I'm not excited about lock-in but this method of identifying who is a "bad" company by their size seems petty and arbitrary. There are 15 companies in the world that have achieved a $1T market cap. Senator Weiner is saying in essence, "if you're not too big, your behavior can't be bad." And I disagree with that. A lot of tech companies are happily supporting this proposed law, not because they think the concept is just or good, but because it gives them a leg up temporarily. It's pure greed fighting greed, and in the end I predict nobody will be a winner but the lawyers.

Sounds like you understood their metaphor just fine. Nobody should be using those things for that activity.

Well said. Most people choose a neighborhood based on its characteristics. Is it close to downtown restaurants and shopping, or a quiet place where the kids can play safely? Is it close to work or a rural oasis? Is there adequate street parking for visitors, or do the neighbors block all the sidewalk with their many cars? Do you get a backyard and green space to relax? Does it have a neighborhood pool/gym/rec center; schools; parks? How do the neighbors maintain their yards: decent, amazing, messy...? And when they find the environment they like, and contract to spend a lot of money to live there, they are understandably upset if someone decides to overrule their environment with a new law or lifestyle.

I think the grandparent post awkwardly worded something that is accurate. I'm going to make up an imperfect example to illustrate what I think they meant. Suppose half the houses have one school-age kid, and schools cost $10k per student, all funded by property taxes. If houses are valued at $500K, your annual property tax rate is (10*0.5)/500 = 1% or $5K.

Now suppose instead that you still have a $500K home, but the 25 homes around you are half the size and just under half the price, $240K. Average house value is $250K, so property tax rate is (10*0.5)/250 = 2%. You now pay $10K in property tax, and all the other houses pay $4800. Services didn't change their price at all. So as a percentage of property values in a low-property-value area, they are a higher percentage. And since your house is no longer average price but expensive compared to others, your taxes are higher than others. I think that's what they meant to say in a much shorter form.

Oh -- thank you! I had not found that feature before, and now will go use it. I'm going to try to have everything I regularly use in one single window set, not split across a bunch of tabs.

Except that if I want my window at anything less than full screen, it decides which icons to hide. (Your view may be different.) So some of the functions I regularly use require me to change the display dimensions of Office. In the pre-ribbon days, I could put all my favorite icons to the left like Excel's Sort & Filter, and move to the far right the ones I rarely use like Excel's Conditional Formatting.

And the lucky landowner who sold has to move, because his neighbors all hate him now. A significant part of the value in rural life is your reputation and ability to call upon neighbors for help if/when disaster strikes. Anyone who sells to a datacenter is burning all that reputation. It's more expensive than the city slickers understand.

I'm inclined to make a snarky comment that it's a poor coffee shop that goes out of business because its customers can afford coffee makers. Target sells them for $20.

But I also don't think a coffee shop just provides brewed drip coffee. For starters, it gives inexpensive access to a clean space where you can meet with your friends or just get out of your apartment. How much would someone's rent rise if they needed to add that extra space? How much work is it to keep your own space ready and inviting for friends? For some, it's too much, and the coffee shop serves them well. Plus, they know how to make all sorts of tasty creative beverages, and stock the ingredients so they're fresh. And you can meet a date there without revealing your home address in case things don't go well. Enough people seem to like these features over Folger's at home to keep them in business.

Oh, I'm not pretending. I'm sure I don't know what "excessive rent" is or why it should be tied to any specific interest rate. So if not knowing those makes me dumb, I'm confidently wearing the dumb hat. If you can't explain these terms, I don't want you to die, but you may want a hat too.

Well-said. Non-HOA neighborhoods can have significant variety, in ways that can affect property values.

Could you please define (mathematical formulas are delightful here) "excessive rent"? Is there a variable in the formula that addresses the risk of loss or property damage, so that a frat house charges a different rate per square foot than a suburban family home? And which interest rate do you consider, the current mortgage rate, the prime rate, or what the bank pays on savings accounts? If the world can come to agreement here on details and terms, I can support it, but without serious specifics, it feels like an empty idea.

I'd rate that statement half true. In some municipalities, almost all housing stock is in HOA neighborhoods. No law compels you to buy there, but in those regions, alternatives are few and far between, pushing you out of the area. Don't want an HOA? You get the longer commute. And that is a perfectly reasonable trade-off for some folks. We can't all have unicorns and jet-cars and 2.5 perfectly-behaved children.

I'll agree that a single vacant business may not deeply affect property values across the neighborhood. And I understand that the property owner is worried that he'll sign a lease for a low amount, and miss out on some sweet sweet money. But he may also be like the former high school quarterback who's dreaming of the old glory years instead of being business-savvy. That's not a free market failure, but an ego failure.

When you own property (on which you are paying annual property taxes at a minimum), it's a losing investment unless you either use it yourself, rent it out or sell it. In the long run, he may make money by selling it years from now. But why he's not renting it in the short run seems bizarre. The honest assessment would be: if people go out less, then brick-and-mortar businesses can't earn as much, so property rents on average should fall. Subsidies aren't needed -- the landlord who understands that someone can pay $40/sf but not $50/sf is earning $48K/year on a 1000 sf space, instead of zero. That's free market economics at work.

The point of "blind auditions" was to get rid of unconscious bias and measure solely on merit. We say we want the best musicians, but we're distracted by appearances for some reason. The blind audition is fully defensible as a best practice without reference to any part of the DEI conversation. And I'm glad that the people who make the best-sounding music get the job, period, full stop. I do laugh, though, at seeing the advertising posters for upcoming concerts. When there's a young female classical artist headlining, they are almost invariably dressed as though they are headed to a disco or a fashion show; the men tend to be pictured very studiously and thoughtfully focused on their craft. Compare Joshua Bell and Yuja Wang.

Heh... calls to mind the old warning: "Go away or I shall replace you with a very small shell script."