Little bit off topic, but maybe not. You've said multiple times that 'the time is not now' to replace USGov. That is obviously true-- at the federal level. But what about at the city level? It seems like the time is more than ripe for making the attempt on a US city or two. There are dozens of cities in the US that qualify as 'failed cities', any way you define it, any one of which represents millions, or hundreds of millions, of dollars of depressed value, just waiting to be 'liberated'.
There are probably 100 cities across the US, that have massively depressed property values, all because of incompetent/corrupt city governance. By which I mean, mostly, lack of safety, and messed up city services— everything from failure to pick up the trash to artificial scarcity in taxis. So, fixing the governments of any of those cities by privatizing their governments, would certainly pay. Even if the privatizers didn't own any property in the city themselves, they would realize great profits simply through the increased taxes on the property as it increased in value. If they went in ahead of time and bought many city blocks of the worst slum areas they would be able to buy for a pittance, and make out like bandits. So, why isn't someone doing this already? We've probably got a billion dollars profit opportunity here. I'm guessing the reason is because innovators are rare on the ground. It's 'old news' to go in and takeover a badly run company and replace its management and fix its problems, but no one has ever yet gone in and taken over a badly run city and done the same. If that's true, if one person/company, successfully privatized a city, and really cashed in, others would follow, in a massive cascade. Or am I missing something basic? People running for mayor are always promising to clean the city up, but, instead it is always more of the same. That may be because politicians have no real incentive to really fix the problems, unlike someone who really is going to cash in if the city property values recover to what they ought to be. Or it might be, that with the current set of city laws, and current set of city employees, it can't be fixed.
But someone going in to privatize a city wouldn't be doing the equivalent of running for mayor, or city manager, he would be presenting a referendum to the voters, with a new city charter, involving rules and laws similar to something like a planned retirement community— with sale of stock to private investors. The privatizers, of course, hold back a good healthy chunk of shares for themselves, for future sales, etc. The money raised by the sale of the stock will be used for repairing infrastructure—roads and bridges, cleaning up graffiti, etc; forcing landlords to repair their properties, or condemning them and forcing their sale; and improving city services, most especially law and order. That might require hiring a lot of additional cops, who arrest anyone who break even the smallest law, (broken window policing) and 'throw the book at them' judges, who hand out jail time to anyone who breaks the laws. That will clear out your troublemakers PDQ—they will all depart to someplace where they can break the law in peace. A safe place to live means rents will rise, of course, which means property values will rise. There will be a turnover of population of course, 'gentrification', and a virtuous cycle that just keeps increases the value of city property.
Possible problem areas would include: legal problems associated with discharging useless employees, and massive liabilities in the form of retirement benefits for existing city employees. A plan like this would probably only work for cities without a massive pension liability overhang.
Potentially not that off topic to start a meme city. Probably works best as either an informal hostile meme takeover (WSB), or a formal incorporated entity with plans to purchase, refurbish, and people properties in an undervalued town. You could probably take over a neighbourhood to start with a min buy in of say, 50k and 100 ppl. Pooling resources. Generating rental income from a given number of those properties would provide capital for expansion of the neighbourhood. Then, all you have to do is have enough of the people in the town be part of your corporation that you just win any election by default, and you can rewrite every rule from the ground up. There was a guy Justin Murphy interviewed who had the same idea (are you that guy?)... but the guy justin interviewed was a little more focused on like, convincing other people to basically, give them the whole town for being awesome.
Many great towns were started as corporations first. Like Jamestown! Or, the Virginia Company.
A corporation would be easier to succeed with, but would probably be able to generate a lot less capital than a wide spread meme city idea.
Honestly its less stupid than living on a bunch of boats tied together and calling yourself a country (I'm looking at you seasteading).
meme cities. I love it -- 'an informal hostile meme takeover' -- that probably wouldn't work for a whole city, but it could work for a neighborhood. And all it would take would be a somewhat credible coordination signal--just like WallStreetBets---and you'd get an 'decentralized hostile neighborhood takeover'. All you would need would be a semi-credible coordination signal. It would be a self reinforcing cascade too-- everyone that jumps in stands to see 10x or 100x returns on their money-- or a lot more than that, if they borrowed money to make the purchase. And I would think banks couldn't even refuse to lend-- it would be redlining.
