{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "and while we\u2019re on the subject of Amazon, I\u2019d like to mention how it\u2019s affected the city I\u2019ve grown up in and love so dearly....", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/186394422093/", "html": "

shieldfoss:

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kontextmaschine:

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voxette-vk:

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chroniclesofrettek:

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vidya-g-cat:

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thefearlesstour:

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thefearlesstour:

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and while we\u2019re on the subject of Amazon, I\u2019d like to mention how it\u2019s affected the city I\u2019ve grown up in and love so dearly.

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Amazon is in part directly responsible for the godawful housing market in Seattle and it\u2019s surrounding towns. The average rent for a small home in my neighbourhood, 30 minutes north of Seattle, can top off to $1,900 a month. I live in a small, 3 bedroom rambler that\u2019s nothing special and our rent is $1,800 per month and climbing as amazon tries to bring in more employees to the area. We\u2019re in the middle of a homeless crisis because many people cannot afford to live here anymore with rent skyrocketing and the gentrification of many low-income neighbourhoods in order to create space for more amazon transplants.

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just so y\u2019all can see how much Seattle natives haaaate amazon and their impact:

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and if y\u2019all are interested or have time, do check out @/vanishingseattle on Instagram. Cynthia is lovely and she\u2019s been documenting the destruction of Seattle due to amazon for years.

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part of this is all the workers they bring in from cali who are used to paying a fuck load for housing, and local landlords think they can take advantage of it\u00a0

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Build. More. Houses.

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someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my city is dying

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build more housing

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no, i want to drive out employers

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tsk, the real constituency of a city, for the benefit of which it\u2019s run, isn\u2019t whoever its occupants happen or happened to be at any given time - they can be replaced, it\u2019s run for the benefit of its fixed real estate

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Not unless the landlords have the vote.

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It\u2019s not any given landlords, it\u2019s property value. It would have to be, really, cities being funded primarily through property tax, and if the thriving and capability of your body is related to variable X, you will find yourself maximising for X as an emergent property of the system.

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Have you ever read The Power Broker? It lays out, in tedious detail, how this works in practice, how if a body tries to not maximize for X, it just means that it stops being the real governing agency and power flows to some other body that will.

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Think about Red Vienna. What\u2019s that saying, do not think you will be permitted to just vote away power? They tried to do that and favor people over property value and they got away with it for a bit until the system seized and chewed them up entirely.

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It\u2019s not so direct as there, when they raised an army in the countryside, but one thing is that landlords can operate at scale. Even if it\u2019s purely electoral and nonmilitary, even if you use people power to control a city, the landlords will take control of the next larger unit. Rent control is weakened or prohibited in New York, California, Oregon, and probably more at the state level.

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Like, you can even kill the landlords and that won\u2019t change it. The significance of the storming of the Bastille is that for centuries, landlords dealt with popular uprising by retreating into a fortification while their allies raised armies in the countryside, this time the fortification didn\u2019t hold.

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But the July Revolution (1830, the \u201cLiberty Leading the People\u201d one), the June Rebellion (1832, the Les Mis one), and the Paris Commune (1871) indicates even this was not a conclusive resolution in favor of the people of Paris.

That\u2019s why you can\u2019t do Socialism in one state.

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