Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel

[Higgenbotham]

There's a corollary to this with regard to those who reach the point of recognition that a civilization is in decline. Since the point of recognition can, over the first few decades, be reached upon the realization that things have slowly deteriorated just below a particular person's unique threshold of comfort, the person who has recently reached this point will almost surely think that if we can just do (fill in the blank) that the decline can be reversed. It can't.

A big picture core conclusion is that over the past 80 years, what it takes to be a person of influence, whether it be in technology, government, media or any position of authority or responsibility is more and more wide ranging and random in terms of the person's qualifications to be there - to be supervising employees, to be offering advice to colleagues, to be running a major technology company, to have great wealth, to have the ability to make weapons of destruction, to be making decisions that affect large numbers of people, to be quoted, to be given public money, or whatever.

How apocalyptic worldviews are moving from the fringes to the corridors of power
Published: July 14, 2026 11:50am EDT

Research has shown that people are more willing to support extraordinary measures when they believe they face an existential threat. It has also been shown that political leaders’ psychological dispositions matter more in times of uncertainty. The unforeseeable effects of technological and environmental transformation create risks and anxiety – and the danger is that leaders treat opponents, social movements or minority groups as mythical foes.

End-times politics then becomes a struggle over the definition of the ultimate threat to humankind. We are in a time when humans face multiple risks. These worldviews eventually determine how national politics and geopolitics evolve.

There is another reason to pay attention. For much of the modern era, the most influential people were elected leaders and state officials. Today, a novel type of leader has emerged: technology executives with wealth and media influence.

https://theconversation.com/how-apocaly ... wer-286581

[Higgenbotham]

Starting right about now, fewer Stackees will be entering the work force than the Stackees leaving the work force. Think of Stackees as like worker ants who put the extra crumbs they gather into the bank accounts of the kings and queens who own the ant hills. Fewer ant hills and maybe no organized ant hills at all is the so-called "crisis" incoming that is being labeled a crisis that is not.

Have any social scientists ever compared an anthill to a city?

AI Overview

Yes. Social scientists, urban theorists, and biologists have frequently compared ant colonies to cities. The "city metaphor" is one of the oldest and most enduring ways to conceptualize how thousands of independent individuals self-organize without top-down planning to build complex, sustainable infrastructure.

Key Comparisons

Division of Labor: Just as a human city relies on doctors, builders, sanitation workers, and farmers, ant colonies utilize strict division of labor. Ants are born to specific physical castes (like foragers, nurses, or soldiers) that dictate their job for life.

Underground Megacities: When scientists excavated abandoned leaf-cutter anthills in Brazil by pouring 10 tons of cement into them, they unearthed massive "megalopolises". These subterranean cities plunge several feet deep and feature interconnected roads, bypass lanes, nurseries, fungus-cultivating gardens, and recycling/garbage disposal centers.

Collective Intelligence: Early sociologists and economists used the ant colony as a model of commercial society, while modern sociologists note that cities mirror the way ants behave. Both systems scale efficiently—a cell, ant, or person actually requires less energy to survive in a larger, denser community than in a smaller one.

Crucial Differences

Despite these structural similarities, sociologists stress a few fundamental differences:

No Blueprints: Humans build cities with aesthetic intent, blueprints, and central governments. Ants build vast subterranean empires entirely through instinct, relying on simple chemical signals (pheromones) to guide their immediate neighbors without a master plan.

The "Superorganism": Unlike human citizens with individual goals, a mature ant colony is often categorized by biologists as a superorganism. Individual ants are comparable to the cells in a human body; their ultimate drive is the survival of the entire colony rather than their own personal well-being.

In my late teens and early 20s I noticed this in 2 ways. The first was while flying into Detroit and Chicago. When the plane would get ready to make its landing, I'd look out the window and think that the city below resembled an anthill. The second was while driving out of a city the morning after I finished a Summer job. I thought, wow, some of these people will be doing this for the next 40 years and I am one of the only people escaping out of this anthill. I didn't think of them as Stackees at the time, just ants. All I knew at the time was I didn't want to be one of them.

