sanity_is_maddening
I can't speak for every place on earth, but where I live in the south of Portugal, that is very much the problem. And affordable long term rent has been destroyed in all of Europe by Airbnb and similar initiatives. And no, this is not a scapegoat theory. All you have to do is access housing registrations and match against citizenship registered to addresses in the same area and then you start to see the problem. There's a lot more houses than people that have their permanent address registered to the same area. So then the problem can't be housing in itself. When one starts to look closer we start to notice a lot of titles to the same people and the same last names as we all would expect. The house to person ratio is quite disproportionate in its distribution. I can tell you that this has been exposed time and time again over time, but since 2008 that it has indeed gotten worse and more so exponentially every year since then.
The problem in just simply building more housing is that the same thing will happen to those new homes. They'll just be absorbed into this same phenomenon of asset flipping and market speculation in which even rent, not just owning property reaches prices beyond what locals can afford with long term rent even becoming entirely unavailable due to Airbnb and other initiatives alike.
That's why the governments have to intervene. Especially at a local level. But if a rewiring of the general population doesn't occur, it will just be lobbied back to the same as before. As it has happened. Because what is simply enforced is not learned. And this is what you are referring to when you speak to the public aversion to government intervention. If not understood and learned, what is then witnessed is the same rope pull of do and undo between governmental administrations, that wears off and alienates the public.
But yes, sometimes the problem in itself can be an increase of population density that exploded beyond the local availability of houses. And then new housing development is required or people will have to choose (more like forced without an option) to relocate.
That is why I said "the problem is not a lack of housing in itself necessarily". In which I meant it as not always the source of the problem. I didn't say the lack of housing in itself is NEVER the problem.
There are many contributors to this issue.
Environmental changes and war are also intertwined as they both lead to resource depletion, and become part of the same feedback loop that plays a part in the whole of the Metacrisis. In which both will cause mass migrations. And mass migrations will always cause a disparity between demand and availability in housing, which leads to more inflation and more conflicts over resources, which in turn leads to more mass migrations and on and on and on... This is "systems thinking" and the general public has not caught up to the descent we're in yet. Or is in denial and refusing to engage in the face of its enormity.
Most problems that are detected by most people are real and feeding into one another. What I said is true and what you said is true and anyone who doubts that is possible is not engaging with the complexity of the world as it is.
There is nothing wrong with weeds. Though there is something wrong with Monocultures that have no place for them and in turn produce nutrient deficient sustenance.
Permaculture and syntropic farming have for decades now integrated them without any use of pesticides. Insuring soil nutrition and nutrient dense foods in the process.
They keep trying to find better ways to do the wrong thing. Yes, this would be better than the pesticide use, but always worse than the alternatives I just mentioned.
And if anyone has the question "is it scalable?" The answer is yes. But it depends...
Because I would still say that given that more than half of the world's population lives in cities, we need to match the vertical axis of them when we grow their required sustenance. To stack up people vertically and then still spread their consumption horizontally it's how we get a problem of space ratio as we have.
But even in this form of vertical indoor farming, this should still be moved into the cities or as close to them as possible with the Permaculture philosophy incorporated in them. Vertical Indoor Farming also creates resiliency against weather events and potential pests given that the growing cultivation is isolated inside. All while able to create the appropriate conditions to grow anything all year around. This would help in releasing more surface land from the eroding practices of monocultures and their required plowing and harvesting cycle which destroys the integrity of the soil and leads to erosion. Allowing these spaces to be free from these harming practices while integrating practices of reforestation would be indeed a great development in the right direction.
Not to mention that alongside all this, Precision Fermentation is also an absolute requirement to feed a growing population into the future.
I keep saying for a while that Precision Fermentation is the future. Because if it isn't, that probably means there isn't one.
Using the lowest trophic level possible to grow our sustenance directly is the only way to ensure the least destruction possible. Which ensures the most environmental and ethical efficacy. As there should never be anything to distinguish between them in the first place.
