How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing - <AUTHOR> http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-274.html

<comment><USER2> As someone in Boston, I can tell you that rent control was terrible here. The rent controlled units went to people with high incomes and political power (including mayors and those sitting on the Supreme Judicial Court). Most rent controlled units were simply taken off the market in one way or another. If you're getting well below market rent, you tend to look for other ways to use the property and some just allowed relatives or friends to use it rather than bothering with renting, but a lot converted them into condos. The effect was the same - people had to move.

Even the Boston Phoenix (the leftist alternative paper akin to New York's Village Voice) came out against it.

The fact is that when you put price controls in place, who gets something is determined by factors other than what you're willing to pay for it. In housing, that means:

1\. Will you bribe people? Will you bribe the landlord renting the apartment with, say, an extra $200 per month? Will you bribe the current resident of the apartment with $2,000 to vacate and give it to you all the time claiming to the landlord that they haven't left?

2\. Are you willing to live in a slum? Landlords don't improve properties when they can't charge more for those improvements. Unsanitary conditions? Screw you! They can rent it to plenty of other people willing to live in that squalor. Properties just deteriorate until they are uninhabitable (or barely habitable) and it removes more properties from the market. With tenancy at will, landlords are able to evict anyone without reason with 30 days notice. Should you complain, you're out and unlikely to find another place.

3\. Will you even be able to find a place? No one is willing to move because they won't be able to find another place. People hang on for dear life.

Price caps create shortages. The remaining people get to fight like shoppers at a Best Buy at Christmas for one of those Nintendo Wiis.

The first thing to go is anyone renting a room in their house because, for the limited rent they could get, they could use it better for themselves as a guest room or something. Next is anything that can be converted to condos. Remaining rental places are kept abysmally and many eventually become uninhabitable. Any little brightness in this situation is hoarded by a lucky few who tend to be those with political or economic power (doctors, lawyers, mayors, and judges) and you can't even pry those places from their cold dead hands.

Economics finds an interesting balance a lot of the time. If you force landlords to rent for pennies, they don't maintain their property until it's in a state that wouldn't command more than pennies in rent. If you are forcing tenants to not pay more than $x in rent per month, they'll give under the table for anyplace that's nice.

The easiest way to drive down housing prices is to increase the amount of housing. Landlords don't want vacancies and lower their prices to fill. The problem is that, in some cities, there are more people who want to live in them than there are housing units available. So, prices rise until some of those people decide they'd rather spend less and live in a less desirable area.

Other than price, what else should determine who gets in and who doesn't?

<comment><USER3> Aside from anecdotes, do you have access to any data that substantiates the claim that "The rent controlled units went to people with high incomes and political power" -- can you put a figure on it (50%, 60%, higher?).

My grandparents lived in rent controlled apartments in NYC that they could not have afforded to stay in -- moved there in the 30's in neighborhoods that filled with gang violence -- but gentrified around them and became very expensive. There are anecdotes both ways.

<comment><USER4> _My grandparents lived in rent controlled apartments in NYC that they could not have afforded to stay in_

This is selection bias. Suppose the government raised the federal minimum wage to $50/hr. This would cause massive unemployment (and, no doubt, a thriving black market for labor), but some lucky low-income workers would keep their jobs. You could then point to one of those workers and say, "Hey, I know someone who has a high-paying job that wouldn't exist but for the new minimum wage." But this ignores the damage done to everyone else through unemployment and higher prices. And so it goes with your lucky grandparents.

You can avoid these sorts of errors by consistent application of the following rule:

 _The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups._

\-- Henry Hazlitt, _Economics in One Lesson_ <http://jim.com/econ/contents.html>

<comment><USER3> I gave a counter-example to show how ridiculous it is to talk about this through anecdotes. Yes, it's selection bias -- the entire top-rated comment on this thread is full of anecdotes are data arguments. Thanks for the pointers on avoiding this error in the future -- sheesh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Although rent controls are widely believed to lower rents, data I have collected from eighteen North American cities show that the advertised rents of available apartments in rent-regulated cities are dramatically higher than they are in cities without rent control."

Uh... no shit? Why would a city with low rents have any impetus to impose rent control?

"There can be no doubt that rent control creates housing shortages. For almost 20 years, national vacancy rates have been at or above 7 percent--a figure generally considered normal. Cities such as Dallas, Houston, and Phoenix, where development is welcomed, have often had vacancy rates above 15 percent."

Yes, but these are also sprawling shitholes. And: ridiculously high vacancy rates are a good thing now?

"Young people who migrate to New York or San Francisco usually must settle for paying $600 a month to share a two-bedroom apartment with several other people or commuting from a nearby city. Crowding is a manifestation of rent control."

It has nothing to do with NYC being an island and SF being a peninsula. And we'll ignore that if you consider an area the size of Houston around both of these cities, you start seeing affordable housing again - commuting 5 miles from _another_ city is a bad thing, but commuting 20 miles from _the same_ city is awesome.

"The goal in getting rid of rent control should be to allow the curve of housing prices to return to the elegant symmetry of the free market."

Ah, so it's an aesthetic concern.

This is just a ridiculous article. There are 3 cities cited as suffering from the supposed ill-effects of rent control, New York, San Francisco, and San Jose (and Boston has "overtones of the rent-control effect at the upper end", whatever that means). The data that illustrates the supposed terrible effects of rent control is the price of apartments on the market on one weekend, completely ignoring the _entire point_ of rent control, which is to allow people to stay in their homes (which the article perversely tries to twist into people becoming "prisoners of their own apartment" - because people in great locations in NYC and SF would otherwise really want to move if only their apartments weren't so damn cheap). There's never any attempt to prove that rent control actually drives out affordable housing, there's only the "no shit, that's the point" observation that newcomers to an in-demand city with rent control pay more.

I moved to San Francisco last February, and I'm moving to New York in a month, so I'm not exactly a fan of rent control - I know my price is much higher than my neighbor's because of it. At the same time, though, I recognize that it's really shitty that I could take my programmer's salary and use it like a club against the people who were already living in the city. Why do I want to move to these places? Don't the people who were living there before me get some credit for making it desirable enough that I want to move there? Maybe I should be okay with subsidizing them.

<comment><USER6> "It has nothing to do with NYC being an island and SF being a peninsula."

It's not just that. NYC is not built up the way it should be, and most of the buildup of recent years is condos. For many years, there was a ridiculous incongruity in NYC: sky high rents and abandoned buildings. Why renovate when you can't charge rents commensurately? These days it's mostly a Harlem/Inwood phenomenon.

By the way, why is "allowing" people to stay in "their" homes (fine print: homes which are not really theirs) a good thing? Are unskilled workers somehow _more_ deserving of a house in Manhattan than skilled workers? Do retirees deserve to live close to young workers jobs _more_ than the young workers do?

A guy with a family has a very good reason to pay more for a house close to his job.

<comment><USER5> Rent stabilization in NYC isn't mandatory for new construction, so new buildup being condos is not a response to rent control (unless it's a response to the threat of future rent control). Also, you'll need to explain how "sky high rents + abandoned buildings" corresponds to "Why renovate when you can't charge rents commensurately?" - if landlords can't charge rents commensurately, where are the sky high rents coming from?

The argument that rent control prevents owners from maintaining their buildings is pure bullshit. There's not a rent-control law in existence that doesn't allow annual increases sufficient for maintenance. Buildings aren't maintained because the owner sees the opportunity for dramatically increased profits if the current tenant leaves and lets the building fall to shit in an effort to drive them out.

As for why allowing people to stay in their homes is a good thing (and forgive me for being sentimental, but these are their homes, even if other people own the buildings - they do live there): there a few things that bother me about the free market religion:

1\. The belief that all things with value have been priced appropriately.

2\. The belief that ownership is the only form of risk that should be rewarded by society.

Neighborhoods don't just magically become expensive to live in. I won't claim that the only reason is because good, noble people moved in when things were cheap and turned things around, but it's ridiculous to suggest that the people living in a place have nothing to do with that place becoming a desirable place for wealthier people to live.

