the problem is that the bank gets paid first, so the bank has no risk, they get some interest payments and get the principal back when it craters. they are then happy to work with bain on this scheme the next go around, and the next one, and the next one.
if the bank didn't get paid first, they wouldn't be willing to go along with the scheme because they only get the principal back if it's actually paid back.
I think the main problem is that the big debt from the bank gets paid before any other obligations. US bankruptcy law should be reformed so that you get repaid according to the fraction of the debt you hold. So everyone gets something. That way the bank would be unwilling to loan to someone who they thought was going to do this.
A more worker friendly solution would be to make sure that all employee pay, accrued vacation, pension obligations, etc. get paid first. Can't see that happening anytime soon.
the problem is that the bank gets paid first, so the bank has no risk, they get some interest payments and get the principal back when it craters. they are then happy to work with bain on this scheme the next go around, and the next one, and the next one.
if the bank didn't get paid first, they wouldn't be willing to go along with the scheme because they only get the principal back if it's actually paid back.
I think the main problem is that the big debt from the bank gets paid before any other obligations. US bankruptcy law should be reformed so that you get repaid according to the fraction of the debt you hold. So everyone gets something. That way the bank would be unwilling to loan to someone who they thought was going to do this.
A more worker friendly solution would be to make sure that all employee pay, accrued vacation, pension obligations, etc. get paid first. Can't see that happening anytime soon.
Eh, there are always plenty of options for corruption on both sides. Right now our system hugely favors bank corruption, so the banks and investors are corrupt. The 'workers always get paid first' option gives the inverse incentive. The laws should be structured to incentivize good partnership between capitol investment, management and workers.
the problem is that the bank gets paid first, so the bank has no risk, they get some interest payments and get the principal back when it craters. they are then happy to work with bain on this scheme the next go around, and the next one, and the next one.
if the bank didn't get paid first, they wouldn't be willing to go along with the scheme because they only get the principal back if it's actually paid back.
I think the main problem is that the big debt from the bank gets paid before any other obligations. US bankruptcy law should be reformed so that you get repaid according to the fraction of the debt you hold. So everyone gets something. That way the bank would be unwilling to loan to someone who they thought was going to do this.
A more worker friendly solution would be to make sure that all employee pay, accrued vacation, pension obligations, etc. get paid first. Can't see that happening anytime soon.
Eh, there are always plenty of options for corruption on both sides. Right now our system hugely favors bank corruption, so the banks and investors are corrupt. The 'workers always get paid first' option gives the inverse incentive. The laws should be structured to incentivize good partnership between capitol investment, management and workers.
Exactly how does it provide an "inverse incentive"? Mind you, worker costs - salary, leave, pensions, etc. - are sunk costs, whereas bank debt is an investment with risk built in. There is no "both sides" here - one side has a very clear rationale for corruption, and the other side really doesn't.
the problem is that the bank gets paid first, so the bank has no risk, they get some interest payments and get the principal back when it craters. they are then happy to work with bain on this scheme the next go around, and the next one, and the next one.
if the bank didn't get paid first, they wouldn't be willing to go along with the scheme because they only get the principal back if it's actually paid back.
I think the main problem is that the big debt from the bank gets paid before any other obligations. US bankruptcy law should be reformed so that you get repaid according to the fraction of the debt you hold. So everyone gets something. That way the bank would be unwilling to loan to someone who they thought was going to do this.
A more worker friendly solution would be to make sure that all employee pay, accrued vacation, pension obligations, etc. get paid first. Can't see that happening anytime soon.
Eh, there are always plenty of options for corruption on both sides. Right now our system hugely favors bank corruption, so the banks and investors are corrupt. The 'workers always get paid first' option gives the inverse incentive. The laws should be structured to incentivize good partnership between capitol investment, management and workers.
Exactly how does it provide an "inverse incentive"? Mind you, worker costs - salary, leave, pensions, etc. - are sunk costs, whereas bank debt is an investment with risk built in. There is no "both sides" here - one side has a very clear rationale for corruption, and the other side really doesn't.
Because workers have operational control of the company. Workers are not just low level employees, but everyone employed by the company, including managers and supervisors who have varying levels of control over things like compensation. The typical reason why salaries/pensions/severance and such are handled at the unsecured level is that it is very easy for an manager who realizes that their company is going under is to grant themselves (or their friends) a golden parachute, which would tend to push a company already in a rocky condition all the way to bankruptcy and allow them to completely deny any compensation to any creditor class that would be below them (why save any money at all for other unsecured creditors, when you could take it all yourself?). It is basically the inverse of the perverse incentives of leveraged buyout drawbacks, as noted.
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Giggles_FunsworthBlight on DiscourseBay Area SprawlRegistered Userregular
Yeah dudes. Overcompensating labor is such a problem in late stage capitalism.
the problem is that the bank gets paid first, so the bank has no risk, they get some interest payments and get the principal back when it craters. they are then happy to work with bain on this scheme the next go around, and the next one, and the next one.
if the bank didn't get paid first, they wouldn't be willing to go along with the scheme because they only get the principal back if it's actually paid back.
