For what it's worth, banana peels were a serious matter too
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/can-you-slip-banana-pe...
105 karma · joined November 12, 2019
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/can-you-slip-banana-pe...
A) All housing is owned by individuals. Some people own the housing they live in, and pay the maintenance for their housing. Some people are landlords who own more housing than they need and collect rent, while other people don’t own their housing and need to pay that rent. To move up the “housing/economic ladder” you need to save up for a downpayment on a house, and then get a giant (for many people, life-defining) mortgage to do it, and many people never will be able to do it. This is roughly the world we (at least America, I know Germany is different).
B) All housing is owned by publicly traded REITs. Some people own an amount of REIT shares equal to the housing they consume (rented from the same RIETs) , such that (Dividends from REITs - Rent To REITs) is equivalent to the maintenance costs they would have paid. The “Landlords” make more from dividends than the rent they pay, and the “renters” own no equity. To move up the “housing/economic ladder” people simply buy shares of the REITs. Building up ‘your fair share’ of equity is a equally life-defining economic task, and many people never will be able to do it.
If the wealth inequality in worlds A,B are the same, is world B actually any worse? What’s the difference between spending 50% of your income to rent a shitty apartment owned by a slumlord vs. spending 50% of your income renting from the REIT, which is in turn owned by the “equity slumlord”? If you rent your car, but own “one cars worth” of shares in Zipcar, are you worse off than if you own your car? Conversely, “The sharing economy” is just a "rent-a-center" economy if only a few people own the things being "shared".
What is the economy of this world? Who owns the apartment that the “Narrator” is living in? The government? The “Generalized REITs” of world (B)? Mysteriously benevolent rich people? They say “our city” but what does The Narrator do(or own) to merit living in he city more than the people “in the empty and abandoned houses in small 19th century villages”
Am I missing something here or does the author dodge all of this?
I'm ~30 years old, which puts me at a ~.2% (?) chance of dying if I get it. On the other hand, I've spent 1% of my remaining life under lockdown so far, and expect to spend an approximately equal amount before a vaccine. At what point is it not worth it?
I've thought a little about this in terms Quality-Adjusted-Life-Years, let's say "Covid lockdown" gives a discount factor of half (maybe should be less, but been feeling kind of shitty recently). In these terms, I've already spent 2.5X more QALY from lockdown than the Micromorts I'd get from Covid and expect to spend another 2.5X more before this is all over.
Other factors are A) I’m in a pod with older family members, so I'd have to exit the pod. B) If I got sloppier, I’d increase the chance that somebody else got it, which feels like a dick move. C) The long term health effects are not known, and even if I live it could fuck me up for life (this could be worked into the QALY).
How are other people dealing with this?