brc

Your whole reason for being, the thing that gets you out of bed and searching for food, is your in-built desire to recreate and nurture life. Intentionally rejecting that is a massive commitment to make, given the very long term consequences of it.

In short, go have some kids, bring them up well and enjoy the benefits. Our biology is tribe-based and ingrained, so it's smart to work with that and be part of a tribe.

We all die alone, but those that die surrounded by love feel less lonely in all the decades up to that final point. That's your Dna rewarding you for a job well done.

I would suggest you stop worrying and get on with your biological imperative to reproduce your dna, only in slightly variated pattern to ensure parasites and viruses are kept guessing.

Also know that people have been grappling with this question for centuries and every doomsday prediction has turned out to be wrong. So there is cause for optimism.

Moreton bay, look it up. Few years ago now, but the sub visit was big news.

I would have thought most of the issues with publicly listing are the regulatory environment rather than the lack of a specialised listing market. Isn't this way the Nasdaq used to be?

I'm all for innovation but I can see the various levels of bureaucrats sharpening their pencils with a 'tsk tsk' noise.

Perhaps the energy could be well spent getting the wider public to accept investing and risk taking in a way that it used to. That would at least prepare the ground for tech companies to get listed again.

Maybe all the people who got burnt in 2000 have finally retired now.

I know someone who was at sea when their GPS stopped working. They found out later a nuclear sub had come into port around the same time. Seems like it wasn't a coincidence as gps outages are rare.

This applies to many things, including deciding to mow your own lawn instead of outsourcing it. Most people think that their time is worth x, and the yard-guy costs y, and if x>y, they should outsource the mowing. It's not as simple as that, as most people cannot earn X on demand - their total hours are capped by law or arrangement. Additionally, people mistakenly use their gross over net pay to calculate it, and then discount the time needed to arrange, inspect and pay.

The ideal childcare arrangement is bartered, such as an agreement between two families to cover childcare with each other. This takes into consideration attachment of the child to the caregivers.

However, it is more efficient economically to have as many children under a single caregiver, as that frees other adults to create value for society (work with me and imagine every job adds value).

Taxation on that arrangement is just the government capturing some of the value created by it becoming more efficient. I don't necessarily have a problem with that, but the childcare company paying tax, paying payroll tax and then the individual employees paying income tax and the owners paying income tax is taxing the activity too many times.

There is an argument to be made for not having corporate tax. Corporations are just collections of people, owners and employees. As long as the income goes from the corporation to those people, it will be taxed as individual income. Now I grant you that individuals will use techniques to try and avoid having that income attributed to themselves, so you'd need to tighten that up. But a corporation paying tax, then paying employees and owners, who then pay tax, is double taxation. Indeed some countries have taxation credits that flow through to owners when they are paid dividends, eliminating that double taxation.

Flat taxes sure woud put a lot of tax planners out in the street. Hat wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing overall.

Except that the marginal cost of production will go up because of the increased competition for scarce goods, of which every single produced item has some component, not the least of which is land and labor.

So yes, there is likely an inflationary effect, but it is impossible to accurately predict.

It also depends on the net change in people's overall income as most basic income proposals include scrapping piecemeal and overlapping welfare systems.

Personally I think I could be convinced if it was essentially a replacement and thus simple to administer, but would have to be coupled with strict immigration control for the first country to try it.

This is two private parties slugging it out. The government adjudicates but does not have a specific law that is broken. That is by definition freedom of the press.

The danger is when the government starts setting laws that the press has to follow, or has the power to drag the press through kangaroo courts where the process is the punishment.

When you have an essentially private dispute between parties like this it is interesting but has little relevance to actual freedom of the press. The only issue would be if the government of the day started weighing in on the case.

That is the whole point of punitive damages though. The big awards are a punishment of the person or company which lose.

Plenty of environmentalists would be happy if an oil company got sued into bankruptcy over a spill.

It's the way of the courts, really.

I read that article and starting watching my dog, who tends to do his business while walking. It's not true for my dog at least. There really is no rhyme or reason though he will tend to go parallel to a path if there is one.

So I'm not convinced on the north/south axis thing, and not just because of my anecdata, but because it sounds like one of those internet facts like duck quacks don't echo.

