Pilot: "You have the plane." Co-Pilot: "I have the plane." Pilot: "You have the plane."

The third statement is the pilot acknowledging that the transfer of control has completed. Without it, the co-pilot doesn't positively know that the pilot knows that control has been handed over.

As an aside, Air France 447 was a crash where the co-pilot was pulling back on the stick without the captain knowing. The captain couldn't understand why his controls weren't having the intended effect. Both pilots were making inputs, unaware of each other.

I spend so so much time looking for information I saw in the past...a document, a conversation, a website, etc. This will be a big time saver and have a ton of utility.

To those that are scared of it: don't use it. I can make my own choices.

Let me fix that... People don't trust Microsoft.

(I don't particularly trust Microsoft, but I'm also not in their ecosystem.)

That would be a straightforward example of "can't read the browser history for a user, but could read it indirectly via the agent."

About 50%.

You can literally see the satellites at night and they do not traverse horizon to horizon 1/10th as fast as depicted here.

Aside from the massive tether and engine that would need to pull it, I'd imagine it would rip the submersible to shreds at those depths

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_(ROV)

And the Titanic was discovered by camera sled being towed by a ship.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argo_(ROV)

So your search might have been a bit too quick. It certainly is possible possible to build a tethered crewed submersible, though this vehicle wasn't.

Credit to js2 from this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36396161

Ex.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Schematic-image-of-a-wor...

https://f-e-t.com/subsea/vehicles/tether-management-systems/

There's also this one which looks like it can get to the depths of the Titanic:

https://nautiluslive.org/tech/rov-argus

So it was certainly possible to do this with a tether, but it would have been much more expensive.

No good for pulling it to the surface, of course, but reliable communication alone would be a great benefit.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nereus_(underwater_vehicle)

This sub has 4 Innerspace 1002 thrusters that make for a max total of 342*4=1,368lb of thrust... I think a useful point of reference in deciding how much pull force would be needed for an emergency recovery tether.

I think it's reasonable that a 4mm dyneema line with a breaking strength of 4,000lbs would be sufficient for emergency surfacing, and safely provide much more thrust that it's own motors. The whole sub weighs 23k lbs and is approximately neutrally buoyant.

Total weight for 3 miles of 4mm dyneema is only about 120lbs, and for simple emergency use, in the spirit of OceanGates now infamous "scrappy thriftiness" could be pulled with the type of simple/cheap hydraulic winches used for pulling crab pots, anchors, or fishing nets. 3 miles of this line would have cost about $15,000.

At 4000m under the ocean, you'd need like 10000m of cabling at a minimum I'd assume? And then you'd need the tether + winch to be capable of supporting and lifting the sub at that depth.

I'd be amazed if any country let alone company has that capability outside of maybe the US military.

This would cost about $3/meter.

They are not tethered?

Also, subs operate at close to neutral buoyancy. A tether does not need to support the weight of the vehicle, it only needs to resist the force of drag that the water exerts on the vehicle moving at whatever the max tow / lift speed is.

The vehicle that

With almost no exception, the renters make horrible financial decisions that set them up to work until they die. The average credit report I see is about a 500 and it's filled with missed payments, loans sent to collections, etc. Then, right at the top, in the last two or three months will be new loans for expensive cars and jewelery. It's mindboggling and sad. Most of my tenants have a nicer car than me (I own a pretty vanilla $30k sedan).

The renters usually come just above the 3x income to rent ratio and they never fail to pay their rent. But I don't really ever forsee them owning a home if they continue to make luxury purchases that prevent them from saving. The loan industry really enables a life of debt.

It really does, and I've seen so many people fall into it, especially at the beginning of their career. Financial responsibility should be something taught early on at schools. With cryptos today, maybe even with the risks behind investing.

That said, I'm glad I live in the majority of countries where someone more privileged than me cannot judge my financial decisions to give me access to housing. I consider myself financially responsible, and credit scores aren't a thing here anyway, but I find it very disturbing.

You usually present proof of earnings and possibly references from previous landlords. And if you get unlucky - well, same as in the US, in many of the nicest markets, you're facing an uphill battle to evict people.

Strong data protection rules have made it that there is now a credit score report which is only giving you a pass/fail so that landlords don't know too many details.

Which means if you always paid your stuff on time, a virtual +1 is the same as a +1000, and the visible result will just be "OK" and after a while the entries will age out if it was a "NOT OK"

I know a few landlords and despite the efforts they take to find the perfect tenant, they all have tales to tell of people who passed all the tests with flying colours but soon turned out to be a costly disaster.

