HN has plenty of neo nazi propaganda. This comment section itself has plenty. It also has a pretty large base of far right wing members who actively participate in rings to upvote right wing content while flagging articles and downvoting comments that don't match their philosophy.
Take a look at the current state of this post. Most of the comments around Adams' bigotry are downvoted, and plenty of pretty wildly right-wing comments are upvoted.
> Cities that have almost completely banned Airbnb (e.g.: NYC) have not seen any improvement on affordability. What's next?
New York, as expensive as it is, is still considerably cheaper than cities like SF. Part of this is that they build more, part of it is that they have a usable train system, which allows people to live more spread out across the city, but part of it as well, is that they've banned airbnb. It would be ideal to also see empty unit taxes on units >$10m (inflation adjusted). It would also be good to see high taxes on sales of units >$10m (inflation adjusted).
> Minimum contract length of 5 years.
This is good, assuming it's one sided (the tenant can choose to move out, but the landlord can't break the lease). People need stability in housing more than landlords need to be able to end leases.
> Maximum increase of rental per year regulated to 2/3% (even during high inflation years)
Sure, it should be generally tied to inflation, but what other investment exists where you're guaranteed yearly increases? Why are people so adamant that landlords need to be guaranteed minimal increases in their profits?
Housing is a natural monopoly, and allowing businesses to maximize their profits, unchecked, isn't capitalism.
> It can take years to evict a non-paying tenant. If there are children in the apartment, it's even harder.
This is often brought out as a massive negative of regulations, but let's be honest, this is an outlier. Without tenant protections, however, it's common for landlords to evict tenants to increase rents. Even with protections, landlords still take illegal measures to try to evict tenants to increase rents, like doing constant construction at night, or refusing to do maintenance.
This is basically the same complaint about welfare programs. We have to accept some percentage of fraud to serve the greater good.
It's completely normal for most businesses to take a risk based approach to fraud, to maximize profits. Retail businesses, for example, will try to maximize their credit card auth rates, even though that may increase their fraud rate, if the increases in auth rate outweigh the cost of the fraud.
A stable society is worth a small percentage of fraud.
> If the landlord is not a person but a company, regulation is even harder.
Good. I don't see how this is a downside.
> Maximum prices set by the local government, seasonal contracts banned, and even room rentals regulated.
Again, this is good. If there's a housing crunch, then residents should be prioritized over tourists.
We do agree. The desired objective of the regulations I mentioned is good. It's a good thing to have some stability as a renter, to not be kicked out and on the streets if you have children and cannot pay the rent, or that yearly rent increases are small enough that renters don't feel asfixiated.
However, we should not only consider the stated objective of the law but the real consequences of them. My point is, housing and rents are quite regulated in Spain. More regulation is being added every year as it serves the political and electoral objectives of our leaders, yet the situation is getting worse. Regulation detached from practical realities will fail to reach the desired objectives.
The rest of the market was allowed to maximally increase rent to the point this person can't afford rent anywhere except for where they live, and the problem is rent control (which NYC has relatively little of)?
Why not complain about the high-rises full of empty apartments bought by oligarchs for money laundering? Why not complain about the tens of thousands of airbnb units?
NYC is actually quite good in terms of building supply, but the demand is also extremely high. Some of that demand is completely artificial due to money laundering and short-term rentals, and without fixing those issues, how can we expect people to live without limiting maximally increasing rents?
The problem is he has such a sweet deal, he needs to use the apartment even though he would rather someone else have the apartment. I don't think the goal of rent control is to trap people in a city so they can't leave.
There aren't really that many high rises full of empty apartments bought by oligarchs for money laundering in NY. And even when there are - how much land does it actually take up? At the Central Park Tower for example, 180 oligarchs can launder their money in a 200'x200' plot of land. You'll walk by it in less than a minute without really clocking it.
> 180 oligarchs can launder their money in a 200'x200'
The vertical size of that, however, could be used to house at least a thousand (or more) people.
This is mostly a manhattan problem, but there's a quite large volume of the market there (due to the valuations) that are ultra-high-end, which tends to be vacant units used for money laundering. Same issue in a lot of the larger cities.
Luxury taxes (on both the sale, and ongoing yearly costs) can help reduce the problem as well as provide tax income for the cities. It's easily a win/win.
> There are often no hotel rooms with 3+ beds and kitchenette
There are very few hotels with kitchenettes. Most people don't cook (and don't want to cook) on vacation. Most hotels also don't cater to the low-income, and folks who cook on travel tend to be low-income. There's business rentals that offer this, but they're often not bookable for short-terms (usually 2+ weeks minimum).
Most hotels can accommodate 5+ people in a room, if you call them. Though no rooms (except suites) will have more than 2 beds, hotels will provide cots. In general, though, rooms aren't expected to host any more than that, and if you have more people than that, the expectation is that you'd book more than one room. Plenty of hotels have adjoining rooms for this purpose.
