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Victor Villas

@ villasv @lemmy.ca

Posts
0
Comments
235
Joined
3 yr. ago

mostly inactive, lemmy.ca is now too tainted with trolls from big instances we're not willing to defederate

  • The numbers don’t lie: The housing crisis is not caused by a supply shortage

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  • The strawman is taking “supply is an issue” to mean that “dwellings per capita is going down”. Or to assume that stating the former means stating the latter. Or to assume that the former implies the latter. Whatever framing you prefer.

    If you disagree this is strawman, that’s fine. Maybe there’s a bette name and we can call it something else, sorry for the confusion. The main point is that “dwellings per capita is going down“ is not representative of the view that supply is a factor in housing affordability.

  • The numbers don’t lie: The housing crisis is not caused by a supply shortage

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  • Your first quote conveniently leaves out the last sentence which says “historical data shows otherwise.”

    What difference does it make? It's still a straw man. Historical data will showing otherwise is what makes it a great straw man.

    Now, a strawman argument is where you create a fake thing to attack.

    Yes, I know but thank you. It's exactly what the "If the argument is correct, then we should expect to see..." line is doing.

    You seem to be on the side which knows that supply is not the problem, rather it’s greed.

    No, I'm not. I don't think there's a single cause that can easily summarize the housing affordability problem. Specially not a vague one such as "greed". Saying that greed is the problem is the kind of thing that people who confuse BlackRock with Blackstone say.

  • The numbers don’t lie: The housing crisis is not caused by a supply shortage

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  • The “supply-shortage argument” is encapsulated by the CMHC’s claim that “increasing housing supply is the key to restoring affordability.” If the argument is correct, then we should expect to see evidence that increases in dwellings per capita lower prices over time.

    A great straw man argument 👍

    It is difficult to find clear evidence that increased supply pushes price down, because in private markets, new supply only emerges when prices rise and developers feel reassured they can earn a profit on their investment. Price and supply both move up together over time, with increased supply not necessarily pushing prices down.

    But when setting out to demonstrate supply’s downward impact on price, they instead use abstract models that presume what they are trying to explain.

    Oh the irony. These economists with shady premises... btw you will never find evidence that supply pushes prices down, because in private markets that's impossible.

    It's kind of funny that the same group that eats this kind of narrative like hot cake is also the group of people with a tendency to blame demand (as in immigration), like if by magic the supply vs demand relationship only works one way. Even though the last paragraph of the article tries to state this exact point (if supply is not the solution, demand is not the problem) - the only thing that this kind of article accomplishes is to undermine the efforts to build housing.

  • This Toronto doctor has over 2,000 patients, but still no permanent residency

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  • Interesting read but that's just another one in a myriad of cases. This is the norm.

    100% of my acquaintances that did not get professional services to prepare the application forms and documents (because that help is very expensive) had at least one rejection due to a form mistake or weird edge case.

    Even with professional help I had trouble getting my wife's fingerprints validated because her digitals are so dim that ink-on-paper fingerprinting just doesn't work, it's a black blob every time, and during our year-long process the government changed the rule so that digital submissions were no longer valid so it had to be ink-on-paper.

  • Canada’s elite media wants you to serve in the military

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  • It's probably on Canada's best interest to have more people serve. And that doesn't have to be a bad thing, it's kind of like a public servant job with extra steps. A lot of it is administrative or technical desk jobs. It's the one rare situation where conservatives will allow any sort of public spending or inflated budget, because it's camouflaged (literally).

    So yeah sure, let's get the army to hire more civil engineers and put them to handle climate change infrastructure changes. Train more tactical operations and lend a hand on wildfire emergencies. The military is very flexible, and if it's a bipartisan approach to get more tax dollars dedicated to good things, go ahead.

  • Y Combinator website no longer lists Canada as a country it invests in

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  • This is a bit of a nothing burger because the vast majority of startups they invest in (and any other US-based VC fund for that matter) is intensely pressuring companies towards structuring as an LLC based in Delaware/Cayman Islands. I guess instead of forcing companies to restructure, they want companies to start off with the structure before coming to them, which ends in the same place.

    If a founder is for some reason insisting on basing in Canada, this founder shouldn't be looking at YC in the first place since the cash and expectations and market will be all US focused.