That sentiment doesn't apply to most people. It seems to me that most people are OK being part of the anthill if they can own a home and have a few of the benefits that go along with that. CNN just ran a special report on "forever renters" where they profiled the unaffordability of housing in Cleveland. One woman, I think in her early 40s, who felt that she had worked hard, done most of the right things and paid a quarter million in rent over her lifetime so far asked the question something along the lines of, "If I can't afford to buy a house, then why am I here?" That, I think, would sum it up for a lot of people, maybe somewhere around 50 percent. More and more people are no longer "getting ahead" and that seems to be a point of vulnerability for the anthill, or system if one prefers.

[Higgenbotham]

“Think about wherever you’re working, whatever capacity in our firm or elsewhere, how you can be an agent of change, how you can make things better, how you can serve clients in a better way,” Gray said in a recent address to Blackstone’s newest class of analysts, adding they should focus on “this idea of being entrepreneurial.”

Gray has spent 34 years at Blackstone and has seen that philosophy play out firsthand. He credits the firm’s rise to becoming the world’s largest alternative asset manager to preserving the culture it had as a small business when it was founded by Peter Peterson and Stephen Schwarzman in 1985.

“We’re as nimble and entrepreneurial when there’s something new that emerges,” Gray said. “And yet we can continue to do it at a larger and larger scale.”

“The beating heart of the place, that feels the same. Drive, desire to be successful, operate with integrity, be excellent in what we do,” he added.

https://fortune.com/2026/07/22/blacksto ... usinesses/

Blackstone owns tens of thousands of single family homes throughout the US. They are a major part of the affordability problem because of their non-entrepreneurial operations.

If someone wants to know what an entrepreneur looks like vs the crony capitalists at Blackstone, they can read my story about Bob vs Bailout Receivables.

Also, this is pathetic journalism from Fortune. Call it crony journalism.

Starting here: viewtopic.php?p=80965#p80965

Does Blackstone charge high rents on single family homes that are poorly maintained?

AI Overview

Yes, major regulatory actions, tenant complaints, and investigations into Invitation Homes (which Blackstone founded and owned until completely divesting its stake in 2019, while continuing other single-family rental investments like Tricon Residential) indicate a pattern of high rents, mandatory junk fees, and neglected maintenance.

Regulatory Actions and Findings

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) penalized Invitation Homes $48 million for deceiving renters regarding hidden fees, withholding security deposits for normal wear-and-tear, and delivering homes with broken appliances, rodent infestations, and severe maintenance issues.

Tenants and legal aid groups frequently report "fee stacking," where mandatory utility, smart home, and air filter fees inflate the base rent.

Tenant Experiences and Maintenance

Reviews on platforms like the Better Business Bureau Invitation Homes Profile show mixed-to-negative consensus regarding slow repair windows, half-completed maintenance, and sudden rent hikes.

Regulatory and investigative reports note that algorithmic pricing tools used by institutional landlords are designed to maximize yields, leading to continuous rent escalation even when property upkeep falls short.

Residential homes

In 2013, Gray helped create a business venture through Blackstone called Invitation Homes to buy foreclosed single-family houses and turn them into rentals.[14][15] The Wall Street Journal reported that Gray went on the “biggest home buying spree in history” after the foreclosure crisis, spending $10 billion in the company's first four years.[16] The firm would later come under criticism for its business model, and US Senator Elizabeth Warren criticized Blackstone for "shamelessly" profiting from the 2008 housing crisis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_D._Gray

Criticism

Wall Street companies in the rent industry, especially Invitation Homes, have garnered strong backlash from real estate experts and affordable-housing activists for taking advantage of tenants to fulfill investors' pockets; the primary argument is that the corporations are incentivized to keep repair costs low and fees and rent prices high in order to increase bond sales that determine their scale.[9] California Reinvestment Coalition's Kevin Stein derogatorily labeled the business model "securitization of rental income."[9]

