Social Construction & Sentence Construction

I don't know what I'm talking about. I thought I did, but I realized I don't. I found myself immersed in sudden confusion. A new arrival in Aporia. 'Social' means of society, concerning society, communal, many. 'Construction' means 'construction' but does construction implicate design? an architect?

In the absence of an actual understanding, I tend to use other concepts as substitutions for 'social construct' to set up affirmative-negative positions on any particular point. I tend largely to think in terms of a centrally planned economy (as seen in the USSR, Mao's China, and to a lesser extent Japan) vs decentralized markets. Which in turn I tend to analogize into 'intelligent design' versus 'natural selection' arguments.

That is to say, I get the impression that when 'social construct' is invoked, the general idea is that it's something we consciously constructed. This I am no longer sure about.

For example is a termite mound a social construct?

Does a bee nest qualify as a social construct?

Could social construction actually be referring to 'evolution by natural selection' the fruits of extended phenotypes? Are people describing a process whereby norms arise from multiple iterations of behavioral experiments and learning in changing environments?

Have I been talking past people because I don't know what social construction means?

Well, why don't I just look up what it means?

A social construct or construction concerns the meaning, notion, or connotation placed on an object or event by a society, and adopted by the inhabitants of that society with respect to how they view or deal with the object or event.[6] In that respect, a social construct as an idea would be widely accepted as natural by the society.

A major focus of social constructionism is to uncover the ways in which individuals and groups participate in the construction of their perceived social reality. It involves looking at the ways social phenomena are developed, institutionalized, known, and made into tradition by humans.

Here's the thing. I don't know what that means. The first paragraph I would interpret as basically saying 'society has norms it adheres to' and the second paragraph I interpret as 'the investigation as to where norms come from is ongoing.'

Being a fan of Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now' I long ago endeavored to read it's inspiration 'Heart of Darkness' by Joseph Conrad. It's heavy heady stuff, but I found while reading it that my eyes often moved mechanically over the page, which in turn were turned and after three or four pages I would glance up and ask myself 'wait. what's happening?'

It's not a long book, but it is one of the hardest I've ever read as it's very much a moody piece written in an almost stream of consciousness way:

The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.

After reading this paragraph a few times, my personal 'solution' to this paragraph is 'The value of sailors' stories is derived from the embellishment they make not the description of true events.' Or something.

So I have a bias towards plain speech despite what my own writing might indicate. I'm aware in literary appreciation circles there's people who would nominate James Joyce as greatest of all time and highly recommend reading Proust. I probably linger with the unseemly crowd who think nothing beats George Orwell for his amazing ability to speak plainly. An ability I don't have and feel like a moron for.

However, is a metaphorical descent into hell and madness aboard a riverboat as one travels away from civilization in search of a mysterious defector is probably a more interesting and compelling narrative than a farm where the animals take over and try to run it for themselves.

On the flip side though, in my experience Orwell is often cited to criticize totalitarian ideas and practices, so much so the short hand 'Orwellian' is well understood. I would posit that plain speech creates works that have broader influence than the domain of literature. If anything the richness of Conrad's prose obfuscates the horrors of the Belgian Congo by making it an abstract nightmare that is backdrop to the internal journey of the narrator, much as Coppola's movie uses the Vietnam War as backdrop for the journey of Martin Sheen.

If communication is the shared understanding of meaning; a process of encoding, transmitting and decoding the meaning... I'm not really qualified to lecture in communication and linguistics. But you know 'quiero comer un manzana' 'ore wa ringo o tabetai' and 'I want to eat an apple.' are three seperate encodings that depending on languages spoken can convey the exact same meaning to a listener.

However in the same language, encoding can move along a spectrum from obvious to obscure. There are many motivations to move along that spectrum. Necessity might demand you be more obvious 'Help! Police!' or more obscure 'Hello officer, yes [wink] I'm alone [wink] in the house. Nobody [wink] is holding me hostage. [wink wink wink]'

But I guess when people say 'x is a social construct [wink]' I am now a confused police officer standing on the doorstep 'so are you being held hostage or not sir?' 'don't [wink] assume my gender [wink, wink]' 'Are you hitting on me?'

This is a rhetorical trick I use. I admit it, which is to say when I admit that I don't know what something means, it means I don't know what you mean, nor do I possess the competence to know that you know what you mean. I use it to try and get people to commit to a position that can then be argued. It's sometimes effective.

I also use a rule-of-thumb to manage my attention. In my head I call it 'heavy lifting' and I recognize it as people going to a lot of cognitive effort to make a case, while rejecting a much simpler case. It's a real red flag when obscure technical language creep into heavy lifting, particularly if the content is directed to a an audience consisting of the general public.

With that in mind, here is an excerpt from Wikipedia's page on Social Construction of Gender. I really like Wikipedia, regard it as one of the best things on the internet. I use it to assess lecturers that I feel should do at least as good a job of explaining concepts and technical jargon as the relevant Wikipedia page. Anyway here we go:

"gender proves to be performance—that is, constituting the identity it is purported to be. In this sense, gender is always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to pre-exist the deed".[29]

I find this quite obscure language, it is however a quote devoid of context. I interpret it (or decode it) to be saying 'We are what we do' something in the field of clinical psychology has been described to me as 'we are what we do' (as opposed to who we think we are, or who we say we are). I'm all about that. I make idiotic arguments, I am an idiot, even if I claim to be a genius. Let's continue.

In demystifying this concept, Butler sets out to clarify that there is indeed a difference in the terms gender performance and gender performativity. In doing so, Butler states in an interview: "When we say that gender is performed, we usually mean that we've taken on a role; we're acting in some way…To say that gender is performative is a little different…For something to be performative means that it produces a series of effects. We act and walk and speak and talk that consolidate an impression of being a man or being a woman…we act as if that being of a man or that being of a woman is actually an internal reality or simply something that is true about us. Actually, it is a phenomenon that is being produced all the time and reproduced all the time."[30] Thus, Butler perceives gender as being constructed through a set of acts that are said to be in compliance with dominant societal norms. Butler is, however, not stating that gender is a sort of performance in which an individual can terminate the act; instead, what Butler is stating is that this performance is ongoing and out of an individual's control. In fact, rather than an individual producing the performance, the opposite is true. The performance is what produces the individual. Specifically, Butler approvingly quotes Nietzsche's claim that "there is no 'being' behind doing… 'the doer' is merely a fiction added to the deed – the deed is everything."[31] Thus, the emphasis is placed not on the individual producing the deed but on the deed itself. Although a seemingly difficult concept to grasp, gender performativity is realized throughout many aspects of our lives, specifically in our infancy and young childhood, our teen years, and finally our adult lives.

Again, given how inarticulate and incoherent I am, I find this hard to decode what is actually being said or asserted. It appears to be a restatement of 'we are what we do' and adding 'we can't separate an individual from their environment.' Perhaps even 'we are the sum total of our actions that are shaped by feedback from the environment.'

Without interpretation, the text is but white-noise, and I am not confident of my interpretation. This is an explanation of a concept on Wikipedia that is quoting its originator accompanied by commentary, that I find hard to understand.

I pick on Butler, because she features in this Onion video I find amusing:


I think it is an example of applying obscure language artfully, such that the joke can be interpreted multiple ways. My initial visceral interpretation was that it was painting a picture that ideas, like Butler's being disseminated widely through society, is pure fantasy. It ridicules the theories presented but I can see how another perspective could interpret it as ridiculing Trump voters, because they really don't 'get it'.

I don't get it, but I don't mean that in a hostile way. There appears to be no market sufficient to my need to have 'social construct' explained in plain language, as to a 6-year old. Instead I have to look to the examples offered and try to infer what is meant.

Like 'Money' appears to be a non-contentious social construct. It is an invention or contrivance of society, that allows me to walk into a building, fill a basket of food, tap a piece of plastic against a plastic box, and strangers let me walk away with all that food without a word.