Also I think landlords can only see a high level summary and final score, not the details of your financial situation.

* A mafioso comes for a chat with the tenant and they move out. This rarely happens.

* The case is presented to court and they'll evict the tenant in about 2 months. This usually happens.

* The tenant has small children and is poor. The owner is fucked as the court won't do anything - the tenants children have a basic human right to a roof over their head. This also rarely happens, but when it does, the damages are huge. My great aunt lost 1-2 years of rent and about 10k in damages due to neglect this way.

Because of this, there are interviews for tenants. Mostly just a chat, but rarely you need to prove you're employed and provide bank statements.

100% guarantee that this does not matter one iota.

I've tried and tried to help so many people with their financial picture. You would have more luck talking to a brick wall.

People don't care. They just simply do not care.

This is because most people - maybe 95% - are ruled by their emotions rather than rationality. Or to put it more precisely, people make decisions based on emotions and then use their rational mind after they make their decision to rationalize their purchase.

Also, becoming financially responsible is just about the simplest thing to do, at least at the beginning stages. All it requires is addition and subtraction, mostly, which we learn in second grade or whenever it is. Second grade.

I remember opening my first savings and checking account when I was 15 years old (when you could do it yourself without parent's permission). The person who helped my took about 10 minutes to help me understand, that's all you need.

The internet is inundated with videos and classes on basic financial knowledge. I'm sure that I could go to Udemy and find 500 courses on basic financial training and pay $15 for it....hmmm, let me go check right now...ok, typed "personal finance" in the search and it came back with "6,496 results for “personal finance”"

People don't take those classes because they don't want to take them. Probably personal finance is one of the topics that is #1 for total courses available.

Honestly, personal finance is so easy. It is just about the easiest thing to do. Sure if you get into complicated stuff, if you have $200 million in the bank/assets/whatever, maybe it is hard. But for the general person, no, it is simple. And the part that someone doesn't get, there are a ton of videos and articles on that, too.

I have gotten exceptionally angry at some people because they were so broke and asked me for help. There I was, spending countless hours with them, doing what you said and educating them, and they go out and blow a HUGE chunk of their feeble savings on the stupidest shit. I got angry because I knew these people and got emotionally invested in helping them (I don't regret getting emotionally invested).

I don't help people anymore. It's an exercise in frustration and futility. People simply do notwant to be financially responsible...well, maybe in the 20/80 law, 20% are financially responsible. The other 80%...don't waste time on them.

Kind of a rant, but it still burns deep in my soul, because the people I tried to help are good people.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Pearls before swine.

To be fair that's not quite true. For example credit cards go out of the way to make their interest and penalties algorithm obscure in order to try to lock people into paying interest forever.

Getting information is exceptionally easy, and a LOT easier than when I got my first one. I knew from when I got my first credit card that I had to pay off the balance in full, every month. That using a credit card should be the exact same as using cash. You never buy anything unless you actually have the cash first. Then you can use the credit card and pay it off at the end of the month. It's so easy to understand. It doesn't matter about credit cards companies and their obfuscation. I didn't learn it from credit card companies. I just learned it because it was easy to learn. How difficult is it? Don't use a credit care unless you have the cash first. You pay it off in full and you don't pay interest, whatever level it is - .01% or 40% - it does not matter what the interest rates are, unless you don't pay on time.

And the problem is that people don't care. They think emotionally, and don't give a crap about future ramifications.

This is my favorite video that explains it all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3ZJKN_5M44

But difficult to find. Do you know how to get out of paying interest on credit cards if you happen to be late for a payment once? Unless you've researched it, probably not. And it's unintuitive to have to research it because you'd think the answer is obvious (just pay it off) but it's not. Credit card companies count on people not noticing and then keep paying interest forever.

I know plenty smart people who just pay their credit card bill on autopay and don't examine every line item of the monthly statement. That seems crazy to me but it happens.

42% of Americanas are overweight, do you think it's because we don't have the data or it's not available? No, it's that within this capitilistic society its more profitable for companies to sell sugar with a high markup and copyright protection, than a piece of fruit. If a banana was the most profitable food item to sell, there would be less obesity. At what % obesity or taking out loans or addiction do we shift from blaming individuals to blaming the scenario and the players creating that scenario often for profit?

