Is it just a result of rising interest rates? Or was there another catalyst, not covered by the article? Did the supply of housing increase? What are the current rates of immigration?
Plenty of people out there buy houses for cash, spruce them up, and sell them for profit to extract some of the equity inherent in real property. Over time, they collectively push up the perceived value by force, and occasionally, the people who are the ultimate source of that equity, the ones looking to buy a permanent home, will stop buying.
There’s been a chunk of time recently, a decade or maybe more, where those permanent home seekers, the true source of the equity, haven’t been buying property. COVID exasperated the issue, because the flippers went fucking crazy for a couple years and inflated the amount of non-homes. Now they want their equity back out, but nobody who wants an actual home is looking to buy one because there isn’t enough value for them.
So prices have to come down before the actual source of equity starts buying again. The bubble has to deflate some.
Again, the entirety of this statement is simply my personal opinion, so grain of salt, but this is what pure logic and critical thinking suggests is the true mechanism :)
The problem is that (at least in America) tons of banks and corporations are buying up HUGE swaths of housing - single family homes, condos, apartments, etc - and they’re building, or have already built, businesses models centered on permanently renting those residences. Here is an article, and here is an excerpt:
Real estate investors bought a record 18.4 percent of the homes that were sold in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2021, up from 12.6 percent a year earlier, according to the realty company Redfin.
And in some markets, especially in the relatively affordable Sun Belt metro areas, their share is far higher.
In Charlotte and Atlanta, investors purchased more than 30 percent of the homes sold in the fourth quarter of 2021, according to Redfin. In Jacksonville, Fla., Las Vegas, and Phoenix, they bought just under 30 percent.
For those in the back: two years ago, corporations bought around 30% of available homes, and particularly focused on markets where home prices were reasonable, thus further exacerbating the housing crisis and wealth disparity in the long term.
New law proposal: the only type of corporation allowed to own a house is a bank, and then only under the strictures of a mortgage held by a private individual (or, logically and necessarily, through default and foreclosure). Additionally, houses repossessed through default may not be rented, as long as the bank is the sole holder of the property.
I think investors figured out that the REAL money in real estate is in endless renting and not so much in flipping.
I know more than 1 person that owns several rental properties and they're getting filthy rich from monthly rent while also building equity. But I get the impression from them that they'll never sell. Buy low, then rent forever.
If interest rates went up, crippling demand for new housing, this is a temporary “burst” at best. Their economy is in the trash can right now, and that means demand is artificially low.
The second their economy rebounds they’ll be back in the same situation.
As someone who owns my own home, let me just say…me too. I don’t care if my house value goes to zero. I still have a house. I don’t know how anyone in the middle class can get into house ownership without crippling debt.
The only ones who should cry are the home-hoarding investors and landlords. Fuck em.
Double ditto. My mortgage is less than rent anyway, and my costs will go down if valuation does (lower taxes). I don’t even like where I live right now (I bought what I could afford and got in with a low interest rate, but it’s a poorer neighborhood) but I’d be so happy to see my friends who’ve been struggling manage to have something for themselves.
you do not like where you live right now and still own a house in that neighborhood?
This is actually something I’ve discussed with my wife and we came to the conclusion that we only buy/build a house if we find the right one or the right spot. For me it just wouldn’t work to own a house just for the sake of it because a house has to last and since we live in an awesome flat in the center of Bonn there is no need to rush for us, except a baby but then we just would find a bigger flat for us.
Same. I was apparently got lucky and picked up my place in 2017 before everything went crazy. Even though my home value has doubled, it doesn’t really help if every other house out there has doubled in price too and finding a home is harder than ever.
Except now you need even worse debt to buy a house. Two years ago interest rates were around 1%, now it’s over 4%. So the house is 10% cheaper, the interest more than tripled.
At least then you can take the money out of the cartels and despotic regimes. You can then use the tax money raised to offset the harm these drugs absolutely do through social policies and rehabilitation programs that actually work
Also helps ensure the drugs are clean. The US marijuana legalization process has absolutely not been perfect but the regime of testing for pesticides and mold is very effective.
If cocaine were legal and regulated you wouldn't be hearing all these stories of people dying of fentanyl overdoses from doing shitty cut coke.
It does make me wonder where they swiss government will acquire their coke. With weed, it’s fairly easy to grow it wherever you need to, but with coke, you pretty much have to be in certain regions, yeah?
If that’s the case, is this still going to be supporting those same cartels? If more countries legalized, we could maybe hope to see legally grown, harvested, and processed coke without all the slave labor and shit. Could be a real boon for South American countries, too, if the cartels lost power, and the cocoa plantations could be nationalized.