No, I'm not the guy Justin Murphy interviewed. Don't know who he is.
One major problem is that the current populace of these areas will not overlook the "hostile" part of this hostile takeover. This is *their neighborhood*, after all. Maybe take a drive through the rougher parts of Saint Louis, Chicago, Detroit, wherever, see it from the street level, then let me know how viable you think this plan really is.
so, ok, first you pick out some 'neighborhood' something with a natural attractant— a 'bad part of town' that is right next to a downtown area, or a major employer, or a university district. Someplace that would attract renters/homeowners/retail establishments— based on location ; but right now no one dares live there except criminals and gangbangers etc, out of fear of assault/robbery/rape. So, across a freeway or a major artery and you see price differentials of 10x or more. Like east Palo Alto used to be. Murder capital of the United States, and immediately adjacent to Palo Alto, home of the one million dollar teardown.
Probably most large con-urban areas have someplace like that. All you need is a coordination signal. It's has to be a local coordination signal though— you would need one for Chicago, one for Detroit, one for LA. No one in LA is going be interested in jumping on the bandwagon for a neighborhood in Detroit, or vice versa.
So, say you are a young urban professional, or a young urban gun nut. You can't afford downtown prices, so you log onto r/realestatebetsdetroit, or whatever, and look and see what neighborhoods are being suggested as takeover targets ; see what kind of chatter is going on— or start r/realestatebetsdetroit, if it doesn't already exist.
Biggest profits are going to be where there is in someplace that currently has lots of crime and violence— which means the people going in are going to have to be young, male, and single— what a happy coincidence, that's our target demographic. If they have a job they can get a loan; they probably wouldn't need more than $5K of their own money, if that; in fact, with $5K in a lot of places they wouldn't even need a loan—they could buy the property outright. They coordinate ahead of time, say, via pinned posts along the line of '…we are looking for 3 more guys to set up a community association and neighborhood watch in neighborhood x-- currently we are looking at the area bounded by ave x and y, streets a and b, if you are interested in something that area or immediately adjacent, get in touch…' Someone who is more of a second wave type, who still wants/needs cheap, and is willing to take a risk, but, well, not that much of a risk, would be looking for something more along the lines of '… two hundred percent price appreciation in the last six months, at least that much appreciation still to go… neighborhood watch in place and ACTIVE— regular patrols, lots of community solidarity— regular street parties and pot lucks. We have the police, city maintenance, and our area's city councillor on speed dial, with coordinated calling and phone trees to get the message out to everyone in the community to call/complain/picket, letter writing campaigns. We are currently looking at mass volunteering to support the primary campaign of x…—any drug dealers, drug houses, tent cities, aggressive panhandlers, homeless people, shitting in the street, pot holes, graffiti, party houses …. we swing into action immediately……' Meanwhile, the first wave guys are selling to the second wave people, and staking out a new takeover target— only this time buying 3-4 houses, evicting unruly tenants, maybe quitting their day jobs, some of them, going into real estate takeover as a full time job…
The key thing I think, that would make it work is that, the amount of money you'd need to get started would be low— prices are already rock bottom, and banks are legally required to lend in 'troubled areas'. All you really need is a way to find 10-12 like minded people to go in as a group, each buying a house, going in knowing the house is a fixer upper— and so is the neighborhood, but with enough people going in simultaneously to pull it off— result— major upside profits.
One problem I see is that in neighborhoods of this sort there may be a lot of houses that someone would be glad to sell if they could find a buyer, but they have given up on hoping to find a buyer, so few or no places will be listed for sale. The people living there will be renters, or even squatters—so a real estate agent probably couldn't go door to door looking for people interested in listing. But maybe there is a public record of property owners, down at city hall. But, probably, the property owners address isn't publicly avail, for privacy reasons. Maybe go door to door asking renters who their landlord is, who they pay the rent to?
You have to think this has been tried before by a more centrally organized development crew. I know a lot of former industrial zones that became fancy townhomes or highrises, but de-gangbangification of a residential neighborhood with (likely) public housing nearby seems like a tall order for a dozen e-friends. It sounds fun though.
