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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 months ago

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Leveraged buyouts are not like mortgages

I'm coming to DEFCON! On FRIDAY (Aug 9), I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On SATURDAY (Aug 10), I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

Here's an open secret: the confusing jargon of finance is not the product of some inherent complexity that requires a whole new vocabulary. Rather, finance-talk is all obfuscation, because if we called finance tactics by their plain-language names, it would be obvious that the sector exists to defraud the public and loot the real economy.

Take "leveraged buyout," a polite name for stealing a whole goddamned company:

Identify a company that owns valuable assets that are required for its continued operation, such as the real-estate occupied by its outlets, or even its lines of credit with suppliers;

Approach lenders (usually banks) and ask for money to buy the company, offering the company itself (which you don't own!) as collateral on the loan;

Offer some of those loaned funds to shareholders of the company and convince a key block of those shareholders (for example, executives with large stock grants, or speculators who've acquired large positions in the company, or people who've inherited shares from early investors but are disengaged from the operation of the firm) to demand that the company be sold to the looters;

Call a vote on selling the company at the promised price, counting on the fact that many investors will not participate in that vote (for example, the big index funds like Vanguard almost never vote on motions like this), which means that a minority of shareholders can force the sale;

Once you own the company, start to strip-mine its assets: sell its real-estate, start stiffing suppliers, fire masses of workers, all in the name of "repaying the debts" that you took on to buy the company.

This process has its own euphemistic jargon, for example, "rightsizing" for layoffs, or "introducing efficiencies" for stiffing suppliers or selling key assets and leasing them back. The looters – usually organized as private equity funds or hedge funds – will extract all the liquid capital – and give it to themselves as a "special dividend." Increasingly, there's also a "divi recap," which is a euphemism for borrowing even more money backed by the company's assets and then handing it to the private equity fund:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/17/divi-recaps/#graebers-ghost

If you're a Sopranos fan, this will all sound familiar, because when the (comparatively honest) mafia does this to a business, it's called a "bust-out":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bust_Out

The mafia destroys businesses on a onesy-twosey, retail scale; but private equity and hedge funds do their plunder wholesale.

It's how they killed Red Lobster:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spineless/#invertebrates

And it's what they did to hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/28/5000-bats/#charnel-house

It's what happened to nursing homes, Armark, private prisons, funeral homes, pet groomers, nursing homes, Toys R Us, The Olive Garden and Pet Smart:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

It's what happened to the housing co-ops of Cooper Village, Texas energy giant TXU, Old Country Buffet, Harrah's and Caesar's:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/14/billionaire-class-solidarity/#club-deals

And it's what's slated to happen to 2.9m Boomer-owned US businesses employing 32m people, whose owners are nearing retirement:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/16/schumpeterian-terrorism/#deliberately-broken

Now, you can't demolish that much of the US productive economy without attracting some negative attention, so the looter spin-machine has perfected some talking points to hand-wave away the criticism that borrowing money using something you don't own as collateral in order to buy it and wreck it is obviously a dishonest (and potentially criminal) destructive practice.

The most common one is that borrowing money against an asset you don't own is just like getting a mortgage. This is such a badly flawed analogy that it is really a testament to the efficacy of the baffle-em-with-bullshit gambit to convince us all that we're too stupid to understand how finance works.

Sure: if I put an offer on your house, I will go to my credit union and ask the for a mortgage that uses your house as collateral. But the difference here is that you own your house, and the only way I can buy it – the only way I can actually get that mortgage – is if you agree to sell it to me.

Owner-occupied homes typically have uncomplicated ownership structures. Typically, they're owned by an individual or a couple. Sometimes they're the property of an estate that's divided up among multiple heirs, whose relationship is mediated by a will and a probate court. Title can be contested through a divorce, where disputes are settled by a divorce court. At the outer edge of complexity, you get things like polycules or lifelong roommates who've formed an LLC s they can own a house among several parties, but the LLC will have bylaws, and typically all those co-owners will be fully engaged in any sale process.

Leveraged buyouts don't target companies with simple ownership structures. They depend on firms whose equity is split among many parties, some of whom will be utterly disengaged from the firm's daily operations – say, the kids of an early employee who got a big stock grant but left before the company grew up. The looter needs to convince a few of these "owners" to force a vote on the acquisition, and then rely on the idea that many of the other shareholders will simply abstain from a vote. Asset managers are ubiquitous absentee owners who own large stakes in literally every major firm in the economy. The big funds – Vanguard, Blackrock, State Street – "buy the whole market" (a big share in every top-capitalized firm on a given stock exchange) and then seek to deliver returns equal to the overall performance of the market. If the market goes up by 5%, the index funds need to grow by 5%. If the market goes down by 5%, then so do those funds. The managers of those funds are trying to match the performance of the market, not improve on it (by voting on corporate governance decisions, say), or to beat it (by only buying stocks of companies they judge to be good bets):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/17/shareholder-socialism/#asset-manager-capitalism

Your family home is nothing like one of these companies. It doesn't have a bunch of minority shareholders who can force a vote, or a large block of disengaged "owners" who won't show up when that vote is called. There isn't a class of senior managers – Chief Kitchen Officer! – who have been granted large blocks of options that let them have a say in whether you will become homeless.

Now, there are homes that fit this description, and they're a fucking disaster. These are the "heirs property" homes, generally owned by the Black descendants of enslaved people who were given the proverbial 40 acres and a mule. Many prosperous majority Black settlements in the American South are composed of these kinds of lots.

Given the historical context – illiterate ex-slaves getting property as reparations or as reward for fighting with the Union Army – the titles for these lands are often muddy, with informal transfers from parents to kids sorted out with handshakes and not memorialized by hiring lawyers to update the deeds. This has created an irresistible opportunity for a certain kind of scammer, who will pull the deeds, hire genealogists to map the family trees of the original owners, and locate distant descendants with homeopathically small claims on the property. These descendants don't even know they own these claims, don't even know about these ancestors, and when they're offered a few thousand bucks for their claim, they naturally take it.

Now, armed with a claim on the property, the heirs property scammers force an auction of it, keeping the process under wraps until the last instant. If they're really lucky, they're the only bidder and they can buy the entire property for pennies on the dollar and then evict the family that has lived on it since Reconstruction. Sometimes, the family will get wind of the scam and show up to bid against the scammer, but the scammer has deep capital reserves and can easily win the auction, with the same result:

https://www.propublica.org/series/dispossessed

A similar outrage has been playing out for years in Hawai'i, where indigenous familial claims on ancestral lands have been diffused through descendants who don't even know they're co-owner of a place where their distant cousins have lived since pre-colonial times. These descendants are offered small sums to part with their stakes, which allows the speculator to force a sale and kick the indigenous Hawai'ians off their family lands so they can be turned into condos or hotels. Mark Zuckerberg used this "quiet title and partition" scam to dispossess hundreds of Hawai'ian families:

https://archive.is/g1YZ4

Heirs property and quiet title and partition are a much better analogy to a leveraged buyout than a mortgage is, because they're ways of stealing something valuable from people who depend on it and maintain it, and smashing it and selling it off.

Strip away all the jargon, and private equity is just another scam, albeit one with pretensions to respectability. Its practitioners are ripoff artists. You know the notorious "carried interest loophole" that politicians periodically discover and decry? "Carried interest" has nothing to do with the interest on a loan. The "carried interest" rule dates back to 16th century sea-captains, and it refers to the "interest" they had in the cargo they "carried":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/29/writers-must-be-paid/#carried-interest

Private equity managers are like sea captains in exactly the same way that leveraged buyouts are like mortgages: not at all.

And it's not like private equity is good to its investors: scams like "continuation funds" allow PE looters to steal all the money they made from strip mining valuable companies, so they show no profits on paper when it comes time to pay their investors:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/20/continuation-fraud/#buyout-groups

Those investors are just as bamboozled as we are, which is why they keep giving more money to PE funds. Today, the "dry powder" (uninvested money) that PE holds has reached an all-time record high of $2.62 trillion – money from pension funds and rich people and sovereign wealth funds, stockpiled in anticipation of buying and destroying even more profitable, productive, useful businesses:

https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2di1vzgjcmzovkcea8f0g/portfolio/private-equitys-dry-powder-mountain-reaches-record-height

The practices of PE are crooked as hell, and it's only the fact that they use euphemisms and deceptive analogies to home mortgages that keeps them from being shut down. The more we strip away the bullshit, the faster we'll be able to kill this cancer, and the more of the real economy we'll be able to preserve.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/05/rugged-individuals/#misleading-by-analogy

#pluralistic #leveraged buyouts #lbos #divi recaps #mortgages #weaponized shelter #debt #finance #private equity #pe #mego #bust outs #plunder #looting

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allthecanadianpolitics · 8 months ago

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Pro-Palestinian supporters are calling for a second real estate event planned north of Toronto to be called down over concerns it involves the selling of land in the occupied West Bank. On Sunday, dozens of people gathered near the Aish Hatorah synagogue in Thornhill, Ont., to protest an event that organizers say was aimed at helping people in the Toronto area buy property in Israel. They were met with pro-Israeli counterprotesters and Jewish leaders took issue with the Sunday protest taking place outside a synagogue. But pro-Palestinian protesters say companies associated with the event market property in the West Bank, where over two million Palestinians live under Israel's military occupation, according to the United Nations (UN). A similar event is expected to take place Thursday at another synagogue in the area. It is unclear whether the two events are connected. "We weren't there because it's a synagogue, we were there because we were protesting against a real estate show," said Ghada Sasa, who was at the protest over the weekend.

