>And suddenly houses become affordable

Except they definitely won't.

Because the issues isn't construction costs. It's artificial scarcity created by Zoning Laws that say you have to put that new home on a much bigger plot of land (of which there is only so much in a give area) or you can't build it at all. Meanwhile, taller buildings with more units are also outlawed by zoning in most areas.

Because land isn't an elastic good- there's no way to make more of it just because its price goes up: this means people can charge basically as much as buyers can afford for it. There isn't real competition.

The only way to solve this problem is to relax zoning laws to the point where it's possible to build more housing in areas where it is currently in high Demand than there is demand for it. Which means smaller lots for single-family homes and allowing duplexes and mid-rise apartments in a lot more areas, basically.

Until then, all this research into new construction techniques may be good for the environment (since most of the new technologies are "green") but it won't do diddly-squat for housing prices. The issue is artificial scarcity, not production prices.

The actual cost of BUILDING a home (and not the cost of acquiring land and then permits- another source of artificial costs) and THEN building on it is usually a very small fraction of the price new homes of that size and quality actually sell for in an area.

>she was not amused.

Maybe because it's really a poverty thing?

Old people get prescribed Hearing Aids, but can't afford to use them because of ridiculous price-gouging on the batteries.

>Managing a state is very different from managing a company

Indeed.

Singapore is a nation that enshrines Capitalism in its laws and Constitution. This is far from the only example.

This is not a good thing.

Tacitus was a late Imperial historian writing in a period of relative peace, and known to be subject to exaggeration and outright flattery at times to ingratiate himself with the powerful.

That being said, he was most definitely talking about garrison troops. Legions did occasionally travel with substantial swine herds to eat, but nowhere near the scale of 1 hog per day per 40 men. A figure of around 1 hog per day per 250 men might be more accurate for an army on a prolonged campaign.

Note that few legions in Tacitus' day actually went on such long campaigns. The legions were generally fairly sedentary at the time, only marching relatively short distances to deal with border incursions.

The Dacian Wars towards the end of Tacitus' life were one major exception to this rule: and although the legions were exceptionally well supplied during them as Dacia was quite close to major Greek and Illaryian holdings of Rome (and connected to them by navigable rivers), you'll likely find that meat consumption for the actively canpaigning legions even then fell substantially below this figure of 1 per 60 if you look into any reliable statistics available for the wars.

>Now, man cannot live on bread alone. Especially if you want them fit to fight. An oz of red meat has about 75 calories.

You're completely wrong.

Armies on the march DIDN'T eat any substantial amount of meat in ancient times.

Most armies existed on an almost entirely grain-based diet as late as the Roman Empire. Legionaries famously ate a sort of porridge for most meals on campaign, and were punished by being fed lower quality or less desirable grains (such as barley rather than wheat) if they did something wrong.

Meat is a modern luxury. It's not something armies could afford to travel with large quantities of.

Your other assumptions are ridiculously far off too. The total army of a nation would almost never be deployed all in one place (it simply wasn't logistically feasible, as you deduced). So, maybe half the Army would be defending dozens of cities in the homelamd as holding forces, and the other half would be spread into 3 or 4 large fighting forces and one to two dozen smaller skirmishing forces along the border with a foe.

The larger armies would only gather together right before a battle. The Romans even had a maxim for this: "March divided, fight concentrated."

No it's not.

As earlier comments have pointed out, mercenaries were EXTREMELY common in this time period.

These numbers likely included many, many mercenaries who were on some kind of retainer to serve if needed- but served other city states at times as well.

Pretty spot-on.

'Cept I don't think they don't know better.

I suspect the malice and lack of understanding is intentional. A lot of politicians get elected through resentment-fueled politics nowadays.

This ain't about me bro.

Exactly.

Make participation mandatory, but don't make it a prerequisite to get off the streets.

>imagine trying to get clean when every night you are sleeping in a different place where it's not really safe

Exactly this.

Asking homeless people with addictions to be completely, 100% clean for an entire month before providing them housing is horribly unrealistic, and grounded in a lack of empathy or understanding of what these peoples' experiences are like...

>they require separate, layered solutions.

Solutions which are extremely, extremely difficult to provide in a sufficiently reliable manner while a person is still living on the streets or in shelters.

>Stupid as in staying sober?

Stupid because it's incredibly difficult for someone struggling with addiction to BECOME (not "stay" as you misleadingly and falsely claim) sober while out on the streets.

Experience proves it's extremely difficult for an addict to become sober even when they have never been homeless. Doing it while still living on the streets, for an entire month (not some more realistic, reasonable requirement, like a few days) is nigh-impossible.

Asking for near-impossible things as a prerequisite to providing someone help is wishful thinking at best, and malice fueled by resentment and pride at worst...

>30-day sober before entry

>housing first

This was the problem.

It's not really housing first if you start adding difficult requirements (staying sober an entire month while dealing with the extreme stress of homelessness and likely untreated mental illness is extremely hard and not exactly a low bar to entry for someone with an addiction) to even get the housing.

The whole point of Housing First is that by giving people a stable place to live, it becomes feasible to actually start dealing with problems like addiction (a difficult issue to tackle even for people who have never been homeless).

Thankfully, this kind of thing is self-limiting.

The more expensive crops become (due to diminishing usable topsoil) relative to the cost of things like fertilizer and hiring land use experts to advise on how to reduce erosion, the more these will be used.

Looking at any trend and projecting it infinitely into the future without change is always a terrible idea.

Feedback looks exist everywhere. Trends will generally either accelerate, or slow down and level off, with time.