A reminder that anytime an outlandish or shocking sounding claim is made, to follow up on its veracity. Usually it is much less surprising. For example: that lady that sued McDonald’s for coffee being hot… sued because the coffee was hot enough to melt flesh, which she experienced firsthand. And don’t take my word for it because that, too, is shocking. 0.
And, famously, it turned out that the "brown M&Ms" clause in Van Halen's performance contract was a canary to see whether venues carefully read the contract -- not an example of rock star overweening entitlement.
I remember an article about a letter Ayn Rand wrote to her teenage niece. It was clear from the article text surrounding the letter that the author intended for the reader to pass judgement against Rand as a horrid, unfeeling aunt. But the actual text of the letter told a different story: Rand had agreed to lend $25 to the niece to buy a new dress, on the condition that she repay it within a year: six months to find a job, and then in six monthly installments after that, under pain of being considered an "embezzler" and being cut off from contact with her aunt altogether. Which is very... Ayn Rand, but a wholly unkind aunt would never have lent the money in the first place, let alone at no interest. And Rand also wished to convey a lesson: a responsible person does not enter into debt without the intent of repaying it in full. Something more teenagers especially today could stand to learn. This letter is probably least on the list of things to judge Ayn Rand for.
Because of things like these I tend to check claims in sensationalist journalism much more carefully now.
Everyone should doublecheck sensationalist claims given the well-known incentives to lie, exaggerate, etc.
That said, cutting off contact with an under-age relative over a couple hundred dollars does sound like pretty miserly behavior. A lesson in the tenuousness of familial ties in the face of stubborn ideology, if anything.
Basically, a relative that she didn't know wrote to her knowing she had money, and she said, sure, but since you aren't exactly close family, I'll put some conditions on it.
Like you said, if you want to get judgey with Ayn Rand, this is at the bottom of the list.
hot liquids can burn. people like hot coffee. takeout coffee cools relatively quickly. coffee is made with boiling water. What temperature should a coffeeshop serve their coffee at? Who is responsible for what? I think the case was overblown. Life has risks, assume them or don't leave your house.
I understand that others might differ, they want only "safe" coffee to be served, but we're not looking at a "trolley problem." Less than hot coffee is just a different arbitrary line, one that will increase number of people disappointed by cold coffee. "hey, lower speeds save lives, let's put the highway speed limits at 45 and strictly enforce!" It's not something to make a morals case out of, it's a practical tradeoff.
As anyone ever interviewed by a journalist or even remotely attached to a news-worthy event can tell you, it's not just the shocking claims that deserve follow-up.
For those who don't know: Gell-Mann amnesia is the effect is what happens when you read a story in the newspaper about, say, the rampant corruption of the opioid crisis, but then turn the page and read about the Covid vaccine with fresh eyes.
It's basically like containerization for knowledge that helps prevent conspiratorial-thinking exploits. :)
Note: I am fully misrepresenting the intention of the phrase "Gell-Mann amnesia effect," but in a way that AFAICT is 100% consistent with its definition.
Trying not to sound as sensationalist as the original story, but this part specifically had me infuriated:
"Hunter has had less luck. Of the news stories, he said: “They’re infuriating but they’re comical if you have the facts… I tried to give the facts to KIRO, I tried to give the facts to Daily Mail, I tried to give the facts to Business Insider. I would send them actual proof of everything, and none of that mattered. They just wanted that [online] engagement.”
How do we solve that problem? Educate people to instead read properly informed news sources that still have journalistic integrity? Hold the journalists to a higher standard and call them out when printing sensationalist stories? Even if they are called out, the damage is usually already done. The press is supposed to check society, but who checks the press?
People are supposed to. But just like it’s easier (and more lucrative) to post mistruths for clicks, it’s easier (and more rewarding in terms of interaction and positive reinforcement) to play outrage in your social media reactions. “That was a good article” doesn’t get nearly the thumbs ups or engagement as “that was the worst pile of filth I’ve ever read and here’s why the author is literally Hitler”.
Both are also easier than simply paying for legitimate journalism (witness the vast number of articles here instantly posted to an archive site).
Society is the failure here - and social media is the medium. I say, unironically, on social media.
This will absolutely be used as a talking point by landlords to push for laws that make renting even more miserable in this country.
It seems that these days the only way to prevent this kind of rage bait is to make it unprofitable to publish a story so misleading. The Seattle times is just another news outlet that has found the most profitable model is printing rage bait, and there seems to be no shortage of people who will fall for it in increasingly dangerous ways.
I lived in a large, left leaning metro area for 10yrs and they can't even be bothered to ban landlords from passing their business expenses to tenants as a condition for signing a lease.
Because that's what brokers are when the only value they're providing is the work a landlord doesn't want to do, like advertising a space or handling lease paperwork. A business expense.
You want to talk about what makes rents worse and availability lower? Let's look at charging an entire additional month's rent up front to pay a third party.
Why should that be banned? It's part of the transaction cost. People don't seem to understand that renting is, or should be, a voluntary transaction between a tenant and a landlord.
Posting to Craigslist because the landlords are too lazy to do it themselves is a reasonable part of the transaction cost?
And the thing is that it's not voluntary any more than grocery shopping is. You can maybe make a point about where (sort of -- where I live, this practice is actually allowed statewide, so it's not strictly a rural/urban divide), but that's a separate axis from whether or not people need places to live. (Theoretically buying is an option, but if renting is inaccessible, it's unlikely that you're really looking at homeownership either.)
This is just the same laissez-faire capitalism that gave us Ticketmaster, right down to being an identical business model.
Yes, it is definitely reasonable. Why wouldn't it be?
I'm not sure what point you're making about Ticketmaster. That business is completely different from the rental market (for example, there are probably literally a million times as many providers).
Both practices are effectively drip pricing, is my point. In the case of landlords you're right that there are a glut of "providers" (and I'm not sure I agree with that terminology per se but mechanically it works), but the thing you have to sift through a horde of ads for one that doesn't. And even then, it's largely guessing, because they're not actually required to tell you that in the ad itself -- sometimes you have to actually go through the whole process of reaching out to a human, maybe getting a response, and then finding out.
And unlike other up-front costs (first/last/security) it doesn't actually provide value to a tenant in any way. It's a third party that is really only acting on behalf of a landlord, never mind the part where we're talking about literal rent-seeking.
Essentially, it's deceptive advertising, that makes for a less fair and accessible marketplace to consumers. Especially in any remotely competitive rental market (which is a lot of them now, given the way prices have skyrocketed in recent years relative to pay), it's easy to get stuck paying an exorbitant fee simply for lack of a clear way to find out which places don't expect you to pay the third party they contracted.
I agree with you that markets function better when prices are transparent, and that there is a potential positive role for carefully designed regulation to improve such matters.
0 - https://www.tortmuseum.org/liebeck-v-mcdonalds/