As for whether unskilled workers are somehow more deserving of a house in Manhattan than skilled workers: no, but then again, they don't deserve to be run away from their jobs and families simply because some rich asshole can price them out, either. You're making an emotional appeal for a guy with a family to have a right to be close to his job - that cuts both ways, you know.

<comment><USER6> "Rent stabilization in NYC isn't mandatory for new construction,"

In NYC, future crazy regulations are always a worry. Most new construction IS rent controlled. My previous apartment (built to be condos, but the owner was unable to sell) was. To evade various ridiculous NYC taxes (which make a lot of new construction unviable), you need to submit to rent control.

"if landlords can't charge rents commensurately, where are the sky high rents coming from?"

Sky high rents come from _current_ demand. Rent control provides a disincentive to _long term investments_ like new construction or major renovations to rental buildings.

Incidentally, neither of the "things that bother you about the free market religion" are actually part of the free market ideology. 1) only applies to efficient markets (like the rental market, with many buyers and sellers, and good information) and 2) is closer to the Clinton/Bush/Dodd/Obama ideology that ownership is something to encourage.

"Neighborhoods don't just magically become expensive to live in. I won't claim that the only reason is because good, noble people moved in when things were cheap and turned things around, but it's ridiculous to suggest that the people living in a place have nothing to do with that place becoming a desirable place for wealthier people to live."

In some cases the people are completely unrelated. The main attraction to living in Harlem is the 1-6 trains. Having tried to get a sublet for my old place, I discovered that the people living there make it _less desirable_ to live in.

"You're making an emotional appeal for a guy with a family to have a right to be close to his job - that cuts both ways, you know."

As far as who "deserves" to live on some place, it's a wash. So lets not favor any particular group over the other. As far as emotional appeals go, I'm not casting any group of people as assholes.

<comment><USER5> "To evade various ridiculous NYC taxes (which make a lot of new construction unviable), you need to submit to rent control."

Agreeing to not displace people to cash in on temporary market swings seems like a better tax shelter than some others I've heard of.

"Sky high rents come from current demand. Rent control provides a disincentive to long term investments like new construction or major renovations to rental buildings."

This doesn't make any sense. Without the current rent-control laws, the incentive would be to keep the housing supply low and spike rental rates. New construction would still be difficult (because it's NYC), plus current owners would spend their political capital on preventing it from happening to keep their incomes up.

"Incidentally, neither of the 'things that bother you about the free market religion' are actually part of the free market ideology. 1) only applies to efficient markets (like the rental market, with many buyers and sellers, and good information) and 2) is closer to the Clinton/Bush/Dodd/Obama ideology that ownership is something to encourage."

Maybe I should be more clear, my fault. My first point has less to do with pricing efficiency than with the basic idea that certain things with value can be priced at all (a person's contribution to the appeal of a neighborhood, for instance). My second point was that there are other kinds of risk (living in a bad neighborhood for its cheap rent) that should be rewarded by society over ownership (the windfall that the owner of a slum stumbles into as the neighborhood appreciates in value).

"In some cases the people are completely unrelated."

Of course, I never implied otherwise. My next sentence after the one you quoted was that I wouldn't claim such a thing. As for Harlem, I was almost going to use that to illustrate my point. Prices there are a lot cheaper there right now than the location would suggest they should be, and (despite your experience) tons of people are starting to look that way. Assuming living in the city stays cool, do you really think it's going to be as cheap as it is today in five years? And everyone who's moving there right now, who are going to make it that super-desirable place to live? They'll be priced out (see: SoHo, parts of Brooklyn, Hell's Kitchen, etc., etc).

"As far as who "deserves" to live on some place, it's a wash. So lets not favor any particular group over the other."

I disagree, let's favor the particular group that was already there, that's already established the place as their home.

"As far as emotional appeals go, I'm not casting any group of people as assholes."

Really? I've got some rental agencies to introduce you to.

<comment><USER6> "This doesn't make any sense. Without the current rent-control laws, the incentive would be to keep the housing supply low and spike rental rates."

Only if there were a monopolistic housing provider. Absent rent control, the incentive for _any individual housing supplier_ would be to build more houses and cash in.

By your logic, dell should (in the absence of computer-price control laws) cut back on computer production to spike prices. Of course, that's ridiculous; HP, Asus, Everex and others will pick up the slack and Dell will lose money.

As for other landlords engaging in rent seeking, that's a problem, but a separate one.

"My second point was that there are other kinds of risk (living in a bad neighborhood for its cheap rent) that should be rewarded by society over ownership (the windfall that the owner of a slum stumbles into as the neighborhood appreciates in value)."

Living in a bad neighborhood is rewarded; the reward is cheap rent.

"Prices there are a lot cheaper there right now than the location would suggest they should be, and (despite your experience) tons of people are starting to look that way."

Prices are a lot cheaper than they should be precisely because newcomers don't want to live near Harlem natives. High prices elsewhere are driving people here, but the locals are not helping things. As an example of the issues, several of my female visitors have been hassled on their way home. So if you argue for subsidizing hip locals who make a neighborhood attractive, do you also want to penalize disagreeable locals? If not, why not?

<comment><USER5> "Only if there were a monopolistic housing provider."

Come on, man, housing isn't a commodity. If you're an owner charging whatever crazy price you can get in the LES as passive income on top of doing whatever you do as a day job, you're not interested in going out and spending the energy on amping production of more housing units. Plus, maybe you live in the neighborhood yourself, and you'd hate to see soulless apartment blocks go in, and if they did go in, all the charm and neighborliness that makes it so great and desirable in the first place disappears, and prices collapse. You really don't think that guy is spending his political capital on preventing new apartment construction in his awesome neighborhood? I know that's how it happens in the Mission in SF, where I'm living now.

"Living in a bad neighborhood is rewarded; the reward is cheap rent."

Until the rich people see you living there happily and drive up prices trying to be your new neighbor - hence, rent control.

"So if you argue for subsidizing hip locals who make a neighborhood attractive, do you also want to penalize disagreeable locals? If not, why not?"

I said subsidize the people who make the neighborhood desirable to live in. It's pretty cynical if you think that's just the hip locals who moved in only a little before the rest of the wave. Harlem is a little rough today in parts, but I fucking love that part of town. Crime hurts everyone; people who are less well-off have just as much right to live in a crime-free neighborhood as everyone else. Squint a little, and maybe you can see it another way: how much does it suck that the rich white people have to move in before a neighborhood gets policed properly?

<comment><USER6> "If you're an owner charging whatever crazy price you can get in the LES as passive income on top of doing whatever you do as a day job, you're not interested in going out and spending the energy on amping production of more housing units."

So basically, you believe landlords/builders are 1) greedy when it comes to raising rents 2) not greedy when it comes to building more houses. And superpowerful, able to prevent any other greedy people from building housing and renting it for a profit.

They sound like the villain in a poorly written movie. (I should be more specific; it's not all builders, since condos do get built. I guess these problems only apply to the rental market.)

"Until the rich people see you living there happily and drive up prices trying to be your new neighbor - hence, rent control."

It's probably not very bad by this time. Why should I continue to get the reward?

"I said subsidize the people who make the neighborhood desirable to live in."

Yes, and the flip side of that is to tax the people who make it undesirable to live in. Why is this bad policy?

And I'm not just referring to criminals, but also people who lower the quality of life. You want to live near the hipster. But what about living near people who insist on talking at 2AM outside your window, or people who just need to take a shower?

As for police protection, I don't believe I ever advocated reducing it for the poor. I just see no reason to subsidize the stationary at the expense of the mobile.

<comment><USER5> "So basically, you believe landlords/builders are 1) greedy when it comes to raising rents 2) not greedy when it comes to building more houses."

Yes. Believe it or not, there are a ton of people who don't act exactly how economic theory says they maybe should.

"And superpowerful, able to prevent any other greedy people from building housing and renting it for a profit."

When you're out of new land to build on (NYC or SF, for instance; interesting how those are the two cities we keep coming back to, isn't it?), and other greedy people would have to buy your land or building, then yes.

"Why should I continue to get the reward?"

Because it was your sweat-equity that made it not very bad. It's not like you're paying the same amount that you used to - rent does still go up in rent-control environments - you're just not getting your ass thrown to the street because of a market fluctuation.