I think the main problem is that the big debt from the bank gets paid before any other obligations. US bankruptcy law should be reformed so that you get repaid according to the fraction of the debt you hold. So everyone gets something. That way the bank would be unwilling to loan to someone who they thought was going to do this.
A more worker friendly solution would be to make sure that all employee pay, accrued vacation, pension obligations, etc. get paid first. Can't see that happening anytime soon.
Eh, there are always plenty of options for corruption on both sides. Right now our system hugely favors bank corruption, so the banks and investors are corrupt. The 'workers always get paid first' option gives the inverse incentive. The laws should be structured to incentivize good partnership between capitol investment, management and workers.
Exactly how does it provide an "inverse incentive"? Mind you, worker costs - salary, leave, pensions, etc. - are sunk costs, whereas bank debt is an investment with risk built in. There is no "both sides" here - one side has a very clear rationale for corruption, and the other side really doesn't.
Because workers have operational control of the company. Workers are not just low level employees, but everyone employed by the company, including managers and supervisors who have varying levels of control over things like compensation. The typical reason why salaries/pensions/severance and such are handled at the unsecured level is that it is very easy for an manager who realizes that their company is going under is to grant themselves (or their friends) a golden parachute, which would tend to push a company already in a rocky condition all the way to bankruptcy and allow them to completely deny any compensation to any creditor class that would be below them (why save any money at all for other unsecured creditors, when you could take it all yourself?). It is basically the inverse of the perverse incentives of leveraged buyout drawbacks, as noted.
First off, when people are talking about workers in this sense, they are not referring to the C-suite, who do have those powers. Instead, the term is usually referring to the rank and file and middle management, who have little discretionary power over such matters.
Second, it's telling whenever the view is put out that "if given the power, workers would fuck everyone else over", with little evidence to show for it. This view has always struck me as saying more about the person espousing it and how they see things, as opposed to how things really are.
the problem is that the bank gets paid first, so the bank has no risk, they get some interest payments and get the principal back when it craters. they are then happy to work with bain on this scheme the next go around, and the next one, and the next one.
if the bank didn't get paid first, they wouldn't be willing to go along with the scheme because they only get the principal back if it's actually paid back.
I think the main problem is that the big debt from the bank gets paid before any other obligations. US bankruptcy law should be reformed so that you get repaid according to the fraction of the debt you hold. So everyone gets something. That way the bank would be unwilling to loan to someone who they thought was going to do this.
A more worker friendly solution would be to make sure that all employee pay, accrued vacation, pension obligations, etc. get paid first. Can't see that happening anytime soon.
Eh, there are always plenty of options for corruption on both sides. Right now our system hugely favors bank corruption, so the banks and investors are corrupt. The 'workers always get paid first' option gives the inverse incentive. The laws should be structured to incentivize good partnership between capitol investment, management and workers.
Exactly how does it provide an "inverse incentive"? Mind you, worker costs - salary, leave, pensions, etc. - are sunk costs, whereas bank debt is an investment with risk built in. There is no "both sides" here - one side has a very clear rationale for corruption, and the other side really doesn't.
Because workers have operational control of the company. Workers are not just low level employees, but everyone employed by the company, including managers and supervisors who have varying levels of control over things like compensation. The typical reason why salaries/pensions/severance and such are handled at the unsecured level is that it is very easy for an manager who realizes that their company is going under is to grant themselves (or their friends) a golden parachute, which would tend to push a company already in a rocky condition all the way to bankruptcy and allow them to completely deny any compensation to any creditor class that would be below them (why save any money at all for other unsecured creditors, when you could take it all yourself?). It is basically the inverse of the perverse incentives of leveraged buyout drawbacks, as noted.
It seems pretty easy to exclude c-levels and anyone else who has is high enough in the company for this to matter. Normal employees who have little to no insight into the business shouldn't be getting screwed out of their compensation when management fucks up. They also happen to be the people who are least capable of absorbing the loss.
also just like... don't make the law painfully naive?
there's a million different controls you could put in place to keep upper management from giving themselves bonus on the day before bankruptcy while still making sure that the rank-and-file employees get their final paycheck, and vacation payouts
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Its not a theory, really. If you setup bankruptcy law such that it favors the workers (which is not uncommon in many nations, actually), then it becomes very easy for a failing company to be pillaged by its workers. Its easy to -say- to exclude the c-suite, but keep in mind that it is painfully easy for the c-suite to simply hire friends and relatives as janitors and whatnot to suck money out of a business. And once you put a creditor class that the business owners have control over higher up on the list, then it becomes painfully hard for most legitimate businesses to secure credit to start and/or grow, because it becomes very hard for lenders to recover anything from failed businesses. It then becomes a vicious cycle where the economy doesn't grow because credit is not available because creditors can't trust that they'll be able to secure repayment.
I don't really think 'hiring your family to do nothing' is that uncommon a scenario that we can disregard the possibility of having workers-first bankruptcy payments being exploited in that manner.
Really though, I think the financial vehicle used here needs to be examined, found to be used in a reckless or just destructive manner, and then whatever fine or penalty needs to be applied on that basis.
