Raw rushes are still available on the original disks/cards, but the project files and any renders were stored on a single location with no backup or snapshotting.
You'd have to redo everything from scratch. Maybe your editor/director remembers what they want so its a bit faster this time round, if they are available, but its still a lot of work to rebuild the edit.
Once it becomes cheap enough then religious or similar cults will do it, and the cost of doing isn't a great deal more than colonising the solar system where are are economic benefits.
That assumes reaching 5 light years in say 50 years
However once it's done a few times, then it can't be stopped. If you're going at say 1/1000th of the speed of light (50 years to travel, 450 years to settle and build the next wave is 1% the speed of light) then your successor species will have colonised the galaxy in 100 million years, and we know that hasn't happened.
Not sure if my interpretation here makes any sense but here it is.
Due to relativity time slows down on the ship, the laser is still hitting the ship, how would the measurement of the energy received from the laser be perceived on the ship, from the ships perspective a 1000 years worth of energy arrives within a few decades. My head hurts thing about this. If you had a ship that could instantly jump to 0.5c travelling away from earth and we beamed a message using a laser at say 1Gb/s, how would the bandwidth appear to the ship?
You have it backwards. The further and faster the ship goes, the less energy is received. The energy collected over a day will be spread over a week, a month, a year, a decade, etc.
GP has it backwards too. For 1g of acceleration, none of the beam that is produced after a year will ever reach the accelerating spacecraft. You only need to run it for a year.
For 1g of acceleration, none of the light produced after 1 year will ever reach the spacecraft. You only have to operate the power source for a year, but you only get a year of source power spread across an infinity of time.
Bill Gates certainly programmed at the start. At a point early on in Microsoft history he had to stop doing that and concentrate on actual business problems.
Someone working for a 40k a year payslip, or even a 200k a year payslip, is likely in group 1. Someone with 5 million net worth is comfortably in group 2 - even at 3% in a savings account gives them an income way above people earning from labor. Both of those groups are so divorced from those whose wealth increases 5 million a year, or 5 million a month that they're basically the same.
At some point it ceases to be about money and being able to afford the things you want, and becomes power to control others.
The person making $40k/yr and the person making $200k/yr likely have irreconcilable differences of opinion and are equally divorced from each other as they are some billionaire.
No they are not. The $40k guy wants the material plenty the $200k guy has. The $200k guy wants to scheme up some way to not have his position threatened by the $40k guy while simultaneously trying to become a "genuine rentier" the combined incentives of which results in a hell of a lot of punching down (usually with the government or some other obfuscating intermediary in the middle).
Do both rely on a salary and being employed to have access to their material needs? If so, they're both from the same class, and being pitted against each other despite that is a mean for controlling both.
"When education isn't liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor." as it was eloquently posited by Paulo Freire.
Class consciousness is an interesting term. Not too long ago, people were trying to figure out what it would mean in practice to build a society based on that. It turned out that the answer was in class interests. In particular, whether it would be in someone's interests to support communist revolution and the subsequent abolition of private property.
The eventual conclusion was that the interests of the upper middle class did not align with those of the working class. Anyone with substantial non-labor income, such as a small business owner with permanent employees or a professional with enough wealth to have a rental property or other investments of similar value, would not want to have their wealth taken away. That made them class enemies of the working class.
It can be instructive to read what happened to kulaks (wealthy independent peasants) in the early USSR.
Maybe I'm too naive but I can imagine a whole bunch of scenarios between the current capitalismmaxxing and "ThE GuLAgS".
You don't have to be marxists or revolutionist to notice that you're getting the short end and that a smaller and smaller part of the population is profiting more and more. Wealth inequalities weren't anywhere as bad between the 1930s and 1990s for example, it was still capitalism, still largely the same societal organization, etc.
We're asking that we perhaps should consider doing something about the 0.1%... and people like you are misrepresenting it as "they want to literally kill anyone owning anything". Nobody gives a shit about the local baker, farmer or ice cream shop.