I just woke up, so I may be just talking out my ass, though
I'm honestly totally ignorant to whether they can be grown indoors at scale outside of their normal growing region, but that's a good point to bring up.
If you go to Peru, you can buy coca leaf tea, grown by legitimate companies, sold entirely legally. It’s amazing for adjusting to high altitudes, if you ever go to the Andes, I highly recommend you drink the tea.
There’s huge illegal growing operations, but there’s legal ones. It’s not that hard to grow - I think it likes high altitudes and moisture, but although it’s not as easy to grow as “weed”, I’m pretty sure it’s easier than coffee
Yeah, drinking a large amount of liquid is what I’d call “leg work”. You can’t just do a bump or smoke something, you have to pace your tea intake… Much harder to overdose or go on a bender
That's only true if you believe the lies that the "war on drugs" was actually about drugs. It never has been, it was always about having an excuse to incarcerate and beat down groups they didn't like; minorities, the poor, and the left.
When you look at it that way, it's obvious that the war on drugs is actually a really successful means to an end. Just try not to have a heart and think of the countless lives they ruined to keep a boot on peoples' neck.
No, we keep it illegal and go the Ollie North strategy. Invent a more addictive form of cocaine (crack), and sell it to minorities to fund secret wars for oil in South America.
For me the most impactful sentence here is the acknowledgement that the war on drugs failed. This is obvious to a lot of us, but to politicians to say this, could mean they are actually not tangled up with the drug lords. Cheers for Switzerland, hope the legal marijuana trials triumph with positive outcomes.
Nope, here in Brazil they love to copycat the US where it fails the most, like education, healthcare, prison system and war on drugs. Sadly the whole south america follows this path at some degree.
The war on drugs was widely successful when you start considering that it was never meant to combat drugs. It was a political maneuver to divide the populace.
Swiss cocaine so cheap and widely used they’re considering legalising it
As prices halve on ‘highest quality we’ve ever seen’, Bern says ‘war on drugs has failed’ and looks at it being sold for recreational use James Crisp, Europe Editor 21 December 2023 • 2:53pm Switzerland has one of the highest levels of cocaine use in Europe
Switzerland’s capital is considering legalising cocaine after admitting the “war on drugs has failed”.
Bern is weighing up a pilot scheme to allow the sale of the class A narcotic for recreational use – a radical approach which is thought to be a worldwide first.
Switzerland has one of the highest levels of cocaine use in Europe, according to the levels of illicit drugs and their metabolites measured in waste water, with Zurich, Basel and Geneva all featuring in the top 10 cities in Europe.
Prices of the drug have halved in the country in the last five years, according to Addiction Switzerland, and usage is rising. Some politicians and experts have criticised complete bans as an ineffective means of addressing the crisis.
“We have a lot of cocaine in Switzerland right now, at the cheapest prices and the highest quality we have ever seen,” said Frank Zobel, deputy director at Addiction Switzerland.
“You can get a dose of cocaine for about 10 francs these days, not much more than the price for a beer.”
Cocaine prices have fallen because the market is flooded with large amounts of the drug.
In 2022, more than 160 tons of cocaine were confiscated in Antwerp and Rotterdam alone, and much more got into Europe undetected.
While prices have dropped, purity has increased. In Switzerland, 70 to 80 per cent of the substances sold are now pure cocaine. ‘Legalisation can do better than repression’
Many European countries, including Spain, Italy and Portugal, no longer impose prison sentences for possession of cocaine, which is highly addictive, but nowhere has gone so far as to legalise it.
The plan will require existing national law banning recreational use of the drug to be changed, but Bern’s parliament supports the scheme, which would follow trials now under way to permit the legal sale of cannabis.
“The war on drugs has failed, and we have to look at new ideas,” said Eva Chen, a member of the Bern council from the Alternative Left Party, which co-sponsored the proposal. “Control and legalisation can do better than mere repression.”
She said it was too early to say how the scientifically supervised pilot scheme would develop, including where the drug would be sold or how it would be sourced.
The sale of cocaine could be based on the model for selling cannabis but with stricter rules.
Any legislation would be accompanied by quality controls and information campaigns, Ms Chen added, with the aim being to curtail a currently lucrative criminal market.
Bern’s education, social affairs and sports directorate is preparing a report on the possible cocaine trial, although this does not mean it will definitely take place.