If u didn't earn it, it's not ur money. Don't spend what's not urs. I don't think that's hard to understand

There are reasons to use a credit card - you get purchase protection, for one. You also can build up credit if you want to buy a house. You need one to rent a car.

But really, while there might be other reasons, the only reason to get a good credit rating is to be able to buy a house. Everything else can be paid for in cash (check, online payment from your checking account, etc)

When you use a credit card, you should treat it exactly like cash. You should have cash in the bank before you purchase anything with a credit card, and then pay the entire credit card balance each and every month.

If someone has a problem with this and just can't do it, then they should not get a credit card at all. Credit cards are very dangerous technology if one can't control it. Just like fire - if you are not careful with it, you can set your house on fire.

You can do everything you listed without an actual CC, including rent a vehicle (I know, because I do it).

https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/mortgages/how-to-buy-house-n...

And that's kind of the silliness of credit score, you can game it by never actually using credit.

I don't think you get the same purchase protection with a debit card vs credit card.

As far as renting a vehicle, I've tried on a debit card and been denied. But that was quite a while ago so things could have changed, and I guess have as you have done it.

As for renting a vehicle, their requirements are usually a bit more stringent, things such as showing more documentation that I live where I say I live, they'll put a hold on a larger amount, but I've never been outright denied from renting a vehicle for having a debit card.

Of course, having said that, I was denied the last time I tried to rent a vehicle because they had started running credit checks and I have no credit. This despite the fact that I had been renting regularly from them for 7 or 8 years (a few times a year). Can you imagine thinking credit was a better proxy than your own records for determining someone's trustworthiness?

I've never liked rental car companies, they're all shitty in 1 way or another, but that for me was the last straw. It will be a cold day in hell before I ever rent a vehicle again.

Instead I went out and purchased a vehicle to do exactly what I was trying to do with the rental, I posted about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34099429#34114741

I thought there was pretty solid evidence it was 100% of us who acted like this. Just that for some our "emotional" decisions (or at least, our subconscious decision making processes) are better informed.

FWIW, I'm pretty sure one's financial sense is more guided by upbringing than genetics - though supposedly there's a lack of strong evidence that, for instance, whether you give your kids pocket money and encourage them to manage their own finances makes all that much difference, which always surprised me (and I did it anyway - kid's now got his own job and seems to manage money pretty well so far).

I also have given up helping people. It is a waste of time. Most people simply don’t think further ahead than today or tomorrow. And then they turn around and blame their financial difficulties on the system, politicians, greedy rich people, immigrants, white people etc. Anybody but themselves. consistently refusing to take responsibility for their own actions.

I didn't write this, but could have. 100% agree with what you are saying. The whole thing about "my school didn't teach it, that's why" just makes me so mad. It's just simply not that difficult.

But even for wealthy people, stupid financial decisions will sink their ship. Mike Tyson won $300 million (a third of a billion dollars) and blew it all. Johnny Depp made $500 million (half a billion) and almost went broke with profligate spending and poor financial decisions.

There's a well-known saying - Poor to rich to poor in 3 generations. This means someone comes to America without a penny and they put their kid through school and that child makes hundreds of millions, but that child's child grows up with no respect for money and is fritters it away, and they end up poor.

This is why people who win the lottery or pro athletes go broke after 3 years of winning the lottery or out of the sport - they blow money.

Saying something like "Maybe they have a rich dad who will die soon and cover all their debts" shows a complete and total lack of respect for money. Anyone who thinks this way has a great chance of blowing all the money, unless they change their thinking. Why would making crappy financial decisions just because you have a rich dad make any sort of logic at all? It makes no sense. Why would one make poor financial decisions, just because they are going to come into some money? All it means is that this same person is going to continue to make poor decisions when their rich dad dies, run out of money and then complain about it when they are broke. Happens all the time.

If 68% of the millennials expect an inheritance, how much do they expect to get? Are they making their financial decision based on getting mom and dad's house? Have they considered that this house might be used to pay for mom's and dad's care in their last years? Did they think about the fact that they might get the money only once they at 40 or 50 year's old? What if they end up with $2300 and a dinnerware set after a lifetime of poor financial decisions--I imagine most inheritances are not 7 figure affairs.

I'm worried if this is truly the case.

Did you read the article? Genuine question. Because you seem to be completely missing the main point it's making, it's not exactly lacking in examples.

TFA says amortized cost of things is lower when you have access to cash, or cheap credit. Buying in bulk in large shops is cheaper than buying small amounts at local shops. Proper renting is cheaper than weekly-billed accomodation.

