tcpip | Ignorance, Gillard PM, Holidays Approach, Gaming Reviews

Ignorance, Gillard PM, Holidays Approach, Gaming Reviews

Most regular readers will know I'm an advocate of land tax as a replace for inefficient and unproductive taxes on labour and capital. On a whim, I entered this discussion on a property investment website. Enjoy the results. What I find particularly remarkable is their ignorance of basic economics (like the Law of Rent or the distinction between land and capital) on matters they claim expertise in. Actually I must confess I find this a lot; often people with a strong opinion on a topic like to think they're an expert on a topic. Personally, I prefer to form a strong opinion by reaching "deeply considered convictions", based on reason and evidence, rather than having "deeply ingrained prejudices" from emotions and assumptions.

Julia Gillard became the first ever female Prime Minister of Australia yesterday (that's only taken over one hundred years, *grumble*). It's an acting position whilst Rudd is in Bali (finally a PM who's acting on climate change!) , and one which seems to attract a share of odd events. I've sent her a congratulatory email (the last email conversation we had was a little terse; I was writing on behalf of Labor for Refugees and she was shadow minister for immigration).

Speaking of which, for the second year in a row, I'm desparately trying to organise tickets to Bali again over the break. I've contacted Flight Centre, and they've sent an email confirmation saying their processing the request, but no confirmation yet. Meh. It's been years since I've been to the archipelago, and I really want to see it again. New Zealand is not an option this summer (I think I'll go south for winter). If this doesn't work out for whatever reason maybe a visit to Tasmania is in order; it's been a while since I've seen Murdoch's former Vice-Chancellor, Professor Peter Boyce and we remain in irregular correspondence.

This week I finally managed to finish my review of Earthdawn: Gamemaster's Compendium; it's a huge, stunning book and quite good on the substance level as well. Not so good is the old AD&D module D1: Descent into the Depths of the Earth, which is seriously lacking in style, substance and a purpose for existence. Played another session of Legend of the Five Rings last Sunday with a refitted AD&D Oriental Adventures module. It's going very well, if only I can hack out some overall narrative to the various instances of character development and plot leads.

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Dude, your html is broken

Enjoy the results.

I agree with everything you've said - but I'd still have tagged you with a Do Not Feed the Troll comment...

Yes, cropping up in the midst of a discussion and expressing an opinion that, no matter how eloquently put and well backed up, is pretty much guaranteed to be diametrically opposed to that of all those of the forum does look like trolling. Intelligent trolling, but trolling nonetheless.

If a subject is dear to ones heart, however, and the opinions expressed on a forum are complete and total drivel, it's sometimes difficult to keep the forefinger away from the trigger.

From my experience with this I've been forced to conclude that Simon and Garfunkel were right, "a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest"^[1]. In any group of opinionated people, there will be some who will vehemently defend an indefensible opinion^[2].

The open minded soon drop out of the argument and you're left talking to people who just aren't worth talking to.

[1] this is such a blindingly obvious thing that someone must have said it before them, but that's the one that springs to mind at the moment.
[2] As hinted at, I believe, in "Nights in White Satin" by The Moody Blues^[3].
[3] I promise, I'll stop with the rock references now

Aye. The link to your new review is broken.

Julia Gillard became the first ever female Prime Minister of Australia yesterday (that's only taken over one hundred years, *grumble*).

What're you complainin' about? It's been 200+ years and we're still waiting for a female President. Hell, we're still waiting for a non-white, non-male President.

. . . although if our only option to end the string is Hillary, I'd rather wait another 200 years!

On the "enjoy the results" -- I made it most of the way through 5 pages before I couldn't stomach it anymore. You are correct that the folks in that forum do NOT understand even the fundamentals of economics ("I invest in land to make money -- creating jobs is the government's job" -- wow!)("some guy named smith")

The one thing that makes me skittish about embracing the academic concept proposed in the real world, though, is the idea that a government will increase a tax on one good (land), and lower the tax on other goods (labour, capital). My experience (which is clearly not comprehensive or objective) is that governments do not reduce taxes on other goods, or at least not enough, to see the true benefit of the tax revision. This is why perfect academic models don't always translate into success in the 'real world' (I know you understand this -- I'm just trying to be clear).