Tagging @politicsofcanada

#cdnpoli #canada #canadian politics #canadian news #ontario #quebec #stolen land #palestine #settler colonialism #israeli occupation #west bank

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csuitebitches · 10 months ago

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Book Review- The Wealth Elite: A Groundbreaking Study of the Psychology of the Super Rich, by Rainer Zitelmann Notes

I came across this book because I was looking for psychology books. I found the first of the book rather boring and too textbook-y. The second part is much better.

The author interviewed like 45 millionaire - billionaires. These were his findings.

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48% stated that real estate was an ‘important’ source of their wealth, and one in ten described real estate as the ‘most important’ aspect of their personal wealth-building. And a total of 20% described stock market gains as an ‘important’ factor in wealth-building, although in this case only 2.4% stated that this was the ‘most important’ factor in building their wealth.

‘Creative intelligence’ is key to financial success. The following is a comparison between the percentage of entrepreneurs (and in brackets the percentage of attorneys) who agreed that the following factors played a decisive role in their financial success: seeing opportunities others do not see: 42 (19); finding a profitable niche: 35 (14).

The role of habitus

* Intimate knowledge of required codes of dress and etiquette

* Broad-based general education

* An entrepreneurial attitude, including an optimistic outlook on life

* Supreme self-assurance in appearance and manner.

He identifies a key quality that is essential for any prospective appointee to the executive board or senior management of a major company: habitual similarities to those who already occupy such positions.

Skillset of Entrepreneurs

* The ‘conqueror’. The entrepreneur has to have the ability to make plans and a strong will to carry them out.

* The ‘organizer’. The entrepreneur has to have the ability to bring large numbers of people together into a happy, successful creative force.

* The ‘trader’. What Sombart describes as a ‘trader’, we would more likely call a talented salesperson today. The entrepreneur has to “confer with another, and, by making the best of your own case and demonstrating the weakness of his, get him to adopt what you propose. Negotiation is but an intellectual sparring match.”

Entrepreneurial success personality traits

* Commitment

* Creativity

* A high degree of extroversion

* Low levels of agreeableness

Entrepreneurial success personality traits

* Orientation towards action after suffering disappointments (the entrepreneur remains able to act, even after failure)

* Internal locus of control (the conviction “I hold my destiny in my own two hands”)

* Optimism (the expectation that the future holds positive things in store)

* Self-efficacy (the expectation that tasks can be performed successfully, even in difficult circumstances).

constant power struggles with their teachers in order to ascertain who would emerge the stronger from such confrontations.

Secret of selling

* Empathy

* Didactics

* Expert knowledge

* Networking.

Conscientiousness is the dominant personality trait. Extroversion is also very common among the interviewees. Openness to Experience is very common

A high tolerance to frustration is one of the most characteristic personality traits of this group.

exceptionally high levels of mental stability.

primarily characterize entrepreneurs as being prepared to swim against the current and make their decisions irrespective of majority opinion.

“No, I never did that (lost my temper). I never get loud. But I can be resolute and say: “That is unacceptable.” And then you either have to go your separate ways or make a decision that the other party might not like. It’s the same in negotiations. I was always described by other people as a bit of a toughie.”

Having the courage to stand against majority opinion is probably a prerequisite for making successful investments, as this is what makes it possible to buy cheap and sell high.

Many of the interviewees spoke about their ability to switch off and direct their focus, even in the event of major problems. The interviewees consistently referred to their ability to focus on solutions, rather than torturing themselves with problems.

At least in the initial phases of wealth creation, most of the interviewees rated their own risk profiles as very high. This changes during the stabilization phase, when risk profiles decrease. In this phase, the hypothesis of moderate risk does apply.

Conscientiousness was the interviewees’ most dominant personality trait. It is important to remember that the Big Five theory’s definition of conscientiousness does not just include qualities such as duty, precision, and thoroughness, but also emphasizes diligence, discipline, ambition, and stamina.

#c suite #powerful woman #strong women #ceo aesthetic #personal growth #that girl #productivity #getting your life together #balance #book review #books

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bootleg-nessie · 11 months ago

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Things that will happen in the future (based on my own experiences with time travel):

***FAQs at the end***

*All of these observations are copied directly from my notes in roughly the order I took them in

*Don’t ask about the interchanging use of past/present/future tense, you know how that stuff is with time travel

Women just started all growing three boobs instead of two. Scientists baffled

Genetically engineered catboys (no literally)

The great pyramid of Giza has been converted into a Bass Pro Shop

The entire state of Rhode Island was bought by some rich tech CEO who promptly dug a 500 foot wide trench around the entire state so that it could in fact be an island. It was soon converted into the world’s largest parking lot

Pollution has gotten so bad that fresh oxygen is now delivered straight to most homes via a subscription service

Basic necessities such as food, water, and housing are now provided for free by the government, but only for the top 1% of wealth holders

Insulin now costs twice as much as rent. “Get fucked,” say pharma companies

92.6% of new electronic appliances now have smartphone integration and require a monthly subscription to use

Most billionaires have real estate on earth’s moon

As an ongoing film experiment, Taika Waititi successfully convinced a Nebraska man that he’s been raptured and is now in heaven. He actually got Truman Show’d and now millions of viewers tune in every week to watch God (played by John DiMaggio) manipulate Robert into confronting his own views, battle cognitive dissonance, and face the realization that he might not have been as good of a person on Earth as he thought he was

Carrots have gone extinct, as have highland cows

Species of extinct animals and plants now are being posthumously renamed after the billionaires and elites most directly responsible for killing then off

Researchers discovered a sentient colony of fungus off the coast of Chile, it prefers to go by Fleebo and appears to have a incredibly complex intelligence far greater than any other observed organic being

Nobody knows where Ireland went. It literally just disappeared off the face of the earth one day and nobody bothered to question it. The story couldn’t compete in the news cycle with the recent news about a company in China that made the first real life pokemon. An entire civilization of people gone and I’m the only one who seems to remember it or even care

Fleebo and its offspring have annexed Madagascar and are threatening any retaliation with nuclear warfare and “making The Last of Us a reality.” Nobody knows if Fleebo actually has the capabilities to do this, but after the Lovecraft incident we’re all TOO goddam scared to fuck around and find out

Large snails have replaced cats and dogs as the most common household pet. Snail culture has largely taken over the world, especially Japan

The president of the United States is now decided with an oiled up twerking competition. Most people were hesitant at first but this has produced vastly more competent leaders so now everyone just kinda goes along with it

With the cost of living crisis only worsening with time, selling tattoo space on your body to advertisers has become common as people struggle to afford rent and pay their bills

North and South Korea have reunited into “Korea 2.0”

Germany has split up into East and West Germany again

Belgium and France have been annexed by West Germany and renamed “Wester Germany” and “Westest Germany” respectively

The entirety of Florida is now underwater. Most of Kansas is too for some reason that scientists refuse to explain because they’ve “sworn an oath to the eldritch gods” and that “much worse things would happen” if they did

The melting ice caps in Antarctica unveiled a lost civilization of intelligent creatures descended from a species of lungfish, predating human civilization by millions of years. They planned on hibernating for another 10-15 million years to observe the course of evolution on Earth and are very very angry at humans for waking them up prematurely and ruining all of that with global warming

The politically correct term for lungfish people is “Dipnoid” but most people refer to them by a variety of slurs, such as “finwalker” and “kelp muncher” (not that they even eat kelp)

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has now increased to nearly half the size of what was formerly known as Canada and has been colonized entirely by pirates (the flag is actually pretty cool). The pirate nation has the 17th largest economy in the world and is projected to surpass the United States in GDP

Africa is about 2% smaller. Nobody knows why. Most people point to Fleebo, who denies having any involvement

All human-Dipnoid interaction was promptly banned by most world governments, except for the GPGPRP (Great Pacific Garbage Patch Republic of Pirates), whom the Dipnoids rely upon extensively for trade

Scientists have used DNA from fossils to recreate other species of humans. We now live alongside them like we did for thousands of years before everyone besides Homo sapiens went extinct. Racism is at an all time high

Class C and above robots are now legally recognized by most progressive countries as people

The United States government has been exposed for secretly funneling billions of dollars into the GPGPRP and using it to fund terrorist operations all over the world.

