It’s the other way around. Residential properties are used as investment vehicles, because it’s profitable. It’s profitable because the prices are high and rising. The prices are rising because of the housing crisis, which is caused by lack of supply. Lack of supply is caused, in large measure, because of restrictive zoning.

If there were a glut of housing on the market, prices would crater, and it wouldn’t be profitable, investors wouldn’t buy residential properties. They could still try to buy up all of the properties, and create artificial scarcity that way, but the idea is to make a profit, not just collect residential property for the sake of having it. As soon as they started selling or letting properties in large numbers, supply would rise and prices drop again.

It’s the artificial scarcity mandated by law that’s driving the high prices. This explanation is confirmed by many cities, like mine, that have a very low rate of private equity ownership, and still have a housing crisis.

Honestly, though, that sounds like an avoidant attachment style. He desperately wants intimacy, but it scares the bejeezus out of him, so he unconsciously finds a way to sandbag every potential connection.

Here ya go, a whites-only community in Arkansas.

Consider that the Father of All Selection Biases is at work here: Of course we’ll hear comments, from all the men who can’t handle the concept of not sharing their opinion, sharing their opinion of not being able to share their opinion.

Lemmy is like a house party, where everybody has the freedom to talk to whomever they so choose, thus creating segregated groups. If one butts in to a conversation, the participants are free to ask one not to participate, and are free to walk away if one insists. (In this metaphor, the WomensStuff community doesn’t even mind if you listen in.) For a house party, though, the host is well within their rights to not invite anybody, or even ask guests to leave. That’s a very strictly segregated group.

What’s been the ripple of evil from allowing house parties, or companies to pay only a select group of employees, private clubs, family dinners et cetera? Has the existence of the chain of women’s-only gyms destroyed men’s lives?

You are correct. I forgot to qualify my statement to say that it applies on city streets. Apologies, I can’t find the YouTube video that discussed the study right now.

Hi-viz doesn’t do anything. There’s no statistical difference in casualty rates between people wearing it and people not. Consider that drivers routinely plow into the back of emergency vehicles stopped by the side of the highway, completely wrapped in hi-viz, reflective material, and with million-lumen flashing lights. This is victim-blaming nonsense.

How DARE people move around the landscape in the traditional way that humans have been locomoting for tens of thousands of years without considering YOUR needs!

(That is, if you can’t see what’s in front of your car, you need to slow down.)

e: typo

Which one is more fantastical, a flying, super-strength, alien humanoid; or a covert, large-scale demolition operation with not a single leak?

That’s why I keep my eye on Joe Rogan. I mean, folks tell me I’m nuts to think that a charismatic entertainer could make the transition to being President, but I’m not so sure. (/s, to be extra clear) I notice that he’s taking care to distance himself from the regime’s more-unpopular actions, but not break with it wholly.

Ah, the old Sen. Sumner treatment!

False? We employed that strategy, i.e. voted for Democrats multiple times over decades without demanding that they do better, and now we have fascism. That’s not to say that the strategy caused fascism, but self-evidently didn’t stop it.

The crux of the issue is that we voted for Democrats “for the time being” multiple times over the past 50 years, and this is still what fucking happened. But, ignoring that, the big idea here to save our hides is that a Democrat has to win every single election from now until the sun goes super-nova? That seems more than a little unrealistic.

The optimal strategy remains to vote for neoliberals when the alternative is fascists because that is how to create time for socialists and progressives to primary neoliberals in the Democratic Party and win general elections.

With all due respect, that strategy got us fascism. The terminology has changed, but I could tell close to 30 years ago that this would be the result. Is three decades not enough time for socialists and progressives to “primary” neoliberals? Apparently not, because socialsts/progressives/leftists are lazy, good-for-nothings who are simultaneously powerful enough to swing elections, but too inconsequential to talk about their issues or court their votes.

In other words, maybe these vaunted “centrists”/liberals should’ve stepped up to stop fascism. (And, it’s not leftists who say that Harris “went too woke” and now want to throw trans people under the bus.)