Posts by BenWilson
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Field Theory: 65 bottles of beer on the wall..., in reply to Danielle,
Bugga, last thing you'd be wanting to do, I'd expect.
Unlike, apparently, 75% of the people I know.
Are they actually trying not to get invited to any parties? But I forgive easily.
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Field Theory: 65 bottles of beer on the wall..., in reply to Russell Brown,
No worries...I just got some of those myself, Dad's birthday present, and my wife's first live game ever. Lots of our Fijian friends are going. W00t!
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I might go to the odd game, but it seemed more fun to have lots of people having a good time at mine than to try and find someone else to spend hundreds of dollars to go to games with me.
That's always been my reasoning in the past and it's still sound, but for the one thing - this will probably be the only Rugby World Cup I'll ever be in the same city as in my life, so it does rather seem to waste the occasion to not go to any games.
Haven't decided which games though. Ideally some evenly matched minor teams, where the crowd will be interesting - Fiji or Samoa vs Wales perhaps. England vs Scotland could be good for the rivalry, but I'd have to sit way up the back to afford it.
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Hard News: A Capital Idea?, in reply to DexterX,
It's a brilliant phrase man, it does sum up an attitude that has cost me a lot at times - it was like "I've only got so much brainpower, which I need for my work, so I'll only put a small amount of it into this 'side investment'". Which in the most poignant case I'm referring to ended up costing me $50,000, most of which could have been saved by a little less miserliness on the attention. However, since that experience, I learned not to do it so much. Perhaps that's half the problem, is that until recently, casual property investors just haven't got burned enough.
As a friend put it to me recently - certainty breeds uncertainty. If something is easy money for long enough, everyone wants a piece, and that means it's no longer easy money. So, despite the tax advantages of property, eventually, people will work out how to fuck it up and make it lose money. Essentially, a lot of people get into it who shouldn't, put money on things that aren't worth that much, and a herd mentality drives the prices up....for a while. Then reality kicks in, people can't meet the payments, the investments crash, the bubble bursts and here we are.
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Cracker: Another Capital Idea..., in reply to bmk,
Don't forget the compulsory super that is at least 9% regardless of bracket. Not technically a tax, but it's money straight out of your pay packet that you can't spend, so it works much the same economically. There's some other taxes - the medicare levy surcharge is 1%.
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Is there no one who is actually excited by the fact that we'll be hosting a major sporting event this year?
I am, and fully intend to get into it, like I never have before with a World Cup. In fact, I'll most likely break the habits of a lifetime and actually go to some games. This is never going to happen in NZ again, I don't want to miss it. To do so reminds me of all the dorks I worked with in Ozzie who opted for double time over the turn of the millenium, which only happens every thousand years. To be there worrying about a fucking bug in software at work struck me as just the kind of thing I'd make sure I never let get in the way of a good time.
My wife is Australian, and there are many other nations represented in my close circle of friends, so a lot of the games will have high tension. I actually don't really care who wins so much, although naturally I'd prefer it was the All Blacks. There's a bloody good chance of it too, NZ does play a lot better to a home crowd. But whichever way it goes, there's going to be partying. The games will only be a focal point - they last 90 mins, the partying continues regardless.
I can understand people who have no interest in rugby. But I can't really get hip to the level of misery that it seems to have generated. It's like being determined to be miserable at your own wedding, because the thing costs a lot of money. Yes, it does, and that sucks, but seriously, it's going to suck even harder if you actually want it to.
I see the RWC in that light and I for one can't wait.
Onya. Welcome to PAS, too.
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The point is that CEO pay often relates to the size of the company, rather than actual performance.
Yes, in that way they're actually like government.
My personal experience has always been that the bigger an organization gets, the generally less empowered and happy the employees feel, and the greater the disparity between pay and performance. But the people at the top get way more than most small organizations, so naturally they think it's pretty choice. Which probably explains why most examples holding up capitalism as awesome are simple, referring to small businesses, simple markets, etc. When the iron law of oligarchy kicks in, and power does what it usually does, concentrates, then most of the least optimal aspects of capitalism kick in. Luck is rewarded far more than talent or effort, and the most rewarding behavior is to crush competition, either internally via sneaky politics, or externally with sheer muscle.
It's hard to see how this basic factor could be changed without dramatic changes to our social organization, because large scale organization is something that it is pretty much impossible to stop.
Tweaking existing taxation goes some of the way, but I don't actually think that focusing on pulling the big boys down can ever work. They're just too far in front, too entrenched in power structures, too mobile, too strong. The better way is to focus on bringing the small players up. The more empowered they are, the greater the chance of upward mobility of everyone who cares for it. And the more it is seen to happen, the more people do care for it.
So I do favor a more progressive taxation system. Bringing in a CGT is a good start, focuses on a particularly dysfunctional part of our national wealth profile. We could do more, though.
All this said, I do agree with Damian that we should still be allowed to make mad cheddar. Some good ideas should be allowed to go apeshit. If hotcakes are selling, that's because people want them, and they'll go without if at some point the hotcake maker is told that they're just not allowed any more.
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Hard News: A Capital Idea?, in reply to Rich Lock,
What I've personally found quite striking in NZ is how often, and across a wide range of areas and disciplines, the urge to cut corners and do things on the cheap appears, even with repeated upfront warnings about simply storing up trouble for yourself downstream.
My folks have just spent upwards of $50,000 repairing weatherboards around their house that had been damaged by inadequate guttering. The most embittering irony for them is that my brother warned them about it at the time, that the job being done was cheap and nasty, and Dad didn't listen.
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Hard News: #NetHui: it's all about you, in reply to Rich Lock,
Yes, it was almost like a job. Considering how much funnier it was than numerous cartoon strips that people actually do for their job, it seems pretty righteous.
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Hard News: A Capital Idea?, in reply to andin,
Some of the indigenous American tribes believed you could only own the piece of land you were standing on literally only as far as your shadow reached.
I'm presuming they meant at noon, when you shadow is directly below you, rather than dawn or dusk, when it can cast all the way to the horizon.
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