The thing is though, 'social construct' seems to imply that money could be anything we all agree on. Bananas, Tree leaves or poems. But money or currency is subject to selective pressures. It's a social construct but it will butt heads with reality from time to time, and often lose in the form of asset bubbles bursting, hyperinflation, and sovereign debt defaults. In Economics you learn a list of criteria, or the selective pressures money is subject to: Generally accepted, relatively scarce, a store of wealth, a unit of account and perhaps portable.

Bananas won't survive as a currency because they are perishable and hence can't be a store of wealth. Tree leaves won't survive as a currency because they are also perishable, too irregular to be a unit of account and not scarce enough. Poems wouldn't work because it's not even a medium of exchange, someone can pay you for a poem, but can't really pay with poems because you would retain the poem that you have just supposedly traded. I just realized how ridiculous it is that I am arguing against poems-as-currency.

My argument is that the social construct of money can be explained by a process of evolution. People have come along and tampered with the social construct, and generally the tampering works or doesn't work. We see money evolve - milled edges, non-intrinsic worth, promissory notes, bank notes, credit cards, eftpos, pin and chip, tap and go, block chain. Economies collapse, liquidity in the market dries up etc. We know people constructed bitcoin, but it thus far has failed to become a real currency because it can't meet the money criteria while there's rampant volatile speculation as to it's price which is crazy given that it's only intrinsic utility is as a currency.

However, some people have agreed to let a dog use leaves to purchase biscuits. But if the societal norm is that only higher primates engage in trade, and identity is performative with no doer pre-existing the deed, is that dog in fact a primate? What I'm sure we can all agree on, is that it is very cute, and it would be hard not to give the dog a biscuit. Apparently he has had his visit to the shops limited to 3 a day though, lest the dog get diabetes and the ready availability of leaves bankrupts the school store.

I tend to view the 'big three' social constructs as Religion, Nations and Gender. However I appreciate that Religion is only a non-contentious social construct regarding every other religion but one's own, although often some reciprocal altruism is extended by believers to the rights of all religion. Gender is somewhat contentious, but in the circles I move it tends to be whether there's a distinction between sex and gender, where sex is biological and gender a construct...

Alas, these examples provide no clarity either. A case can certainly be made to explain religions with evolution through natural selection, right down to specific religious practices. Since that was really the debate of the 00's though, I won't dig into that.

Nation states as a social construct are also bound by selective pressures though. Borders tend to follow geographic features like rivers, mountain ranges, seas, island chains. The borders have to be defended from neighbors or other invaders to survive. They also depend on internal political stability lest they subdivide, not to mention the climate which has wiped out more nations and civilizations than people have.

Cuisine is a social construct, techniques and recipes can be altered, but these too tend to be shaped by selective pressures. We can add as much salt to a recipe as we care to, but our pallets will react in order to preserve our kidneys. If we make poison, those recipes tend to die out as go to meals. We can observe the correlation between use of spices and climate, and also how foods high in salt, fats and sugar lead to addiction almost as if our ancestors had no access to such an abundance of cheap calories.

I'm beginning to convince myself that 'social construction' must be a euphemism for 'natural selection' however my impression of what I'm supposed to decode is: 'it's arbitrary; accidental or malicious'

This then in conclusion is the gist. I cannot read minds, but my suspicions are aroused when terminology becomes popular that is incredibly hard to explain and pin down a meaning for. Sure concepts that are hard to conceive of like infinity, intelligence etc. we can 'know when we see' but I specifically suspect that in the market of ideas, there's always a demand for permission to believe what we want. We will find people willing to do torturous, strenuous heavy lifting to turn 'we are what we do' into a sentence so convoluted we can interpret it as 'we are who we think we are.' or something. I can only hope there is always demand and supply for pop-science writers to interpret for me.

The Last Climate Denier

So pretty much everybody has by now heard that my country of birth and residence Australia, is on fire. It will likely continue to burn for four more months or so. My family (including myself) was evacuated on the second day of our holiday. On our way to Eastern Victoria we saw a cavalcade of CFA fire trucks heading to the front - our holiday destination.

Just as some countries of the world have their 'Wet' and 'Dry' seasons, Australia has its 'Fire' season. Bush fires are not unusual, and we've had very bad ones in the past, what is unusual is to have bad ones start so early in summer, keep burning for months and occur all at once. They also traditionally have affected city folk less than say Tropical Cyclones that can make landfall in our northern cities, but also take out banana crops, causing prices to spike in urban supermarkets. But this time clouds of ash are blowing in with the breeze and giving the residents of Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra a taste of what it is like to live in Beijing, and other mega cities powered by Australia's brown coal.

So that's the situation.

I got taught the four broad ways in which people avoid responsibility. Buckets if you will, that any time you have a problem or complaint and it wasn't resolved, you'll find it dropped into one of these four buckets.

1. Denial 'There is no problem'
2. Excuses 'We can't address it because...'
3. Blaming 'Joe did that not me.'
4. Diversion 'Your story reminds me of the time...'

I worked in a call center for the better half of the last decade conducting surveys, which gave me probably 10,000 hours to practice recognizing which buckets people use. Let's say I called up to ask people to do a survey about exercise:

1. 'I don't exercise.'
2. 'I'm having dinner.' 'I'm at work.' 'The kids are in the bath.'
3. 'The government is supposed to stop these calls'
4. (Very rare) 'I'll ask you a question what do you think about these Muslims?'

What might be missed is what people aren't taking responsibility for. Because there's two equally valid ways to resolve a market research cold call: A. Do the survey. B. Decline to do the survey.

The four tactics listed above, are not ways to avoid surveys, but ways to avoid taking responsibility.

So.

Climate deniers. The first question to ask is: 'what constitutes denial?' By analogy consider the following statement:

I'm not an alcoholic, I can quit whenever I want, but I don't want to.

Our social situation is such, that on a subject like alcoholism there's really only a binary. Once you admit you are an alcoholic, it tends to come with it a social expectation that you not be consuming alcohol.

Climate deniers though may style themselves as 'Climate Skeptics' and if one feels inclined to examine the magnitude of this fancy SBS ran an episode of their flagship show 'Insight' where one Climate Scientist took on an entire studio of Climate Skeptics.

Climate deniers are those people who opt for the simplest and most elegant way to abrogate responsibility for human-caused climate change. Those who deny it is taking place, and really we are now in it so it might carry the additional burden of denying it has taken place.

We don't however tend to think of 'denial' as an attenuated process. Consider:

A) Climate change is a hoax.
B) Climate change is real.
C) Climate change is real and it needs to be addressed now.
D) Climate change is real and it needs to be addressed now, and it's the most pressing issue of our time.
E) Climate change is real and it needs to be addressed now; and it's the most pressing issue of our time and I need to start making sacrifices.
F) Climate change is real and it needs to be addressed now; and it's the most pressing issue of our time and I need to start making meaningful sacrifices.

Now in Australia it is still more or less true that we are a classic two-party democracy. Voting is compulsory, voting is on a preferential system, yadda yadda... we follow a global trend of two-party democracies where our country is divided roughly in half and the right-wing party tends to have a narrow edge. Furthermore, our right-wing party tends to follow the American model of being the party of climate denial.

This would suggest that somewhere between 40~51% of Australians believe climate change to be a hoax. My suspicion is though that if one was to attempt to produce this via survey polling with any statistically significant and representative sample, it would be hard to find anything near 40% agreeing with the statement 'Climate change is a hoax.' option A.

Which would suggest something else is going on, and running from option A-F from above I would posit only option F is actually a state of complete non-climate denial. I'm not sure I'm in that category, (which is to say I'm possibly still in denial), because 'meaningful' sacrifices is a tricky concept.

For some people, the meaningful sacrifice may be not voting for the party they have voted for all their lives. To accept a bundle of policy issues they mostly object to in order to have climate change meaningfully addressed at a policy level. It may mean for them, that while they agree climate change is real and the most pressing issue of their times, they will have to sacrifice Negative Gearing, Water Allocations, Subsidies, Tax Benefits on Retirement Funds etc.

