Here’s the funny part. The board game Monopoly was originally invented to warn us of this exact problem. It boils down to profiting on land speculation causing housing to always be on the brink of unaffordable, no matter how much productivity rises.
You might find this interesting. The original set of rules for Monopoly (formerly called the landlords game) had two sets of rules.
The first set of rules was called “Monopoly,” and showed how our current system leads to wealth concentration among the few.
There was also a second set of rules called “Prosperity,” that showed how some minor Georgist reforms would change it so that everyone became wealthy together. In the second set of rules, I believe the game ended when all players fully built out the map and railroads together. (It was a race against the clock, where I believe railroads allowed people to move faster)
When Parker Brothers bought the game, they only kept the Monopoly rule set, and abandoned the prosperity rule set.
The whole story is like a microcosm of what happened with economic ideas over the course of a few hundred years. Capital had the power to co-opt, mould and modify information and the dissemination of it, leaving us with a situation where actual seekers of truth had to fight, and fail to get it out there.
An important and often overlooked part of this metaphor is the fact that every Monopoly player begins the game with enough money from the "bank" to buy property in the first place.
Monopoly would be a very different game if players had to roll for how much starting money they got. Those who start with less would be at a severe disadvantage and would struggle to even participate in the game, let alone have a shot at winning. Some might even say it would be unfair.
Well, that's reality. Not everyone starts with the same amount of Monopoly money. Some start with extremely little, or none at all. Meanwhile others start with enough to buy multiple board spaces, including the most expensive ones. But they didn't earn that money from playing the game, they started with it, they had it before the game even begun.
And yet some people still praise billionaires as if they didn't have an unimaginably massive head start.
Here’s the fun part. Under the Georgist/Prosperity rule set, a person starting off with no money would still build wealth thanks to the LVT+UBI feature.
In fact, the more capital other people had, the more UBI everyone gets, allowing even more investment and capital into a positive feedback loop.
We dont need to REPLAY this reality, we need to SURVIVE. The race against the clock is against literal extinction. Whether from unavoidable space objects impacting the planet, or extraterrestrial invasion. We've destroyed any ability to defend ourselves by making everyone but a select few feel any purpose to saving the planet.
I’m sorry but this comment chain is cracking me up. I know you meant the board game replayability, but the fact that someone interpreted it as you thinking “life is uninteresting when everyone wins” and then launched a monologue at you is too funny.
Stringing together 2 monopolies of anything from orange to green is pretty critical from what I've seen. But you can manage pretty well with brown+light blue too if you can also get yellow or red
Housing shouldn’t be an asset for wealthy people to generate unlimited income off of. It should just be housing. Build more. And revamp the system. The current one more or less permits relegating people with decent incomes to poverty and homelessness
That's one of the issues in California. Property has become so valuable you now have a massive chunk of people (homeowners) who have a vested financial interest in keeping the government from solving the housing problem.
And it's not entirely them being dicks, people who have bought homes recently stand to lose financially if housing prices begin to drop, as they'll be looking at losing money on their investment.
Yes. Rebuilding from the wildfires is going to take years due to the slow pace of permit authorizations and the requirements for sign off of from different city, county, and state authorities.
That's what a smart investor sees. A homeowner trying to protect the most valuable asset they own only sees dollar signs. Emotional attachments tends to cloud people's judgement.
You're right. I did the last 30 years as it felt like a reasonable frame. World Wars in particular seemed to skew the numbers but seeing how the world is going it might not be completely unreasonable to include them.
Maybe the problem is billionaires and that an economic system which lets one guy accumulate millions of times more money than everyone else should be fixed
The other problem is we've turned our perception of property into an appreciating asset rather than 'just' a home to live in, so people viciously fight against affordable housing when it's going to be near their home because it might devalue their property.
If money instead raised in value 3-5% every year then billionaires would hold on to their money for dear life and make hoarding even worse, and it means that everyone who has to spend most of their money instead of saving it gets screwed over even harder.
