gary's recent activity
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Comment on Tenant unions are coming. US landlords aren't ready. in ~life
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Comment on Tenant unions are coming. US landlords aren't ready. in ~life
gary Link ParentIf it helps you, then imagine I wrote "my opinion is:" before my post. If you had asked nicely, I would have replied nicely. I also don't get the fixation on "bankrupt" versus "pulled out". If I...If it helps you, then imagine I wrote "my opinion is:" before my post. If you had asked nicely, I would have replied nicely.
I also don't get the fixation on "bankrupt" versus "pulled out". If I had written "the landlord decides that the revenue is not worth the costs, so stops operating their property" instead, would that meaningfully change my point? My point being that a tenants union adds external costs that end up being shouldered by others elsewhere.
I suppose if you think I'm wrong, how do you think a tenants union would play out with landlords and the overall costs to the system as a whole?
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Comment on Tenant unions are coming. US landlords aren't ready. in ~life
gary Link ParentDepends on the country/state/city, but the strongest is probably the ability to squat without being evicted for months or years. Basically the threat of lost revenue to landlords that have fixed...Depends on the country/state/city, but the strongest is probably the ability to squat without being evicted for months or years. Basically the threat of lost revenue to landlords that have fixed costs or opportunity costs. In the aggregate, being a landlord is not supremely lucrative.
If we're talking specifically about rent increases and displacement as a result, then there's not much of anything around this. I don't see that as a bad thing. Reducing displacement via force ends up helping those already in place at the cost of those that would like to move in. I live in a hyper segregated city and have a distaste for any notion of "I got mine".
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Comment on Tenant unions are coming. US landlords aren't ready. in ~life
gary Link ParentNo. I don't like your tone here; you do not get to tell me to cite sources or link studies. Your later reply elsewhere confirms that you are not interested in having a discussion but rather you...No. I don't like your tone here; you do not get to tell me to cite sources or link studies. Your later reply elsewhere confirms that you are not interested in having a discussion but rather you just think I'm wrong. Since you believe I'm wrong, you can feel free to post your sources. Internet discussions suck if you ask for a source upon reading anything you disagree with. I posted my logic. You can post yours if you wish.
From your later text:
If there were many examples of landlords being driven to bankruptcy and having their properties taken over by housing authorities due to bad faith tenant unions, housing authorities would run out of their limited resources pretty quickly.
We don't see that because tenants unions are so rare.
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Comment on Tenant unions are coming. US landlords aren't ready. in ~life
gary Link ParentI'm traveling for the next few weeks and only have a phone, so longer form discussions with good sources is hard, but here's a podcast I listened to a few months ago on rent control. I can link...I'm traveling for the next few weeks and only have a phone, so longer form discussions with good sources is hard, but here's a podcast I listened to a few months ago on rent control. I can link any study and I'm positive someone could object that it's biased or poorly researched because this topic gets emotional, but I hope this one is palatable since it discusses the topic with several economists that have published papers you can look up, and even includes a brief discussion of Sweden's tenants union and the housing problem in Sweden. I will drop a few highlights so you have something you can refer to and then my thoughts.
In 1997, Ed Glaeser did his own analysis of rent control in New York City, trying to determine just how economically inefficient it was. He and his co-author, Erzo Luttmer, found that “this misallocation of bedrooms leads to a loss in welfare which could be well over $500 million annually to the consumers of New York, before we even consider the social losses due to undersupply of housing.”
DUBNER: Furthermore, you write that landlords who are susceptible to rent control “reduce rental housing supplies by 15 percent either by converting to condos, selling to owner-occupants, or redeveloping buildings.”
DIAMOND: So, when you think about those initial tenants, that’s the best bet you’re going to get for the benefits of rent control to low-income tenants: the people that are already in the housing. But even though we find that those tenants are much more likely to stay in their apartment, when we look 10, 15 years later, the share of those 1994 residents that are still there is down to 10 percent or so. So 90 percent of them no longer live in that initial apartment.
And it’s that next low-income tenant that wants to live in the city, that low-income tenant is going to have a very hard time finding an affordable option, because now there’s going to be less rental housing, the prices that that low-income tenant are going to face when they want to initially move in are going to be higher than they would have been absent rent control.
GLAESER: Sweden, of course, is the place where Assar Lindbeck, the famous economist — and although he was market-oriented, he certainly skewed to the left — Assar famously said that, “short of bombing, I know of no way to destroy a city that was more effective than rent control,” and he certainly had Stockholm in mind.
