This is just the sunk cost fallacy though. You can inflate the paper value of assets by playing games like this, but the bill always comes due in the end. Yes, companies that do this can juice their books a bit in the short term, but they're harming themselves in the long term.
I mean..... That's kinda what late stage capitalism is all about, squeezing blood from stones on a quarterly basis.
You could create a subsidiary and have that company rent out some of your floor space for absurdly high rates. But you're ultimately just robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Reminds me of the twin towers. One of the reasons it was such a catastrophe is because the towers were such a money sink that the city of New York subsidized the development by relocating a ton of government offices to there.
Fuck, these companies might actually be violating the law. Deliberately choosing unproductive business practices just to cook your real estate books is something Enron would do.
Pretty much the standard quo nowadays....why invest in things like labour when you can just inflate the worth of assets for free? Capitalism is about reducing cost while simulating growth, there is no reason to actually invest in the company if you can simulate investment enough to make share price go up.
Maybe if capitalism actually relied on competition for growth as capitalists often claim, however it's pretty easy to recognize that corporations often work together to create their own demand.
You're forgetting the whole...." I invested entirely too much in corporate real estate".
When there's instability in the market a lot of fortune 500 corporations will start investing in corporate real estate as a "safe bet" to hedge more risky investments.
Skyscrapers and large office spaces are on paper horrible investments and have an awful time filling enough vacancies to offset their upkeep. The only thing that makes them a "safe" investment is that every company uses them as a way to bank equity. If those same companies pulled the rug from under themselves they would all lose that safe equity piggy bank.
Idk, I feel like allegorical communication is a bit different than someone believing that building a telescope is going to destroy the universe because it takes up too much ram.
I mean there are literal cults out there murdering people because they think AI is going to punish people who dont help AI take over the world.
There is something inherent about spending too much time with computers that warps people's brains into compulsively perceiving everything around them in digital logic.
And yet the people in charge of the judiciary are more religiously motivated than they've been in nearly a century.
It doesn't really matter if we as a society are less religious than ever if the people with their hands on the tiller are not. There's a reason they are called reactionaries......
Np, there's companies who sell it as a wettable powder that you just mix in water and apply it with a sprayer. Works like a charm and doesn't take much, think I bought a 25b bag like 4-5 seasons ago and it's still at least half full.
Idk, if it wasn't religion it'd be something else. Religion is a great tool to control populations, but it's just one of many. Most human conflicts have a materialistic basis to them and things like religion or nationality are just used as window dressing.
I'd say the most destructive force on the planet is usually just rich/powerful dudes beefing over turf.
Haha yeah that tends to be the real problem with the dill strategy. Typically if we actually want a dill for ourselves we'll plant one in a hanging planter away from the rest of the garden, otherwise the greedy little guys will eat it as well.
We've also used fennel in the past as well, dill and fennel seem to be their favorite for some reason.
Ultimately, it was Bacillus Thuringiensis (BT) which worked the best.
We've tried to step away from any kind of active pesticide, just because we get so many monarch butterflies where we're at. Usually if they get on a plant we want to try and save we've had luck using kaolin clay. Which has a dual purpose as a sun protection during real hot summers.
My dad was in the Air Force so we moved all over the place, but whenever we were stationed in the South in the 90's I would often be the first Asian person to ever go to that school.
This is why my garden has at least a couple sacrificial dill plants. A couple fat caterpillars can wreck a dill plant, the little guys love dill but it usually grows fast enough to satiate them until metamorphosis.
I think a lot of people get really attached to the plants in their garden and have a reflex to attempt to subvert nature by sanitizing it. But there's an old rhyme that I like to remember when it comes to remembering that we are part of a working ecology, not the masters of it.
Four seeds in a row: One for the mouse, One for the crow, One to rot, And one to grow.
Basically, expect most of your plants to fail before harvest. That has been the expectation since agriculture has been a part of human existence. It's only in modern times where we actually expect to reap all of which we sow.
Most of the disposable e-cigarettes tested released markedly higher amounts of metals and metalloids into vapors than earlier, refillable vapes.
Yeah, seems to be an issue with a lack of commercial regulation than with the inherent technology itself. I am usually skeptical of any study toting cigarettes as the "safer" option, however this kinda keeps in pace with our society's rapid devolution back to industrial age regulatory standards.
Industry's regulatory and judicial capture seems to rear it ugly head once again at the expense of the public's health.
I don't know why people assume that the siren systems local governments install aren't the affordable option...
What do you think is cheaper and provides the most safety....a single siren loud enough to cover a very wide area, or the state reimbursing hundreds of people to buy inadequately installed and tested sirens all over the place?
I can guarantee that if you had everyone install their own systems a significant portion would not be installed correctly, and another significant portion wouldn't have the needed maintenance performed to maintain reliability.
I guess people don't understand the innate cost effectiveness of consolidation at scale?
i always assumed they were around much longer than that! /s
Not even a joke, but orthodox Judaism is an invention of modern times, and ultra orthodox Judaism didn't come about until the early 1900's and was popularized until after WW2.
Orthodox Judaism is only a couple hundred years let alone a couple thousand. It's a modern practice and it's ultra orthodox subsect is barely older than scientology.
There's really no longer any kind of gatekeeping preventing people from just being a clown. The proof is in the pudding, you are a clown if you can do all the things a professional clown can do. Now turning it into a career you can pay rent with is the real challenging aspect, which is true of most performing arts.
My wife is in a professional dance company that focuses on aerial dance, and has performed around professional clowns in the past. If you want to just busk you don't need anything but skills, but if you want to perform on stage or tour you will need to hook up with some kind of performing arts company or an artist co-op.
The Iran situation only ended because America got involved.
Call me pessimistic but I don't think the "Iran situation" is anywhere close to being over.
Israel was running out of air defenses and couldn't establish air superiority over enough of Iran to stop Guerilla style launches
I don't think air superiority was ever in question. If anything Israel might be running low on anti-air defense that currently allows them to strike without receiving any meaningful retribution.
When talking about achieving air superiority it usually refers to being able to provide combined arms air support for ground troops.
If the US ended support, Israel would have no choice but to capitulate and stop being a genocidal apartheid always picking fights in the region, or to activate the Samson option.
Maybe if it happens right now.... but with trump in the White House I wouldn't count on it. I think another three and a half years of support maybe enough to where they could mobilize to a wartime economy and commit it's population to total war. Israel is currently trying to straddle a somewhat normal economy in the hopes they don't spook the civilian population into unrest. But who knows how crazy they're going to get in the next 3 years.
I mean..... That's kinda what late stage capitalism is all about, squeezing blood from stones on a quarterly basis.
Reminds me of the twin towers. One of the reasons it was such a catastrophe is because the towers were such a money sink that the city of New York subsidized the development by relocating a ton of government offices to there.
Pretty much the standard quo nowadays....why invest in things like labour when you can just inflate the worth of assets for free? Capitalism is about reducing cost while simulating growth, there is no reason to actually invest in the company if you can simulate investment enough to make share price go up.