ChuckFrank

That's not doubling down on Capitalism. That's doubling down on a jackpot economy. The two things are very different.

How so? I don't see any diminishing returns. Pay a living wage for good work, forever.

Capitalism see labor as a cost, and though outsourcing, overseaing, and automation attempts to drive that cost to as close to zero as possible. The fundamental problem is that people derive great benefit and satisfaction from their labor, their participation in production, and the knowledge of a job well done. Capitalism, over a long time, will always deny people that satisfaction. Young people can feel that truth in their everyday. It's Capitalism's fundamental, and intrinsic flaw. Work matters, and it is not a cost, it is a benefit.

I agree.

I mentioned it above, but have you looked into the MGTOW community? They feel the same way.

Have you looked into the MGTOW community? You sound just like them. They are smart guys, but they get a lot of shit because they push back against those exact social expectations that you talk about.

This should be Open Sourced. And adaptable for different site conditions.

Otherwise, it's just theoretical.

This from the man, Lynn, who said that we'd be making houses the same way we make shoes. He's a techno carpet bagger. He takes the most current and promising technologies, from shoe makers, to car makers, and then rails at the building establishment for not taking that technology and his lead seriously. When in fact, his actual works are bonded kids toys. And that's the problem with these guys, they talk big game, but when it comes to implementation, they barely elicit a shrug.

Structural steel was adopted quickly once it was clear that it was superior to all other existing construction technologies. The same thing would be true with glue-this and glue-that, if it turned out the be true. It's not. It's the architectural equivalent of vapor-ware.

Sorry Herr Lynn, we are still waiting for your shoe houses.

I work next to their brand new WeLive on Mission in SF. And from where I sit, I see trouble.

1. Similar models are popping up all over the city, including the much more sophisticated Panoramic just up a block. Beds starting at $1500. Yes Beds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LI0tqVmGtI

2. They built the Panoramic in the time it took WeLive to do their interior improvements. And when they were working on it, it was just a skeleton crew. The whole time I was thinking ... how are they financing the building? This is insane.

3. WeLive has a main floor common space, where they've had two? events since they opened. Both were modestly attended, but certainly had a college dorm feel to it. Not anything anyone over 30 would be interested in.

4. There appears to be value-added services in the common area, a cafe, a juice bar, etc, but I hardly see it used.

5. They continue to putter around the building, putting a whole new set of scaffolding up, taking it down, putting it up again, doing some painting, taking the taping down, putting it up again, and I wonder ... what on earth are they doing? They had a year to get this right, what's the hold up.

6. Compared to the huge number of apartments going in across the street -- 1900? WeLive is a ghost town.

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-planners-back...

(ps. the Trinity has major problems going in to this as well. I see it as a huge bungle for the Planners. But I am waiting to see what the Market Street retail looks like. If it's anything like the Mission Street side, it'll keep that side of Market dead.)

So, in short, WeLive is some capital intensive problems, that a lot of smart people are trying to solve, just up the block and across the street, and nothing I see puts WeLive ahead of these guys.

Especially when landlords stop leasing to them at .5x, so that they can turn around and dormify the building and get 2x for it. Not with Panorama and Trinity right there.

True.

true.

Can Yahoo get its money back from its current CEO? Or did they really pay someone to run this ship aground?

At the time when they were looking, I wrote Jerry an open letter about what I thought could be done. Sure I'm a nobody, but none of the ideas were even, through the chances of good business, implemented. Instead there was a fancy rebranding, and a targeting of women's lifestyle channels. And now this.

I'm glad we have a competitive economy, or else I could imagine Yahoo becoming the service that sucked, but that everyone still used.

37% of what? equal what? did I miss the suggested number? I see that it's dependent on the number of people that you are considering, from 10 to 100, but that leaves a difference of between 4 and 40 people to date. How do we know how many people, total, we would date, when we are just starting?

I get the feeling that this article only has half the math.

As an aside, I've heard that the optimum number for this equation is in fact 12. So 12 is the 38%. But this article doesn't confirm that - as far as I can tell.

I bring stats, and sources to refute baseless statements, and I get down voted. Any ideology that requires false statistics will fail.

In single income families, the income is shared, the household or domestic partners work in not uncompensated. And as to expenditures, the domestic partner, primarily the female childrearer is in charge of a huge percentage of that income, for everything from vehicle purchases, vacations, furniture, clothes, etc.

If I'm wrong, show proof.

With women controlling between 80 and 95 percent of household incomes, and being responsible for 85 percent of all brand purchases, worldwide, women do not do uncompensated labour. This fallacy needs to be brought to an end.