One thing that appears absent from the discussion, though, is zoning... Is that a concept that has any traction in Australia? taking an overly simplistic view, then: If we were to appropriately tax just the unimproved value of the land, this would seem to be good for me, as I own a small piece of land, and bad for the owners of homes on larger parcels... or would it? The economic value of land is tied inherently to the use(s) to which it may be put. In my locality (and most others in the US) we zone property to control its use. As such, my land is valued at a much higher rate per acre than land which is zoned for lower density. Thus, my .08 acre is valued at almost the same $$ amount as a neighbor's .25 acre because they can each support 1 home, given current zoning.

Obviously, Zoning is another kind of "Tax" -- one which has costs and benefits. Does the proposal you are endorsing account for this additional layer of "tax" or is that tied in some other way? Just curious (and too lazy to read more on it now).

You mean RPG.net's PHP was broken, right?

Yeah, I noticed that when I was posting, but put the post up anyway hoping that they fix it quickly. It seems OK now.

Taking the Wikipedia definition, my intent wasn't really to engage in an argumentative response, merely to express an alternative point of view with the hope that they would perhaps read it and consider it.

If there is an act of foolishness on my part it's that I often think that people who seek to acquire knowledge in the same manner that I attempt to. I am yet again reminded that this is usually not the case. Honestly, I don't know how to get around this except to continue to present issues as I do.. If one in ten read the material and even try to understand it with an open mind (even if I don't agree with the conclusions) I suppose it makes it worthwhile introducting them to the idea.

Interesting. How do you seek to acquire knowledge? And how is it different from the way others do?

No - when I first came by all of your html was showing as text rather than tags - it was fixed pretty shortly after I posted the comment, so maybe it was an lj problem, rather than some lack in your html.

Ahh, that was me actually... I was posting in a hurry and noticed there was a missing < which broke everything.

You're quick, I had it fixed in under a minute :-)

I also remember thinking "Naah, I don't need to Preview this..."

But RPG.net's links were very broken indeed.

Pretty well covered in the content of this post really. When confronted with a proposition test it with internal logic and empirical correlations. If one doesn't understand the proposition simply state to the proponent "I don't understand" and have them explain it to you.

I have found even in IT there are plenty of people who feel bad about asking questions which they think they should know the answers to but are embarrassed (I suppose) that they don't. In my world there are no bad questions and I'm quite ready to admit what I do not know.

All this said it is a lot easier I suppose to start with a visceral reaction and in engage in logical fallacies such as ad hominen attacks etc.

I didn't have time to read the land tax thread in detail (even after reading the FAQ I'm fuzzy on exactly how it would replace other taxes), but that's beside the point:

The people on that forum are veritable intellectual gods on par with S. Hawking compared with the "people" on investor forums like Hot Copper.

It seems to have been an deliberate by the far left to run women candidates in US Presidential elections.

From the major parties, I believe there was recently a woman in the Republican's (whose name I forget) who was going to run but had to drop out due to lack of financial support. Realistically, running for President requires resources in the millions.

I must say I haven't seen anything particularly bad about Hilary as a Presidential candidate, although I also admit I haven't looked at that closely. I'm part of the Mike Gravel campaign. :-)

I didn't have time to read the land tax thread in detail (even after reading the FAQ I'm fuzzy on exactly how it would replace other taxes), but that's beside the point

Let me assume just a three sector economy. All (a) land and natural resources which are fixed in supply, (b) all capital goods (i.e., produced assets), which is variable in supply and (c) all labour, which is variable in supply.

Public money ultimately has to come from one of those three sources, or a mixture thereof.

If you derive public monies from (a) you have the opportunity to reduce the reliance on (b) and (c) - which means that there's more incentive to increase their supply, resulting in more buildings, more good and services.

However, if you derive money from (b) and (c) instead, it drives the incentive to accumulate (a) which, being fixed in supply, increases its price of land.

The people on that forum are veritable intellectual gods on par with S. Hawking compared with the "people" on investor forums like Hot Copper.

If I didn't know better I'd say that was spammers "pump and dump" forum.

Yeah, I think you have a point there.

It's a bit like walking into a crowded Liberal Party function to try to convince them of the value of human rights. Unless not torturing people or imprisoning children behind razorwire might somehow increase their personal wealth directly, the Liberal Party crowd just won't be interested.

