I was having trouble understanding what you meant because you didn’t think about the obvious implications of millions of properties being unloaded in a short time.

If the number of landlords drastically increases, which would happen when you have mass property sales, then there’s more competition, and rent goes down.

Or, depending on your setup, the government seizes some of the properties that people refuse to sell, and turns them into public housing. This also drives rent down.

So then, what happens? Oh yeah, both buyers and renters win. Was that clear enough? Perhaps I should write in all caps.

I feel that you missed one basic aspect of economics. Competition is one reason prices might go up. There are other reasons, which are relevant here. Monopolies, collusion, price fixing, goods that people can’t live without, speculation, those are also reasons that prices go up.

In the housing market, it’s not fair, it’s not free, this isn’t a basic supply and demand situation.

I think we agree, with the caveat that you need to be careful when stating a position like yours, because it’s often used as an excuse to do nothing at all.

Is there anything specific to open source about this question? If you’re a software developer, you might have to decide whether you want to work for a shady company, or whether you want your smaller company to contract with a larger shady company. Those are I think harder decisions to make, because it could be your job on the line.

In the open source world, at least you don’t know for sure what people are going to do with your work.

But we do know that if a company is looking to be evil, it’s probably going to find a way, whether or not it uses your library.

I like how they already frame it as him taking the bait. Because they’re desperate to have an excuse, and they want to blame the moderator or his opponent for tricking him into being an a******.

They know that he will, they know that he’ll say ridiculous things, and they’re trying to come up with as many preemptions strategies as they can.

I don’t think your definition of middle class is what most people use when they talk about it.

This is really obvious if you think about people remarking on the death of the middle class. They’re not saying that the mean or the median doesn’t exist. They are saying that families like the Simpsons are much less common than they used to be.

What a joke of a headline. That’s not what making ends meet means. They are wealthy, by definition they can afford to make ends meet.

Historically that’s not true. We have had disastrous governments and Supreme Courts in the past, and yet the country somehow survived. It’s just that they do so much damage while they’re around.

And just because things held together in the past is no guarantee that they will hold together in the future.

Rather than saying that the system has failed us, I think it’s more accurate to say that the system has been failing the vast majority of Americans for many years.

Since long ago, my friend. Citizens United was a landmark in my opinion, although there are probably older rulings that showed how little they care about basic functionality in a democracy.

My interpretation of the article is that it’s a question of timing. If you offer me money in order to hook you up, that’s a bribe. But if I hook you up and later you give me money in thanks, that’s not a bribe.

Obviously both of them are corrupt. But apparently this law can only target the former.

Flatpak is one extra step. If apt or rpm already has what you want, which is true for many new users, why would we push them towards scary click thru action?

Wait a second. You think that if large-scale landlords have to sell property, that will magically make it harder for other people to buy it? Now now. You can do better.

I’m down with anything. The point is that your rent is not high because Bob has two houses. It’s because the real estate speculators own five thousand.

The sarcasm might have been lost on the author. One can never be too sure these days. :-)

What a terrible article. The solution is throwing more subsidies? Of course it’s not! The solution is making it illegal to own more than a few properties. It really is that easy.

Isn’t this why we’d expect new users to use a built-in package manager? Because it avoids this exact problem?

Pushing someone new to Linux to use Flatpak? Shame on you.

To hell with Utah.

There’s only a reasonable expectation of privacy in private. As the courts have ruled many times, it’s something is visible from the street or from the air, it’s probably not private.

They’re looking after wealthy supporters. Rich folk, not middle class folk.