But then GP is saying, the poor often have better access to credit than it might seem, it just goes to things that don't improve their financial situation. Nice cars and jewelry for instance.

I don't really know and suspect both are true to an extent, but chipping in since poverty is fascinating to me and I don't fully understand it (I come from and remain in a modest background btw). Sometimes it's just a lack of cash but often it seems not as simple as that.

Yes, it probably is a bit of both, but the GP seems biased towards colouring everyone with the caricature of being in a financial position purely of their own making. It seems incredibly cliche like shouting "get a job you lazy bum" and ignoring any systemic factors and other forces at play as outlines in this article.

I personally have been in situations very close to the threshold of not being able to make rent in the past, and I'm very very far from a "consumer". When the window of time in which you have to make ends meet is on the order of days or weeks it's impossible to make long term optimal financial decisions, not merely because of stress, but because in the short term other people need your money, like this unempathetic landlord who apparently owns many properties.

It made me wonder if all the required features and electronics are puffing up costs a bit?

I wish this article broke down the "food" and "clothing" categories into the specific products they are purchasing.

A little anecdata:

These families would buy brand-name sneakers and jeans for their kids, whichever brand was popular that year, whereas I was on year two of home-sewn or no-brand cheap jeans. I'd go visit friends and see boxes of brand-name Lucky Charms, Apple Jacks, etc, and be envious versus the bulk oatmeal I choked down every morning. Their mothers were getting their "nails did" regularly whilst mine had perpetual dishwater hands.

My parents didn't make much money, but they knew how to spend it wisely. Other poor families, not so much.

Another anecdata:

My father-in-law grew up absolutely dirt poor (far far worse than my parents), but did reasonably well for himself over time. He still has significant debt and inability to manage his money because he has to buy luxury goods regularly as some sort of compensatory mechanism to ensure that other people would never see him to be poor.

At the end of the day, when I look at poor people's spending habits, I see the same thing you do: they are hooked on unnecessary spending. I suspect there is something in the human psyche that makes poor people try to compensate for it by spending to not appear poor, thus exacerbating the cycle.

It's a largely self-inflicted problem.

Landlords are a necessary part of a functioning society.

- refinancing on low interest

- significant leveraged appreciation of housing pricing because of fiscal policies

What's more interesting is if you take that extreme and flip it back to housing.

Imagine a world where:

You are banned from owning land or housing. There's a variety of options to live in, but limited by what the government decides is fitting. Then, a popular movement within government decides that a particular type of housing is not appropriate for society, and starts destroying all of those houses. Instead, they decree, the best and only type of housing that should be available are communes where everyone gets a bed but zero privacy. You're not allowed your own four walls, you have to share space with everyone.

It's so much more efficient! they decree.

Well, that's exactly what is starting to happen to roads in some major cities. Parking spaces are being removed in favor of expanding public transportation. Entire blocks are being declared off-limits to private cars to make them "walkable".

I'm not really advocating one way or the other here- my point is that it's kindof silly to compare roads and housing at such extremes, because the benefits and consequences of various polices are not directly analogous to each other.

Not really, given that something is apparently different about this world such that the existence of roadlords represents a stable equilibrium.

Sometimes people can pay but choose not to. Ability to pay is necessary but not sufficient. Demonstrating a proven track record of financial responsibility makes a landlord much more willing to lease on favorable terms.

> By being a land lord, you are preventing people from buying and building equity.

Landlords increase the supply of housing by improving and renovating older structures or converting them into residential use.

A landlord has the exact same costs as a homeowner. He has a mortgage, property taxes, insurance, repairs, etc. Because he wants to operate at a profit he needs to keep those costs low, and a lot of landlords do that by purchasing distressed properties at lower prices, improving them, and leasing them profitably.

Alternatively a landlord can lease to tenants who have poor credit and can’t obtain a mortgage to buy a house. Those tenants would probably be homeless if it weren’t for landlords willing to risk leasing to them. No bank will lend $300k to those tenants so they can purchase the houses they would otherwise be renting. Those landlords are charging higher rents commensurate with the higher nonpayment risk inherent in tenants with low credit scores.

Generally the only thing preventing tenants with poor credit from building home equity is their poor financial decisions.

credit is a record of your debt load, nothing else, but landlords use it as a proxy.

I have no credit and had to laugh when I realized no one would rent to me despite my 6-figure income. I had to start vetting THEM to see if it was a waste of time or not.