A new major religion revolving around Dave Grohl has skyrocketed in popularity. Grohilsm is now the world’s largest religion, second only to Fleeboism

Scientists discovered a new continent in the Pacific Ocean, and then promptly lost it again. Most people are convinced this was just an elaborate practical joke, but scientists “swear it definitely happened”

For a brief period of about 30 years, everything in George Orwell’s 1984 happened almost exactly as written in the book. Literally 1984

It was revealed that Jeff Epstein didn’t kill himself. He actually faked his death and spent the next few years in a drug-fueled episode of psychosis making sock puppets in a cave in Italy and then molesting said sock puppets until he died from a sock puppet related illness

Bigfoot was discovered off the coast of Georgia doing cocaine with a congregation of alligators. When questioned, he said he normally lives in Montana and was only there on vacation. He is now a celebrity, and has been featured in a number of tv shows and films, two of which he won an Oscar for. Last I checked, he was a washed up actor living in Hollywood with a reanimated Neanderthal woman

The GPGPRP raided most of England’s museums with the object of “doing exactly what they did for the last few centuries” England was understandably furious, but the rest of the world found it rather amusing

England declared war on the GPGPRP, which it promptly lost after hackers brought down the entire country’s military overnight. Much like in the 21st century, England is the world’s laughing stock

The entirety of Luxembourg relocated itself to the moon

Russia attempted to take over most of Eurasia. In retaliation to the full global effort to stop them, they launched nukes at the world’s 600 most populous cities outside of its current territory. Most of the warheads were stopped in time, but a few major metropolitan areas got hit pretty badly, including Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Chengdu, Mexico City, and Istanbul. Japan was understandably super pissed that Hiroshima and Nagasaki got nuked for a second time

In the wake of the nuclear holocaust, Canada assumed control over what was formerly Russia and assimilated many of its citizens and leaders into its own society and government. Under the new rule of formerly Russian leaders, Canada became a puppet state for the second coming of Russia. It annexed much of the United States, Mongolia, China, and a handful of other countries, becoming “the world’s first megacountry.” Crungolaska now controls a majority of the northern hemisphere

As part of a practical joke by Adam Sandler, Tom Hanks was actually marooned on a desert island like in Castaway. He lasted less than a week before he died. When I left this era of the future, Adam Sandler was serving a lifetime sentence in prison for murder

Fringe groups of crows with above-average intelligence have started popping up around the world. So far they have been observed forming small communities, crafting relatively complex tools, using rudimentary speech, performing rituals, and creating music

Aliens visited earth and had a formal meeting with many of our world leaders, but decided to leave us alone for a few thousand more years because humanity is “not yet mature enough to handle the responsibilities of interstellar travel.” They have incentivized us with a the blueprints for an Alcubierre Drive and a means to produce the exotic matter to fuel it once they deem us as being ready

The original colony of settlers on Mars has declared independence, officially becoming the first country not on Earth

We sent Tom Cruise back to space but this time we just left him there

The tether for the space elevator broke. The town known as Vatorville, famous for being the location of the takeoff point of the elevator shuttle on Earth, was completely decimated as tens of thousands of miles of steel cable came crashing back down. There were no survivors

Most people in first and second world countries have mandatory microchip implants that serve as a personal ID

Last Thursdayism has been largely denounced by quantum physicists. Current theories now revolve around “Next Thursdayism,” the belief that the entire universe was created in the future and that we all exist as a memory in the past

Synthetic organ farms for transplants and research have become a massive industry worth billions of dollars. However, there is still a huge black market for organically grown human organs, as they’re much cheaper to acquire and aren’t taxed at the exorbitant rates that lab-grown organs are

China dug a hole all the way to the center of the Earth. Turns out it’s hollow and there are people living inside. Who knew?

A university reconstructed the entire city of Rome as it was in its early days during the Roman Empire. It’s actually pretty historically accurate, except for the fact that there’s a lot less sex because it’s run by a bunch of sweaty history nerds

After Rome 2 resulted in the creation of a cult revolving around the Roman god of the dead that gained traction as a minor religion, Pluto was officially reinstated as a planet by NASA when cultists picketed their headquarters every day for nearly 3 years straight. “Fine, we’ll give these fucking virgins what they want so they’ll finally shut the hell up,” said NASA’s administrator in chief

In a display of the biotechnical prowess of Disney’s Imagineers, all the animatronics in Disney’s Hall of Presidents were replaced with clones of the originals, which went about exactly as well as you’d expect. After reports of the presidents hurling a series of racial slurs and other obscenities at the first black family to enter surfaced, the project was shut down almost immediately after it had opened. Minority admission to Magic Kingdom plummeted to 2.3% of its numbers from the previous year, making it the second whitest place on earth after a taylor swift concert

Plastic now makes up about 3% of every organism on earth by weight

Public officials are now required by law to take shrooms before running for office

Trees are considered a rare and highly sought after commodity, and are usually only owned by public institutions and the rich (the vast majority of oxygen farms use algae to produce oxygen)

FAQs:

FAQ: What time period(s) did you go to?

A: I have no fucking clue. The world stopped using the Gregorian calendar in 2063 after a gamma ray burst hit the sun. The GRB led to stellar ablation, which changed the length of a year on Earth. The sun would continue to lose mass at an accelerated rate for several more years, with the length of the year changing slightly from year to year. The world adopted a variety of different calendars which kept being updated frequently and were often super confusing and contradictory. I traveled to about a dozen different points in time, which based on my best estimates spanned within a few millennia of the current date.

FAQ: How did you obtain a time machine?

A: I think it was the 17th or 18th of June, 2055? That night, a large sci-fi looking box thingy roughly the size of a VW Bus appeared a few hundred yards away in the open field in front of my house. I tried to take a picture of the box, but for some reason the closer I got, the more the image on my camera started to become fuzzy, and by the time I got close enough to take a decent picture, the camera had stopped working altogether. I pulled open a door to reveal a corpse inside that was charred beyond recognition, who appeared to have suffocated and/or burned to death during a fire that damaged most of the interior. I also noticed a number of strange tumors and growths on the body. I pressed a random button on the remains of what I believed to be a control panel, expecting nothing to happen, but the door closed automatically and I suddenly lost consciousness. When I came to, I exited the box, expecting to still be in the field in front of my house, but instead found myself a ways outside of a small snowy village that based on my best estimates, was somewhere in northern Asia around 2-3 thousand years ago. The villagers started coming after me with spears, so I quickly ran back to the box and pressed another button, hoping it would return me to from whence I came. This time, the people I found (who were thankfully much nicer and spoke a dialect of English that I could mostly understand) told me that it was the year 506 of the PGRB-Δ4 calendar (the calendar that the United Territories was using at the time). I repeated this maybe a dozen more times trying to get home until I landed in 2023, which as far as I could tell, was the closest I had gotten back to my original time so far. It was at this point that I decided to stay and seek medical attention, as I was rather concerned about some nasty new growths on my arms and legs similar to that which I had seen on the corpse.

FAQ: Where is the time machine now?

A: No idea. It disappeared a few days after I landed in 2023. My best guess is that some poor sap found it and ended up sometime else.

(I never ask for likes/reblogs but I literally spent fucking WEEKS on this one so if you liked it pls show me some love <3)

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shinobicyrus · 2 years ago

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One thing my brain keeps going back to about Pacific Rim (besides the rad giant robots) is the whole existence of kaiju organ harvesters and their implications.

Like, you have Hannibal Chau, a bizarre and interesting character, but we’re presented with a black market operation that seems mostly interested in the “alternative medicine” uses of kaiju parts.

But my brain demands to know: what does the corporate kaiju harvesting industry look like? Sure kaiju blood is toxic, but there are plenty of toxic materials that have useful applications. Are there chemical companies studying kaiju organs? Big-Pharma jumping on the kaiju bone-powder bandwagon? Are bio-tech firms studying kaiju hide to make tougher materials? Agribusinesses clamoring to acquire kaiju crap for fertilizer?

I’m picturing something like the age of whaling, when humans hunted giant animals and carved them up to feed insatiable industries. Whale-oil lighting lanterns for entire cities, whale-bone being used in everything from knick-knacks, tools, umbrellas, and corsets. Ambergris alone was used in perfumes, medicines, cooking. It was even added to wine as an aphrodisiac.

We glimpsed how kaiju affected pop-culture. Now picture a kaiju smashing a city, but the stock market going up for construction companies (rebuilding the cities), vulture real estate (buying the destroyed land cheap), and all the other corporations that profit from the systematic dismantling of a kaiju corpse and making money off of its parts. Sure, a city was roughed up and who knows how many thousands are dead, but it’s a better windfall when a kaiju makes landfall. It’s always less profitable when jaegers kill them too quickly; sea-based extractions are so much more expensive.

Imagine entire industries, entire economies that don’t just make money from the devastation of kaiju attacks, but grow dependent on them. And then the laws, the squabbles over those valuable, resource-rich kaiju corpses. If a kaiju attacks one country but keeps rampaging and is killed in the country next door, who has claim over the body? The party who was damaged more by it or the country where the corpse physically is? Bidding wars over “cleanup” contracts that cut corners and are only interested in collecting those sweet, sweet, kaiju parts as fast as possible, even if their official mandate is supposed to be the safe removal and cleanup of a toxic substance.

Once jaegers started getting efficient at killing kaiju, the people with all the money became less interested in solving the problem of kaiju attacks and switched to merely managing the industries that kaiju-killing feeds.

What? You want to put more resources into R&D to try and close the Breach? Whatever for? The kaiju comes out, jaegers kill it, and the “host country” gets the proceeds from the kaiju’s body. It’s a win-win for everyone. Why waste time, money, and effort solving a problem that isn’t a problem anymore?

Everything is under control.

#Sorry Long Post #Nerd Rant #Pacific Rim #Kaiju #Hannibal Chau #Kaiju Harvesters #Worldbuilding #Capitalism #an entire kaiju-industrial complex #DARPA tech and military budgets build the jaegers #don't try to tell me that there isn't a entire cabal of corporations profiting off of kaijus beyond just simple toys and marketing #(though that also leads me to wonder WHO exactly has the patent on kaiju?#are they public domain or does the PPDC and the UN have an IP on the kaiju they identify and name???#there's nothing wrong with me I'm normal I swear

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7thheavenhomes · 1 year ago

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One of the best deal on a home loan

Finding the Best deal on a home loan depends on several factors such as your financial situation, credit score, loan amount, and the current market conditions. Here are some general tips to help you secure a favorable home loan.

#organized real estate company #best deals on resale houses #best deals on plots

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vintagegeekculture · 5 months ago

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So, a friend of mine on Discord said something interesting, and I feel like you might have thoughts on it. So. What do you think of the idea of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as being "The Shaw Brothers for kids", a sort of gateway drug for "the kung fu genre"?

