If there is ever an economic crisis that results in housing prices dropping, the banks get bailed out.

For me the biggest reason to buy is simply quality of life. On paper, sure, renting comes with ease of mind. You don’t have to do maintenance and the landlord takes care of everything. However, the responsible landlord is the personal finance analog of the physicist’s spherical cow. Landlords are in the business to make a buck. They never do any maintenance unless absolutely forced to do so by either the law or market conditions. If the city isn’t going to condemn the property, and as long as they can keep it rented, they don’t give a damn. However, when something at the landlord’s house needs fixing, it’s undoubtedly fixed quickly and properly.

I like owning a house because it ensures that I can actually have a pleasant place to live. Landlords have no incentive so keep their properties actually livable rather than just inhabitatable.

That’s not how fractional banking works. You’re confusing the economic concept of money supply with outright fraud.

They don’t “create” money. Someone deposits $100. They take $80 or $90 of that and use it to make loans. This increases the overall supply of money in the economy. But there’s no printing press in the back office turning out notes. And they don’t do the same thing digitally. The only bank that’s allowed to literally poof money into existence is the Federal Reserve.

What’s your loan:value ratio on your mortgage?

No. That isn’t how people lived. You call it “alms,” but alms had a specific definition. Giving alms was giving to poor beggars in the street. Taking care of your elders was not alms. It was just something you were culturally and often legally expected to do. The Ten Commandments include “honor thy father and mother.” In modern times, this tends to be read as “respect your elders.” But in premodern times, this really meant, “take care of your parents when they’re old.” It was such a societal obligation that it was a literal commandment from God.

What really tended to happen was that children would take over family businesses, and then in turn support their parents when they could no longer work. Are you a farmer? You have kids. All of them help on the farm when they’re young, but most move out when they get married. One of your kids works on the farm into adulthood and keeps doing so on the understanding they’ll inherit the farm. You and they work on the farm until you’re too old to work. Then they take over, and you keep living on the farm in your elder years. In these final years, you help out with whatever chores or childcare for your grandkids that you can manage.

Family businesses were the main form of retirement savings. You passed your farm, your shop, your workshop, etc to your kids. Then you lived with them in your final years. Agreeing to take care of you was a prerequisite to taking over the business.

Sure. But it’s much funnier to imagine an assassin going to great lengths to plot a murder, when if they had just done absolutely nothing, the result would be exactly the same.

They do this by not labeling it a murder unless they find the murderer and enough evidence.

See that makes too much sense. A crazier theory would be more fun!

I know! It turns out that Japanese people are just really, really hard to kill. They’re ultra durable. Must be the food or something. The murder rate is low because it’s just incredibly physically difficult to kill a Japanese person with violence. In fact, Japan didn’t actually have an army in WW2. It was just one Japanese guy that went nuts and started rampaging across the Western Pacific. It took the atomic bomb to finally stop him.

Why else did we build the bomb? To flatten cities? No. That’s just what it took to stop the bastard!

I’m actually curious if anyone has any info on South Korea. I know about the fan death belief. And I also know of South Korea’s history with dictatorship. But in real life, have the two ever crossed? Has fan death ever actually been used to cover up a political murder?

I imagine many reporters wouldn’t be too eager to dig too deeply into a story like this. If the hypothetical murderers can get to a high profile judge, who has enough power to literally sentence former national leaders? If you can get through that person’s security, what hope does a reporter have of staying safe if they uncover something they shouldn’t?

Sane theory: the judge took his own life from the stretch.

Reasonably suspicious theory: he was murdered.

Comedy of errors theory: the suicide note is entirely genuine and sincer. The judge did intend to kill himself. However, he was murdered before he could carry it out!

See the article or provide other suggestions before sea-lioning.

Simple. Just have the court rule that the court is constitutionally MANDATED to mine Bitcoin on the government’s dime! 😂

They say they don’t want to replace workers. They say they just want to use AI to make existing workers more efficient. Very well; let’s hold them to their word.

To me, the real tragedy is that a shared identity really could be forged between these two groups. In another world, I can imagine a beautiful fusion between the Israelis and Palestinians, like two trees growing around one another.

So much of the conflict in the West is viewed from a Biblical lens. Israel represents the return of the Jews to their ancestral homeland! But really what present-day Israel represents is the spiritual descendants of the Biblical Israel ruling over and occupying the genetic descendants of the Biblical Israel.

Through this thread, a common identity could be forged. That kind of shared identity is the kind of thing that national identities could be forged from. Instead of “Israel” being defined as “the Jewish homeland.” “Israel” could be defined as “the home of the genetic and spiritual descendants of ancient Israel.” This conflict need not always be “the Jews vs the Palestinians.” It could simply be one type of Israeli and another type of Israeli. Some claim that name by blood. Some claim that name by religion. But both are united in one nation.

The nation of Israel has no right to exist, same as all other nations.

I don’t know about this as a blanket declaration. I’m no moral philosopher, but if I can imagine Trump saying this in a speech announcing the annexation of Canada, then there’s probably something morally wrong with.

I wonder what the legal basis for this is? Is there a constitutional provision that allows banning of parties that seek to end democracy?

If so, I wonder how that would work for someone that wanted to end electoral democracy, but not for any malevolent purpose? For example, instead advocated for a different or non-electoral democratic system, but still with noble intentions? For instance, under the German system, could a party lawfully argue to a system based on sortition?

In sortition, public offices are assigned by lottery, as we handle jury selection today. It doesn’t guarantee the most competent leader will be elected, but elections also clearly don’t select for the most competent leader. The main advantage of sortition is that, unlike elections, it doesn’t select for the most power-hungry and psychopathic members of society. It’s long been said that no one who actually wants power should be given it, and sortition is a way of solving that problem.

Could someone in Germany advocate for moving to sortition, or would that violate some constitutional provision meant to protect electoral democracy?

You think they have no employees at all? BYD had over five times the employees than Ford! And subsidies? In the US, we bailed out our auto sector during the Great Recession and heavily subsidize our auto sector via tariffs. Plus no car plant had been built in a generation without heavy state and local tax breaks and subsidies.

Seriously. What are you smoking? Cause I want some.

“They’re just heavily subsidized, not actually beating us!!”

Pure cope.

All auto makers are heavily subsidized, US automakers most of all.

And yet, the birth rate has only declined further.