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//Only after a crash should// |
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You misspelled might, there's no d in it. |
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At least the 'intended' direction of travel is in the right
place. |
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But there are probably unintended consequences you might
not like. |
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Might be better ways to achieve the desired outcome. |
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Government interference in markets is ultimately always negative. |
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While somewhat paradoxically a complete & utter lack of any
government interference (regulation, laws, taxation & rules)
also often leads to negative results. |
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For the many if not the few. |
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Balance & getting it right is the key. |
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If you tax rental income at 50% then most landlords, who already ignore maintenance issues, will stop fixing everything entirely,
Most will default on their mortgages since rental income is what pays off the loans.
The glut of foreclosures would flood the housing market causing property values to plummet, and whole districts to become slums. |
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So, in short, your plan would guarantee mass evictions and bankrupt many people. |
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Those houses from defaulted & foreclosed mortgages would
then be bought by others for knock down
prices either to rent (with the smaller mortgages
needed
making it sustainably profitable again, or for cash) or to live
in by
those
that
couldn't previously afford to buy. |
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So, in short, after a brief hiatus you get a market
adjustment
& everyone's housed again. |
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This is a bludgeon where you need more of a
scalpel. I am a landlord because we could not afford
to sell our old place but needed more space than 2
bedrooms and 110 sq meters. Plenty of people are
still upside-down like this in their mortgage vs.
value. |
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There's one of the more obvious (unintended?)
consequences ^ |
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People you like may suffer financially along with those you
want to hammer. |
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But you may consider that an acceptable broken egg to
make
your omelette with, after all, for someone to gain someone
has
to lose, that's the nature of redistribution of wealth. |
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> This is a bludgeon where you need more of a scalpel |
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Can you think of a scalpel that would solve the problem? |
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AFAIK, People need one house and they need that house to
live in. |
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People who are still upside-down in their mortgages
but couldn't stay in their first home had no choice
but to rent. |
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On the other side of the equation are the slumlords.
IMaybe if you rent out more than one home you
should have some kind of sliding scale of taxation to
discourage larger corporate purchases. |
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But that also hits rental complexes, so even more
unintended consequences. |
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This is hardly a new idea. Land Value Tax based on taxing the rental value of property has been around for a century or more. See the writings of Henry George. There are even website discussion forums devoted entirely to extracting wealth from property owners to reduce the price of both renting and buying a house. |
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Not all problems have a solution. |
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While it is disagreeable (particularly for politicians) to admit "There is no fix for this", nevertheless such situations are far from uncommon. |
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It is a sign of intellectual maturity to be able to state "There is no obvious solution". This does not imply that the search for a solution should cease, nor that a non-obvious solution can be found, or changed circumstances reveal a solution. |
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Many mathematical problems are of this nature. |
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Consider the development of a vaccine for the common cold. A vaccine can be made for known variant strain A, but by the time it can be manufactured and distributed, the virus has mutated into variants A2, A5, B4- B7 and E. |
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Thus a vaccine to prevent the common cold is extremely challenging, and there is no current solution. The highly dynamic nature of the problem precludes a solution using current techniques. This does not mean that no solution exists. |
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Trying to apply a rule-based laggy solution to a large scale highly dynamic problem is unworkable. It's difficult enough to produce "self-driving" cars and autopilots, and those tasks are tightly bounded with minimal decision-response latency and small aperture uncertainty. |
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Social engineering is noted for the Law of Unintended Consequences making frequent and embarrassing inputs... |
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//then there is a huge jump upwards during the bailouts// |
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The idea includes //remove all exemptions of renting out
properties// |
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Removing or reducing financial incentives
to renters is at the very core of this idea so bailouts to
ameliorate the intended effect would be
silly, it's counterproductive to try for an
effect then try to counteract it, so, purely for the
purposes of the idea, I think we can rule out any
bailouts. |
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Disclaimer: this is just an observation, please don't take it
in any way as a denial of
the ability of governments to do stupidly counterproductive
things. |
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<Cover's microphone with hand> |
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This one's on to us, put him at the top of the list. |
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<Cover's microphone with hand/> |
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We heard that. And he's already on our list. |
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That's alright, I gave your address when I filled out the
forms. |
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Thanks, since we moved the Cube from Fermi to Alden, some of the mail's taking a while to be forwarded. |
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The neighborhood had really gone down since those blasted Reticulants moved in to Tsiolkovsky next door and set up their while-u-wait spacedrive servicing business. Banging and crashing at all hours ... |