Yeah I agree. I mean, obviously there is a crap load of value in decriminalizing a criminalized area. But it seems much easier to just, pick a quaint deindustrialized town, fixed it up, and turn it in to a nice little retro air bnb community. You are probably looking at 3x property values plus good rental and business incomes, vs. taking back all those post-war homes in detroit and similar is like... 50x property value if you succeed but also 100x harder. Like, you want to start with the quaint hamlet of memeington before you move onto memevill, meme city, meme nation.
Deep value real estate and architecture is already definitely a thing, but I don't think it has necessarily been tackled in this way before... Kirsten Dirksen has a great youtube channel devoted to the nascent movement, which to me feels a little like PC's in the 70s... https://www.youtube.com/user/kirstendirksen
I fear the bums now know that they're stuck in the movie Brazil. Dying in a hail of bullets while _holding the line_ is the only nobility that remains accessible to the bums. The camaraderie of the damned is what links thedonald.win, WSB and the _six_janviertards_. Everything else is just oxycontin of one flavor or another. The Bigs remain proud of the technological terror they have constructed.
For sure, but WSB was an awesome peruse and I’ve done well actually investing off some of their sentiments— being early-ish on Tesla in 2019 for example.
For the lulz, and definitely not because I have the slightest desire to engage in political action of any kind, I pledge to do my bum best to enroll my bum circles in your bum mobilization scheme, BUT ONLY ONCE, per bum law, assuming you do all the hard work and keep me entertained with more tasty blog posts.
>Bums are not sincere. No bum has had a sincere thought since the age of 15, when he came home early from school and caught his mom banging the cable guy.
Japan is making a nice profit selling American bums their sincerity supplements, in 22-minute capsules.
"To begin with, Nishitani says we must heed the call of Nietzsche’s madman and cease fleeing from the experience of nihilism. God as the highest being is dead, and it remains an open question whether he can be reborn as absolute nothingness. In any case, the venture of Nishitani’s philosophy of Zen is more concerned with the existential imperative of letting go of attachments than it is with immediately grasping hold of a new concept for God. In order to finally free humans from their egoistic obsessions and manipulative objectifications in the dualistic “field of being and consciousness,” Nishitani argued for the necessity of first boldly stepping back into the “field of nihility.”
Yet the real breakthrough to a non-dualistic reaffirmation of self and world only occurs when the relative nothingness of nihility is in turn broken through to a genuine experience of absolute nothingness or true emptiness on the “field of śūnyatā.” Nishitani thus explained the personal encounter with nihilism as an experience of the extreme relative nothingness of “nihility” or “vacuous nothingness” (kyomu), and for him the central task of “overcoming nihilism by way of passing through nihilism” entailed transgressing beneath (i.e., “trans-descending”) the “field of nihility” to the “field of śūnyatā” (see NKC X, 109 and 122ff.; Nishitani 1986, 97 and 108ff.).[15] As mentioned earlier (subsection 3.2), the “field of śūnyatā” is not a vacuum of relative nothingness that assaults beings from without; it is an open clearing wherein beings are neither nullified nor reified but rather let be in the mutual freedom of their coming to be and passing away. It is also the place in which a genuine interpersonal encounter can take place (Nishitani 2004; Davis 2017).'
The trajectory is clear though. Nihilism becomes the lingua franca of the bums. And as the systems try to compete with the memetic lattice the bums fart out, crossing the bum's moat of absurdity becomes an ever higher computational cost the systems must pay upkeep their sovereignty.
r/wsb is bored. The Dudes / Bums are apathetic. I don't think Curtis is catching the distinction. Who will raise the Dead Bum Army of Dunharrow? Our Nihilist Prince will have to be the Heir to Isildur.
My wife asked me what I was reading, then came over and proceeded to read this heading out loud, sigh, and walk away: "Secrets of bum power"
Privatizing Cities.
Little bit off topic, but maybe not. You've said multiple times that 'the time is not now' to replace USGov. That is obviously true-- at the federal level. But what about at the city level? It seems like the time is more than ripe for making the attempt on a US city or two. There are dozens of cities in the US that qualify as 'failed cities', any way you define it, any one of which represents millions, or hundreds of millions, of dollars of depressed value, just waiting to be 'liberated'.
