AirBnB is not rent seeking though I’m dubious of its value to society. People buying property in RESIDENTIAL areas to be used exclusively as short term rental units are rent seekers.
If society was actually thrown back into preindustrial levels, odds are good we would never get back, because all of the easy to acquire oil/coal is already gone.
I don’t think that’s frightening at all. A bunch of rent seekers lose everything, and everyone else wins. This practice should be, and in some places is, illegal.
People seem really positive about this, but I don’t see anything here that seems actionable or materially different from what we’ve seen elsewhere. Can someone point out why this is noteworthy?
I don’t believe that could possibly be true. The current ICU makeup in the US is 2-4% for ages 20-44. That’s a 10-20x increase you’re proposing. And yes, you can say that they’re triaging, but for this to be possible you’d need truly enormous numbers of infected individuals AND tons and tons of triaging going on which doesn’t feel accurate based on what news says.
A quick google suggests that 84% of the population is under 65, so this isn’t especially surprising. Every other data source I’ve seen has used age 60 as the benchmark which is probably skewing how we think of these numbers in the US context.
% of ICU patients in ages 20-44 is just 2-4%.
% of ICU patients under 60 is going to be, eyeballing it, maybe 25-30% with most of concentrated in people in their 50s.
If you’re young and would be hospitalized (not ICU), I think it’s pretty unlikely you would die from this even if just left at home.
This is a serious concern. It is not apocalyptic. If you’re young and healthy, you are still vastly likely to come out of this just fine even if infected regardless of hospitals.
The IWBTG maker has a rarely updated blog in which he talks about game design in stuff he has played or made which I enjoy. Maybe check this out? This post seems relevant.
If people are moving to areas that lack jobs and economic prospects, because they can survive on UBI, you’ve just burdened a bunch of small towns with people who aren’t interested in making more money.
Towns need tax revenue, which doesn’t come in sufficient quantity from people happily volunteering on a UBI wage.
I don’t see how it would reduce the power of landlords. If more people want to live in an area than housing can support, rents will increase to whatever level they can sustain to find the equilibrium where fewer people can afford it. If fewer people want to live in an area than housing supports, rents will fall.
Anecdotally, I have a friend who runs a middle eastern restaurant near a handful of popular Chinese restaurants. Early on, before there was any realistic threat to the area, but after it was known that a new disease was coming out of China, the middle eastern restaurant started surging in popularity because people were avoiding the Chinese ones all of a sudden.
I don’t think it’s racism, but I definitely believe the claim is real