Yes, that is how it would go if rule of law had worked.

Yes, less homes available for rent increased their price. Regular supply and demand - total demand over both categories didn’t change, while supply shifted from one to the other.

And everybody here commenting on this post are Haves. Maybe not on the scale that some others are, but I know I certainly didn’t have to walk several hours today just to get clean drinkable water.

The system of haves extracting wealth from have nots is not one where you are either 100% one or 100% the other. If you rent a house from BlackRock, you likely get access to clean water. You are a have not, since you do not have a house, and money is extracted from you by BlackRock because they do have a house (many of them). But the homeless man around the corner is not in the same position as you, because he has no income. In that sense you are both a have not (a house) and a have (a job). It is more a linear scale between the have everything and the have nothing. Corruption is a different example of the same system: the have (power) extracts money from the have not (power). Sometimes it looks as if the richest is always the leech, but it can also be the corrupt employee instigating the extraction.

But I can, and that’s because my government tilts the scales in my favor.

It’s not only individual haves extracting from individual have nots, but also groups of the one making profit of the group of the other. I am not a fan of this system, but large part of it is our (flawed) human nature. If you look at animals they tend to share among a group (a herd, a family etc) but not share among others of the same species. It’s a free-for-all and we are in dire need of a system that protects the weakest instead of rewarding the strongest.

If you’re into ETF’s first thing that matters is who manages that fund, BlackRock’s ETFs are branded as iShares - avoid those of you do not want to give BlackRock any money. European alternatives are among others Amundi (French) Xtrackers / DWS (German), L&G (UK). My suggestion is look up the ETFs you have on https://www.justetf.com/ and look at what companies/countries/sectors are in that fund.

ETFs are best as a long-term investment, so I’d argue it’s fair to not only look at how much cash you might get out of them but also what kind of companies you ‘support’ through them.

Personally my experience is that generative chat bots with web search are quite good at giving answers to your questions though. Not saying you should take their advice, but if you ask for example ‘what are good ETFs without BlackRock and without AI?’ you might get results that are worth checking out.

Basically, the state would buy the houses and rent them out.

We used to have this (local governments building houses and renting them out), privatisation forced these organizations to only cater to the lowest incomes. Which honestsly is really great for them, the problem i described before is mainly one of the younger middle-class (finished education but not yet in a position to buy a home). Iirc Denmark and Austria have social housing for a much larger group. But it does seem to come down to money: is the upperclass willing to subsidise housing of the classes below them.

For me it helps speaking other languages, because once you do it no longer matter whether each sound has it’s own letter. Every language, afaik, has a unique sound while all languages I know share the Latin alphabet which really makes it a lot easier to learn that language. I don’t think life would improve if each sound had an exclusive letter.

It’s pronouncing the letter ö

Lucky me, I access Lemmy almost exclusively with my smartphone with touchscreen ;)

But what if i want a keese sandwick? Or are we keeping the k and just ditcing ch?

I nominate ö

I’m not against but please let me just type th instead of having to copy paste that everytime.

In the Netherlands they raised tax on owning houses that you don’t live in yourself, a lot of affordable houses flooded the market. Which was great for everyone wanting to buy a house, but meant there were less homes available to rent. So while some people had it easier to find a house, others had it harder. The lessen basically everyone knows already: if there are not enough houses to live in, you need to build more houses. I totally agree with you, but if after that change there still aren’t enough homes the problem will remain.

Some still do

Founder of craigslist is showing why making it in life alone does not lead to billionaire status. If you get rich but have values, you reach a point of feeling rich enough.

But if you take it literally it can be any head you see right, because you’re not seeing it within the scope of the idiom but the scope of your direct surrounding? Otherwise nvm, i’m not a native speaker so whatever.

I heard something like OpenAI (or Anthropic?) tweaked one of their AI’s to do well on a certain benchmark test and while they did have the highest score they couldn’t publish the model because it used like $20,000 in electricity alone to make sure it’s answer was correct.

Actually i think in English you say you hit the nail on the head, so if you take it literally you can pick any head you like. In Dutch you’d say you hit a nail on it’s head which is much clearer to someone who takes it literally.

There is two truths to this: not 100% of the company exchanged hands. The part that hasn’t changed hands only lost perceived value, no money has moved. The part that is exchanging hands is real people losing and winning real money.

So every investor who had faith in SpaceX as a central supporting column of the USAs future in space

It’s not like they’re investing to help SpaceX or the country or whoever, they’re just as self-interested as wall street and SpaceX executives. Sucks for them they got conned, but there were plenty of warning signs it was overvalued.

Is it your taste or your imagination that is so limited?