An analysis of Census and property data by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Maya Abood of four Los Angeles County neighborhoods where Invitation Homes single-family rents are located show that the percentages of rents it owns in a neighborhood ranged from 10% to up to 25%.[9]

A December 2016 Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta study stated Wall Street rent corporations evicted tenants significantly more than regular mom-and-pop landlords; it reported Invitation Homes evicting 15% of its renters, and the entity it would later merge with, Starwood Waypoint, 30%, and stated being African-American also increased chances of being evicted if under a company like Invitation Homes.[9]

Complaints and horror stories from Invitation Homes' customers have been covered on publications and news stations such as WGCL-TV,[19] CBS Sacramento,[20] The Arizona Republic,[6] and WTVF.[21] Mold, sewage, and water leakage;[9] nails poking out;[20] infestation of vermin such as spiders, cockroaches, and ants;[9] broken appliances such as garage doors, heating systems, stoves, and microwaves;[9] and unfulfilled repair requests are frequent issues.[9] Invitation Homes has raised rents by an average of as much as 10% per year in some markets such as Oakland, California, double the norm for these markets, according to the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE).[9] There have been three protests at Blackstone's California offices by Invitation Homes tenants organized by ACCE, such as one in October 2017 at Blackstone's Santa Monica headquarters, which involved the tenants placing letters on the desks to hold a meeting with the corporation's executives and stop practices of excessive rent prices, fees, and poor maintenance; the company never got back to them.[9]

Invitation Homes has faced several lawsuits from courts throughout the country.[6] In May 2018, tenants filed a class action against the corporation in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, with a rationale of excessive rent price increases and fees; they reported being charged $95 if even a minute late on a rent payment, regardless if the company's online payment system is broken, and filing eviction notices that added more "unfair" legal costs, fees, and penalties for them to bear.[9] On July 20, Invitation Homes responded with a motion that stated the class action group and its plaintiff had too little evidence.[9]

Staff of Invitation Homes has responded to the criticisms, including chief operating officer Charles Young who in July 2018 stated the company had an average rating of 4.32 stars out of five from tenant surveys it ran.[9]

Despite Congress passing legislation banning broker's price opinions after the mortgage crisis, a loophole in the law does not apply to bonds of multiple homes and allows Invitation Homes to continue to use them.[9] For the entity, the other firm's BPOs are a less-costly alternative to mortgage appraisal by licensed contractors typical of the housing market; according to an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission that started in September 2017, they involve inspections by independent contractors unlicensed to do appraisals, who are only assigned to inspect the exteriors with the assumption that the interiors were already renovated.[9]

One of the single-family securities looked at by Reuters contained 7,024 houses, each of which was making the entity an average rent of $1,538 a month and $985 a year for other fees.[9] Reuters also interviewed five Invitation Homes ex-employees that stated the company spent too little on repairs; the bond data showed it spent a per-house annual average of $1,142 on maintenance, less than the typical $3,100 average most Americans spend for the same services, although the entity responded that the $750 spent on system back-up costs wasn't shown.[9]

In September 2024, Invitation Homes reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), in which the company agreed to refund $48 million to customers harmed by its actions, which according the FTC allegedly included "a variety of unfair and deceptive tactics, from saddling people with hidden fees and unjustly withholding security deposits to misleading people about eviction policies during the pandemic."[22] In March 2026, the FTC mailed 444,131 checks to renters who claim to have been misled by Invitation Homes. As part of the settlement, Invitation Homes is required to incorporate mandatory fees into its advertised rental prices, implement fairer procedures for returning security deposits, and discontinue certain eviction practices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invitatio ... #Criticism

We can offer him an outhouse infested with stable flies at the back of The Dark Age Hovel for 200 a month plus water and sewer fees.

[Higgenbotham]

Update labeled below.