What I'm suggesting in other words, is that there are a bunch of Australians who want something done about climate change, but the chips have fallen such that they wind up voting in lockstep with the full blown climate deniers (A) because of what they perceive as more pressing or more immediate issues. (C)

Here then, I suspect the full-on Climate-Change-is-a-hoax people may provide a valuable service to the less visible majority of people in denial about climate change. Because remember that denial is but the simplest way to avoid responsibility. The larger group in denial don't resort to denial of the problem in the first place, but perhaps first and foremost; to blaming. Which is to say, we blame the inaction on climate change, on the climate deniers, not our own feet dragging.

There will, like any good dodge, be some truth to it. Electoral seats with high unemployment that have pinned their hopes on Coal to provide high salaries for unskilled and semi-skilled labor market etc. Lobbyists from offending industries basically paying to continue to externalize their true costs. The question, to explain the title of this post though, is: is it really the case that we need every last person to migrate from (A) to (B), or is it more the case that we need to move people from (B) to (F) or perhaps there's enough people in (E) that if we moved only them to (F) that would be the tipping point?

I don't know. Because I suspect by and large we don't have this data. The denial that shows up in political leadership though, tends to strike me as more motivated than sincere. The difference between the two is kind of moot to me, because it's just clear that there are incentives for politicians to take a position of climate change denial or skepticism. (And of the skeptics I tend to get a far greater impression that the skeptical political leaders aren't free to consult the data, read the reports and question the methodology. eg. behave like a skeptic, rather than willfully ignorant).

In which case, it may come the time that we need to look at their supporter base and interrogate that package deal. Are there a bunch of voters for example, that want something done about climate change, but are hoping to cash in on their property portfolio and take the retirement vacation of a lifetime before climate change is addressed? Are there voters, that want something done about climate change but balk at the idea of parents consenting to pre-pubescent children medically transitioning gender?

That would describe shifting people from (C) to (D) on climate change, not from (A) to (B).

But wait, it gets more....

"Après Vous" I'm told is what the French say... although we say it too because it's fairly straightforward translation which is 'after you'. Which I'm sure you'll agree we English speakers say facetiously all the time.

While there's evidently roughly half the population that could make an emotional sacrifice and vote for a party that will tax Greenhouse Gases or... basically address climate change in any way whatsoever, there's another half of the country including me, that I can't quite let off the hook with a simple 'you've done your part.'

What I suggest is this. Imagine someone knocking on your door and saying 'You've seen Italy for the last time. I hope you made the most of your last visit, because you'll never see it again.' And if Italy has no particular meaning to you, insert France, England, the United States, Brazil, Japan whatever floats your boat (or lifts your airplane). Imagine being done basically, with air travel. Imagine some official knocking on your door and saying 'You've eaten your last steak.' or knocking on your door and saying 'The window has closed for building your dream home.'

Add another detail to this though. You take it on the chin, the sacrifice the nation, the world is asking of you, and out of curiosity you ask the official. 'So you have many more doors to knock on this street?' by way of polite conversation and they say 'No. Just you.'

Maybe.

Maybe you are the kind of noble soul that could take it all for the team; would take it all for the team if you could. In my experience of posing hypotheticals to humans though, it is very common to see people try and weasel out of the scenario. Avoid responsibility. Robert Schiller in his book 'Animal Spirits' for example asserted that wage negotiations rarely have anything to do with supply of and demand for labor, but far more often to do with a sense of fairness. You'd really care if at 28 years of age you were told your travelling days were over, then watched your parents plan a holiday to Morocco because they were tired of Spain and wanted to do something different.

If we entertain (because I can't prove) that full blown climate deniers tend to be older rather than younger, have lower levels of educational achievement, and work and live in areas where the local industries are big greenhouse gas emitters. Industries like mining, agriculture, tourism and construction... that's the vast majority of the Australian Economy. Furthermore another big export: Education, results in much air-travel bringing students in and out of the country and they often are driving inner city apartment construction booms. The potential economic contraction that may follow from properly costing Climate Change may not have us scratching our head as to why climate skepticism is so prevelent, but instead why it's so rare.

I could only suggest it's probably because most people do have a naive intuition as to economies being segregated, discrete, isolated rather than appreciating how completely integrated they are. Everything you purchased this week, probably had fossil fuel burning for the next century factored into its price. I suspect the number of people that truly intuitively understand that the price of survival is fair up to and including everything you have is low, and here's why:

I recall reading some ten to fifteen years ago a Vox Pop segment in a paper that interviewed a Latrobe Valley Coal worker about climate change/carbon tax etc. and it made an impression because his response contained the words [paraphrasing from recollection] "At the end of the day we all need to turn on the air conditioner." Now there's loads of problems with that assertion, including the necessity, the source of electricity etc. but I also see an invitation to empathise, that is too often declined.

People who believe in climate change, as a man-made existential threat to organized human lives, lead their own lives all too often in fear of getting fired. Of being passed over for promotion or career opportunities. Of not paying their debts. And of trying to consume their way into happiness or at least esteem by their peers.

One might feel outrage at the suggestion that Air-conditioning is a sacred human right for which the planet may be destroyed. But as Freud so beautifully said "He does not believe, who does not live in accordance with their beliefs." People all over are living as if not just air-conditioning is a human right, but air-travel, international holidays, 80-20 grinds of chuck, pouring concrete and having no interruption to their supply of electricity is a human right.

If it were the case that somehow through some strange physics what we really needed to address climate change, was to close our Educational sector, rather than Agriculture, Mining, Construction etc. you could bet the demographics of climate skepticism would shift roughly in line with who was being asked to sacrifice the most.

Yeah, personally I believe in top-down rather than bottom up. There's a reality that many people who have gone vegan and will only visit Italy by sailing around the Horn of Africa, are extremely disadvantaged by our economy, which is to say our society is set up to drive these people to extinction and promote people with the largest ecological footprints. But if that's the case and the real change has to happen at a policy/economic incentives level, then the move from E to F (make sacrifices vs make meaningful sacrifices) places an onus on us to change our own politics. Which is to say, to stop demanding the policy platforms from our representatives that have kept our potential allies voting right-wing that want something done on climate change.

As we speak, the Democratic party in America is going through the arduous task of determining who will run against Trump. One of the flaws of this primary process I've noticed, is that the Primaries may be determined by the outcomes of 'Blue' States, large electorates like New York and California, whereas the Presidential race will be determined by Battleground states like Wisconsin, Florida etc. this would pose no problem, if the interests of the safe Blue states and the Battleground states converged. But I'm guessing Silicon Valley and the Rust Belt, don't quite have the same priorities.

Because the Coal miner, or Coal-fired power station worker has a much better vantage point to see the hypocrisy of the Tertiary educated millennial demanding - they give up the only career they've ever known, write down the value of their home, in the town that's lost it's biggest employer and completely reinvent the story of their lives - jumping on the latest Jetstar sale of $70 flights to Tokyo.

Just so, the politicians that stand in the way of climate action can freely observe how hollow a student 'climate strike' is in February so far from the VCE exams they will not be skipping, because there's no way they are giving up on their dream career.

I don't have hard and fast answers. But because I can never unsee those tactics people use to dodge personal responsibility, I see in the discourse of people that accept man-made climate change a lot of denial, a lot of blaming, a lot of excuses and yes, even diversionary tactics. (Lest we forget that a few weeks before bush fires broke out in Eastern Victoria the latest Disney Star Wars installment was for many people a more pressing catastrophe for debate than the fires burning in the state to the north of us.)

Credit where credit's due, a lot of people have donated money, raised awareness of the best fundraisers, volunteered their time and efforts. But these laudable efforts I suspect would be the same dealing with a non-climate change disaster fall out, like a Tsunami for example, and it's entirely possible that in relief efforts climate activists and climate deniers alike mobilize for a common cause.

What gives me hope is that living so close to the front, living in the ash cloud of these catastrophic bushfires while unlikely to budge the dyed-in-the-wool deniers (A), may be moving, myself included Australians from (E) to (F). Or any migration along that spectrum of denial from (B) to (F). People starting to process that the house they are trying to pay off may be devalued by the climate sooner than the tax policy. Or that 2020 is the year to give up red meat, not 2021. That gives me hope.