And I don't think that need to determine intent changes between leveraged buyouts or employee-first payments.
It doesn't matter who gets paid first; figure out if they ran the business into the ground deliberately and then charge them. Or vice versa.
Its not a theory, really. If you setup bankruptcy law such that it favors the workers (which is not uncommon in many nations, actually), then it becomes very easy for a failing company to be pillaged by its workers. Its easy to -say- to exclude the c-suite, but keep in mind that it is painfully easy for the c-suite to simply hire friends and relatives as janitors and whatnot to suck money out of a business. And once you put a creditor class that the business owners have control over higher up on the list, then it becomes painfully hard for most legitimate businesses to secure credit to start and/or grow, because it becomes very hard for lenders to recover anything from failed businesses. It then becomes a vicious cycle where the economy doesn't grow because credit is not available because creditors can't trust that they'll be able to secure repayment.
So what’s going to happen to all the TRU real estate? I can’t think of any retailer that fits in stores that big that currently has an appetite/need for these locations...
Convert to office space?
Harbor Freight is a bit smaller on average but the newer ones are the biggest so that's a bit skewed. They're opening something like 200 stores this year.
Walmart also has those regional mini-walmarts that only have a couple departments, those could eventually expand to new areas.
TRU isn't the only retailer leaving its husks everywhere though, they'll never all get filled.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Why the fuck would anyone "being payed to do nothing" try to fuck with that?
I don't really think 'hiring your family to do nothing' is that uncommon a scenario that we can disregard the possibility of having workers-first bankruptcy payments being exploited in that manner.
Really though, I think the financial vehicle used here needs to be examined, found to be used in a reckless or just destructive manner, and then whatever fine or penalty needs to be applied on that basis.
And I don't think that need to determine intent changes between leveraged buyouts or employee-first payments.
It doesn't matter who gets paid first; figure out if they ran the business into the ground deliberately and then charge them. Or vice versa.
The point is to stop this from happening, not to catch the culprits running from the burning wreckage. That's why people are looking at the order of creditor payment - to make highly leveraged buyouts risky for banks, so in turn when Bain comes to them for the loans, they'll say "Are you mad? We're not risking that."
So what’s going to happen to all the TRU real estate? I can’t think of any retailer that fits in stores that big that currently has an appetite/need for these locations...
Convert to office space?
Empty rotting big box stores are going to be a feature of the landscape...
Popping back in here, again Orlando is sort of weird but a lot of our closed big box stores have been converted into a range of mixed use properties. From turning the interiors into large office complexes, industrial uses, or (more commonly) shared church/temple/moqsue buildings for a range of practitioners and faith groups too poor to build a church entirely themselves, but also too small to really need a full time rental. I know of at least three dead mega-marts converted to this use on my side of town.
We also have a chain of paintball arenas that have been buying up closed grocery-store strip malls, gutting the insides of all of them, and turn them into a range of combat zones.
A private arts college (Full Sail) bought out two adjacent Steinmart/Books A Million strip malls for their campus, then converted the service alleys between them into a faux Amsterdam-esuq riviera for student commons and filming for their video departments. It even has a flowing canal that is kept remarkably clean for Florida.
Recently, my city started tearing down the existing dead-strip plazas in the area to turn into small mixed-use structures. Usually a parking garage, a small retail and restaurant area, two or three floors of offices, and then apartments. You can fit a decent density city block on most of these mega stores, and our city is doing its damnedest to convert to a denser population to fix our suburban sprawl.
They don't have to be a fixture of the landscape. You just need investment from the city in terms of zoning and community members willing to use the land you have rather than drive to the edge of the suburbs to build a new, unnecessary hub. In Central Florida's case, hard regional requirements for a permanent rural boundary are causing us to push back in towards infill. We are talking in terms of decades, but most developers in such environments see empty box stores as quality opportunities, as the ground has already been graded and pulling up concrete is cheap.
I though most of the money went toward paying the debt.
Most of the money goes towards paying the interest on the loan. There is no payment on the principle of the loan, and no amount of profitability would have enticed Bain Capital to have paid back the loan. It just would have gone into Bain Capital's coffers. Toys R Us was dead as soon as the deal was signed, it just took a decade for the business to finally fail.
I skipped to the back here so maybe it was already talked about, but what does Bain Capitol get out of these kinds of moves (buying company's and saddling them with debt)?
My understanding is essentially this:
Bain buys TRU with lots of debt.
Bain puts this debt on TRU's books, and it becomes first priority of payment in front of existing TRU debt.
Bain makes the minimum payments on this debt, while the rest of the profit is paid out as executive compensation. (Maybe make some noise about Ch.11 bankruptcy to make this compensation seem justified to tuen the company around).
Bain makes TRU declare banktuptcy, selling off all TRU assets and getting golden parachutes.
Bain's leverage buyout debt is paid off with the sale, leaving those creditors happy. Smaller creditors and employees are not likely to be paid out.
Effectively, Bain and the bank agreed to split up the profits for a few years then throw away the corpse, fucking over other creditors in the process at minimal risk.
