I'm Canadian, but I know someone from the US who did this. She's living in Paris, moderately successful in academia and as far as I can tell, completely happy to never return to the US. Her family goes to visit her in Europe once in a while.
> moderately successful in academia and as far as I can tell
Why not pay your debts then? I totally understand debt forgiveness for extenuating circumstances (and imo, it's a crime that student loan debt can't be forgiven, and the interest rates are often predatory—especially in the case of med school and law school), but this just sounds like stealing with extra steps.
Sorry - didn't mean to be vague but I don't want to out my acquaintance too much. She has a good job in STEM. I think she does fine for herself and I would have thought her capable of paying the loan.
One of the people in the article was supposed to pay $60/month for 20 years. That seems manageable for pretty much anyone but the article cites "psychological issues" or whatever
Yeah. I don't know the extent of her debt or current income, but she went to an in-state school for a STEM degree, she's not someone who got a useless degree from an overly expensive school. She definitely doesn't seem to regret her decision, whatever the financial or moral considerations.
She went to an out-of-state school for her master's. Article said that she was a ward of Colorado but went to the University of Oregon for her graduate degree.
No mention of undergrad so hopefully she did go in-state for much lower or free tuition.
I have 2 kids in college and a recent graduate. I am routinely horrified by the choices that some students make in going out of their home state or to a private school instead of a public one.
But jokes aside, I'm curious too. Nothing there seems too extravagant, people move abroad all the time. Maybe it then takes them 30 years to realize they didn't have it so bad after all and move back. I'm not speaking for the US here specifically, but more generally. Those longer term stories I think are more interesting.
Starter comment, as a Canadian entrepreneur with US citizenship, I can't fathom the rationale for this. Why would you dissuade permanent residents from starting businesses that employ citizens?
Sure, block access to companies controlled by non-residents, but lots of people come to Silicon Valley legally to start businesses, shutting them out of financing seems beyond bizarre.
As a startup you don't have Google's money. You don't have Google's employer brand. You don't have Google's work environment.
in fact as a (hopefully) fast-growing startup the only thing you really have to offer is growth. So make it clear how you are going to help the candidate grow their career and experience faster at your startup than at the established company, and offer the best you can do on comp and work environment.
This doesn't mean fresh grads, but more like someone with a bit of experience who's ready to jump into a team lead or architectural lead role.
I upvoted you despite entirely disagreeing with your premise. Yes - negotiate with the county to take over management of the playgrounds and lawn mowing. Yes - make the clubhouse and parking lots open, fee-based and voluntary, and controlled by a private corporation rather than an imposed, taxed service. Yes - return the excess money to the current homeowners, or use some of it to effectuate these conversions.
Honestly, the amount of money you have in reserve, plus the list of amenities you list, makes it sound like the HOA has been sitting on a spigot of endless cash for a very long time and finding nice-to-have things to justify the continued fees.
We have a reserve study completed by a professional company that requires us to hold this much. For example, we are replacing two AC units for $50k total. Pool needs to be resurfaced for $100k. We have roof repairs that will need to be done eventually, gym equipment replacements, various beautification repairs, weir repair ($250k), fish guards/blockers, pond maintenance etc
Sure - I understand these roofing, HVAC and landscaping expenses are associated to the common amenities? So if you spin out the clubhouse into a country club that members can opt to join, you can allocate the clubhouse an appropriate amount of cash. When you negotiate with the county to take over management of the grounds including the pond, you can negotiate to give them some of the reserve money for the future pond fixes.
I understand it wouldn't be easy to change all these management responsibilities, but in principle everything the HOA does can be devolved to either voluntary associations, or to public authorities (as happens in most of the rest of the world). Unlike a condo association, it's not a completely unimaginable shift what this lawmaker is proposing.
Right agree and I think I have tried to articulate that here and below. Florida law says what to do when HOAs are dissolved. Point is it will be extremely messy to suddenly dissolve hundreds or thousands of HOAs. Windfall for the State too because the money by default needs to go somewhere and it won’t go back to the homeowners (which ones btw current or past, law doesn’t speak to it). So it goes to the State based on the sale of the land and properties.
I don’t think homeowners will be universally pleased with this.
Doesn’t that mean the budget at the county level will have to increase to cover all the new maintenance, and thus taxes raised? I’d rather have some say in what my money goes towards in the HOA than have taxes raised to maintain neighborhoods all over that I never visit. We end up paying either way.
Cities or counties suddenly having to take over lots of road, playgrounds, sidewalks, street lights, and etc is going to be a big drain on their budget. Sure they could run with the HOA's money for a while but eventually they're going to have to pay.
