Could you please clarify your statement?

>> Attacks on free speech - like social media censorship or bans - makes democracy not possible.

GP stated this.

Parent replied with a list of scenarios where violence created progress, albeit none of which featured universal democracy before the violence.

IOW, they are loudly agreeing with each other.

At least in the case of the USA, then, there's still no universal democracy. Corporations have far more powerful and influence, in basically every election you can only vote for a neoliberal, and plenty of people get disenfranchised.

It seems like bike-shedding to equate complete lack of franchise with vote dilution.

They are very different levels of democratic access.

Could you provide some sources?

Probably a reference to https://freebeacon.com/campus/a-failed-medical-school-how-ra...

Any reference that you can point to on the housing shortage being due to preference?

It seems like job location, compensation, average cost of living, and commute would play a fairly large role.

Exactly. Those are preferences.

You can get a decent, 3 bed, 2 bath house for 100k. Just move to some place like Tucumcari, NM. Why not? Oh...right...the same reasons no one else moves to places like that...

Preferences don’t explain why we aren’t building housing where people want to live. Mid rise buildings don’t need to be particularly expensive per square foot. ~11 million for a 50 unit building is 220k / apartment not 100k cheap but way better than what you see near most cites people want to live in. 2 to 3x housing density requires extra transportation infrastructure but it also means being able to support such infrastructure.

Instead walk around most expensive city’s and you see single family dwellings /row houses in sight of high rises / skyscrapers. That’s not economic efficiency that’s people who can afford high housing prices likening the system the way it is.

You need to find a way to convince the owners of that inefficient housing to sell it to a developer so that they can demolish it to build the efficient housing. That will add significantly to the unit economics of the efficient housing.

Legal issues are more of a hindrance.

At the start you might be adding a few million in land costs and building taller, but that quickly deflates the housing market. Pushing people to sell before their homes become ever less valuable. Further cities outlive people, reluctant homeowners eventually die.

City infrastructure similarly has real costs, but an infrastructure tax on every net new unit isn’t going to see anywhere close to current prices.

In most cases it's illegal to build that efficient housing.

Because there aren’t jobs there?

"It seems like job location, compensation, average cost of living, and commute would play a fairly large role."

Are you saying these don't involve preferences?

And a web search will bring up tons of housing preference sources coming various aspects.

https://learn.upright.us/real-estate-investing-blog/a-housin...

Sure, you could argue that some people prefer to not live a destitute life, and that influences the high price of housing. But that is reductive, ignoring a host of other factors, which again, you might be able to boil down to preference (wealthy capitalists prefer to make more money) but again, it's reductive and offers a somewhat shallow perspective and not much to act on.

You would at least be able to act on the true cause rather than chase short term changes that may not even work or won't scale. If it's indicative of a distribution problem, then we should be investigating distribution solutions. If you can't see this connection, then I posit that you might have the shallow perspective.

Enlighten me.

Finviz

Saw bits of that interview.

Lonsdale comes off as a ‘yes’ man for the wagon he’s hitched his fortunes to.

When in doubt, he’ll suggest tons of fraud, but offer no substance, and Sorkin just lets his guests speak.

May I suggest a fifth possibility: your core assumption is flawed and your professor hasn’t been paying attention.

Unless your college is failing, it is hard to believe that the student population hasn’t changed significantly over the last 30 years, when the US population has almost grown by 30%.

I attended UCI over 25 years ago. The student population has since more than doubled. Tuition rates, interestingly have also almost doubled.

This was at a college where indeed the student population did not change in size. The same goes for the professors, whose population grew about 5% over that time.

Not every school wants to grow the size of their student body. And there shouldn't be any reason why they would be forced to.

That's a weird thing to say since many small and rather well regarded private schools stay small on purpose.

For example, do you really think Dartmouth is failing?

Yeah, the parent comment here should have been thinking Dartmouth rather than about one of the UCs for their model school. This was Caltech.

Well, as a fellow alum, I can tell you they definitely screwed up the last two points (esp ITAR) within living memory.

Yeah, the list I provided there were areas where Caltech grew significantly. I wasn't sure if other schools were the same.

Many elite colleges have opted to keep class sizes small, and make themselves more selective instead. It is pretty despicable. It sounds like UCI is doing the right thing, although I've heard it's still hard to get into many of the UC schools because there are so many applicants.

In fairness, a dollar in 2000 is worth $1.83 today, so that would (almost) account for the tuition increase.

Because SAT scores, alone, tell you nothing about a candidate outside of their ability to completely that test.

It is different. Cost plus allows the contractors to charge for development and add a profit margin.

The corporate equivalent would be a fixed price contract, which has overhead built in and far exceeds university rates.

Wouldn’t you expect some sort of forensic accountant leading an audit of a multi trillion dollar organization?

No

Why not?