"Yes, and the flip side of that is to tax the people who make it undesirable to live in. Why is this bad policy? And I'm not just referring to criminals, but also people who lower the quality of life. You want to live near the hipster. But what about living near people who insist on talking at 2AM outside your window, or people who just need to take a shower?"

I don't get what you're saying here. Who are we taxing? The thugs hassling your friends walking home? Homeless people? Are they reliable taxpayers? And as for people who insist on talking at 2AM outside your window, there are noise laws in most places...

"As for police protection, I don't believe I ever advocated reducing it for the poor. I just see no reason to subsidize the stationary at the expense of the mobile."

You said that people don't move to Harlem because they don't want to get hassled by the undesirable locals. I was just saying that those undesirable locals are probably just as undesirable for the current locals as well. I assumed you meant criminal, since the example you gave was your friends being threatened on their walk home - nobody should have to put up with that.

"I just see no reason to subsidize the stationary at the expense of the mobile."

Because you're a caring human being? Because those wealthy enough to enjoy a mobile lifestyle can fend for themselves?

<comment><USER6> "Believe it or not, there are a ton of people who don't act exactly how economic theory says they maybe should."

All it takes is a few people to behave greedily. And again, how come the condo market in NYC doesn't have these problems?

"Because it was your sweat-equity that made it not very bad."

I think you've got me confused with the cops. I did nothing to improve Jersey City or Harlem, I just live here.

"...you're just not getting your ass thrown to the street because of a market fluctuation."

I think you misspelled "be forced to move to a cheaper apartment in the next 30-60 days".

"I don't get what you're saying here. Who are we taxing?"

The locals that make a place undesirable to live in. You advocate rewarding certain stationary locals who create positive externalities ("make the neighborhood worth living in"). The flip side of that is to punish negative externalities.

It's something along the lines of rewarding the creators of public art (who create positive externalities), while punishing polluters (who create negative externalities).

"Because you're a caring human being? Because those wealthy enough to enjoy a mobile lifestyle can fend for themselves?"

If subsidizing the needy is your goal, then why not target neediness directly, rather than using mobility is a (very poor) proxy?

Using mobility, you hit (non-wealthy) guys like me. I moved once to be close to my job (underpaid postdoc), once to be close to my live-in girlfriend's job, and again last month because she became my ex-girlfriend. Stuff like that is uncorrelated to wealth.

<comment><USER5> "All it takes is a few people to behave greedily."

A few people acting greedily forces an unwilling owner to sell out? That makes no sense.

"And again, how come the condo market in NYC doesn't have these problems?"

I didn't address this before because it sounds like something you're pulling out of your ass - and you said it yourself, your building was built for condos but used for rent b/c the market for condos wasn't there. What, exactly, do you want me to argue against here?

"I think you've got me confused with the cops. I did nothing to improve Jersey City or Harlem, I just live here."

Did you mug anyone? Sell drugs? Piss on other people's porches? Litter? Pay your rent on time? Spend money in the local stores? Occasionally smile at your neighbors? Call the cops when you saw someone breaking into a car? You don't have to be a hero to make a part of town a better place.

"I think you misspelled 'be forced to move to a cheaper apartment in the next 30-60 days'."

Cute. 30-60 days, that does make things way easier. Gives people plenty of time to find a place they can afford that's really far away from their current job, so they spend less time with their family, or maybe even need to get a new one. Any local support systems? Churches that sometimes helped with groceries, trusted neighbors to help with babysitting, etc, all gone.

"The locals that make a place undesirable to live in."

Okay, you come up with a way to enforce it, I'm all for it. Rent control is easy, and it has roughly the same effect in upwardly-mobile neighborhoods.

"If subsidizing the needy is your goal, then why not target neediness directly, rather than using mobility is a (very poor) proxy?"

Subsidizing the needy isn't my goal. My goal is not kicking people out of their homes because rich people would rather have them.

"Using mobility, you hit (non-wealthy) guys like me. I moved once to be close to my job (underpaid postdoc), once to be close to my live-in girlfriend's job, and again last month because she became my ex-girlfriend. Stuff like that is uncorrelated to wealth."

So, wait, hold on: you want to kick people who are even worse off than you financially out of their homes so that you can afford a bit cheaper apartment now that your girlfriend broke up with you?

<comment><USER6> "A few people acting greedily forces an unwilling owner to sell out? That makes no sense."

You think ALL property owners in NYC are unwilling to sell? You think ALL builders/landlords are unwilling to build investment properties, and are unwilling to sell to those who will?

"I didn't address this before because it sounds like something you're pulling out of your ass - and you said it yourself, your building was built for condos but used for rent b/c the market for condos wasn't there. What, exactly, do you want me to argue against here?"

You claim that builders are not greedy enough to create new housing in response to market demand, or that there are other monopolistic factors preventing this.

Yet for some reason, they build new condos. Why don't these same factors prevent condo construction?

"Cute. 30-60 days, that does make things way easier. Gives people plenty of time to find a place they can afford that's really far away from their current job,..."

And someone else is now close to their current job and gets more time with their family. Why do the stationary deserve that more than the mobile?

"Subsidizing the needy isn't my goal. "

In that case, why try to equate mobility with wealth? The two are not very strongly related, if at all.

<comment><USER5> "You think ALL property owners in NYC are unwilling to sell? You think ALL builders/landlords are unwilling to build investment properties, and are unwilling to sell to those who will?"

No, when did I say anything that implied that?

"You claim that builders are not greedy enough to create new housing in response to market demand, or that there are other monopolistic factors preventing this.

Yet for some reason, they build new condos. Why don't these same factors prevent condo construction?"

No, I claimed that the removal of rent control would incentivize some owners to oppose new construction, and that current rent control doesn't disincentivize new building.

"And someone else is now close to their current job and gets more time with their family. Why do the stationary deserve that more than the mobile?"

Seriously? You're seriously claiming that the person who just moves into an area has equivalent roots in the area as the person who has lived there since 1971? Come on, be serious.

"In that case, why try to equate mobility with wealth? The two are not very strongly related, if at all."

Yeah, people moving into expensive areas and bidding up rent prices generally aren't wealthy, my bad.

<comment><USER7> _"Yeah, people moving into expensive areas and bidding up rent prices generally aren't wealthy, my bad."_

My impression was that in a housing market without rent control, people are displaced by periodic, incremental yet substantial increases in rent, not a one-time multiplication of rent. If that's the case, then it's not an issue of the poor being displaced by the wealthy. It's people being displaced by others who are a rung or two above them on the economic ladder.

You're also not taking into account poorer people who _want_ to move every once in a while instead of staying in the same place. They end up having to pay the rent control tax each time they move just like the "wealthy." Taxing mobility is rife with unintended consequences.

<comment><USER5> You're right, I'm not taking the poorer people who want to move into account. I'm not an anti-market housing zealot. The only thing I'm saying is that the human cost of displacement seems to me to be large enough that we should be willing to sacrifice market rents for people who have been living in an area that's becoming expensive to live in. The people who create the value should have the first shot at enjoying that value, it shouldn't be arbitrarily handed over to the wealthy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Markets interpret social engineering as damage and route around it.

<comment><USER9> Many government policies could be seen as "social engineering", be they farm subsidies, tariffs on imports, spending on things like highways, subsidized communication networks like the postal system, education for people other than those born wealthy, meals for poor kids so that they have something in their stomachs at school and can actually try and think, and so on.

And, yes, some of them get 'routed around'. Other policies, whether you agree with them or not, affect the market more than the other way around. For an extreme example, see Cuba, where social engineering routed the market, with results that are disastrous in many ways. Other social engineering experiments, such as universal education up to a certain age in most western countries, seem to have been a net positive for society, even if they are imperfect.

Also, I think that some "social engineering", such as keeping people from starving to death, and ensuring they don't freeze to death for want of a warm place to sleep, at a minimum, should not be routed around.

<comment><USER8> I meant social engineering in the form of manipulating markets.

<comment><USER9> Import tariffs and subsidies are direct market manipulation, and the market doesn't really route around them. Rather, they tend to wreck markets, which is one reason many developing countries continue to press the US and Europe to end farm subsidies - it's wrecking their export markets and hurting their farmers.