Just as I feel nobody is more likely to be the undoing of Trump than Trump himself, I am fairly confident no agent will be so persuasive that the climate is changing than the climate itself. Sol the mighty Sun God has returned to voice his wrath, and there's something to be noticed about this God in particular in that he won't spare the true believers either.

It would be helpful if the outright denial would stop and responsibility would be taken, but many people might be surprised at how reluctant they find themselves to take responsibility when the last Climate Denier concedes.

Among those that profess our belief that human activity has altered the climate, the onus is on us to come up with a better conception of our opposition than cartoonish stereotypes that merit no falsification, and keep uttering political messages that only ring true on our ears. We do not want Generals that cannot conceive of defeat, nor soldiers that cannot conceive of anyone rallying to any other banner. We do not want to limit ourselves to simply putting more resources into strategies that continue to prove ineffective. We have an obligation to change our own conversations, to check the map against the ground, and inventory the degree to which we are complicit in our own defeat.

Not-Thinking Out Loud

My sister said to me once, that we were living in the era of the Op-ed. My time in Mexico, impressed my sisters description on me further. Just as meal delivery apps have sprung up in the past half decade as a convenient solution to the time poor individual, the abundance of Op-ed (opinion editorial) content provides a convenient solution for the time poor individual to participate in a discourse while ensuring their toilet break does not exceed a mandated 4 minutes.

And of course I would surmise, that it isn't just stressed out 6-8 workers utilizing the convenience of outsourced opinions, convenience is beguiling to all. I would be surprised if uber eats wasn't popular with the long term unemployed slipping into a malaise where the stress and stigma from their situation makes it harder and harder to pull themselves away from soothing video games, not to mention the calming salts, fats and sugars of takeout that we seldom include when we cook at home. Just so, I imagine there may be people with plenty of time on their hands that will still prefer the sheer convenience of reading and sharing someone else's thoughts as a substitute for their own.

The person who has food delivered for years is unlikely to lose their ability to cook bolognese, pancakes or cubes of ice. And I don't know the neuroscience as to whether our neural pathways for cooking gradually go extinct with neglect or whether it's like riding a bike. But one is not likely to develop culinary skills in the interim. I do not imagine it is a frequent experience however that one is called upon to cook in their life; at least I can't conceive of a situation where one cannot instantly excuse themselves with 'I can't cook'.

Yes there's no Saw-like scenarios to my knowledge where someone has regained consciousness in a deathtrap that requires them to make a croquembuche or be baked themselves. I'm not arguing that eating out is good for you, nor harmless, just relatively inconsequential.

Because it strikes me as more likely that if one doesn't practice thinking, reasoning, argumentation, rhetoric, negotiation, writing, communication, presentation etc. these skill sets atrophy. However encountering a situation where, being able to do the cognitive equivalent of assembling a croquembouche, will be both more likely and incredibly consequential. Whether it is saving yours or another's life, avoiding financial ruin, casting a vote, or being able to sleep at night. Thinking is much more consequential than cooking, evidently so, because thinking can be used as to produce or substitute for a recipe.

What's interesting to me is that we live in a social environment that discourages thinking. The measure of nations remains Economical, with perhaps the solitary exception of Bhutan with its gross national happiness. This hasn't caught fire, nor do people of nations appear particularly impressed or perturbed by OECD human development indexes. My nation has never had a political leader come forth proposing we should run our nation more like Italy, given their greater longevity.

The proxy-measure for progress has been for quite some time 'Gross National Product' or GNP. It measures the total number of finished goods produced over a time period for the primary market, or at least that's my understanding of it. If you purchase a brand new fridge, the economy gets some credit for it. If you purchase a second hand fridge, the powers that be don't care.

This is significant because play conforms to the rules of a game. My former principle used an analogy of handing out darts to students and predicting they would throw them anywhere in any direction, into trees, walls and probably... fellow students. The moment though he paints a target on a wall, the darts will be thrown at it. This by the way is distinct from the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy. What it means is that if your boss's boss's boss's boss cares exclusively about GNP then eventually you will learn to care exclusively about GNP.

This seepage down of incentives inevitably shapes society, until you have office buildings built on top of food courts and social media filled with shared op-eds. Simply because if you consume less that's bad for GNP. Buying ingredients from the grocery shows up in GNP, however preparing that food for yourself doesn't. Paying someone else to prepare your food does. The economy just by rewarding consumption, creates a blind migration to a society where nobody does anything for themselves if they can consume a good or service instead.

Not in some diabolical puppet master string pulling way, but just from the simple fact that if one is not paid to sit down, order their thoughts and articulate a position it doesn't show up in GNP. However, if someone pays a website for attracting eyeballs that see their ads, or attracting eyeballs to convert to subscriptions or donations, that website will likely start paying people to do thinking for others, or even articulation for others so they don't have to.

In an apolitical, and even amoral way, it is the exact same blind process that has us pay a premium to 7-Eleven for freezing and grinding up beverages for us, but extending into our mental lives.

Of course you've probably already thought of numerous exceptions where having someone opine for us is immensely valuable, just as having caterers feed 40 people for us, or having someone clean our office for us etc. is a good thing. We could call this, deferring to expert opinions, which is distinct from the appeal to authority. I do not for example advocate home surgery or just giving flying a passenger jet a go, or defending yourself in a criminal trial.

Enter an expert problem though, which is identifying experts. We have domains where expertise either does not exist, or possibly even cannot exist. I'm not sure if this is what is known as the expert problem, but I can conceive of few other candidates. It's namely the expertise required to identify an expert. Say you want to invest your savings to provide for your retirement and request an ethical fund. Lacking a degree of expertise in finance and investment you will be at the mercy of your expert. Are they an advocate of modern portfolio theory or value investing? Do they have a fiduciary obligation to advise in your interests? How are they determining your risk profile? What is their criteria for 'ethical' and does it map with yours?

If the Dunning-Kruger effect means we are blind to our own incompetence, surely this extends to our ability to detect competence in others. One particularly active and outspoken individual I see in my feeds urges me not to be 'brainwashed' but how does one know if they are brainwashed or not? Surely being successfully brainwashed requires one to believe they are not brainwashed? I can conceive of brainwashed individuals urging others not to be brainwashed.

As a poignant example of this expert problem consider this article that sticks in my memory for the very reason that cursory scrutiny of the article reveals it has no content. The additional effort of clicking a link reveals the assertions made are written by a non-expert. It is an Op-ed in the most literal sense, the thesis inferred is simply 'I encountered someone who voices opinions counter to my own, these opinions must be obstructed in order for my opinions to be unobstructed in the path to unanimity.'

One could be forgiven for thinking it contains content, if a list of unjustified assertions is confused for argumentation, where premises are established and conclusions follow. There is, with a little cognitive effort an interesting idea within the editorial and that is: "Toxic masculinity describes ...most importantly: the right and masculine way of engaging with the world." which though still an assertion, alludes to a weak inference that the very concept of argumentation, rhetoric, philosophy if attributed to toxic masculinity excuses the need for anything beyond an assertion, such that one cannot even use an argument to establish that philosophical argument and reason produce value and therefore cannot be defined as toxic.

That's really sophisticated though, and most probably unintentional given it isn't explicitly stated. But hopefully it highlights an expert problem, or appeal to authority. Is the average person competent to notice when subjective opinion is being presented as objective fact?

This is one of my chief misgivings about the recent surge of Video Essay content. With an economically driven reduction in the barriers to production, many non-experts have learned through trial and error and imitation and competition to present mere opinion in a convincingly authoritative way. 

About a year ago, I got interested in why nobody I know condemns Antifa, who just seem shit, let alone shit at opposing fascism. They seem to pass in civil society under a veil of ignorance. 'They're Anti-fascist? Well then they must be good!' I have to admit I was largely ignorant regarding Antifa, kind of just assuming they were like Melbourne's shitty activist group 'the Socialist Alternative'. Seeking to get myself more informed, I eventually found an hour long video explaining the 'Philosophy' of Antifa. Which was very informative, but upon reflection I felt was again, ultimately contentless.