These kinds of things sound good in your head, but they're just not reality.

In your case, they don't have your credit, so they obtain the probability through other variables, like your income. Most likely they'll assign a high probability to you paying, but the confidence interval mat be too big for their liking.

Obviously credit history doesn't give zero information, which is implied in this thread several times.

What? This is like arguing that someone who owns a car and is a taxi driver is “preventing people from buying” and “instead their hard earned money goes right into your pocket”.

One person being a landlord does nothing to prevent others from owning property. Housing is no more a scarce resource than cars are. Or, at least, that would be true if the US weren’t covered in laws preventing new housing. There’s your actual bogeyman.

In the sense that land ownership is zero sum, yes it does.

> Housing is no more a scarce resource than cars are.

That’s simply not true. In any given market, there’s a limited supply of housing, and it’s much more inelastic than the supply of cars.

> Or, at least, that would be true if the US weren’t covered in laws preventing new housing. There’s your actual bogeyman.

Who do you think is lobbying for these laws? I’ll give you a hint: it’s the people whose property gains value if there’s less to go around.

Sure, land is limited. But housing is not 1:1 with land! Housing supply is inelastic, but population growth is also slow, and it’s absolutely not a lack of construction capacity that prevents new housing. It’s inelastic because our laws make it so.

The folks lobbying for these laws are interest groups like any other. The problem is they’ve also suckered too many others in to the belief system that neighborhoods must never change or grow.

I can buy thousands of square meters of land that is physically able to support housing for a negligible amount of money.

The land is useless to me because construction is expensive (as a result of regulatory requirements) and I'm not legally allowed to build there (also due to regulatory requirements).

> That’s simply not true. In any given market, there’s a limited supply of housing, and it’s much more inelastic than the supply of cars

Is that the fault of humans wanting to live in close proximity with other humans? maybe, there is an ample amount of land anywhere between cities with an inelastic supply of housing.

> Who do you think is lobbying for these laws? I’ll give you a hint: it’s the people whose property gains value if there’s less to go around.

Moloch is a problem.

but it's not a human universal. incentives matter, look at China, for example.

in the US renters outnumber landlords in many cities, yet they too mostly voted for stagnation.

Am I missing something obvious? Isn't it just because not everyone who misses payments is low-income?

Renting is a service that is available to everyone, not just those who can’t afford houses. Most people who buy houses previously rented. Gotta live somewhere when you save up.

Go try to rent a decent place with no credit history and then tell me you still have that opinion.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.

I responded because there are people who CAN rent who will not be rented to (or will find it very difficult to) because they have little to no credit history, or have a bad credit history.

There are other issues I didn't mention, such as taking a landlord or property manager to court. That can absolutely get you black balled both locally and somewhat nationally and not because someone is maintaining a secret list that everyone is watching, but because a large number of landlords and property manages are farming out SaaS services for background checking to these services and a large part of that is checking public court records. In light of that environment, taking your landlord to court is going to have a major effect on your ability to rent in the future.

Basically, the other poster was just not right and whinging about HN guidelines doesn't change that.

Most importantly, only residents vote in local elections and it's local policy that has the largest impact on housing supply and renter protections. Market's are quick to react to policy changes but policy has to actually change - advocating for individual actors to behave against the market is, on average, not going to actually help the people you aim to help... instead other actors (and perhaps actors biased to even more amoral decision making) will take advantage.

there are regional trends that can make it a great investment, and the secular trend of urbanization (and the growing US population, and growing economy) also help, but almost all of the growth in prices is due to very harmful shortsighted policy, and the circumstance of the move to near zero interest rate.

It's effectively shielding the tenant from the financial risks of house ownership, for a price.

I also agree it's unfair to the poor that renting is more expensive long-term when they can't afford to buy, but I don't think it's the landlords fault.

I agree that homeownership is becoming less and less viable for the middle class and below due to a lot of speculation that has entered the market in the past few years, and this should be nipped in the bud with regulation. But without knowing much about OP, it feels like an over reach to make assumptions that they are the problem.

On the credit history, I don't know if you have rented out a place before(sounds like maybe not), if you get a bad apple as a renter...everything gets massively more complicated and remedying the situation is not a clean maneuver. You wouldn't buy a vehicle off one picture, so why would someone rent out something that is 10-20x more valuable without proper due diligence?

Are you concerned that the parent is using a credit history to make a decision who to rent to?