There are probably 100 cities across the US, that have massively depressed property values, all because of incompetent/corrupt city governance. By which I mean, mostly, lack of safety, and messed up city services— everything from failure to pick up the trash to artificial scarcity in taxis. So, fixing the governments of any of those cities by privatizing their governments, would certainly pay. Even if the privatizers didn't own any property in the city themselves, they would realize great profits simply through the increased taxes on the property as it increased in value. If they went in ahead of time and bought many city blocks of the worst slum areas they would be able to buy for a pittance, and make out like bandits. So, why isn't someone doing this already? We've probably got a billion dollars profit opportunity here. I'm guessing the reason is because innovators are rare on the ground. It's 'old news' to go in and takeover a badly run company and replace its management and fix its problems, but no one has ever yet gone in and taken over a badly run city and done the same. If that's true, if one person/company, successfully privatized a city, and really cashed in, others would follow, in a massive cascade. Or am I missing something basic? People running for mayor are always promising to clean the city up, but, instead it is always more of the same. That may be because politicians have no real incentive to really fix the problems, unlike someone who really is going to cash in if the city property values recover to what they ought to be. Or it might be, that with the current set of city laws, and current set of city employees, it can't be fixed.
But someone going in to privatize a city wouldn't be doing the equivalent of running for mayor, or city manager, he would be presenting a referendum to the voters, with a new city charter, involving rules and laws similar to something like a planned retirement community— with sale of stock to private investors. The privatizers, of course, hold back a good healthy chunk of shares for themselves, for future sales, etc. The money raised by the sale of the stock will be used for repairing infrastructure—roads and bridges, cleaning up graffiti, etc; forcing landlords to repair their properties, or condemning them and forcing their sale; and improving city services, most especially law and order. That might require hiring a lot of additional cops, who arrest anyone who break even the smallest law, (broken window policing) and 'throw the book at them' judges, who hand out jail time to anyone who breaks the laws. That will clear out your troublemakers PDQ—they will all depart to someplace where they can break the law in peace. A safe place to live means rents will rise, of course, which means property values will rise. There will be a turnover of population of course, 'gentrification', and a virtuous cycle that just keeps increases the value of city property.
Possible problem areas would include: legal problems associated with discharging useless employees, and massive liabilities in the form of retirement benefits for existing city employees. A plan like this would probably only work for cities without a massive pension liability overhang.
Potentially not that off topic to start a meme city. Probably works best as either an informal hostile meme takeover (WSB), or a formal incorporated entity with plans to purchase, refurbish, and people properties in an undervalued town. You could probably take over a neighbourhood to start with a min buy in of say, 50k and 100 ppl. Pooling resources. Generating rental income from a given number of those properties would provide capital for expansion of the neighbourhood. Then, all you have to do is have enough of the people in the town be part of your corporation that you just win any election by default, and you can rewrite every rule from the ground up. There was a guy Justin Murphy interviewed who had the same idea (are you that guy?)... but the guy justin interviewed was a little more focused on like, convincing other people to basically, give them the whole town for being awesome.
Many great towns were started as corporations first. Like Jamestown! Or, the Virginia Company.
A corporation would be easier to succeed with, but would probably be able to generate a lot less capital than a wide spread meme city idea.
Honestly its less stupid than living on a bunch of boats tied together and calling yourself a country (I'm looking at you seasteading).
meme cities. I love it -- 'an informal hostile meme takeover' -- that probably wouldn't work for a whole city, but it could work for a neighborhood. And all it would take would be a somewhat credible coordination signal--just like WallStreetBets---and you'd get an 'decentralized hostile neighborhood takeover'. All you would need would be a semi-credible coordination signal. It would be a self reinforcing cascade too-- everyone that jumps in stands to see 10x or 100x returns on their money-- or a lot more than that, if they borrowed money to make the purchase. And I would think banks couldn't even refuse to lend-- it would be redlining.
No, I'm not the guy Justin Murphy interviewed. Don't know who he is.
One major problem is that the current populace of these areas will not overlook the "hostile" part of this hostile takeover. This is *their neighborhood*, after all. Maybe take a drive through the rougher parts of Saint Louis, Chicago, Detroit, wherever, see it from the street level, then let me know how viable you think this plan really is.
Tl;dr: Don't bother. Too dangerous.
