So if you have no change you get locked out of your home?
Libertarian Police Department
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me.
what a nice AI generated article that I’ll definitely read
Hope they like slugs.
PKD predicted this in the late 60s in Ubik.
Wow, an extra fee for the disabled to disproportionately pay.
Since when was this a thing?
Italy checks out. Their entire economy is based around creating problems that no other country has, and charging for solutions.
Fascists doing fascist things
Meh, italians will find a way to circumvent that
Property managers argue that heavy users should pay more. Direct fees create a funding stream for electricity and repairs that flat condo fees never quite cover.
So they’re saying that they’re incompetent managers who don’t have a sufficient rainy day fund for unexpected expenses, and can’t even plan ahead for obvious, anticipated maintenance and repair expenses.
Yeah we have condo fees, part of that goes into preventative maintenance and contingency fund for breakdowns. Land Lord should manage it the same way
The problem is that most condo boards can’t actually charge enough in dues to cover the long-term maintenance costs. People just don’t want to pay the real costs. This is a problem in Florida. After that tower collapse, Florida reformed their regulations on condo finances, requiring condos to charge realistic dues to actually cover long-term maintenance. People are now losing their condos because they can’t afford the massively increased dues, which have to both pay the real expense of dues and make up for decades of underpayments.
After the Florida collapse, New Jersey passed a similar law. Fortunately, my condo has reasonable management, so we were at 90% of the money we needed in our fund, and got by with a relatively small increase - I think maybe $20 a month or something? Which is still an increase, but other condo boards are in real trouble.
It might be a bit different here. Owners can vote down the fee increase, which is stupid short term minded, but then if work needs doing it comes in the form of special levies that require payment per unit or it is a lein on the property.
We’ve had some residents just stop paying fees thinking they can just refuse to contribute to building maintenance and operating costs, ignore legal notices, until they get the final “look, you owe this much in back fees, pay by x, or there will be a forced sale of property”…and by a miracle they suddenly pay
The consequences of acting like wealth is in indicator of virtue or competence:
They tried it in Naples.
5 minutes later the coin box was jemmied open.
Ethical Vandalism
As they fucking should.
Naples
Why am i not surprised?
Now do that with pay-to-use bathrooms.
We had those in the UK in the 50-60s and earlier, you would have to spend a penny for the public toilet. Which coined the term “I have to go spend a penny” as a polite way of saying you had to use the toilet
They tried those in the states too and they got widely vandalized. It was a short lived experiment. Meanwhile parts of Europe still seem to like them.
And worse, there are DEFENDERS!
Disability tax, more like
In an ideal world I can see this being a deterrent for an able bodied person from using an elevator meant to be used for maintenance workers, disabled persons, and people moving in/out, and that they’d get a code for free use. But we all know that’s not the case.
There’s always the complaint box:
Edit: Maybe not the best picture. It’s a box with a coin slot.
That will be 2 slips of Latinum please.
Most elevators are legally required to have a fire key for fire service to be able to take over use of the elevator.
Also completely unrelated, did you know most standard keys that are legally required are often public information. You can often just find the keyring in legal documents.
Vandalizing an elevator that you aren’t allowed to use doesn’t take anything away from you.
If this is added to an existing building this is a violation of tenant laws. The facility that was free when you moved in is now not available and that isn’t allowed.
Okay and what if the apartment owners all voted on it at the board meeting?
Outside of the US it’s very common for apartment buildings to have shared ownership. In my country there are basically none where the building is owned by an entity.
That’s dozens of people you need to get to agree on how to fund lift maintenance and you bet the first and second floor folks would rather it be usage based.
Not saying I’m a fan of this but the ol’ murican “landlord should take care of the building” falls apart when you have a two or three digit number of people with a stake and say in what happens.
It’s still morally wrong even in condo situations. In fact, it’s even more unethical, as it’s a lot harder to walk away from an owned condo than an apartment lease.
Democracy is not a substitute for morality. If a slight majority votes to murder everyone in a minority, that does not make it ethical.
Imagine a 5 story condo building. Everyone bought units expecting elevators to be free to use. The agreement from the beginning was that maintenance would be shared among all owners. Every condo owner bought their unit agreeing to this deal.
Then after some time some dingbat proposes making the elevator pay-to-use. The people on the ground floor don’t need elevators, so they vote in favor of the change. Each higher floor has fewer people vote in favor of it. Those on the top two floors vote near-unanimously against the proposal, but it passes anyway. Those on the upper floors, dependent on the elevator, have to shoulder all the cost.
Think of the situation those people on the upper floors are in. They might be retirees living on fixed incomes. They bought their condo knowing they could afford the maintenance fees. They bought knowing the agreement was that all maintenance would be shared by all. But now the folks on the lower floors have gone back on their word and decided they don’t want to pay for the maintenance on the elevators they have little use for.
This is a way for the residents of the lower floors to take advantage of the folks on the upper floors. The upper floor units would have very low market value without a working elevator. When the building was built, those upper units sold at the same or higher prices than the lower units. If the upper units had to be sold for half the cost of the lower units, then the cost of the lower units would have had to have been much higher to make the project viable to construct.
We’re used to upper floors of tall buildings selling for more because of views. But historically this didn’t happen. Historically, ground floors commanded the highest rents. The elevators in a condo building allow the ground floor owners to purchase units much more cheaply than they otherwise would be able to. And now those ground floor owners are trying to both benefit from the reduced purchase price AND offload the elevator maintenance costs to the upper floors.
Shared ownership would be different
Holy crap, you’re an expert on tenant rights in Georgia, Italy, and China? That’s impressive!
The fuck?
Enshittification soaring to new heights.
Crapification reaches the new levels.
En-Defication approaches new floors above and below us-