It's a good theory but I think the investors are pretty straight-up about wanting their companies on a short leash.

The key will be those other cities/hubs having their own successes, bringing in the capital and expertise to nurture new talent. It's likely that the number of successful hubs that can be supported is pretty low. I happen to believe that the amount of (awful word) synergy needed to flip a few percent of startups from fail/borderline to success is pretty high. In other words, all those know-a-guy-who-can-help connections have to have a high concentration before it starts to pay off.

But then mine is just a theory as well and has a high chance of being wrong.

Australians will take lecture from the New York Times after The USA perfects its record.

This article is full of bias-pushing, including the idea that what happens to the people on Nauru is mysterious or that they are in limbo, or that they are in some type of concentration camp.

The families on Nauru are free to leave and return to their country of origin any time they choose. They are free to participate in the local community and are not behind barbed wire.

The people who have self-harmed have been in contact with the legal industry inside Australia that prospers from their continued presence. These refugee advocates, in full knowledge of the state of the people in Nauru, don't seek to help them but seek to play them as pawns in their deadly game.

The undeniable facts of the matter was that when Australia temporarily relaxed the border protection laws, by the governments own statistics, at least 1,500 men, women and children drowned at sea. Most well known was when a timber fishing boat smashed into rocks in front of news cameras as people drowned.

Since the reinstatement of the laws, the only people who have been harmed are those that have self-harmed.

There is zero doubt that the laws save lives, and crucially, also provide the ability for people to support genuine refugee settlement, such as the processing of 12,000 Syrian refugees, more than the USA is doing, despite the USA having 14x the population of Australia.

The laws have broad support amongst Australian voters, including this voter. The advocates for open borders and a 'let them in' attitude are a small but noisy minority.

Australia still maintains a sizeable immigrant intake every year, drawing on people from around the world.

Frankly, the rest of the world can call me and fellow citizens as many names as they like but border protection is an important task for a Federal government, and I'm totally comfortable with it.

Yes.

I know someone on staff at the Wsj, and know their political views. I have seen their reporting and it is generally balanced. Yes, the papers always have an editorial line they are following, but it's not necessarily biased to push a view, but more so to match their buyers. Running a newspaper is not a public service for the Wsj.

The big surprise for most people is that people at institutions like Wsj and ny times try and be as professional as possible. They aren't acting like click bait interns at gawker.

They are designed to look sexy in the dealership.

Most engine covers pop off without even using any tools.

If you have a car it probably needs some type of work, somewhere. The big cost is in tools, but just start simple and work your way up to something like an engine rebuild. Even doing simple but time consuming tasks like replacing leaking gaskets or hoses teaches you a lot and saves a ton of money.

That's a wrong attitude for a shop teacher - nerdy types are usually very good at mechanical work.

You're right in that the best way to learn is to do.

Porsche now makes a flat 4 engine again- the new Boxster/Cayman engines are turbo 4.

On the cost issue, Porsche famously tried to cut costs for the 996/Boxster gen 1 by using a common cylinder head casting for both sides. This was done by flipping it over for the other side. The only problem with this was providing the drive for the camshaft from the rear of the engine. To do this, they created an intermediate shaft operating at the rear of the engine. This worked ok but it couldn't have an oil fed bearing, so they used a roller bearing. This caused a failure rate if something like 5% of engines, and caused a class action suit that Porsche had to settle.

The other advantage of boxer engines is their suitability for air cooling and packaging. In fact, Porsche produced an aircraft version of the flat 6 but it ended up being too exprensive to build and run, despite outperforming a lycoming by a long way.

Actually two decades now.

I am not a proponent for taxes, most of my arguments centre around the idiocy of most taxes. And you are correct in your analysis, particularly as the improvement component on the land is already taxed by sales taxes for the materials and income taxes for the labour.

However, it's best to tax broadly and close to the generation of income.

I think land taxes couples with sales and income taxes is an efficient combination. Land taxes penalise land banking, and encourage the most efficient use of land.

Sales taxes penalise consumption, and encourage savings or investment.