I couldn't share this video as an appeal to authority, to defer to, as a better articulation as to why and how fascism must be opposed, because I thought about it.

For the purposes of illustration, its most interesting idea and articulate argument was to substantiate a double standard, (justify a belief that fascism needs to be opposed by any means necessary) - is that fascists can choose to stop being fascists and go about their lives, whereas Jews, Homosexuals, Gypsies etc. whoever fascists target; are required to cease to exist in order for fascists to be happy.

This though was undermined earlier in the piece where the auteur addressed dogwhistles, such that one need not identify as fascist or white supremacist to be justifiably targeted by Antifa. The video also attempts to justify a slippery-slope argument, that there is no form of white supremacy that does not result in violence.

I am no fan of Fascism, and I am a fan of Democracy, Self-determinism, Secular Humanism, Philosophy and the Enlightenment etc. As such I would apply Tony Benn's five essential questions for power to any group tasked with defending Democracy from Fascism:

1. What power have you got?
Tentative answer: Unlimited powers to oppose fascism, in addition the unilateral ability to determine who is fascist.
2. Where did you get it from?
Autonomously self appointed.
3. In Whose interest do you exercise it?
Ostensibly everyone.
4. To Whom are you accountable?
Nobody.
5. How can we get rid of you?
Unknown.

These examples of content that can serve to outsource one's own thinking to, are but examples I've personally chosen of product that has evolved under the selective pressures of the market. Alas, there always has been, and always will be a market not only for reason, but rationalization. Rationalization is also I'm fairly confident a largely automatic process.

A problem with markets, (as outlined by economist Robert Schiller whose expertise was established by being on the very short list of economists recognized for predicting the Global Financial Crisis,) is that they will efficiently produce snake oil when the market demands snake oil. It doesn't mean it should be provided.

The libertarian defense to this phenomena is that if left to it's own devices the snake oil salesmen will eventually go out of business when their customers die. However, we could also just regulate the market by altering incentives to prevent the sale of snake oil. Furthermore, snake oil is a fucking metaphor, and if it takes the shape of something like cost cutting measures in construction, insurance fraud, or climate denial, the demand may not represent the ultimate consumers of the snake oil.

To the limits of my imagination, I can guarantee if you search the market you will always be able to find someone willing to tell you what you want to hear. They may even be able to value add by formulating arguments and articulating them where you could not yourself. They may add value by committing fallacies you yourself cannot detect.

The market for outsourced thinking, certainly adds value in the form of risk management. If you were to write out your manifesto as to why the West needs to abandon it's taboos regarding the consumption of monkey and dog meat, and your friends refuted it, I suspect that would feel quite personal. If you share someone else's opinion that you happen to be sympathetic to, and your friend refutes it, much less personal. Very similar to IBM's 80's campaign 'Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.' If you go with some bloggers opinion and it doesn't pan out, it's the bloggers fault. If you express your own opinion and it doesn't go well, it's your fault.

Sadly though, sooner or later someone will ask you to justify some belief you hold, and it's very rare for a belief to be self evident. I suspect you never want to confess 'I believe it because I want it to be true.'

I listen to others, I try to find experts, I defer. I watch debates, often in masochistic state of frustration, I have even been known to read up on a subject. None of that is bad. However, by analogy consider how schools teach students to solve math problems.

The teacher might demonstrate the problem on the board for the class. Then have them open a textbook, the textbook might have worked examples that walk the students through the problem. So far, learning resembles outsourced thinking, with designated authorities the students largely take on trust. You may then be given examples, and there's almost certainly answers at the back of the textbook you can check against or copy from.

At some point though, you will be handed a piece of paper that asks you to solve for something, and that you show your workings. In my highschool you got a mark for the write answer and marks for your workings. One might get four out of five marks just for the workings where a stupid error was made like rounding or getting a sign wrong.

I've been out of school for a while, but would be shocked and disturbed if schools in an effort to catch up to the internet age no longer instructed students to show their workings, but instead asked questions like 'use your smartphone to share a quadratic equation on social media.'

Arguably one of the objectives of Education in teaching basic mathematics is to empower students to not have to spend money paying someone to do quite basic mathematics for them. To not produce adults that need to pay people to read for them.

Sadly, we do live in a world where at best people are often sharing content they may have read, but not really scrutinized. I have a great appreciation now of the old proverb 'A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth even has its boots on.' It is not uncommon for me to see people sharing warnings about a misinformation campaign that has not nor ever will reach me, before then obliviously sharing misinformation themselves.

Perhaps most concerning though, is that often in the marketplace of ideas, when we outsource our thinking we often aren't even serving the interests of the people we think we are (ie. the author of an op-ed) nor even the employer of the author, nor the direct financial beneficiary like their advertises or sponsors, or the company that takes a cut of all the donations it facilitates. I mean, coincidentally yes, we may be unwittingly serving all these interests in the chain.

But ultimately, we are serving those few economists that pretended to know that GNP was the most suitable proxy measure of human utility. 

"Ok, Boomer"

The great irony of the meme 'Ok, Boomer' is that by the very nature of memes, if you employ a meme to criticize a generation, you are that meme. In other words:

Had you been born between 1946 and 1964, you would be a 'Boomer'.

Which is such a banal truism, I'm confident the point would be missed. I'm not sure how to articulate it better. Perhaps a few more examples would help:

If you were in your 20's in the early 90's you would be making 'not jokes'.

If you were in your 20's in the late 90's you would be listening to 'Nu Metal'.

If you were in your 20's in the 80's you would have paid money to see Police Academy movies.

If you were in your 20's in the 80's you wouldn't do yoga, you would do aerobics. 

Of course, we can't argue the counterfactual, so these assertions of mine are opinion. However the idea bears entertaining I feel. The specific idea that if we were somehow able to displace you in time or perhaps even geographically, you would struggle to maintain your beliefs.

'Oh but that would be great tohm! if you could send me back to the start of the industrial revolution, I could warn everybody about climate change!' Yeah you could, but I'm talking about displacing you not as a cyborg sent back from the future with memories of how things pan out, but more if you were abducted at birth and raised in different circumstances.

I was watching the German Netflix sci-fi series 'Dark' that is about displacement in time. Without giving too much away, a kid goes missing in the present day and turns up in the 1980's. There's a scene though where the missing kid from 2018 is discovered in the 80's by his father who has managed to follow him through time, and the kid is wearing short jean-shorts, long socks and sandals.

This small detail had me question my very identity. Would I wear the socks and sandals? I mean I still for the most part dress like it's 1996. Fashion has by and large never worked for me since. But if I was 10? If I had no means by which to purchase my own clothing? Would I protest or go with it?

'Ok, Boomer' would be useful as a device to make salient that our beliefs are by and large products of our environment. In which case, it should work in both directions, but the very espousing of 'Ok, Boomer' indicates to me more a comforting exercise in blaming, the boomers are bumbling buffoons that have fucked up the planet, but we have it all figured out. 

In Melbourne, in the inner city, you can find on pretty close to every block a bubble tea shop. They sell sugary drinks in plastic cups, sealed with plastic lids that are punctured with a plastic straw. You can also find in abundance, cafes that serve people coffee in their reusable 'keep cups'.

Would a white office worker with their keep cup turn around to a Chinese international student sipping on their bubble tea and say 'Ok, China.'? While privately I'm sure they feel superior, I doubt they'd feel comfortable laying into the Chinese. If the two individuals were the same age though, I sincerely doubt the keep-cup toting white person would imagine they wouldn't give a shit about single use plastic consumption had they been born in China.

But chances are, they wouldn't.

It is a conceit of hindsight we often make that we would have realized Bruce Willis was dead in the 6th Sense, that the memories in the Arrival were in fact taking place in the future, and that we would have been among the very few Boomers that took Climate Change seriously, argued for greater representation in Studio Movies and accepted our child's demigender non-binary status. 

