[-] Hillock@feddit.de 1 points 5 months ago

The type of building is irrelavant to the problem. Anything that works for apartment complexes works just as well for a single family house. It's always the land underneath that's the issue.

And at the ond of the day any solution that include getting rid of landlords comes down to the government seizing "unused" or "inappropriately used" land more aggresively. Something that just doesn't sit right with most people.

[-] Hillock@feddit.de 3 points 5 months ago

I can't unsee it anymore. It really does look like one.

[-] Hillock@feddit.de -1 points 5 months ago

You miss the point of the discussion. The discussion is about how Fahrenheit relate to how humans interact with numbers and relate that number to temperature based on how that temperature feels.

I am not saying Celsius is arbirtray, I am saying that 40 being really hot is a weird number for most humans to associate with "hottest weather you are somewhat likely experience". Of course if you grew up with Celsius it feels second nature. But for someone who isn't familiar with either Celsius or Fahrenheit, the 0 - 100 could be way more intutive. Fahrenheit still fails at this because the numbers between 0-100 don't really add up with what's intuitive.

That's why I said the original argument of "Fahrenheit is how humans feel" doesn't work.

[-] Hillock@feddit.de 25 points 5 months ago

It only makes sense if you grow up with Fahrenheit. Otherwise Fahrenheit isn't how humans feels since most of us have no concept what these number mean.

If I would just go with 0 - cold 100 - hot I would assume 50 - perfect. But 50 is still chilly. 70-80 feels like it should be getting hot but that's the most comfortable temperature.

[-] Hillock@feddit.de 69 points 5 months ago

A lot of users are also from poorer countries that lack the means to create their own web infrastructure. Using Facebook to run your business account is easier, cheaper, and more reliable than most alternatives there. Phone carriers and ISP often also have "free"-data for certain social media platforms. You get 1GB+1GB for Facebook/IG/YT/Some Game. So you are stuck in this loop where everything reinforces itself to use Facebook.

[-] Hillock@feddit.de 4 points 5 months ago

While my farts can also be trusted, the few times I doubted them I still went to the toilet just to be sure. It never turned out to be necessary but I'd rather take 20 seconds to go to the toilet and be safe than having to deal with the aftermath of a misjudgement.

[-] Hillock@feddit.de 11 points 6 months ago

No, there is too much content for that nowadays. YouTube has over 3 million new videos each day. Facebook, TikTok, Instagram also has ridiculous amounts of new posts every day. Browsing Reddit on New was a terrible experience on r/all or even many of the bigger subs. Even on the fediverse sorting by new is not enjoyable. You are swarmed with reposts, and content that's entirely uninteresting to you.

It works in smaller communities but there it isn't really necessary. You usually have an overview of all the content anyhow and it doesn't matter how it's ordered.

Any social media that plans on scaling up needs a more advanced system.

[-] Hillock@feddit.de 7 points 6 months ago

You limit the hotel licenses. You then go hard on hotel inspections and revoke licenses or don't renew it from hotels that aren't up to code/standard. That way the available hotel rooms will go down. The number of licenses is limited by hotel category. That way you ensure a healthy mix of available room types and can still have all kinds of tourists in town. There won't be an issue with "big chains snatching up all the licenses".

Then for a time only people with a valid reservation are allowed to enter. You place checkpoints at the most common points of entry. That way you limit the number of potential tourists by limiting the available hotel rooms. It would also fix the issue of unregistered AirBnBs. It won't be perfect but you don't want to kill tourism just reduce it.

Locals and family of locals would be exempted from the limit. You just put some system in place to apply for that exemption for family. Since the checkpoints are only temporary (maybe around 6 months) the impact on locals and their family isn't too bad before it goes back to normal.

There will be a lot of media coverage about the closure and fewer tourists will come. The lifting of the checkpoints will barely make the news so things won't go back to how it was before. And the limit on hotel licenses is still in place, so the available rooms are limited anyhow. Naturally reducing tourism because fewer peope can book a room.

[-] Hillock@feddit.de 4 points 6 months ago

I grew up in Austria, so while we aren't bordering Russia there is no oceans between us either.

My issue with the mandatory military service is just, I do not belive that the training is actually effective. You aren't training soldiers that you can call up and expect to peform. You are artificially inflating your military number by having "reservists" that are just as effective as untrained people picked up from the street. The 6 months of training your rank-and-file soldier gets is just not helpful anymore. It might have worked 150 years ago when we were fighting with muskets and basic cannons.