(source she-conomy.com)

Strange that BlahBlah is made to seem so hot when ZimRide had to convert to Lyft to make any headway. I wonder if ZimRide overstepped their transition, or if BlahBlah executed better, or if Lyft is simply a richer pot.

What is interesting is that Lyft chases the taxis and BlahBlah chases the trains, or the other way around, depending on your loyalties.

Still, as the old adage goes, lots of people do have the same ideas around the same time. Winners are much more unique than that.

Big advances kill houses. That's the way it's been, and that's the way it's going to be. But in an increasing winner take-all, buyers won't care. They need the win and they'll lose their shirts trying to get it.

The success of The Windup Girl killed Night Shade Books, because it upped their advances in an attempt to replicate its success.

You can see the same thing happening with the studio summer blockbusters. Everyone appears to be voting to bet-it-all, with losses almost crushing the studios.

I'm not sure what the moral here is except, don't do it. Don't buy into it. Big bets don't make big wins. Wins make wins. And fate is fickle as to where they come from.

I and a lot of others have been talking about the dispute resolution processes and how they shift power to corporations over and above all sectors of government. In the domain name space they are called Rapid Dispute Resolution Processes (DRRPs) and around, in particular, intellectual property, they are fraught with danger. They allow corporations to overrule national laws around environment, climate, working conditions, you name it.

I hope we can slow this train down enough so that people can understand what is on the table here. At almost 6 thousand pages there are also a lot of devils in the details.

Politically, from my own personal experience, most infrastructure projects are sold to the public with a much lower price tag than what they know to be the actual costs, because people are incredibly price sensitive when approving important infrastructure projects.

What we need is a true accounting of the cost of things, and the political willingness to do them. This way we don't have to worry about politicians 'underbidding' their projects just to get enough popular support. It becomes a rigged game when that happens, where the public approves projects that everyone on the project side knows will costs several times that early estimate.

If we want the bridges and the tunnels and the shared transportation, sanitation, etc. We need to understand that these projects cost money, and we need to be able to have t true accounting of them, not one that is politically convenient.

Otherwise, we'll just have this, with 2x and 3x being common run ups, ad infinitum.

Good numbers, on all projects, would help us better allocate our future dollars. Big numbers shouldn't kill meaningful and worthwhile projects. Bad ideas should.

The Swiss seem to be able to do it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel

On time and on budget.

They can just use the Beer Store or LCBO model. Done.

There's an oversupply of Cannabis in the west coast. Done.

Next?

You are smart. Good thinking. The best solutions, like this, should be available to us all.

Easier to sell, borrower is, to the best of their knowledge, complete and not taking on any new loans.

Plus, as mentioned above, it sets the interest rate for all the loans. I'm not sure how often at a more or less favorable rate, and if that's part of the incentive, to consolidate lower interest loans into a large higher interest one. I could definitely see them pushing this at different times, which was also something that came up in the article, that available repayment options were withheld when they were favorable to the banks and servicers.

It's the easiest way to justify the accelerating administrators incomes. And they say they have to do it to maintain the competitive advantage, over other schools that are doing the exact same thing.

See UC Davis, where they are building a huge new Art Museum, to compete with the one being built right now in Berkeley. Here's the thing, UC Davis is NOT an art school. It's an ag school and should be focusing its resources on that. But no, building an art museum justifies the salaries of all the people that are involved.

Any link? This is news to me.

Again, great point.

I love that people understand the long con. It's almost one of the defining characteristics of the current system. Sure everywhere you look, we promised you greater success, but not at the moment when you signed, then it was up to you to believe it. A classic long con move.

And if you dispute it, you still have to pay the penalty first before you can pay any of the outstanding loan amount, allowing them to hold the funds and determine, with your funds in their hands, whether or now the dispute is valid. Imagine 9 out of 10 times what that will result in.

Once you've lost control of the money, you've lost the dispute. The money is the only leverage you have in the dispute.

It's certainly not explicit fraud, but it is a type of social scam, which becomes a trap, and yes, I think the solution is to turn down the loans, and force the landlords to deal with lower rents, because, as you say, now they have tremendous price gouging incentives. And while it's bad in Berkeley, it's really bad in Westwood, where the UCLAers live.

Low rates compared to what? Wall Street banks?

Lenient default terms compared to what?

Government assistance for the borrowers in what form?

And stacked against the borrowers due to the rapacious secondary market servicers. More money can be made off late fee and penalties than off simply servicing the loans, so they do everything in their power to make that the case, including misdirecting funds, misstating loan amounts, requiring burdensome documentation, while at the same time setting penalties on accounts.

Absolutely, and tuition could also vary accordingly. It would happen naturally if the system was allowed to self correct.