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4 minutes ago, KillaKukumba said:

I just read that the telcos are blaming the federal metadata retention laws for this breach.

Glad to see the teclos aren't at fault! :)

 

It just reinforces my statement that regulation in Australia is a confused mess designed to diffuse accountability, transparency and responsibility.

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Well that’s just what you get with Australia’s being historically right wing politically, everything is designed to screw over the ordinary citizen in favour of the 1%. We need serious reform to get the legal system, taxation, and many other areas but unfortunately simply don’t have enough people advocating for said change.

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14 minutes ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

Well that’s just what you get with Australia’s being historically right wing politically, everything is designed to screw over the ordinary citizen in favour of the 1%. We need serious reform to get the legal system, taxation, and many other areas but unfortunately simply don’t have enough people advocating for said change.

 

Noting it used to have a more left wing bent to early 1970s.  

Problem is both major political parties have had exactly the same core ideology since 1970s.   It doesn't matter who is in government, the core policies remain untouched.


System is so engrained that it's unstoppable even when it threatens long term stability or living standards.

 

---

 

Mind you seems Britain is the same eg latest mini budget is exactly the type of bullshit you expect from Australian politicians.

 

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America is the same, we’ve reached a point where capitalist exploitation is so ingrained in our political system it’s almost impossible to overcome. As though Australia couldn’t afford to put in place more beneficial social policies to support low income earners and alleviate some of the cost of living pressure which is crushing so many households, there’s just no incentive for the government to actually do anything about it partly because they’re corporate donors don’t want anything to change, and partly because there’s no real alternative to keep them accountable at the  polls.

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You would have to cap corporate donations at just a few thousand dollars and then actually follow up and make sure they didn't find ways to circumvent that law. Then you'd have to impose strict term limits on the Congress/Parliment so these fat old fucks couldn't become entrenched in their seats for decades.

But since the ones who would have to vote for these things in order to implement them are the very same ones who stand to lose the most if these things came to pass, it will never happen. Politicians talk a lot of shit, but the fact is they'd rather things stayed just the way they are. Accountability is a myth.

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2 minutes ago, JonoBlade said:

Britain must surely be the joke of the world right now. Except everywhere else is a joke too. 

What is observationally hilarious is that the current cabinet is the most diverse in history. Just proving to the woke libtard leftists (like me) that women and minorities are just as evil as white men. All humanity and its various offshoot cultures and races are as shit as each other.  It is nice to know we have reached equality of shitness. 

 

Nail hit on head. Humans are animals and as such only the vicious, corrupt, greedy and self serving get to the top regardless of culture.

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1 hour ago, Dead1 said:

Nail hit on head. Humans are animals and as such only the vicious, corrupt, greedy and self serving get to the top regardless of culture.

Interestingly, as another economic meltdown has begun, they reckon interest rates will rise and house prices will tumble by up to a third.  Which they probably need to do.

High interest rates discourage people from living beyond their means and encourage saving - both anathema to free market capitalism.

Like in the GFC the richest get the opportunity to buy up all the businesses and real estate - although I do wonder who would want all those shitty new build houses made by developers to the lowest possible standards.

Swings and roundabouts.

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5 hours ago, JonoBlade said:

Interestingly, as another economic meltdown has begun, they reckon interest rates will rise and house prices will tumble by up to a third.  Which they probably need to do.

High interest rates discourage people from living beyond their means and encourage saving - both anathema to free market capitalism.

Like in the GFC the richest get the opportunity to buy up all the businesses and real estate - although I do wonder who would want all those shitty new build houses made by developers to the lowest possible standards.

Swings and roundabouts.

In theory anyway. What happens in the states anyway is that people just go deeper in debt. The term "live within your means" isn't in the vocabulary of the majority of Americans. Interest rate hikes also don't deter corporations from buying up single-family homes at prices above what the average person would pay for them. Which still makes home ownership impossible for most. Interest rate hikes also don't deter companies from raising their prices indiscriminately in the never ending search for increasing profits.

Capitalism - the gift that keeps on giving, or the perfect trap depending on how you look at it.

