You still lose 4 hours.
nimpnin
joined 1 year ago
To some extent, but 8 hours straight on a train is pushing it
Without trying to be scientifically accurate: 8 hours has the opportunity cost of 120 euros with an hourly salary of 15€. Slightly better travel comfort, marginally less stress and climate consciousness need to do a lot of heavy lifting to offset the lost time compared to a flight. I don't think price competition is possible.
And of course there are people who this makes sense for. I would have taken this train on an interrail a few years ago and been happy, instead of the slow and painful connection they had back then. But you gotta have a lot of time to justify this option. Or just a very bad timing so that flights are really expensive.
Stockholm – Helsinki doesn't seem that way. Tourists, people visiting friends and family in the other country, some business people. I fly regularly, in the morning, during the day, and in the evening, on weekdays and weekends.
Pretty cool but 8 hours is still not practical for most people.
swear edging
housing is artificially scarce
Housing is not artificially scarce, because land is naturally scarce.
Renting will always cost more than the upkeep of a house because otherwise nobody would lease
On average yes, but you also do not need to account for variability in price due to for example, having to replace the plumbing every 20 years or so.
All your issues with personal ownership of a house stem from other people treating housing as private property that can be invested in
This addresses none of the things I listed.
I think housing is a human right but homeownership has nothing to do with it. Governmental intervention or renters organizing or both is required to secure the right.
Given a rental apartment with an affordable rent where I could live as long as I want, why would I want to own property instead?
I don’t want to worry about the plumbing being replaced or the floor having water damage, and that putting tens of thousands of costs on me randomly. I don’t want to speculate what the price of the apartment is in ten years and how that affects my mortgage. I don’t want to not have housing anymore if I get a pest infestation.
I think it’s the other way round, people own property because it is seen (and often is) the only way to have reasonable housing costs and not worry about having to move if you don’t want to.
A single home owner does not expect to profit from that investment
What are you talking about? People definitely buy homes as an investment so that they can sell it and retire.
increase in value provides the means to move to a new home
What is this, if not profiting off an investment?
Housing being a human right has nothing to do with getting rid of rental properties. If anything, having to buy a house is a lot bigger barrier to housing than rent.
What we need is rent to be affordable, and landlords to do their job, i.e. maintain and fix the apartments. There are many ways to achieve this: government owned housing, legal regulation, tenant unions etc. Everybody buing a house or an apartment is not one of them.
Trump will take a hero dose of acid, there’s no other way