If you go back 30 years this is what Bain and KKR was doing with US manufacturing companies. It's been the same pattern for nearly 50 years with some small variants. Like with pension laws -- at one time you did have the fully fund them. Until the investment class got those laws changed to where if a company promised to fulfill the structure at time of withdrawal by the participant it would be fine. Nevermind that the withdrawal might be in 25 or 30 years in the future and nothing in the law said that the company had to actually exist at that point in time...
What I'm trying to point out is that they've marched one step further up the economic chain. This is the retail level. Previously was the manufacturing level. Expect the talking heads to start in about how much better it is to shop online or better yet how Amazon and their workerless stores are the next wave of the future even harder than they are right now. Why? Because then we don' t have to worry about the investor class getting rid of those jobs and the rest of the retail world can be raiding just like this was. Yes that's a very cynical thought. I don't deny it, but with the amount of anti-worker sentiment swirling around these days it's hard not to think in that direction. I'm not saying we can't reverse direction. We can. It's just going to take a heluvalot of work in order to do so. Also, I'd love to have a world where most don't have to toil in labor but it's not like we're setting things up so that people could survive in that situation. Just the opposite, really. Again, that's cynical but I'm not being despairing about it.
All opinions are my own and in no way reflect that of my employer.
Austin converted a huge dead mall in the middle of the north side into a community college campus - that was very effective re-use. Sounds like Orlando really has a good handle on how to deal with the real estate though.
I'm not even talking weed either.
Like you could probably rack up a bunch of like blueberries and strawberries and shit. Just straight up moving farming into an urban center.
I like the idea, but I wonder if the price of berries or other fully legal and completely non objectionable crops would pay the cost for the building and power for the hydroponic farm.
I'm not even talking weed either.
Like you could probably rack up a bunch of like blueberries and strawberries and shit. Just straight up moving farming into an urban center.
I like the idea, but I wonder if the price of berries or other fully legal and completely non objectionable crops would pay the cost for the building and power for the hydroponic farm.
Oh power consumption would be nuts.
Solar farm on the roof?
I basically just keep coming up with ideas that cost a shit load already, and just need giant empty warehouses to work with.
I'm not even talking weed either.
Like you could probably rack up a bunch of like blueberries and strawberries and shit. Just straight up moving farming into an urban center.
I like the idea, but I wonder if the price of berries or other fully legal and completely non objectionable crops would pay the cost for the building and power for the hydroponic farm.
Oh power consumption would be nuts.
Solar farm on the roof?
I basically just keep coming up with ideas that cost a shit load already, and just need giant empty warehouses to work with.
I really want to do a server farm that captures the heat from the computers and uses it for aquaponics on a large scale.
I'm not even talking weed either.
Like you could probably rack up a bunch of like blueberries and strawberries and shit. Just straight up moving farming into an urban center.
I like the idea, but I wonder if the price of berries or other fully legal and completely non objectionable crops would pay the cost for the building and power for the hydroponic farm.
Oh power consumption would be nuts.
Solar farm on the roof?
I basically just keep coming up with ideas that cost a shit load already, and just need giant empty warehouses to work with.
I really want to do a server farm that captures the heat from the computers and uses it for aquaponics on a large scale.
How many IT people did you just gave seizures by suggesting aquaponics in the same place as a server farm? Particularly when they're close enough to share waste heat?
I'm sure you could engineer it so that even in the event of an "Oh Shit" moment you don't drown your servers, but there will always be an even more epic oh shit moment just waiting.
Edit: The last big box store (a Safeway) near me to close and be resurrected became a gym. Seems to work pretty well. Don't think they had to add any new windows to the building for it. Of course, there's been some other big boxes that haven't been picked up for anything.
I'm not even talking weed either.
Like you could probably rack up a bunch of like blueberries and strawberries and shit. Just straight up moving farming into an urban center.
I like the idea, but I wonder if the price of berries or other fully legal and completely non objectionable crops would pay the cost for the building and power for the hydroponic farm.
Vertical farming uses less water and overall a better idea than hydroponics
I'm not even talking weed either.
Like you could probably rack up a bunch of like blueberries and strawberries and shit. Just straight up moving farming into an urban center.
I like the idea, but I wonder if the price of berries or other fully legal and completely non objectionable crops would pay the cost for the building and power for the hydroponic farm.
Vertical farming uses less water and overall a better idea than hydroponics
Yeah that's way more what I'm thinking is straight up vertical farms.
I stopped in to my local Toys R Us yesterday and it was a madhouse despite it not being one of the ones from the original list of closing stores and thus without any sort of clearance or sales. It mostly felt like people who didn't understand that there wouldn't be sales that quick coming for sales that weren't there, looked around a bit, and then left only to be replaced by the next wave of people looking for nonexistent deals. The only things that actually seemed to be selling were bicycles and Toys R Us exclusive items. The latter I understood (snap them up for inflated resale down the road) but the former made no sense and I enjoyed listening in to a conversation between a parent and an employee trying to puzzle out why.
I'm not even talking weed either.
