Why don’t realtors share their closing prices? Seems like a good marketing tactic - “look how much I can get you for this thing”.

You could also take a look at listing prices for land of different types. Or even just call realtors and say you’re interested in buying something similar to yours and ask what the range is for them.

You could probably also buy this data from a data broker for cheap.

EtA, you could probably also hire someone on fiverr or upwork to do this research.

Check sales listings for any sold property at that price?

In France the answer would have been: because otherwise there would be widespread demonstrations, strikes and eventually riots.

Am I understanding you correctly that you’re advocating for grassroots campaigning for the Democrats?

As in: drumming up public support to vote in a Democrat majority, presumably in the hopes of creating a long term Democrat rule where they could address the checks & balances, the skewed system, the dysfunctional ethics and decorum situation, etc.?

That would indeed be a path forward, but I’m worried that the Republicans would counter campaign very hard, and as proved aren’t hesitant to use any trick they can to not give up power.

It’s what historically worked, but is it still feasible?

Iirc, Reagan was the first to strongarm a party line and establish the strategy of voting for power over anything which has proven very effective, with courts, gerrymandering, and stalled electoral reforms very helpful to form this current opportunity.

But with the current system where it is, I have trouble seeing any such grass roots being able to accomplish much until they gain a majority enough, for long enough to re-establish the checks & balances. Electoral voting and the two party system makes it incredibly hard for a new party to establish, and even then they will get bogged down in the same malintent behaviour exhibited now. At least enough to appear powerless, ineffectual or otherwise not making change enough to keep taking seats, like the Democrats of the last few cycles.

Do you envision some kind of path short of a revolution to throw out the current politicians?

You’re not wrong, but I don’t see the relevance to the topic? Unless this is part of the public revolt?

Organising to protect immigrants in your area is admirable, but how do you get rid of the necessity to do that? You’ll have to replace the politicians, no?

And you’ll probably need to be revolution sized and well organised to be able to do that when they ignore any procedure or deal that doesn’t benefit them in the specific moment.

I see basically three ways out:

1. Democrats/someones sane win overwhelming majority for long enough to harden procedures, cement effective enforcement, and subversion proof the whole system, while not succumbing to their own corruption. Seems incredibly unlikely.

2. Autocracy and/or persecution of political rivals, where dissenters “fall out windows” a lot or the legislative body is replaced, until stability reforms and new norms can be reintroduced. Seems most likely currently, and has several contemporary examples.

3. Revolt, public and/or military, throwing out all the politicians and imposing exile or lynching of the offending politicians. Seems improbable, and especially to unite enough to throw out all the bad behaviour. Also will lead to a junta, civil strife and/or provisional government which come with their own slew of issues and corruption.

4. The Republicans grow a sense of decorum to protect the less privileged party. I can’t imagine this happening without basically a GOP-internal pogrom under a strongman, but Republican conservatism pulls a strongman in the opposite direction. Unless perhaps they’re some kind of upstanding teocrat perhaps?

This is all wild and slightly saddening speculation, please feel free to suggest other paths!

I’ve already covered this earlier in the thread

Profit, price pressures, inflation are not necessarily meaningful terms in a different system.

What exactly do you mean by that?

In a circular or planned economy, those aren’t really significant measures, neither in a subsistence living context. Which are strategies that have housed all of humanity until the last few hundred years.

In a post-capitalist economy, we might be able to provide the human necessities without exploitation. I don’t know how, but I know it’s not through more capitalism.

Homes have been built for many thousands of years longer than we’ve had those as concepts.

If you include cedar bark as a major construction material then sure. Not knocking cedar bark here - it’s great. But not quite the same investment in time or durability.

As mentioned in the last reply, the Palace of Knossos, as well as the Petra were marvels of craftsmanship and engineering, staggering investments, and have stood for over 2000 years. Would probably have survived longer if maintained properly.

The pyramids, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassos, the Taj Mahal, all are landmark (literally) feats for the contemporary technology and societies.

You comparing them with modern construction methods necessitated by capitalism, and with modern technology seems an unfair comparison, as well as circular reasoning.

Profit, price pressures, inflation are not necessarily meaningful terms in a different system.

Homes have been built for many thousands of years longer than we’ve had those as concepts.

Agreed.

But also in groundbreakingly advanced multiresidential complexes, condos, and palaces for thousands of people.

The world will indeed be different if we have different priorities. Capitalism requires high density to sustain the economic engine, other systems might not.

Under capitalism, capitalisming harder is indeed the only solution. I don’t know how to get you to be able to imagine something without assuming capitalism, but humanity and society did indeed thrive even without it.

My point is, if you read “aunt” as “landlord”, my comment is not about the landlords as much as the system.