Of all, income taxes penalise earnings, but earnings are unavoidable for most people. But they do incentivise investment income where there is a differential, which could be mildly beneficial.

The key to all these is uniform applicability and flat rates. The massive drag that tax minimisation has on an economy is underestimated routinely.

From the property front - land taxes should be paid annually, there should be more releases of land with fewer restrictions, and there should be no/minimal transaction taxes to go in/out of a property.

Because you can't trade like-for-like.

It's a tax on moving.

If you want to leave your 4 bedroom, 1 million dollar property and buy a 2 bedroom, 1 million dollar apartment, you have to forego 100k just to do this? Obviously most people choose to not move. They'd rather the money goes tax free to their kids, or to just borrow against the house and spend the money.

It's a strange attitude to suggest that paying $100k to the government is 'not a problem' just because your house is worth more. If you were in the same position I think your attitude would change somewhat.

Well, correct. There are lots of other expensive things you can buy which don't have any issue with price increases no matter now many people want to buy. Boats, for example. If lots of people start buying boats, then the number of boats being made increases, but the price of boats doesn't really change.

We can build units quickly and relatively cheaply (certainly the cost of building has fallen over time, certainly on a like-for-like quality basis. As you say, steel frame buildings with lift access can create housing units quickly and cheaply.

The issue is restrictions on supply caused by government policies and nimbly-ism, plus a general desire to shelter parts of the community from market forces.

It wouldn't matter how many Chinese investors wanted to buy apartments if supply kept up with demand.

They are crappy because of the rent control.

It is always and every time a terrible idea. It should never be implemented anywhere, at any time, for any reason.

Price fixing destroys markets and creates a tiny subset of winners at the expense of everyone else.

It's even worse in Australia, which most properties do not have a yearly property tax. So you pay a 'stamp duty' when you purchase the property, based on a % of the sale price.

This means you have people living in Sydney with multi-million dollar properties - which are just modest houses in now-desirable suburbs - who haven't paid any property tax since the 60's, and who can't move anywhere because they'd be up for so much stamp duty in one hit (easily 50-100k).

Furthermore, the state government has unpredictable revenue streams based on the ups and downs of the property market (you can have high prices but low volume) and the labor market is more calcified because people are unlikely to sell and move to access a new job.

The result is tightly held real estate, variable state government revenue and ever-higher prices. Adding fuel to the mess is a universal belief by local governments that housing development is evil and must be curtailed, so they concentrate on high density and infill development, which drives the prices of stand alone property ever higher.

Unsurprisingly, Australia just about outpaces Canada for the most severely unaffordable housing market.

And yet if you ask the average person in the street, they will blame 'interest rates' or 'Chinese buyers', and not once look at the ridiculous blockage on supply.

Dating apps favour the top 20% of men, and the top 50% of women. The data says as much. I do think there is a 'cliff' where the amount of responses you get drop at a certain point - whether from height, income level, whatever. In real life it's much more nuanced than that because people sort themselves out gradually and not as much from limited statistics or even just visuals.

The issue for men (and to a lesser extent, women) at the bottom of that cliff is that online dating has the possibility to demoralise the person into not doing actual physical dating. I do think we are entering a period where a significant chunk of the population is going to finish life having never had a real life partner.

I thought this was the obvious answer.

The sky is not dark at night when you use the right telescope. So either the sky changes when you point a telescope at it, or the 'sky' as we see it, is just an artefact of what our primitive eyes and mammalian brain sees.

In general, large/luxury SUV sales has been outpacing large/luxury sedan sales for a while. Perhaps this was an artefact of a distorted market rather than true preferences. Either way, platform engineering the model s in to the model x will pay off with increased sales once it gets underway.

It's the same strategy as 5 series/x5 that bmw has, and has been exceedingly successful at.

The distance issues becomes a problem. What works for the Bay Area doesn't work for North East. It's both because all politics and business is regional, and because information flows are affected by distance.

But if something is worth doing, it's worth doing now.

If you had an idea for a great startup, you wouldn't wait for a few years. You'd do it as soon as it was ready.

It's a popular idea but not borne out by the truth. In any decent sized (ie, not tax haven) economy, even the most financially distorted economy still produces a lot more real good and services than finance services.