Updates, updates, updates..

I haven't posted on here in a while, so I may as well do a little bridging post.

Firstly, I'll belatedly comment on the New Zealand election. Jacinda Ardern pretty much dominated it. Storming to victory with unbridled ease.

My personal view was that Judith Collins looked more impressive. Having watched the few debates I found myself really liking her. To be fair I also found Jacinda Ardern much more likeable than I'd originally anticipated, but still I felt what she offered was mainly soundbites and platitudes. With little core substance.

So it went contrary to how I would've preferred. However, I'm sure the New Zealand people know their country much better than I do, so no doubt they know what they're doing. Also, the New Zealand First leader Winston Peters had a bad election. That was the guy who was being helped out by the Arron Banks team. So in a way it goes against the grain of what's been happening over the last few years. Perhaps 2020 is the year the establishment pushes back. The big one is November though, so we'll see what happens there.

..lockdowns?

Now a little update about where we are with the lockdowns.

I think we've reached a point where the narrative has completely broken down. The public are largely fed up, and an increasing number are now outright questioning the whole thing. Governments the world over seem to be pushing ahead with the second wave of lockdowns regardless though. So it'll be interesting to see what happens.

Obviously I've been against the lockdowns since day one. However, back in March I understood only too well that over ninety percent of the public were onboard. So unlawful though I thought the rules were the reality was that they had public support. So I accepted the defeat and went along with things.

If you live in a fundamentally religious country it doesn't matter how barmy you think the religion is, you're gonna have to outwardly conform. Otherwise you face the wrath of the mob.

So it was no point pleading technicalities.

Now though we're in quite a different situation. When a significant proportion of the population don't agree with a law then it becomes difficult to enforce. So authorities risk surrendering legitimacy, and things begin to break down.

Personally, in my private life I've returned to normal. When I interact with other people in a personal capacity I do it by mutual consent. As would normally be the case. If someone wants to meet up, or wants me to visit their home I do so. If they don't I respect that. I have no idea what the actual rules are on visiting other people at the moment where I live (they change so often), but either way I doubt they're enforceable in any realistic sense. So in that regard normality is returning, and it's returning with or without government sanction.

In more formal settings, such as supermarkets and whatnot, I'm still outwardly respecting the faith. As are most others, but I wonder how sustainable this is too. Although in business settings it is much easier for governments and local authorities to enforce the rules, so any restrictions in these places may be hard to shake off. I wonder if we'll see some odd dichotomy where this all continues in business settings, but in residential areas, outside of the glare, things just return to normal.

There's also the prospect that we might begin to see the black market grow as legitimate businesses are impinged upon. After all, jail isn't much of a threat when you're essentially under house arrest anyway.

So I fear we're getting to a point where things could get ugly as public opinion and government intention desynchronise. I guess it's a question of how far governments are prepared to go to enforce these things.

Cheap, cheap housing.

Finally, and this returns us a little to the first section, I have a few little notes to make about housing. When I was watching the New Zealand election debates I noticed that both leaders were incredibly reluctant to admit that house prices would fall if more houses were built.

Apparently New Zealand has similar problems to those we have here and elsewhere. With people unable to afford their first home, or stuck on waiting lists for government housing. The obvious solution, which all the leaders seemed to agree upon, was to build more houses. However, when asked if the consequence of this would be falling house prices, the politicians hesitated and squirmed to openly admit it.

Politically it's understandable. Voters that own property will obviously be reluctant to vote for a candidate that will reduce the value of their assets. So it probably doesn't poll great. It's a huge problem for politics though, as we need politicians arguing for lower house prices. If this isn't openly on the table we'll get nowhere.

I've argued on here before that we should be aiming as a society to make basic housing as affordable as someone's first car (i.e. so cheap that someone can save for a single year and buy one outright). This may sound incredibly unrealistic when viewed from inside our current paradigm. However, it only seems radical because it's so unfamiliar. We think it's normal (one normal I don't want to get back to 😎) to spend your entire life paying rent or mortgage ..but tell that to the birds. Or tell that to people living nomadic or tribal lifestyles outside of our civilisation.

The whole economy seems geared towards paying money so that people can have some space to sleep at night. Even though space is the one resource that we always have and that isn't going anywhere. We're housing 99.9% of the population right now, so it's not like we can't house people - we just do it in an incredibly whacky way that impoverishes people and bankrupts the nation. Even home owners are largely losing out (in spite of their rising asset prices) as it's their taxes that are funding the vast sums of money governments pay in housing benefit and such like.

Rent/mortgage is pretty much the biggest bill people have. So big it makes it impossible for much of the population to live without state aid. Often even if they're in steady work. Imagine how much more balanced our economy would be if we could radically slash this bill down.

I've even argued that in a more utopian society people would essentially be given a basic amount of space to live in on reaching maturity. Completely gratis. I've been labelling this concept Universal Basic Space, as it's not dissimilar to the Universal Basic Income idea. (See the orange economy articles on this site for more information).

I think I'll probably struggle to sell the idea of Universal Basic Space just yet, but getting the notion that lower house prices are a good thing onto the political agenda would be a huge step in the right direction.

So I thought that was worth making note of.

I've also knocked up another little graphic for this orange economy blog series.

(I've moved from oranges, to carrots,

and now to apples it seems ..though that apple on

the right looks a bit too yellow perhaps ! 🍎)