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Interest rate rises don't stop average people borrowing here. It's slowed down the number home loans approved but with continual rate rises and more suggested in the future there are still people rushing out to get million dollar loans for houses. Our big test is going to come when house prices start to drop as they predict will happen within 12 months and people find themselves owing more than their property is worth.

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9 hours ago, JonoBlade said:

Interestingly, as another economic meltdown has begun, they reckon interest rates will rise and house prices will tumble by up to a third.  Which they probably need to do.

High interest rates discourage people from living beyond their means and encourage saving - both anathema to free market capitalism.

Like in the GFC the richest get the opportunity to buy up all the businesses and real estate - although I do wonder who would want all those shitty new build houses made by developers to the lowest possible standards.

Swings and roundabouts.

 

Would have made sense before deregulation of debt in 1980-00s and introduction of things like credit cards and then pay day loans etc. 

 

Many westerners are now culturally accustomed to living mainly on debt.  Anecdotally I've known people who would pay credit cards off with credit cards.

Deregulation of debt is the single least thing mentioned in modern economic discourse.  There is an acknowledgement there is a lot of debt, but not the reasons why or how much of this debt is bad.  Indeed this is the same situation as what led to GFC - lots of shit debt that no one wanted to even contemplate as long as the profits were coming in.

1 hour ago, KillaKukumba said:

Interest rate rises don't stop average people borrowing here. It's slowed down the number home loans approved but with continual rate rises and more suggested in the future there are still people rushing out to get million dollar loans for houses. Our big test is going to come when house prices start to drop as they predict will happen within 12 months and people find themselves owing more than their property is worth.

 

I don't know if negative equity (ie debt on property worth more than property) will have as big an impact as it did in GFC.  There seems to be a lot of chatter about how the main thing is the ability to service debt ie make repayments.

Literally it's become a pure cash flow thing.  I think it's a bit optimistic and myopic but I do not walk in the ivory towers of the financial elites.

 

Essentially it all comes down to the following:

It’s a slow day in some little town……..
The sun is hot….the streets are deserted.
Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit.

On this particular day a rich tourist from back west is driving thru town.
He stops at the motel and lays a $100 bill on the desk saying he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night.
As soon as the man walks upstairs, the owner grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.
The butcher takes the $100 and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer.
The pig farmer takes the $100 and heads off to pay his bill at the feed store.

The guy at the Farmer’s Co-op takes the $100 and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer her services on credit.
She, in a flash rushes to the motel and pays off her room bill with the motel owner.
The motel proprietor now places the $100 back on the counter so the rich traveler will not suspect anything.

At that moment the traveler comes down the stairs, picks up the $100 bill, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money & leaves.

NOW,… no one produced anything…and no one earned anything…however the whole town is out of debt and is looking to the future with much optimism.

3 hours ago, navybsn said:

Capitalism - the gift that keeps on giving, or the perfect trap depending on how you look at it.

Like Communism it's ideal in theory.  In practice not so.

I would argue our capitalism worked when heavily regulated by government and before globalisation and computer networks proliferated and derailed every single assumption about  it.

 

9 hours ago, JonoBlade said:

Interestingly, as another economic meltdown has begun, they reckon interest rates will rise and house prices will tumble by up to a third.  Which they probably need to do.

High interest rates discourage people from living beyond their means and encourage saving - both anathema to free market capitalism.

Like in the GFC the richest get the opportunity to buy up all the businesses and real estate - although I do wonder who would want all those shitty new build houses made by developers to the lowest possible standards.

 

People like my wife and so many of my friends want to live in them though even my wife admits the build quality is shit.  Modern mainstream media and especially reality TV promotes these houses as extremely desirable. 

And the other mob who don't really care about quality are the property speculators who now form a large part of the market (in Australia due to dreadful tax and immigration laws designed to jack up speculative profits and ensure ongoing demand).  They would buy literal cardboard boxes if they thought it net them a couple 100% return on investment. 

 

 

Locally I am horrified how much prime farmland is being turned into subdivisions full of cheap nasty cookies cutter houses.