Or are you concerned that by being a landlord the parent is somehow preventing people from buying a house?

I can see each being a concern. However, phrased as it is, it sounds like an incoherent emotional rant that is hard to respond to.

Yeah me going to the gym, reading, and eating healthy is the reason why so many others are obese and unread.

>>Instead their hard earned money goes right into your pocket.

What is the connection between X being a landlord and Y not being allowed to be a landlord?

Not OP, but do you actually think those situations are analogous? This feels like either a strawman or arguing in bad faith.

>What is the connection between X being a landlord and Y not being allowed to be a landlord?

The more houses being purchased for rental, the fewer that are available for individual ownership and landlords typically own more than one home. Additionally and probabaly more importantly, by using housing as an investment vehicle, it pits people with excess money to invest against people who may only have enough money for basic essentials in bidding for a house. This is all exacerbated further when you take note of the fact that companies/invesment funds are also buying up homes and becoming 'landlords'.

Yes, in fact it is as true as it gets. The thing is lots of things reduce to individual agency and responsibility and regardless one agrees with it or not, you are always in total ownership of any situation. Sure you can't buy a million dollar mansion inside a horse ranch. But there's always something you can buy.

There's always a minimal level of bootstrap anybody can start with. But you have to be very serious, very failure immune and be ok with taking multiple shots at the problem.

>>The more houses being purchased for rental, the fewer that are available for individual ownership and landlords typically own more than one home.

Have never ever seen homes go like hot cakes. You have time, you have lots of time. The question here really is do you want to buy a home? If yes, there is always something you can do about it. You might not get a million dollar home, but theres always something you can buy.

Take a look at toronto or vancouver, to name a couple places in my country where no one has had to sell at or below sane asking prices for years.

>You have time, you have lots of time. The question here really is do you want to buy a home? If yes, there is always something you can do about it. You might not get a million dollar home, but theres always something you can buy.

You were originally saying that landlords buying up houses doesn't affect other people being able to buy a house. Sure, if we move the goalposts far enough and say 'it doesn't stop you from erecting 4 walls and a roof somewhere in the world', you're right. However, if you want a house anywhere near where it's likely to be of practical use, there is no question that landlords/investors scooping up houses absolutely affects those who need a house NOW and who are without the capital to compete against millionaires with multiple properties.

Also, if you say I/we 'have lots of time', that's implying that there's no marginal cost to having to rent for all that time. If that were the case all the time, why would anyone bother buying a house?

Since you already believe you can't buy a home, it might end up becoming a self full-filling prophecy.

The point of this article is that those "horrible financial decisions" aren't mistakes, they are costs of living that are imposed upon those that are already struggling. Sometimes it may be irresponsibility, other times it is an inevitability, a distinction that you truly cant discern from the outside. It's possible that splurging on a car might be a long term benefit, maybe fuel efficiency or maintainence costs are money savers after the initial buy in. You don't know the personal calculus of each decision so maybe don't assign motive to what renters are doing under the heel of capitalism.

And it turns out, these people need a roof over their heads, which you could provide at a cheaper cost if you chose to but instead you take a chunk of their paycheck each month as your personal profit. Like you could help people. You could treat housing as a necessary resource and not a commodity. Overnight you can alleviate people's debt if you wanted to.

poor people don't have 3x income to rent ratio, middle class people do. poor people don't drive $30k+ vehicles, middle class people do.

The only thing you got right is that poor people make bad financial decisions. Often times they're forced into it, although not nearly always. Poor people trade time for money.

People are often predatory towards the poor because there's a combination of money being there but not having enough to protect yourself from the bullshit.

Personally, the one group of people I have absolutely no sympathy for are landlords, and I say this as someone with a 6-figure income who rents. I grew up dirt poor, to the point of being homeless.

And the number of times I've had a landlord try to pull some shit only to be shocked when my lawyer got in touch is entirely too damned high. Only for the problem to magically go away.

And why? Because you would never imagine my resources by looking at me and how I live. landlords do this shit as a matter of course and only back off when they realize not only CAN you defend yourself, but you WILL defend yourself.

Think about it like this.

There are laws on the books that very explicitly state if a landlord makes a persons property inaccessible before they're legally required to move, that person can sue them for the value of everything lost.

1. How do you think I know that (they gave away 2 of my pets, reptiles)?

2. Why did that law need to be passed?

---

I'm sure there are landlords that act in good faith as decent human beings, but it seems as if there's something unique about landlords that makes it difficult. In all the time I've been renting I've met a single decent property manager, and no decent land lords.

