ECB

I can't check at the moment, but that sounds like something 'Simply Perfection' would be capable of.

It's essentially an addon specifically for tweaking the appearance of gnome stuff.

Nothing is preventing a business from building parking spaces though. It's just getting rid of the requirement to do so. It's essentially a free-market approach.

I think there are bigger issues wherever you are, in that there doesn't seem to be (enforced) parking laws. I see this pretty frequently in the Balkans, for instance.

The issue is basically that a lot of places people have this idea that, just because they own a car, they are entitled to a cheap/free place to park it. That type of incentive just leads to more and more people buying cars (and expecting a cheap place to park them) so it just makes the problem worse.

Trams are the best! I'll go out of my way to take a tram over a bus any day

They are just so much smoother

It's really fun! I picked it up yesterday and I've been playing on ky deck.

I will say that I usually prefer tower defense games with more 'linear' pathing (think bloons) but it's been a good time regardless.

It's not colonialism to prefer one culture (or certain cultural traits) to another. In fact, it's natural.

I've lived in a number of countries and each had their own distinct cultural norms. Each has had aspects which I perceived as either positive or negative.

Add it all together and I definitely have preferred certain cultures, not because they are "better" but because they more closely match my own preferences. Other people would prefer different cultural norms.

IPTV is generally for live TV channels rather than on-demand.

Yeah that's what I mean... it would be good for society if prices went down, but it would also make a lot of people pissed off, so they intentionally dance around actual solutions in favor of shit like this.

I recently moved to Vienna and don't qualify for the public housing (you need to have lived here for a certain amount of time)but the sheer amount of it (and relative quality) means that even in the private market, competition is much less.

Compared to other cities we have lived in, the rent is much lower and the quality much higher.

Something like 60% of the population lives in either public or subsidized housing!

It's the perfect solution for the democrats because it sounds good but also won't actually cause housing prices to go down, so homeowners won't feel like they are 'losing' money.

Sure, here's a paper which explores the effects.

Essentially, housing prices have hugely inflated (in much of the developed world) because demand is much higher than supply. Prices in the real-estate market are generally really reactive to changes in supply or demand because each 'product' is unique and limited, as well as being worth a lot of money so there is more pressure to maximize the potential gains.

This sort of plan increases the resources available to the demand side without increasing the supply side. This drives up prices since there are more potential buyers.

Anyone who couldn't buy a house without such a program is being added the the pool of people competing for a limited supply of houses. It won't increase supply because supply is heavily limited by other factors, most notably zoning.

It's unfortunate, because the thought behind such a policy is admirable. It's trying to make buying a house more fair and more easily achievable for a broad segment of the population that currently is effectively shut out from owning a home.

It definitely looks a lot like Toronto, but it's been a while since I was there

In the UK a similar scheme just led to the entry-level segment of the real-estate market inflating faster than the rest.

It also led to a rise in more 'luxury' entry-level properties being built.

Again, it's not exactly the same concept, but in the case of the UK, most economists agree that most buyers actually would have been better off if the policy had never been introduced, since the price rises ended up outpacing the value of the assistance.