I’m more surprised that anyone gives a shit at all that they have the time to go do something like a review bomb or try to organise a boycott. People must have a lot of free time on their hands, I barely have time to play a video game, let alone sacrifice valuable free time to go organise a boycott.

If a game is bad or costs too much, I just forget about it and move on. Loads of other things I have to do with my day, and there are a billion other games I can play instead.

I played Warhammer 2 a bit, but saw their shitty patches that broke the game every time, so I just uninstalled it and forgot about it, and CA. I recommend people do that instead. Loads of other fun games to play instead.

UT is such a beautiful state. I miss autumn in Big Cottonwood Canyon. The Day’s Fork hike has some of the most beautiful colours I have ever seen.

How much money do you get if you file?

I have no idea, I’m not Republican.

I have no idea, I’m not a Republican.

I’m not sure. They definitely wanted one, but after that ridiculous plea deal which Weiss got, it’s clear he’s an absolute weasel and company man after all, and this is coming from a hardcore Sanders democrat. That plea deal was insanity – a misdemeanor for lying blatantly about drugs on a federal firearms transfer? And not paying taxes? Imagine if those charges were leveled against an ordinary person, and not a member of the ruling elite.

There needs to be a special counsel appointed, but fuck this Weiss guy.

Zoning is only a small part of the problem. Even if you zoned a bunch of new land today, if you let the private, free market have its course, then what do you think will be built on that land? Highly unaffordable luxury flats/houses, because that is what leads to the highest profit margins for the private sectors builders. And those flats will be bought up by investors or wealthy individuals to create more unaffordable rent.

That’s the core issue, individual private sector interests are not aligned to be altruistic interests for the good of society. They want to maximise profit, nothing more. Hence, you need someone willing to build houses and sell them at a loss, so average people can afford housing again. Only the government can sell for a loss and remain in business.

Ergo, you can zone all the land you want, but if you only let private sector builders have it, then you’ll just get more and more unaffordable properties built, chasing rich foreign investors, tech millionaires, or pension funds.

This is the core issue with Thatcherism/deregulation/privatisation. An individual company’s profit margins don’t always align with the good of society, but society needs essential services (water, sewage, electricity, food, housing, defense). These things need to be provided to all citizens, urban and rural, but doing so doesn’t always guarantee a profit, so you can’t just leave it to the private sector only.

Rent didn’t shoot up, how could it, the whole point of the law was it was frozen.

I think you’re missing the forest for the trees in this entire conversation: rent has been skyrocketing everywhere, in every G8 country, for the last 20 years. Especially in places like London, NYC, LA, Seattle, Paris, Toronto, Bay Area, etc. Hell, even in Salt Lake City where I used to live my rent went from £1816/mon to £2600/mon for the same flat, in just 2 years. And none of those cities have classic rent control (NYC has a few places which have it, but overall it doesn’t). So clearly with a free market, pure capitalist approach, rents have only been skyrocketing. Same thing for housing to buy, have you tried buying a house lately?

So to claim that rent control or rent freezes lead to higher rentals or less supply is wrong, because rents are going up in a free market too, and supply is already at an all time low (hence the prices shooting up).

So you’re fucked in either situation. The real problem is there just isn’t enough supply of shelter for people, and that’s because if you leave it to the free market, there’s no incentive to build affordable housing with no profit. Hence, because shelter is something required by citizens, government should be building it even at a huge loss. Just like government provides fire brigade and military at a financial loss, because people need these things. You don’t leave essential services to the private market because it may not be profitable to do them, for example, rural communities have shite internet, why? because it’s not profitable to dig and lay fibre optic cable into some rural hinterland for just a few hundred customers. So in Norway, the government steps in lays that fiber optic at a financial loss because it wants its citizens to have a better life. Same for housing. If the private sector isn’t doing it, the government should be. Just like in the 60s.

Depends on your definition of “success.” Countries such as Holland, France, Canada, Germany, and China all have caps on the amount by which a landlord can increase rent in any given year, usually by law it’s less than 5%, or indexed to inflation (but with 5% as the max). These laws are incredibly popular with renters and have been around for decades.