Like you could probably rack up a bunch of like blueberries and strawberries and shit. Just straight up moving farming into an urban center.
I like the idea, but I wonder if the price of berries or other fully legal and completely non objectionable crops would pay the cost for the building and power for the hydroponic farm.
Oh power consumption would be nuts.
Solar farm on the roof?
I basically just keep coming up with ideas that cost a shit load already, and just need giant empty warehouses to work with.
I really want to do a server farm that captures the heat from the computers and uses it for aquaponics on a large scale.
How many IT people did you just gave seizures by suggesting aquaponics in the same place as a server farm? Particularly when they're close enough to share waste heat?
I'm sure you could engineer it so that even in the event of an "Oh Shit" moment you don't drown your servers, but there will always be an even more epic oh shit moment just waiting.
The thing is, all of us immediately recover from the seizure and try to figure out how to make it work.
For example: remove the roof and convert the building to a greenhouse of sorts.
I stopped in to my local Toys R Us yesterday and it was a madhouse despite it not being one of the ones from the original list of closing stores and thus without any sort of clearance or sales. It mostly felt like people who didn't understand that there wouldn't be sales that quick coming for sales that weren't there, looked around a bit, and then left only to be replaced by the next wave of people looking for nonexistent deals. The only things that actually seemed to be selling were bicycles and Toys R Us exclusive items. The latter I understood (snap them up for inflated resale down the road) but the former made no sense and I enjoyed listening in to a conversation between a parent and an employee trying to puzzle out why.
Can't speak for anyone else, but I took my daughter there over the weekend because it's possibly her last chance to walk through a large toy store and pick something out, and I got the impression that a lot of other parents were there doing the same thing.
I stopped in to my local Toys R Us yesterday and it was a madhouse despite it not being one of the ones from the original list of closing stores and thus without any sort of clearance or sales. It mostly felt like people who didn't understand that there wouldn't be sales that quick coming for sales that weren't there, looked around a bit, and then left only to be replaced by the next wave of people looking for nonexistent deals. The only things that actually seemed to be selling were bicycles and Toys R Us exclusive items. The latter I understood (snap them up for inflated resale down the road) but the former made no sense and I enjoyed listening in to a conversation between a parent and an employee trying to puzzle out why.
I stopped in to my local Toys R Us yesterday and it was a madhouse despite it not being one of the ones from the original list of closing stores and thus without any sort of clearance or sales. It mostly felt like people who didn't understand that there wouldn't be sales that quick coming for sales that weren't there, looked around a bit, and then left only to be replaced by the next wave of people looking for nonexistent deals. The only things that actually seemed to be selling were bicycles and Toys R Us exclusive items. The latter I understood (snap them up for inflated resale down the road) but the former made no sense and I enjoyed listening in to a conversation between a parent and an employee trying to puzzle out why.
Well, what was the reason?
If they were actually branded with toys r us, I bet it was for speculatory souvenir resale. Seeing if toys r us becomes a cool retro thing one day, which people who remember going when they were kids want on their walls.
"That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
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Giggles_FunsworthBlight on DiscourseBay Area SprawlRegistered Userregular
I'm not even talking weed either.
Like you could probably rack up a bunch of like blueberries and strawberries and shit. Just straight up moving farming into an urban center.
I like the idea, but I wonder if the price of berries or other fully legal and completely non objectionable crops would pay the cost for the building and power for the hydroponic farm.
Oh power consumption would be nuts.
Solar farm on the roof?
I basically just keep coming up with ideas that cost a shit load already, and just need giant empty warehouses to work with.
I really want to do a server farm that captures the heat from the computers and uses it for aquaponics on a large scale.
How many IT people did you just gave seizures by suggesting aquaponics in the same place as a server farm? Particularly when they're close enough to share waste heat?
I'm sure you could engineer it so that even in the event of an "Oh Shit" moment you don't drown your servers, but there will always be an even more epic oh shit moment just waiting.
Edit: The last big box store (a Safeway) near me to close and be resurrected became a gym. Seems to work pretty well. Don't think they had to add any new windows to the building for it. Of course, there's been some other big boxes that haven't been picked up for anything.
Nah, Florida's perfect for it too. You'd just have the tanks below (or possibly next to but elevated) the servers. Florida doesn't really get natural disasters besides hurricanes and data centers have contingencies and generally just shut down and reroute traffic as much as possible if it seems like they're going to take a direct hit. As long as the servers are close enough to vent the heat to the fish tanks you're good but you're prolly gonna need an insulated wall between the two rooms anyway. If you really wanted to make it more efficient you could send the water from the bottom of the tanks through pipes to help cool the server room.
Edit: Also I am the person that writes the policies and figures out worst case scenarios and disaster planning. I am confident you could make it work in the right location and Florida fits the bill. It'd be less efficient in the summer but I think you could offset it with solar panels. Only place that might be better is the high desert, maybe parts of the Rust Belt?
I'm not even talking weed either.
Like you could probably rack up a bunch of like blueberries and strawberries and shit. Just straight up moving farming into an urban center.