There is a middle ground, but class consciousness does not lie that way. Once you start thinking in terms of class interests, the natural conclusions are unpleasant.
The propaganda of the communist revolution was just a mirage.
The communists confiscated everything of value from the majority of the population and in theory all that became "common property of all the people".
In reality, every valuable property was controlled by a small class of privileged people, who even if they were not the owners on paper, in reality they used and benefited from those properties exactly like or even more than "capitalist" millionaires and billionaires. All the communist revolutions just replaced a few privileged people with other few privileged people and the majority of the people typically became even poorer after the revolution, though frequently some minorities received some advantages after the revolutions, because those in power needed faithful people in some lower jobs, to be able to control the majority.
The only difference between the "capitalist" oligarchs and the "communist" oligarchs is that for the former the amount of money recorded in their bank accounts is important for their power, while for the latter money is of little importance but what is important is their network of allies with which they are connected by family relationships, complete obedience when subordinates, bribes or barter of various favors.
The first decade after the Russian Revolution was characterized by a power struggle and search for direction in the communist party. First there was "war communism" with forced socialization and central control. Towards the end of the civil war, there was a switch to a form of market socialism, for both ideological and pragmatic reasons. Many people even got wealthy during that time. Then Lenin died and Stalin started consolidating his power. The first five-year plan marked the beginning of the kind of communism we now know.
During the civil war, communists saw kulaks as enemies, as their loyalties were at best unclear. And because they were convenient scapegoats. Most Russians were peasants, and kulaks were the neighbors who were better off than you. When things were bad, you could blame kulaks for your misery, because they had more than you.
Later kulaks were tolerated as a necessary evil in market socialism. Then Stalin started his "dekulakization" campaign. Millions of kulaks were deported (mostly to Siberia and Kazakhstan), which was a major contributing factor to the famine in the early 1930s. And when Stalin's purges started, most of the victims were from former kulak families.
Right but compared to a billionaire the difference between the two workers is a rounding error, a distinction with an insignificant difference. You're claiming the pecking order of hens matters anything to the fox outside the henhouse.
A million seconds is a couple of weeks, a billion seconds three decades. Comparing a worker at any salary to that singular concentration of socioeconomic power just doesn't make any sense to me, the key distinction of the rentier is that he can avoid the domination non-rentiers must suffer almost by definition when rentiers exist - they are subject to the arbitrary whim of someone who cannot be voted out of power through democratic efforts. In my view liberty is the freedom from domination, and any private individual with the power to dominate in their own right is inherently hazardous to a democratic society. It is in the interests of both workers that the billionaire is prevented from gaining a position of political influence.
Do you really think so? A few years ago I was making ~40k euro a year, now making ~80k a year and my life and opinions are essentially identical, other than the fact I save slightly more and treat myself to a few more things. I would assume 180k euro (200k usd) would net me a slightly higher quality of life and an earlier retirement but otherwise not much else.
Amongst my friend group incomes vary from around 12k (dole) to about 150k and apart from some people having less money for leisure (resolved usually by having a night in as opposed to a night out) it doesn't really lead to any tension.
Is this some cultural aspect I'm missing here? Eg lower social cohesion between income levels in the US?
Or maybe it's just a life stage thing. I'm still in my 20s, and none of my friends or myself have children. As time passes and savings mount and people start having families maybe the problems emerge...
> One way out could be to tax the value gain at the time of sale
Stamp duty in the UK, horrendous tax. It's better than nothing at offsetting the unearned increase in house (land) value, but far worse than a regular tax.
If you live somewhere for 10 years, then move, then repeat for 40 years, you pay far more than if you never move. This encourages people to live in less suitable houses for longer.
As to your worry about land values increasing -- the owner is deriving benefit. The higher the land value is, the more benefit the owner gets from the land.
The increased land value is because the land is more desirable. If I buy some land next to a rubbish dump, it's cheap because living there is terrible. If the dump is then closed my land improves in value, and I derive value from that.