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Interesting links, [zen_tom]. There's a graph which shows
productivity/wage divergence appearing dramatically from the
time of the Nixon Shock. There's a summary of the Nixon Shock
as comprising price freezes, wage freezes, import tariffs and the
floating of the currency. |
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Now, of those, all but the floating of the currency proved short-
lived. So, in your opinion, how does the transition to free-floating
fiat currencies lead to productivity/wage divergence? Is it
simply a matter of making capital more mobile than labour (and
hence better able to exploit opportunities and apply pressure)? |
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//Government interference in markets is ultimately always negative// |
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I know, right!? Who needs the FTC anyway with its demands that publicly traded companies follow GAAP and making it illegal to label cow urine as orange juice. We need to go back to the good old days when 12 year old boys worked in the coal mines to become men! And minimum wage! what's that about anyway!? We all know the if it were abolished there would be enough $3 per hour jobs to feed everyone. |
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Tracing down mislabeled products, stopping good honest snake oil salesmen, enforcing contracts, I haven't been able to make any money for months what with having to change venues every two weeks for their preposterous "419 prevention" programs. The government needs to get out of the markets and stay out! |
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Government interference in markets is clearly multi faceted. |
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We wouldn't need a minimum wage if people weren't
assholes. |
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I don't believe markets create products fast enough to instil
confidence. Like a product that is an orange juice standard.
So you can't sell cow urine as orange juice. |
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// if people weren't assholes // |
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But people are assholes, provably so. All of them. Throughout history, humans of all ages, races, religions and nations consistently behave as complete and total assholes. All evidence shows this to be so. |
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The hypothesis "All people are assholes" may not be provable, but it closely fits the observed facts. |
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The Mk. I. human is incredibly unsatisfactory. It's not fixable. Get over it. |
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So you need government interference. |
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One bunch of assholes that are bigger than the rest. |
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That much you have grasped; but you have also identified the very reason that it is always doomed to failure. |
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"Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, we submit that, with that self-incriminating admission, the case against [Chrolological] is proven beyond reasonable doubt". |
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What's the case against me? |
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You want humans not to behave like fools and assholes, but that is what humans are. |
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It's like asking tigers to go vegetarian. A tiger is a big furry thing that kills and eats other animals. It's what tigers do. If it didn't do that, it wouldn't be a tiger.. |
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Humans are foolish, venal, greedy, inconsiderate and unpleasant. They always have been and always will be. How do you propose to modify this highly predictable behaviour ? |
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//the case against [Chrolological] is proven beyond
reasonable doubt// |
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//You want humans not to behave like fools and assholes// |
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I believe [8th] is aggregating a prime computation across all
available evidence of your posts to date rather than merely
on
this particular idea [chron], we know it can't be based on
just this
idea because
this one relies on humans
//venal, greedy, inconsiderate and unpleasant//
nature. |
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Damn ! Borg mentats, that complicates things. |
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Speaking of which when did you have time to assimilate a
mentat [8th]? |
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//foolish, venal, greedy, inconsiderate and unpleasant// |
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These are all relative terms. Therefore it is logically vacuous to
apply them indiscriminately to everyone. |
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We present the statistical general case. Statistically, all humans meet the criteria to some extent. There will be outliers. Some individuals may be very foolish, but not particularly unpleasant, compared to the mean value. Their placement along the distribution is interesting, but does not influence the overall result. |
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It does not invalidate that [Chron] desires humans to behave in ways different from their consistently observed ones, without proposing any practical method for achieving this. |
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[pertinax] the significant link in my view is that the shift to fiat currencies
enabled governments under pressure to eschew (in the short to mid term)
old fashioned economic notions such as the balance of payments and
spending controls. They were suddenly free to spend and rather than tax,
trade or go to war to make up any shortfalls, they were instead able to
inflate away the value of any sovereign borrowing they'd gotten themselves
into. |
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A government pound/dollar borrowed today can be evaporated into
nothing if you inflate the currency, enabling you to pay it off much later
with a greatly reduced real value. This bit of sneaky accounting means
that as long as inflation stays under 5%, a government can effectively tax
their workforce without them noticing. |
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Commodities that are traded at the point of consumption will increase in
price but we rarely notice their appreciation because we're too busy
consuming them. |
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Property is different, it retains its value, and is never truly "consumed" so
over time, in an inflationary system, it increases in price, benefiting the
owner by acting as a float in a rising tide of inflation. |
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This is the root cause for nationwide property prices extending beyond the
affordability of much of the population. Yes, there are additional pockets
where prices are further lead by local desirability, but we're talking an