Governments, when they want to, are perfectly capable of interfering with markets and even destroying them. I am not a libertarian and do not believe that all intervention is harmful, but disagree with your thesis that markets are able to route around governments. Yes, in some cases, but I think that governments have the upper hand: they have guns and police and stuff, like the libertarians love to say.

I think the "law of unintended consequences" is perhaps more solid ground with regards to governments and market manipulation.

<comment><USER8> Tarrifs are actually a particularly good example of markets routing around government interference. Routing around tariffs is called smuggling, and has been a huge business as long as there have been governments.

I wasn't claiming, incidentally, that markets were totally immune to government interference-- just as networks are not immune to damage. Just that markets will always find whatever room you give them.

<comment><USER9> I'd bet that smuggling is a tiny trickle compared to what the market _could_ provide with many commodities (wheat, cotton, corn, stuff like that, not diamonds and rhino horns), meaning that the market is not effectively routing around it at all.

<comment><USER10> False.

In Colombia, 4.5 kg of coca paste, which will yield about one kilo of cocaine, fetches about $4,500. On the streets of the United States, selling this kilogram of cocaine will earn between $200,000 and $600,000. (<http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia150.htm>)

Claritin 10 mg Consumer Price (100 tablets): $215.17 Cost of general active ingredients: $0.71 (<http://www.rense.com/general54/preco.htm>) normalized to 1 kilo ... cost $71,000, value $21517000.00

what did we bet again? :)

<comment><USER11> Huh?

Your math is off by a few orders of magniture. 100x10mg = 1g, so 1 kg should be 1000x$215.17 = $215,170.00, for an ingredient cost of 1000x$.71 = $710.

Also, I can buy 100 x 10mg Clarityn for $65, but I won't, because I can get 100 x 10mg Mildin (exact same active ingredient) for $35.

Edit: Oops, forgot to add a point.

Your point holds true, your calculations are just for 100 kg instead. Thing is, medicine isn't invented, manufactured sold or bought in a free market. Another difference between Clarityn and coke is that there is a very elaborate framework in place to make sure your pills are good - if your dealer dilutes your coke with flour or ratpoison, you're screwed and nobody cares. If there was no demand/requirement for that protection, I'm sure we could get our pills for around $1.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The article seems to ignore one thing: rent control helps people stay together, and in doing so helps communities stay together. The examples they give of communities with rent control and higher rents are places I'd want to live in. They have real community fabric. This counts for something, though I'm not sure how much.

</comment><comment><USER4> While I'm sympathetic to the goals of empirical studies of this type, I doubt their utility: if they find that rent control increases rents, the evidence is right; if they find that rent control does not increase rents, the evidence is wrong.

The reasons for this apparent rejection of empiricism are simple:

(1) Empiricism, so successful in the exact sciences, relies on clean evidence and controlled experiments, but evidence in economics is necessarily messy, and controlled experiments rare.

(2) Given _extremely_ reasonable and general assumptions (buyers tend to buy more of something if its price goes down, producers tend to produce more of something if its price goes up), the connection between rent control and rents is a _theorem_ , not a conjecture. (See any introductory economics text for a proof.)

Doing an empirical study to test the statement "Rent controls increase rents" is kind of like measuring the length of ladders leaning against buildings to test the Pythagorean Theorem. You're likely to find that Pythagoras was right, but if you don't it's probably a flaw in your measurements rather than a mistake in the proof.

</comment><comment><USER13> I have a vagrant living in my NYC apt building that pays $75 a month in rent and eats out of the garbage. He has no electricity or running water. When he opens the door to his apt in the summer the rest of the building gags. There are two other units that pay $75 dollars; a nice old couple and a loony chain smoker with bad BO.

<comment><USER5> At a 7.5% annual increase from 1971, they would have originally been paying just over $5/month (that's about $25.34 in today's dollars). I'm not an expert in NYC rent prices in the early 70's, but that seems absurdly low. Maybe it's that cheap for some other reason?

<comment><USER13> The rent amount is gossip from the super. The other stuff is first hand, and probably adds a little "control" to my rent as well, but believe me not that much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It isn't hard to think of many solid, rational reasons to oppose rent control. That is, until the wealthy bid up the cost of living in _your_ neighborhood.

</comment><comment><USER15> I have a friend who says: "Hell will be full of landlords."

She is a master's degree holding architect who rents.

<comment><USER16> As the son of a former small-time landord (teachers by day, landlords of 1 single family and 1 duplex house), I can assure you that those landlords will have PLENTY of tenants to rent to down there!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Rent control is one of the many well-intentioned Government projects that doesn't achieve its goals.

Government needs to focus more on 'social technology' (Karl Popper's term) -- on how to achieve the goals it aims for -- and less on arguing what the goal should be and then assuming that making it happen will be the easy part.

To those who disagree, I would appreciate to hear why.

</comment><comment><USER18> Rent control does more in New York. It means that if you are in a rent controlled apt they will increase your rent to the maximum allowed! Always! And they reject people if they don't earn enough money to actually have their rent go up by the maximum amount (rent cannot exceed 20% of your annual income).. And poof In fact I've been hearing that in non-rent-controlled apartments in NY the inflation rate for rent is smaller than for rent controlled apartments.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm not real clear on why a 1997 article from a routinely discredited right- wing think-tank on this issue is Hacker News....but since we seem to be playing "cite old biased articles", here's the sordid history of how unregulated landlord greed drives out affordable housing:

<http://www.tenant.net/Community/history/hist-toc.html>

<comment><USER20> Examples of how Cato has been discredited?

<comment><USER19> Oh my. Two minutes of web search:

<http://www.accuracy.org/article.php?articleId=51>

[http://www.cato-unbound.org/2008/11/12/matthew- yglesias/poli...](http://www.cato-unbound.org/2008/11/12/matthew- yglesias/politics-compromises-the-libertarian-project/)

<http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2006/05/cato-hypocrisy.html>

<http://www.socsec.org/publications.asp?pubid=325>

<http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200207/thinktank.asp>

<http://www.acsh.org/publications/pubID.498/pub_detail.asp>

<http://www.no-smoke.org/pdf/catoinstitute.pdf>

<http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1409>

<http://www.iwpr.org/pdf/CATORIB.PDF>

<http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=21>

[http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/...](http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/9/0/5/9/p190590_index.html)

[http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/01/im_friends_with....](http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/01/im_friends_with.html)

[http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/dec2005/nf200512...](http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/dec2005/nf20051216_1037_db016.htm)

<http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/vdh56a00>

[http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment- fonte050902.as...](http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment- fonte050902.asp)

<http://www.skepdic.com/refuge/junkscience.html>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Milloy>

[http://web.archive.org/web/20011122034255/http://www.tnea.or...](http://web.archive.org/web/20011122034255/http://www.tnea.org/pages/comm/taxref.htm#Cato%20report)

<http://www.pkarchive.org/global/swedenomics.html>

<http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Asian_Economy/EG12Dk01.html>

Trying to pretend that Cato in practice is anything but a shill for big business (including, in particular, the fucking tobacco industry) and the greedy is moronic.

<comment><USER21> Their defense of the tobacco industry has always been centered around the rights of the individual. Just because Phillip Morris pays a few dollars to keep the institute running does not mean Cato's arguments are unfounded. All think tanks have financial backing from some faction or another, and (surprise!) it's usually the people who agree with the think tank's point of view.

Just because a think tank accepts money does not make their arguments wrong. As an individual, it's up to you to research both sides and decide on which makes the more compelling case.

<comment><USER22> "Just because Phillip Morris pays a few dollars to keep the institute running does not mean Cato's arguments are unfounded."

lol

"As an individual, it's up to you to research both sides and decide on which makes the more compelling case."

Yup. If you don't give equal time to paid shills you're not being Fair and Balanced.