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Owing more on a property than it's valued at means very little to anyone until they want/need to sell. Most people just keep paying their repayments and providing the repayments don't get higher than what they earn things travel nicely. But trying to sell a property for $400K, which 12 months earlier was purchased for $500K and still has $450K owing on it is neigh on impossible unless the owner wants to move into servicing a debt for something they no longer own. 

There is plenty of people in suburbia who would have paid over a million for properties in the last 12 months. If the prediction that housing could drop 30% is true and those people suddenly go from a house worth a million down to $700K, while at the same time (bank) interest rates start pushing over 7 or 8%, maybe even higher, just the metal weight of owing several hundred grand more than the property is worth is enough to send some people crazy. They can't afford to sell and down size, they might be able to sell and rent, but they'll still be servicing a loan of several hundred grand.

None of this worries me much, I'd prefer interest rates went up, but I'm not everyone.

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Many people here are in a similar position. The news claims the 'average' home loan here has gone up something like $500 a week since the interest rates started rising back in about April or May. There is a lot of caveats with that $500 increase and the 'average' loan, but throw decreasing house prices on top of that, then throw the increased cost of fuel, the cost of food and the cost of things like insurance and it's a weight some people will be bearing whether they like it or not.

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1 hour ago, KillaKukumba said:

Many people here are in a similar position. The news claims the 'average' home loan here has gone up something like $500 a week since the interest rates started rising back in about April or May. There is a lot of caveats with that $500 increase and the 'average' loan, but throw decreasing house prices on top of that, then throw the increased cost of fuel, the cost of food and the cost of things like insurance and it's a weight some people will be bearing whether they like it or not.

 

 

Reserve Bank of Australia assumes people will just draw down on their savings to service higher debt....literally they're banking on jacking up poverty whilst hoping companies don't price gouge too much (which is also contributing to inflation).

 

https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2022/sep/22/workers-did-not-cause-australias-inflation-woes-but-they-will-be-the-ones-to-sacrifice

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10 hours ago, Dead1 said:

I would argue our capitalism worked when heavily regulated by government and before globalisation and computer networks proliferated and derailed every single assumption about  it.

No doubt we've covered this before, but that is my conclusion too. Capitalism ok but with massive and eternal regulation and a shift of focus away from growth as a metric for everything. Communism never seemed to work because it becomes a cult of personality and any regime that tries too hard to stop people from leaving the country is probably not an ideal system.

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1 hour ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

So the middle ground would be…? Because there does exist an alternative to those options.

We could all move down to Australia crack a few stubbies and throw another shrimp on the barbie?

 

I agree with Jon-O and Deadovic that it seems like capitalism could really work quite well if it was heavily regulated and closely monitored. Because humans apparently can't be trusted to do the right thing. The incentive for profits and potential wealth is a powerful motivator to get out of bed in the morning and do what you've gotta do, so it's hard to imagine western society making a complete break from some form of capitalism. The trick is to destroy plutocracy. 

But is successfully regulated capitalism an unrealistic utopian panacea? I mean ostensibly this is the system we've already got in place now. So then you're saying even more regulation is the key? Is there really any way for human beings to regulate themselves fairly and properly without corruption creeping in, gaining a foothold and then inevitably metasticizing like a cancer and fucking everything up?

And what exactly would that look like? Would an Orwellian society that was regulated and monitored in such an extreme, heavy handed way be a pleasant place in which to exist? I've seen personal freedoms being eroded over the course of my lifetime and with the recent rise of populist authoritarian governments it seems like western society is only going to get more and more restrictive. I understand why some people think this is neccessary, and I don't always neccessarily disagree. But is doubling down on the regulation and governmental control what we really want? Would that really be any better than the overdone movie premise of the machines taking over and enslaving the human race? 

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46 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

But is successfully regulated capitalism an unrealistic utopian panacea? I mean ostensibly this is the system we've already got in place now. So then you're saying even more regulation is the key? Is there really any way for human beings to regulate themselves fairly and properly without corruption creeping in, gaining a foothold and then inevitably metastasizing like a cancer and fucking everything up?