Gentrification incorporated.
so, ok, first you pick out some 'neighborhood' something with a natural attractant— a 'bad part of town' that is right next to a downtown area, or a major employer, or a university district. Someplace that would attract renters/homeowners/retail establishments— based on location ; but right now no one dares live there except criminals and gangbangers etc, out of fear of assault/robbery/rape. So, across a freeway or a major artery and you see price differentials of 10x or more. Like east Palo Alto used to be. Murder capital of the United States, and immediately adjacent to Palo Alto, home of the one million dollar teardown.
Probably most large con-urban areas have someplace like that. All you need is a coordination signal. It's has to be a local coordination signal though— you would need one for Chicago, one for Detroit, one for LA. No one in LA is going be interested in jumping on the bandwagon for a neighborhood in Detroit, or vice versa.
So, say you are a young urban professional, or a young urban gun nut. You can't afford downtown prices, so you log onto r/realestatebetsdetroit, or whatever, and look and see what neighborhoods are being suggested as takeover targets ; see what kind of chatter is going on— or start r/realestatebetsdetroit, if it doesn't already exist.
Biggest profits are going to be where there is in someplace that currently has lots of crime and violence— which means the people going in are going to have to be young, male, and single— what a happy coincidence, that's our target demographic. If they have a job they can get a loan; they probably wouldn't need more than $5K of their own money, if that; in fact, with $5K in a lot of places they wouldn't even need a loan—they could buy the property outright. They coordinate ahead of time, say, via pinned posts along the line of '…we are looking for 3 more guys to set up a community association and neighborhood watch in neighborhood x-- currently we are looking at the area bounded by ave x and y, streets a and b, if you are interested in something that area or immediately adjacent, get in touch…' Someone who is more of a second wave type, who still wants/needs cheap, and is willing to take a risk, but, well, not that much of a risk, would be looking for something more along the lines of '… two hundred percent price appreciation in the last six months, at least that much appreciation still to go… neighborhood watch in place and ACTIVE— regular patrols, lots of community solidarity— regular street parties and pot lucks. We have the police, city maintenance, and our area's city councillor on speed dial, with coordinated calling and phone trees to get the message out to everyone in the community to call/complain/picket, letter writing campaigns. We are currently looking at mass volunteering to support the primary campaign of x…—any drug dealers, drug houses, tent cities, aggressive panhandlers, homeless people, shitting in the street, pot holes, graffiti, party houses …. we swing into action immediately……' Meanwhile, the first wave guys are selling to the second wave people, and staking out a new takeover target— only this time buying 3-4 houses, evicting unruly tenants, maybe quitting their day jobs, some of them, going into real estate takeover as a full time job…
The key thing I think, that would make it work is that, the amount of money you'd need to get started would be low— prices are already rock bottom, and banks are legally required to lend in 'troubled areas'. All you really need is a way to find 10-12 like minded people to go in as a group, each buying a house, going in knowing the house is a fixer upper— and so is the neighborhood, but with enough people going in simultaneously to pull it off— result— major upside profits.
One problem I see is that in neighborhoods of this sort there may be a lot of houses that someone would be glad to sell if they could find a buyer, but they have given up on hoping to find a buyer, so few or no places will be listed for sale. The people living there will be renters, or even squatters—so a real estate agent probably couldn't go door to door looking for people interested in listing. But maybe there is a public record of property owners, down at city hall. But, probably, the property owners address isn't publicly avail, for privacy reasons. Maybe go door to door asking renters who their landlord is, who they pay the rent to?
You have to think this has been tried before by a more centrally organized development crew. I know a lot of former industrial zones that became fancy townhomes or highrises, but de-gangbangification of a residential neighborhood with (likely) public housing nearby seems like a tall order for a dozen e-friends. It sounds fun though.
Yeah I agree. I mean, obviously there is a crap load of value in decriminalizing a criminalized area. But it seems much easier to just, pick a quaint deindustrialized town, fixed it up, and turn it in to a nice little retro air bnb community. You are probably looking at 3x property values plus good rental and business incomes, vs. taking back all those post-war homes in detroit and similar is like... 50x property value if you succeed but also 100x harder. Like, you want to start with the quaint hamlet of memeington before you move onto memevill, meme city, meme nation.