A few days ago I overheard a conversation between 2 women where one said, "Joe is going to get his 100% soon" and the other one replied that some relative of hers was going to "get his 100% soon" also. Then the first went on to say that once Joe gets his 100% they will no longer have to pay property tax. That seemed a little farfetched to me until I read this:

Do veterans that are 100% disabled pay property taxes?

AI Overview

In many states across the U.S., veterans who are rated 100% permanently and totally disabled by the VA are completely exempt from paying property taxes on their primary residence. Because it is a state-level policy, the exact eligibility rules, surviving spouse benefits, and application requirements vary.

The Exemption: In Texas, veterans with a 100% disability rating (or a determination of individual unemployability) from the VA are completely exempt from paying property taxes on their residence homestead.

Primary Residence Only: This exemption can only be applied to a single residence homestead that the veteran owns.

Surviving Spouses: The exemption can transfer to an unremarried surviving spouse if they continue to live in the home.

Disabilities are now where the money is at in the United States.

Cradle to grave and beyond for the surviving spouse.

Joe has a severe case of gout which has nothing to do with his military service. He was bowling at his wife's Christmas party. Quite well in fact.

Have another beer.

Update:

INGERSOLL: We Badly Need To Address The 100% Disabled Veteran Bullsh*tters

100% DISABLED VETERAN BULLSHITTERS

A few things are true: VA disability is rife with bullshitters. There’s almost nothing that can be done about it. Not necessarily for the reason you think either. At the same time, reform for the process is absolutely necessary or the VA will bankrupt itself.

Veterans' Benefits now a record 27% of DoD spend (and ~8% of total US Federal receipts), rising far faster than both DoD spend & Federal receipts.

The issue has become more pronounced in recent years because of center-right personal finance podcaster Caleb Hammer.

He has dozens, probably hundreds of clips at this point.

He once talked to two veterans, one who apparently never left the states, and one who flew into an Arab base, worked, and flew out. They were both at 100% and receiving around $10,000 a month. He had one guy who was a cook receiving $4,000 a month for hearing loss. The guy wanted $8,000 and was working toward that goal, Hammer later said. Another guy studied cyber security as a civilian and seems to have spent most of his time on base. He said he had disability to the tune of $4k a month.

That’s all … eye popping. I deployed three times and spent significant time outside the wire. I’m not even close to that. I’m sure I have friends who did 4x what I did who are not even close to that.

Along with Hammer, you now have allegedly rape-tastic Graham Platner. He has a 100% rating. He was infantry. He might deserve it, who knows, I haven’t really looked into his case (not sure I legally even can, given privacy laws).

Not exactly the poster child you want for VA disability.

—

The general consensus is VA disability will not get cut because it’s a third rail. Nobody wants to cut benefits for veterans.

That’s an issue, but it’s not the real issue.

The real issue is that unfucking the ratings of 19 million veterans is a massive clusterfuck. It’s an administrative and bureaucratic nightmare. I’m not a mathematician or a risk analyst, but you don’t need to be one to know that over/under on the cost of doing that versus just paying out the benefits is an easy hedge to make.

You just pay out what you’ve already promised and avoid the cost of rerating everyone plus dealing with the wave of legal challenges.

But you don’t move on that easily.

The rubberstamp that worked for actually damaged veterans caught in the forever waiting loop is now getting abused. There are dozens of companies out there offering services to veterans and guaranteeing 100% rating. The yearly cost is over $200 billion and skyrocketing. That’s insane. It’s unsustainable.

As usual, a system devised for people who genuinely deserve help is getting abused by a vast swath of liars, cheats and fraudsters.

The VA needs to close the door. Now. It’s shameful. We need to return to doing it the hard way and actually rating veterans fairly and comprehensively.

Otherwise, the whole system will implode. It’ll take some of my closest friends with it.

https://dailycaller.com/2026/07/16/inge ... -benefits/

Manipulation and fraud are the biggest businesses in America today, and waddling up to the window for a bailout is the most in-demand job skill in America today.

[Higgenbotham]

In 2006, the US was at Great Depression era levels of corruption. Now the US is at civilization ending levels of corruption.