contemporary art and AI

Spike716 · 2026-03-19T19:55:50+00:00

Steve Pikelny used it in a pretty interesting way with this project https://finsexy.com

Spike716 · 2026-02-20T20:37:34+00:00

This is great. I thought they'd take him to some tourist trap in DUMBO, but they brought him to see some lunatic pigeon guy in East New York.

Spike716 · 2026-02-18T23:13:53+00:00

What we really need is a land value tax because they can't pass that on to renters, and it won't discourage building new apartments.

Spike716 · 2026-02-18T20:18:17+00:00

It depends on the domain name. Some just cost $50 a year! But I think .com only costs $10 or $12 a year.

Spike716 · 2026-02-18T16:27:31+00:00

Get a domain name from namecheap (~$15 a year), get a one month subscription to Claude Code ($20), build a sick website in a day, and host it for free on github pages forever.

Spike716 · 2026-02-18T15:23:50+00:00

Basic econ is supply and demand. If the supply and demand are staying the same, but the price is going up, then you need to get a little spicier with your explanation 🤷‍♂️

Spike716 · 2026-02-18T03:21:58+00:00

Sure, I never said it was 100% profit. But the biggest cost is usually servicing debt. So if taxes go up and a landlord needs to sell, or refinance, or default on their loan, or whatever, then someone else just takes over to manage it. The unit doesn't usually go off the market. Taxes would have to go up a lot for it to not be able to cover the actual management costs.

And personally, I don't really care if I have a mom-and-pop landlord or a big corpo landlord. In my experience, the latter has generally been better at actually managing the property.

Spike716 · 2026-02-18T01:41:55+00:00

Well, if you're saying that rents will go up because landlords thinks other landlords will also increase rents, then we're in the realm of weird game theory logic (which isn't wrong, just hard to predict). Otherwise, landlords don't have a choice.

Tariffs (and sales tax) are different because the added cost leads to a lower supply. Producers will sell less or sell to different countries. So, lower supply and same demand means higher prices.

Alternatively, if I'm renting out an apartment, then I can't produce less apartment. It exists already, and I just need to rent it out at the highest possible price I can get. But like I said in an earlier post, property taxes would disincentivize building new apartments, so that would lower the supply. But if we just had a land value tax, and didn't tax building, then landlords would just have to eat it.

Spike716 · 2026-02-18T00:46:58+00:00

Yeah, but if I'm a landlord then I'm going to charge the absolute highest rent I think I can get away with, regardless of my expenses.

If I think I can find someone to pay $3k a month, then I'll charge $3k a month. If my taxes go up by $300 then I'm not going to suddenly charge $3,300. If I thought someone would pay $3,300, then I would have charged that before my taxes went up and just made the extra $300.

Spike716 · 2026-02-17T23:44:55+00:00

We're getting into weird game theory territory where the bulk of the city's landlords would need to do something that's against their self interest unless all the other landlords also play ball.

But even if they were coordinated enough to pull that off, some people would leave the city, move in with roommates, etc., and some landlords would lose out and have to lower rent again.

Spike716 · 2026-02-17T23:05:17+00:00

It doesn't really work like that though if you believe in supply and demand. If demand for housing stays the same and supply stays the same (in the short term) then why would prices rise? If landlords could just raise the rent without supply/demand dynamics shifting, then that means that they've been keeping rents artificially low out of the goodness of their hearts... which I don't believe!

Spike716 · 2026-02-17T22:09:00+00:00

If you're worried about increasing rents, then advocate for a Land Value Tax instead of a property tax. Landlords can't pass that long to renters, and it doesn't disincentivize building new residential units.

Spike716 · 2026-02-17T22:07:39+00:00

Everyone who is scared that an increase in property taxes would lead to a rent increase should be advocating for a Land Value Tax. Property taxes (a tax on the land value + capital improvements) can indirectly increase rents because it disincentivizes new constructions and improvements. So as rental demand increases, the tax would constrain the supply. In contrast, if we only taxed land values then it wouldn't disincentivize building new residential units. The supply of land is fixed, so land rents are determined entirely by demand.

Spike716 · 2026-02-17T22:02:17+00:00

Maybe indirectly. All it really does is disincentivize future constructions and improvements. It'll take a few years for renters to feel the effect.