Likewise if I buy somewhere cheap in a backwater town, and the town becomes more desirable because there are better employment opportunities, better shops, better amenities, all of which serve to mean people will pay more for the land, then I benefit from that immediately.
The value is subjective, if you lived in a quaint town and now it’s become a bustling place it may be a nightmare for you , despite the price increases. That is actually a win win situation, though, since you can now move to another quaint town elsewhere while taking a pile of cash with you, with the perhaps important caveat that you do lose your proximity to places and people you may consider more important than the money.
These imaginary scenarios do not align with typical real world experiences. Very few people live near a dump that closes or see their small town unexpectedly boom (and as brabel notes, that’s not necessarily a benefit).
Most people’s home values go up because of 1) increasing housing demand and 2) the collective delusion that home prices can continue to far outpace wage growth indefinitely. Neither of these things necessarily result in an increase in amenities or improved quality of life.
My own home value has gone up something like 70% in the last 10 years. Meanwhile, the amenities near me are essentially unchanged. Same schools. Same number and quality of restaurants and grocery stores. My net worth has jumped a fair bit but my immediate benefit seems pretty much flat.
The house is more desirable, evidenced from more people willing to spend more money in there. You benefit from the same things which make it desirable to other people.
And yet in 2 days of responding you’ve been unable to articulate how real homeowners benefit day to day from rising prices. My own home was in a highly desirable area long before I purchased it. I receive no clear benefits day to day from rising prices.
It's a tax on sellers, with some of the proceeds going to FTBs
Lets say two people are after the same house, both are willing to spend 500k on it.
Person A: Next time buyer, has a budget of 500k after legal/moving costs, that leaves 14200 for stamp duty, and that means you can pay 485,500 (plus 14,275 stamp = 499,775).
Person B is an FTB, they have the same 500k budget but can bid upto 490k due to lower stamp
As such person B can bid 486k, thus offering more than Person A, getting the property.
If both were Next Time Buyers the seller would get 500 less
If both were FTBs the seller would get 4500 more
If there was no stamp duty they would both be able to pay 500k, the seller would get 14k more
Oh, so GP was just incorrect in calling this a tax on gains. That explains why repeat buying and selling incurs more tax.
Large sales tax on home purchases is probably a generally bad idea. Looks like Bay Area pricing would incur a 10-12% tax under the UK scheme which seems pretty crazy.
It's a transaction tax. Setting aside that there's typically a 2% cost on buying and selling a house in the UK anyway due to estate agents and legal costs, and the average house attracts another 1.5% in stamp duty it's not a major obstacle for the majority of transactions, but it's still friction.
It would be far better to replace with a %age tax whether you move or not, but wealthy people in the south east don't like the idea of taxes on unearned wealth.
It's still horrendous, especially at the top end of the market. It reduced movement on the 500k house which trickles down to the 300k where it's an annoyance and then to 150k houses where it doesn't exist other than slowing the current 150k occupiers from moving to 300k, which itself is really treacled because of the move from 300k to 500k.
It's also a major obstacle in the south east, especially for first time buyers
And arguably, they already extracted the value of that house by having a place to live without having paid for it up front. They didn’t even put up the capital in most cases. In the US they will have been granted a loan that is backstopped, and therefore subsidized by the government. Don’t forget the mortgage interest deduction, that’s a massive homeowner subsidy.
So someone else put up the capital, the government made that capital cheap, and societal demand with artificial scarcity (in most places) pushed up the asset value.
I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but let’s not pretend that making capital gains on a house in the US is anything like any other available investment.
They maintained the home and paid taxes on it. Have you ever had a failed septic system? A major water leak? A new roof? There's this whole anger around home ownership you get these days, oftentimes by people who have no experience in the matter.
Yes, mortgages are subsidized by our interest tax deduction system. That part is true. It doesn't turn home ownership into something with no risk, and it certainly doesn't turn it into this subsidized investment. It's a liability, not an investment.