More to the point, many of us assume that were we to move from the inner city, progressive suburbs, to rural racist heartland that our political views wouldn't change.

And I doubt, they would change dramatically but perhaps more erode over time as one begins to sympathize with a community of different values. 'Ok, Boomer' is a bold declaration of an inability to sympathize, by people who precisely are in the best position to sympathize. Because you are jumping on the bandwagons of culture as and where they occur. There's no Homo Boomus and Homo Millenius.

My ancestors, better known as my Grandparents opposed the imperial expansions of Germany and Japan. Evidently they didn't sacrifice their lives, just youth and mental health, because they came back and had a boom of babies. But many of their peers and siblings did sacrifice their lives. There's a naive assumption we can make in the present day that the Allied forces opposed Hitler because Hitler had to be opposed because of the atrocities of the holocaust. We know Nazism to be bad because it represents the moral nadir of antisemitism. 

Watch the recent Churchill biopic 'Darkest Hour' though, and whatever intelligence the brits had on hand about the deportation of Jews and the death camps, it didn't really feature in the public psyche. The expansion of the Third Reich was opposed for it's imperialism, resistance to being ruled by a foreign power. 

Sovereignty was the reason for the resistance, and with little regard to the Jewish diaspora. In other words: the same kind of sentiments that vote for Brexit. It's quite probable that a bunch of Anti-Semites sacrificed their lives to liberate the Jewish people of Europe, where if but for the accident of their being born a British citizen rather than a German citizen, could have just as easily been posted to a death camp and gassed a bunch of innocent civilians.

And my Grandparents and their peers didn't go fight fascism in order that we be free to marry people of the same sex and open immigration up to Asians and Africans and Arabs, and vote to become a republic, and socialism... their good work, was not undertaken for contemporaneous good intentions, the product of the very freedom and sovereignty they preserved for us. It was for Queen and Country. 

Had my grandparents been born when I was, if someone asked them to lay down their life for queen and country, I imagine they would have said 'fuck off.' as I would.

I was watching the Franky Boyle's New World Order wrap up of 2019, and Sara Pascoe made an interesting point, that is under discussed when they were discussing Greta's UN Speech. She pointed out that she was taught about climate change (she's two years older than me) when she was a kid, then grew up and got busy. And yeah, Pascoe is a vegan, but she also has guested on Travel Man, a show that promotes 'mini-breaks' where one flies to a holiday destination for 48 hours, and we don't hit this up with 'Ok, millenial'

Mark Blyth has been one of the few to point out, that there's an emotional obstacle to climate action. And I invite you to sympathize. 

If you lived in the 1970's you would have been encouraged to go to University for free (In Australia). Going to University would have assured you employment in just about any field, at wages your parents could only have dreamed of and kept you out of Vietnam. It was all driven by the post-war expansions of international trade, manufacturing and fossil fuel driven technology improvements. Real wages had been rising, the middle class was growing. Women were becoming lawyers, engineers, professors. I've met them. There's no laptops, no mobile phones, no internet, no smart phones. If you were an architect or a graphic designer you worked with a set square, not photoshop and illustrator. If you wanted to fact check someone you had to go to the library and look up books via a card catalog, or have a set of Encyclopedia Britannica handy. 

You invested your life in dodging the draft and getting an education in one of the industries that were driving into a better and brighter future. Then in your late 20's you first hear on a Sunday news program about a scientific theory called 'the Greenhouse effect' this is the point where myself and Greta might be tempted to ask 'what did you do?' but we are very unsympathetic as to how obvious the answer would have been to people in their late 20s with two young children and a mortgage who had embarked on careers in the fossil fuel and manufacturing industry - hope it wasn't true.

And I fucking see the same behavior among my peers and contemporaries. There is a popular mass undertaking of social justice, that sure has nobler aims and intentions than industrial expansion. But like the scientists of the 1960's and 70's that first clued in to the hidden cost of greenhouse gases, there is a small, unpopular contingent of serious scientists that have done serious science, that have gone and actually looked at the facts on the ground, and through the microscope and run experiments and they are by and large dismissed by my generation, on so many subjects. And mirroring the climate denying fossil fueled skepticism, there are motivated bodies producing bogus theory and promoting it to preserve their self interest.

I do not know if I would have been a Nazi, had I grown up in Nazi Germany. I listened to Brett Weinstein interview Katie Hurzog where Katie made the interesting claim that she 'knows now I wouldn't be a Nazi in Nazi Germany' (paraphrasing) which was not the reflexive 'well I know I would never be a Nazi.' But more the considered conclusion of a process of much soul-searching, where I assume she concluded with confidence that she was the kind of person who is willing to die out of principle sooner than fit in or be accepted. Brett shares her conclusion, but points out 'we would have opposed it, and we would have died.' (paraphrasing).

And I guess I need to get to some kind of fucking conclusion eventually, so out of respect for Godwin, it may as well conclude with Nazism. This is the thing about the 'Ok, Boomer' meme that I find deliciously oblivious. It's missing the general for the specific. Focusing on the content of beliefs, rather than how those beliefs are obtained.

I was talking to one friend and reported that I knew people who self censored their opinions online. I forget how we got on the topic because our conversation had been so fragmented, but I remember the response was in the vicinity (paraphrasing) of 'well, it's not really a problem because often those kinds of opinions aren't worth sharing.' which I'll be honest, stunned me that anyone wouldn't self censor that opinion, and I was so stunned that I couldn't articulate a push back there and then, it was really blindsiding. I cannot infer a true intention of the statement but what I hear is 'well it's okay if people are unable to express dissenting views because I feel the dissent is illegitimate.' that's not a system. It's tribalism. Simple substitution makes it clear to me 'Well, we shouldn't be concerned if the people are too afraid to criticize the Chairman. The Chairman is a great leader.'

At another party, I was talking about my project to redesign my wardrobe as I transition into middle age and the interesting challenges it poses, and my friend said to me (paraphrasing) 'Well as what I assume is a straight cis man... I think you're going to be fine.' and though I understand the value of labels like cis, to build empathy and challenge the idea of designating 'normal' it was the first time I had a bemused reaction that at first was (this is my inner monologue) 'how cute, you earnestly believe we help each other out...' before graduating to 'that felt remarkably similar to "you Jews are good at making money, and you take care of your own now don't deny it!" sweet pre-holocaust form of Antisemitism.

That's just how I felt, and I feel confident both friends would be horrified to be compared to supporters of the worst endeavors of the 20th century. Nor to my knowledge have either typed the phrase 'Ok, Boomer' anywhere. And in case it needs pointing out, cisgendered heterosexual anglo-saxon men are not as vulnerable as the Jewish diaspora, or even communist dissidents. The people most vocal in attacking us, still have a tendency to marry us, have babies with us etc. 

Baby Boomers are not homogenous, just like every generation, and every other which way you try to slice your demographics. I'm sure climate change, attitudes toward sex and gender, views on immigration, superannuation and how to serve avocado on toast are not the only avenues by which one might feel tempted to post a dismissive 'Ok, Boomer' but it will always remain a self defeating dismissal, because you are demonstrating how ordinary you are and how much in your thinking or lack thereof, you resemble the very people you think you're dismissing.

Short Stories About Housing

Probably two or three years ago I posed the following questions on a post about Housing:

1. How do houses make money?
2. What value does a landlord provide?
3. How can house prices rise faster than rents sustainably?
4. How can rents rise faster than wages sustainably?
5. If housing is such a safe investment, why do banks lend money to people to buy houses rather than simply purchasing the housing themselves and renting them to tennants?

It still feels recent largely because of how relatively infrequently I publish a post in these recent years. In that post I tried to actually steel-man a pro-housing investment position that made sense of these questions. I really tried and I largely failed. I'm time rich, by the way. A big part of my privilege is that I get to sit around and write blog posts, and I realize not everybody does. The point of that post was that if people are going to make large bets on the housing market, it strikes me that they should be able to answer these questions, because these are precisely the bets they are making. I am ever grateful to the few people who read this blog, and even more grateful for the few who had a stab at answering in part one of the five questions I feel anyone buying a property should be able to answer.

