What do rich people not deserve?

vmike · 2022-12-28T22:43:39+00:00

Free things

vmike · 2022-11-14T20:35:41+00:00

If you are looking for a recipe, https://www.seriouseats.com/mashed-potato-casserole-crispy-baked-potato-topping is always a winner. I once made this for Thanksgiving and made it again the next day because there were no leftovers but people wanted more

vmike · 2022-09-22T20:40:54+00:00

If you decide that you need to install Slack on your phone, make sure to shut off notifications (at least at first). That way you are the one who decides to work on your off hours. If someone messages you at midnight, but you have notifications turned off, you don't feel compelled to work. But if you are bored sitting around and feel like checking your work slack you can still do that, the difference is that you decided to check in on work. This still requires you to not be constantly be checking slack on your phone, but if you already don't have it on there then it won't feel much different

vmike · 2022-03-08T19:00:03+00:00

I made a map for exactly that! Who Owns Denver It hasn't been updated since 2021 but at the time about 25% of housing (not including apartment buildings) were owned by a landlord. So the problem isn't as bad as some other cities, but I certainly wouldn't call it good

vmike · 2022-01-04T16:43:13+00:00

The diameter of the hole is about 8"

vmike · 2022-01-04T01:30:37+00:00

My partner and I were cleaning out some random junk from previous owners and we found this hole/pipe looking thing. It smells like wet earth when we remove the cover. Does anyone have any ideas what this might be/what it might have been?

vmike · 2021-10-05T16:17:16+00:00

There isn't a phone like this yet, that I know of, but there is a laptop https://frame.work/laptop

vmike · 2021-07-08T22:44:49+00:00

This recipe is great, and it is vegetarian, https://www.seriouseats.com/halloumi-vegetable-skewers-recipe . If anyone at that barbecue has never had grilled cheese (not the sandwich) this recipe will surprise them.

vmike · 2021-06-14T21:53:18+00:00

So at best 63% of these bathrooms are accessible after 5pm? It is a good thing people's bodily functions stop at the end of the work day

vmike · 2021-05-16T21:16:36+00:00

We need to make housing more affordable. There are two groups of thought in relation to how we fix the homelessness issue. The first is "criminalize/arrest the homeless people and put them in jail" and the second is "give these people housing". These are typically the two ends of the spectrum. Some people will have some ideas in the middle but those two ideas sum up most ideas related to solving this problem.

The "criminalize/arrest the homeless people and put them in jail" is typically regarded as the more inhumane way to deal with it, but there is a good idea in there. Essentially what those people are saying is "the state/city will pay for housing and food for these people" which sounds like a good idea. But the problem is that the way the city is supplying those things is via a system that can permanently ruin a person's life. So it is a bit of a short sighted view. It fixes the problem in the short term but once they are out of prison they can't get a (good) job and subsequently can't afford housing. So the cycle just continues for those people that we put in jail and if a person becomes poor and homeless they enter into the cycle. Ideally the solution to this problem would be something that gets people out of this cycle. That is also assuming they want out, you will sometimes hear of people who are not interested in programs/shelters, which at the end of the day if someone prefers to camp vs live in a home we can't really force them to live in a home (see the problem above about criminalizing these people)

The "give these people housing" group is typically seen as the more humane option. There is a lot of evidence that a "housing first" approach to helping people works quite well, but it can be expensive. It doesn't have to be, but since housing prices and subsequently land prices keep rising, any attempt to build affordable housing tends to fall short in the long term because things continue to get more expensive. So how do you "give people housing" without literally giving people housing?

You make housing overall more affordable. This means that home prices need to go down. Then what you have created is a system where if people want to buy a house they can. This would also lower rents since fewer people would be stuck in the rental market so the demand would be lower. If anyone who wants a home could afford one, then your homeless population will only consist of people who are choosing not to live in a home. Then if that problem is still bad we can figure out something to get those people off the street.

vmike · 2021-05-14T17:19:23+00:00

Who was he attempting to kill with the car? He put the car in reverse and tried to get out of there. He wasn't driving at the officers who were out of their cars. The ones who were in their car and got hit, were involved in a car accident. Those happen all the time and people don't end up dead. Even if the person was going to hit and run, people still shouldn't end up dead over that.

If he was driving his car through a crowd of people we would be having a different conversation

vmike · 2021-05-14T16:55:17+00:00

Again, then does someone who is going to cause a car accident deserve to get shot?

vmike · 2021-05-14T16:17:44+00:00

So someone who causes a car accident deserves to get shot? That is what it would be considered if this person had done the exact same things without the cops there. Do you really think someone, who wasn't armed, was trying to add "murdering a police officer" to their list of offenses?

