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An otherwise insightful (but somewhat crass) comment seems to have been immediately [dead] upon being posted, but I think they might be on to something. Reader

by 0des 5y ago

An otherwise insightful (but somewhat crass) comment seems to have been immediately [dead] upon being posted, but I think they might be on to something. Readers: I hope you don't mind me momentarily intervening in the voting process, but I will post the comment below for others who may not have show-dead turned on to see. EDIT: Even more curious, the majority of this accounts otherwise normal posts seem to be [dead] as well. Is this a result of HN shadowban, or is this outside influence by a very motivated dissenter? Curious what I've stumbled upon here, as there are quite a number of accounts like this I'm noticing lately. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=newaccount2021 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=newaccount2021 https://imgur.com/1CUqXja.png https://imgur.com/1CUqXja.png 0 minutes, dead. ---- newaccount2021 [dead] [–] I think its more basic: 1. the restaurant they used to work at isn't there anymore 2. they moved back in with the parents and stopped giving a shit about the future 3. still living off their unemployment and stimulus...it will go to zero one day, but not today 4. even with a substantial raise, most jobs they qualify for will still leave them impoverished, so whats the point America's unemployed need deflation more than they need a raise. A 50% drop in housing costs will serve them better than a 15% raise. The number of Americans who would benefit from a substantial deflation rises every day.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
Very similar to the "Lying flat [Tang ping]" movement in China [1] [2] [3]. [1] https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/the-lying-flat-movement-standing-in-the-way-of-chinas-innovation-drive/ https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/the-lying-flat-movement... [2] https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1007589/tired-of-running-in-place%2C-young-chinese-lie-down https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1007589/tired-of-running-in-p... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_ping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_ping
indymike 5y ago
> A 50% drop in housing costs will serve them better than a 15% raise. The number of Americans who would benefit from a substantial deflation rises every day. Except servicing existing debt would become nearly impossible as wages went down, but that pesky car payment stayed at $500/mo.
- newaccount2021 5y ago
  young people haven't taken on debt yet, they will be better served by a world where things are cheaper older Americans with high debt loads are DOA no matter what
  - indymike 5y ago
    Student loans?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- imtringued 5y ago
  In reality, the market isn't really naturally free in the "freedom" sense. There is coercion everywhere. It's just that ownership of land allows for the most powerful form of coercion. Advertising companies, sales people, car dealers or realtors are all trying to convince you to spend more so they get their commission or more revenue but ultimately you can always refuse. You can always decide to live well within your means. The truth is that pretty much everything on the market that is free of coercion is getting cheaper. Housing doesn't work like that because location is a natural monopoly. It's a basic human need that cannot be produced and jobs unnecessarily cluster in cities forcing people to move there bidding up prices endlessly. The rule of thumb has become "If you can afford the house, you can afford everything that fits inside it." Wanna build a machine shop with $100k worth of tools? Cheap compared to the $600k to $2 million house. That's the thing. Strangely enough, literally everything is getting cheap except real estate. The story that inflation has been ruining the working class for the last 10 years just doesn't add up. There is no reason why housing shouldn't obey the same trend other than artificial scarcity of either housing near jobs or jobs near vacant housing.
mjevans 5y ago
Relief of the housing drought to the point that prices _do_ drop 50%: I hypothesize that alone would allow the low and middle class to save again and thus hope again.
nostromo 5y ago
There’s a little-used feature on HN that allows one to “vouch” for a flagged comment that is made for these situations.
- 0des 5y ago
  I use vouch all the time, including several times today, however I've never seen it on a comment, only threads in [new]
  - nostromo 5y ago
    Click on the comment’s date. Then you’ll get the option to vouch for it. (Assuming you meet some unknown karma threshold.)
    - 0des 5y ago
      Nostromo, thank you very much, I'll do that. Have a great weekend and thanks for showing me 'the way' :) Also, do you happen to know why this person's seemingly normal comments appear to be [dead] within 0 minutes of their post?
      - s5300 5y ago
        Likely because they've at some point reached and sustained a negative amount of Karma like I have :P Sometimes it's for a good reason, others it because there's some very alt right folks on HN that will brigade you if you've said something that makes them a bit butthurt.
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      You have to have 31 karma to vouch for a comment. If you vouch for too many comments that break site guidelines, you’ll have the vouch feature taken away. https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20356579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20356579
devwastaken 5y ago
Unemployment doesn't last very long, nor do you make much because it's based on what your income was. COVID gave special rules that extended and substantially increased the amount. That has since passed, and the amount was enough to only afford rent, food, and maybe a car payment in an affordable town. Housing and public transportation. The two things cities don't want to fix, because city boards are fascists that know only the wealthy of the city control it.
rsj_hn 5y ago
It's a valid take. Not one I necessarily agree with, but one that deserves exploration. IMO we are facing costs and painful trade offs: * Many insisted that the "moral" course of action was shutting the economy down during Covid to minimize deaths. Well, OK, there is a price for that in terms of destroying businesses and livelihoods, of loneliness and isolation. A lot of people are now stressed out, out of work - and those jobs are gone. Yes, new jobs will take their place, but not necessarily the same jobs in the same place. * Many insisted that the "moral" course of action is to suspend evictions when people lose their jobs during covid. It was unfair to lose your apartment if you lost your job. Well, OK, but that means that rental prices are now out of whack from what people are earning and the new job situation. That inventory is held back from the market and from (downward) price pressure. * Many also insisted that the "moral" course of action is to not have professional versus trade tracking in schools, that every high school should be "college prep", and everyone should go to to college. Well, OK, there is a cost for that in terms of not having a trade school infrastructure and a lot of people with no marketable skills even if they attended college or a college prep high school. The biggest problems that we face in our economy are problems we ourselves create in trying to approach the economy as a pez-dispenser of fairness rather than as an engine of economic growth that follows emergent technical, rather than ethical, laws. By pretending we'll all just be professionals, we have a huge mass of people who have no careers and no opportunity to engage in truly skilled work, together with acute shortages of things like plumbers, electricians, carpenters, auto mechanics, general contractors, etc. So yeah, life for a lot of people is very bleak. The take away is not to "warn" employers that they should manufacture lots of non-existent jobs for workers, but to fix our educational system so that it produces the kinds of people our economy needs, rather than the kinds of workers we think we want to be. Then rely on church attendance and government income insurance to take care of our moral concerns.
- brighton36 5y ago
  These are trolley problems all the way down. For which, there is probably no solution, save for educating the public as to what a trolly problem is. But, no one does that. So, instead, we have 'moral clarity'. I don't see how a country can work in such conditions for very long...
- 5y ago