For this post, I thought it handy to just bring up a refresher of those five questions, to prime the mind when reading my ridiculous short stories about housing. Stories intended to get whosoever might read them to see the world they live in differently.

Now story time.

Seachange

Your husband had an affair affair with your sister and was arrested for fraud, leaving you and your children in disarray. Needing to make a seachange in your life you accept a job as a local Magistrate for a seaside community. You get in touch with a real estate agent and discover there's a house on the market that suits your needs perfectly and the owner is asking for $50,000. Your employment contract is going to pay you (after tax) $200,000 a year, working full-time as a magistrate. You arrange to meet the owner at the estate agents office and sign the paperwork.
When it's all scheduled to go down, Barry walks in to the meeting, unannounced. He informs you he is a local businessman that's made a fortune from selling abalone to the Japanese. He can secure a loan from the banks for a much larger amount than you and at a lower interest rate. He offers to do you a favor, he'll buy the house not for $50,000 but for $200,000 then you can pay him $5,000 dollars a month in rent. And you're welcome.
Being a magistrate and trained and experienced in calm, sober consideration, you point out to Barry some facts of the case: A) he doesn't need the house, whereas you do. B) You can afford the house, at the asking price. C) the rent you would pay him, is more than you would buy the house for if he wasn't taking out a loan to overpay for it.
Your verdict: he isn't doing you any favors. Barry holds up his open palms and interrupts, stating 'I'm happy to invest in good old bricks and mortar.'
You ask the agent if there are any other houses on the market, Barry interjects 'I'll grab that one too. Of course, that's going to mean two loans I have to repay and one house just sitting empty. I'm afraid $5k a month might not cut the mustard...'

The Great Property Apartheid Retirement Plan

You are sitting with your accountant explaining that you plan to retire in a few years. Your problem: You've grown accustomed to a certain lifestyle your working income affords you, and you don't want your autumn years to be less enjoyable than those years you've worked your butt off during being compensated for making the world a better place.
The accountant starts talking about the potential future demand for renewable energy and the need for investment in that sector as your eyes start glazing over...
That shit's all to complicated for me! you say. Gimme something simple, you demand. The accountant stands up abruptly, moves to the window and shuts the blinds. He walks over to the office door and locks it. Yes, no cubicle for your accountant that's why you pay him the big bucks.
The accountant says 'okay, I may have the ideal retirement financing strategy for you.' He pulls down a large chart and explains.
'See you are here, currently working, earning an income. This income pays for things like cheese, foxtel, petrol and airconditioning. In a few years though you'll be here... with no income. But what if you could take someone else's income?'
Go on you say, you're listening.
'You have a son, who lives in a room in your house, he is in his early twenties and will be earning an income for many years.'
Yeah, you say, he has an honors degree in fine arts and now works as a guy who delivers food to people with real jobs, but you don't see how that is relevant.
'Well, what if you were to charge him rent? He earns $400 a week, you could say young man if you are going to live under my roof you have to contribute. And charge him "rent"'
Rent? You mean that thing I paid way back when I was at uni?
'Exactly, you could charge him up to 60% of the money he earns for living in your asset.'
Well, okay that's something you admit, but that's not enough to buy cheese and foxtel and petrol...
'Ah ha, excellent point sir. But what if you had more sons?'
Well I'd need more rooms...
'Yes, so what if you owned lots of rooms? then you could take 60% of the wages of 10 or 20 young people with shitty jobs, that will be working until the day you die.'
I see, but where would I get those rooms?
'You would buy an investment property.'
An investment property... interesting. But what if my son decides to buy his own house?
'Well, fortunately houses are very expensive. Your son won't buy a house because his job is insecure and he doesn't have much money. So nobody will lend the money to him to buy a house. He may refuse to pay you rent, and decide to rent elsewhere.'
So your whole scheme is broken then? What a waste of my time.
'No, that's the beauty of it. I have many clients like you, and if your son refuses to pay you rent and he instead goes to pay rent somewhere else, who do you think he's paying that rent to?'
...someone...like me.
'Exactly, housing is expensive not everyone can afford to buy, fortunately though renting is much cheaper than buying, so those who can't afford to buy pay the rent to those who can.'
So it's like a big charging your own kids rent swap?
'Yes. Exactly.'
But isn't buying a house expensive? I mean sure I can get a loan based on the assets I already have, but isn't it like paying $10 a week in order to charge my kid $5?
'Well, yes, but fortunately nobody really buys property for the rent. See here's the thing, if you were paying for something like a restaurant meal, what would you expect?'
Well... an excellent meal, cooked properly and served hot. Good service, on time... a good atmosphere... those sorts of things.
'And if you were paying rent to live in your current home what would you expect?'
To rent my own home? Well a bloody lot if I'm paying some other basterd for the roof over my head.
'This is the beautiful thing. If your toilet broke, you'd call a plumber, if your dishwasher broke you'd call an electrician.'
Yeah, that's just common sense.
'When someone is renting, if the toilet breaks they have to call an agent and request emergency repairs, if the dishwasher breaks, they have to fill out a maintenance request form, lodge it with the agent who passes it onto you and you arrange an electrician to go repair it whenever you feel like it.'
So I basically could charge them rent, and provide no service?
'Almost no service, toilet breakdowns are rare, so it's pretty close to none whatsoever. I mean what are your tennents going to do? Build their own home?'
Well yeah, that's what I'd do, you're whole system falls apart.
'But you forget, I have many clients, so where would they build their home? On whose land?'
...they'd have to buy it first.
'Yeah, and are you going to sell it cheaply? No, you've lost a lot of money charging $5 rent when it costs you $10 to own.'
Yeah!
'You need someone to bail you out, by overpaying by even more than you overpaid to provide no real service in the first place!'
That's right. But I have some questions, if this is all about getting our kids incomes... I heard there's less of them than us. And they have less job security than we do, and their incomes aren't very good.
'Well, it doesn't matter, property prices always go up, so really it wouldn't matter if you didn't rent your house out at all. I mean we can say that immigration will bring the working population back up, but that's kind of a red herring. The fact is, like you most people don't understand productive industries that make and do things of value. Heck! Most of my clients don't really understand the industries they work in, and aren't particularly good at their jobs. Even you sir, are asking questions most people never even think to ask. People hate landlords, and they hate paying rent, and they hate living with their parents, so much so that they will pay pretty much any price to not do so. I mean think of it this way, if your son was kidnapped how much would you pay to have him returned alive?'
Well, everything I have?
'Is that all? What if they were asking more? Much more? Would you still retire? Would you go into debt?'
Yes! Yes! Anything for my son.
'Well, isn't it fair then, that your son would do the same for you? I mean this is basically that, in reverse.'
So it's like a... kidnapping or extortion racket?

The Best Years of Our Lives

Now we turn to a happy couple in the early 80s at an auction, and here after much preamble, our story takes off. Imagine though that we didn't bid in the local currency of dollaridoos, but instead simply pledged years of our working lives. Now there's a reason we bid in dollars, and that is because people earn very different salaries and other incomes. So if 90's Bill Gates was at an auction with a 90's supermarket cashier, one might be pledging 0.001% of a years wages and the other 10,000 years. This would make it hard for the auctioneer to keep track of whether the bids were higher or not.
But here at our 1980's auction, everyone earns about the same and so the bidding opens.
'One year!' an enthusiastic couple call out. 'One year and one month' chimes in another bidder. Things tighten up at one and a half years, before the most persistent bidding couple decide to go for a knockout blow 'One year, 8 months.' it goes once, it goes twice, it goes three times. The owner is delighted the property sold for so much over the reserve of one year and two months. The bank approves a ten year loan to repay one year and eight months worth of wages. Everyone is happy.
Time passes.

Interlude

What happens when labor can no longer capture the returns of economic growth through higher wages? Where real wages are by and large stagnating. Not just for a little bit, but for decade after decade. Surely this would make workers angry, demanding economic protections against overseas competition, the threat of capital moving operations offshore for cheaper wages, lower taxation and more relaxed regulation?

