Comment by cuuupid

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Comment by cuuupid

I sold my company ~2 years ago for a very decent 8-figure exit where we cleared multiples, everybody got paid, fat bonuses all around, etc. just real pipedream founder stuff. Was incredibly excited and thought "we've made it!"

Currently barely affording a condo in Jersey City (not Manhattan). Don't really understand why the prices are this high, none of these homes are selling, the ones that sell are vacant EB-1 investments of which there surely cannot be that many, and there's no way an upper-middle class family could afford this.

More ludicrously taxes keep going up, property tax is super high making it impossible for buying to ever be better than renting.

Everyone in tech keeps talking about how AI might usher in a permanent underclass but it's already here. It's not "you will own nothing and be happy" for most people I think it's already "you own nothing and aren't happy." It's very confusing what is happening with the real estate market but what is obvious is that local politicians and housing regulations have invented feudalism from first principles.

I genuinely do not understand the controversy here, imagine somebody said this about bread.

1) It is the 12th century. Local lords own all the wheat farms and bakeries. Bread is incredibly expensive, nobody can buy bread, people are simply buttering the bread and licking off the butter, and still having to pay a portion of their wages to help maintain the bakeries.

2) ~1000 years pass. Everyone looks back at that time as the worst economic reality in human history, the foundation of most political systems is the ability for anyone to own bread and operate bakeries, people can buy bread.

3) One day you go to the bakery to buy some bread and it's now $120 a loaf. You say WTF this is so expensive, nobody can buy bread anymore, but there are so many loaves on the shelf. You're informed all of these loavess are spoken for by the people in the parking lot who are apparently gambling on the value of bread.

4) Nobody is saying you can't gamble on the value of bread. Instead, everyone agrees it would cost less if we would simply make more bread. But the people in the parking lot, who are already rich and supposedly champion a totally free bakery, say we can't make more bread as that might drop the value of bread and reduce their portfolio value, which would be worse than starvation, so we must limit the bakery. This is obviously ridiculous.

5) Then somebody walks into the bakery and says, I am a champion of the working class, I am one of you, I too cannot afford bread, make me your leader! So you think amazing, let's put them in charge, they will make more bread.

6) Unfortunately, no, for a variety of reasons that sound like they were made up on the spot, they further reduce the supply of bread, stop people from building more bakeries, and install a series of their supporters to 'review' the grain quality of bread at great expense. Also, a very small group of people will get a loaf of bread for free.

7) The price of soars further, everyone agrees that all of this is making it even less affordable. However it becomes culturally unacceptable to reverse any of these policies.

8) You have obviously been betrayed by the current leader. One of the current leader's supporters decides they want to be leader. The other supporters, who again are responsible for this crisis, back this person and say this is the next leader. They say you cannot question them, you must put them in charge or you're to blame for the bread prices. They run constant smear campaigns against anybody who disagrees, branding them all the same as the people in the parking lot, and scare people on the brink of starvation. So fine, you put them in charge, but demanding they change things.

9) They say yes we have a great solution. The people in the parking lot who are gambling on the prices of bread will now let you borrow a slice from them. You cannot eat it but you may butter it and lick the butter. If the butter seeps into the bread, as tends to happen with butter, you will be charged for the cost of drying out the slice later.

10) It is the 21st century. Local lords own all the wheat farms and bakeries. Bread is incredibly expensive, nobody can buy bread, people are simply buttering the bread and licking off the butter, and still having to pay a portion of their wages to help maintain the bakeries.

Genuinely incredible

Replies cuuupid · 2026-06-20
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