Note that there are those that criticize Freakonomics for being pop economics. I encourage you to find whatever sources that are not Freakonomics if you do not trust them.
A private landlord is renting out a 400 units at a profit, and the housing authority without a profit incentive is charging taxpayers?
So it's not that the housing authority is intentionally charging taxpayers, but that it eventually gets there through perverse incentives. Imagine that the tenants only want to pay $1k/unit/month. But the cost of everything (property taxes, maintenance, etc) actually costs the city $1.1k/unit/month. The housing authority could either say "tough luck, it's $1.1k and that's fair" and the tenants protest and start withholding rent. Or some smart politician might think "wow, if I just add some grant money to the housing authority to cover the $100/unit/month difference, that's more votes for me in the election". And thus, the perverse incentive exists and nothing counters that.
It may very well be that initially the lack of profits makes running housing cheaper under the housing authority. But over time it becomes so politically impossible to change that inefficiencies become tolerated and paid for by the government because who wants to be the politician that says your rent is going up? Certainly one would have to be very principled or very stupid to vote for their own rent to increase.
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Comment on Tenant unions are coming. US landlords aren't ready. in ~life
gary LinkRent control is one of those topics where the majority of experts that study it conclude one thing but people want the opposite. Whatever. Here's why unionized tenants sucks. There's no good...Rent control is one of those topics where the majority of experts that study it conclude one thing but people want the opposite. Whatever.
Here's why unionized tenants sucks. There's no good equalizing factor. If the union at Big Company pushes for unrealistic demands, Big Company fails and the union loses overall. So both sides are incentivized to come to a sustainable, and fair, equilibrium. If tenants unionize and withhold rent, the landlord goes bankrupt but the tenants continue living there because the state is not heartless enough to evict them. This article gives an example, sort of:
We had a two and a half year campaign now where we actually organized the site, 400 units. Got the private landlord to pull out. The Housing Authority took over full ownership of the site
There's no balancing factor there and what ends up happening will be a system that's inefficient yet works for tenants (who wants to pay rent when they could.. not pay rent?). Taxpayers will end up subsidizing the artificially reduced rent for tenants because the spenders (politicians) are too far removed from the payers (citizens) yet also stand to benefit from a voting bloc.
Similar to how shitty police officers are protected by their union because unions derive power through membership and solidarity, tenant unions will also protect shitty tenants. Again, shitty members is not an issue when there's a balancing factor, but there is none here.
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Comment on The US Democrats need to start acting like an opposition party in ~society
gary LinkThe author seems to take the view that Trump's success derives from being obstinate and that Democrats need to be the same, but I'm not so sure that's the winning move. Trump spoke to what...The author seems to take the view that Trump's success derives from being obstinate and that Democrats need to be the same, but I'm not so sure that's the winning move. Trump spoke to what Americans felt AND was loud and persistent about it regardless of the truth. The reasons I feel the message was just as important as the stubbornness are that Bernie received a lot of support despite being a socialist and, well, I just didn't see much success when Dems were shouting from 2016-2020 about Trump. The message didn't resonate. Yea, Biden won 2020, but Trump kept basically the same amount of support.
I don't think Democrats have figured out yet what Americans really want. I hope they don't start adopting opposition tactics until after they've figured out a platform to rally around, else they'll think they're making more progress than they really are and be disappointed again in '28.
More personal views are that much of their '24 platform needs to be looked over because it clearly didn't work.
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Comment on Lucy Letby lawyer seeks fresh appeal over reliability of expert witness in ~health
gary Link ParentI was a bit cranky when I wrote that, so let me be fair to the British subreddits and say the US ones are also toxic :)I was a bit cranky when I wrote that, so let me be fair to the British subreddits and say the US ones are also toxic :)
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Comment on Lucy Letby lawyer seeks fresh appeal over reliability of expert witness in ~health
gary LinkAfter reading into the case and the evidence against Letby, everything against her seemed really flimsy. But when I went to check what the British subreddits were saying, the consensus was that...After reading into the case and the evidence against Letby, everything against her seemed really flimsy. But when I went to check what the British subreddits were saying, the consensus was that only idiot Americans would believe she was innocent and only because we hadn't followed along during the trial.
Yet all the evidence that they kept pointing to (Letby's notes stating guilt, supposedly) were all explainable with broader context. Like the notes themselves could easily be from someone shaken by what they felt were inadequate skills rather than an actual admission of guilt. All the notes combined would point this way and it would make more fucking sense than a murderer writing "I AM EVIL I DID THIS".
