Talk about anything

Yeah, buying a house is one of the dumbest financial decisions you can make in your life. Unless you can pay all cash upfront, but even then, there are much better investments to make if you have that kind of money. People tell me that all the time, like I should buy a house. Why should I? I rent and my apartment is fairly cheap, I have freedom. Not putting myself in debt for the rest of my life.

Tomcat A house of one's own is reliable. (Unless, of course, a rocket flies in and ruins it.) The landlord, at any time, can change the rules of renting, or he may need it himself.

That's true if you actually own the house and the land (like if you build a house yourself). But the vast majority of people don't have that kind of money. Where I live, even a "cheap" house costs $700,000. So what happens is people take out a loan, and pay it off over 30 years. But you don't actually own the house, the bank does. And it's not really cheaper than renting once you take into account the interest rate over time, and also that you still have to pay taxes every month. Depending on the value of the house, the taxes themselves could be several hundred dollars, or even a thousand dollars a month for a nice house. Which is not cheaper than renting, you are in debt forever, and plus the cost of maintenance (if the water pipe breaks, leaks on the roof, etc.) which you have to pay out of pocket. It's a scam.

cybereality I have had so many friends that bought houses just outside of their budget thinking they could make it work and living a life of poverty trying to pay for it. It's a millstone around your neck. I don't think there is a much worse financial decision you could make next to wasting your life on drugs or getting into a bad marriage.

cybereality And it's not really cheaper than renting

The landlord can set his own rules. For example to prohibit the pets. Not everyone can live without a Сat. So even an apartment is better to own than to rent. But the mortgage is a rip-off, yup.

Tomcat Not everyone can live without a Сat.

+++

I rent and I have cat. But she has to pay rent, it's $50/month. But she pays it with love.

For better or worse, at some point in our history we started keeping and depending on things that we couldn't make and carry as we walked from one place to another. It wasn't a conscious decision -- cultures that settled down could have more children, so they had bigger armies and overwhelmed the wanderers. Human nature being what it is, some people collected most of the property and used it to control the rest of us.

Now the only choice most people have is to dance to someone else's tune. You either work for the banker or the landlord or the state all your life, just like the serfs of old. If you manage to escape that trap, you're very lucky (and possibly very smart as well). That's the price we pay for the benefits of civilization and our own fatal flaws.

Most of us just settle for the type of servitude we like best and tell ourselves that we've won.

duane It's amazing how much of our culture involves defending our possessions from other people trying to take it. It's like the American Indians who really got a bad deal over here for sure, but every tribe took some other tribes land and warred with each other. You look at the old castles and they were set up for defense. All the serfs would run in there during an invasion. It keeps getting to be larger collections of people, like Russia invading Ukraine. Americans are in a forever war ever since Vietnam. What a waste of lives and money. No one thinks anything of it anymore. We're just in a different war like the book 1984. Everybody gets into it and yeah we got to stop them. No we don't. They can work something out without our war machine. 30 trillion in debt. The CIA starts half of them trying to stop some other one or start a puppet government. Democracy. We choose which one will start the next war.

Bringing this back into the realm of video games, couple good ones on this list:

https://bosslevelgamer.com/dystopian-games-inspired-by-george-orwells-1984-13459

Bimbam It's a tragedy that Dishonored is not mentioned once. That game where an old dude kills the empress because he thinks her measures aren't "inventive" enough.
It's a good game. It did the thing Deus Ex Human Revolution did where it took immersive sims and made it just arcadey enough for people like me to stay interested. It also looks really, really cool.

Cool. I just bought We Happy Few. Didn't realize it was the same devs that made Contrast, that was a really good game. I guess the art style looked strange, I thought it was something else. Looks good.

Also some movies on that same line, Brazil and THX 1138.

That would be cool to do an escape an oppressive government game with some branches ending up in mind conditioning and some where you find a way out. That would take a pretty good size budget, though. Some of your coworkers disappear and come back conditioned.

cybereality
Brazil is an awesome movie.

Dishonored was pretty good for me. Can't remember the story, but you had lots of powers, and they included rats. Graphics had an original art design too, I found it enjoyable and on the same level as Bioshock and Half-Life 2, just with a less interesting story.