There will be many political hurdles for the proposal to clear before it can be implemented. Concern about potential dangers
Bern’s parliament leans towards the Left but the government of the canton of Bern, one of 26 member states of the Swiss confederation, tacks to the Right and may yet be able to block the required change in national law.
Still, the decision to go ahead could come in a matter of years, or earlier if the current cannabis schemes - where the drug is on sale at pharmacies - show successful results.
But opponents of the plan have voiced concern about the potential dangers.
“Cocaine is one of the most strongly addictive substances known,” said Boris Quednow, group leader of the University of Zurich’s Centre for Psychiatric Research.
He said its risks were in a completely different league to alcohol or cannabis, citing links to heart damage, strokes, depression and anxiety.
“Cocaine can be life-threatening for both first-time and long-term users. The consequences of an overdose, but also individual intolerance to even the smallest amounts, can lead to death,” the Bern government said
“Cocaine is one of the most strongly addictive substances known,”
Isn’t sugar also strongly addictive, and very damaging to the body? Yet it’s marketed like there’s no tomorrow, and obesity doesn’t grow at an alarming rate?
I guess it all depends on your definition. If you take only one gram of sugar per day, you probably have a very weird diet (keto?). Even a slice of bread will get you above that. On the other hand, a gram of cocaine per day…
One gram of cocaine a day is an enormous amount. It’s like one gram of caffeine… You can go way higher, but that’s a ton
On the other hand, half a bag of cocq leaf? Half a box of coca tea? People have worse effects and addiction to caffeine
Here’s the thing about cocaine… It’s very addictive, but the withdrawal is minimal. People with crazy cocaine habits can spend 20k a week on it, and lose their life savings. And, when they’re out of money, they can just stop. More likely than not, they do just stop
You can’t buy pure caffeine normally… It’s quite dangerous, you can buy enough pills or energy drinks to kill yourself, but it’s not easy to take a lethal dose. If you could buy pure powder, you could.
We should treat coke the same way - we can sell it in products, but we shouldn’t sell the pure form. Cocaine is safer… And that means you can take insane amounts of it
Coca is a smoother, more effective, less addictive simulant than caffeine… Cocaine is not a good idea, and shouldn’t be sold directly. Coca products are great, but concentration, informed consent, and age need to be taken into account
Czech media reported that Kozak authored social media posts in which he indulged in fantasies of suicide and mass murders in the days before the attacks.
I don’t want to ruin internet privacy, but who has ideas on how to handle this better? I feel like if someone’s posting “I wanna do a mass shooting” something should happen. I don’t want the state or private enterprise to be able to abuse that, though.
That would help with mass shootings, very likely, yes. I feel like there’s also things we (or various platforms) could do to address the parent category of mass murder
Yes. The solution is not to curb netneutrality and online discourse though. But to have a better social net and family support that can catch individuals like these or prevent them completely.
And Czehia has or had these. Which is why the rate of mass shootings, with a country that actually allows people to own guns, is much lower than in the country where that has virtually no support and more lax gun laws.
I have long thought that the police as an institution in the US is, shall we say, not good.
One time I was walking home from the grocery and I saw a couple having a screaming fight on the street. The guy had taken the woman’s phone from her and was holding it up out of her reach. I thought to myself, “Someone should probably do something… but who? And what?”
If I had called the police, it’s incredibly unlikely it would have gone well. The people fighting weren’t white, for one thing. The cops would probably roll up, throw their authority around, and get violent. Possibly murder the guy. Not what you want. Even if they didn’t do violence immediately, subjecting that guy to the criminal justice system is not what you want, either.
In my imagination there should be a department of deescalation specialists. No guns. No arrest powers. Maybe some snacks.
But yeah, policing in the US is a tragedy at pretty much every level.
Back on topic, responsibility could maybe fall onto the platform. There are suicide prevention services. Maybe there could be mass shooting prevention services.
In my imagination there should be a department of deescalation specialists. No guns. No arrest powers. Maybe some snacks.
As a teacher, I had to do home visits for every student in my homeroom. Two families threatened to kill me. One by siccing their dogs on me, the other by just shooting me. The entire purpose of my visit was just to meet them and let them know I care about their kids
What do you do when these de-escalation specialists go to talk to a person who is crazy-posting, and have their lives threatened?
I don’t ask this facetiously. I think this is a good idea. But these workers will run into situations like this, and more to the point, opponents of these programs will definitely bring this sort of thing up when trying to sway public opinion.
Some of the earliest modern police forces in the US were slave patrols in the south. In the north, Boston was the first city to have a modern professional force. It grew out of a system where private companies were hiring their own security to protect their cargo in the Boston port, and offloaded that cost onto the public.
