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Comment Re:Bogus (Score 1) 231

Only if you're on the side of the published standard (generally meaning, if you're the seller, since published standards are like tent poles that hold the prices up -- i.e. they artificially inflate prices, in spite of the natural level of demand). If it's working against you (as a buyer), then they don't help you at all, they cause you to have to pay higher than what would otherwise be market rates.

Comment Re:Bogus (Score 1) 231

Regardless of whether you think KBB is high or low (basically, depending on whether you're a buyer or seller), people apply an adjustment factor in their head. I'm not talking about KBB dictating the acutal price paid, I'm talking about KBB setting the entire pricing structure for the whole market, by providing reference points. Regardless of what people think about KBB, they will never make a purchase without consulting it for reference. That's the whole point: it no longer comes down to an "invisible hand of the market" when there is a reference point that is trusted as an omniscient oracle.

Comment Bogus (Score 2) 231

The reality is that the entire market is comprised of numbers pulled out of the air. Therefore, suing Zillow for doing what the entire market is doing is completely bogus.

That said, I kind of hate how Kelly Blue Book dictates the price of the entire auto resale market, so yes, all appraisals should be abolished. It's hard to do though in a market of non-fungible items, like houses, where there is no fully objective way to compare one house to another.

Comment Women treat women worse than men treat women (Score 2) 450

Every time you hear a story like this about men mistreating or under-valuing women in the workplace, ask the same women how the *women* they work with treat them, compared to the men. You may be surprised to learn that women often mistreat women coworkers even worse than men do, in a great many circumstances. This doesn't justify men mistreating women, but it does mean that men mistreating women is far from the whole picture.

Comment French: bad example (Score 1) 301

"On" in French is a bad example -- "on" agrees with masculine conjugations and endings, not feminine. And French is a bad example in general, since so much of the language is gender-laden. Try getting a French person to remove the destinction between "le" and "la", replacing it with something else ("lo"?) -- and replace all masculine/feminine dimorphism in the language with some new generic ending. That will take you far.

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