Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns

abc7news.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 177 posts

Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns

#91

Post by johngladtj »

Loquebantur wrote: post #60
Negitivefrags wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am also an advocate for transparency of ownership of companies, but that Disney example seems like more of a case against transparency than for it? Why should Disney be price gouged in that circumstance?

By your logic, insider trading would be just fine. For a market to function properly, information pertinent to traded value has to flow freely. The more you stifle that, the more rigged the market. Essentially, you sustain a monopoly that way. Of course, people in possession of such "insider information" believe themselves in the right to profit from it. But that perspective is obviously biased and reveals a fundamen…

Insider Trading is just fine.

Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns

#92

Post by gowld »

riskable wrote: post #70
jrk wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly every time single old houses in in-demand areas are bought for renovation or redevelopment into denser duplexes, they're "bought by investors, including LLCs and other corporate entities." This doesn't mean 20% of housing stock is being bought and left fallow or anything – this is exactly how densification and redevelopment in response to demand happens. Many of those LLCs are even individuals.

About a quarter of all single-family homes in the US are owned by investors: https://www.billtrack50.com/blog/investment-firms-and-home-b... The percentage of investors that buy single-family homes in a given year may rise or fall but the long-term trend is clear: Investors are owning more and more of the total market over time. Actual single families are being priced out. Some markets are worse than the national sta…

> About a quarter of all single-family homes in the US are owned by investors:

I don't see that mentioned anywhere in the article.

I see "Last year, investor purchases accounted for 22% of American homes sold. This is significantly down from the 80% number in 2020-2021,"

Also, that "80%" number appears to be a mistake that doesn't match the cited source. https://www.redfin.com/news/investor-home-purchases-q3-2021/

It appears to me a misstatemenr of "investor purchasing of single-family homes increased over 80%." which is just silliness comparing the covid dip to the post-covid recovery back to normal.

The billtrack50 article is so incoherent and self-contradictory that it's not worth trying to make sense of it.

Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns

#93

Post by reducesuffering »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #40
jonathankoren wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of posers on OSINT twitter. You need to be a much more discerning on who you follow. As the meme goes, "I am tired of being an infectious disease expert. Today, I'm a military intelligence expert!"

Who are some "usually right" accounts to follow? Ideally ones that aren't plainly designed to spread propaganda of one sort or another.

https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch

https://twitter.com/RALee85

https://twitter.com/KofmanMichael

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical

Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns

#94

Post by nonameiguess »

mistermann wrote: post #44
whalesalad wrote: post #4

If this land is so precious to our national defense, why wasn't the land already owned by the federal government? Eminent domain is the uno reverse card here.

Also, if this is a genuine risk to be concerned about (as was the Cuban Missile Crisis), then why[1] are similar concerns out of Russia "not objective/logical/valid"? [1] No "correct by definition " memes, please. Imagine that you are writing code and thus have to be logical, exhaustively if you want to achieve correctness.

I think you misunderstand the purpose of statecraft and adversarial relationships. The point is to gain and maintain a strategic advantage, not to be maximally fair. We want to have capabilities and exert a level of control and influence that Russia is not also able to exert. When we try to prevent China from controlling popular media narratives, it's not a gotcha to say "ha, but the US does that, too." Yes, that is the entire point. We're trying to win, not to play fair. Which is also what they're trying to do.

Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns

#95

Post by ethanbond »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #68
ethanbond wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s true only if both parties have perfect information, which is of course why Disney went to great lengths to prevent that. There would be no such thing as fraud if “accepted transaction == definitionally fair.”

Perfect information has nothing to do with fair There's a difference between false information and no information.

False information like

Q: Who is buying this land?

A: XYZ Shell Corp (no connection to who is actually effectively buying and coming into control of this land)?

Obviously your argument will be "it's not false that XYZ Shell Corp is buying it," and sure, but it's obviously misleading in a way that affects the transaction, as it is specifically designed to do.

Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns

#96

Post by JackFr »

fnimick wrote: post #48
koolba wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Price gouged? Don't you mean, fair market value? Price is always contingent based on the information shared between the buyer and seller. Since when? Buying and selling anything is always a game of imperfect information. There’s nothing special about the buyer being a large corporation or the item being land.

And shouldn't you support having as much information be available as possible, or do you want people to play games and try to hide info to raise prices on people?

You've got a parcel of land. You are farming on it or renting it or doing something which generates income. Because of that, you discount your future cashflows and determine it is worth X. Disney comes along and estimates that with what they are going to do the land is worth Y, which is significantly higher than X.

If the land trades for any value between X and Y, you are both made better off by the trade.

There is nothing wrong with you trying to capture as much of Y-X as you can, similarly there is nothing wrong with Disney trying to capture as much as they can. Neither of you are "owed" the money and there is no such thing as an objectively "fair" price.

Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns

#97

Post by onetimeusename »

ryandrake wrote: post #15

Setting aside the national security question, more broadly it's pretty insane that the USA lets companies hide who owns/controls them. When you decide to hang out your shingle and profit at the expense of the general public, I would say the general public has a genuine right to know who you are. Reminds me of how Disney used aliases and codenames and shell companies and secretive ownership structures to buy up all th…

There are cases where I think corporate anonymity protects people. If you start a business in something that is targeted for harassment, I think you should be able to protect your identity. The downside of this is the risk of national security threats. But I feel strongly for people who don't want to be targeted for abuse.

Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns

#98

Post by jonathankoren »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #40
jonathankoren wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of posers on OSINT twitter. You need to be a much more discerning on who you follow. As the meme goes, "I am tired of being an infectious disease expert. Today, I'm a military intelligence expert!"

Who are some "usually right" accounts to follow? Ideally ones that aren't plainly designed to spread propaganda of one sort or another.

I haven't been on twitter in months, and now you can't browse the site without logging in. My advice Read the bios. Is it from someone from a real org, or is it just someone with #OSINT in their bio and patreon.

Off the top of my head is HI Sutton. He's good for submarines. Rob Lee RALee85 is pretty good as well. Then there's the Jeffrey Lewis (ArmsControlWonk). Pay attention who those people follow. They do this for a living, and have been for decades.

Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns

#99

Post by kasey_junk »

Loquebantur wrote: post #60
Negitivefrags wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am also an advocate for transparency of ownership of companies, but that Disney example seems like more of a case against transparency than for it? Why should Disney be price gouged in that circumstance?

By your logic, insider trading would be just fine. For a market to function properly, information pertinent to traded value has to flow freely. The more you stifle that, the more rigged the market. Essentially, you sustain a monopoly that way. Of course, people in possession of such "insider information" believe themselves in the right to profit from it. But that perspective is obviously biased and reveals a fundamen…

In the US (but not necessarily other jurisdictions), insider trading laws are not there to protect the broader market, but to protect other shareholders.

There is no assumption that you can’t trade on knowledge unavailable to the rest of the market just not information that should be available to other shareholders but isn’t.

It’s not about a working market it’s about preventing you from stealing from other people.

Lots of economists think insider trading should be legal, precisely because it would make the market more transparent, not less.

Post reply on HN