Going through life categorizing people into buckets and then proudly proclaiming you have zero sympathy for ANYONE in that bucket isn't a mature or healthy way to view the world. It seems like you have some really intense bones to pick (your reptile story) and are extending that anecdotal experience onto a group of tens of millions, a mental leap which is usually frowned upon in circles like this. Just my thoughts.

No free human will ever do this.

Landlords can be a mixed bag, tenants can be too. My mother's had a tenant nearly totally destroy one of her homes by bringing in five juvenile pitbulls when there was supposed to be one. She then refused to leave the property and didn't notify my mother when the aerobic septic system wasn't working because that'd require my mother to go in the bathroom where a 3x3 hole was made in the floor.

On the other hand, as a renter I've been subjected to some arcane laws. I was threatened with having to pay the remainder of the rent on a contract when I bought a house. I've had them nickel and dime me for average wear and tear. I had one that liked to stop by nearly monthly.

This tells me a few things, some probably based on my own biases:

- The laws that maximize one person's rights can cut into another person's. Sharing property complicates this further.

- Poor folks (who my mom rents to) do make poor decisions, but a lot of it is experiencing the cycle of being poor or trying to cope with it. That doesn't give them a right to destroy other people's stuff, but it tells me that we should be focusing on the poor cycle as a class issue.

That crappy tenants exist is not an excuse for so much consistency in how badly landlords treat their tenants.

The single property manager that treated me well? I stayed in that house for 6 years. Do you know why I moved? The landlord switched property managers. Literally month X everything was fine, month X + 1 I was fighting with them. And what about? They wanted to charge me a processing fee for my rent and wouldn't accept a check. They were based out of state, didn't have a local office, didn't accept check, and were pushing the processing fees onto their tenants. yeah, fuck that.

And what I said above about never being late? Not totally true. That property manager had the same bank I did so I would transfer money directly to her account, send her an email and she would respond with a confirmation that she saw it. At some point she switched banks. I waited until the last day to pick up a cashiers check to run by her office, only, unbeknownst to me, my bank had shortened their hours due to covid so I couldn't. When I realized this I called her, explained the situation, told her I'd be at her office first thing monday morning (it was a friday) and nothing was ever said about a late fee.

landlords tend to be assholes for no good reason and they generally get away with it because of the power differential that exists (or is perceived to exist) between them and their tenants. There are many more laws on the books protecting tenants than landlords and the reason for that is BECAUSE they tend to be assholes. There are laws on the books stating landlords are not allowed to let themselves into others homes whenever they want because if that law didn't exist many of them would.

For example, they bitch about how hard it is to get tenants out of the house due to existing laws.

That's absolutely true, but what do they think the laws were put into place for? On the whole, they cannot be trusted to be fair. They did it to themselves.

> I'm sure there are landlords that act in good faith as decent human beings, but it seems as if there's something unique about landlords that makes it difficult. In all the time I've been renting I've met a single decent property manager, and no decent land lords.

In reality it's just a random jackass on the internet that wanted to preen in front of others.

Introspection ... lmao. "I should figure out why I keep having to pull out my lawyer to keep landlords from abusing me".

In reality, it's because I rent cheap and they're used to having a power differential that doesn't exist with me.

As a counterpoint, I was a landlord of a cheapish condo (rented for 17 years), and also a decent house in a solid middle class neighborhood (rented for 5 years). Wasn't looking to be a landlord, fell into it (really long story involving divorce right before housing bubble burst). Needed to do something to tread water until the housing market returned, renting was the only sane option (or bankruptcy, which I abhor). Had 4 tenants over the 17 year span.

Anyhow, having no experience as a landlord I tried my best to treat my tenants as "real human beings" and not be the evil landlord character you see on television. Repairs on time, quality work (by me), below market rent, didn't raise rent often (had an elderly lady on HUD in one, only raised her rent once in 10 years). I really tried to make it work, treat them well and they'll treat me well I figured.

I learned several valuable lessons about tenants. By and large they can and will take advantage of any good will you give them, as they assume that you're screwing them somehow. They also will not take care of your property regardless of how well you treat them. Their attitude towards me can be summarized as "take what you can get while the getting is good". I did not have a single tenant that didn't burn down the relationship with me on their way out. I usually found out the tenant was planning to leave once they stopped paying rent. Twice they squatted, had to get a lawyer in both cases, took forever to get them out. Just a mess.