international problem here - property is expensive whether it's in Europe,
the US, Asia or elsewhere. This isn't a local problem, though populist
politicians would like to pretend otherwise, blaming immigrants, elites,
landlords or whoever else might fit the simple narrative. It's a political
crowbar, if you can spin a story that resonates well enough with enough
people, you can demonise a slice of the population and get into power. But
the true cause is systematic. Meanwhile, those who hold property are
insulated from the problem, while those that don't are made even worse
off. |
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This effect is best reflected in the wages/productivity deviation - wages
are consumed by inflation, while technology provides a driver for increased
productivity. The average worker in the last 50 years has become squeezed
between the two. |
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How to solve the problem? The bond markets used to be a reasonably good
control, effectively increasing the price of debt wherever a government
looked like it was doing something silly - but - given the ability to self-
inflate, this just isn't real and especially post 2008, I think any remaining
pretence around that being a proper control is likely to fall by the
wayside. |
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You could perform the taxation controls as described in the idea, but I
think the chances are, people would still benefit from owning and renting
property, if only as a continued inflation-hedge, perhaps increasing rents
to offset the additional tax burden. So in effect, the idea might increase
the disparity rather than solve it. |
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Building a lot more houses would be another short-term solution, but since
once these were owned/occupied, the inflationary pressure that's inherent
in the system would likely push their values out of people's normal price
range in the medium term and we're back to square one. |
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The only real way to solve the problem would be to return to some non-
fiat currency model - and that brings with it the old ways of dealing with
sovereign debt crises; default, war, revolution and famine. |
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// war, revolution and famine. // |
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Remind us again, which is the one on the pale horse ? Clint Eastwood ? |
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Interestingly, in "The Eiger Sanction" which stars the said Mr. Eastwood, reference is made to "Agent Wormwood", wormwood being the name of a "star that falls to earth" in the Book of Revelation <link>, and in the movie "Pale Rider", Eastwood plays the lead role, another reference to the same Biblical text. |
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Go on, dismiss it as "just coincidence" ... |
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//wages are consumed by inflation// |
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Sp. "savings", shirley? Wages which are consumed as fast as
earned are, as you noted, not affected by inflation, unless you
assume that inflation is of assets only, not of labour costs, in
which case you've sort-of begged the question, haven't you? |
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To put it another way, if what you say were true, then the biggest
losers from the arbitrary inflation of currencies would be not
struggling proletarians (who are kept in work, however
wastefully, by all that public spending), but rather, holders of
government bonds. As you know, bond markets differ from
equity markets partly in the way that they look at you funny if
you come to the table with less than a million dollars. The kind
of person who holds government bonds is generally not the kind
who is struggling to get a foot on the property ladder. |
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Therefore I suggest that some rethinking of your theory might be
in order. |
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// Wages which are consumed as fast as earned are, as you noted, not affected by inflation // |
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Not true. During inflation, the real value of wages falls constantly, converging on "subsistence" (Iron Law, again). Workers must constantly press for wage "increases" merely to maintain their current standard of living. Obtaining a "merit" increase on top of that becomes more difficult. "Labour cost inflation " is equivalent to "labour value erosion". |
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As has been pointed out, inflation benefits governments because it writes down long term debt. |
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That just destroys the private rental market. |
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The Law of Supply and Demand will, eventually, force an adjustment. |
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It never works, but that's not an answer people want to hear, so they vote for liars who promise the impossible, then whine when it all goes horribly wrong. |
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The real answer to that is to destroy trust and belief. When politics loses credibility (as religion is in many geographies) a bleak realism will become the ruling paradigm. |
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Up to the Enlightenment, religious belief was ubiquitous. Coincidentally with the Industrial Revolution ("Rise of the Machines", ha ha) belief began a long, slow, terminal decline. In many Western nations, excluding immigrants, religious conviction is progressively disappearing except as a social convention (hatchings, matchings and plantings) and a cultural curiosity. Observe the huge numbers of buildings that have been demolished or repurposed. Repeated, highly publicized scandals have discredited religious hierarchies - particularly Catholics - at every level. |
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Thus it will be with politics. Without "trust" and belief, existing systems fail. When everything is constantly questioned, and subject to unrelenting scrutiny - and data flow can no longer be controlled - those institutions that are not rigorous and evidence-based will shrivel like a slug under a blowtorch. |
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When "fake news" is commonplace, ALL news becomes suspect. The only remedy is to assess the validity of sources, cross-reference, and apply critical thinking. This is not easy, and demands mental discipline, but is possible. |
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Bear in mind that mass representative democracy in large nation-states is only about three centuries old. It was a workable solution within a specific context; that context has now changed radically. |
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[pert] so here's the key bit - consumable prices and wages (subject to some lag as 8th
points out) go up together as per classic inflation. But the effective supply of consumables,
due to the increased productivity over the same period has increased too - based on this
hugely increased availability, prices for consumables should have gone through the floor.
