groutexpectatio

in this thread: people who don't understand economics

should be perfectly fine to hold extreme opinions. Bayesian distributions suggests that extreme opinions will be unpopular, and will not find much evidence from the real world, and will be less likely to gain mass following.

No one's saying he can't get profit and put it back into the system, as long as you _pay your taxes_. But if you're not paying your taxes, and you're resorting to the private sector, then you're really just squirreling away your wealth to do what you see is fit. We've seen how that works in 501c4s, with dark money and PACs. We've seen how that worked with Carnegie-style redistribution at the expense of working class labor. And we don't want to see that anymore. If you're going to invest the fruit of your success into a next idea, thats fine, but don't forget that real people, the public, made you that wealthy, and give back to them, the way they want it.

geoengineering as a concept operates with a High Modernist ideology, and overwhelming confidence in humanity's ability to reshape the natural world, society, the State, in a desired fashion. i think relying on policy and markets and the state makes sense public works cleanups, removing tax breaks and subsidies for industries that produce externalities, restructuring labor into environmentally-minded industries and sectors....but i'm ultimately skeptical of a technological fix, sprinkling oceans with lead or growing mass plankton farms or whatnot. sounds like snake oil to me.

Infrastructure is not permanent. 'We' don't build roads and bridges to last, governments might run a cost-benefit analysis or a net present value and build a project out to where it makes sense given time money and interest. Bridges need repair, asphalt cracks and wears, re-bar rusts and compromises concrete from the inside, infrastructure depreciates. The ancient world, some of those things, are built to last--- because they're made from solid stone and such.

Multiple factors figure into why the rent is so high, but from a government policy standpoint, I'm interested in "the decision by consumers to rent over purchase" but what is more likely, that in spite of low mortgage rates, a number of buyers are not eligible for credit from private lenders.

The other policy piece that I think is interesting is the private housing market's ability to deliver housing choices-- what are developers producing, are they producing luxury units, are they producing affordable options in high enough quantity, and are developers inhibited by government regulation in delivering a diversity of housing choices.