Berlin implemented a hard rent freeze in 2020 which was extremely popular with renters, but not with landlords, naturally.

However, rent control isn’t just a hard price cap like back during the war, there are many nuanced aspects, see here for information: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/23/berlin-rent-cap-defeated-landlords-empty

I unfortunately can’t read that article as it’s paywalled, but looking at the link, it’s an Opinion piece, so not factual reporting. It’s also from Bloomberg, one of the most pro-capitalist publications out there, second only to The Economist in its championing of all things pro globalist and pro capitalist.

The main stream media which is all very pro capitalist (as they’re all owned by billionaire oligarchs) has been shitting on rent control for decades.

Here’s a more nuanced article on the matter which doesn’t come from such a pro-capitalist, classical economic outlook: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/23/berlin-rent-cap-defeated-landlords-empty

Capitalist/free market* economists.

Rent control works just fine in a more socialist model, especially when the government is a prime builder of housing without seeking profit, as almost every European country was during the 50s-70s. It’s only when government gets out of house building and everything gets privatisated and for-profit that rent control fails.

I totally agree, we should treat animals the same as we treat humans. I really don’t understand why so many people value animal lives lesser to those of humans.

Is it possible to eat those humans? If it’s actually nutritious I don’t see a problem, and it’s less wasteful, as you said. Soylent Green operated on this principle.

I’m afraid you genuinely lost me.

I said I’m all for free mental healthcare and housing, but even these don’t seem to solve the problem. Nor does just throwing money at the problem. So I have no ideas for how to solve the issue, besides maybe just dismantling capitalism entirely, but this also comes with problems.

Maybe, but even Norway has hardly stamped out homelessness completely. Far from it actually, there are some parts of Oslo which have immensely high levels of homelessness. Not as bad Skid Row in LA, but not far behind either.

It’s not nearly so trivial. Having lived in Norway for many years, a country which does have unconditional free healthcare (including mental health), and free access to housing, they still have a large homeless population and plenty of street crime.

No one would be happier than me with this solution, but it will never realistically happen in our lifetimes. And even if it somehow came to happen eventually, given the entrenchment of current elites, it would only happen with an immense cost in human lives and violence, and a massive drop in living standards in the immediate aftermath before some utopia is created.

Current day -> neo Soviet revolution -> Mad Max -> the last of us? -> ??? -> Bernie Sanders Utopia

I’d love to mate, but I honestly don’t know how. One thing I have to come to realise is that simply throwing money at the problem doesn’t work. Norway, London, NYC, and California both spends billions each year on homelessness and the problem is only getting worse every year in all those places.

Maybe a good place to start would be opening up free sanitariums again where homeless people with mental issues could be housed, as sadly the streets have become the new dumping ground for people with severe mental illness.

Beyond that, am not sure, besides a total dismantling of capitalism.

I hate to burst your bubble, but it’s not just an America problem. Have you been to Paris lately and seen the homelessness situation there, especially on the Metro?

Or in Oslo, where homeless Roma people attack people in broad daylight at Nationalteatret station and steal their luggage?

It’s a big problem everywhere, and attitudes like the type you describe aren’t relegated solely to Americans.

Am not defending this law at all, but the thinking behind it is twofold:

1. you might be handing out tainted or expired food
2. the bigger issue: you are creating a “nuisance” on the property where you’re doing it, as large groups of homeless people gather there. Some would say it’s a safety concern, for example handing out free food at the corner of a primary school.

Again, I’m not agreeing with either point, but these are arguments I have heard from people who back such laws.

To the second point though, I’ve seen it firsthand. Salt Lake City tried to do a good thing by making the public library a homeless-friendly zone by handing out free food and allowing access to WiFi. This caused a large amount of homeless to hang out there all the time, and some of them would harass and attack non-homeless patrons of the library to the point that pretty much all of them stopped coming to the library entirely, and the area became a no-go zone.

The real issue is that a large amount of homeless people have severe mental illnesses (since public sanitariums all closed in the 70s). So where there are big congregations of homeless, there will inevitably be harassment and possible violence. Cities don’t want people feeding the homeless at any old public building to avoid these situations, hence the laws, which allow you to do it only at certain places the city allows.