Deep value real estate and architecture is already definitely a thing, but I don't think it has necessarily been tackled in this way before... Kirsten Dirksen has a great youtube channel devoted to the nascent movement, which to me feels a little like PC's in the 70s... https://www.youtube.com/user/kirstendirksen
I have a friend who fixed up a house in a really high crime area with his wife. https://www.redfin.com/VA/Richmond/2111-Keswick-Ave-23224/home/55434425 very doable. Though dangerous. Someone was shot directly outside of his house.
I fear the bums now know that they're stuck in the movie Brazil. Dying in a hail of bullets while _holding the line_ is the only nobility that remains accessible to the bums. The camaraderie of the damned is what links thedonald.win, WSB and the _six_janviertards_. Everything else is just oxycontin of one flavor or another. The Bigs remain proud of the technological terror they have constructed.
For sure, but WSB was an awesome peruse and I’ve done well actually investing off some of their sentiments— being early-ish on Tesla in 2019 for example.
At least it is an ethos
For the lulz, and definitely not because I have the slightest desire to engage in political action of any kind, I pledge to do my bum best to enroll my bum circles in your bum mobilization scheme, BUT ONLY ONCE, per bum law, assuming you do all the hard work and keep me entertained with more tasty blog posts.
How does Mayor Kurtz of Memeville sound to you?
Glol I'm the farmer in nh. Thanks for the shout out?
Note to self 📝
1) Write...map...then...step
2) if write bum map...be fun...
Professor Yarvin Professor Yarvin! Wait sorry...map first, got it...hard adjustment really.
>Bums are not sincere. No bum has had a sincere thought since the age of 15, when he came home early from school and caught his mom banging the cable guy.
Japan is making a nice profit selling American bums their sincerity supplements, in 22-minute capsules.
Nick Mullen, explained.
cumbois of the world, unite!
I think this is the spirit you are looking for:
"To begin with, Nishitani says we must heed the call of Nietzsche’s madman and cease fleeing from the experience of nihilism. God as the highest being is dead, and it remains an open question whether he can be reborn as absolute nothingness. In any case, the venture of Nishitani’s philosophy of Zen is more concerned with the existential imperative of letting go of attachments than it is with immediately grasping hold of a new concept for God. In order to finally free humans from their egoistic obsessions and manipulative objectifications in the dualistic “field of being and consciousness,” Nishitani argued for the necessity of first boldly stepping back into the “field of nihility.”
Yet the real breakthrough to a non-dualistic reaffirmation of self and world only occurs when the relative nothingness of nihility is in turn broken through to a genuine experience of absolute nothingness or true emptiness on the “field of śūnyatā.” Nishitani thus explained the personal encounter with nihilism as an experience of the extreme relative nothingness of “nihility” or “vacuous nothingness” (kyomu), and for him the central task of “overcoming nihilism by way of passing through nihilism” entailed transgressing beneath (i.e., “trans-descending”) the “field of nihility” to the “field of śūnyatā” (see NKC X, 109 and 122ff.; Nishitani 1986, 97 and 108ff.).[15] As mentioned earlier (subsection 3.2), the “field of śūnyatā” is not a vacuum of relative nothingness that assaults beings from without; it is an open clearing wherein beings are neither nullified nor reified but rather let be in the mutual freedom of their coming to be and passing away. It is also the place in which a genuine interpersonal encounter can take place (Nishitani 2004; Davis 2017).'
"More champagne, sir? The better a champagne—the more important it becomes to drink it from the bottle, by the bottle."
And as Dennis Wheatley remarked, the trouble with a magnum is that it's too much for one but not enough for two.
The trajectory is clear though. Nihilism becomes the lingua franca of the bums. And as the systems try to compete with the memetic lattice the bums fart out, crossing the bum's moat of absurdity becomes an ever higher computational cost the systems must pay upkeep their sovereignty.
After this description, I’m not so sure that I’m rooting for the bums. They don’t deserve to win.
Montenegrin? Was I alone in hoping for a Nero Wolfe reference?
Has anyone ever seen Curtis and David Samuels in the same room together? No? Hmmmm.
r/wsb is bored. The Dudes / Bums are apathetic. I don't think Curtis is catching the distinction. Who will raise the Dead Bum Army of Dunharrow? Our Nihilist Prince will have to be the Heir to Isildur.