Good god Iran's shit is all over the place. He gets sentenced to 6 years, appeals it, gets sentenced to death. Death dude. For saying something out loud. How do governments like this expect to ever gain legitimacy in the eyes of the people they rule?
mister_monster
joined 2 years ago
I don't buy it. Imagine writing an article about how a 250k house will cost you a million dollars by the time you die and shilling that as a good thing. Insane!
Value goes up, taxes go up. Value goes down, you're upside down on "your investment". It's a lose lose. A house isn't an asset! It's not an investment! An investment in what? Who's doing the work to raise the value? You are! So it's an investment in yourself? It's an asset that you have to continue to pour capital into to keep it's value? That's not an asset, that's a liability!
I've got a friend that lives in a medium sized city in a large metro area. He pays the total value of his house every 10 years in taxes. That's every 10 years, he's re-paying off his house. Every year they raise the taxes by the maximum legal amount, every year he disputes it, every year he is denied.
Water leaks. Mowing a yard. A new roof. Another pain in the ass every weekend.
The idea that you're not tied to a house after buying it is ridiculous. As if it's a liquid asset you can just slap on Facebook marketplace and sell in a weekend.
HOAs. You must select one of the approved paint colors. You can't cut down that tree. You can't plant that tree. You can't park on the street in front of your house. You can't work on your car in your driveway.
What if you don't want to buy a house as an investment? What if you want to you know, just own a place to live? Too bad. You'd better have a line of credit for emergency expenses on the house, you'd better have home equity, you'd better have a valuation higher than your liability in perpetuity or youret fucked. You can't just have a home anymore, you have to manage an asset, or a liability.
So that 200k savings you get by the time you croak according to the author's math, is it worth the hassle? The neighbors telling you what to do, the municipality fleecing you for every dime they can get, the constant maintenance because a house is a liability, not an asset, that will crumble if you don't pour money and time into it, the commute, the traffic, is it worth it?
I would never, ever buy a house in a residential area, ever. The whole market is a god damn mess. Now, buying land somewhere rural and slapping up an A frame...
The problem is that the Taliban have popular support. The media don't want to report it, but this is a society where public life has always been under the purview of men, it's a largely Muslim country, very rural, and the alternative power centers there are chock full of child molesters and corrupt individuals. The Taliban, despite their strong ideological position, has a lot going for them. They're not taking bribes to sell out their values. They're capable of maintaining stability. Even if people disagree with some or other things about them, theyre better than the alternatives. Fact is, they're in power there because they're the only organization capable of holding power there.
If you're getting upvotes in this thread you're a lemming that believes what everyone else does and you only allow yourself to consider socially acceptable ideas. Your beliefs are based on social proof, not introspection or critical thinking.
Another one: about 50% of the population are destined to be poor wagies and there's nothing you can do to help them.
Ubuntu, because of their shenanigans with ads in the OS, forcing snap and just generally demonstrating disdain for their userbase.
Manjaro for their office suite debacle, and general instability.
RHEL for their recent attempts to subvert GPL.
Debian because packages are never, ever, ever up to date.
Gentoo because any sane person would get sick of compiling.
When people feel ignored in a democratic country, they begin to feel like the democracy they live in is a sham or that democracy itself doesn't work.
Votes like this aren't necessarily about "we need a different direction" and more about desperation and/or anger. They want to show the elites of their country that they still have the power, they want to cost them something for treating the population like it's there to be harvested from, they want to shake up the status quo at all cost.
They want to prove to themselves that their vote still matters.
Letting it get to this point is really bad governance. Once you get here, either they win, or they don't. And of they don't, most of the people who support them have their suspicions confirmed, they don't live in a democracy, they voted and didn't get what they want, again. This creates a division that is difficult to come back from.