by 0des 5y ago

toomuchtodo 5y ago

Very similar to the "Lying flat [Tang ping]" movement in China [1] [2] [3]. [1] https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/the-lying-flat-movement-standing-in-the-way-of-chinas-innovation-drive/ https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/the-lying-flat-movement... [2] https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1007589/tired-of-running-in-place%2C-young-chinese-lie-down https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1007589/tired-of-running-in-p... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_ping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_ping

indymike 5y ago

> A 50% drop in housing costs will serve them better than a 15% raise. The number of Americans who would benefit from a substantial deflation rises every day. Except servicing existing debt would become nearly impossible as wages went down, but that pesky car payment stayed at $500/mo.

newaccount2021 5y ago
young people haven't taken on debt yet, they will be better served by a world where things are cheaper older Americans with high debt loads are DOA no matter what
- indymike 5y ago
  Student loans?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
imtringued 5y ago
In reality, the market isn't really naturally free in the "freedom" sense. There is coercion everywhere. It's just that ownership of land allows for the most powerful form of coercion. Advertising companies, sales people, car dealers or realtors are all trying to convince you to spend more so they get their commission or more revenue but ultimately you can always refuse. You can always decide to live well within your means. The truth is that pretty much everything on the market that is free of coercion is getting cheaper. Housing doesn't work like that because location is a natural monopoly. It's a basic human need that cannot be produced and jobs unnecessarily cluster in cities forcing people to move there bidding up prices endlessly. The rule of thumb has become "If you can afford the house, you can afford everything that fits inside it." Wanna build a machine shop with $100k worth of tools? Cheap compared to the $600k to $2 million house. That's the thing. Strangely enough, literally everything is getting cheap except real estate. The story that inflation has been ruining the working class for the last 10 years just doesn't add up. There is no reason why housing shouldn't obey the same trend other than artificial scarcity of either housing near jobs or jobs near vacant housing.

