Article with a brief explanation of what’s happening to the world’s economies and potential outlooks: https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/overview/the-future-of-wealth-and-growth-hangs-in-the-balance#four-scenarios . No, the banks nor the RBA are out to make you homeless ffs.

You’re completely delusional. Understandable, because you’re invested in the delusion. The pun is free of charge. No need to pay rent on it.

The RBA’s cash rate had been abnormally low, near zero, for a long time. It was abberant. I’m sure there’s a reason it had been like that, and I’m sure that reasoning involved lots of America. But you people need to understand it was not, and is not, normal. It’s not going back down. (At least not until the Americans drag it down again.)

The residential investor class in Australia is largely made up of amateurs being sold on hype and ideas of free money. “Stack your mortgages up on top of each other and get tennants to pay it off for you, plus profits!” The whole sector is full of jokers. And they kept on rolling in, inflating the price of housing with the banks’ eagerness to finance speculation with ever cheaper money.

“But some people just won’t be able to afford to buy. We’re providing housing. If the big meanie banks make our loans cheaper we’ll lower your rents. Pinky promise. :(”

Use some logic, please, I beg of you, to at least present as a more sympathetic victim if nothing else. Why was the price of housing and rentals not going down when money was gradually getting cheaper? We’ve had your scenario play out already, and housing got more expensive.

Secondly, that’s the banks role, not yours (to provide housing to those that can’t afford the immediate outlay, in a round about way): to bring forward future expenditure. You know, to loan money. It’s meant to be good for the economy.

Your role, as a landlord, is that of a parasite. Sorry, there’s no glorious role here for your lot within the larger economy. From Adam Smith in the 18th century, to Henry George in the 19th, to who the fuck knows who in the 20th, to the unemployed, couchsurfer Brian in the 21st: landlords have not been seen as productive to the economy. Bearable, and injurious when too large. Never welcome. In Australia, their collective cries of “woe is me” is just… sad. A touch of pathetic, but mainly a deep sadness. A country that thought it could make nothing, and just perpetually rent out and/or flog stolen commodities.

Australia, you have a big problem. It’s been decades in the making. I wish the federal government would be more visionary and lead in nation building. Its citizens don’t have a fucking clue.

Website says “sold out”, but then prompts the user to join the wait list saying few tickets left. So which one is it? thinking emoji

I’m in my early 30s, and likewise, never liked life. I’ve listened to people and they always say “it gets better”. I doubt it, but even if it did, when? What even gets ‘better’? How? When you’ve been crippled by age does the universe pull back the curtains to reveal meaning, or floods your body with feel-good chemicals?

Does no one else find it absurd that both corporations and governments increasingly rely on Google and a small group of other American companies simply to host critical files. This entrenches them as monopolistic, parasitical third parties, driving out competition and ensuing that they’re the only gatekeepers between vital civic and business activities.

I don’t want to do business with Google, and I can’t, because I do not agree to their terms. If governments want to shunt their services to “apps” they have to actually do the leg work and create domestic infrastructure, both the physical and software side, to support them. The current state is completely bizarre, and a sovereignty issue. Equievelant to showing up to a state-school and being barred from an education because you don’t have one of two pre-approved pens made by their favoured American partners. Why are the commentariat so mute on this topic?

Any contracts the government undertakes with private firms for software solutions should stipulate that the software is to be open source, and the derivative data a public asset. Currently private providers are getting royalty-free streams of data that only serve to entrench their economic dominance.

Foo company gets to train its ‘AI’ algorithms on a stream of state-backed data, shuts up shop in Australia, and sells its product to less developed, foreign states demanding exorbitant prices because the software is trained on larger and higher quality data sets that were derived from the contracts of modern, stable states that their competitors were not able to get.

The nature of ‘buying’ software is not the same as that of buying physical goods. It’s a different bargain, and the buyer always seems to get short changed.

Yes, Yacy is what you want OP (https://yacy.net). It’s rather pathetic that people are still trying to be a parasite, but wanting to do so anonymously. Roll up your sleaves and commit your resources to making community search engines work. You have the control.

When do we commercialise for the owners? Can’t wait to be exploited in novel ways.