Not the Shaw Brothers, but Golden Harvest. Let me explain:

I’m going to sound like a conspiracy theorist when I say this, but I believe the New Line Cinema “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” (1990) movie was actually a money laundering scheme by the Chinese Mafia, specifically, the Sun Yee On Triad.

Looking into the role of organized crime in martial arts cinema is a rabbit hole that goes very, very, very deep...and comes out somewhere very shocking at the end.

You mention the Shaw Brothers, but there was another Hong Kong Producer who was the only credible rival to the Shaw Brothers (and who eventually surpassed the Shaws) in martial arts movies: Golden Harvest’s Raymond Chow….a man who started off as the Shaw Brothers’ talent division, but who eventually founded his own rival studio to the Shaws (with rumored triad financial backing), and who made Bruce Lee, Angela Mao and Jackie Chan stars. Raymond Chow is widely, and extremely credibly, believed to be a middleman for the Hong Kong Triad, the Sun Yee On, who used Golden Harvest as a front facing money laundering scheme, as claimed by Frederic Dannen in "Hong Kong Babylon," and Yiu Kong Chiu in "The Triads as Business," books I recommend if you are at all interested in the topic of organized crime in the Hong Kong film industry.

Raymond Chow was also the producer and primary funder of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies. I mean, what does it mean when your movie is entirely produced and funded by a guy well known for being a triad middleman and money launderer?

And all of this happened at New Line Cinema, a borderline independent film company…one known for having dodgy financials it’s entire existence, no less, which ultimately doomed it? One of the most extraordinary things about the 1990 Ninja Turtles movie is that it was, essentially, an independent film. New Line would later become a powerhouse as a studio and created Lord of the Rings, but at the time, it was a mainly low rent operation, rather like Cannon films, known for the success of the slasher series “Nightmare on Elm Street.” So yes, I do believe "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" (1990) was a money laundering scheme by the Chinese Mafia.

The triads in Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan take enormous interest in financing martial arts movies for the same reason that they take a tremendous interest in financing porn movies: they’re quick, cheap, dirty, and can be used as a mechanism for laundering money, and a way to claim money from illegal sources (say, heroin) comes from a clean and legal source that can be claimed on taxes, like say, a movie studio. In addition, Hong Kong’s strict rating system, the Category III (equivalent to a far stricter R-rating) meant that very violent movies were handled in ways that were outside the law in ways similar to pornography. And according to several Senate investigations in 1991 ("Hearings on Asian Organized Crime"), the triads were actively involved in money laundering as well outside of Hong Kong, including currency trading and real estate, and the idea they could back a studio is entirely possible.

Everyone working in Hong Kong cinema has a story of dealing with the triads, who are interwoven into the city. Anita Mui's manager was was shot dead by mafiosos. Jimmy Wang Yu, the first Kung Fu star, was a suspected member of the Bamboo Union triad, and once borrowed money from one triad to pay another....and may have used his reported connections with the Triads to get Jackie Chan out of his initial contract with Golden Harvest, a favor Jackie repaid. Golden Harvest studios were actually firebombed in 1984, an event suspected to be due to Triad activity. Raymond Chow’s fellow producer and good friend who discovered Steven Chow, film producer Charles Heung, is well known to be the son of Heung Chin, who founded the Sun Yee On Triad, the largest in Hong Kong with over 25,000 members. And you don’t have to take my word for it; a US Senate Committee in 1991 on Asian Organized Crime identified Cheung as a leader of the Sun Yee On along with his brothers. Because of his association with Charles Heung and the Sun Yee On, Steven Chow, director of Kung Fu Hustle, cannot enter Canada legally.

Jackie Chan asserted Raymond Chow’s triad connections in his autobiography, and also claimed that he only hired triad members and other people who were mobbed up at Golden Harvest. One example would be producer Ng See Yuen, who produced Once Upon a Time in China for Golden Harvest, and who Jet Li refused to work with ever again after his manager was assassinated by triad gunmen (Jet Li blamed Ng See Yuen for his manager's death).

There's also Lo Wei, a Shaw Brothers director and known “Red Pole” enforcer of the Sun Yee On Triad, who came over to Golden Harvest, where he directed Bruce Lee’s Chinese Connection and Big Boss, and also directed Jackie Chan’s earliest “period” historical movies for GH. Jackie Chan, in his autobiography, stated that the reason he initially left Hong Kong to go to the United States for an American career was because Lo Wei, his director on Laughing Hyena, put a hit out on him for refusing to make Laughing Hyena 2, and Jackie had to flee the city when Lo Wei sent gunmen to his house to abduct him. When arriving in the United States, he had to avoid some men with machine guns at the airport. To this day, whenever possible, Jackie Chan goes out in public armed for fear of gangsters.

Even Jackie Chan though, never made the assertion that Raymond Chow and the Sun Yee On had Bruce Lee killed. This is important to mention because if you talk to any Chinese person, nearly all of them believe with unshakable, absolute certainty that the Chinese Mafia killed Bruce Lee, which is literally the plot of Game of Death (which, incidentally, Raymond Chow produced). Everyone around Bruce was mobbed up, because everyone in the Hong Kong film industry was mobbed up; in fact, it’s an open question how much it existed for its own sake. It’s notable Bruce Lee died at the home of Betty Lo Ting Pei, Golden Harvest actress, and his known mistress…who was married to a triad gangster. It’s also known that the first person that Betty Lo Ting Pei called when Bruce died was not medical services but Raymond Chow, something that to this day, she has not attempted to explain.

It can be hard to imagine what the motive is for Raymond Chow and the triads to kill Bruce Lee. After all, wouldn’t Bruce Lee be more useful to Raymond Chow alive than dead? I never saw the angle, here. But then, you consider that in the last few months of his life, Bruce Lee started to set the stage for his transition to behind the scenes roles like producer, and was assembling a lot of stunt talent around him (a lot of productions down the pipeline intended to have Bruce Lee in producer roles, like Circle of Iron). The rumor among the stunt players, as recounted by Sammo Hung, was that Bruce was attempting to form his own stunt and film production company (as Chiba later did successfully in Japan) and that would involve organizing and peeling off half the talent in Hong Kong….in a deeply triad controlled industry, no less. There was also a story recounted by witnesses that Bruce Lee, a temperamental and explosively violent man, physically assaulted Raymond Chow in his office with punches and kicks when he heard Chow had two sets of books in their shared production company, as Bruce was always keen to keep the triads out of his films. Ten days later, Bruce Lee was dead. And for weeks before his death, Lee told his friends "Hong Kong is getting too hot, I have to get out."

And you know something? A Ninja Turtles movie from 1990 is probably the least of it. In 2020, a few documents were declassified by the Taiwanese government that showed that the members of the Bamboo Union Triad had 19 top governmental positions in Taiwan from 1955-1984 (the era when Taiwan was in a complete state of military rule), including the National Security Bureau and all branches of the armed forces. In other words, Taiwan during the military rule era wasn't just corrupted by the triads, the triads were the government.

I never cease to be amazed at the incuriousness of the journalistic professions. Governments don't declassify documents - especially something as damning as triad involvement in government - unless they have to. So why would the Tsai Ing-Wen government reveal this now in 2020, especially when anti-corruption is the driving force of Taiwanese politics, and anti-corruption sentiment pushed the KMT out of power since the 90s? Outsiders believe that the single biggest question in Taiwanese politics is their relationship with the mainland. Kinda...the status quo is more or less a settled question. It's actually anti-corruption and anti-triad infiltration, which is why the DPP are the ruling party now.

The answer, I suspect, is that the triads are no longer working with the Taiwanese government, but with the mainland government. In the 1980s, Wong Man Fong, editor of the Xinhua paper of Hong Kong, said in several interviews he was asked by the People's Republic of China to reach out to the triads to help make a deal: no government interference in their activities, if they pledge to keep order in the city after the handover in 1997. I strongly suspect the mainland now has a similar arrangement with the Bamboo Union, Green Gang, and the Si Hai Bang they did in Hong Kong, especially since so much money is going back and forth with the release of trade to the mainland. In other words, the triads in Taiwan are active agents of the PRC.

Backdoor deals between government and the mob aren't out of the question, just ask the CIA, who used Giancana Crime Family assassins sent to kill Castro as a key plank of the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the role of the mafia in the Kennedy Assassination, or how control of opium was a key under-the-table reason for the invasion of Afghanistan.

What I suspect happened is, the Taipei government is turning on organized crime now after decades and decades of ludicrous and obvious corruption, because to the triads, the money to be made with the mainland and unification is far more lucrative. It's no coincidence that the largest pro-unification party in Taiwan is led by a triad gangster who spent time in jail for racketeering, Chang An Lo, nicknamed "the White Wolf." Like John Gotti, everyone knows he's a mobster and that's even part of the White Wolf's coolness and appeal (if you could vote for Tony "Scarface" Montana, boy, I bet a lot of guys would), but nobody can touch him. In fact, combined with how the "light world" financial institutions are intertwined along with the underworld, there's an argument to be made that the reason the PRC hasn't tried to take Taiwan is that for all intents and purposes, they already have it.

In other words, the triads have gone from using the Ninja Turtles to money launder to essentially setting global geopolitics.

#organized crime #triads #chinese mafia #bruce lee #teenage mutant ninja turtles

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reinen5astro · 1 year ago

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Your Income Indicators According to Your Natal Birth Chart

One of the indicators of income is your 2nd house, particularly your 2nd house ruler.

