Admittedly, I’m a landlord (Yes… boo, hiss!). This “system” (from policy, banking sector, entrenched real estate industry lobbying) relentlessly encourages and rewards people for investing in housing as opposed to more productive enterprises.

You know this system is broken when the price of an ordinary family home appreciates at a rate faster than what one earns in their full time job and that is before the taxman takes his take off of my full time salary in software development.

Furthermore, It is not lost on me that houses are for people to live in first and foremost. Not instruments of financial speculation based almost purely around betting on future capital gains. The current system, while not alone in being responsible, is clearly contributing to both growing and intensifying social issues we all know too well.

Sadly, None of the politicians I spoke to across the poltical spectrum in the run up to the last election seem to show any real geniune care.

Part of a series on Disdain and Dividends where I document investing (out of existential dispair) in companies that I deeply dispise as a psychological analgesic due to public apathy and the institutions who are suppose to protect us legitimize these companies’ actions through inaction.

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The situation I feared almost two decades ago has materialized.

Facebook has begun and is already replacing having a website for a lot of businesses. Often when I do a search for a business, I find they now only have a Facebook page. The issue with this is that it effectively forces people to get a Facebook account to look at their page. (Scroll a handful of posts and FB now demands you login or create an account)

I will admit to buying shares in Facebook (now Meta Platforms Inc.) as a psychological analgesic to try and take the edge off of my high disdain towards the company. The stock price has now since quadrupled.

Despite my attempts to set up alternative self hosted platforms for friends to use (this site, peak.nz originally being one of them) to try and stop Face-borg taking over in this fashion, this was ultimately in vain. In hindsight and upon blunt reflection, I stood no chance.

The old web is dead. 15 years ago I was panned for being “Oh so pessimistic” for suggesting what has now eventuated today.

Admittedly, I really dislike the “new” Internet and have responded by drastically cutting down my personal use of it