llamaimperative

Share evidence of the non-textbook fraud then.

Or is this belief just formed form whole cloth with literally no evidence, just vibes?

If both sides do it, then they should be able to publish better evidence than Stacey Abrams’ “ties” to Power Forward Communities.

The fact that all the DOGE and DOGE-adjacent claims of fraud have been so shamefully weak has actually reduced my confidence that the alleged behavior is actually widespread at all.

“Ties to Stacey Abrams”, by the way, is that she is an advisor to one of the five organizations that founded Power Forward Communities…

I.e. that a community organizer was involved in a community organization…

Have you ever ordered commercial merchandise? You tend to order a number far below infinite, and if your goods sell faster than you’re able to get a new order, it is “sold out.”

And yeah, presumably they didn’t do a giant run for this, nor should they have?

It definitely does mitigate the risk (pretty substantially in my experience!)

I agree with your concerns but don't feel like we're at that tipping point to be honest, relative to the value of credit being generally easy to get for the legitimately creditworthy.

> Already the US credit score makes people obsessed about credit, and getting credit cards and loans to improve/game their credit scores with their future mortgage in mind

I've encountered very, very few people doing this to an inappropriate degree (obviously yes you should consistently demonstrate creditworthiness, that's not gaming though). Anecdotally, the people I see doing this are actually seriously not creditworthy. A whole lot of "you bought 3 cars and fucked your score, here's how to dig your way out." But like... the evidence actually shows you can't be trusted with credit!

I don't disagree with any of your big picture concerns about the system and the possible edge cases or distortions of priorities. I just haven't seen evidence those are huge problems relative to the value of the system.

Not the Model S, which was the "early lead" that they squandered

Those seem totally distinct?

For example, credit card points are a zero sum game. Credit scores are not. Everyone could be creditworthy, but many are not, and it’s highly beneficial to the entire system to be able to identify which group a person fits into (including for the person who isn’t creditworthy!)

It’s excellent for its price point! Not so much for the $75-$120k Tesla price tag.

Tesla would be dead in the water actually because its products are shit compared to what’s available today.

They had a massive lead where a sub-Corolla quality build could sell for $60k+ because EV, and squandered it.

The question is whether it destroys the incentive to produce the work. That is the entire point of copyright and patent law.

LLMs do indeed significantly reduce the incentive to produce original work.

Excellent counterpoint!

Meh, I just shared the fact that for the same scale of project outside of Burlington, anyone can literally 10x their budget for construction costs based solely on land price differences.

Of course the counterpoint is: a single stalled project with extremely unique economics (built for students and on land that was already owned)

So who knows!

I didn’t say it’s the full picture.

UVM’s internal politics are, in fact, accounted for in the price of land.

Yes, for that particular plot of land, which they already owned, the land price is not what prevented construction. That particular project’s failure is not a major driving force of the price of living in Burlington.

The fact that 2 acres costs $3MM is a major driving force.

> Zillow list price for vacant land doesn't consider all the vacant lots held by people who aren't building for various reasons nor does it consider the surrounding suburbs etc. or the land uvm holds but doesn't develop (who they gonna sell to? they have more money than anybody). there are a lot more variables than just zillow!

What? Yes it does. That's how prices work. If UVM sold all of their land, prices would go down, but they aren't selling all of their land, so the prices are higher.

I never said "all land is being used productively." I said "land prices are the primary source of cost in high COL areas." One contributor to high land prices are all the things you mention: people withholding their unused land from the market.

No, there are not more variables than just the sale price. The price of land is the price of land, and it factors in all the variables you mentioned.

No, those are real numbers spot-checked from Zillow. I was on my phone and, ya know, it's an Internet argument, so they're definitely ballparked, but they are from real actual land sales inside Burlington and then a few miles outside of Burlington.

I suppose the delta is surprising to you?

It's expensive because it's productive. The marginal productivity of living/working in Burlington means the market can sustain higher costs, ergo the costs go up.