I like the idea, but I wonder if the price of berries or other fully legal and completely non objectionable crops would pay the cost for the building and power for the hydroponic farm.
Oh power consumption would be nuts.
Solar farm on the roof?
I basically just keep coming up with ideas that cost a shit load already, and just need giant empty warehouses to work with.
I really want to do a server farm that captures the heat from the computers and uses it for aquaponics on a large scale.
How many IT people did you just gave seizures by suggesting aquaponics in the same place as a server farm? Particularly when they're close enough to share waste heat?
I'm sure you could engineer it so that even in the event of an "Oh Shit" moment you don't drown your servers, but there will always be an even more epic oh shit moment just waiting.
Edit: The last big box store (a Safeway) near me to close and be resurrected became a gym. Seems to work pretty well. Don't think they had to add any new windows to the building for it. Of course, there's been some other big boxes that haven't been picked up for anything.
Nah, Florida's perfect for it too. You'd just have the tanks below (or possibly next to but elevated) the servers. Florida doesn't really get natural disasters besides hurricanes and data centers have contingencies and generally just shut down and reroute traffic as much as possible if it seems like they're going to take a direct hit. As long as the servers are close enough to vent the heat to the fish tanks you're good but you're prolly gonna need an insulated wall between the two rooms anyway. If you really wanted to make it more efficient you could send the water from the bottom of the tanks through pipes to help cool the server room.
Edit: Also I am the person that writes the policies and figures out worst case scenarios and disaster planning. I am confident you could make it work in the right location and Florida fits the bill. It'd be less efficient in the summer but I think you could offset it with solar panels. Only place that might be better is the high desert, maybe parts of the Rust Belt?
I mean, in terms of catastrophic water damage, sever buildings already have plumbing and there's not much worse an aquaponics system could do than a water pipe in a wall busting. And aquaponics systems can be incredibly efficient if built properly. If you're running a data center, that is going to massively dwarf the electrical cost for any aquaponics system, lights included. LED tech has come a long way and you can build or acquire amazing high grow lights pretty cheaply now (with great longevity).
If anything I don't think it would be worth doing the combo setup just because I think you'd actually eventually run into a cooling issue rather than a heating one. A data center is going to put out far more heat than the aquaponics system is going to require, so any efforts to integrate the systems would have to depend on cut offs and independent fail safes and that would just make everything needlessly complex.
I wouldn't deny that TRU was screwed over and had their life cut short. But I doubt they were long for this world anyway.
Basically. Healthy companies don't become victims of leveraged buyouts because they know where that leads.
If shareholders vote to sell ten there's nothing a healthy company can do.
I wouldn't be surprised if Bain Capital was willing to pay significantly more than the market price, since their method of valuation would be different than for people who were actually planning to invest in their purchase.
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Giggles_FunsworthBlight on DiscourseBay Area SprawlRegistered Userregular
I'm not even talking weed either.
Like you could probably rack up a bunch of like blueberries and strawberries and shit. Just straight up moving farming into an urban center.
I like the idea, but I wonder if the price of berries or other fully legal and completely non objectionable crops would pay the cost for the building and power for the hydroponic farm.
Oh power consumption would be nuts.
Solar farm on the roof?
I basically just keep coming up with ideas that cost a shit load already, and just need giant empty warehouses to work with.
I really want to do a server farm that captures the heat from the computers and uses it for aquaponics on a large scale.
How many IT people did you just gave seizures by suggesting aquaponics in the same place as a server farm? Particularly when they're close enough to share waste heat?
I'm sure you could engineer it so that even in the event of an "Oh Shit" moment you don't drown your servers, but there will always be an even more epic oh shit moment just waiting.
Edit: The last big box store (a Safeway) near me to close and be resurrected became a gym. Seems to work pretty well. Don't think they had to add any new windows to the building for it. Of course, there's been some other big boxes that haven't been picked up for anything.
Nah, Florida's perfect for it too. You'd just have the tanks below (or possibly next to but elevated) the servers. Florida doesn't really get natural disasters besides hurricanes and data centers have contingencies and generally just shut down and reroute traffic as much as possible if it seems like they're going to take a direct hit. As long as the servers are close enough to vent the heat to the fish tanks you're good but you're prolly gonna need an insulated wall between the two rooms anyway. If you really wanted to make it more efficient you could send the water from the bottom of the tanks through pipes to help cool the server room.
Edit: Also I am the person that writes the policies and figures out worst case scenarios and disaster planning. I am confident you could make it work in the right location and Florida fits the bill. It'd be less efficient in the summer but I think you could offset it with solar panels. Only place that might be better is the high desert, maybe parts of the Rust Belt?
I mean, in terms of catastrophic water damage, sever buildings already have plumbing and there's not much worse an aquaponics system could do than a water pipe in a wall busting. And aquaponics systems can be incredibly efficient if built properly. If you're running a data center, that is going to massively dwarf the electrical cost for any aquaponics system, lights included. LED tech has come a long way and you can build or acquire amazing high grow lights pretty cheaply now (with great longevity).
