Thinking a system is bad does not require a misunderstanding of the system.

I genuinely want to see a breakdown on what is increasing building costs so much. Houses are not more complicated than they were 15 years ago.

Normally if you make essentially the same product for 15 years, production costs fall.

It's absolutely a good example of how putting literally every egg in this cultural basket is not a good strategy. Americanism is two things: money > all else and individual > other. We have taken the first to its extreme and the alligators indicate the second one is not far behind.

We all suffer the results.

Hides them under a mountain of corpses with duct tape over their mouths. That's the only way these autocratic nightmares end.

HN has a whole lot of people trying to make it really big financially, for a huge variety of reasons. One of the things that excludes someone from that group is an understanding that our culture is dominated by the idea that wealth is the first, biggest, best priority.

We collectively give the wealthy extra protection, status, and influence. Basically every definition or subcategory of power.

When you do this, it creates a disgusting race to the bottom from those trying to reach the top. We are seeing the ultimate result of that: a mafia kingdom. A feudal clown show.

You will see a weirdly large amount of people supporting that here because a large number of people have conditioned morality out of their ideology. Or reduced it to a very superficial level, completely subservient to the almighty dollar. "Greed is good", "the ECONOMY", "my peers do it so it's okay". And in and on and on.

In short, many would be doing the same thing in the same position and they can't see just how amoral that is. And how it reflects the utter rot that is our culture.

Rising since 2015, but legitimately barely. Enough to look into and attempt to remedy of course, but nowhere near enough to justify the absolutely unhinged rhetoric constantly being used to justify awful legislation and amoral crackdowns.

You can specifically look at people's assumption at violent crime rates charted against actual violent crime rates and see that the gap has never been wider.

Also, 1980 to 2025 is not a "very specific time frame" and it still shows the trend described above. Very large cliff in the 90s we are still nowhere near.

It's culture. American culture treats teaching and education like a free babysitting service, and pays teachers accordingly.

If our culture valued education we would value teachers and their ability to teach, and we so clearly do not.

The largest type theft done in the United States, by far, for decades, is wage theft. In terms of dollars stolen.

All other forms of serious crime have dramatically fallen since the 90's per Capita. Some are at 1/3 the rate they were then. (FBI UCR)

remember that next time you see a headline or politician speak about crime.

We are safer, doing less crime to each other, and seeing more prison population than ever before.

While corporations crush us illegally and face no consequences.

This is absolutely true, but that is exactly how culture spreads now. Through products/software/media.

American business software, American movies, American YouTube channels. They will inject American problems and solutions into your country, like it or not.

Microsoft may treat your privacy slightly better because of the GDPR, but those invasive systems are still there, toggled off. Waiting for Microsofts lobbying to chip away at the privacy laws until they can turn them on.

Im grateful I can still shoot raw on my pixel 8 and edit myself from there. But at that point I will just grab the dslr. A used canon eos 100d is like, startlingly cheap on eBay, I think I picked mine up for $150 a few years ago with a decent lens and it still demolishes any smartphone without much effort.