In the course of all of this, the hospital continued to hide their own inability to care for these babies and used Letby as a scapegoat. It's easier for the British to pretend there's a sick murderer than that their healthcare system is crumbling down around them and some of these babies dying could have been prevented.
Read the case for yourself and make up your own mind, but look up online discussions around the time this New Yorker article was posted if you want to see some of the most close-minded discussions you'll ever find. They bring up talking points that the article took pains to disprove.
Maybe Letby is guilty, but I haven't seen anything convincing yet.
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Comment on What possession(s) do you have that continue to delight you every time? in ~talk
gary Link ParentAre YOU me!? Mechanical keyboards, Hario Switch, Flair Pro 2, 1zpresso JX-Pro, and a Fellow Carter Move (lost). Nice taste there, stranger. :) u/0x29A another vote for the Switch here! I chose it...Are YOU me!? Mechanical keyboards, Hario Switch, Flair Pro 2, 1zpresso JX-Pro, and a Fellow Carter Move (lost). Nice taste there, stranger. :)
u/0x29A another vote for the Switch here! I chose it after wanting less plastic in my life touching hot water and it does its job admirably and will likely outlive me.
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Comment on US pounds ISIS camps in Syria after Bashar al-Assad flees in ~society
gary Link ParentThey're now known as the Syrian National Army (SNA), or at least the faction that went after Manbij is. The SDF wasn't very popular in Manbij from what I heard so it's not likely they would have...They're now known as the Syrian National Army (SNA), or at least the faction that went after Manbij is. The SDF wasn't very popular in Manbij from what I heard so it's not likely they would have been able to hold it anyway.
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Comment on Russia loses almost 46,000 troops, over $3 billion worth of military equipment in November, Defense Ministry says in ~news
gary Link ParentThe wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were very one-sided in favor of the US though, and US forces also had much better access to medevac than Ukranian forces do here. So I would assume the ratio...The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were very one-sided in favor of the US though, and US forces also had much better access to medevac than Ukranian forces do here. So I would assume the ratio should be worse than 1:6.58.
If Zelensky is saying 1:8.6, then the one thing I know with 99% certainty is that it is worse than 1:8.6.
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Comment on CrowdStrike avoids customer exodus after triggering global IT outage in ~tech
gary Link ParentThe thing preventing more uptake is probably that it's not necessary. PE first came about because of cost overruns and a theory that a licensed engineer could predict costs better. An engineer is...The thing preventing more uptake is probably that it's not necessary. PE first came about because of cost overruns and a theory that a licensed engineer could predict costs better. An engineer is one who does engineering work (and engineering work is what an engineer does). It stands to reason that if society existed for this long without airplanes falling out of the sky every day that society likely did not need as many PEs to exist as claimed because unlicensed engineers are still good at doing engineering work.
On page 34 here, it shows ~1M engineering licenses, but that counts licenses per state and not number of people who hold a license. Many engineers hold licenses in each state because engineering licenses are not a federal concept but a state one. NSPE estimates there are over 2M practicing engineers. So at best, ~50% of practicing engineers are not licensed, but at worst, ~75% of engineers are not licensed.
At the end of the day
- NSPE also uses the term engineer for non-licensed engineers (see above "practicing engineer")
- at least half of practicing engineers are not licensed engineers
- software engineers don't have an avenue to go get licensed, so if this were a moral issue, then go yell at the non-software engineers for not getting licensed first
- engineers existed before licenses started to come about in 1906 (took 40 years for all states to adopt)
- most countries don't have a license requirement for engineering work
- engineers that have a problem with the term "software engineer" because of licensing better not call themselves engineers outside of the states that they are licensed in!
In the course of my research, I learned that it's relatively uncommon to have a PE in the aerospace, mechanical, chemical and electrical fields. It is extremely common with civil engineers.
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Comment on CrowdStrike avoids customer exodus after triggering global IT outage in ~tech
gary Link ParentIs your friend in the US? If so, most engineers here are not required to have a PE to work on projects. Most engineers work in industries/companies covered by an industrial exemption and I have...Is your friend in the US? If so, most engineers here are not required to have a PE to work on projects. Most engineers work in industries/companies covered by an industrial exemption and I have never heard of a "mechanical developer" title. As far as I can tell, only civil engineers really need a licensed PE to sign off on work. Not only that, but "engineer" is generally not a protected term here, so plenty of engineers should be drawing your friend's ire.
