Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
When is dynamic and personal pricing managing supply and demand in such a way that benefits most people, and when is it just using tricks and technology to screw people?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzDL5QmbzWo
Congresses and presidents give tax breaks for the wealthy and give the wealthy regulatory protection at the expense of everyone else because congress members and presidents are the wealthy. They are protecting themselves and people like them, screwing over everyone else.
https://www.capitalisnt.com/episodes/why-congress-protects-car-dealers-more-than-elon-musk-ft-eric-zwick
Many people will always make financial mistakes. Financial institutions make money by taking advantage of other people’s dumb mistakes. We’ve got to get real and understand that human beings have limits and that many will be financially stupid their whole lives. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t educate educate educate, but we should also recognize the limits to education.
https://www.capitalisnt.com/episodes/our-personal-finance-mistakes-are-the-industrys-profits-ft-john-campbell-tarun-ramadorai
Congress was warned well ahead of time about how the lack of regulation and transparency would lead to a great crash when many big institutions were all making the same bets and making the same assumptions. Congress didn’t listen. They listened to the Ayn Rand follower Alan Greenspan instead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ25uZtey34
Cut-throat competition is supposed to benefit the consumer, but in China, in an effort to lower prices as much as possible, it led to cheating, cutting corners, illegality, and the spread of foodborne illnesses. This food was produced in a manner that would not pass a basic inspection.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAQ9uTRX3Q
Some companies use regulations to their advantage. They beat companies that are obeying the spirit of the law, by finding a loophole that absolutely destroys the spirit of the law, but technically, can be argued to follow the rule of the law. Cheating companies have a competitive advantage and the nice guys finish last.
This strategy is aided by weak regulators.
Sometimes this is bad because the regulation fails to prevent the harm it was supposed to stop. Other times it is good because the regulation was preventing new and disruptive ideas from flourishing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q37yxPUAC24
An SEC director quit because her bosses wouldn’t let her investigate insider trading by people who include those with ties to Trump’s circle. They won’t even let the SEC investigate insider trading! The Trump administration has gutted the SEC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY0LZHyNlHg
“The Trump administration signaled a plan Friday to revoke a two-year-old tax rule designed to crack down on an arcane but highly lucrative tax avoidance tactic used by some of the largest and most complicated businesses.
If enacted, the Trump administration’s proposal would mean that large business partnerships no longer need to tell the IRS when they shift assets from one corporate entity to another. Those transactions, called “basis shifting,” have allowed businesses to dodge tens of billions of dollars in taxes, the Treasury Department alleged in the past, by illegally depreciating the same asset over and over again.
…
the IRS workforce has shrunk drastically under Trump. In the first months of his term, more than a quarter of the agency took buyout offers or otherwise left their jobs.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-moves-undo-tax-rule-204632497.html
So before regulation, the great tycoons of the era just acted like greedy unethical thieves in financial markets?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp6EggtUBYI
“Beginning in 2017, the city began enforcing a requirement that new apartments of 20 units or more include “affordable” housing units, which are rented at money-losing, below-market rates to lower-income tenants.
The results were predictable. Developers shrank the size of projects to avoid having to comply with the costly mandates. Overall, permitting fell.
…
It’s certainly true that “funding” inclusionary zoning to offset developers’ losses helps to mitigate the negative impact the policy has on new supply. It would also go a long way toward making inclusionary zoning constitutional. (Critics periodically argue in lawsuits that unfunded inclusionary zoning is an unconstitutional, uncompensated taking.)
Even so, there are still many problems with “funded” inclusionary zoning that make it an inferior policy to simply having no inclusionary zoning at all.
For starters, funded inclusionary zoning does not remove a regressive tax on housing. The tax, in the form of the mandated affordable units, is still in effect. It is just offset by a countervailing subsidy intended to prevent housing production from falling.
Funded inclusionary zoning thus still has a suppressive effect on overall housing supply that must be mitigated with government subsidies/tax breaks.
Instead of spending tax dollars on schools, police, or lowering tax rates, city hall must spend that money just to keep housing production flat. The tradeoff of funded inclusionary zoning then is no new housing and fewer public services (or higher taxes).
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That YIMBY worldview would therefore seem to suggest that housing subsidy dollars should be spent expanding supply even more, not zeroing out the effects of supply-killing affordable housing mandates.
If a city has a housing shortage, boosting housing production, and not tinkering with the mix of incomes in new buildings, would seem to be the priority.”
https://reason.com/2026/02/24/the-flaws-of-funded-inclusionary-zoning/