• 7 Posts
  • 1.75K Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: August 3rd, 2023

help-circle




  • I bought in early 2020 and it’s now worth about 50% more than it was.

    I kinda lucked out, because I bought right before everyone realized that we were screwed with COVID and were going to be stuck in their houses because the government had no idea what they were doing. I say “kinda lucked out” because I watched Trump deliver a speech as the stocks tanked in the corner, and realized he had no idea how to handle it. After watching it I turned to my spouse and said, “I know it sounds crazy, but I think we should buy a place right now.” I also had been looking for some time and realized that mortgage rates were near all time lows.

    All time low rates + stuck in small places = everyone that can buy a bigger place will buy a bigger place.






  • One definition of a collapse is a sudden drastic reduction in the complexity of a thing.

    I’m not sure whether we’re going to have a societal collapse or a slow decline, but either way the US is in a downward spiral. I think Trump increases the likelihood of us going into the collapse trajectory.

    All that said, on the other side of a collapse, there is some room for hope. The incendiary portion of the collapse will definitely suck to live through (if you’re lucky enough to do so), but our country could probably use some simplification long-term because the people within it largely cannot navigate a country this byzantine. A lot of this country’s systems are too complex for an average person to understand let alone administer.

    Most of these complexities were probably birthed via intentional decisions by the system creators, and others were a product of unintended consequences. I think the gap in education between our commoners and “the elite” – to borrow a tired trope – also played a part here.

    No matter how we arrived at this point, I don’t think the current population can actually operate these systems anymore and long-term one way or another our people require a drastic reduction in the complexity of our society.

    There is another path in which the United States invests more in education and scales up the average intelligence of its citizens so that they can handle the complexity of modern life, understand nuance, do research, and create better policy…but at this point I think we’re frankly too far fucked to ever go down that path.








  • Yeah these are things that “centrists” can oppose…talking to your neighbors, going to council meetings, joining a union, starting a poker game, or joining a social group. /s

    Edit:

    I mean hell start a podcast even. There’s literally no place I even know of in my town to build any of this so-called solidarity keyboard leftists talk about as if it’s ubiquitous. I live in a top ten city in one of the most left-leaning states and all I see is “let’s go Brandon” bumper stickers and maga stickers plastered on the backside of my street signs.

    Maybe, just maybe, online leftists are full of it and America isn’t on the brink of some great socialist revolution. But who am I kidding, it’s inevitable, right guys? It springs up automatically out of the dirt like dandelions. /s