For Part 2: [Career/Legacy Indicators according to your 10th House Ruler] - go here

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Tutorial:

~ First find the sign your 2nd house is in by pulling up your birth chart

As you can see their 2nd House is in Pisces [I circled it + pointed to the line that indicates what sign it's in]. If you don't feel like pulling up your birth chart right now, you can just think of the sign after your rising sign. For example, a Sagittarius rising has their 2nd house in Capricorn [the sign after Sagittarius], while an Aries rising has their 2nd house in Taurus.

~ Next, look at the ruler of that sign. This is the ruler of your second house. I've written them down below

Aries: Mars

Taurus: Venus

Gemini: Mercury

Cancer: Moon

Leo: Sun

Virgo: Mercury

Libra: Venus

Scorpio: Mars and Pluto

Sagittarius: Jupiter

Capricorn: Saturn

Aquarius: Uranus and Saturn

Pisces: Neptune and Jupiter

~ Lastly, find what sign your ruler/rulers are in. My interpretations are down below.

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2nd House Ruler In The...

1st House:

You are the prime creator of your own wealth. If you don't work for it, you're not going to get it. So have confidence and work hard ;). Also, your profession/the way you earn income may be related to the expression of your talents or the utilization of your own body.

2nd House:

Rapid acquisition of wealth awaits you. It will be incredibly easy for you to gain wealth. You can earn money through your own industry/business and your practical and realistic sense will aid you in your professional activity. This is also an indicator of a wealthy marriage as well.

3rd House:

Your income may be derived from a job/career that involves verbal as well as written communication, studies, travel, and also by working with a brother or sister if you have any, or another close relative. You also may work in teaching, particularly early education. Your peers, community, and siblings will aid you/earn you income. This is also an indicator of an inheritance from a sibling.

4th House:

FAMILY!! Your family could be a prime source of income for you [including your ancestors [especially your father or paternal side]]. Your income is related to your home, the city where you reside, and also to real estate in general. You may work at home or in professions such as interior decorator, gardener, farmer, or real estate ventures. You may also earn income from serving your country, such as working in government affairs or in the military. This is also an indicator of an inheritance from family members.

5th House:

Your income is related to creative endeavors, publications, entertainment, sports or arts, investments that imply certain risk or speculation, education, or children. You are likely to earn money through some pursuit that will offer satisfaction and pleasure. Your children may even aid you in your business ventures. You may work in fertility, Obgyn matters or in surrogacy. Consider turning your hobbies into a business because you will earn considerable income from them. However, I don't recommend gambling or doing investments that imply risk or speculation if the 2nd house ruler is Mars or is conjunct/opposite/square to Mars, it will have an adverse effect.

6th House:

Your income is related to the fields of sanitation, diet, health, hygiene, and nursing. Or occupying a subordinate position and organization in important companies. You may earn income from work in animal care or as a life coach or fitness coach as well. Your coworkers, associates, and employees will aid you in your quest for financial security :). This is also an indicator of an inheritance from an uncle or aunt.

7th House:

MARRIAGE period. This is a great indicator of financial security through marriage. If not, then your income may be related to an activity related to the public, such as commercials. You could also earn money involving legal affairs, such as contracts and agreements. Also, a great indicator of earning income from one-on-one partnerships/friendships. This is also an indicator of an inheritance from a spouse.

8th House:

Your income is related to the administration of other people’s resources, joint investments, banking, brokerage, insurance, or politics. There is a possibility of receiving an inheritance after a death. This position also favors profit by marriage. Or it could be fortune after an emotionally inharmonious marriage [take this with a grain of salt]. You also may work in the occult, such as an astrologer ;). You may work in investigative fields as well; you'd do amazing as a detective! You also may work in the sex or death industry.

9th House:

You can earn money in foreign trade, import and export, travel, tourism, or a liberal profession, science, philosophy or religion, or teaching in a university. Indicator of earning money from a degree too. You will have very profitable voyages [long term travel], so travel the world dearie! You may earn income from blogging too! [I have this placement as well and I truly want to go to college no matter how much it costs because I feel like I won't regret it [Pisces moon tings; my intuition is on point]. I'm even adamant on studying abroad as well. AND I want to work a professor too.]

10th House:

It's your choice :). Your income is related to any career or profession that you choose. Thanks to your daily effort, you will be able to establish a sense of achievement. This position enables you to earn money in some government capacity or politics or to acquire a profession of great social status. You will have a comfortable worldly position and will rapidly acquire wealth.

11th House:

You will have MANY influential acquaintances and their support will help you improve your income. Your income is closely linked with those of friends, your relationships, or activities that you perform in certain social groups. There is a possibility of earning money through administrative or political positions in social organizations. It would be a good idea to join/participate in social groups/activities/organizations as it will bring you income. You may also work in humanitarian activities, such as in the environment or the United Nations.

12th House:

Your income is related to some kind of service in connection with healing and welfare or helping the less fortunate. You may have difficulties evaluating your self-worth, which will impinge on your level of income. Evaluating your natural talents would bring even better financial opportunities [so get on that ;)]. This influence could bring confidential financial support but also may lead to clandestine or illegal business. Avoid any easy business that may imply some risk or commitment. There may be numerous difficulties in establishing the position [doesn't mean that it won't happen; with astrology nothing is impossible, it's just an obstacle]. However, if the ruler is Venus/Jupiter you will gain through farming and leases and will avoid these difficulties.

**********************************************************************

Alrighty, I hope you enjoyed!!

For Part 2: [Career/Legacy Indicators according to your 10th House Ruler] - go here

Anyways bye bye ;)

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astroismypassion · 4 months ago

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✨PART OF FORTUNE IN SIGNS AND HOUSES SERIES: 9TH HOUSE✨

Credit: Tumblr blog @astroismypassion

ARIES PART OF FORTUNE IN THE 9TH HOUSE

You feel the most abundant when you have Aries and Sagittarius Sun people in your life. You would do well as a personal trainer or fitness instructor since you have great energy and motivation that can inspire clients to achieve health and fitness goals. You feel abundant when you are inspired and inspiring others and when you can experience the childlike joy and share it with those around you.

TAURUS PART OF FORTUNE IN THE 9TH HOUSE

You feel the most abundant when you have Taurus and Sagittarius Sun people in your life. You can earn money via teaching about practical skills, business, economics or the arts, via creating and selling educational content (online courses, e-books, instructional videos), by becoming a travel writer or blogger, starting or managing a tourism-related business (travel agency, boutique hotel or guided tour company), via international law.

GEMINI PART OF FORTUNE IN THE 9TH HOUSE

You feel the most abundant when you have Gemini and Sagittarius Sun people in your life. You can earn money via developing or working with educational technology platforms that facilitate online learning, via work in international business/trade, via diplomacy, engaging in media production, creating content for TV, radio or online platforms.

CANCER PART OF FORTUNE IN THE 9TH HOUSE

You can feel the most abundant when you have Cancer and Sagittarius Sun people in your life. You can earn money via selling home-brewed beer or offering brewing classes, via media content (podcasts, videos) connected with family relationships, emotional health, cultural traditions, life coaching, via real estate related to family homes, community housing, vacation properties that provide a sense of home and comfort, via non-profit organizations that focus on family support, emotional well-being and cultural preservation.

LEO PART OF FORTUNE IN THE 9TH HOUSE

You feel the most abundant when you have Leo and Sagittarius Sun people in your life. You can earn money via providing high-end services, such as image consulting or bespoke travel planning, via engaging in theatre, film, directing, producing, via creative arts (music, painting, dancing), via sharing your experiences by storytelling, via teaching, arts, philosophy or leadership.

VIRGO PART OF FORTUNE IN THE 9TH HOUSE

You feel the most abundant when you have Virgo and Sagittarius Sun people in your life. You can earn money via nutrition counselling, naturopathy, wellness coaching, preventative care, via writing for technical and scientific publications, via developing or managing programs that facilitate cultural exchanges and study abroad opportunities. You feel abundant when you are focused on service and when you have clear communication.

LIBRA PART OF FORTUNE IN THE 9TH HOUSE

You feel the most abundant when you have Libra and Sagittarius Sun people in your life. You can earn money via becoming a make-up artist, creating tutorials or selling beauty products. You feel abundant when you travel with your loved ones, your partner or as a part of the team. You find wealth via becoming a teacher in subjects like art, design, law or philosophy. You find abundance in starting a business in art (art gallery, design studio, fashion brand).

SCORPIO PART OF FORTUNE IN THE 9TH HOUSE

You feel the most abundant when you have Scorpio and Sagittarius Sun people in your life. You can earn money via esoteric studies, sociology, spiritual transformation, via energy work, shamanic healing, transformational coaching. You feel abundant when you dive into transformation, healing and deep psychological insights. You can also offer consulting services in areas, like crisis management, organizational transformation or deep personal development. You feel abundant when you promote healing and transformation via self-help books, wellness products or spiritual tools.

SAGITTARIUS PART OF FORTUNE IN THE 9TH HOUSE

You feel the most abundant when you have Sagittarius Sun people in your life. You can earn money via offering tailored travel plans, starting a business in adventure tourism (offering hiking, trekking and cultural tours), offering spiritual counselling or coaching, helping others find their path and purpose.

CAPRICORN PART OF FORTUNE IN THE 9TH HOUSE

You feel the most abundant when you have Capricorn and Sagittarius Sun people in your life. You can earn money via import/export, global consultancy, multinational corporations, via offering historical tours, archaeological digs, via eco-tourism, via international law or corporate law. You feel abundant when you are disciplined, patient and persistent.

AQUARIUS PART OF FORTUNE IN THE 9TH HOUSE

You feel the most abundant when you have Aquarius and Sagittarius Sun people in your life. You can earn money via writing or speaking about progressive philosophical or spiritual ideas that align with modern, futuristic or humanitarian values, via online courses, workshops or alternative education methods, via technology, social sciences or futuristic studies.

