The Paul Street Boys. I still remember it fondly!

I’m ok if they are used to extend surveillance and actively prevent a problem. For example in a shop to block shoplifters or in a swimming pool to spot someone drowning.

I find them a lazy and often useless solution in most of the other cases. It’s nice to have the video of a robbery or a car accident to investigate later, but I don’t want the robbery or the accident to happen in the first place. Imagine the case of an homicide: it’s cool to catch the killer, but the victim remains dead. Cameras are a cheap “solution” to have the illusion of control.

Plus: the whole face recognition thing is going to be a huge problem in the future in the less-democratic countries.

Just one: don’t panic, it happens.

More than one in a short time or you find droppings: you may have an infestation and you need pest control as soon as possible.

In doubt, start with a spray or traps.

For a large portion of the market, the price of the rent is now decided by law.

That’s an admirable initiative!

On paper it is. It is not working well though.

basic necessities (rent, utilities, public transport) should have a set price.

I’m not an economist, but I really doubt that it would work. When there was a shock on the gas market, the electric companies raised the prices and that pushed down the consumption, but with fixed prices the electric companies would have needed taxpayer’s money to integrate the losses (or cut costs like jobs). A new player would struggle to enter in the market if it was unable to lower the prices and build a base of customers. On the other side, a company would not be able to offer premium services at higher costs.

It seems nice on paper, but the effects may be negative for everyone.

I don’t really see why pushing for renovations without the incentives should have the same effect as setting rents by law,

It has a similar effect. If you force the renovations, you eat the profits and people may leave the business exactly as it happened when they fixed the prices. The effect may be a shortage of affordable houses.

I don’t really think many people would be forced to sell because they can’t either renovate or pay the fees for failing to do so - but of course the law could be written to demand unreasonable renovations and impose unreasonable fees… it’s a quantitative problem, not one of principle.

The case of The Netherlands is basically like that. You own an apartment that used to be rented out for €1.200, but with the new rules the price dropped to €800. You are not forced to do anything, but doing the math your conclusion could be that it’s better to sell and invest somewhere else.

Regarding the renovations, last thing I’ve heard is that by 2030 (or maybe 2035, I don’t remember now) it will be illegal to rent places below a certain energy class (a relatively low one, but it will require at least modern windows). Those expenses will trigger the reasoning I described above. Some people will sell and there will be less affordable houses, other people will renovate and increase the rents to recover the costs so, again, less affordable houses.

Hence the need for fees/taxes to dis-incentivize not doing that.

The result of that would be a transfer of the cost to the tenant at least until a large part of the house stock is affected.

If more people need to sell buildings, prices go down and buildings become affordable for people who previously couldn’t afford them. This is not considered in your reasoning.

This is exactly the bet that the Netherlands did introducing heavy regulations on rentals. For a large portion of the market, the price of the rent is now decided by law. While the market still needs to settle (it’s a recent change and now they are touching the taxation) there are the first negative effects: more cheap houses for sale, less cheap houses for rent, the price of the houses grew anyway, and the shortage of cheap houses pushed up the rents in the upper segment of the market. Moreover, developers stopped building cheap houses because it’s less convenient now.

Basically, cheap houses for rent may be cheaper, but they are fewer so people end in the free segment of the market where they pay more. Who lost were the tenants, not the landlords.

I would really feel for that poor-poor landlord who would no longer be able to live off the rent they are paid every month

Did I ever say landlords are a bunch of rich bastards? This is twice you put words into my mouth.

Mind your tone if you don’t want to be misunderstood.

would you be so kind as to enlighten me with your wisdom?

Sure. Real world example:

• Apartment rented for €700/month.
• Tax on the rent around 30%.
• Property tax €1.500.
• Expenses from the building about €1.500/year.
• Fees for the agency 5%/year.

Total: €2.880/year. To that, subtract the fees for the agency and occasional maintenance that can range from €100 to a few thousands per year. Yes, it’s possible to go negative.

A minimal renovation to improve the energy class (like changing the windows) is in the €10-15.000 range that means that no landlord will find it economically reasonable. A lack of renovation of rented properties means that who lives in them (including poor working class) will have higher energy bills and lower quality overall. When an apartment becomes too old to be rented out, it is sold and typically stops to be rented out limiting the number of affordable homes for the low income class.

So, before complaining because a tax cut may help “poor-poor landlords”, remember that without them there will be no renovations (so 0 taxes instead of a positive discounted amount) and low income families will not see improvements in their places very easily.

Using legit regular banks would be your best bet to avoid scams or being accused of fiscal crimes.

It depends on where the billionaire’s and your bank account are located (some restrictions may apply), but a normal bank transfer works perfectly for any amount. Of course for large amounts it’s better to contact the banks first because it may reject a large deposit if it comes out of the blue.

For donations there will be taxes and some bureaucracy, the anti money laundering will be triggered, but it’s nothing impossible to handle.

Building a filesystem essentially means linking a directory of filenames to physical blocks and handling CRUD operations. It’s not that hard. The hard part comes when you go beyond the basics to build something efficient with useful features. For example, fast access, journaling and fragmentation are all challenging topics. You can try without messing with the kernel by creating an in-memory filesystem (essentially a block of RAM) and playing with the I/O.

I’m afraid you know little about the real estate business, and are blinded by the assumption that landlords are all just rich bastards.

Your PS is correct if you, like Elon Musk, are able to live borrowing money using your wealth as a collateral. For most of wealthy people that’s impossible.

I get it: you would bind the tax discount to individual wealth.

What if I’d tell you that a minimal renovation would eat the earnings from a rented house for 5-10 years and be therefore completely anti economic for the landlord?

You can tax as usual and have some renovations, or tax less and have more renovations.

I would not hold my breath considering that GH was already supposed to die in 2018 and we are still predicting its imminent end in 2025.

Wrong assumption 👋

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Damn, you got me! Now I have to rethink my whole plan to undermine Spotify’s revenues one comment a time!

I never said it wasn’t a successful service. I’m only genuinely surprised that so many people pay for what I personally consider marginal improvements. Also thanks for being the usual internet jerk ready to snap at any comment he doesn’t like: now I have an idea of who may pay for that subscription.

What bubble?

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