If anything I don't think it would be worth doing the combo setup just because I think you'd actually eventually run into a cooling issue rather than a heating one. A data center is going to put out far more heat than the aquaponics system is going to require, so any efforts to integrate the systems would have to depend on cut offs and independent fail safes and that would just make everything needlessly complex.
I think it really depends on the size of the aquaponics system vs. the data center, and how efficient you can get the heat exchange. Ideally you run your numbers and it's mostly a passive system that turns a waste byproduct of your primary business into additional money. I'll finally have a garage next month, I'm going to try to play around with this. Also if the tanks start to overheat you can always vent the system outdoors.
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A more worker friendly solution would be to make sure that all employee pay, accrued vacation, pension obligations, etc. get paid first. Can't see that happening anytime soon.
Eh, there are always plenty of options for corruption on both sides. Right now our system hugely favors bank corruption, so the banks and investors are corrupt. The 'workers always get paid first' option gives the inverse incentive. The laws should be structured to incentivize good partnership between capitol investment, management and workers.
Exactly how does it provide an "inverse incentive"? Mind you, worker costs - salary, leave, pensions, etc. - are sunk costs, whereas bank debt is an investment with risk built in. There is no "both sides" here - one side has a very clear rationale for corruption, and the other side really doesn't.
Because workers have operational control of the company. Workers are not just low level employees, but everyone employed by the company, including managers and supervisors who have varying levels of control over things like compensation. The typical reason why salaries/pensions/severance and such are handled at the unsecured level is that it is very easy for an manager who realizes that their company is going under is to grant themselves (or their friends) a golden parachute, which would tend to push a company already in a rocky condition all the way to bankruptcy and allow them to completely deny any compensation to any creditor class that would be below them (why save any money at all for other unsecured creditors, when you could take it all yourself?). It is basically the inverse of the perverse incentives of leveraged buyout drawbacks, as noted.
First off, when people are talking about workers in this sense, they are not referring to the C-suite, who do have those powers. Instead, the term is usually referring to the rank and file and middle management, who have little discretionary power over such matters.
Second, it's telling whenever the view is put out that "if given the power, workers would fuck everyone else over", with little evidence to show for it. This view has always struck me as saying more about the person espousing it and how they see things, as opposed to how things really are.
It seems pretty easy to exclude c-levels and anyone else who has is high enough in the company for this to matter. Normal employees who have little to no insight into the business shouldn't be getting screwed out of their compensation when management fucks up. They also happen to be the people who are least capable of absorbing the loss.
there's a million different controls you could put in place to keep upper management from giving themselves bonus on the day before bankruptcy while still making sure that the rank-and-file employees get their final paycheck, and vacation payouts
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Really though, I think the financial vehicle used here needs to be examined, found to be used in a reckless or just destructive manner, and then whatever fine or penalty needs to be applied on that basis.
And I don't think that need to determine intent changes between leveraged buyouts or employee-first payments.
It doesn't matter who gets paid first; figure out if they ran the business into the ground deliberately and then charge them. Or vice versa.
Can you give examples of this actually happening?
Harbor Freight is a bit smaller on average but the newer ones are the biggest so that's a bit skewed. They're opening something like 200 stores this year.
Walmart also has those regional mini-walmarts that only have a couple departments, those could eventually expand to new areas.
TRU isn't the only retailer leaving its husks everywhere though, they'll never all get filled.
The point is to stop this from happening, not to catch the culprits running from the burning wreckage. That's why people are looking at the order of creditor payment - to make highly leveraged buyouts risky for banks, so in turn when Bain comes to them for the loans, they'll say "Are you mad? We're not risking that."
Popping back in here, again Orlando is sort of weird but a lot of our closed big box stores have been converted into a range of mixed use properties. From turning the interiors into large office complexes, industrial uses, or (more commonly) shared church/temple/moqsue buildings for a range of practitioners and faith groups too poor to build a church entirely themselves, but also too small to really need a full time rental. I know of at least three dead mega-marts converted to this use on my side of town.
We also have a chain of paintball arenas that have been buying up closed grocery-store strip malls, gutting the insides of all of them, and turn them into a range of combat zones.
A private arts college (Full Sail) bought out two adjacent Steinmart/Books A Million strip malls for their campus, then converted the service alleys between them into a faux Amsterdam-esuq riviera for student commons and filming for their video departments. It even has a flowing canal that is kept remarkably clean for Florida.
Recently, my city started tearing down the existing dead-strip plazas in the area to turn into small mixed-use structures. Usually a parking garage, a small retail and restaurant area, two or three floors of offices, and then apartments. You can fit a decent density city block on most of these mega stores, and our city is doing its damnedest to convert to a denser population to fix our suburban sprawl.
They don't have to be a fixture of the landscape. You just need investment from the city in terms of zoning and community members willing to use the land you have rather than drive to the edge of the suburbs to build a new, unnecessary hub. In Central Florida's case, hard regional requirements for a permanent rural boundary are causing us to push back in towards infill. We are talking in terms of decades, but most developers in such environments see empty box stores as quality opportunities, as the ground has already been graded and pulling up concrete is cheap.