This is more problematic than every other good because 1) they cannot add more land inside Burlington and 2) the land doesn’t actually have higher carrying costs by virtue of being more expensive (unlike roughly every other asset).

So 1) yes construction costs are a huge, huge factor (especially right now), but 2) land is about $1.5MM/ac in Burlington VT. A few miles outside of it, land is about $150,000/ac.

Consider a 2 acre project:

$3MM in land costs inside Burlington

$300,000 in land costs right outside Burlington

What projects would could you do on the $300,000 lot that you can't possible do on the $3MM? Basically all of them!

Regarding the UVM project: they should sell that parking lot to bring the $1.5MM/ac costs closer to $300k/ac so people can build stuff instead of a place to store asphalt :)

I didn't say anything about "people living solely on UBI"

Your claim is, I guess, that people supplementing wages with UBI will move to poorer locations, because they are less tied to their jobs, and then the poorest of the poor (those who already live in bottom-percentile COL locations) will... move to even poorer locations?

Seems like a wacky argument relative to: "people will do what they literally always do with new marginal income, which is move to nicer areas, and since everyone is doing it simultaneously without new supply, prices will go up and nobody will improve their lifestyle."

What location is this?

There's a big gulf between "eventually all marginal productivity increases are eaten by rising land rent" and "laws of supply and demand don't apply."

You have no reason to believe people with new marginal income from UBI would move to lower COL areas. We have strong reason to believe they'd spend that money to move toward high COL areas. Evidence for this is the fact that people, when they have money, choose to live in high COL areas.

And before that software rent never went up?

Taking the U and the B out of UBI? They should pick a different name.

All rents are set by the market's willingness and ability to pay.

No matter whether you're the 40th percentile (a vacancy-sensitive landlord) on price or the 90th (a vacancy-insensitive landlord), the dollar value of the underlying distribution is defined by the market's willingness and ability to pay. If that goes up, the entire distribution moves to the right.

This is correct, it does apply to all forms of wage increases. I wouldn't say "instantly," but yes that's why cities are perpetually expensive despite constantly increasing productivity. They are highly productive ergo they have high wages ergo they can sustain high rents ergo they have high rents ergo they "are expensive" compared to adjacent markets.

Mentioned above but I'll put it here too for other readers: the reason rent is unique is that in high COL areas, it's driven primarily by the price of land which is has zero supply elasticity. Higher prices induce supply in all other forms of goods and services.

Well it's not quite arbitrary because it will induce supply in other goods and services. Rent in high COL areas is driven primarily by land rent (i.e. cost of land, regardless of whether that land is actually rented to the building on top of it or not), which has zero supply elasticity.

And then the other portion of rent (the building itself) is also pretty darn supply-inelastic as well, though not entirely.

Very obviously correct^

Are we talking about one person’s income going up, or knowably every single person’s income going up by a known amount?

When minimum wage rises, yes rents rise.

When high paying employers come to an area, yes rents rise.

These are a lot more random/diffuse in the market than UBI is, but they still cause the same effect.

Can you please explain why rents go up at all?

Okay then you tell me: why do rents go up at all?

It’s not “arbitrary.” It’s raising rents for the same reason rents are ever raised: people’s willingness/ability to pay has gone up.

That can happen because of a new subway station, a hot new employer nearby, or simply because money appeared in their pockets.

If money were no object, more people would live in high COL areas, not fewer. You know this is true because you see it in the prices.

To prevent rent increases you’d need people all to have $n appeared in their pockets and to have a pact not to then spend $n to upgrade their living arrangements. The cruel irony of course being if everyone attempts to upgrade, then no one achieves an upgrade but they do achieve spending their new money!

UBI won't fix much for a far more trivial and mechanistic reason: adding $1,000/mo to everyone's income merely gives landlords the ability to charge ($1,000*n bedrooms)/mo more in rent.