PISCES PART OF FORTUNE IN THE 9TH HOUSE

You feel the most abundant when you have Pisces and Sagittarius Sun people in your life. You can earn money via producing media content (podcast, video, documentary) on spiritual, artistic, cultural topic, via creating educational programs/workshops that blend traditional learning with holistic or spiritual perspective, via spiritual coaching, astrology or psychic readings.

Credit: Tumblr blog @astroismypassion

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago

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How the kleptocrats and oligarchs hunt civil society groups to the ends of the Earth

It's a great time to be an oligarch! If you have accumulated a great fortune and wish to put whatever great crime lies behind it behind you, there is an army of fixers, lickspittles, thugs, reputation-launderers, procurers, henchmen, and other enablers who have turnkey solutions for laundering your reputation and keeping the unwashed from building a guillotine outside the gates of your compound.

The field of International Relations has studied the enemies of the Klept in detail: the Transnational Activist Network is a well-documented phenomenon. But far more poorly understood is the Transnational Uncivil Society Network, who will polish any turd of sufficient wealth to a high, professional gloss.

These TUSNs are the subject of a new, timely scholarly paper by Alexander Cooley, John Heathershaw and Ricard Soares de Oliveira: "Transnational Uncivil Society Networks: kleptocracy’s global fightback against liberal activism," published in last month's European Journal of International Relations:

https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:5e5a3052-c693-4991-a7cc-bc2b47134467/download_file?file_format=application%2Fpdf&safe_filename=Cooley_et_al_2023_transnational_uncivil_society.pdf&type_of_work=Journal+article

The authors document how a collection of institutions – some coercive, others organized around good works – allow kleptocrats to take power, keep power, and use power. This includes "wealth managers, company providers, accounting firms, and international bankers" who create the complex financial structures that obscure the klept's wealth. It also includes "second citizenship managers and lawyers" that facilitate the klept's transnational nature, both to provide access to un-looted, prosperous places to visit, and boltholes to escape to in the face of coup or reform. It includes the real-estate brokers and other asset facilitators, who turn whole precincts of the world's greatest cities into empty safe-deposit boxes in the sky, while ensuring that footlose criminal elites always have a penthouse to perch in when they take a break from the desiccated husks they've drained dry back home.

Of course, it also includes the PR managers and philanthropic ventures that allow the klept to launder their reputation, to make themselves synonymous with good deeds rather than mass murder. Think here of how the Sacklers used charity to turn their family name into a synonym for culture and fine art, rather than death by opioid overdose:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/11/justice-delayed/#justice-redeemed

Beyond providing comfort to "Politically Exposed Persons" and "High Net-Worth Individuals," TUSNs are concerned with neutralizing TANs. Activists in these transnational networks play an inside-outside game: in-country activists will recruit peers abroad to bring attention to the crimes of their local kleptocrats. These overseas partners target the klept in the places they go to play and spend, spoiling their fun – and if they succeed in getting corrupt leaders censured abroad, then in-country activists can leverage that bad press to fight the klept at home.

To fight this "Boomerang Effect," TUSNs seek to burnish corrupt officials' reputations abroad, getting their names on humanitarian prizes, beloved sports teams, cultural institutions and great universities. They seek to capture international governance institutions that might wrong-foot kleptocrats, co-opting them to enable and even celebrate looters.

When it comes to elite philanthropy, TUSNs are necessarily selective. Kleptocrats' foundations don't fund anti-kleptocratic groups – they stick to "education, public health, the environment and the arts." These domains steer clear of human rights questions that might implicate their benefactors. Russian oligarchs love children's charities and disability rights – provided they don't target the Russian state.

If charitable giving is reputation laundering's carrot, then "reputation management" is the laundry's stick. Think of organized copyfraudsters who clone websites that have criticized their clients, then backdate the articles, then accuse the originals of infringing copyright in order to get them de-listed from Google or taken offline altogether:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/23/reputation-laundry/#dark-ops

Reputation managers also spend a lot of time in court. In the UK – the world's leader in libel tourism, thanks to a legal system designed to let posh monsters sue muckraking journalists into silence – Russian oligarchs have perfected the art of forcing their critics to shut up and go away:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/04/londongrad/#enablers

Indeed, London is a one-stop shop for the global klept, a place were forelock-tugging Renfields will buy you a Mayfair mansion under cover of a numbered company, sue your critics into silence, funnel your money into an anonymous Channel Islands account:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/07/the-klept/#pep

They'll sell you whole galleriesworth of "fine art" that you can have relocated to a climate-controlled container in a Swiss or Irish freeport:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/14/poesy-the-monster-slayer/#moneylab

They'll give your thick-as-pigshit progeny a PhD and never check to see whether he wrote his thesis himself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSE%E2%80%93Gaddafi_affair

Then they'll hook you up with a cyber-arms dealer to hunt your enemies by capturing their devices:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/27/gas-on-the-fire/#a-safe-place-for-dangerous-ideas

But don't let Brexit stop you from shopping for bargains on the continent. The Golden Passports of the EU – available in a variety of flavors, from Maltese to Cypriot to Portuguese – offer the discerning failson access to the luxury good shops and fleshpots of 27 advanced economies, making it a favorite of the Khmer Riche – the junior klept of Cambodia's ruling faction:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/cambodia-hunsen-wealth/

But golden passports are for amateurs. Skilled klepts travel on diplomatic passports, which offer the twin benefits of free movement and consequence-free criminality, thanks to diplomatic immunity. The former Kazakh dictator's son-in-law enjoyed a freewheeling diplomatic life in Vienna; one daughters of the dictator of Tajikistan had a jolly time as an envoy to DC; another, to London (where else?).

All this globetrotting serves a second purpose: when rival elites seize power back home and force the old guard into exile, those ex-monsters can show up in the lands they called their second homes and apply for asylum. It turns out that even bomb-the-boats UK will welcome any asylum seeker who enters via the private jet terminal at City Airport (to be fair, these "refugees" have extensive properties in Zone 1 and country places in the Home Counties, so they won't need housing).

This stuff works. After Kazakh state goons murdered at least 14 protesters at a Zhanaozen oil facility in 2011, human rights groups around the world took up the cause. But they were effectively neutralized by TUSNs, with former UK PM Tony Blair writing on behalf of the Kazakh government to the EU condemning any kind of international investigation into the mass killings (add "former Prime Ministers" to the list of commodities for sale in the UK to sufficiently well-resourced murderer).

The authors close their paper with two case-studies. The first is of the daughters of Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov, Gulnara and Lola. And President Karimov was indeed a dictator: he trapped his population within his borders, forced them to use unconvertible scrip in place of money, and ordered the murder of hundreds of peaceful protesters, plunging the country into international isolation.

But while Uzbeks were sealed within their borders, Gulnara Karimov became an international player, running a complex network of businesses that mixed the products of the nation's oilfields with her family's fortune. She solicited – and received – bribes from Teliasonera, MTS and Vimpelcom, who were all vying for the contract to provide service in Uzbekistan. All told, she extracted more than $1b in bribes, laundering them through Latvia, Hong Kong and New York. She acquired real-estate in France and Switzerland, and her spree continued until her father collaborated with Uzbek security to seize her assets and place her under house-arrest.

Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva was Gulnara's estranged younger sister. She and her husband Timur Tillyaev ran the Dubai-based SecureTrade, which did extensive business with "opaque Scottish Limited Partnerships," laundering more than $127m in a single year to offshore accounts in the UAE and Switzerland. They acquired many luxe assets – a jet, a Californian villa, and an LA perfumier.

Lola styled herself as the face of the Karimovas abroad, a "philanthropist and cultural ambassador." She was a UNESCO ambassador and commissioned works of monumental art – and also sued the shit out of news outlets that reported factual matters about her family repressive activity at home. She organized AIDS charities in the name of Uzbekistan – even as her father was imprisoning a writer for publishing a book explaining how to have safer sex.

The second case-study is on Isabel dos Santos, "Africa's richest woman," daughter of Angolan dictator Jose Eduardo dos Santos. Isabel's vast fortune stemmed from her personal capture of vast swathes of the third-largest economy in Africa: "telecommunications, banking, diamonds, real estate and cement, among many others." Isabel enjoyed seemingly limitless access to state credit and co-investment, and was given first crack at newly deregulated industries. Foreign firms that invested in Angola were required to "partner" with Isabel's businesses.

Isabel claimed to be a "self-made woman" – a claim credulously parroted by the western press, including the FT. She used her homegrown fortune to become a major player abroad, especially in Portugal, where she was represented by the leading Portuguese law-firm PLMJ. Her enablers are who's who of corruption-loving lickspittles: McKinsey, Ernst and Young, Boston Consulting Group, and the Spanish BigLaw firm Uri Menendez.

Isabel cultivated a public facade of philanthropic giving and public spirited activism, serving as head of the Angolan Red Cross. She attended Davos and spoke at the LSE (she was also invited to Oxford, but her invitation was subsequently rescinded). On social media, she dismissed critics of her wealth and corruption as "colonialists," decrying their "racism" and "prejudice."

Isabel dos Santos's corrupt sources of wealth were finally, irrefutably exposed through the Luanda Leaks, in which the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists mapped the network of "top banks, management consultants and legal firms that were central to dos Santos’s operations."