Since workers negotiate their wage increases based on the going intuitive rate for
consumable goods, they've managed to settle for less and less over time. |
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Meanwhile, those things whose supply has not been increased, and this would tend to be
non consumable assets like property and (...can't think of anything else right now) which
would normally be accounted for outside of the normal wage-negotiations have risen far
more than might otherwise be expected. |
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// those things whose supply has not been increased, // |
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"Buy land - they've stopped making it ..." (Attrib. Mark Twain). |
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A thoughtful and cogent analysis. Remind us again why you come here ? |
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// can't think of anything else right now // |
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Unique art objects, natural gemstones, some precious metals. |
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Objects of little or no intrinsic value to which the market assigns exceptional value through scarcity will tend to "beat" inflation. This is because humans are very stupid. We have inspected a number of items of "great art" at close quarters and inevitably concluded "It's good/average/rubbish*, but not worth the value the market places on it". |
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Well, they are making more land. See the
islands off Dubai and China, the Hawaiian
volcanoes... |
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Is there a less efficient space for maximizing
surface area with minimal matter than a sphere? |
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What we need to do is to turn the available land
into a fractalized sphere with infinite surface area
and zero volume so that everyone still gets sunlight
but we have more available real estate. |
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Or maybe just make the earth more lumpy. |
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// they are making more land // |
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The Dutch are way ahead of that... |
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But coastal erosion claims a goodly area each year, and the sites suitable for dredge-and-build are quite limited. Volcanos are useful, but not exactly attuned to human requirements, and have a nasty tendency to go off bang. What price a house in Kalapana Gardens now ? Or that nice little bungalow just outside Plymouth (Montserrat) ? |
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Yet nations like Hungary are being damaged by rural depopulation, and property is available at knock-down prices ... |
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Two big dikes either end of the channel perhaps? would make
invading france easier. |
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It hardly seems worth the trouble and expense, when the Germans are much more conveniently situated, and have a good (82%) record of success in that rather specialized field of endeavour ... |
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True but it's always more fun to measure yourself against
others, ever played chess against yourself? not so much fun,
I'm sure they'd appreciate the competition, we could take it in
turns, maybe throw in the odd capture the flag with the first
to reach Paris as the winner ... |
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//Since workers negotiate their wage increases based on the
going intuitive rate for consumable goods, they've managed to
settle for less and less over time.// |
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So the problem is faulty intuition in an inflationary environment,
and not any objective change in the labour/capital power
relationship? It's believable as *a* causal factor, but I suspect
that other factors are also involved. |
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// first to reach Paris as the winner ... // |
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Presumably the start line is the Rhine or Meuse, and the contestants pick their own route through either western Belgium, or the Ardennes ? |
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"... do not pass Eben Emael, do not collect 200 prisoners... " |
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//Since workers negotiate their wage increases based on the going intuitive rate for consumable goods, they've managed to settle for less and less over time.// |
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For some workers that's true, maybe even most, but others contract out their services and, if they are worth their salt, name their own price according to demand and cost of supplies.