Maybe the Finnish military is different and prepare you better in the 6 months. I doubt it. The more usefull training is already voluntary and comes with a longer commitment time (both in Austria and Finland). In Austria you don't even get any training after your 6 months without opting in. Finland gives you an additional 80-150 days over 50 years according to google. Which is at least a little bit usefull.

If countries with mandatory military service bump up their current active standing military by a few thousands and offer a voluntary reservists program, that would provide a military just as if not more effective as the current system. And wouldn't force thousands of people to spend months doing something they aren't interested in.

If you really think mandatory service is necessary for the security of the country, then go the way of Singapore or South Korea where the service is around 2 years. Then the people actually are trained and spend long enough time in active duty to be ready in case of a war. But again, this 6 month mandatory service is nonsense in my opinion.

In 2013 Austria had a vote to get rid of the mandatory military service. 60% were in favor of keeping it (only 52% of people voted). The main arguments of people in favor of keeping: The civil service is essential for Hospitals, Nursinghomes, Schools, etc. as "free" labor. They aren't really free because the state is paying them. The second most common argument was "I had to do it, so they should also have to do it". Which is just stupid. A very small percentage of people actually cared about the military aspect of it.

[-] Hillock@feddit.de 2 points 6 months ago

The alternative is to have a standing professionall army. Then you have people who are actually trained and "combat ready". I wouldn't say that's worse at all. It allows people who want to be in the military to be in the military and people who don't, won't have to.

Mandatory military service isn't doing your bit, it's sitting around for a few months doing nothing useful. Even if war breaks out during your time, you are barely better prepared than someone just picked off the street. And after 2-3 years all the "training" you went through is forgotten anyhow.

I understand the need of drafting people during a time of war. That makes sense. But all mandatory military service does, is waste a year of your time.

[-] Hillock@feddit.de 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

The situation is way more complicated, it isn't a simple scam. It certainly didn't start out that way. The developers fully inteded on building these homes (at least until recently). And the business model was sound and generally works.

Pre-selling of units in apartments/condos is common around the world and a key part of securing the cashflow for the project. Chinese developers were operating just as anywhere else. The model is - use internal funding + pre-selling to build the project, then sell the remaining units once done. Use the money from selling the finished units to pay for the next project. Since demand for homes was super high, they started planning the next project before the first one was finished. Same as anywhere else in the world. The issue started that finished projects didn't sell the remaining empty units at the expected rate. Eventually the capital of the development company was mostly used up and the cashflow from finished projects dried up. So they had a lot of half built projects and the only money available was that from projects even further in the future. And that's not sustainable and here we are now.

There are three big factors why the finished units didn't sell.

  • Pre-selling is cheaper. So homeowners opted for that. You usually are given a decent discount and have much easier payment terms. You often have a few years of monthly payments before the lump-sum is due. So by the time you need that mortage you already have 10-30% equity in the unit. Making the mortage lower and easier to get. And if your financial situation changed, you can even sell the unit before the lump-sum is due.

  • China has rather restrictive rules on owning land. In many muncipialities, and especially in big cities, people are only allowed to own 1 or 2 residential homes (there are ways around it). Foreign entities aren't allowed to own residential properties for investment purposes in general. So unlike in the west where you have a conglomerate of investors buying up all the homes with the plan of making their money back by renting them out, Chinese investors have to rely on people buying their own home for personal use. Which means there is no real option of selling empty units on mass for a lower price.

  • The rate of rural to urban migration slowed down. In the past few decades China experienced some of the fastest growth of urbanization ever. Tons of people coming from the countryside to live in the city. This created the illusion of near limitless demand for homes. But now it's very likely that the Chinese government lied about their population. So the demand for homes can't be as high as expected but on top of that, migration to urban areas has slowed down.

Now a lot of these things have been known for years. And nobody really did anything. So I personally think calling all of this a scam is fair at this point. But the Chinese government could step in and help out their population. If these developers really go bankrupt, the government could just seize all of the empty unsold units and redistribute them to people who got fucked over. It isn't perfect but it's better than not having a house. The big question is just, how many of these units are actually habitable. China has questionable building methods to begin with and on top of that many of the buildings were so empty that there was no money to pay for maintainance. So alot of these homes are death traps. And I suppose no home is better than a death trap.

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Hillock

joined 11 months ago