That is the best possible solution. That's how it works in my neighborhood and it is the best answer.
This neighborhood has a few amenities like soccer fields, tennis courts, bike/walk trails and exercise stations. In the early days of construction there was some debate about a HOA but that was fortunately shot down pretty quickly as far too toxic.
Instead, there is a property tax assessment on all houses in the area that covers for the city to maintain these common areas. Sure we pay for that, which is fair. The areas are maintained, they are open to all which is great, and there is no nasty HOA meddling in how people paint their houses or what flowers they plant or what car they buy. Best of all worlds.
The major problem I see in this group is that they have constructed a self-identity of being intelligent. This means that by being part of a Rationalist group, a person can claim to have insight into things that "the rest of the world doesn't understand."
Which, because (1) self-identifying as intelligent/insightful does not mean you are actually so; (2) you are following the "brain reprogramming" processes of some kind of comvincing leader; is a straight shot to NXIVM style apocalyptic cultism.
Personally, I prefer more of both. You have to actually do things - as in, develop the engineering, test things, see what works and what doesn't - to advance the state of the art. We need robots for science, humans for engineering.
Robots completely replacing humans cannot occur in a capitalist system without complete economic collapse.
If robots are developed to be able to perform the most undesirable jobs, then they will also be developed to perform the most desirable jobs. If humans don’t work, they have no money. Humans without money cannot buy things. Humans can’t buy things, companies can’t exist.
I think your read is right on the money. There is an overall plot to the games, but the reason to play is in all of the ridiculous side quests, which are decidedly not serious: "Help this naked guy who forgot his clothes", "Help this guy make baby formula", "Stop the roomba gone rogue", etc
The games are a mashup of genres, but it is only the latest one which leans so heavily into the RPG aspects. Prior installments are more "fist fight dudes" core gameplay.
Like a dragon is different than the rest of the series. It's turn based, focused on Ichiban, and it's meant to be ridiculous.
The main character essentially hallucinates that he's a character in dragon quest and the bad guys you encounter at first look normal but transform into "sujimon"/monsters during encounters.
The core gameplay is really fun, the writing is top notch (first like a dragon > infinite wealth tho), character classes/"jobs" picked out at an unemployment center are fun/funny, your "mage" is a homeless guy who summons pigeons to attack and uses a bottle of alcohol which he spews into a lighter to cast flames, and the mini games are just there if you want to play them and many are fun.
Just speaking of genres and starting points: if you're looking at the series from the perspective of wanting a JRPG (and here I'm assuming you mean that you want something turn-based), then you'd want to start with Yakuza: Like a Dragon, which is the first turn-based game in the series and one that introduces a new protagonist. The sequel, Infinite Wealth, is the same style of game.
Pretty much any other Yakuza game you're going to see will be more action-focused and have real-time battles, but still with RPG elements. Yakuza 0 is a commonly-suggested starting point for the action-based entries or the series as a whole; it's a prequel but one that still works well as a place to start.
Yet Tesla market cap is four times that of Toyota's.
Unbelievable.
I had to stay out of TSLA after the first year or so because the valuation made no sense to me. Other than a FOMO / YOLO play like BTC.
I'm shocked that the valuation continues to remain so high after so many lies and mediocre results. Was the Cybertruck a success? There definitely are not a million Tesla robotaxis on the road as Elon suggested there would be by 2020.
Well, I heard Cathie Wood refer to Tesla as the largest AI project in the world. So if you think of it that way maybe the sky's the limit. She seems 100% certain that people will be earning money renting out their Teslas as robotaxis in the next few years. But it's a car company. Or not. Maybe. Whatever. I put it in the "too hard" pile.
I'm not saying this doesn't hold, but this includes every first-run first-model car from Tesla (5-10 years old cohort), and decade+ old refined models from every other brand.
Admittedly just a hunch, but I suspect the data for the more recent cohorts and Tesla models is much better than this data shows
It might be hard to believe, but on the inside, people like this are pretty easy to spot. Crypto people are weirdly bad at scamming, compared to other con artists, but because the amount of damage is so fast and liquidity so easy, incompetent people can do a lot of damage.
The scammers also the most vocal. Partially because they aren’t building something novel or valuable, and make up for it in marketing and flash. It’s also faster to build a con than to build a real product, so you see more of them
But yes. It is exhausting. Honest parties in the industry need to build against a large and growing negative reputation. It may be insurmountable. And the industry, generally, does nothing to punish these bad parties or self-regulate. The industry likely has to die, and be reborn after the token/blockchain era
Perplexing.
reply