Most of the money goes towards paying the interest on the loan. There is no payment on the principle of the loan, and no amount of profitability would have enticed Bain Capital to have paid back the loan. It just would have gone into Bain Capital's coffers. Toys R Us was dead as soon as the deal was signed, it just took a decade for the business to finally fail.
Hydroponics facilities.
If you go back 30 years this is what Bain and KKR was doing with US manufacturing companies. It's been the same pattern for nearly 50 years with some small variants. Like with pension laws -- at one time you did have the fully fund them. Until the investment class got those laws changed to where if a company promised to fulfill the structure at time of withdrawal by the participant it would be fine. Nevermind that the withdrawal might be in 25 or 30 years in the future and nothing in the law said that the company had to actually exist at that point in time...
What I'm trying to point out is that they've marched one step further up the economic chain. This is the retail level. Previously was the manufacturing level. Expect the talking heads to start in about how much better it is to shop online or better yet how Amazon and their workerless stores are the next wave of the future even harder than they are right now. Why? Because then we don' t have to worry about the investor class getting rid of those jobs and the rest of the retail world can be raiding just like this was. Yes that's a very cynical thought. I don't deny it, but with the amount of anti-worker sentiment swirling around these days it's hard not to think in that direction. I'm not saying we can't reverse direction. We can. It's just going to take a heluvalot of work in order to do so. Also, I'd love to have a world where most don't have to toil in labor but it's not like we're setting things up so that people could survive in that situation. Just the opposite, really. Again, that's cynical but I'm not being despairing about it.
This is the Sleepiest post
Like you could probably rack up a bunch of like blueberries and strawberries and shit. Just straight up moving farming into an urban center.
I like the idea, but I wonder if the price of berries or other fully legal and completely non objectionable crops would pay the cost for the building and power for the hydroponic farm.
Oh power consumption would be nuts.
Solar farm on the roof?
I basically just keep coming up with ideas that cost a shit load already, and just need giant empty warehouses to work with.
I really want to do a server farm that captures the heat from the computers and uses it for aquaponics on a large scale.
I'm sure you could engineer it so that even in the event of an "Oh Shit" moment you don't drown your servers, but there will always be an even more epic oh shit moment just waiting.
Edit: The last big box store (a Safeway) near me to close and be resurrected became a gym. Seems to work pretty well. Don't think they had to add any new windows to the building for it. Of course, there's been some other big boxes that haven't been picked up for anything.
Basically. Healthy companies don't become victims of leveraged buyouts because they know where that leads.
Vertical farming uses less water and overall a better idea than hydroponics
Yeah that's way more what I'm thinking is straight up vertical farms.
The thing is, all of us immediately recover from the seizure and try to figure out how to make it work.
For example: remove the roof and convert the building to a greenhouse of sorts.
Can't speak for anyone else, but I took my daughter there over the weekend because it's possibly her last chance to walk through a large toy store and pick something out, and I got the impression that a lot of other parents were there doing the same thing.
If they were actually branded with toys r us, I bet it was for speculatory souvenir resale. Seeing if toys r us becomes a cool retro thing one day, which people who remember going when they were kids want on their walls.
Nah, Florida's perfect for it too. You'd just have the tanks below (or possibly next to but elevated) the servers. Florida doesn't really get natural disasters besides hurricanes and data centers have contingencies and generally just shut down and reroute traffic as much as possible if it seems like they're going to take a direct hit. As long as the servers are close enough to vent the heat to the fish tanks you're good but you're prolly gonna need an insulated wall between the two rooms anyway. If you really wanted to make it more efficient you could send the water from the bottom of the tanks through pipes to help cool the server room.
Edit: Also I am the person that writes the policies and figures out worst case scenarios and disaster planning. I am confident you could make it work in the right location and Florida fits the bill. It'd be less efficient in the summer but I think you could offset it with solar panels. Only place that might be better is the high desert, maybe parts of the Rust Belt?
If shareholders vote to sell ten there's nothing a healthy company can do.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
I mean, in terms of catastrophic water damage, sever buildings already have plumbing and there's not much worse an aquaponics system could do than a water pipe in a wall busting. And aquaponics systems can be incredibly efficient if built properly. If you're running a data center, that is going to massively dwarf the electrical cost for any aquaponics system, lights included. LED tech has come a long way and you can build or acquire amazing high grow lights pretty cheaply now (with great longevity).
If anything I don't think it would be worth doing the combo setup just because I think you'd actually eventually run into a cooling issue rather than a heating one. A data center is going to put out far more heat than the aquaponics system is going to require, so any efforts to integrate the systems would have to depend on cut offs and independent fail safes and that would just make everything needlessly complex.
I wouldn't be surprised if Bain Capital was willing to pay significantly more than the market price, since their method of valuation would be different than for people who were actually planning to invest in their purchase.
I think it really depends on the size of the aquaponics system vs. the data center, and how efficient you can get the heat exchange. Ideally you run your numbers and it's mostly a passive system that turns a waste byproduct of your primary business into additional money. I'll finally have a garage next month, I'm going to try to play around with this. Also if the tanks start to overheat you can always vent the system outdoors.