Well, let's see what is happening at the auction. Our happy couple who bought their first home back in the 1980's are now selling it in the present day, on auction of course. A crowd gathers. Many just to watch the events of the auction unfold. Bidding opens. 'Twenty years' calls out the auctioneer, someone takes it. 'Do I hear twenty two?' 'Twenty five!' someone interjects, 'I got twenty five, can I hear 26?' ... again after an initial flurry the bids climb up into the late 30s, there are only two bidders left, an anxious young couple with pram in tow, looking for a home to live in to raise their child, and some guy in a leather jacket with designer sunnies looking for an 'investment property' to help secure his retirement and lifestyle aspirations. 'Thirty nine' says the young woman choking back the pleading desperation in her voice. 'forty' says the man in the leather jacket, reflexively while checking his phone for notifications. The couple anxiously request a moment to confer, doing some back of the envelope calculations... as a hail mary, they bid 'forty years, one month.' the man counters with 'forty one years.' It goes once, twice, three times. The young couple demoralized walk away.

Sharktank

'...and by taking the principle of the mobius strip and rendering not in three dimensions, but π dimensions I devised a new form of wind turbine that makes no noise, can be constructed from household materials and can provide free clean energy to power a four occupant dwelling from the slightest breeze.' she straightened her tie, trying to tamp down the excited movements of her hands.
'And you want our funding... to manufacture these mobius-turbines?' says the middle shark with the silver beard and hair.
'Oh no, I need a small amount of funds to set up the electronic distribution infrastructure to distribute schematics to the world via a pdf. I mean, this could stop carbon emissions... tomorrow.'
'How much would you charge for the pdf?'
'I'm thinking, pay what you feel. I mean this would be going out to markets everywhere.'
'I mean free energy might mean a saving of thousands to some, you don't plan to capture that? Over a lifetime it could be hundreds of thousands for an individual.'
'Oh yeah, well, in undeveloped markets though, the local currency and average wages of the population would amount to a micro transaction, I want them to have this too. To put an end to selling cheap dirty coal to poorer nations.'
'Well here's my problem Keith. I could put the money you are asking for down as a deposit on a house, and within a year make a double digit return on that. Because house prices historically always go up, and you, your answer to piracy of your intellectual property is to just give it away to people who don't feel like paying. It's a pass for me.'

 Short Story

'So would you like to pay 8% interest on a 1.5 million dollar loan, or 20% interest on a 75 thousand dollar loan?' 'How long do I get to pay it off?' 'Well you can pay off the interest first, then the principle.' '8% please!'

The Eve of Battle

The mood in camp was grim. Many of the men had fought  alongside the enemy putting down the rebellion of the Northerners. They'd fought side by side, and now this. Tomorrow they would meet upon the field and shed blood. Had only the King the lucidity to cede to the demands...
What were the demands again? The general sent forth an envoy to fetch terms of surrender. Perhaps no battle would be necessary after all.
Sure enough, the price to not do slaughter was cheap, agreeable. A granting of lands along the north shore of the riverbank and payment of the Lord's captured brothers ransom, as well as back payment for defending the north border. All-in-all peanuts when compared to a long campaign. The King might feel the stain upon his honor simply buying out his rivals rather than noble conquest, but at least he could finally turn his attention to a disastrous crusade to the Holy Land...

Property is Booming!

On a mysterious world there lives a couple, in a house and also on this world there is a bank. Where the bankers sleep is a mystery, but it is a mystery nobody seems concerned with for the purposes of this narrative, because one day one of the couple arrives home with some bad news. 'I've been made redundant, I'm laid off.'

'We'll have to sell the house.' says the partner, 'it's the only way to finance our lifestyle. We just can't afford this anymore.' so they make the painful decision to sell their home, and place it on the market. 'We'll need a place to live.' said one to the other. 'I saw a house has just gone on the market!'

So the couple head to the bank, and arrange a meeting with the manager. 'We'd like a home loan.' 'How much?' 'Well the owners are asking for $100,000' 'We'll we should be able to arrange something let's look at your budget.' so the couple pull out there budget, their balance on the savings account, documents relating to their remaining salary.

'We also plan to sell our house, we're hoping to get $100,000 for it.' 'Well...' said the bank manager. 'If that goes ahead, combined with your salary and savings deposit, we'd be willing to lend you $200,000' 'Well!' said the couple 'That would certainly do it.'

The couple are thrilled to receive an offer on the house for $200,000. 'That's almost double what we were asking!' and papers were signed and so the couple were able to sell their house to themselves ready to move into their new abode. After fees and taxes and interest was paid down, they found themselves with very little outstanding on their mortgage.

'You know...' said one to the other, 'We made more on the sale of our house than we have earned for the last ten years.' 'Property is booming.' agreed the other. 'We should really sell while it's still a seller's market.' So the couple excited by the recent trends puts their house on the market again, asking $250,000.

The bank manager based on the strength of last quarters real estate figures, is happy to lend them $300,000 to invest in their next property.

Time passes. The couple had never in their wildest dreams imagined that they would one day be sitting on a multi-million dollar property portfolio, but sure enough every time they nearly blinked on taking out such a mortgage, they always found themselves willing to buy their house from themselves at ever increasing prices.

The inflation in price had been so rapid and dramatic, that both had been able to quit their jobs to go full time into property investment. The more they sold their house to themselves, the more confident they felt. A confidence that was shared by the bank, who agreed to lend them more and more money each time they sold their house in order to purchase it at their ever increasing asking prices.

And of course, they lived happily ever after.

Not in Conclusion

When I was younger, in my late teens to early twenties I was a big fan of Warren Buffet who had come to my attention thanks to a profile on his eccentricities in the Age weekend supplement 'The Good Weekend' something I had taken to reading out on the spit of Lake Wendoree on a Saturday morning while I threw pine cones into the lake that my dog Lil, would fetch. If one wanted her to be occupied for a good twenty minutes at a time, you had only to throw two pine cones in at a time. Like Marty McFly's reaction to being called a chicken, she couldn't back down from the challenge of trying to bite down on a pine cone, while she already had a pine cone in her mouth.

At any rate, Warren Buffet made a profound impression on me, and through my fascination with him stumbled across one of his investment heuristics 'Don't invest in anything you don't understand.' Which had notably spared Buffet from the Tech Stock crash of the early 2000s and the collapse of Enron.

Being an artist has kept me from investing in general, also I suspect the acute awareness that having something to read while throwing pine cones to a dog is a good life; and so long as I have sufficient leisure time, life for the most part is sufficient, resulting in a chronic lack of material ambition.

But it has meant that for most of my adult life, I have been running around a mental labyrinth that folds back around on itself like a pretzel, trying to understand what most adults are doing with their lives. The housing labyrinth is more elaborate than my mental capacity to construct metaphors, I simply cannot picture how the housing market works. I do not understand it.

However I feel like I may be Zeno pointing out the impossibility of motion to Diogenes, who simply gets up and leaves the room. Which is to say, I attempt to construct arguments to show that property investment can't possibly be sustained, then I walk past the newspapers that seem to demonstrate the opposite.

My position then, is basically that property investment is a dead end in a labyrinth. We just have no intuition for dealing with labyrinths so large that it might take several lifetimes to hit that dead end. It may even be a positive, speaking as an elitist rather than an egalitarian.

We know, all of us generally, that wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated. Taking this as an a priori it simply must be the case that most people are actually losing at property investment. Further buttressing this argument is the observation that there's generations now who are not expected to ever own property in their economies of birth. That means that the assets are not even able to be passed down through the generations, they have to be sold off to the wealthy elites.

That could be a good wealth redistribution mechanism, if it meant that people are basically just pledging most of their income to a bank or in some cases landlord, for their entire working lives and that income then finances the highest value (emphasis on value, rather than wealth) individuals in the world. I just suspect that it tends to prop up societal deadweights like Donald Trump, literal 'rent seekers' and not the people working on clean renewable energies etc.