Again, though, hotels aren't really targeting low-income folks. Airbnbs can be cheaper in this regard, but most rentals on Airbnb charge by the person, so in some cases can be as expensive or more expensive than getting 2 rooms.
In either case, I think the issue is your needs are uncommon for vacation travel.
It's not about low-income people. Those needs are actually quite common among upper-middle class American vacation travelers with children so I assume you don't know many of them. Regardless of expense it's a huge hassle to drag multiple small children to a restaurant for three meals per day for a week. For at least some meals it ends up just being a lot easier to heat up something in the hotel room.
I am well aware that hotels will provide cots. Cots are torture. No one wants to sleep on a hotel cot. And even if hotels have adjoining rooms they often won't guarantee to give them to you when you make a reservation. It makes no sense at all.
Two adults with two children is doable with 2 beds. That's higher than the average number of children for a family in the US at this point. I know plenty of people with children (and I have children myself).
Airbnb probably serves you quite well, but you're a bit of a niche market for the travel industry, so it makes sense why your need isn't generally addressed. Hotels have to maximize their space, and the vast majority of people don't need kitchenettes.
> What does this mean or are you just communist coding your speech?
What they were saying is simply common sense. If an airbnb host is buying a local unit and renting it out for high prices to tourists, they're going to buy it for a higher price than someone who's simply there to live, and that's stealing the opportunity for someone to live somewhere within their means.
You don't need to be a communist to understand that it's bad for everyone to prioritize entertainment travel over the ability to afford housing in the city that you live.
But that then applies to any transaction where someone pays higher price. Gentrification? Subdivision? Commercial development? Rezoning? Auction? There's always a chance someone could've lived there for less.
I'd argue Airbnb owner is going to pay far more in taxes than resident.
You must be an American, because plenty of trains exist to bring people to nature elsewhere. You know, when you drive a car to a nature place, you put it into a parking lot, then you are no longer in the car, right? Same works for trains.
Man I love this silly debate. The original comment just wanted to travel 500 miles to "somewhere" and most instances of "somewhere" that people travel to could be accessed by train.
Also no one has said that no one is allowed to drive ever again anywhere. I'm trying to be generous but the victim complex is crazy.
What social networks are these? If they aren't complying with the law, they can (and should be) blocked.
You're also missing what folks keep saying: the network effect isn't there. It needs to be popular enough that there's social pressure to be there. If it's that large, it's going to be large enough to be on the radar and then be under enforcement.
Slippery-slope arguments, for the most part, exist to fear monger folks away from change, even when the argument itself is non-sensical.
well for one: I find it humorous how this law has an exception for Roblox. That really speaks to how up to date lawmakers are on the situation (or worse: how easy it was for Roblox to pay them off). I don't see how it's a slippery slope when the corruption is before our very eyes.
Each company was required to put a statement to the eSafety commission explaining why they should be exempt from the law, even GitHub. The eSafety commission also have an open monitoring period where they'll repeal the law if it isn't working as intended, and will release research.
I don't think it's just corruption, there are people who are trying to do the right thing, even if flawed.
YouTube didn’t make it through because of how it actively pushes alpha male crap at teenage boys. The Tate brothers and others who push the whole toxic masculinity, man are superior, men must protect women even from themselves, to be a man you must be able to fight, men are owed a position of power and women should be subservient, etc. It was a very strong feature in the early debate, and something educators put in as part of their submission as being an extremely noticeable shift for young men, and those same young men quite consistently stating the same content they viewed.
YouTube’s tendency to push extreme rabbit holes and funnel towards extremism and conservatism in young men is what led to them being included.
"YouTube is targeted for a ban because it shows children conservative viewpoints" seems somehow simultaneously an obvious free speech violation and a proper own-goal for the conservatives pushing these rules.
Anyone can find specific things to dispute about Tate's views, but "traditional gender roles exist for a reason" is obviously not the position associated with the left.
You're putting Tate's views in an overly good light with the way you represent it. "traditional gender roles exist for a reason" is the very lightest possible way you can phrase his viewpoint.
He hates women, to the point of trafficking them. He's a predator and he spreads hate, and it reflects poorly on conservatives if they feel that represents their political views.
There is a generic flaw in humanity that controversy brings popularity. The result is that if you take the core of something popular (e.g. the political beliefs of half the population) and then sprinkle some rage bait on top of it, you'll have an audience. This is the business model for the likes of Tate.
The problem is, it's also an asymmetric weapon when you try to ban that unevenly. If you censor Tate but not the likes of Kendi who use the same tricks, you're saying that it's fine for one side to play dirty but not the other, and that's how you get people mad. Which plays right into the hands of the demagogues.