The experience was (and still is) quite shocking to me. Being the type of person that pays my bills on time, I figured that everyone else did as well. I learned the hard way that you have to protect yourself or you will end up getting screwed. End of the day it's financially stressful making my monthly mortgage payment (and lawyer) on a place that someone else lives in but isn't paying me rent.

It seemed to me that what all of my renters had in common was that they rented because they weren't responsible enough to own. Being poor is a trap for sure, but at the end of the day I don't feel bad for the people I dealt with. Maybe I should, but it's hard to look past having to pay a lawyer to reclaim control of my property.

Got out of being a landlord as soon as the market made it possible. I could feel the stress roll off me when I sold those places.

The entire experience really soured me. I don't give people the benefit of the doubt like I used to, and am a lot more jaded with random strangers. Talking about it now is bringing back bad memories.

That said, it sucks being poor for sure. It's hard to rise above it. And yes I'm sure most career landlords suck. You have to be a lot more callous than I was to make it work at scale. Personally I know I went above and beyond and was just treated poorly for it. I suppose I let that happen, but I'm never going to make that mistake again.

It's not so much that the poor can't catch a break, but that they don't recognize the break when they get it, and don't know how to follow through and/or capitalize on opportunity, and have no problem biting the hand that's helping them. It's a very moment-by-moment type of existence, I suppose it's survival instincts kicking in that explains some of the behavior. Lying is better than being homeless, etc.

Just one man's experience and my 2 cents. I wasn't a career landlord. Draw whatever conclusions you will.

You're giving them a helping hand by asking them to pay you every month and fixing things that a part of the contract.

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And to be clear, I'm not bitching that a landlord will evict someone for not paying rent. Those issues have absolutely nothing to do with it.

I'm bitching because I gave them goodwill, and they burned it.

I'm bitching because I trusted them as human beings, and got taken advantage of.

I'll give you just one example of what I dealt with. The son of the elderly lady was trying to start a handyman business, and she asked if I would pay him to do the repairs. Help him get started etc. Long story short, I paid him (in advance, I'm the idiot) and he never did the work. I found out about this when I went over to the place and saw the work wasn't done, but the materials I paid for were gone. She stopped asking for ridiculous things for a while after that one.

I'm not saying I'm a saint. But I really tried to not be "that guy". It was impossible.

I'm getting angry just revisiting this stuff. sigh.

Edit: Regarding fixing things was my end of the contract, there was nothing too small I wouldn't fix. When it got to the point she was asking me to change lightbulbs for her, and clean the shower she let get full of mildew, I had enough.

I only posted my experience to counter your generalization about landlords. There are good and bad actors on both sides, and landlords can get taken advantage of too.

It seems that a small minority of folks ruin it for the larger group, who then get conditioned to treat the other side in kind as a pre-emptive defense mechanism (When in Rome...). I wasn't like most renters, but got treated the same as the rest. I'm sure my landlords had horror stories, and were jaded, so I was just another young punk to them, which isn't fair at all to me. At some point you give up. I got out of being a landlord before I got too jaded.

My experience as a landlord probably had less to do with me and more to do with their previous landlords.. To them I was just another landlord, so they're thinking why would I treat them any different? So why would they treat me any different?

The power imbalance goes both ways, and seems to me to have something to do with "having nothing to lose". I had a lot to lose if I didn't pay my mortgage to the bank, but my renters had nothing to lose by not paying me. They had all the leverage. I learned to be careful when dealing with people who have little/nothing to lose. As much as I tried to make renting a mutually beneficial relationship, it just exposed me and my finances to people with no real skin in the game.

Coincidentally, I just turned on my domain blocker again this evening (I use Freedom.to, it syncs all your devices on the ban-list to avoid unconsciously opening up news sites out of habit).

Looking at you Peter F. "A god turned up and fixed everything lol" Hamilton, but it seems to happen a lot in sci-fi, maybe because the author prefers worldbuilding to a satisfying plot resolution.

Though I think in some cases the publisher puts their foot down and tells the author that the N-logy ends here and there's not going to be a N+1th volume, so the author just slaps a desultory ending on it and ships it.

That would be "A Memory Called Empire". I really enjoyed that book. Sure, you could boil it down to moving into an apartment... From having lived on a space station to an alien world, as a new ambassador, dumped into intrigue. That's quite a lot of unpacking.

People need to forget using chrome on android at least

But, from word of mouth, UBlock Origin is more consistent.