  • Doug Ford thinks it's "fantastic" that we're equipping ICE

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  • Short term pleasure, long term own goal against ourselves too.

    We don't want the US to go full Gilead. They're halfway there and look how much damage to us they're causing already.

    What we want is to nudge that sick nation to better days, if nothing else for our own sake.

  • Mark Carney essentially said that the liberal rules based world order was a convenient lie everyone went along with because American hegemony opened up markets and sea lanes for them.

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  • The thing it's supposed to mean: associated to economic liberalism. The use of the word "liberal" as progressive is the dumb use of the word, put forth by American politics.

  • Is more trade with China really a good idea? -- [Opinion]

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  • I think this is an argument that doesn't need to be made. Everybody knows that trading with smaller nations would be a much more collaborative endeavour than trading with US or China given the power imbalance.

    "We should be building bridges with smaller players", well of course, that sounds great. What's missing is to actually go and look why it's not happening (if it really is not happening, big if), what are the tradeoffs, otherwise it's just like saying "we should lower inflation" without adding anything material to the discussion.

  • Canada's Carney called out for 'utilizing' British spelling

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  • the language is called English so by definition, they are correct in everything.

    lol linguists hate this one weird trick that killed entire branches of studies

  • Should We Separate the Art from the Artist?

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  • A: No

    You can enjoy the art, and remember that the artist is a piece of shit, and that will affect the enjoyment of the art in various degrees, and that informs later decisions on supporting/platforming that art and/or artist - all on a case by case and very personal/individual basis. I don't even see how there's a debate to be had here.

  • Could Canada be the Next Ukraine? Russia is Our Neighbour, Too - [Opinion]

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  • I agree.

    Letting Russia chew through Europe would mean EU has less influence in global politics, that’s not really a factor with Canada.

    And this whole proxy war against Russia has been not that bad of a deal for the US, which is why it's so regrettable that the US is now withdrawing its support.

    But letting Russia encroach via Canada is basically the opposite situation of letting the US (through NATO) encroach via Ukraine. Their stupid golden dome is not as effective if Russia can just move underneath.

  • JD Vance blames immigration for Canada's 'stagnating' living standards

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  • The classic old tale of measuring living standards as GDP per Capita.

    This is the perfect metric for the US, since deepening inequality means that a few billionaires approaching trillionaire status on the backs of their own working class can create a fiction that somehow the country is working just fine. While billionaires put cars and penises in orbit and their workers are denied SNAP benefits, we can always celebrate their beautiful GDP per Capita graph. Congratulations.

  • Opinion: Allowing doctors to practise in both public and private systems solves what exactly?

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  • It solves this problem of rich people having too much of a hard time getting ahead of poor people for medical treatment.

    And it solves the issue in a way that the middle class thinks they're on the winning side, but in fact they're on the losing side, so it ends up solving a second problem: how to further deepen inequality in a way that the mass populace stays under a delusion of fairness.

    And it solves the issue in yet another relevant way, in that the poorest segment of society gets to die off without care. What we call politics of extermination, where falling off to the edges of economic activity doesn't merely make you marginalized, it actually erases you of the surface of the earth.

    Triple win for the wealthy, double loss for the working class, and a final loss for the poor - death.

  • Alberta invokes notwithstanding clause on trio of transgender laws

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  • I too feel bad for the kids that are having to detransition.

    But then what? What does that have to do with these laws?

    You keep dancing around the issue instead of just saying it out loud: you think that, because some kids suffer with detransition, we should make it harder to get access to gender affirming care. Yes or no? If no, then cool. If yes, then you need to inform yourself on the already enormous hardship that is getting gender affirming care and the overwhelmingly positive outcomes it generates.

  • The Conservative floor crosser actually reveals a lot about the Liberal budget (and it's not pretty)

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  • thinking the Liberals are far right

    That’s not what I said

    because they tabled a budget based on actual finances and economics

    What are you even talking about, I didn’t even mention the budget

  • The Conservative floor crosser actually reveals a lot about the Liberal budget (and it's not pretty)

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  • How much farther right does the centrist party needs to go before the far-right option drops of the table and the “leftist” option becomes viable as the new center? The southern neighbour has shown us: too much

  • Ditching YouTube - Canadian Podcast Suggestions?

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  • Canadaland seems to have been going downhill

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    Permanently Deleted

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  • I understood the context, doesn’t change what I’m saying