If they are smart they invest in property rather than toys and fun. |
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There seems to be confusion between government regulation (to prevent fraud etc.) and intervention (to manipulate market behaviour). |
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Regulation can be useful- intervention rarely so. Regulation does not necessarily distort the operation of normal market processes, if kept within limits. If excessive, it stifles innovation and indeed encourages bad practice as clever players exploit social and technical change to "design round" the rules, which always lag far behind the actual situation. |
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It always begs the question, why does anyone really *want*
to reach Paris? To improve German attempts at wineries
with French land? |
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I propose a tax proposal tax on people that propose taxes. |
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so, what rate will you be paying? |
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// why does anyone really *want* to reach Paris? // |
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Because then when you then leave, anywhere - anywhere at all - is an improvement. |
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Regulation of markets is intervention in markets. |
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Shut up, and drink your nice glass of fresh cow urine. |
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// Regulation of markets is intervention in markets // |
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This is true, but becomes an argument concerning semantics. |
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Regulation can be thought of as setting boundaries and rules, but then allowing events to play themselves out; intervention is trying to produce an outcome. |
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Consider a sports match. There is a playing area, published rules, and a referee. During the game, the referee punishes rule violations, but otherwise the best team wins. Thast's regulation. |
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If the referee starts handicapping one team to try and produce a specific result that would not otherwise occur, that's intervention. |
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The interventions of the CMA are necessarily trying to force
an outcome: the elimination of abuse of dominant positions
by undertakings, and - of late - the promotion of outcomes
favourable to consumers. |
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Definitely an unpleasant taint of socialism there ... |
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It's an interesting point though - what do we mean by markets? |
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For some they are the worst type of venal, warfare-by-any-other-means
competitive bear-pits, where anything goes, and from which suckers never
return - further, they are inherently corrupt and produce weird distorted results
full of monopolies, droughts, mercilessly exploited externalities, waste and
senseless consumption. |
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And to others, they are more Smithian deliverers of solutions, engines of
progress, ever guided by invisible hands that somehow have everyone's best
interests at heart. |
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Somewhere there should be a thing that delivers what we collectively want -
and we should figure out what it is, how much regulation it ought to have, what
the rules are best likely to deliver the results we're looking for - and then give
that thing a name. |
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Until we can agree on this thing, whenever people get together to talk about
markets - some will be talking from one conceptual standpoint, and others from
the opposite side. |
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// Somewhere there should be a thing that delivers what we collectively want // |
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No, there can't be, because of goal divergence between the members of the population. |
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Those who are the "movers and shakers" have totally different objectives from the bulk of those who participate in the market. They are few; the market is many. |
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Those who design and create systems often - but not invariably - seek to extract resource from many without undue complaint (it is a bad parasite that kills its host). |
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Consider Edison. Edison did not invent devices for the general betterment of mankind; he did it to become immensely wealthy, and succeeded. Claims to have worked "for the benefit of all" were retrospective window-dressing. |
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It cannot be denied that the work of Edison, Ford, Westinghouse, Colt and Stephenson has ultimately benefited the bulk of the population, but that doesn't mean they did it "for" the bulk of the population; they did it for the normal human motives of greed and self-interest ... because someone gave them money to do it. |
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Alexander Fleming was an academic researcher. He was driven by a spirit of enquiry and produced a useful discovery. He received honours and awards, but was only ever modestly well off. For him, the recognition of his work was presumably sufficient. |
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The bulk of the population benefit from both light bulbs and antibiotics. But the motivations of the creators were radically different. |
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The vast bulk of consumers are motivated neither by the desire for great wealth and power, nor by the spirit of scientific enquiry. Thus the objectives and world view of those who innovate, and those who consume, are irreconcilably different. |
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//The vast bulk of consumers are motivated neither by the
desire for great wealth and power, nor by the spirit of
scientific enquiry// |
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//Thus the objectives and world view of those who
innovate, and those who consume, are irreconcilably
different// |
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I think you underestimate the vast bulk of consumers, a
little bit, or rather overestimate the divergence between
them & the two
classes of movers & shakers you refer to. I
for instance would consider myself part of that bulk yet if
I had the money I'm pretty sure I'd be getting up to some
pretty weird shit simply for the hell of it. |
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But that's exactly the point. Mr. Musk is building Hyperloop and SpaceX. No-one makes him do that. |
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Some innovators are self-starters, like Edison. Some are funded by academia, like Fleming. But both of those individuals had a necessary combination of drive, imagination, intellect and dumb luck. Being at the right place at the right time is a big part, too. |
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If you can think up an invention that someone else will pay you money for, and can protect the intellectual property, you can become wealthy. That doesn't mean you will. There are many hurdles to jump. |
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Most members of the population lack one or more of the necessary factors for success, otherwise the planet would be overrun with designs for automatic hands-free bottle openers and self-cleaning spectacles. |
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What I mean is that the perceived divergence of motivation
you assign them isn't so much inherent in their character as
imposed by the financial constraints & environment
(educational & societal as well as financial) they
find themselves in, not for all obviously, but for a lot more
than not. |
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Does that make sense to you? |
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I don't mean do you agree with me, just do you understand
what I'm saying? because I'm not sure I've put across what I
mean with good clarity. |
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//Some innovators are self-starters/// //Some
are funded by academia// //combination of
drive,
imagination, intellect// //dumb luck// |
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I think we're in agreement :) |
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//Some innovators are self-starters, like Edison.// |
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The man was an IP vampire depending on theft to sustain a mommy-inflated and completely undeserved ego.