So all you have to do is achieve perfect balance and censor only the bad things from both sides, right? Except that that's one of the things humans are incapable of actually doing, because of the intensely powerful incentive to censor the things you don't like more than the things you do, if anyone holds that power.
Which is why we have free speech. Because it's better to let every idiot flap their trap than to let anyone else decide who can't. And if you don't like what someone is saying, maybe try refuting it with arguments instead of trying to silence them.
> There is a generic flaw in humanity that controversy brings popularity.
Not necessarily. You need to have that controversy shown to enough people of similar mindsets, which requires a platform, or for them to somehow grow their local audience, which was difficult for folks on the fringe to do in the past, but is easy now that social media promotes the fringe.
> So all you have to do is achieve perfect balance and censor only the bad things from both sides, right?
No. Regulate social media that drives views to these people. They're able to exist because social media uses algorithms based on engagement, and these people game the engagement system to slowly radicalize them. If you remove the pipeline, you also lower the popularity of these people.
Sure, some of this is word of mouth, but it's mostly not. Social media actively encouraging people to view this content.
> Because it's better to let every idiot flap their trap than to let anyone else decide who can't.
Yes, but free speech doesn't include the right to be platformed. Depending on the country, the definition of free speech also differs, and I have a feeling you're only considering this from the US point of view.
Slippery slope arguments exist because the act of governing has the tendency to converge on ratchet effects. It never bloody loosens, do every damn inch has to be treated with maximal resistance.
Sure, except that for the most part conservatives seem to be happy to watch their rights slide right down a hill when conservatives are in charge. See the entirety of US politics at this point.
Society already puts limits on children's access to media, their access to addictive substances, advertising that's allowed to be shown to them, etc. The internet, and especially social media, is a gap in the existing limits. This isn't a slippery slope, it's adding a missing set of compliance.
Social media is: media, addictive, shows unregulated advertising to them, is psychologically harmful, and their algorithms have been radicalizing them.
Regulation is absolutely needed here. I'd rather see tight regulation, rather than being blocked completely, but social media companies have been highly resistant to that. For example, they shouldn't be allowed to show advertising, they shouldn't be able to do tracking, they shouldn't be allowed to have an algorithm led feed, notifications should be mostly off by default (and any notification that is shown to primarily exist to make you open the app should be disallowed).
The problem with changes like that is that they destroy the network's engagement and remove their profit, and for the most part, it's changes adults would like to see as well. Making those changes for some countries laws would push other countries to introduce similar laws and not limit them to children.
It's a bad point though, because those are fringe and don't have network effects that would pressure most children to join them. You become a social outcast if you don't participate in <popular social media of the day>, but the kids participating on fringe sites are likely already outcasts.
We should be aiming to remove purposely addictive things from our children's lives, and all currently popular social media platforms are addiction machines.
> Padding ties up capital, it reduces credibility, it delays deployment, it adds costs through delay.
Well done timelines are a negotiation between the stakeholders and engineers. The stakeholders need something done for the business, the engineers give a timeline. If that timeline works for everyone, great. If it doesn't, then the stakeholders will ask if it can be done in a faster time.
A timeline that lands on time, or early, is good. The point of timelines is that teams outside of engineering are resourcing their projects based on your timelines. They may have made outside commitments to customers, they may be lining up marketing, they may have embargoed PR, it may be delivered by someone at a conference, etc.
A project running late can be catastrophic. Bad customer relations, wasted marketing spend, pulling back stories from PR, delays for dependent teams, etc.
You pad to make sure your timelines aren't overly optimistic, because we're all bad at estimating, and it's possible our dependencies are too. By padding, when it comes time to negotiate for shorter timelines, you also have some wiggle room.
Bureaucratic environments tend to be larger companies and they care about schedule slips, because they have more teams being impacted, and those teams are handling larger numbers of overall projects. Schedule slips can lead to cascading failures.
But because these stores exist, they lead to grocery stores no longer existing, because they eat the majority of the profit from grocery stores. This forces people to shop at the dollar stores because it's the only thing nearby. The dollar store model increases prices, reduces consumer choice, and makes us less healthy.
I haven't seen that happen, maybe it does in some places.
In my hometown, we had a grocery, but it closed in the earl 90s. They didn't get another on until the lat 00s. It was open a few years, had bare shelves most of the time and convenience store level prices when they did have something. In the late 10s, a Dollar General opened... so far, it has remained open, has much better prices than the previous attempts, and is generally much better stocked. The town hasn't grown in that time. But Dollar General is existing where no one had managed to survive before.
On particular items, yes. As a whole, no. They have a lot of loss leaders, then rely on being generally overpriced to make that up. Grocery stores also rely on this, but at a larger scale, and when their higher margins dry up, they go out of business.
Dollar stores target grocery stores margin products, to drive them out of business.
Take a look at the current state of this post. Most of the comments around Adams' bigotry are downvoted, and plenty of pretty wildly right-wing comments are upvoted.
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