<comment><USER21> What source is not a paid shill? Everybody has to pay the bills. Sure there are organizations that don't pay or pay very little, but they don't get the best and the brightest and they can't spend money to keep their people informed.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Vagon – Personal high performance computer in the cloud - <AUTHOR> https://vagon.io <comment><USER2> Wow, mixing monthly and hourly pricing like that is borderline fraud. Especially when you advertise it as a $8/mo service when the actual price for a typical 160h work month is $215. For the cheapest option. That's 26x the advertised price! At that point, buying an equivalent computer yourself would break even in months. And it'd work without a stable internet connection!

Here in Sweden all taxis advertise the component prices, but the the most prominent price has to be the "Jämförpris" (comparison price), which is the price of a standardized "typical" journey.

And of course this has to use Intercom, in an even more invasive and annoying configuration than usual.

I suppose my only solace is that people have tried this idea before[0], and at least they seem to be well on their way to bankruptcy.

[0]: [https://www.wycore.com/](https://www.wycore.com/)

<comment><USER3> I think you're looking at it wrong. The price for the base service (so storing your settings/app configuration) is $8 /mo while the usage itself is added to that. The pricing to me is pretty straightforward.

On a side note, do you really take solace in watching businesses go to bankruptcy? Why though?

<comment><USER4> When someone says "Starting at $8/mo" that usually means you can start getting something of value at $8/mo. In this case, that's false.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are other services like this, mostly for gamers. Vagon is $1.29/hour, plus $8/month. There's no technical problem doing this, but it's an expensive service to provide. The pricing is usually too high to get a market. NVidia's GEForce Now and Google's Stadia are running at a loss for promotional reasons. The game industry's reaction to Stadia is that almost everybody who considered supporting it expects Google will cancel that service.

Is Vagon reselling AWS, or do they have their own data center?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we built vagon on top of AWS with goal of eventually supporting multiple cloud providers. Our thinking is there's already a reliable, state of the art network of datacenters around the globe for our consumption, it makes sense to use it.

<comment><USER6> It might make sense to use it, but why does it make sense to resell it? What are you adding to the equation and who is going to pay 1.29 an hour?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> At work, we use Paperspace quite a bit for Desktop-as-a-Service in order to teach distance learning and in-person classes. We like not having to rely on our users having beefy(ish) laptops or being able to install software on them. The killer paperspace features for us, in no particular order, are:

1\. Private networks -> keep classes isolated 2\. Shared drives -> mount read- only class data 3\. Create machine images -> build out the 'base' class image and spawn new instances from it 4\. An API for spinning up and down

It seems like you are positioning yourselves as more for individuals and less for companies. It's not clear fo me from the landing page, but does Vagon require you download and install a client? Or is there a browser-only option? If we were to spin up, say 35 VMs, and then destroyed them a week later, is that $7.99/month charged for each machine or just once? Is it pro-rated if you don't use the whole month?

<comment><USER8> How do you remote into Paperspace instances? Is there a custom client that performs well? Every few months I'll tinker with setting up a Linux desktop in some generic cloud provider, but the lack of good remote desktop X solutions is always a pain point.

EDIT: after some more clicking around I managed to find references to a Paperspace "native app" for remote desktop. I may sign up for an account and give it a try, since I just noticed Vagon only supports Windows machines at the moment.

<comment><USER7> We generally use the browser interface, since many of our classes have both a GUI app and commandline work -- we've done this with both the Windows VMs and the linux ones. For linux desktop (Ubuntu), we use the ML-in-a-box image as our base and build on top of that. The linux VMs you can also SSH in via your favorite terminal/client

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just wanted to mention that changing the tab name to "Steve says..." and back to your normal attention, just because the tab is in the background, feels like a terrible way of getting my attention. It's mostly annoying but then when I go to the tab, there is no Steve saying anything! Would expect something happened. But then putting the tab in the background shows the switching of tab name again. Not very nice UX.

</comment><comment><USER10> Seems like a wrapper for, and should be compared with [https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/pricing/](https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/pricing/)

<comment><AUTHOR> It may seem that way but I assure you it's not. You can tell by comparing our prices to workspaces and see that we're more affordable. When we started to work on vagon we did consider using Workspaces under the hood but opted to develop our own infrastructure on top of EC2 and our own display protocol instead of using Teradici PCoIP like Workspaces.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice interface and very easy to set up, it's great I could get to try it without entering any payment methods.

I actually need a Linux machine (for GIS with QGIS), it would be nice to get other OS options aside from Windows. I also wanted to sync my Dropbox folders but stopped short of typing my password in the VM after installing the Dropbox client, as I have no idea what kind of security you are using.

Something else, I had it in fullscreen mode on Firefox, but then every time I went back to my guest OS it triggered a resize of the guest, which was kind of annoying. Maybe it would be good to choose whether I want a scaled view.

<comment><AUTHOR> We do have rolling out Linux machines in our roadmap, hopefully quite soon.

Thanks for the feedback about fullscreen mode I agree it is annoying. We haven't yet figured out a simple way to communicate that choice but it's absolutely necessary.

Regarding security: This is obviously a question we get a lot. We're providing you with an isolated VM, it's not a shared resource. Only you have access to it. We are basically managing backups for your data as file system volumes. We don't have any further access to it. Dropbox was pre-installed for convenience but I see how that may be suspicious.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN!

vagon is a personal cloud-computer that is built to help creatives with flexible performance. Architects, CAD designers, video editors, animators, researchers - they all need powerful computers to create things and that's what we are trying to provide. Our goal is to make running graphics software such as Adobe or Autodesk products possible even from a Chromebook or a veteran Macbook Air.

After a lot of hard work, we've finally launched our beta. We'd love to hear your feedback and recommendations to make it better!

Through our web app, you can \- create your personal vagon computer, \- install your software, \- sync your files, and use it as you use any other computer.

You can access your vagon anywhere - you only need a stable connection and a computer to use it.

P.S: We are currently on Product Hunt, you can visit our post and get a 2 months free coupon code to get you started right away.

<comment><USER12> Just a thought -- chromebooks are often being used in school setting as a cheap alternative to having an expensive Macbook Pro or something equivalent.

A student discount could go a long way.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're working on it right now :) we plan to announce it in the coming weeks. Glad to see it makes sense to other people as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This name really isn't the greatest.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why are the specs not more configurable? You could offer it at a lot lower of a price if a costumer can get 16 GB of GPU without 244 GB of RAM.

</comment><comment><USER15> So, like, AWS + remote desktop?

<comment><USER16> I think the idea is it comes pre-prepared for people who cannot spawn an environment from scratch on AWS or any other cloud provider for their purpose

<comment><USER14> To be fair AWS does offer that [https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/pricing/?nc=sn&loc=3](https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/pricing/?nc=sn&loc=3). But, Vagon is somehow cheaper than AWS, which I almost never see.

<comment><USER16> As a non dev-opsy person, I do not think i can create an environment to use. To be fair though, I cannot understand amazon pricing compared to vagon's enough to have an opinion eitherway

<comment><USER14> Note: I have not used this service before.

I'm pretty sure this is an almost exact competitor to Vagon. You're not creating an environment. It's a full desktop right out of the box.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


From Stolen Wallet to ID Theft, Wrongful Arrest - <AUTHOR> http://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/03/from-stolen-wallet-to-id-theft-wrongful-arrest/ <comment><USER2> It's interesting that law enforcement claims that they need to surveil all of our private data to keep us safe, yet they can't even figure out a way to share amongst themselves crime-related information that citizens give them willingly.

If the police departments had just shared the information about his stolen wallet (his local police department had just warned him about unauthorized use of his credit card 24 hours before the arrest), then the arrest could have been avoided.

</comment><comment><USER3> The title says "wrongful arrest" which is not accurate, since the police computer says to pick up that person - it's just the arrest of the wrong person.

A wrongful arrest is more like an arrest with no warrant and no evidence - like walking down the street and refusing to answer questions or show ID to a police officer who is attempting to infringe your civil liberties.

<comment><USER4> > A wrongful arrest is more like an arrest with no warrant and no evidence

Like arresting someone when they have _evidence_ the person they're arresting didn't do the crime?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Real question: In the US is it possible to get your driver's license cancelled and re-issued when it is stolen?

That may have helped here, since when the cop ran the license it would have turned up stolen. Assuming cops are entering license #IDs into the system rather than just recording the name.