I have replaced my septic. Repaired a roof. Dealt with flooding. I own a home. I have plenty of experience with homeownership. I recognize that maintenance exists and have never said otherwise. You have made assumptions about me to load up an ad hominem attack against a straw man argument. Nothing I said was angry at homeowners. Just pointing out that making 500k on a home isn’t the result of savvy financial moves exclusively, and more a foreseeable outcome of government policy at all levels.
I’m not saying that homeownership is a slam dunk. If you go back and reread, what I’m pushing back on is that the mere act of purchasing and holding a house counts as doing something worthy of a return.
My point is that homeownership, in the US especially, is so heavily favored as an investment vehicle that you perhaps should not act as if you inherently deserve the gains for having “done something”.
As you say: it’s a liability, not an investment (although, I would say it’s entirely possible to be both, and trillions of dollars of smart money agrees)). But it is a liability that has limited downside because of government policy. Because of this, it actually makes a pretty good investment as well. We would do well to recognize where those gains come from (artificially low mortgage rates, and often artificially high scarcity).
>My point is that homeownership, in the US especially, is so heavily favored as an investment vehicle that you perhaps should not act as if you inherently deserve the gains for having “done something”.
By whom? Private equity buying out land in Georgia? Political pundits? Blogs you read? I've heard that too, and it's only true in specific times in history - like since the financial crisis and then covid, where prices only went up.
There's nothing today to suggest that people are eating 6.5 percent interest rates or even staying put out of any calculated investment return. People buy because they're forming a household, they are sick of rents going up, or they want stability. The rest is rhetoric.
There's an entire category of investments called REITs that invest exclusively in real estate. There's a subcategory of REITs that invest in residential real estate that verifiably hold trillions worth of residential housing. There are also PE firms that specialize in residential real estate holding an unknown amount of assets.
Besides all that, owning rental properties and investment properties for individuals is incredibly popular.
Are you really trying to claim that it is a myth that people buy houses for investment purposes? I can't continue a conversation with someone so incredibly out of touch with reality.
For that matter 500K homes and 3 percent interest rates are a thing of historical fiction.
And insurance, repairs, taxes are at an all time high. One day when you get older and you and your parents purchase your first home together, it'll start to make more sense what's being said here. It's not a good investment. If you want an investment stick to your brokerage account.
Historical fiction? Is that a euphemism for "a real thing that happened just a few years ago?" Yeah, it almost certainly won't happen again. But part of that is because – surprise surprise – the thousands-year history of land is that it appreciates in value. Anything that was worth $500k in 2021 will be worth vastly more today, and will almost certainly be worth vastly more in another 10 years.
Periods of cheap money like ZIRP, because land is such a reliable investment, tends to pile into higher land values.
I appreciate the condescension, but I made more than a million dollars in real estate before 30 years old (with no inheritance, trust, or "gifts" to get me started). Also have made significant money in public equity markets and in private venture. Each product type has a role, which is why there are huge amounts of money in each one.
That's wild that someone who is literally 'the gentry' (as in you don't have to work for a living anymore) is blaming random homeowners for being a 'landed class.' Something is off here in how you've calibrated your political perspective.
I own real estate and none of it is anything other than a place for me to live. Nothing is an investment, only a cost. And if I lose my job I have to sell or rent something out. For a loss - interest rates are brutal. Taxes are enormous, and maintenance is through the roof. I'm luckily not in a state like Florida where insurance is the biggest eater.
Historical as in 2.5 percent interest rates are finished forever.
Summary - none of this stuff is evidence of a landed gentry image you're assuming. The alternative is renting - meaning the rent goes up every year.
I see now the issue with your perspective - you're in the privileged class punching down, somehow conflating different types of home ownership, the family wanting to own their own shelter -- and the Duke of Westminster.
No, my calibration is quite simple: a landowner doesn't create, and therefore doesn't earn, and therefore shouldn't keep the appreciation of land values. But there is virtually nothing more certain than appreciation in land values.
