Posts by BenWilson
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What a bizarre story. I guess the problem, as with so many rape stories, is the difficulty that police have in getting evidence, when all there is is witnesses who won't testify. They may be completely sure that these guys are doing what they're doing, but apart from giving warnings (which they did) they can't touch them. But you're right, Facebook at the very least should not be condoning it.
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I watched The Block, off and on, mostly because my wife wants to veg out before bed after a hard day. I felt a tiny bit sorry for the couple that only made $25,000, until I remembered that several of the people in the top 8 on The Contender not only went home empty handed after 10 weeks, but also having been knocked out cold on live TV.
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Hard News: Movie Disaster, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Our country is smaller economically than many US cities.
Yes, 20 or so. Population wise, it's only smaller than New York, though, and Auckland is big enough to be one of the top 8 largest US cities, pipping San Diego at the post.
But my point is that within NZ, there aren't multiple sources that can be set up to compete with each other to subsidize industries, so they can't jump around with anywhere near the ease they could in the US, especially compared to California. But mind you, that in itself is a barrier to setting up for any such industry, and the subsidy would need to be far lower to attract one.
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Hard News: Movie Disaster, in reply to Bart Janssen,
While that does make it less of a good idea in the US, I think that their federal system might make that easier to pull of than it would be here. Our cities and towns aren’t doing the subsidization, it’s the central government, and there is no state government in the mix. Only multinationals could slip in and out of here with the kind of ease that you could just changes states as a US based company. Furthermore, the waters are even more muddied in the US by having a convenient low wage economy just over the southern border, to which the threat of moving comes at a very small cost to those companies.
ETA: I've just realized this is actually arguing against subsidizing films produced by the multinationals. Definitely they can relocate easily, and threatened exactly that over the Hobbit. Again, I come back to thinking: The reason to subsidize film isn't really to make a huge profit. It's the spin-off goods, and the simple desire of the country to be involved in this industry, that are the main arguments for it. It's something that NZers are mostly proud of, that we've built a large technical industry over the last few decades, and many hugely popular international productions are made here.
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There might come a day when actually we've made enough stuff. This is the hardest thing for me to get my head around in economics. It should be a good day. But the closer we get to it, the harder it seems to suck. As a species, we're all about relative wealth, not absolute. This means we inflict a rat race on ourselves, a ten-yard-fight, a struggle for survival, even if we provided for our survival in a purely technical sense a long time ago.
Strange days.
I think we should fund movies if it's a thing we want to do, regardless of the economics. If the very work itself is something that we, as a people, want to be doing more of, then lets do it. If market efficiency really is true, then the whole business of picking winners or not picking winners is all academic. No one has better information, all paths can make profit or take loss. Huge gambles can make fortunes or lose shirts. Conservative investment has opportunity cost that can be so significant that inflation eats the investment. The world economy could sink or swim without NZ having the slightest power to change the course. To me, the question is: Do we want to do it making shows, or making custard squares? Each to their own, privately, and the public purse should go where the public wants it to go.
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Hard News: Mega Strange, in reply to Keir Leslie,
but could you teach it to 300 first years from a fifty year old book?
It's been interesting to see just how few people do actually use the book.
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Hard News: Movie Disaster, in reply to Rich Lock,
They’re an exception, not the rule – you don’t tend to hear about the ones that fail because they just fade away as the money runs out.
Also, if they do succeed, it's going to be because someone like Lockheed buys them. Good reward for their hard work, but will probably have zero impact on the local economy. I'd be surprised if they can stay in NZ at that point.
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Hard News: Mega Strange, in reply to Stephen Judd,
And it really is very good
:-). I’d suggest Plato to anyone starting Philosophy. It’s two philosophers for the price of one. Or even more, if you count some of the other folk who show up.
*Oh, and it's all free.
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Hard News: Mega Strange, in reply to Keir Leslie,
I agree textbook publishing’s a corrupt rort, but let’s not over egg it.
Well, you could actually quite adequately learn elementary calculus from a 50 year old text book, you know. I have one in front of me right now - it's the same stuff as the new one, and sometimes clearer in the the different exposition. I'm not suggesting that the new books have no added value at all, but they're nowhere near $200 worth.
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Hard News: Mega Strange, in reply to 81stcolumn,
i) Most academics don’t make enough off books to live.
ii) The book in question costs $120 hardback and $80 as E textSo who is making money here?
Dunno. In a totally broken model, we can have no one making money. However hard it is for academics to live off their book sales, it's hard as a student studying calculus to see why they should pay $200 for things that were old news in the 19th century, whose content form has barely changed in 50 years, and which are delivered in the least convenient form possible, either a heavy brick of dead trees, or some pokey DRMed proprietary thing lacking in even basic features. Considering there's entire online courses covering the same material, at least 20 choices of professional YouTube video series, and millions upon millions of second hand texts, I'm not surprised it's hard to make a living off something like that.
*ETA: Not to mention the texts themselves, jailbroken and freely handed around, usually via sticks, or even just photographed.
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