embedded machine learning research engineer - georgist - urbanist - environmentalist

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • Last year, my sister had her driver’s license suspended because of a medical condition, but she’s still perfectly capable of riding a bike. But the problem is our societal assumption of cars-for-all-whether-you-like-it-or-not means her neighborhood street design is extremely hostile to her getting around by bike safely, and it’s way too sprawling and car-dependent to walk anywhere. There’s also no public transit within a reasonable walking distance.

    So I might ask you: Do you believe people like my sister deserve the same right to mobility as the rest of us? If so, why support a system that make life actively hostile to her and people like her? You act as if disabilities are a monolith, and that cars are only ever their saviors, as if cars are never the thing making life actively more difficult for many people.









  • This is exactly what I don’t understand about people who want peace in Ukraine as soon as possible and at all costs: capitulation for the sake of short-term peace endangers long-term peace.

    If we globally set the precedent that you can invade whomever you want and win just because you have nukes, that makes for a vastly more dangerous world. Every country with nukes will suddenly be more willing to go all imperialist, and all the countries without nukes will want to have them as a guarantee against invasion. And I don’t know about y’all, but a world with way more nukes in way more hands is way more dangerous.

    Plus, Putin has shown he’ll keep on invading neighbors so long as he can get away with it. Delivering a crushing defeat to Russia and specifically Putin is the only way to achieve a more lasting peace.




  • Hmmm, market rate is determined by price fixing so the people living there have to make more so they can live there and then the rent is price fixed up, and so on, and so on, and so on…

    Look at the chart I showed in my last comment again. Clearly landlords in Minneapolis aren’t raising rents in perpetuity. Gee, could that be because they abolished single-family zoning in 2018, and they’re already seeing a stabilized rental market despite being a large, desirable, high-QoL city? So much for your assertion that it “takes 30 years to see results”.

    Raising taxes

    My goal isn’t raising taxes. My goal is to replace bad taxes like sales, income, and property taxes with good taxes like land value taxes, carbon taxes (and other taxes on negative externalities), and severance taxes.

    all of your points are meaningless to me because you’re not operating in good faith.

    My guy, who do you think I am? Do you think all YIMBYs are actually just a secret cabal of developers rubbing our greedy little YIMBY hands together to demolish your historic gas stations and parking lots?

    I’m a fresh-out-of-grad-school engineer who rents an apartment in a major city. I’ve seen the power of YIMBYism first hand, as I was able to negotiate down the landlord on rent before signing the lease, because there was a credible threat of me leaving and finding somewhere else cheaper. The reason why? My city, Montreal, is the most affordable major city in North America, with some of the lowest barriers to density, and extensive neighborhoods of “missing middle” housing (e.g., townhouses, plexes, low- and mid-rise apartments). All despite being a very desirable, very high-QoL city. Turns out having options gives you actual negotiating power against your landlord.

    If you have all the fear of homelessness and your landlord has no fear of vacancy, then your landlord has all the power over you. If you have plenty of options, and your landlord has a credible fear of vacancy, you will have actual negotiating power. NIMBY policies only serve to empower landlords and weaken tenants.

    Unlike you, I want to actually grant tenants (myself included) more negotiating power against their landlords by granting them more choices in housing.

    Further, do you legitimately believe the current crony capitalist system has produced enough housing in America and Canada? Or is it possible vested interests have captured local governments to artificially limit supply and thus limit competition, and that NIMBYs like you are the pawns to protect their speculative investments?