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Comment Re:No (Score 1) 487

What do you mean by incubator? I have images of 100s of baby chickens running around....

I have NFS shares which share media between a freenas box and multiple kodi front ends. Also stored on that is all the digital photos and camcorders that we have taken over the past 10 years. I am less concerned about people being able to access them then having someone delete something. Yes I could change permissions and everything like that but given my wife uses a windows box that gets painful fast. So Samba has read & write privileges which means someone with a phone could be an arse. (And yes it's backed up but I still don't want the hassle)

I realise that it is probably overly paranoid but I just prefer to not give anyone access that I don't need to.

Comment Re:Empower the pilot (Score 1) 843

Couple of points. 10 rookies operating at a good level will likely kill one expert. The F35 is not an air superiority fighter like the f22. It is meant to be ok at everything and to have a cubic fuckload of them in the air so you want to bring your average pilot level up the most, even if it means you bring your experts down. Overall that would be a net gain.

For a rear facing gun there are a couple of reasons. The first is that it would mean 1 less gun facing forward or reduced ammo / capability of both. Second is that it would be almost impossible to aim and you would be likely to make yourself an easier target if you did. Third is fighters don't operate alone, they are focussed on putting an attacker into a compromised position through manoeuvrability AND their wingman.

On what a pilot prefers I can't comment. But I would expect that the more information the pilot has the more they can do with it.

Comment Re:Government by the Courts (Score 1) 242

Except it doesn't work. Have a look at the fightback campaign run by John Hewson in the 1993 Australian federal election. The 1993 election was considered un-losable for the LNP and yet they lost and Paul Keating won another term.

The reason they lost is he came to the election with the most comprehensive and thought out policies ever brought to an Australian election. He had all the policies laid out and costed. The problem was though that any balanced plans have give and take so the other side focussed all their noise making on the takes, said they wouldn't do any of those and that they would do all the positives.

Unfortunately that negative approach worked and they were re-elected. Since then Australian elections have been incredibly lacking in policy during the campaign. In order for a rational, thought out and calm campaign to work you need voters to be rational, calm and thinking.... I think you can probably see the problem with that.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-...

Comment Re:Not me, not in California (Score 1) 940

Perhaps I am reading you wrong as I don't believe patents or rental properties would qualify as economic rents.

My understanding of economic rents occur when you are paid more than you would have accepted for a particular service.

With regards to rental properties you are charging what the market will pay, not more, and sometimes less. The only way that you would be able to forcibly charge an economic rent in the case of rental properties is if you were either the only or 1 of a small number of people who owned the properties. There is significant competition between rental owners because there are so many of them as they are so many 1 or 2 property rental investors. There may be an actual scarcity of housing in general as a result of not enough land releases but this would be reflected in both purchase price and rental price.

Rental prices may be too high for a healthy society, and I won't argue with you there. But these are generally caused by a lack of accommodation being built which often comes as a result of planning laws or lack of land releases.

Renting properties out shouldn't be seen as a bad thing. If you do not have rented accommodation you are requiring all people to make the choice to invest large amounts of money into one asset class. If you are someone who moves often then that could be extremely expensive. Also if you remove renting as an option you will make a large number of people homeless as they will be unable to achieve the financing required. Letting someone rent a property is much lower risk then giving someone the money to buy a property.

Comment Re:Not me, not in California (Score 1) 940

Sigh. I do understand leverage. Perhaps I phrased it wrong above. You can purchase shares with "other people's money" as described in your quote, hence you can leverage. You can also see capital appreciation in shares as well. This capital appreciation allows you to increase your level of borrowings in real terms in exactly the same way realestate capital appreciation does.

That said your example has some very flawed maths. If you put down 100k on a 500k investment and the investment value has increased from $500k to $525k your net position sure as hell isn't now $525k. Unless you have somehow paid off the initial $400k loan. What you have seen is an increase in your net position of $100k to $125k assuming you can sell the property for no costs. What this example also assumes is that there is no cost to using "other people's money" which is provably wrong. So at 3.5% interest on $400k loan you have a cost of $14k in interest. So now your actual increase in net position is down to 11k.

In addition to this you have the opportunity cost of having a 400k loan. While you have a debt of 400k on the mortgage you will have to forgo other investment opportunities. This is because as your debt level rises, and hence your leverage rises, your risk as an borrower increases and institutions are less likely to lend you money.

Above I assumed a zero cost for liquidating your realestate asset, but this is also provably false and significantly so. Depending on where you are in the world a realestate agent will charge you between 1% - 5% of the TOTAL value of the property. Even if we assumed 1% at $525k you are looking at $5250 in realestate charges and that kicks your return in the teeth and takes it to under 6k. Conveyancing costs and lawyers fees also need to be paid.

So finally coming back to your original comment. Realestate is good for some people and not good for others. If you move around a lot then realestate has risks that other asset classes do not, shares being one of those classes. You are able to leverage the purchase of shares, so your personal example of a couple of thousand of your own down and the rest by the bank, remains the same. Shares are also much easier to liquidate than property and much much cheaper to do so.

Comment Re:Not me, not in California (Score 1) 940

And what if I only want your car for a month? If I have no need or requirement for a car for longer than a month even if I could afford one?

Or are you suggesting that because I need a car at all that I should find the 30k up front capital for its use for 1 month and then find a buyer at the end of that month?

Comment Re:Not me, not in California (Score 1) 940

How the hell is it unearned? Are you basically saying that car rental companies, tool rental companies and every other rental system is unearned income? That they haven't invested in product, marketted it, and found people to use it? That they haven't calculated the number of people who need to do a little bit of earth moving around their house there needs to be to justify 1 bob cat?

Or are you essentially saying that only labour has a value and that if you own any kind of working asset you are getting money for nothing?

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