What?? Pretty soon you're gonna be suggesting that there are better ways to transport people around than cars and that we could build better public transportation infrastructure with the tax payers money so that the same tax payers can afford mobility for a lot less while saving time in getting around and polluting a lot less the atmosphere that allows them to breath!
What's this? Do you want to make sense? We wouldn't want to start making sense now, would we?
...
Jokes aside now, when it comes to housing, the problem is not a lack of housing in itself necessarily. The crucial part of the problem resides in property hoarding by the wealthy and upper middle-class as long term investments in the form of assets to flip, all while they still obtain revenue in renting them to the highest bidder. Airbnb and similar initiatives destroyed affordable rent all around the world. This to say, that a lot of people in the unprivileged categories didn't also mind screwing their peers to get ahead. This is what the capitalist system does. It re-enforces sociopathic behaviour in people through them valuing the monetary tokens more than the lives of those around them and the very world in which they have to inhabit. This is what Elizabeth Magie tried to explain the world when she created "The Landlord's Game". It has been explained and demonstrated as a predicted model for a very long time. And we all lose in the end. Always.
Saying that the government needs to interfere and create measures to prevent the furthering of this crisis is incomplete without acknowledgement of the required rewiring of the general public to stave off the centuries old social conditioning of appealing to the worst in human condition.
The default setting of a common citizen is not to contribute to a life shared by all that live around them and in turn benefit from the same efforts from others. It is instead to try and survive them all and and not needing the slightest from them. Which is never true, never possible but nevertheless the reason why we are always in this mess. And the reason why we all lose, and even those who lose the least, they still have to inhabit a world that would be better if this wasn't true.
Individuality also explains the housing crisis in the sense that more and more people have the desire to live alone. And therefore more houses are required. Which in a world like the one we have, that desire is perfectly understandable but in itself also a reinforcement of the loop that causes it.
It's a mess.
Have an acount on both and use them to verify each other.
I have a Proton mail account. While I'm ready to scold them for stop posting on Mastodon while still posting you know where!!... I think the stupid tweet that Andy Yen posted got way too out of hand. It was one tweet. You should find the tweet and read it yourself. It's just a dig at the "Left" in the vein of "wait, since when is a Republican defending small tech from Big Tech more than the Left?" It was tone deaf, and dumb and calls caution to the fact that this may be another dumb tech Bro who likes to tweet irresponsibly just as much as the idiots we know too well. But it wasn't any form of endorsement at all. Just a tone deaf attempt to create social pressure for the supposed "Left" to do what it is supposed to do. And oh boy, did the tone deaf tweet backfire.
But anyway, I belive, like many people here do, that one shouldn't put all of one's efforts to just one bet. That is how we got Google in the first place. You should also have a Tuta Mail as well, especially if you seem inclined to and don't have an alternative mail to Proton. I'm always ready to jump at any time that I find something that displeases me. And that includes Proton.
There's also personal preferences at play. What works really well for one person, might not for another.
We should try to spread our choice amongst all the villagers. Do not replace your entire Google suite for the Proton one. That's how we get another powerful conglomerate.
I don't like making generalisations...
But...
I agree.
There is absolutely an observable correlation there. And mentioning exceptions will only prove the rule.
Yup. It does, doesn't it?
I know people with a lot of money to their name who buy second hand just to get around, and people with not much that end up with barely a cent to spare because they're paying a loan to own a car they couldn't really afford. Go figure.
"It takes a special type of person"- as you said.
Also, my comment wasn't a dig at people for liking or enjoying cars at all. It's about specific ones and how they're being driven around... we see them around right?
It's the same with motorcycles to.
The problem is never the vehicles themselves, obviously, it's the idiots that get drawn to them and ruin what others might enjoy in them as well.
Thank you for pointing that out to me because I really missed that.
That does make blurring the license plate hilariously futile. Well, unless people need to go get their ears checked or cleaned like me.
