: this is austin's blog :

What’s this? A BLOG post after months of total silence? Why yes, that’s exactly what it is! It’s been 4 months since my last post, give or take a few days (in blog time, that’s like 6 eternities.) I wonder if anyone is even going to read this. I notice that I hit over 10,000 unique views during my absence. That's a shame, it definitely should have been a celebration post.

What could possibly have ripped me out of my zero-internet-presence-funk? A Flickr comment I left on one of my recently posted pictures has produced anger in me. (Well, really it’s a combination of the previous point and procrastinating studying for a final exam 6 hours away.)

So yeah, here’s the comment in question.

Basically everything I would put in my post, I’ve already said there, and I’m too lazy to block quote it or re-state it here, so just hit the link and read it there. As for here, I’m just going to rant a bit about how money = justice.

See, if we had money we wouldn’t be renting and thus not have this problem. But this is not the way it is thus, we rent. We rent because we don’t have a lot of expendable income. Because of that, obviously, we can’t afford legal representation, especially not during an upheaval like suddenly having to move in a month in a half. We actually only had a month but we managed to negotiate an extra 2 weeks (JOY!) and get our damage deposit.

Optimistic Response: Maybe some shred of a soul still existed in the heart of the owners and they saw this as help (since they were screwing us with the “re-zoning” compensation anyway).

Pessimistic Response: Through careful evaluation of the costs of arbitration hearings vs. kicking us out promptly so they could demolish the house on schedule with the buffer of the legal compensation they should have given us, they decided that they would save the most money by giving us a break.

(Note: If the contractors are kicking holes in walls before we’ve left, they’ve obviously already been through the whole quoting process and a game plan has already been set up. They definitely had been planning the destruction for quite some time.)

Back to the rant: Self-representation in an arbitration hearing is common, but who has the time and resources to organize a case when you have to find a house and pack and organize a move in a month and a half? Add the large budget burden of the cost of moving and there’s not a whole lot of human resources left to fight.

And so it goes. Money buys justice, The economically secure get to shit on the less-secure and the commerce machine marches on. Isn’t capitalism wonderful?