Comments by "Titanium Rain" (@ChucksSEADnDEAD) on "Ben Shapiro responds to Aquaman meme about climate change | Lex Fridman Podcast Clips" video.

He understood the meme. The point is that aquaman is the only feasible buyer once the house is underwater. Ben understood that - he pointed out that between now and aquaman buying the house there could be multiple owners of that house who'd be able to use it for a few decades and negotiate a lower price.
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@KeekeOrb "My car is worth 15,000 dollars" "But you have 300k miles on it" "Okay I'll accept 5,000" See how it works? The house would be massively devalued, which means you could buy it for cheap and use it for 20 years. Maybe you could even live in it for 10 years, and then sell it for even cheaper to someone who only needs it for 10 years. You don't "lose" money on the purchase if the house is so cheap that you actually save money living in it for X amount of years conmpared to a rental. The last person doesn't have to hold the bag, just buy it for so cheap that he or she will get enough use out of it to justify the cost. "Not to mention that no insurance company would insure that house." - If the house is going to become unfeasible to live in in 20 years, get a contract to insure it for 15.
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@sharlesdaviskendy2391 Who am I going to sell the 500 dollar car to? Nobody. I drive it until the wheels fall off and then it goes to the junkyard.
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@Jenkkimie You don't even know what semantics are. If you think a little, there is no problem. The house becomes less valuable which means there's still an opportunity. If you look at the cost of renting and the cost of buying a house that's living on borrowed time, and the house comes out on top, you can easily think of it as a rental. You don't keep it. Someone will eventually own a house that becomes condemned and has to be knocked down. Someone will eventually own a car that it costs more to repair than the scrap value. Someone always uses something for the last time. The problem is that you think that a house is forever and always a half a million dollar purchase. I come to you and say I have a 50k house and in ten years the government is going to take it away because it's not safe. You do the math and figure out you're getting a house for 5k a year. It would cost you more to rent. Why wouldn't you take the deal, and when the ten years are up you let the sea or erosion gobble it up?
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@Jenkkimie I've tackled the issue. This isn't cognitive dissonance. A junked car is a junked car. The house is still flooded. The car is still junked. Everything you own will break down at some point.
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@sharlesdaviskendy2391 Depends. If they continue living there, they lose 100% of their money. It's a choice. I'd rather negotiate with someone and take a hit on value to recoup some of my loss, while that person gains off my loss.
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@sharlesdaviskendy2391 Yes. Someone has to be the last owner of any item on this earth. Nothing is forever. It's not obfuscation. It's how things work.
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@dRoy8364 Man, this guy right here doesn't understand the difference between a joke and actual politics.
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@Jenkkimie How did he fail?
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@sharlesdaviskendy2391 On the surface level it is and it almost sounds like a joke, but it really isn't. If the property retains value albeit reduced, people can move sell it and move.
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@hana-a-cha New homes are built all the time too. Cars break down all the time out of a sudden, houses can have issues that give you ample time to move out or repair. For example look at the millenium tower leaning to one side in San Francisco. The issue is evident years before something could topple the building. Again, we lose more coastline to erosion than rising sea levels. The first effect of rising sea levels will be sea water contamination of fresh water tables. There's people right now living on cliff edges that would have that issue without global warming, it's coastline erosion that will destroy homes first.
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@conradmonson30 I'm not a Shapiro enthusiast. We don't make things to last 100 years. Ever heard of Roman concrete? Lasts more than our modern concrete. The problem is, you can't use rebar to reinforce it. So you're limited to construction that keeps each segment in compression rather than tension, that's arches and domes. Modern concrete construction techniques are so much stronger you can make flat slabs, you can make the segments much lighter, and you can make stuff much taller without requiring massive support arches. But it's not going to last 2000 years. The cracks and corrosion will eventually require the building to be brought down and something else rebuilt. We always talk about how old cars were bullet proof. Well, if we made cars overbuilt the way they were, we wouldn't be able to afford them. When my parents were kids, the average person couldn't own a car where I live. Now in average the families living there have like 1.5 cars. What does it all mean? Anyone can pay lip service to what happens 100 years from now. Truth is, everyone can lie about it because few expect to still be around then. When you make it about the practical, what happens to X when Y, you kind of give up the big picture. You want the big picture? It doesn't matter what happens after 100 years if that house isn't going to be there anymore. Because it was never built to last 100 years.