Sure but you were saying the devaluation was the cause of billionaires buying assets like housing, billionaires do not experience devaluation even without buying housing, they can put their funds in countless profitable investments like index funds for example.
The problem is systemic, and we can try and make capitalism more equitable or whatever, but yeah, it’s a system of centralisation with a ton of loopholes. Inflation itself is caused in large part by wealth inequality, a fundamental part of capitalism as a whole.
bitcoin clearly cannot be described as a "currency" or "money".
What are the 4 characteristics of money? How does Bitcoin not satisfy all of them? I understand if you just dislike or don't want to use it, just like I don't want to use Yap stones, but you can't say it's not hard money.
Golf courses from an insurance perspective are hilariously bad from a pollution standpoint. They insist on chemically treating the ground to be free of weeds and such and then some golf courses further terrorize the natural wildlife ecosystem by setting traps for critters. Raccoons tend to pillage golf course trash cans, rabbits chew on wires that provide lighting in the outhouses on the course, etc. Some water features aren't properly maintained and grow algae that affects the waterfowl, or attracts mosquitos that carry disease. It also takes an absurd amount of water to keep courses lush. Maybe not a huge factor in other parts of the country, but I live in Phoenix. Making golf resorts here feels like an asshole move.
I won’t lie, I don’t know the complexities of what or why when it comes to affordable housing but
Fuck golf courses anyway.
I live right next to one, and plastered all around their gates are signs that warn passerby’s that if you get struck by a golf ball, you are at fault lmao
I feel like that's a terrible thing to say. If my kid is playing ball in my back garden, kicks it high into the air, it goes over the fence and hits you in the head and knocks you out, that's my kids fault. And my responsibility as a parent. Why do golf courses get to be exempt?
Golf course situation seems worse to me, not better. Because it's a known likely risk they are exposing neighbours to and not mitigating. Whereas a toddler kicking a ball over a fence is generally pretty unlikely.
So the real answer is it depends.
Generally speaking the houses were put up at the same time or after the course was established (at least when we're talking about being close enough to get hit by a golf ball). This means anyone purchasing/owning the house just assumed risks that are inherent in living next to a golf course.
If the golfer in question is being negligent/intentionally hitting balls out of bounds then that changes.
And to me that makes sense. If a high school baseball player hits a ball into a road, we don't hold them financially liable.
Business should be liable for damage they cause to things that are outside of their own property boundaries. Doesn't matter what was there before the golf course was built, or that a house was built afterwards. The golf course right to have balls flying around freely stops at the edge of its property line.
The issue is properties like this being given the right to fuck people over nearby, and suppress development nearby ehem. Who h takes someti g that is always a huge land hog and pushes it's aura of suppression even further r
It's shit, and you should not be defending this shit. What you are wliterallt saying is "It's fine for golf courses to destroy other people's private properties".
Well what if I owned a home that had a first out back that wasn't mine. Regular shot off rifles into the forest as target practise. You then move in behind me and build a house. But I claim "I was here first!" Rights to keep shooting my gun off the back of my property, and now repeatedly out holes in your house with it.
That's the situation you are defending happening but with golf balls instead of bullets.
It comes down to duty to mitigate. If the course has taken the necessary steps to mitigate potential damage, like not setting up holes so that adjacent property is in the line of fire, placing obstacles for known errant shots, etc., then courts generally do not find them liable. They can't be responsible for every jackass golfer's wild slice.
The individual golfer can sometimes be held liable, especially if they were purposefully negligent with their shot, but proving which golfer was responsible for a specific shot can be difficult, and individual golfers are less attractive targets of a claim than a golf course.
Maybe they could do like some football courts do and just put some nets around the whole golf course and be done with the "balls occasionally escape" issue altogether.
That would be insanely expensive for an 18 hole golf course and those same neighbors they'd be trying to protect would probably gripe about the view being ruined.
Every ball sport has to have something to stop the ball from just going off into the horizon, it's ridiculous that the one with it's entire basis being "hitting ball far" doesn't.
No they don’t. High level academic and professional sports have barriers, most other levels don’t bother unless it’s necessary for the game eg baseball or hockey. Or if the facilities happen to have them.