The only thing he ever self-started was theft for wealth. Not exactly an original concept as I believe he was incapable of original thought. The asshole sure knew how to swindle though, I'll give him that. |
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Yet he was a success, in terms that most would consider "success". |
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Thus he was suited to his environment. A lack of moral sense, ruthless disregard for the well being of others, and other unpleasant but useful characteristics gave him an advantage. |
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This is called "natural selection". It is inevitable. That which is not suited does not survive; that that is, does - disregarding external factors such as errant asteroids, novel pathogens, or introduced predators. |
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It is unpleasant, unfair, and bears no correspondence to any human inventions such as ethics or morality. It's also how the Universe operates. Get over it. |
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Suit yourself. You see, the Universe doesn't care. It isn't even aware that you exist, because it has no awareness. It's not even capable of malice. It just is. |
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There's nothing that you, or anyone else, can do. You're helpless in the face of its overwhelming, implacable indifference. |
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Intervention vs. regulation: |
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Your sports analogy doesn't work so well, in that the lines
get blurry when the stakes are higher; say one team
decides that they're going to steal the other team's
uniforms or do some other things that aren't necessarily
found as being against the "written rules" because they
are so outside the normal expectation. Because there,
frankly, are no written rules besides what we decide by
mutual agreement, and where one group sees preventing
the other team from committing theft as intervention,
another group just sees it as regulation. |
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And then, as always, the ones with the best lawyers win. |
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Unless humanity does the rational thing, and hangs all the lawyers ... |
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No, it's a very imperfect analogy, because it's, well, a simplistic analogy. What did you expect ? If you want better, you'll have to pay to come to one of our Ruthless Galactic Domination for Fun and Profit seminars. Nice venues, free bar, buffet lunches, swimming pool, gym .... |
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//There's nothing that you, or anyone else, can do. You're helpless in the face of its overwhelming, implacable indifference.// |
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I have come to understand that it is our goal as a species to learn to bend the universe to our individual wills.
Some wills are stronger than others. As you said, survival of the fittest and all that.
The universe can remain indifferent to its bendyness all it wants or doesn't want.
The amoral sociopaths running this shit show have had their day. It's time for a little light to be shone down into the emotionless self serving pits which they deny are their souls. |
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Since I can already hear you thinking; "How's that working for you?"
I would have to preemptively say that it is has been working exceedingly well for me. Like off-the-charts weirdly metaphysically well in fact.
Where there's a will... there's a way. |
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I make absolutely no apologies for that. |
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That's why your species consistently tops the ratings on the Galactic Comedy Channel. |
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I'm fairly good at bending the universe in a very small
amount. Unfortunately the only way I can increase my
influence upon its shape is to enormously increase my mass
in a most unhealthy way, and that tends to get space
travelers all upset in that it invalidates their last Universal
Positioning System subscription update. |
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//There's nothing that you, or anyone else, can do.// |
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My experience so far suggests otherwise. YMMV. |
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//The ones with the best lawyers win.//
<strikethrough>lawyers</sr> insert <offensive and defensive
capabilities> |
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Ah, Sir wishes to sign up for the next seminar, then... ? |
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I'm on a slightly restricted budget right now, so when's the
asymmetrical
warfare seminar? |
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Seminars? That's what you refer to them as
nowadays? There's some choice semantics for a
surreptitious parasitic invasion inserted by a
glass of icewater, while you drone on about tachyon
particle physics. Of course, I suppose even
scientologists use terms like auditing to sound all
above-board. |
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