opinion. People support diversity, but oppose the principal approach to achieving diversity. That is a conflict! You are describing a conflict! I don’t see how the discussion proceeds from here.

It’s not a conflict, it’s a hierarchy of preferences. People’s specific opposition to race-conscious admissions and hiring outweighs their general support for diversity. That’s exactly what the Pew answer choice says: “Only take a person's qualifications into account, even if it results in less diversity.” Race blindness is more important than diversity.

You see a similar pattern on many issues. E.g. people support balancing the federal budget. But most would say that they oppose cutting entitlement spending to balance the budget. That is, people’s specific opposition to cutting entitlement spending outweighs their general support for balancing the budget. In practice it just means that people’s preference in favor of the general issue is weakly held, while their opposition on the specific issue is strongly held.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

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Post by HEmanZ » Fri, Mar 28, 2025, 6:09 AM UTC

legitster wrote: post #46

I've grown a little bit more skeptical of what can realistically be achieved by the passive nature of YIMBY-ism. In Portland, they passed some radical new zoning laws a few years ago that allowed anyone, anywhere the ability to zone ADUs on their property. And the cost to get permits is almost nothing. I have lots of friends and family in the area with property. But not a single one has added an ADU. It seems like it…

Just a bit north of you, in Seattle, it feels like every house in my neighborhood with enough land added an adu, a dadu, and condoized. My realtor says almost everyone looking for single family homes wants an existing dadu or somewhere they can build a dadu.

I don’t know that anyone has claimed allowing ADUs is all you need to do to solve our housing crisis. But in a lot of places it’s the only thing the NIMBYs will let you get away with. So if you can’t middle housing, at least allowing ADUs gets you something more.

If the demand to live in your city dramatically outstrips the any possible number of ADUs that can be built, then it won’t help on its own, the cup still runs over.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#319

Post by TMWNN » Fri, Mar 28, 2025, 6:11 AM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #309

> The DOGE point of view says if the government can’t do anything, we should just get rid of the government I have a hard time wrapping my head around this statement. If a department in a company does not work, we don't get rid of the department? If a company does not work, this company does not go out of business? If a church does not help its community, people will still go there on Sundays? If a school does not te…

>I have a hard time wrapping my head around this statement ... Then why is it suddenly different when it comes to government.

Indeed. I think the media and Democrats are slowly figuring out that screaming about layoffs of federal employees as incipient fascism, tyranny, authoritarianism, etc. just doesn't outrage non-government workers who are quite familiar with the concept of you and everyone else in your office/department/division/company abruptly losing your job.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#320

Post by baskinator » Fri, Mar 28, 2025, 6:17 AM UTC

phil21 wrote: post #268

throw4847285 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a renter since I was born, and I have rented from both mom and pop landlords and bigger corporations, and I can tell you that whether or not the "small landlords" were good people or not, our financial interests were diametrically opposed. If I did not live in cities with good tenant protections, there would be no incentive whatsoever for the people who owned the place where I lived from providing basic ser…

I have total opposite experiences from renting most of my life. I can't think of a mom and pop landlord I had a poor experience with. Financial incentives generally aligned fairly well for me. I was an extremely low-maintenance tenant, only calling for major repairs like mechanicals or outright dead appliances. I handled all basic maintenance and minor wear and tear myself at every property I rented from a small time…

I'd love to rent out my current home but I hear horror stories of how hard it is to evict non paying tenants in my town. The big players are diversified and can eat the cost but an owner landlord with one property can be bankrupted by a bad tenant.

It's a regulatory moat as much as it is tenant protections.