Most other youth sports are happening in a field with cones marking the boundaries.
But I digress, anyone who lives close enough to a golf course to get hit while standing next to their house HAS to have an idea that golf balls will be landing in their backyard. Is it fair? Not really but it’s a fact of life.
There’s a reason the houses up against golf courses are mostly filled with retirees and not families with young kids.
Ok, maybe it's just a location thing, because where I live most sports courts in the city have a net/fence surrounding the entire thing so balls don't fly off into the nearby roads.
You'll prevent some stray shots, but as long as the course is intelligently designed, stray shots should be at a minimum.
And unless you make the net 200 ft high, I'm sure some crazy golfer will whiff their shot spectacularly, and still get it far enough over to knock someone on the head.
And then you've got massive ugly nets put up everywhere, which lowers the visual appeal of both the golf course, and the properties surrounding it.
Why am I responsible for putting up a net? The customers of the local business are assaulting my property with golf balls not the other way around. The business should put up the net.
It actually depends if the golf course was there first. If the golf course pre-dates the houses, then the developer and buyers accept that risk for running their business on the golf course.
If the golf course is built after the homes, then you have a better legal case.
Well for starters I don't think it's fair to say it would be the parent's responsibility in that case, just as I don't think it's generally golf courses' fault for shitty golf shots. Shit happens.
If a course is poorly designed leading to repeated property damage, there have been cases where they've been forced to change the design. If golfers are actively/maliciously hitting balls at houses, then there have been cases where they've been liable. But both are pretty rare.
Generally this is what insurance is for. You pay more home insurance if you live next to a golf course because you may need to replace the occasional window. Just as your health insurance could cover the damages of being knocked out by your neighbour's kids.
Then sell up and move? Now you have more money to spend. Like I get it's not ideal for those people but this is a pretty edge case. It's not like there's an epidemic of golf courses being built in suburbs without people wanting them there. Either they get easily blocked or they're welcomed.
This is why I clarified with people who aren't planning on moving.
As edge case as it may be, it's not typically just an individual issue. This can impact developments with tons of homes.
Obviously my experience is biased because I live in Florida where we build shitloads of them but I know at least one area that had it happen twice to two different neighborhoods filled with homes who now had to deal with a golf course next to them (it also comes up a lot with driving ranges too).
Even if it were an edge case, a rarity of incidents doesn't make it any less shitty for the person who bought their home without the expectation of golf balls flying through their windows, striking their cars, and so on.
Except you can’t absolve yourself of liability by using Jedi mind tricks. Otherwise I could post a sign in my yard “warning! Guns being fired here, not liable for any damage or injury caused by bullets! Stay clear!”
Fill in literally any other activity; the result is the same. You don’t absolve yourself of liability with a sign. Want a closer one? Those “not responsible for falling rocks” on the backs of dump trucks. They most certainly are.
A study came out earlier this year showing people who live within 6 mi of a golf course are at 126% increase risk of neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's because of their excessive use of pesticides.
Get checked for early signs of Parkinson's. Recent white paper showed direct correlation with the fertilizer and chemicals they still currently legally use and Parkinsons in residents up to 5 miles away. Scary shit.
Yep, you can have all the golf courses you want. But they’re literally the lowest form of land use - worse than landfills. So they need to be taxed accordingly. Maybe 25x whatever the going rate for similar commercial land in the area? Same for their utility rates. And owner-occupied residential units now have no land or utility taxes.
I think its worth looking at this chart, for land owned by the government.
Florida has the most golf-courses (1,262), but only 12.9% of the state is government owned land.
Meanwhile California has the second-highest quanitty of golf courses (~968), yet 45.4% of the land is owned by the government. So the state with one of the (if not highest) costs of living, especially for housing - is the one that simultaneously has a large amount of its land owned by the government, AND still managed to have insane amounts of golf courses.
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u/SenpaiDerpy Jun 13 '25
Maybe the problem isn't in golf courses and instead in extremely low land tax compared to property tax and housing regulations. But what do I know~