Without landlords, we’d not have a housing crisis. There would be enough housing for everyone, we have plenty of resources and land to build them. The US, not to mention the world, is still big enough for everyone to have their own plot of land and housing.

How did people live before Capitalism? I’ve read that housing existed before even banking was invented. Somehow there wasn’t a housing crisis back then, until/unless we had exploitation.

You’re not wrong in what you’re saying though. The basic difference of perspective between you and I, I believe, is that you’re viewing this from inside the capitalist system, where landlords do indeed provide a function. But if we’d not have capitalism, we’d still have housing, and with less value extraction/parasitism.

As for the obscure anecdote, let’s instead use the simile of marketing. They add no value to you as a consumer, and if there weren’t so many marketers finding what you need would be easier and cheaper (as there would be no marketing cost). For the capitalist they add value, for the rest of us they’re an ever increasing drain on resources - a parasite.

I don’t know if I’m leftist, but the US spectrum is well right of most of the world.

The question is multi-layered. Your aunt may or may not be a bad person, I don’t know her. Them renting out property may or may not be for good reason, even if they’re doing it to “survive” in the capitalistic economy.

The real issue is that capitalism itself is exploitative, and (depending on where you draw the line) participating may fall under being complicit.

My understanding of parasitism is extracting resources for their own benefit, with little to no benefit for the exploited/system.

The first hint of parasitism is amassing resources they aren’t using for living. Your aunt and husband made surplus money to be able to afford buying the properties. Unless they did that by extracting resources, refining them, working them and making provisions for them to be recycled and ecologically compensated - others will have had to pay the cost. Either by working harder than them, or suffering more than them, for example due to an imbalance of ecology. This is one form of parasitism.

Another perspective of parasitism is inserting themselves as a middle party. Your aunt almost certainly isn’t providing the housing at cost, where rent barely covers their labor and property upkeep. That means they are keeping someone from a home, unless they pay extra to your aunt. Just like a bully.

Now, this doesn’t mean that your aunt has any malicious intent. The point is that the system itself is evil, like a pyramid scheme of bullies, where each layer extracts something from each underlying layer. This is useful for making ventures, but at the cost of ever increasing exploitation and misery. Especially when capitalists are allowed to avoid paying for restoring the exploited, or incentivised to do it more. I’m sure you’ve heard of enshittification.

Now, example time!

I’m sure you’ve thought that air is important for you to survive. And maybe you’ve ever worried that traffic or other pollution might make your air less good for you?

Enter the capitalist! For a small premium we’ll offer your personalised air solution, a nifty little rebreather loaded with purified air you carry with you all day. The price is so reasonable as well, for only $1/day you can breathe your worries away!

Now, producing the apparatus means mining and logging upstream of your town, removing natural air filtering and permanently damaging your environment, but they only charge for the machines and labor. Restoration is Future You’s problem. Selling and refilling the apparatus happens to also produce pollution, making the air worse for everyone. But that makes the apparatus more valuable! Price rises to $2/day.

Competitors arrive, some more successful than others, all leaving ecological devastation and pollution that can’t be naturally filtered. Air gets worse. One brand rises to the top, air is more valuable and lack of competition makes it so that air is now $4/day.

Then an unethical capitalist figures that if we just make the air slightly worse, profits will go up! They don’t want to be evil, but cutting corners when upgrading the production facility means the pollution gets worse. Other adjacent capitalists see that they also can pollute more without consequences. Air gets worse and price increases to 6$/day.

Air is starting to get expensive, rebreather sharing services, one-use air bottles, and home purifyers crop up, increasing pollution and raising costs, air is now $8/day for most people.

People start dying from poor air, new regulations on apparatus safety and mandatory insurance come up, driving prices further to $10/day. You now also need a spare apparatus and maintain it in case your main one breaks down.

Etc.

The point of the example is that through a series of innocuous steps, all making perfect sense within capitalism, you are now paying $300/month more to live than before capitalism, with little real benefit to you, and no real choice to opt out.

Each and every step is parasiting on your life, by requiring you to work harder for that money, and/or suffer more due to pollution and ravaged environment.

The only solution to not work/suffer into an early grave is to have others work on your behalf, perpetuating the parasitic pyramid scheme. This is where your aunt is, is she evil? Probably not. Is her being an active part of an evil system bad? Yes, yes it is. Capitalism bad.

Source on median income pls?

US Census seems to put it at ~42k/year

I’ve had luck with keto working with Lamictal to get my antidepressant weight down.

Keto isn’t for everyone though, it’s a quite severe lifestyle choice, the diet is quite one sided and the high fat content is contrary to norm, and as such difficult to keep up.

