traingang

Office buildings should learn to code

Won't anyone think of corporate real estate and banks

Sowing: "I deserve profits because investments are risky"

Reaping: "well fuck, what the fuck, this fucking sucks"

Oh no! Not commercial real estate!

Anyways

Looks like somebody needs to learn how to diversify their investments 🙄

In the town I live in now, there's a glut of empty commercial real estate that's been a problem BEFORE covid. Do you think this would be enough to convince people to lower commercial rent? Nope, they increased rent and just let the buildings stand empty 🙄 Has this convinced people to stop building more commercial real estate? Nope, they even filled a patch of local wetland (maybe a few acres that also had the railroad running through it, it's been fucked for a while after residential filled in a lot of it anyway).

It feels like the current generation of the local gentry learned from their petite bourgeois dads that the way to make it and keep things stable is to invest in commercial real estate and so they decided to do that absent any evidence or forethought.

market is unpredictable oh noes who woulda thunk.

these people claim to love taking risk but the moment they lose anything they start whining.

Also isn't O'Leary one of those guys that got lucky once and has been undeperforming the rest of the market for the past 30 years? Idk if he's a good source for any sort of analysis lol

“No one saw this coming,”

No one over the age of 45 you mean. The rest of us who grew up with computers realized a long time ago that the world was headed this direction. Not our fault you put blinders over your eyes.

it occurs to me how dishonest the phrase "no one saw this coming" is when deployed by capitalists. you know what? a whole shitload of people see every consequence of US political economy coming. alienation, class tension-political violence, environmental degradation, public health crises, market concentration/monopoly, and in this case: economic instability. instability is the defining feature of the capitalist mode of production.

millions of us are going about our lives witnessing the emergence of thousands of problems. under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, workers, the great masses of us, lack the institutional power to prevent them short of organized work stoppages to get the attention and force the hand of those who do have the power, but literally cannot be bothered to do anything but protect the profits of the already wealthy.

so. no kevin. you didn't see this coming. because you are a fucking idiot operating with only the most narrow ideological frame in the history of human civilization. no one should consult you for anything more complex than making toast, you fucking fetus.

wish the government gave me a billion taxpayer dollars every time i made a bad gamble

God, imagine the incredibly cheap office space you'll be able to rent out if it really does collapse. Yes I think I will have a 2000 square foot former insurance brokerage to use as an art studio for 200 dollars a month split between 2 buddies

Living spaces as well, sometimes, but many buildings won't work for that.

Office spaces are already getting converted into living spaces and other commodities. The banks will just be gobbled up by bigger banks, as is tradition...

It's almost as if having a massive chunk of your 'economy' be built around FIRE makes it super unstable and liable to collapse any time structural pressures are applied to it

My only regret is having to deal with bosses desperately trying to get people back into the office to try and stave off the inevitable collapse of commercial real estate and that these buildings by and large can't be converted into cheap housing when it does become worth nothing.

Maybe don't have the plurality of your country's economy be in real estate. I dunno, I didn't go to Rotman or anything but that seems pretty straightforward to me

Ya know, I might be willing to go to prison over this guy. Not gonna go out of my way for him, but I'm surprised this fuck hasn't been shoved into traffic already.

I told my dad about this entire phenomenon like 5 years ago. He proceeded to disagree. His understanding of economics is better than that "kitchen table" bullshit but it's ultimately still liberal and not Marxian at all. He probably couldn't tell you the name Keynes but that's generally how he feels. He's a well meaning liberal that thinks reaganomics sucks and libertarians should be laughed out of the room so I haven't given up on him yet.

But still, lol, dad.

So what you’re saying is that a system which simultaneous requires stability and thrives on instability might itself be prone to inexplicably regular widespread failure?

Getting a talking to from HR tomorrow, probably about me not returning to office despite being required to lol.

Do what Calgary is doing and convert it into residential.

My man looking like he’s about to tell you the front fell off.

So when these banks fail because of failed property investments, then what? Another financial crash? Full repeat of 2008?

Beautiful

I was full-time wfh before the pandemic and I'm simply not going back to the office.

They’ll just bail them out lol who are we kidding