Both case studies shed light on the network of brilliant, driven enablers and procurers without whom the world's greatest monsters would falter. It's a rare window on a secretive world, one that is poorly understood even by its inhabitants. As Michael Mechanic wrote in Jackpot, his 2021 book on vast, intergenerational fortunes, the winners of the lucky orifice lottery often lack any real understanding of how The Money is structured, grown and protected:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#affluenza

This point was reiterated by Abigail Disney, in a brave piece on what it's like to grow up subject to the oversight of these millionaires who babysit the children of billionaires:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/19/dynastic-wealth/#caste

This is an important contribution to the literature. We naturally focus on the ultrawealthy individuals whose reputations and fortunes are the subject of so much attention, but without the TUSNs, they would be largely helpless.

Going to Burning Man? Catch me on Tuesday at 2:40pm on the Center Camp Stage for a talk about enshittification and how to reverse it; on Wednesday at noon, I'm hosting Dr Patrick Ball at Liminal Labs (6:15/F) for a talk on using statistics to prove high-level culpability in the recruitment of child soldiers.

On September 6 at 7pm, I'll be hosting Naomi Klein at the LA Public Library for the launch of Doppelganger.

On September 12 at 7pm, I'll be at Toronto's Another Story Bookshop with my new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/24/launderers-enforcers-bagmen/#procurers

Image: Sam Valadi (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/132084522@N05/17086570218/

CC BY 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Colin (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palace_of_Westminster_from_the_dome_on_Methodist_Central_Hall_(cropped).jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

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laguezze · 1 year ago

Text

PAC: What's your ideal career path?

(This is for the career oriented people that got absolutely no idea what to do with their lives or have an idea but are so overwhelmed and lost with all the possibilities. I salute y'all bc same)

More piles this time because why not lol

Here are the piles:

Pile 1

Pile 2

Pile 3

Pile 4

Pile 5

Pile 6

Ready? Let's go!

Pile 1

I'm so into you, I can barely breathe ~

👩‍🍳🏖️🩴🍹🚣‍♀️🤝👩‍💼🕴️🧳

There are two subgroups within this pile so I will read them differently right now.

Seems like Group 1 is actually free spirited and out there and independent. You guys don't need anyone and you hate being restrained by boundaries or rules. Thus, I think a career that best suits you is one where no one rules over you but yourself. And of course not a high stress environment. I'm seeing you, group 1 fellows might thrive in a customer service position. Some of you might open your own bar or something, I'm seeing a lot of entrepreneurship here. Do it. Start that business and be happy.

And now onto group 2

For group 2, seems like you guys have some things to work on. You say your dream is to be a hippie by the beach that is free spirited and carefree but you are nothing like that. And that is ok. You're not less cool or more boring or ordinary. You being yourself is already unique, there is nothing to complete in you.

I'm seeing some of you guys are quiet and shy, but actually love people. Wouldn't be hurtful to try out some customer service as well! Weirdly enough I see the same career paths as group 1 for you guys. Entrepreneurship, having your own company, etc.

In general, for both groups I see these:

culinary arts (big on this one), Chef, waiter, bartender, owner of any place that serves food or drink, secretary, CEO, business management, HR worker, meeting mediator, etc

Pile 2

You like my hair? Gee, thanks! Just bought it ~

🎹👮‍♀️⚖️👩‍🔬🔭🔬💅

You guys seem like a bit of an airhead but in a wonderful way. I can't stress how positively I mean that. People seem baffled by the way you act and say things and you surprise them everyday. Seems like you really don't care about who you're talking to, there is no filter or personality switch. You're just you. And it's genuine. And it's enough. You seem to have some issues with people because of that, but also you attract wonderful opportunities as well. Think Elle Woods from Legally Blonde. Big Elle energy for real.

I think you guys might even be in a male dominated industry, which is tough considering your personality, but not impossible. And especially not impossible for you. Absolutely not customer service, though. Some people hate your personality (f them ngl) but your ideal career is probably one where your work speaks for itself and they can't deny your talent.

I see careers such as STEM, law, IT, music, biology, forensics, investigator, nail tech and criminal Justice.

Pile 3

Wrote some songs about Ricky, now I listen and laugh ~

🩰🪩🕺🏠👩‍💼🎭💵🤑😎

You guys are powerful. When you enter a room, people notice you. Which is why you could either do great in the performance arts or in a position of power within an organization. This is so short and straight forward, but so are you so...

Careers I see: dancer, CEO, event planner, actor, real estate agent.

Pile 4

She might've let you hold her hand in school but imma show you how to graduate ~

🏖️🤑🧳✈️🍹🍔🍕👨‍🍳🧥🚣

Ok you guys, this is gonna be a bit straightforward so beware.

A lot of you guys think you're hot s*-#, which you can be but you are not right now. What I mean by that is you seem like the type of person that says: yeah! I'm gonna have a private jet and a thousand cars and blah blah. Very materialistic. But you're not putting in the work at all, you probably don't even know what it is you're passionate about or want to do with your life (which is so valid). You just want to be rich, which honestly I get it, but you need some drive other than "i want a Maserati" you need to want something bigger. You need to be good at something and you don't even know what that something is. And something tells me that you are not even thinking about what that could be. You fantasize about being rich without wondering how to get there. Why do you want that? Status? Relationships? Reevaluate.

That said, I see two types of outcomes. If you put in the effort I'm seeing you can achieve that level of richness you're looking for. Some of you might start a company or climb up an existing one. Some of you might become travel vloggers or influencers.

If you keep doing what you're doing I see you're working at fast food chains (i literally channeled that I'm not gonna lie to y'all) as a manager maybe retail too, that type of jobs.

Careers I see: McDonald's worker, fast food manager, retail worker, makeup store worker (I'm seeing Sephora), mall business owner, souvenir store owner, business owner in general, travel vlogger, boat driver, tourist attraction worker, marketing specialist, hotel worker, hotel owner.

Hope it resonates and my apologies for the bluntness, seemed like the pile wanted to call you out. Maybe you needed it.

Lots of love 💕

Pile 5

I've been here all night, I've been here all day ~

🎤🩰🏡📚🧑‍🍳💐👨‍👩‍👦‍👦

You guys are actually going to be successful. I'm seeing some of you have bigger dreams, some of you have smaller ones (which is cool too!) But all of you will definitely achieve them in some way or another.

I see someone with a family and a big house. Some kids running around. Some of you want to be stay at home partners to a rich person (respect to you guys, every dream is a valid one) and I see you'll get that and be fulfilled. Vacation is a given. You don't struggle with money. None of you guys do.

Some common themes you all have is that your career will allow you to be calm and chill. There are no problems. Money comes easy and secure. And you're living the dream, whichever dream that may be.

A lot of you guys here are here for confirmation of an ideal life you have. Let me say, yes. It's happening. Maybe not in the way you think, maybe not in the amount of success you want it. Or maybe it does fully! But it's happening. I'm seeing some of you might want to act? You'll be an actor and have work but maybe you won't be a big Hollywood star. Or maybe you will!

Some of you may want to be singers. Again, you might not win a Grammy and become Beyonce, but you will work as a singer and it will pay your bills. Like singing at events, hotels, etc. (Or maybe you will win a Grammy! Don't let tarot discourage you from achieving anything! It's just a tool, not a strict rule to follow)

Anyways, you will be whatever it is you want to be.

I know this reading might be confusing but that's what I channelled.

Careers I see: actor/actress, stay at home partner, flight attendant, singer, dancer, librarian, real estate agent, restaurant owner, chef, coffee shop owner, flower shop owner, bakery owner.

Pile 6

A feeling that you can't fight, my one ~

🥖🇫🇷🌍✈️📸

You guys are travelers, no matter what you do you will be up in the air and onto a new place. Kinda chaotic, but you like that.

I'm seeing some of you might work in the fashion industry, models, designers, makeup artists, etc. You all are here gathered. I hear Milan, Paris, London, Fashion Week.

Some of you could just be a flight attendant and that's why you travel so much.

A couple of you might be touring for some reason, you might play in a band or you might sing backup for someone or you might sing yourself or play.

I'm seeing such chaos, though. Like a lot.

Some of you might do film! Or photography! And probably need to relocate for shoots a lot. So cool.

Careers I see: photographer, filmmaker, model, magazine editor, security guard, flight attendant, pilot, makeup artist, wardrobe assistant, set decorator.

The End

#tarot readings #free readings #tarot #tarot blog #pick a card #tarot pick a card #tarot pick a pile #pick a pile #ask game readings #free tarot reading

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mbta-unofficial · 8 months ago

Text

If your city is a Brand, it’s already too late

Long post time. What is it that drives gentrification? Also, what is gentrification? Is it when a city gets blue hair and pronouns? No, it probably already had those.

Gentrification is the result of concentration of wealth in the hands of business owners, including landlords, over and above the hands of residents.

Let’s start with rent. Rent, like any good, is priced according to the laws of supply and demand. Supply of available rental housing is primarily determined by construction costs and estimated return on investment for new construction, and property management costs and estimated return on investment for existing units.

Breaking that down a bit, the higher construction costs get the higher the rent needs to be to break even on new construction. Construction costs include labor (which can always go down but you want it high for moral and practical reasons), materials (highly variable depending on the project) and bureaucratic costs. A bureaucratic cost is a cost that is based on how projects fit into the legal and practical environment, and are usually non-negotiable. Dig Safe, a program which requires three days of surveying local records before breaking ground, is an example where the function is to prevent crews from flattening a neighborhood by puncturing a gas main. Environmental Impact Statements, Fire Codes, Habitability Guidelines, and other regulations increase costs to projects. These programs are good and need to exist, but do stop smaller projects from happening at all because the capital investment required just to actually break ground on a new house might cost as much as the land and materials put together at which point you might as well build another 120$/sqft luxury midrise.