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@Gantz_rl Who tf would buy a shitbox car that is known to give out in a few years? Everyone does it. Let's say rent is 1500 dollars and the house is 50k. Ten years until you have to vacate if you buy it. Your choice is between losing 180k to rent in those 10 years, or just 50k over the same time period. By buying the house, even if the value goes to 0, you're actually saving yourself 130k. How's that not the smartest financial decision you could have made?
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@iseedeadpeople6667 Sure. But that was arguably a risk the owner took without realizing it was a bad decision. You could say the same about anyone building close to the San Andreas fault line. San Andreas isn't just the name of one of the best GTA titles. It's a geological formation which has the potential to unleash a Big One in the next 30 years. "People would be homeless" also applies to flood prone areas, hurricane/tornado prone areas, erosion prone areas, active volcanoes, etc. How come you can resort to such a simplistic take that applies to literally anything? Let's not build anywhere! We all move to Yucca Mountain or Cheyenne Mountain! We'll be safe in the sturdy rock!
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But he did get it. He explained why there could be a line of buyers before aquaman.
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The argument makes perfect sense. Value would go down as part of a long term trend. It does change the outcome. A car with 300k miles is devalued by the perceived "wear and tear" and buyers will expect repairs to be necessary down the line. A broken down car is worth even less and is basically unsellable except as junk or to someone who wants that specific model and is willing to recover it. Now try to claim that stretching the timeline doesn't change the outcome - is an old car the same as a broken down car?
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But Ben didn't strawman them. He explained how the market would react to the information that there's a long term outcome of the house losing all value.
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@adapienkowska2605 So the poor enjoyed a dirt cheap house for a few years. They lost the house knowing there was a time limit on it. The people aren't discardable. They saved money living in a house that was known that at some point would be condemned. If rising sea levels were delayed, they'd actually strike big by getting a cheap house that lasts for longer than predicted.
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@athsumerius6865 The real joke is that the biggest threat from rising sea levels is infiltration of salt water into the fresh water table. We lose coastline from erosion faster than the seas could ever climb.
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@kennethgenz4784 If you buy a 100,000 dollar car that breaks down 20 miles away from the dealership you got the proverbial pickle. But under normal circumstances you use the car, sell it for 70k, next owner sells it for 50k, next owner sells it for 30k, next thing you know it will be on Facebook marketplace or whatever for 500 bucks. The million dollar house would sell for 900k, then 800k, then 700k. Each successive owner losing little value. The fact is, people are buying million dollar houses next to the beaches. Powerful people. Knowledgeable people. Aquaman won't get that house for decades to come.
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@doyouliketypos Nobody will buy a car that doesn't work. Now remember that every broken down car was a working vehicle at some point. People will buy property they can't develop or keep. Again, cars. Unless you're purposefully buying a car to restore it (which requires the model to be in demand) or a rare specimen, you take a financial loss on every car purchase. As soon as you drive a new car off the lot, it devalues by several thousand. Whenever you buy a phone, the model you buy will depreciate. You just figure that your usage of the phone is valued higher. If a house is gone, but you lived in it for 10 years for cheap, all the money you saved put you ahead of other people living a life similar to yours but paying "real" prices on their rent/mortgage. You're going on a rant about real estate developers which is a totally different topic. Yeah, I agree we should re-write the entire thing to promote actual low income housing rather than luxury units. That's irrelevant to the point.
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@iseedeadpeople6667 People build paper thin houses with a reinforced shelter. They treat tornadoes like a certainty. You can try to rationalize any way you want it, but we build on disaster prone areas. The uncertainty is actually worse. You can lose your investment in a year or 50 years. But you'll be rightly f*cked if you lose your home in one year. At least certainty that you'll have a few decades... that's a better guarantee that anyone else will offer in this life.
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It's not nonsensical. You cannot be sure your property will increase in value exponentially in 100 years because you don't know if the area you're buying in will still be in demand 100 years from now. Where you buy a house today could be worthless in 100 years. Could be a total ghost town.
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@eeee0027 But that person paid so little it doesn't make a difference. When you buy a sh1tbox for a few hundred dollars you're also fully aware that you may be that car's last owner. You're not "stuck" with it. You're just accepting you're gonna drive it 'till the wheels fall off, and in the end you'd have saved a ton of money on Uber so you're actually coming up ahead.
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He got it. Which is why he explained how the market would react.
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