It’s governments that are responsible for a lack of housing: local governments through zoning policy. The homeowners in a given city are politically engaged and they vote to protect their own investment in real estate. Call it NIMBYism if you like but homeowners are never going to voluntarily agree to have their house go down in price. Doing so could put their mortgage underwater and result in losing their home and becoming homeless.

Japan does not have this issue to nearly the same extent because they have structured their governments differently. Zoning laws are set by the national government, not the local one, so problems like this can (and have been) set at the national level.

For other countries to solve their housing problem Japan style would require the national government to take power away from the local governments (and in the case of the US, this would put the federal government in a fight with state governments). It would be an extremely messy fight and probably not work out.

I have a Wii and a whole bunch of games just collecting dust. Even now that I’m reminded of it I don’t have any desire to play.

I do really want to grab a CRT TV and a NES and SNES. I miss those games far more than anything on the Wii!

You can sell out on anything, no matter how unpopular it is, if you don’t make enough of them. How many of these things did they actually make?

I think most of those voters vote based on who they identify with, not based on policy arguments. Trying to sway those voters with better messaging is a lost cause if they see your candidate as a career politician whom they cannot relate to.

Some other thoughts: a lot of people talking about ignorant voters but not much said about the disastrous state of education in the US, the lack of affordability, nor the ill-preparedness for work of degree-holders. Countless people in the US have degrees that don’t fit their job!

Wow, chill out! I was very careful to use the word more. I didn’t say other countries are ethnically homogenous in the absolute sense, just relative to the US. Take Japan for example. Yes, there are quite a lot of ethnic minorities in Japan (both indigenous and foreign) however well over 90% of the country identifies only as Japanese and nothing else. This is a very different picture from the US.

You can see a similar story many other countries but not all. India, for example, has many ethnic groups which are strongly distinguished by language, religion, and culture. It’s also the case that ethnicity plays a major role in the politics of India and that role has been increasing of late, not diminishing.

The police represent the state’s monopoly over organized violence. If you get rid of the police then what you have is called a failed state and a power vacuum. What happens then? Read about cartel-controlled areas of Mexico, warlord-controlled areas in Central African Republic, jihadist-controlled areas of Nigeria or Syria, or criminal gang-controlled areas in Haiti for examples.

Don’t get me wrong. The police in the US are quite bad. But things could be so much worse. I’m talking about guys driving around in pickup trucks with machine guns mounted on the backs, firing indiscriminately into crowds of people and homes and public places. Mass kidnappings, massacres, rape as a weapon of war. This is ugly, horrific stuff.

That’s because most countries are far more ethnically homogenous than the US. The ones that aren’t show similar patterns. Look at India for example. Or Israel.

Having to file income taxes for their children is a burden the poor do not need.

Income taxes in general are regressive, even with all the exemptions and credits. If you want progressive taxation you should be looking at land value taxes and other forms of wealth taxation that rich people can’t avoid.

Yeah so you’re not really serious.

You might as well brush your teeth with this stuff:

(Don’t do this!)

What is a gift though? Is it a gift for your parents to feed you, clothe you, and let you live with them rent free?

That’s an interesting take! I’m getting to be an aging gamer myself and I no longer really play story-focused games. I play Roguelikes which I can pick up and drop any time, 5-10 minutes at a time, here and there. These games are designed to have maximum replay value. So even though I don’t have a lot of time I spend it on replaying rather than playing new games!

It’s an interesting difference and I think it depends on what we both look to get out of games.

I think it was inevitable. Before HL2 we had Deus Ex. It was glorious. Fans loved it. Game devs looked at it and went “F*%@ that! We’re not making 3 games worth of content when you’re only going to see 1 on a given play through!”

So that defines the basic tension. Gamers love replay value and multiple paths and different character builds and tons of secrets to explore. Game devs on the other hand want players to see every little blade of grass and tree they worked so hard at placing in the game. I think they also have a lot of data from achievements that show most gamers barely finish the game once, let alone discover all the secrets and alternate endings etc.

Yeah that’s how the Total War series does it. A single unit could be up to 200 people. It tends to make the unit far less maneuverable though. This means it leans pretty far away from what the WarCraft/StarCraft fan is looking for with highly microable units.

The issue with psychopaths is that although they may be rare, they can have an outsized impact. It only takes one of them to victimize hundreds of people and create an atmosphere of terror.

Norms. Same thing for women’s bathrooms. Unless you are alone in there, the psychopath is going to face multiple women yelling at him to leave.

As a society of laws we like to think we can solve everything by just writing a good law. Sometimes it’s much better to create situations where strong norms can solve the problem without the need for law enforcement. Norms are like laws where everyone is an enforcer.

I read a piece not too long ago by one of the developers of WC1. He originally had it so you could select all your units at the same time and just order them to attack. The lead designer said that was too boring and easy, so he had him limit the unit selection to groups of 4.

After trying it both ways, they agreed the smaller group limit made the game more skilful and interesting to play. Ever since then RTS games have gone towards increasing the selection cap more and more! I think it’s a mistake.

I loved the first one so much. I’ve been hearing the remaster for WC1 won’t have online multiplayer. That’s a huge disappointment for me. Hardly anyone ever got to experience that game multiplayer. I played it with my friend exactly once, when I brought my computer over to his house. It worked over LAN and I think also modem, but not the internet.

That works great for regular guys. Not so great for the evil psychopaths who just don’t care what we try to teach them and will always be looking for people to victimize.

Balkanization isn’t a master plan of any thinker, it’s a natural process as people move to cut themselves off from those they strongly disagree with.

I think there is a strong argument to be made that Balkanization is the ultimate, if unintended, result of the US founding fathers’ plan. From the very beginning it was a deal with the devil: a compromise between factions — who ought to be bitter enemies — under threat from a superior foe (the British Empire).

The collapse really began to build steam after the last great foe, the Soviet Union, was defeated.