mjevans 5y ago

Relief of the housing drought to the point that prices _do_ drop 50%: I hypothesize that alone would allow the low and middle class to save again and thus hope again.

nostromo 5y ago

There’s a little-used feature on HN that allows one to “vouch” for a flagged comment that is made for these situations.

0des 5y ago
I use vouch all the time, including several times today, however I've never seen it on a comment, only threads in [new]
- nostromo 5y ago
  Click on the comment’s date. Then you’ll get the option to vouch for it. (Assuming you meet some unknown karma threshold.)
  - 0des 5y ago
    Nostromo, thank you very much, I'll do that. Have a great weekend and thanks for showing me 'the way' :) Also, do you happen to know why this person's seemingly normal comments appear to be [dead] within 0 minutes of their post?
    - s5300 5y ago
      Likely because they've at some point reached and sustained a negative amount of Karma like I have :P Sometimes it's for a good reason, others it because there's some very alt right folks on HN that will brigade you if you've said something that makes them a bit butthurt.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    You have to have 31 karma to vouch for a comment. If you vouch for too many comments that break site guidelines, you’ll have the vouch feature taken away. https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20356579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20356579

devwastaken 5y ago

Unemployment doesn't last very long, nor do you make much because it's based on what your income was. COVID gave special rules that extended and substantially increased the amount. That has since passed, and the amount was enough to only afford rent, food, and maybe a car payment in an affordable town. Housing and public transportation. The two things cities don't want to fix, because city boards are fascists that know only the wealthy of the city control it.

rsj_hn 5y ago

It's a valid take. Not one I necessarily agree with, but one that deserves exploration. IMO we are facing costs and painful trade offs: * Many insisted that the "moral" course of action was shutting the economy down during Covid to minimize deaths. Well, OK, there is a price for that in terms of destroying businesses and livelihoods, of loneliness and isolation. A lot of people are now stressed out, out of work - and those jobs are gone. Yes, new jobs will take their place, but not necessarily the same jobs in the same place. * Many insisted that the "moral" course of action is to suspend evictions when people lose their jobs during covid. It was unfair to lose your apartment if you lost your job. Well, OK, but that means that rental prices are now out of whack from what people are earning and the new job situation. That inventory is held back from the market and from (downward) price pressure. * Many also insisted that the "moral" course of action is to not have professional versus trade tracking in schools, that every high school should be "college prep", and everyone should go to to college. Well, OK, there is a cost for that in terms of not having a trade school infrastructure and a lot of people with no marketable skills even if they attended college or a college prep high school. The biggest problems that we face in our economy are problems we ourselves create in trying to approach the economy as a pez-dispenser of fairness rather than as an engine of economic growth that follows emergent technical, rather than ethical, laws. By pretending we'll all just be professionals, we have a huge mass of people who have no careers and no opportunity to engage in truly skilled work, together with acute shortages of things like plumbers, electricians, carpenters, auto mechanics, general contractors, etc. So yeah, life for a lot of people is very bleak. The take away is not to "warn" employers that they should manufacture lots of non-existent jobs for workers, but to fix our educational system so that it produces the kinds of people our economy needs, rather than the kinds of workers we think we want to be. Then rely on church attendance and government income insurance to take care of our moral concerns.

brighton36 5y ago
These are trolley problems all the way down. For which, there is probably no solution, save for educating the public as to what a trolly problem is. But, no one does that. So, instead, we have 'moral clarity'. I don't see how a country can work in such conditions for very long...
5y ago