Professional, publicly funded policing in the US has long been there to protect the interests of the powerful.
Considering that mass shootings aren’t a common thing in the Western world as a whole, that isn’t really relevant. One is more than most countries in the West have had in decades.
Absolutely. I just think that it's silly to draw attention to guns being easily attainable in this context, when there have been so many more mass shootings in other European countries.
The timeline for the shootings seems like it’s that economic fuckery and downturns precede upticks in shootings. It is very alarming that there has been three of them this year.
If you follow the constitution, the right to bear arms is for a well regulated militia. Not for a stressed 18 year old buying an AR-15 at Walmart to shoot up rioters from another state.
You might not like where that logic goes. The Supreme Court took a stance in United States v. Miller (1939) that the NFA’s provisions on short barreled shotguns could be enforced on the basis that it’s not a weapon that would be used by a well-regulated militia.
That brings us to a conclusion that literally nobody likes. The government could ban shorty shotguns and .22 rimfire, because those aren’t militia weapons. It could not ban fully automatic weapons or even rocket launchers.
We have to come up with something. I am a gun owner. There are legitimate uses for them. But a rifle marksman course requirement? Gun safety classes? 30 day waiting period? Mental health screening? Accountability if you buy it for someone else who uses it to commit violence? Anything?
Something has to stop the senseless violence.
I know that it won’t stop it.
People in Brittain use knives… Acid in the middle east.
The difference there is that the harm is limited to a few people and not these mass casualty events.
Hey don’t cry about unborn babies but be pro school shootings there bud. The founders had single shot musket rifles not semi automatic rifles. If you want to be constructionist then ban the sale of anything other than breach loaders with separate shell and powder charge and have a good day.
First off, I’m pro-choice. I’m just not an ignorant naive tool like you seem to be. The founders weren’t idiots they knew tech wasn’t going to stop, you could also own warships during those days, the equivalent of owning a nuclear attack sub basically. If you think the 2nd only applies to single shot muskets, then the Internet isn’t covered by the first amendment in your mind. Being ignorant of history doesn’t magically make you correct.
Look, there are ways to make this work. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have guns. I own one myself. However, maybe there should be a 30 day waiting period? Mental health fitness assessment? Anything?
If you’re actually wanting to solve our violence problem, you go to the root of our societies issues, not the tool used. All of these things below would curb our violence as a whole 1000xs more than any new gun control can.
We can start with:
Single payer healthcare
Ending the War on Drugs
Ending Qualified immunity
Properly funding our schools and not just rich white suburb schools.
Build more schools and hire more teachers for proper pay so the class room sizes aren’t 30-40 kids for one teacher.
UBI (at least start talking about it) once AI takes over most of the blue collar jobs.
End for profit prisons
Enforce the laws already on the books
Make sure there are safety nets for poor families so the kids don’t turn to violence/gangs to survive.
Increase the minimum wage
Recreate our mental healthcare so kids don’t turn to the internet for support. And to help veterans not end up as a suicide number.
Actively make a law to solidify Pro-choice rights. More unwanted children do not help our situation.
Banning Insider Trading for Congress
Term limits
Ranked Choice Voting so we can move away from a 2 party system
I wish they’d bring back the draft. Draft men and women over the age of 18 for like two years; it doesn’t need to be for combat roles either. You get job training, you learn self-discipline, how to work in a team, really a lot of life skills. And then when your enlistment is up, you get training on how to find a job, how to write a resume, how to pass an interview, you get to use the GI bill and (in my hypothetical scenario) would keep Tricare. And more people would care about where and when we deploy our military, because they actually have a stake in it now.
If people learned how to defend themselves and then also everyone knew how to use them suddenly gun culture changes and it’s like a tool instead of a status symbol. If you don’t want to serve, there are non-combat roles. If you don’t like it then hey maybe you should invent bullet proof kids.
Mandatory conscription is probably my most “out there” political belief. I think the benefits would be vast! I don’t think it would prevent mass shootings in America, though.
Conscription doesn’t mean war. It means being prepared. And yes maybe we could be more prepared to deal with this stupidity and remove the gun culture if it wasn’t special anymore.
I think one of the benefits would be less war since every citizen would be personally affected by it. Also all the public works and infrastructure. And healthcare. It could be great! Maybe it would help with all the “lonely men” culture that we hear so much about, and likely plays into some of the gun culture. I guess we’ll never know since that won’t happen here, though.
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