Zathbog of Planet Cibwarv wants us to stop blaming him for buying up all the property in your favorite big city, ensuring that even families with solid double incomes can barely afford to rent, and will never own a home of their own; after all, you should see the hardships he endured while building up his immense off-planet fortunes in the the interstellar mining industry.
Seriously, though, from my perspective, real estate in cities like New York and San Francisco is simply a great way to protect space cash. If you think economies on Earth are fragile, you should see what happens to Cibwarvian currencies when Vergharsh Belt militants train a plasmatic annihilation beam on our central bank. Your planet, on the other hand, is safe, and not only because you’re not advanced enough to participate in intergalactic wars. Contrary to your Earth-centric science fiction, no one is going to invade your planet to steal valuable natural resources. You don’t have any. But what you do have is a lot of real estate that no one but incredibly rich people (and aliens) can afford. And not just in cities like New York, San Francisco, and Miami. My friend SBBGGGG!!% was telling me just the other day to think about buying in places like Nashville and Denver, because prices in bigger cities have already become too inflated by wealthy alien investors.
I know what you’re thinking: all this is great for you, Zathbog, but what about us Americans? Are we just supposed to be O.K. pissing our money away to landlords, so that you—a being who lives thousands of parsecs away and has three external stomachs covered in bioluminescent slime—can shelter your assets? The short answer is, well, yes. Check back with me when you’re creating jobs in three galaxies.
Stop Complaining That I, Zathbog of Planet Cibwarv, Am Inflating U.S. Housing Prices [Jake Tuck/New Yorker]
(If you hit the paywall, you can bypass it by opening a private browsing window and pasting the link into the location bar)
(via Ellen Kushner)
(Image: UFO looking for the winners…, Gilberto Santa Rosa, CC-BY)