Interesting Links for 3-1-2011

[andrewducker]

• The joy of making model aircraft
  (tags: toys funny)
• UN defends human right to WikiLeaked info.
  (tags: wikileaks un)
• What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2011 if 1977 copyright laws were still in effect.
  (tags: copyright law culture publicdomain publishing)
• The New Year's resolutions of various tech companies. I love Apple's.
  (tags: technology funny)
• New clues uncover how 'starvation hormone' connects insulin, fat levels and cancer.
  (tags: hormones health fat insulin diabetes)
• Why Star Wars is not Entertainment (although it sure as hell entertained me).
  (tags: scifi sf starwars movies)
• Women working in technology discuss whether they would recommend the profession to other women.
  (tags: career feminism work computers technology)
• The Female Character Flowchart
  (tags: feminism)
• Bill Sienkiewicz speaks about Big Numbers #3
  (tags: BillSienkiewicz alanmoore comics)
• Good Lord, government ministers want stable house prices. Altogether too sensble.
  (tags: housing uk government)
• Microsoft not allowing NES emulator on WP7 phones - this kind of thing is why I won't be getting one.
  (tags: mobile_phones microsoft censorship)
• Calories, fat or carbohydrates? The problems with current diet studies
  (tags: science health food diet nutrition research)
• Jesus not actually related to Mithras (or Horus, or Dionysus).
  (tags: religion christianity jesus)

Comments

[nmg.livejournal.com]

You're looking at this the wrong way. The way to reduce house prices is not to increase supply, but to decrease demand. We need a good pandemic around here.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

I'd love you to explain that.

I mean, the verbal principal makes sense, but how does one decrease demand?

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Uh, reduce the number of people who need to be housed?

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

how

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Kill homebuyers, drive them before you like cattle, and listen to the lamentations of their real-estate agents.

Or slap on a huge land transfer tax, or raise interest rates into the stratosphere, or sit on the sidelines as your major source of employment folds tents with no visible means of replacing the lost jobs, or switch off the water mains and sewers. You could also sharply curtail the extension police/fire/emergency services to new developments as an austerity measure.

-- Steve thinks there are tons of ways to make buying a new home unattractive enough that few people would go on the market.

[dalglir.livejournal.com]

"Kill homebuyers, drive them before you like cattle, and listen to the lamentations of their real-estate agents."

Lol.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I mean, the verbal principal makes sense, but how does one decrease demand?

Aside from nmg's Swiftian answer, you mean? Well, you may want to ask the city fathers in Detroit for details.

-- Steve's boggled at the (in a literal sense) decivilisation happening just a couple of hours down the road from his home.

[makyo.livejournal.com]

Indeed. The problem is that house prices depend on demand, which isn't as strongly linked to supply as one might expect or want.