As an aside I thought driving licenses were all picture IDs now? How did the cop not spot that the person handing them the ID wasn't the person ON the ID?

<comment><USER6> Not in NY State. My partners's identity was stolen in 2012, the thief was somehow able to get a NY State DL issued with my partner's information but the thief's photo. NY State DMV refused to issue a new driver's license number, instead there's a fraud flag on her license information. Now she (my partner) must present two forms of photo id when she wants to rent a car or do anything else where a driver's license would normally suffice.

<comment><USER7> That's amazingly bad. We allow these agencies to issue permanent IDs without any sort of management system...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how many of the cars parked in the driveway weren't in the garage because it was filled with stuff.</comment>


The Tigress Diversifying C Virtualizer - <AUTHOR> http://tigress.cs.arizona.edu/ <comment><USER2> TIL (today I learned): It appears a 'diversifying C virtualizer' is an application that takes C source code, compiles it to an AST and transforms it to bytecode, and inserts a bytecode interpreter in place of the function. It can generate many different such bytecode/interpreter representations of a function, thus making it more of a challenge for crackers.

<comment><USER3> That same approach, obviously, works for lots of different languages. Not just C. You can even do it at the level of raw algorithms, transforming (for instance) a block cipher implementation that accepts a key as a parameter into one specialized on a specific key and from which the key is (H)ard to extract.

<comment> v0i0-0 Could you maybe point me to such one tool, i.e. one that specializes routines for given parameters. Will these tools also perform optimizations that might be possible if the specialization took place?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The most prominent application of this can be summed up in one acronym: DRM.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure why DRM would be more prominent than other applications? Software diversification is a big topic right now, in the hopes it can make all software more secure. That could help virtual machines, network stacks, and really anything from web browsers to entire OSes.

<comment><USER6> Tigress is labeled as an "obfuscator" that forces people to "crack, and re- crack, the code", for "software protection" from the owner of an "untrusted remote site" [i.e. you on your computer] - its main purpose is to prevent people who already have full access to the binaries from understanding them. This is somewhat related to the type of benign diversification that mitigates exploitation - preventing code that has limited access to the system from pumping the weird machine correctly - but, I think, not much.

Many techniques required for the first are useless for the second: if everything is open source, or even if it's not and the attacker is smart enough (unlike most protection measures which are supposed to be independent of intelligence...), then measures implemented by this tool like 'virtualization' (i.e. indirecting execution through an interpreter), branch obfuscation, etc. can be undone easily by an attacker with full access to memory; if the attacker doesn't have full access, there are much simpler and more performant types of randomization that are equally good at defeating them. And measures useful for the second (generally, anything that involves multiple variations of the same version of a program, to force exploiters to learn which one is in use) are no good against the first (since the attacker can just pick one to extract secrets from).</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is your favorite movie? And why do you like it?  - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER4> Blade Runner, but not the theatrical version with the phoned-in narration. Director's Cut or Final Cut. It's a beautifully-shot noir film whose special effects hold up even today, and has a very interesting take on the nature of humanity.

Edit: Harrison Ford on his narration: "It was simply bad narration." [http://web.archive.org/web/20080603083514/http://www.harriso...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080603083514/http://www.harrisonfordweb.com/Article/Miscellaneous/playboy_interview.php)

<comment><USER5> The original, with Harrison Ford's voice-overs, was perfect.

The various-re-releases such as the Director's Cut ruined it.

I hate Director's Cuts! They invariably make great movies worse. Why can't Hollywood leave well-enough alone? Why do they feel the need to mess with something that was great to begin with?

<comment><USER6> >The original, with Harrison Ford's voice-overs, was perfect.

Sometimes I wish HN would allows downvotes...

<comment><USER7> HN _does_ allow downvotes.

But you don't have the option until you've accumulated enough magic internet points.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Always used to be Children of Men and/or La cite des enfants perdus. First is the most intense movie I have ever seen, some scenes literally blew my mind. Latter is very dark whilst beautiful and sweet, like Amélie but better - <USER2> techfriendlly.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>-- Don't really like trailers, but still </comment><comment></comment><comment>--

Children of Men: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VT2apoX90o>

La cité des enfants perdus: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSPmtX5KzEw>

</comment><comment><USER9> My favourite:

Let the right one in (the original version), beautiful atmospheric movie: <http://akas.imdb.com/title/tt1139797>

Other recommendations:

City of God, harsh but realistic: <http://akas.imdb.com/title/tt0317248>

Barefoot Gen, shock and awe, made me cry, IMHO better than Grave of the Fireflies: <http://akas.imdb.com/title/tt0085218/>

The Chaser, breathtaking thriller: <http://akas.imdb.com/title/tt1190539/>

The Andromeda Strain, now this is _real_ SF: <http://akas.imdb.com/title/tt0066769>

The Man from Earth, good low budget SF: <http://akas.imdb.com/title/tt0756683>

Castaway on the Moon: funny movie about a man that 'bootstraps' his life on a 'stranded island' after a failed suicide attempt: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1499666/>

I saw the devil, violent but very good thriller: <http://akas.imdb.com/title/tt1588170/?ref_=sr_1>

<comment><USER10> Castaway on the Moon is great, and insightful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Groundhog Day. It's a comedy with some dark elements in it. And it's also something that I would like to experience myself so long as I could resume normal time when I wanted to. A day with no consequences would be fun.

<comment><USER12> it is in fact possible, though in a different way :) You need to achieve nirvana (look up buddha writings, Zen interpretations, nagarjuna's core points, nisargadatta's "i am that" NO BS spoon feed, in that order. And may be add-in bhagavata gita for a fun read). HTH.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Enter The Void. A powerful parade of colors that takes you through the different stages of death. One does not simply watch this movie. One experiences it.

<comment><USER14> When I saw it more than half the audience walked out. There was even a couple that walked out just before the credits started rolling (for those who haven't seen it, it's almost three hours long).

Excellent film.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The Matrix, first movie, I love how everything has a parallel with our own world, also a lot of the movies ideas, messages have underlying concepts in Buddhism, which is just cool.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think that for me it's "Spirited away" - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiEzl7SEtkI>

The story of how the heroine matures in front of our eyes as the weight of the world is placed upon her shoulders was really moving to me. Coupled with beautiful hand-drawn animation and an overall sense of gentleness and wander, it's been an real favorite for me which I enjoy watching time over time.

</comment><comment><USER17> The Kingdom (Lars von Trier, 1994) <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108906/> (The Kingdom II, Lars von Trier, 1997: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0127392/> ), do not confuse it with the remake Kingdom Hospital, 2004 <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0324864/>

<comment><USER18> Not really a movie, but it is amazing. Doubly so if you are Swedish (or possibly Danish)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Spy Game - starring Robert Redford and Brad Pitt. Guess it's the only spy thriller out there, that talks about the dirtier side of espionage, yet how it's up to the inhabitants of that dark corner, to not sell their souls.

</comment><comment><USER20> Koyaanisqatsi. It reminds me how big the world is and how everything is ultimately connected together in some way or another. Plus, good music and no dialogue which is a bonus.

<comment><USER21> Yes, Koyaanisqatsi is my favourite too. This is a film with no characters, plot, or dialogue. Instead, it offers 90 minutes of images set to music. The film begins with shots of nature, such as clouds, lakes, and mountains, and slowly moves its way into civilization, with roads, mines, cities, factories, and endless throngs of people. Watching this film is a unique experience, and really allows you to see the world in a different light. Plus, it's great art.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I watch mostly Chinese movies. I think my favorite one is "You Are The Apple of My Eye". You can watch it on youtube: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4gZIolIrxw&list=FLSZdbc5...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4gZIolIrxw&list=FLSZdbc5A2anDzDE1MV64ZNw&index=41)

It is a love story about first love. This is one of those stories which everyone can relate to some extant. It is a very very cute story.

It has English subtitles!