If you’d like to give it another go, you might want to look up a comprehensive guide/blog/book to follow. The troubles you describe are common in the transition period, the lethargy is from not getting properly into the ketosis (and/or eating much too little calories) it typically takes 2 weeks to get into a stable hybrid state (where you actually function) and then up to 6 months for the body to become as adaptive as you are now, but for a keto lifestyle. For weight loss on keto you need about 200 g fat/day, <10 g carbs, my variant also keeps ~50 g protein/day (normal amount) to keep calories down. You do not lose weight faster if you eat less fat, you need it to run your body and is already at a calorie deficit for most people.

The dehydration issue is acute when one starts, carbs hold a lot of water, but you get over both the transition in a week or so, and learn to carry a water bottle everywhere for the rest. Many miss out on electrolytes in the transition period, add a pinch of salt to your water bottles, maybe consider a Magnesium and/or Potassium supplement.

Oh, and you’ll probably also have a bad time breaking your sugar habit, it is often likened to quitting drugs cold turkey. You’re gonna have a very bad 3-5 days, starting around day 6-9, and then it typically gets easy enough to manage. Prep good food, keep sugars out of your home, drink water and keep distracted until it passes. If you have more trouble than this, you might actually have addiction like issues, and will probably want to tackle it as its own thing before going keto. Also, avoid artifical sweeteners and you won’t have to relive it further down the line either ;)

After that you will start stabilising, figuring out how to eat, start to feel better, and by then typically begin losing weight, and also firming up your fat (6-12 weeks typically) which ofc helps with confidence.

You will probably get bouts of rashes, best guess is that it’s things released from your previous fat tissue that cause irritations until flushed out, amount will depend on your eating habits when gaining the weight. Regular cleaning and a mild hydrocortisone helped me through them.

You will plane out in weight loss, I hit plateus for about 1-2 weeks at a time before continuing, and have kept my current weight for 4 months (I started in May). They say the body resets it’s expected weight in about 6 months, meaning that it will start self-regulating to a new weight after that time.

A thing I hated to hear when starting, but that has really helped down the line is that this is best approached as a lifestyle project, you need time not only to break habits but form new ones. You need to let the biology both survive the change, flush out the consequences of earlier habits, rebuild the structures and processes, and finally get used to the new you. You need to reaffirm your own body image and lifestyle choices (what foods do you keep at home, how much do you meal prep, how do you handle social eating, etc). You need to find how the diet and lifestyle works for you (so that it isn’t just another form of self flagellation).

This takes time, about 18 months for most people. Keep that horizon in sight and it will help with not sweating the small stuff, being fine with an occasional cheat day (and subsequent hangover, ugh), and being ok with plateus and even gain when experimenting. It’s the difference between losing weight, and adopting a new you.

The patience, care and time will make it that much easier to approach this from a good place, make it successful for you, and be comfortable enough to keep being you in your new shape.

EtA: Also, listen to the other poster, the medication is doing stuff to your body. It is entirely reasonable that this makes keto too hard or otherwise ineffective for where you’re at. You need to put your energy into what makes you better from where you’re at, as you get better, you’ll have more energy to pour into harder projects (or just enjoy life, I hear that’s a valid use of energy).

I get it, the world is overwhelming, and one person can’t possibly neither bear nor solve it all.

What helps is limiting your scope: lower your media diet, focus on real people and relationships, focus on the things you can do something about, and do those well.

That’s not the same as doing your thing at the expense of others’, but that it’s fine to learn and correct and simplify as best you can. If you learn that your car is made from endangered child labor and methane leeching radioactive rain forest - you don’t have to burn it at once, but be mindful not to get that type of car the next time.

Find one goal and task and keep your head down until you reach it, it’s the only way any of us can get any real work done.

[Citation needed]

The sad part about believing in an afterlife is that it’s so easy to give up on the world we have to leave for the next generation.

Even if there would be a blissful afterlife, the people who survive you will suffer more for your complacency.

Yeah, we seem to misunderstand each other at every turn, it may be that we have too little common ground for this to be a productive exchange.

Let’s chalk it up to cultural differences and see if we can meet in a forum more conducive to nuance and building understanding.

I’m saying that sometimes it’s not fixable. We’ve been at this for about 200 000 years, almost nothing has been long term solved yet.

Besides, your perspective is iffy. From what you’re saying in the reply, you’ve ignored the suffering of the rest of the world until it affected you personally, and now you claim to speak for everyone affected? Seems like quite a douchebag thing to do.

The world will be different, this will probably not be what ends us all. We will more probably survive as a species only to put ourselves in a bind with even higher stakes. Our base social instincts are wired this way as long as there’s resource scarcity or inequality.

Bold words from a country built on the failure of other empires.