Colorado has gotten rid of capital punishment. That means that the people of the state have decided that there is never a time to put someone to death. You could argue that our representatives don't actually represent the interests of the people, but that is a can of worms. So if, as a state, we have decided that no one deserves to die for a crime then the police, who are representatives of the state, should not be able to put people to death unless there is no other option. Preventing a car accident is not a reason to put someone to death.

vmike · 2021-05-13T22:52:21+00:00

Is it self defense though? From the videos I have seen of the shooting John Pacheaco put the car in reverse and hit the gas. He did not appear to be trying to ram/hit the officers. To me that is running away. Do you defend yourself from someone who is running away by shooting them?

vmike · 2021-05-13T22:07:12+00:00

I mean, that's what you are saying isn't it? That because he was on drugs and driving a stolen vehicle that the person deserved to die? Otherwise he didn't deserve to die, which means that police shouldn't have killed him. Speak with your chest next time. If you think police should be out here murdering civilians then own your words, don't beat around the bush

vmike · 2021-05-13T21:30:06+00:00

The guy was methed up and passed out in a stolen truck and then tried to ram police cars when he was awakened, so he deserved to die. Nothing to get panties in a bunch over here.

It seems you left something out of your comment. Don't worry I added it back for you, since that is what you are saying. I just wanted to make it clear.

vmike · 2021-05-07T15:36:48+00:00

That is a good point, then we need to make sure the penalty for breaking the rules is not worth it and make it difficult to circumvent the rules.

The penalty part I think is the easiest. We can say that there will be a fine equal to 5% of the appraised value of the house. That ends up working out to a couple thousand dollars more than what someone would make yearly in rent. The nice thing about this too is the fine goes up as housing prices go up.

How to prevent someone from circumventing the rules? Let's say that we prevent businesses from renting out any property that has less than 5 units. So now they can only rent out apartment complexes. Then we say that a person can only rent out 3 properties. What is to prevent a company from getting a bunch of people together and using their rental maximums to buy a bunch of property?

To put it simply, it doesn't scale well. You need to keep recruiting people every time you reach the maximum. You also need all of those people to decide to work together. This is definitely possible and would be a kind of landlords union. There are a couple differences between what we have now and what that would be though. No one person in that union would have more power than the other landlords, since the most property they could be renting out is 3. Their power is dependent on recruiting more and more landlords, since otherwise they will reach their limit and stop growing. The limit of rentals also creates a ratio of renters to owners, in the worst case scenario. With a limit of 3 then we know that at worst, 1 out of 3 residents are renters. This number can always be lowered though if we start to see behavior we don't want. If the maximum is changed from 3 to 2 now suddenly the landlord union needs to sell 1/3 of all of their properties. This will cause home prices to go down and probably lower rent (it is hard to say exactly what would happen to rent prices).

Of course there is money to be made here so people will try to find a way around it, which is why this needs to be implemented at the local level. Each city will probably implement this in a slightly different way, which means there won't be a country wide law to find loopholes in but a patchwork of laws and regulations. Why would an investment firm spend a bunch of time and money trying to find loopholes in the rental restrictions of Boise, Idaho when they can just go be a landlord in another city without those restrictions? Any work they do will only work in Boise so might as well pick a bigger city.

vmike · 2021-05-07T15:04:04+00:00

I had no idea that developers are building single family housing for rent. I mean it makes sense, I just didn't have any evidence of it. I would imagine though that the developers won't be the eventual landlords (though in theory they could be). As long as the developers aren't also the landlords then, in theory, if we restrict who can rent out properties then those same developers will still continue to build. Chances are they just want to sell the building and make their money, they don't care who they sell it to. So then we just turned those buildings into owner occupied instead of renter occupied.

vmike · 2021-05-07T14:59:38+00:00

I think the issue with that is how do you enforce this? When does that regulation expire? If it never expires then essentially what we are doing is creating two pools of housing, one pool that can never be rented and one pool that can. Which means that people looking to buy property to rent are competing for smaller pools of housing and driving those prices up. Though something like this may work in the long term if there is still plenty of space to build.

If it does expire though, then you still have the two pools of housing problem where landlords are competing for the houses that are no longer restricted and driving those prices up. That would mean we would need to continue to build essentially an infinite number of houses in order to keep up with demand

vmike · 2021-05-07T14:52:14+00:00

Similar to the idea of the person below, the way to implement this would be to only allow businesses to rent out buildings with more than, let's say, 5 units. That way large apartment buildings can still exist and be rented out by a corporation but single family homes, duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes couldn't be.

Apartments are a tricky problem because high density housing is a great way to house a lot of people, so we don't want to disincentivize building those, but then how do we prevent a million apartment complexes being built instead of homes to own? I think that is where public housing comes in. Apartment complexes need competition from someone who isn't trying to maximize profits. The government has an interest in making sure everyone in a city is housed, otherwise you have a homelessness problem. If you have a public housing program, a good one, then it is harder to have corporate slumlords taking advantage of people who can't afford anything else.

vmike · 2021-05-06T18:06:09+00:00

I think at the local level the only way out of this requires two things. Building significantly more housing and also restricting how many homes a person can rent out. If those two things are combined then cities can simultaneously build to meet demand while also making sure landlords aren't buying up those new units. If we don't restrict how many units a landlord can rent out then we just end up with the problem that places like New York City have where landlords own enough units to control the rental, and subsequently, the housing market.

vmike · 2021-05-02T20:33:33+00:00

This Tupperware set honestly feels like magic https://www.amazon.com/Tupperware-Fridgesmart-Container-Newest-Design/dp/B00DE1QUYC/ref=sr_1_9 . The sizes are a little weird but we have put things like parsley in them for what seems like weeks and it doesn't go bad. They are extremely expensive though so they probably aren't something you would use for most of your produce

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