<comment><USER22> I think movie media (with subtitles) is one of the best ways to learn a language. I have been trying to learn Mandarin for a few months now, so can you please make some more suggestions? Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not sure if it is relevant. The most famous Chinese dating show now has a channel on youtube and the show supports English subtitles. I just took a look at it. The translation is very accurate and they show English and Chinese at the same time. I think it can be very helpful for you in learning English. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmGYsqlsbdQ>

<comment><USER23> Well. I hope the people here don't think that's what Chinese women look like by the show. :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Lawrence of Arabia - man comes to believe in his own myth

(plus the stunning cinematography and incredible nature of the true - <USER3> dramatized - story)

</comment><comment><USER25> Saving Private Ryan. It's the first time I had any kind of idea as to the suffering these people went through to give us our freedom. I know it is a film, and it is dramatized, but you watch that and it will give you some sense as to what it must have been like that. After watching that, and then Band of Brothers, the famous phrase "For Their Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today" made a lot more sense to me.

</comment><comment><USER26> Many enjoyable films posted already. No one has mentioned 'Primer' (2004/Shane Carruth). Respectable as hard sci-fi, and inspiring as an independent project (Carruth did almost everything himself.) I suggest watching before you read anything about it.

For non sci-fi, 'Old boy' (2003/Chan-wook Park) was memorable - fun concept, well acted and a good ending too.

</comment><comment><USER27> Drowning by Numbers - <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092929/>

\- It's gorgeous. Not like a movie, but like a collection of hundreds of beautiful pictures. \- It's geeky. I had to watch the movie dozens of times and read the script to understand all the allusions and references.

</comment><comment><USER28> The Third Man: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_third_man>

Orson Wells. Black and white. Noir. Photography. Impossible love story. The score: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oEsWi88Qv0>

<comment><USER29> Good one! Best use of zither music ever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Drive. Blown away by it. Thought it was another car racing film after seeing the trailer, but it was actually IMHO the best film in 2011. Edit: Forgot the why: Minimalistic. Beathiful Story and propably the best music editing in a film.

<comment><USER31> Same here. Not my favourite but I was totally blown away by it. It looks almost like an art movie for its photography is extraordinary.

EDIT: The trailer didn't make it justice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Cannot say one favorite. But Children of Heaven impressed me a lot when I saw it first. Perhaps because I saw the innocence of children that we have long lost.. Princess Mononoke and Howl's Moving Castle are also very good.

</comment><comment><USER31> I think my favourite is Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind. A beautiful love story talking about how hard it is to forget your true love, how regrets can consume you and that everyone deserves a second chance.

<comment><USER33> Search online for the script. The original was posted somewhere, and you can learn how the story had much more depth in its original form, but due to time constraints and editing a good 1/4 of the script never made it to the screen. Well worth tracking down!

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Vitus - A perfect combination of all story elements, simply genius.

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478829/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1>

</comment><comment><USER35> Batman - The Dark Knight: Clever bad guy, goods characters, believable, fantastic, long movie.

(It is not original, it just take what Holliwood do for long know, and it do it very well.)

</comment><comment><USER36> Shawshank Redemption: "Never ever ever ever ever give up"!

<comment><USER37> Awesome movie..

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Rule number one: You don't talk about your favorite movie

</comment><comment><USER39> Fight Club - The most relevant movie of this generation. Addresses issues such as consumerism, the over feminisation of young men.

</comment><comment><USER40> Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (2011). A poignant reminder of the difference between real honor and superficial/dogmatic show.

</comment><comment><USER41> 2001 a Space odyssey - Saw it on a school trip when it came out. Have watched it dozens of times since then

Also Metropolis.

<comment><USER42> Metropolis is a fantastic film!

I've never been into silent films, but last year my brother conducted a performance of Metropolis (live orchestra of the film score) and I was blown away by how good it was!

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Night on Earth. 5 cities, 5 cab drivers, 5 stories. Just beautiful storytelling. If you haven't seen it, you totally should

</comment><comment><USER44> The Big Lebowski - It is good to know that there is someone out there taking it easy for all of us sinners.

</comment><comment><USER45> The Fountain: for it's seemingly-naive-but-deep take on the effects of death on those who experience it.

</comment><comment><USER37> The Godfather...Everybody knows why..

<comment><USER46> Absolutely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> American Psycho (2000) because you shouldn't just look at it, you should eat it. (Too obscure?)

</comment><comment><USER48> Armageddon! How much cooler can you get with NASA sending up a team to blow up an asteroid?!

<comment><USER49> How about jump starting the planet in The Core.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Rocky, Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.

</comment><comment><USER51> Rocky - Reminds to never give up, dream and reach goals.</comment>


Dilbert creator outed for using sock puppets on Metafilter and Reddit - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/gqzgx/dilbert_creator_outed_for_using_sock_puppets_on/ <comment><USER2> What exactly is wrong with a famous person having sock puppets?

The opposition to this sort of thing defies logic to me. To quote a comment on Metafilter...

 _Scott, if you wanted to sign up for Metafilter to defend your writing, that would have been fine. If you wanted to sign up for Metafilter and be incognito as just another user, that'd be fine too. Doing both simultaneously isn't; pretending to be a third party and high-fiving yourself by proxy is a pretty sketchy move and a serious violation of general community expectations about identity management around here._

So he's acknowledging the value of being able to present opinions as "just another person" and acknowledging the value of the author being able to post as himself but then he says those two are wrong in combination? Doesn't really make sense.

As for being dishonest I don't see a sock puppet as any more or less dishonest as any other screen name.

And who exactly is hurt? At best a sock puppet makes it look like the author has one supporter more than he actually has. So what? No one's going to be swayed by one supporter. Moreover I think someone like Scott Adams should have the right to defend themselves without people automatically dismissing it as self preservation.

In the end a sock puppet is just a way for a famous author to present his ideas without bringing his fame into the conversation and I don't see what's wrong with that.

<comment><USER3> It would be similar to Matt Cutts registering some username and defending Google's efforts at defeating webspam (or telling us that Matt Cutts is a pretty cool guy). Surely any opposition to this doesn't defy logic, so what is the difference? He didn't merely create a fake account and post under it. Scott Adams created a fake persona and used it to help persuade people when it comes to things related to Scott Adams.

<comment><USER2> I'm saying I think the fact that he defended himself is exactly what makes it moral. See here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2452634>

<comment><USER3> That doesn't make it moral.

>>"Because many people would automatically dismiss a defense of Scott Adams ideas coming from Scott Adams" (from the link)

He needn't deceive people in order to defend his own case. That doesn't make any sense. If people want to take what he says with a grain of salt because he has an agenda that is their decision to make -- and rightfully so.

Being deceptive so that people won't think you're being deceptive is illogical.

<comment><USER2> But see your logic is exactly the problem.

Ideas are opinion. Agenda doesn't matter when you are expressing an opinion. Because the opinion is biased by its nature.

It matters when you are claiming to express a fact because then your agenda might lead you to pick and choose what facts you give. Facts require impartiality and that's why having an agenda is relevant there.

But Adams wasn't giving facts he was giving an opinion so his agenda is irrelevant and the fact that you would dismiss his opinion because of some perceived agenda demonstrates exactly why he'd need a sock puppet for his ideas to get a fair hearing.

<comment><USER3> I didn't say that I would dismiss his opinion. I'm just trying to get across why I think what he did was misleading and that he didn't even need to do it in the first place. To give you an example that you can relate to better:

If there was a post on HN about Tom's Tech Blog and commenters were saying that "your site sucks" do you think it would be appropriate/moral for you to create a new account and tell everyone that they are wrong? Why not just post under TomOfTTB? It's not as if some random from the net is in any better position to defend yourself than you are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> tl;dr: An innocent MetaFilter user posted about Scott Adams's writing. A flame war broke out about whether Adams was right, is self-promotional, is a nice person, etc. One of the users defending Adams was "plannedchaos." After a series of increasingly bizzare statements ("How many people think I'm actually Scott Adams writing about myself in third person?" and "Is it Adams' enormous success at self-promotion that makes you jealous and angry?" among them), an administrator of Metafilter (cortex) emailed "plannedchaos" and asked him to own up to it. Scott Adams did so.