Thanks again. You gave me something to laugh and something to worry about.
Cheers.
Why is it always the kind of person you think it's gonna be? I mean, always. One can match the level of inconsiderable idiocy from car models alone.
Imagine knowing you're wrong and persist and insist this much in continuing to do the wrong thing in front of everyone, so that everyone can behold the thing that everyone knows that is wrong for you to be doing, and you still continue to do the wrong thing that you know that everyone knows that you know that is wrong to do. No? Hurts your brain, doesn't it?
Now... Why is his license plate blurred in the video? Does this level of inconsiderate behaviour deserve that level of consideration in return?
I'm not sure if the OP is trying to expose this article as an idiotic thing or not, but I can't take this nothingness of an article seriously.
I'm 40 and I'm sure that I "gave" this supposed "stare" to both older and younger people several times this month alone. And we're barely past midway through it.
Yes, it is smug and rude and most of the times uncalled for. But I don't remember a time when this wasn't around. I've given this look and received it since I'm able to remember existing. It's not a generational feature, it's not even a cultural one, as I've met people from all ages and places that do this my whole life.
And it's not that the young are more rude, is that everyone is more rude now.
We all know that social exchanges took a turn for the worst since algorithmic social media really started to take off circa 2010, and it only got worse when everyone got locked with it as their only form of social exchange during covid lockdowns. This is not a GenZ problem, nor a U.S. problem, this is a problem for most people in most places now.
Blaming this on the young when they had no saying in establishing this mess and when they were obviously never in charge of any decisions that led us here is the typical nonsense to expect from the most idiotic reasoning of the establishment and legacy media.
"Oh, you know who we should blame for the shitty world we have? The people who were never in charge of anything and never had any saying in a single thing whatsoever. That's who!!"
I've witnessed this nonsense too many times my entire life and I don't know how people fall for something so easy to recognize as inconceivable. And not with just the youth. It's always stupid to assign blame to the people with the least available agency in the room, or in the world.
And I hope you all catch it and stop it everytime someone is trying this nonsense in front of you.
This article deserves the very "stare" that is trying to attribute to GenZ. If they do indeed do it more than others, articles like this only re-enforce that they should keep doing it. Because it very much earns that reaction.
Uh, and what is this we're on right now?
Not to mention Mastodon, Pixelfed federating with Mastodon already, Friendica, Peertube etc...
The powers that be don't like the Fediverse. It's not possible to control and averts direct monetization. They know that if it keeps growing, it keeps reverting the internet back to its initial potential that was stolen from all of us. They don't like that.
Remember when the internet was a good thing and not the gated hell that it is? I do. If you don't, they'd like to keep it that way.
They don't want the general population to know that the internet can be from everybody to everybody. Then people might ask for tax funding to go to server maintenance to be cheaper or even better free to anyone who would want to use it. Like a highway? Yes? Remember when that was one of the analogies for the internet? The building of new highways that would connect us all?
"We can tax fund highways instead of gates and tolls" - they can hear it already. And oh they don't like that. Not one bit.
They want American Social Media, but you know, European. The same but ours.
But if it mimics theirs it will be just as terrible, regardless of where it comes from. Look at how the U.S. is imploding. Does it matter the social media is "theirs"?
"But the E.U. has better regulations and will do a better job."
Do we want the folks that brought us a hit like Troika to be in charge of the entirety of the platforms in which their direct citizens can express themselves? Do we want to give them direct influence to crush dissidence? Have we learn nothing?
Yes, I prefer the E.U to the U.S. The E.U. works better, because the countries that are part of it can actually check its influence. Well, when they can. But the true reason why the E.U. really works is because we have worse things to compare it to. And that is a terrible way to build a future.
We have to imagine a better version of the world if we're to build it. And right now, we are in a sliver of the internet that shows that it is indeed possible. Regardless of odds and issues, it is possible.