I'm becoming more amenable to the view of the cultural warriors that the Left/Right political war might be over: it seems these days it's simply the "selfish arseholes" (Liberals and the powerful ALP Right) versus the "community minded" (a few remaining parts of the ALP Left, Democrats, Greens, et al).

The problem there is, you can't convince a selfish arsehole to become more community minded, but, community minded people can be exploited and conflicted by the arses.

Yeah, that was pretty classic :-)

Sure, any increase in land tax is contingent with reduced taxes in other areas. Interesting this was precisely the recommendation of the State Government Review on Business Taxes (2001 iirc) which suggested getting rid of stamp duties, various property duties etc. Even the real estate industry supported it!

If we were to appropriately tax just the unimproved value of the land, this would seem to be good for me, as I own a small piece of land, and bad for the owners of homes on larger parcels... or would it?

Depending on the location; which does lead to that zoning discussion. In the Australian experience the strongest advocates of land tax have been country people, who actually have larger plots - but because the land is "improved" by their work, they invariably see the benefit of reducing taxes on their labour.

Zoning is an interesting one because in part it is justified as land use has to be negotiated with neighbours (I can't imagine people being terribly happy with a nuclear waste facility next door to a kindergarten), but in part they act like a land monopoly by excluding areas from use. It's less of a land tax than a labour/capital tax because it limits the type of production that can occur.

What concerns me about Hilary Clinton:

(a) The only woman available is another Clinton? Is the female talent pool really that bleak in the US?
(b) There's no real sense she'd be much different from any of the Bushes or her husband or Rocket Ronnie. I'm sick to death of the many faces of President Warmonger.
(c) I don't get any vibe from her of a person who can be swayed by good argument or the realities of current events. She seems just as ideologically hidebound as Shrub.

If I didn't know better I'd say that was spammers "pump and dump" forum.

Mostly, but not entirely.

The Land Tax thread makes my head hurt. These people are not worlds away from the HC people - thinking only of themselves, and not of the wider social implications.

The open minded soon drop out of the argument and you're left talking to people who just aren't worth talking to.

Can be a problem; hence the importance of picking and choosing what one responds to. People who are deliberately abusive aren't worth the effort.

Or, as the old USENET saying went.. "Never wrestle a pig in shit. The pig enjoys it and you get covered in shit".

thinking only of themselves, and not of the wider social implications

It's funny, when I started reading the thread - 1st page - I expected them to start calling "commie". They did.

Thanks (I think) largely to years and years of denigrating communism (and by association socialism) regardless of any honest definitions, being "community minded" has become a slur.
Instead, one has to be "family friendly", which usually seems to boil down to giving a particular family more money.

I hate people.

Yeah, the "red, red herring" response was sort of predictable wasn't? Odd sort of communist theory which is backed by neoliberals, conservatives, and socialists 'cross the board tho', eh?

The problem is, and this is where I considered your entire attempt at enlightening them to be trolling... the people that frequent that forum do not care about economics. These are people that want to make money. Taxes are losing money, ergo taxes are bad. Sponsoring taxes makes you a bad person. Thus you trolled em good.

Not withstanding, I do agree with your arguments and analysis of the systems involved - it makes sense on the macro scale. As a multiple property owner however I don't give a rats arse - I'de rather not have the tax at all.

I think all the intelligent discussion had left by page 3 - so thats where I stopped - but did you consider that the last 10-14 years of economics has resulted in most property owners now coming from the lower/mid income groups - who use them as a taxation minimization scheme and revenue generation?
Consequently I believe that in the current environment it's not the rich that pay these taxes - it's everyone else - and all the economists are flawed in the belief that the tax is a good thing - here and now. I'm speculating that raising that tax would have the opposite desired effect on growth - even with other offsets. The Banks would end up owning more.

I could be just talking out of my nether regions with this, but I wonder if anyone has done any studies using the last 10 years data from Australia.

"Even in IT"?? Maybe my experience is biased, but IT is far from being the least culprit in matters of hubris (Larry Wall's virtues notwithstanding).

Anyway, an excellent thread on that forum. The crux appeared to be "Well, us landlords don't want to pay taxes, and we don't care how well the total economy does.". I do have to agree that it's rather like trolling to try explaining how to use landlords as taxes' entry point into the economy when the thread started as a discussion of how to dodge taxes.

Then again, I like trolls. They regenerate 3HP/rnd.

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