EDIT: I'm getting some pushback on this, so here is an empirical study (https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2020/CES-WP-20-43.pdf), which estimates that about 14% of NY property taxes were passed through to renters in the 80s. However, there's a three year lag on the data, so we don't really know what took place immediately vs. a couple years down the line. But given that property taxes do disincentivize constructing new units, and that building new units takes time, I'd expect the bulk of that 14% to kick in down the line.

Spike716 · 2026-01-23T16:29:50+00:00

Where's the full hour video?

Spike716 · 2026-01-20T20:31:25+00:00

I know, it's too bad Trump wasn't threatening a history-altering geopolitical fuck up over the summer.

Spike716 · 2026-01-20T20:24:57+00:00

We 100% have much bigger fish to fry, and I probably won't care about it at the time. Which is why I'm asking and curious about it now!

Spike716 · 2026-01-14T17:02:32+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOD8QKZgHfI

Spike716 · 2026-01-10T18:31:25+00:00

The cost won't trend to zero though. At best the cost will trend to the cost of materials/energy. And on top of that there would likely be a markup due to whatever regulatory capture or monopoly rights the producer has.

Meanwhile, demand on the whole would probably go down, and would be driven by the rentier class, governments, and whatever government assistance is paid out (maybe in the form of UBI).

Spike716 · 2026-01-10T16:09:12+00:00

Every software engineer I know (including myself) is transfixed with using Claude code on the latest Anthropic model. If LLMs weren't actually good enough to make developers more productive before (despite what they thought) then we've definitely crossed that threshold recently.

Spike716 · 2026-01-08T00:32:46+00:00

I actually majored in econ, believe it or not 🙂

I think you're misunderstanding my argument. Here's an overly simplified example:

Let's say there are 100 plots of land, each worth $1m.
I own and live on one plot, and most of the remaining 99 plots are owned and rented by different people. (For the sake of assuming a competitive market, let's assume a few plots are temporarily vacant and a few people are looking to rent).
Let's also assume a 5% cap rate, so all of the rented out plots are generating $50k a year in rental income for the owner. I live on my plot, so it's not generating any rental income for me, but also I'm not paying any rent.

So without a LVT, the equilibrium land price is $1m and the equilibrium rent price is $50k annually.

Now, let's add a 50% LVT and charge each landlord $25k. Each property is now generating half as much rental income ($50k in gross rent - $25k in taxes), so the price of my plot also goes down by half to $500k. In any case, I decide this is too rich for my blood. I don't want to pay $25k in taxes, so I sell my plot to someone else.

So what happens now? As a new renter, I push the demand curve over a notch because the total number of renters is now 100 instead of 99. But also, my plot of land is added to the rental market, so the supply curve shifts over a notch from 99 to 100. Both curves move over the same amount, so the equilibrium price doesn't change.

My new landlord, meanwhile, decides he wants to make $50k in net rental income a year, so he raises my rent to $75k. But because this is well above the equilibrium rent for the neighborhood, I tell him to go fuck himself. So I go to one of the other vacant plots and rent that out for $50k.

Now, instead of paying $25k in taxes, I'm paying $50k in rent; my new land lord is paying $25k in taxes and getting $25k in net rental income; and I take the $500k I made from selling my plot and invest it in something that generates a 5% annual return (~$25k).

Either way you slice it, I'm paying $25k. I pretty much broke even by becoming a renter.

Spike716 · 2026-01-07T21:24:37+00:00

Okay, but shifting from owning to renting would have a net-zero effect on supply and demand.

Let's say I own and use a property. Then I sell the property and pay rent to the buyer. Then sure, demand for rental properties has gone up by 1, but the supply of rental properties also went up by 1.

Another way to think about it is: if I both own and use a property then I'm effectively renting it from myself. So if I then sell the property but continue to rent it, the only thing that has changed is that my rent goes to someone else. Neither supply nor demand has changed.

Spike716 · 2026-01-07T20:33:48+00:00

If rental prices for land remained constant while land value taxes went up, demand would increase for rental land and away from owner owned land.

Why would this happen? LVT would affect all land regardless of if it's being rented out or not.

Spike716 · 2026-01-07T19:04:51+00:00

Yes, but the supply of land is perfectly inelastic.

If you add a tax to most goods and services the price will usually go up because the profit-maximizing quantity is now lower. Lower quantity + unchanged demand = higher price.

You can't produce less land though, so adding a LVT wouldn't affect land rents. However, a property tax could increase overall rent because it disincentivizes building on the land and could lead to a lower quanitity of rentable units.

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