And what exactly would that look like? Would an Orwellian society that was regulated and monitored in such an extreme, heavy handed way be a pleasant place in which to exist? I've seen personal freedoms being eroded over the course of my lifetime and with the recent rise of populist authoritarian governments it seems like western society is only going to get more and more restrictive. I understand why some people think this is neccessary, and I don't always necessarily disagree. But is doubling down on the regulation and governmental control what we really want? Would that really be any better than the overdone movie premise of the machines taking over and enslaving the human race? 

I guess some kind of constitutional capitalism? Deregulation is death by a thousand cuts because corporate bodies want less oversight in order to make more profit. Could regulation enshrined in a constitution have a hope of maintaining a level of minimum standards and preventing corporations from running amok? It does not have to be "heavy handed" in relation to everyday citizens. 

In other words, you can have strict regulation to protect society from corporate greed without having every individual "monitored." To me, these are different issues. What personal freedoms have you had taken away? 

Privacy, which is like a personal freedom, has been somewhat eroded...mainly due to corporations collecting and selling data about you. So, regulate it! Governments collect data too which is potentially a loss of freedom and breach of privacy, but then government policy is naturally regulated if the democracy functions properly because there is oversight by the next batch of elected officials. Corporations have no such natural oversight.

If freedom is to do what you want, when you want and damn everybody else; then you need to be "regulated". It just has to be a sensible framework. Which is what laws and a legal framework to challenge those laws should provide.

The kinds of regulation I am talking about is preventing further damage to the environment so we have a future. On the social side, there should be strict and far reaching regulation on financial markets and tax systems. These are macroscopic issues and not designed to take away personal freedoms, except maybe that you can no longer be a currency trader that makes a fortune from speculating and shifting money from one place to the other without creating anything.

I wrack my brain but can't actually think of a "personal freedom" I have lost in my adult life. I can't speed if I have a fast car. There's always been a speed limit. I can't kill someone I don't like. Murder has always been frowned upon. I can't smoke in a public space? Sorry, I just don't see those things as some kind of fundamental nanny state "loss of freedom" issue. It's just common sense based on evidence. 

I'll keep thinking and ask around to try and come up with a single freedom I have lost in my lifetime. Which is not to say one shouldn't be vigilant and rail against an authoritarian government trying to introduce restrictions, but that is normally about standing up for other people, because they always come for them first. 

 

 

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8 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

We could all move down to Australia crack a few stubbies and throw another shrimp on the barbie?

 

I agree with Jon-O and Deadovic that it seems like capitalism could really work quite well if it was heavily regulated and closely monitored. Because humans apparently can't be trusted to do the right thing. The incentive for profits and potential wealth is a powerful motivator to get out of bed in the morning and do what you've gotta do, so it's hard to imagine western society making a complete break from some form of capitalism. The trick is to destroy plutocracy. 

But is successfully regulated capitalism an unrealistic utopian panacea? I mean ostensibly this is the system we've already got in place now. So then you're saying even more regulation is the key? Is there really any way for human beings to regulate themselves fairly and properly without corruption creeping in, gaining a foothold and then inevitably metasticizing like a cancer and fucking everything up?

And what exactly would that look like? Would an Orwellian society that was regulated and monitored in such an extreme, heavy handed way be a pleasant place in which to exist? I've seen personal freedoms being eroded over the course of my lifetime and with the recent rise of populist authoritarian governments it seems like western society is only going to get more and more restrictive. I understand why some people think this is neccessary, and I don't always neccessarily disagree. But is doubling down on the regulation and governmental control what we really want? Would that really be any better than the overdone movie premise of the machines taking over and enslaving the human race? 

Wouldn’t it just book bike thing progressive socialism model as seen in Denmark, Finland, Norway etc? Countries with high social mobility and low poverty. I know in America that’s a bad word mostly I feel because there isn’t an understanding of the difference between democratic or progressive socialism as the Scandinavians interpret it, and communism, this back of education obviously benefits the right wink because the less people know about a given subject the easier they are to manipulate towards your way of thinking. 

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