That's as true of the Duke of Westminster as it is for you, or me, or anyone else. The fact you think there needs to be a "calibration" that makes the exact same behavior legitimate for one party and illegitimate for another is pretty insane.
The portion of my wealth gained through land value appreciation is absolutely unearned. Same with yours, same with the Duke's, same with an individual homeowner.
Housing specifically (the building) is a liability -- it deprecates, it needs maintaining, just like a car. You pay that and you get utility out of it.
The land its on tends not to be a liability, it increases in value through no work on the owners side. Rarely it will decrease in immediate value, but that's very rare.
Yes, this is correct. However, the 99.999% scenario in the US is that when you buy a house, you are buying the land underneath it. The land is an almost-certainly appreciating asset while the house is depreciating. The land, however, is a growing component of every purchase's factors.
Similar to how cars are liabilities (sure you can have a good eye and turn a profit on some).
House prices might be up 10x from 40 years ago but the SNP500 is up 30x. Houses are not investments. The only utility they have for investing as a “forced savings” mechanism.
There’s no leverage in the SNP500. The global market is up like 80x but for a US-centric form it makes more sense to focus on us investments.
There’s almost always leverage in housing. Which worked really poorly for a lot of people in 2008.
It doesn’t matter if you can get housing at say 6% to buy an asset that historically performs poorly. Plenty of people have created rent vs buy calculators. Housing is not a good investment.
Just because wealthy people buy houses doesn’t make it an investment. Wealthy people also buy Ferraris, imagine the cost of those tires compared to a septic tank!
You seem confused about how investments work if you think lack of cheap leverage is a point for S&P500, or that availability of cheap leverage is a point against housing as an investment.
“Global market is up 80x” is literally meaningless without a timeframe.
I’m going to guess that you’re a “real estate investor”/landlord who does okay for themselves, and then complains that you’re just doing okay despite not even having a real job. Besides (gasp!) having to occasionally pay someone to repair your asset – which is actually a distinct job of property management.
But the fact that someone (in fact many people) as unsophisticated as yourself can invest in real estate and avoid destitute poverty is credit to how powerful of an investment vehicle real estate is.
That’s why there’s trillions of dollars in it. You think all these gargantuan real estate firms are doing it for charity? They just love repairing septics? They don’t know they could just open up Robinhood and buy S&P 500?
Of course not. Real estate is one of the largest industries in the country because people can deploy ungodly amounts of capital into it and expect very reasonable risk-adjusted returns across its various cash flow, appreciation, and tax outputs to their portfolio.
Lastly: You've retreated from "real estate is a liability" to "real estate is not currently producing returns above the S&P 500." Completely different claims. Either you're gaslighting people or you're not sophisticated enough to know the difference between them – wrong in either case.
> “Global market is up 80x” is literally meaningless without a timeframe.
Last 40 years.. the same time frame as every other number i’ve been using.
> availability of cheap leverage is a point against housing as an investment.
It is a point against. If housing is your only source of leverage then you get wiped out in an ‘08 event.
> You think all these gargantuan real estate firms are doing it for charity?
No, they’re doing market research and not blindly buying houses. Just like with cars you can identify which ones will go up in value. However the average car just loses money (but you get to use it).
> Lastly: You've retreated from "real estate is a liability"
I haven’t. The comment was “almost always a liability”. The actual stance i had was it’s not an investment. Just because some of the tails do well doesn’t mean the median did well and that’s what you need for investment advice.
The comment was, verbatim, "It's a liability, not an investment." You are incorrect.
Buying a home that appreciates is nothing like buying a car that appreciates. Again, either you are astoundingly unsophisticated or you're lying through your teeth.
Figuring out which of those is true is not relevant to me nor valuable to other readers on this forum. Have a good weekend!
You'd have to redo everything from scratch. Maybe your editor/director remembers what they want so its a bit faster this time round, if they are available, but its still a lot of work to rebuild the edit.