Posts by Rich of Observationz
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Polity: Hosking’s right about jobs, in reply to BenWilson,
Rewarding/pointless is a quadrant. A lot of people do pointless work but find it rewarding - much of the tech/design industry for instance.
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Polity: Hosking’s right about jobs, in reply to Tom Semmens,
The modern news media is also on the verge of bankruptcy and increasingly kept there by government subsidy (e.g Mediaworks).
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I actually don't believe that NZ will elect a left-wing government until after the crash.
What will Labour offer when Auckland house prices drop 60% and the banks are crashing: haircuts and austerity?
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Well, Labour: one of the main reasons for unemployment is that interest rates are set too high for the real economy, the reason they have to be high is to stop Auckland house prices rising faster that they are already, and the reason house prices are rising is that income from house price speculation is tax free.
So you just ruled out a capital gains tax. Smart.
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I wonder what overseas public servants and senior military officers think when they meet their absurdly well paid NZ equivalents. I'd have thought it would be a bit embarrassing to be drawing footballer's wages to run a comparatively tiny defence force or government department.
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Hard News: The Police Ten 7 State, in reply to Bart Janssen,
senior executives have some legal liability responsibilities that deserve compensation
Has an NZ government employee ever been held liable in this way, except when they’ve engaged in out and out fraud or malpractice? I don’t think Don Elder’s paying us back for any of the money he blew gambling on coal prices rising forever, just as a for instance?
I really like the idea of linking highest salaries to the lowest in any organisation. If the boss wants a pay rise she/he needs to figure out a way of paying the lowest more first.
Absolutely.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Back to a…, in reply to Russell Brown,
It's not the same thing but Kiwiburn has sold out for the first time ever (1200 tix).
Generally, as any fule kno, a multiple of people will click "Going" or "Like" on Facebook than will actually buy tickets. I think a niche gig will get a fairly predictable level of core support - booking this years name acts and hoping the mainstream hoards will buy your expensive tix is always going to be tricky (I'm surprised the acts' management didn't know this, but I guess NZ is a nice place to maybe go and there aren't that many other bookings on a Monday/Tuesday).
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Hard News: The Police Ten 7 State, in reply to izogi,
It’s all about committees of other CEO types ratching up the salary and pretending that running an organisation with a guaranteed income from tax money is equivalent to running a company where people actually have to want to buy your product.
The US caps salaries – nobody in the (federal) public service can out-earn the Vice-President. (NZD350k).
NZ on the other hand has some of the highest public sector salaries per capita in the world. (The Met police commissioner gets about NZD600k – despite having 5 times the workforce and 3 times the population).
If NZ capped public sector salaries, I’d suspect that those who want to make money would go and work in something more entrepeneurial, and we’d have no difficulty finding able people to promote who actually want to serve the public. (It would also help private sector businesses by reducing the competition for managers, and encourage people to pursue careers as professionals rather than seeking the big money in management).
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Polity: A hazy, intriguing crystal ball, in reply to Keir Leslie,
Kier:
Insider trading is the point of prediction markets of this kind in many ways
Ben:
The incredibly tiny scope, where attempts to do any such thing would be extremely obvious to whoever is watching, something that all the other traders are financially incentivized to do
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Which is it: insider trading is intrinsic, or insider trading can't happen?
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As Graeme pointed out upthread, iPredict was licensed as a "market for the trading of the futures contracts". If it hadn't, it would have been an illegal lottery.
The government agreed internationally and passed domestic legislation to place requirements on financial institutions to do due diligence on their customers. There wasn't any exception in any of this for "interesting research by academic institutions involving small amounts of money" and consequently, I'd expect that the Minister was advised not to except iPredict from money laundering legislation.
I'd suggest that where possible, laws should offer certainty, not allow workarounds for mates. If the FMA wants to authorise prediction markets, then it should do so properly as they've done with peer to peer lending (something that will end in tears, in my view).
It's all very well taking the traditional NZ "they're a bunch of good blokes eh, let's cut down on the red tape" approach" - until it all goes pear shaped.