Metafilter traditionally has been good at rooting out sock puppets when they become relevant; no surprise here. (PayPal verification is useful for that)

The original metafilter thread: [http://www.metafilter.com/102472/How-to-Get- a-Real-Education...](http://www.metafilter.com/102472/How-to-Get-a-Real- Education-by-Scott-Adams)

Direct link to Scott Adams owning up to being Scott Adams: [http://www.metafilter.com/102472/How-to-Get-a-Real- Education...](http://www.metafilter.com/102472/How-to-Get-a-Real-Education-by- Scott-Adams#3639512)

<comment><USER5> Regardless of whether Adams should have posted as plannedchaos or not, it feels a bit icky and privacy violating to me that an administrator of Metafilter knew and acted on it.

As examples, if you work at the Social Security Administration, you are not supposed to look up Scott Adams and find out his information. And if you work at American Express, you still are not supposed to look up Scott Adams and tell people what he buys.

How did cortex know plannedchaos was Scott Adams, and what tools did cortex use? (and okay, when did he know it.)

For all the weirdness in that thread, that's the part that bugs me.

<comment><USER6> Cortex didn't out him, he outed himself and cortex confirmed it. My assumption is that cortex asked for permission first. I'm not in on what happened behind the scenes in this particular case, but I've been hanging around MeFi for a while, and the mods are generally very scrupulous about privacy.

<comment><USER5> I will defer to you, however that's one but not the only interpretation of:

"How many people think I'm actually Scott Adams writing about myself in third person? posted by plannedchaos at 9:21 AM on April 15

plannedchaos, please check your email. posted by cortex at 10:19 AM on April 15 [4 favorites]

"

At this point, I still don't think cortex has much business looking at plannedchaos' records (subject to arbitrary mefi rules that everyone the community might understand differently.)

If I said,

"How many people here think I'm Paul Graham writing about Scott Adams" would that vague statement give any moderator here permission to look at my profile?

And I'm not even sure I approve of cortex confirming it unless and until Adams asks.

Moderator's job: make sure spam/hate/abuse/trolling doesn't go to far. Occasionally delete comment. Occasionally delete thread. Occasionally apply banhammer.

I don't see in the moderator's job permission to snoop on personal records of any ser that says anything mildly provocative.

<comment><USER7> Hi, this is cortex.

How it played out, very short version: I got up in the morning and checked the new signups, part of my morning routine. We have to check for spammers and shills on a daily basis to keep mefi free from linkfarming and bullshit self- links and so on, and that tool is step one. The paypal info that comes with the $5 signup fee is hugely helpful for profiling likely spammers.

I noticed what looked like a signup from Adams himself; person I've heard of signing up happens now and then, it's an "oh neat" moment and that's about it, since if you're sticking to the community guidelines and participating in good faith, who you are and what you do and how anonymous you choose to be is entirely your business.

Unfortunately, what I saw when I checked out his comments since signup was weird aggressive pretending-to-be-a-third-party arguing about himself, which is really not an okay thing to pull on mefi. I talked to the rest of the staff, we sent Scott an email saying "you need to either let folks know who you are or stop having this proxy argument about yourself as if you're someone else".

Time passes, no response from Scott. Then he posts that "who thinks I'm Scott Adams?" comment. Gave him some more time, still no reply, left the "check your email" comment. Time passes, and then, still no response to us, he drops the disclosure in the thread.

If he'd chosen to walk away, that'd have been fine too, and we'd have had nothing to say publicly about what he did regardless of how obnoxious and sketchy it was. We took considerable pains NOT to out him and make it his call how to proceed.

<comment><USER5> Hi, I greatly appreciate your explanation, which I do think explains the "how you knew who plannned chaos was" in a very reasonable manner.

I'm not a member of mefi, and if you folks frown heavily on Adams' sort of impersonation, that's your community rules, and fine.

But it wouldn't be my community rules to have a moderator out him.

I guess I would like to think that his behavior, while perhaps not exemplary, would get a pass from the outing, because I suspect that such behavior goes on all the time, and you aren't policing, consciously or not, the behavior of people with less famous names.

I would prefer a community where "famous people" who might be mentioned are welcome as participants and I can only see that happening under pseudonyms. Because hey, they should be able to internet too. And a small aspect of that is that as on any online forum, there will be time they act like jerks, or so you and I might classify. And such behavior really shouldn't rise to national mockery.

His statements and the dialog from everyone were actually somewhat interesting.

But as far as that thread went, and your behavior while moderating it, the thread went downhill into a Scott Adams bashfest by the second and sixth's comments.

As a moderator, you allowed ad hominem celebrity bashing in as part of your community rules, but you disliked it when said celebrity comes in to defend himself and suddenly he is outed because he violated your rules.

Well, ... I think your rules that essentially do not permit this guy to defend himself unless he writes under his own name are lousy rules because no one else had to write under their name.

You didn't examine who the pseudonyms of the other commenters were. For all we know, it's his ex-wife, or some feminist blogger still angry with him, or someone else with an agenda.

I don't know what common mefi behavior is -- I think in your position I would have either ignored it, or as a moderator, asked everyone to get back on track and knock off the pile-on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 1\. Am I the only one that was expecting a video with real sock puppets? I'm feeling behind the times.

2\. I thought it was great. He was articulate and mostly transparent, and more importantly - I got the sense that he was able to repel the onslaught without becoming an asshole.

I'm not necessarily an Adams fan, but in this case, I see no evil.

</comment><comment><USER9> Let's say someone posts something that says "Scott Adams opinion on X is stupid", and that person is misunderstanding what Scott Adams said.

I see no fundamental difference between me posting something saying "No, what Adams meant was Y" and Scott Adams posting under a fake name saying "No, what Adams meant was Y", other than that if he posted under his real name it might shorten the discussion as there would be less grounds for people to say the poster is misunderstanding Adams' position.

As far as I can see, he didn't use his pseudonyms to do things like post positive reviews of his work (which would be wrong because it would imply that the review is from a third party). All he seemed to be doing, at least in the Reddit threads he participated in, was to explain Adams' positions and debate Adams' critics.

This doesn't seem like sock puppetry to me.

</comment><comment><USER10> This wasn't an issue of morality, or even of rule-breaking; rather one of community standards (for mefi). Not too much integrity was on display here by Adams. They simply asked him to either operate as himself, or cease the pretense of being someone else.

I think the most illuminating comment of of the thread was the rephrasing made here: [http://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/gqzgx/dilbert_creato...](http://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/gqzgx/dilbert_creator_outed_for_using_sock_puppets_on/c1pms4p)

He wasn't using anonymity for the sake of interacting or learning, while negating the effect of his 'fame' on discourse. He seemingly joined to leap into the fray in his defense, quite aggressively. I guess the admins at mefi weren't quite wanting this sort of thing: <http://www.reddit.com/user/plannedchaos> to happen.

</comment><comment><USER11> I looked at his comment history on reddit.

I don't see him doing anything shady. He's defending his arguments while referring to himself in the third person.

He's not using it to promote his books or other products.

</comment><comment><USER12> I would argue you can have a more honest discussion in the shoes of a bystander than in the shoes of the author.

<comment><USER5> Isn't that a common theme in many works of fiction?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> More like, metafilter outed as tedious cesspool of uninformed opinion and snark.

</comment><comment><USER14> Is it just me, or was Scott Adams channelling Dogbert?</comment>


Justice Department investigates lawmakers who dumped stock - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-justice-department-investigates-lawmakers-who-dumped-stock-cnn-2020-3 <comment><USER2> I'm more concerned about whether they will actually do anything with this "investigation".

<comment><USER3> My guess is Trump holds potential charges over their head as leverage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems like the trades were based on public info.

<comment><USER5> Yes, they're claiming everyone new about the risk of an epidemic (at this point half the news stations were saying it wouldn't be a problem), and it was purely happenstance that led them to make millions in beneficial stock trades just after a national security briefing on coronavirus, and before numerous states had to start shutting down.

<comment><USER6> > at this point half the news stations were saying it wouldn't be a problem

Half were. Online here we had discussion about how travel bans wouldn't work. Some companies, like mine, were already approving work-at-home until further notice. I was at home already and haven't left (for anything but supplies).

> before numerous states had to start shutting down.

That was decided by governors, not Congresscritters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They'll be fine.</comment>