Property management costs for existing units are largely dependent on age and wear. A unit with no occupant is going to depreciate little, and may also appreciate in value. Depreciation and appreciation here are sort of unintuitive because they can happen at the same time. Imagine an old luxury sports car with a high resale price. Driving depreciates the value because it’s literal condition is poorer, even as the resale value goes up over time. The appreciation needs to beat both inflation and the value of depreciation for it to go up in real value. For companies with large capital holdings however, losses such as through the upkeep of empty apartment buildings are useful to a point because they reduce these organizations’s tax burdens. A company that makes a killing on the stock market only has to pay taxes if they keep it: if they buy houses they then don’t rent, they can claim they “lost” their stock market earnings with “bad investments” and then pay no tax while saving the real estate to rent later. Again, this favors the largest possible projects and the largest possible operators because small companies can be killed by an unprofitable quarter or 4 while large ones explicitly benefit from unprofitability in reducing their tax burden.

Expected ROI is the final piece of this, which affects both new and existing units. Every private developer and landlord wants to make as much money as they can, unless they are explicitly are renting as a service. An example of renting as a service would be families, who will rent to each other at favorable rates or for free, privileging people with large and/or wealthy families that are friendly with each other. Now, ROI is also subject to supply and demand. Everyone wants to build 120$/sqft luxury apartments but once everybody does nobody can sell/rent for those prices without setting a price floor and waiting for buyers to catch up. If you are a small developer, you can’t afford to do this. Your expenses will eat you alive. If you are a big developer, though, those expenses are offsetting the gains you make and serving to reduce you tax bill. Units at prices nobody can pay are effectively furloughed, meaning off the market, and, so long as they remain cheap to maintain, will remain that way, artificially restricting supply. It doesn’t matter if it’s for sale or not when it’s at a price you can’t afford. (Sidebar, anyone who tells you that the minimum wage depresses hiring because it artificially restricts demand is lying to you. It’s not strictly false, but like the above it’s a multi-variable equation and blanket statements about cost of labor are aimed at killing wages.)

What this alludes to also is a need for greater income equality. In order for rental to be a competitive option with furlough, not only does the price of furlough have to be increased, the real value of wages have to be increased in order to create opportunities for people to splurge. This is a twofold strategy, of both increasing the rewards of putting units on the market and increasing the costs of keeping them off. If real wages barely cover cost of living, or don’t cover cost of living, nobody can realistically spend more real wages on rent regardless of the percentage of their income it is. (Real wages here refers to the political power implied by dollar wages. A dollar is really worth whatever it can be exchanged for, whether that is a candy bar or a square inch of a 144$/sqft condo) The real value of everything except time and land are also constantly going down because of constant improvements in manufacturing. The cost in acres of land and hours of labor of a pound of beef, a bolt of cloth, or a pint of beer have dropped dramatically in the last century. Unfortunately, land is one of the few things that remains in marxist terms uncommodifiable, because it cannot be fully abstracted from the physical properties that make it valuable and we can’t make more of it just by making a better machine. This means that as the real value of things goes down because of supply and demand, the value of land only goes up because the supply is hard capped. If the value of everything under capitalism must go down because of increased production, while the value of capitalist assets must go up, or the system collapses, it makes sense that land would become a fixed point in that equation, the marxist speed of light observable from all reference points. The best approximation of land as commodity is, what else, apartments, which make available as living space the empty air above us. Because production never stops, the value of everything but land must go down. Therefore, as time passes, the price of land, and hence the price of housing, must tend upwards. Therefore, in order for housing to remain affordable, real wages must grow. This is the opposite of what is currently happening, as real wages have gone down for decades.

This income inequality which is one facet of capitalism is not new. For as long as people have lived in urban areas there have been issues between the abject class, the working class, the ruling class, and the professional class, a four part distinction I will seriously argue for in opposition to a lot of marxist theorists. The ruling and working classes ought to be familiar, or at least self explanatory. However, the other two classes I identify, the professionals and the abject, are useful to this analysis because they fill both a racial gap in the primarily marxist analysis I put forward and identify the two most likely groups to rent, which is to say the worker who works to produce but owns without governing and the professional who works to govern but does not own. The ruling class both governs and owns, but its court is full of courtiers who are there to push various agendas from within the rule of law without per se producing. Likewise, the working class pensioner exists in opposition to the abject who is denied the opportunity or the resources to be productive explicitly as a means to manufacture a threat against which inter-class solidarity between the workers and the rulers is developed. The textbook nazi conspiracy theory about “elites” doing a great racial replacement picks out perfectly what I mean by both the racial character of the professional and the abject and their utilization to foster solidarity between your plumber uncle and Elon Musk. This is relevant to both the broad theme of gentrification and the narrow theme of rent because gentrification is a wedge issue that divides the working class and the professional class far more than its impact on any other. The working class’ disidentification with doctors, lawyers, PMCs and other yuppie types, as well as the professional class’ disidentification with union politics, illegalism, and radicalism in general is brought to firecrackers in virtually any conversation about gentrification which seems in passing to be more about tapas bars than about real politics. Likewise, these groups shared distrust of and disdain for the abject, who are explicitly labeled by the state as constitutionally guilty, is the basis for the very broken windows policing strategy that empties neighborhoods of minorities regardless of class. The Rent is Too Damn High, and excluding homeless people from the “working” working class is a big part of how we got here specifically because the interests of small time owners and small time government functionaries, carried to their conclusions, are necessarily self defeating. These two groups eliminate the presence of the abject from their spaces at their own financial peril.

In addition to class, there is also a specific historical movement that is crucial to the understanding of gentrification as it exists, which is the movement of factories in search of cheap labor. The United States is not a good place to find cheap urban labor. You build a factory and suddenly everyone complains about air quality and labor violations and you can’t just kill them because everyone has lawyers. You kill one (us citizen) organizer and the NLRB is trying to get you in court for intimidation. What’s the country come to? But a shipping container costs a quarter cent per mile and the goods aren’t perishable so you go to Guangzhou or Cape Town where you can kill union bosses in peace. But for the American city, that’s a loss of what once made land prime real estate. What jobs can replace the insatiable demand for labor that a 24 hour paper mill once produced? Service labor, which crucially is site specific and therefore not outsourceable, is what the US has predominantly turned to. (and arms manufacturing which is not outsourced for very different reasons) However, service labor is only in demand if there is already a stable population that can be served, which requires a constant influx of capital holders in demand of service. This is why Airbnb exists and is hollowing out rental availability, why Boston as a college town is the way it is, and why there are in fact so many damn tapas bars. Fred Salveucci talked about being able to go north of the expressway in the 70s and being able to get a plate of mac and beans for half a buck. I went looking for a 5$ slice of pizza on my lunch break today around Government Center and found two places that were boarded up and ended up spending 20$ at Chilacates. Cities are being slowly turned into Cancun, complete with the fences to keep out the homeless.

What can be done about this? Obviously the factors we’ve discussed that favor consolidation of housing are mostly either contained within a gordion’s knot of tax policy or intrinsic to capitalism/goods as commodities. But, given that we narrow our objectives to making the rent lower, some obvious weaknesses jump out: increasing the cost of vacancy forces units out of furlough, because companies are no longer able to justify the losses, and increasing real wages increases the availability of capital for workers to spend on rent. These are the prongs I talked about earlier.

Legal means to pursue each prong exist. Both a minimum wage and a maximum wage, depending on their implementation, can potentially increase real wages, and vacancy taxes directly increase the costs of vacancy. The government can also ignore the market and directly mandate maximum rents within certain parameters. This tends to decrease the long term supply of housing for the reasons discussed at the outset, given that if the revenues from house building don’t cover the costs of building, less gets built. However, any political movement that exists exclusively within the white lines of the law fails to genuinely threaten change. Landlords, like bosses, break the law constantly with the impunity that a lawyer provides them against consequence. This is why a healthy dose of illegalism is an important part of any effective political movement. The most direct action one can take is property occupation, or squatting. Squatter’s rights are nearly non-existent in the United States. The most leeway that any state grants to any unknown persons occupying a dwelling is 60 days notice to vacate the property, and there are states that allow no notice evictions or lack statutes governing squatting at all. Every single state regards the occupation of owned property as trespassing, meaning most kinds of squatting are prosecutable offenses. However, squatting, even temporarily in ways that don’t expose the squatter to liability provided they don’t get caught, can seriously impact the value of properties. You have heard of rent lowering gunshots. This is the serious version of that. At the same time, illegal action needs legal defense, both in terms of non-compliance with police to protect those willing to take illegal actions from arrest and in terms of legal, 1st amendment protected disruption to keep focus on the issue. The most effective movements have a radical wing and a institutionalist wing who do not acknowledge each other but share the same tactics and objectives.

If you are housed, you need to be willing to protect and support homeless people because they are your front line. Start or join an Occupy movement, where they are your peers in occupying a public space illegally in a way that is too public to prosecute. Give to people on the street, and smash anti-homeless architecture if nobody is watching. Be willing to distract cops if you see someone doing something dodgy so they can get away. Remember that following the law is a tactic, and so is breaking it.

The case for this being on my transit blog is arguably weak, but I felt compelled after a particularly hateful experience looking at facebook memes about homeless people on the T. You should want those people there. You should want those people breaking down the doors of luxury apartments and setting up shop. You should want them keeping your city safe because the cops you hire to separate you from them will train their guns on you next.

And for gods sake, don’t let your city become a brand. Branding is marketing. Branding is clean, and bloodless, and a gloved hand around your throat that leaves no fingerprints.

#long post

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