Lastly, the difference between designing a bridge and designing something like CrowdStrike is that designing a bridge occupies a much smaller problem space with known good solutions. CrowdStrike is constantly changing to counter evolving threats. A PE signs off on a bridge once and that project is done for a long time. Will you find a software PE that can understand every subsystem in CrowdStrike, verify it was done correctly with no fatal flaws, and then do that verification every week when they update? It literally cannot exist without the industry grinding to a halt if not outright regressing.
If something arises here, it will look much different than what civil engineers go through.
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Comment on The affordable housing shortage is reshaping parts of rural America in ~finance
gary Link ParentChicago's not as good as NYC but it's very doable without a car. Just don't live on the south side and instead pick neighborhoods like Lincoln Park. The CTA gets you to most of the city fairly...Chicago's not as good as NYC but it's very doable without a car. Just don't live on the south side and instead pick neighborhoods like Lincoln Park. The CTA gets you to most of the city fairly conveniently, although it feels like trains in NYC run more frequently (5 minutes versus 15 was my limited perception in NYC).
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Comment on What are the cons of Google being forced to give up its control of Chrome? in ~tech
gary Link ParentAnd after the new owner and funding questions are answered, it still remains to be seen how many experienced developers move on over to that company versus finding a new role at Google.And after the new owner and funding questions are answered, it still remains to be seen how many experienced developers move on over to that company versus finding a new role at Google.
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Comment on Thousands of Americans see their savings vanish in Synapse fintech crisis in ~finance
gary Link ParentPassthrough FDIC-insurance should not exist IMO. There's no reason that a financial entity (WealthFront for example) should be able to advertise that they have millions in FDIC insurance because...Passthrough FDIC-insurance should not exist IMO. There's no reason that a financial entity (WealthFront for example) should be able to advertise that they have millions in FDIC insurance because they split your deposit between banks that have $250k coverage each. What if shit hits the fan just as your money is being transferred through Wealthfront? It's crazy that we're allowing this at all.
However, if I were to give advice to a loved one, I would insist heavily that they go directly to an FDIC-insured bank and you can search on the FDIC website if that bank is covered or not. That's still simple enough to do for most people. Even going to a local branch of a well-known bank is enough.
The people that got burned here literally were hoping to gamble and went to a startup that offered lotto balls in lieu of boring old interest rates. For some things, it's just better to be vanilla and follow the crowd..
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Comment on Thousands of Americans see their savings vanish in Synapse fintech crisis in ~finance
gary Link ParentThe lesson here should be to not trust passthrough FDIC insurance to be 100% safe. This was the equivalent of handing your cash to a friend to deposit at the bank for you. The cash is FDIC-insured...The lesson here should be to not trust passthrough FDIC insurance to be 100% safe. This was the equivalent of handing your cash to a friend to deposit at the bank for you. The cash is FDIC-insured once it is at the bank, but while it's in your friend's hand it's not. The juice was not worth the squeeze.
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Comment on Regarding – and, well, against – Substack in ~tech
gary Link ParentSubstack/email newsletters are like RSS in that the reader explicitly signs up to receive updates from a source. So who is suffering that didn't choose to see that content to begin with? I don't...Substack/email newsletters are like RSS in that the reader explicitly signs up to receive updates from a source. So who is suffering that didn't choose to see that content to begin with? I don't use Substack so maybe there's a landing page that Substack users go to that's infested with right-wing content; I don't know. But I assume that if someone is seeing right-wing content pop up in their email inbox, they signed up for it.
EDIT: changed "your" to "their" so it doesn't come across as accusing paris.
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Comment on I just bought a 64GB iPad, anything I should know/do? in ~tech
gary LinkIf you are using Safari on the iPad, then you should install an adblocker. I prefer Wipr, but AdGuard has a free option that works okay too. After installing the Adblock app, you need to enable...If you are using Safari on the iPad, then you should install an adblocker. I prefer Wipr, but AdGuard has a free option that works okay too. After installing the Adblock app, you need to enable its "content blockers" for Safari via Settings->Safari->Extensions.
Some adblockers work by having a declarative block which keeps your privacy protected but limits what types of ads can be blocked. Some adblockers need to request permission to be able to read and modify website data for more comprehensive blocking. It's your choice which type you want to go with (perhaps both), but I stick with the type of blocking that doesn't require letting the extension read any website data.
Hi, it's me. "Labor unions" is too broad of a category. I'm pro-private labor unions. I'm anti-public labor unions. The public unions have no balancing factor (see Chicago Teachers Union). Private ones do. Tenants unions are closer to public labor unions because I believe the government will step in and prevent entire buildings from being evicted if tenants unions push too far.
All above is my opinion, not fact.