benja810 | 2 years ago | on: Telecom Industry Is Mad Because the FCC Might Examine High Broadband Prices
benja810's comments
benja810 | 2 years ago | on: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect
FYI, I used to live in DC (and frequent the Reddit community) and I've never heard of the community you linked. Apparently it's a split from the original with only 8k subscribers:
> Created 2021, free of over-moderation
The more popular community, and the one I'm familiar with, has 332k subscribers. It can be found here https://old.reddit.com/r/washingtondc/
I'd bet there's quite a bit of overlap between the group of users who felt they were over moderated on the original DC community and those that disapprove of these types of regulations.
benja810 | 2 years ago | on: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing
I am an Android user so I don't know Apollo but I too am a huge RIF fan -- it's the only way I consume Reddit. I also agree with GP statement, I wish I could use the RIF app as a HN reader.
What makes Apollo a "truly special app?" in your opinion?
benja810 | 3 years ago | on: Maybe treating housing as an investment was a mistake
I believe GP was describing the [Land Value Tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax). The idea being that a government invests in the infrastructure that improves the value of the land and because it's _public_ money funding those improvements, the property taxes should reflect the value provided.
No one would be forcing people to live a certain way, just forcing them to either pay for the privilege of living in an area that was granted public funding for improved infrastructure, or live somewhere else that received less public investment.
As a thought experiment, I find it easiest to understand the arguments for the Land Value Tax if you imagine a local government building a new subway line. Obviously, the existing homes around the new stops would have their property values increased. After all, many commute times were just cut in half! The local government is interested in more people living near those lines, more people == more tax revenue after all. If the local government had a Land Value Tax implemented, the infrastructure improvements they made to the area would automatically be included in the calculation for the taxes owed by the existing homeowners near the new subway stops. $1M/yr may sound insane, and it would be for a single-family home, but because of the new subway line, local developers are lining up to purchase the homes around that line in order to build new higher-density homes. The existing homeowners can either choose to pay the high tax and enjoy their short commute paid for by other taxpayers, or sell at a nice profit to developers. New higher-density homes get built, more taxpayers move in, the city can now build more infrastructure to improve the city!
benja810 | 6 years ago | on: Facebook Dating
>Everything about it says "throwaway add-on" that they haven't spent any real time on optimizing.
Maybe this is a little unfair considering it was only a beta. Isn't a cornerstone of agile to get an MVP in front of users and iterate on user feedback? It doesn't seem right to judge any software based on a beta experience alone.
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I don't see this isn't a legitimate beef. If you can't comply with local regulations because you serve too many municipalities it sounds like you aren't a good fit to serve those customers. Perhaps the solution is to sell your infrastructure off to smaller, local companies who can comply. Or heck even just other equally big companies who are well run enough to manage such a problem.