The Mega Rich Have Found an Unlikely New Refuge | Hacker News Reader

The Mega Rich Have Found an Unlikely New Refuge

bloomberg.com

227 pointsdmmalam243 comments

The modern world has such a ridiculous disconnect. The people fleeing to remote places because of instability are the very same people causing these issues in the first place. Hedge fund managers selling toxic assets bemoaning the uncertainty of the financial world? And what will your island paradise look like with no one to trade with or if the world economy collapses? NZ doesn't have much of an economy in itself, what are you going to do, go back to farming?

It's even more hilarious because the reason NZ is a desirable place to live is because there is little money in politics and there are few class distinctions. How will that change when all the billionaires move there and want to get their way (and are used to the world conforming to the bank account)? Just another place for the wealthy elite of the world to slowly ruin, maybe the next step is the moon?

The system is rapidly growing out of control and no one seems to be able to stop or halt the insanity. It's like we're all marching towards oblivion and everyone knows it but no one has the will to turn the ship around because the system incentivizes short term greed.

> The modern world has such a ridiculous disconnect.

Agreed. This, to me, is the essence of cyberpunk. To Gibson, 'The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed'

> Just another place for the wealthy elite of the world to slowly ruin, maybe the next step is the moon?

Mars, haven't you heard?

> The system is rapidly growing out of control and no one seems to be able to stop or halt the insanity.

Worse, they are complicit in it. This entire situation amounts to a local minimum, because everyone is working towards their own short term interests. I don't see how we break that cycle, however. The trends are global. I'll admit I'm certainly not doing my part: I'm leaving academia and taking my signing bonus, RSUs, etc. and joining a mega-corp.

You know, everyone blames the mega rich. I blame everyone else. If you're completely honest and you assume that shits going to hit the fan, would you care more about the happiness of 1 billion random people you've never met or the happiness of 100 that you know? On paper you'll say 1 billion, but in reality if someone shoots your mother you cry, if someone shoots someone in Syria you most likely won't ever notice.

But here's a list of things partly responsible:

1. The mere idea that justice is something that will be served at some point is ludicrous. There's no universal concept of morality to begin with. The more money you have, the less like you are to be indicted or pay penalties for virtually anything. Why would you give that might away?

2. That disgusting cult of happiness that is more prevalent in San Francisco than anywhere else in the world is the very foundation of forcing people to be happy with what they have. Institutions like Landmark Forum that are actually requirements for certain management positions make sure that people don't actually critique or change things that are messed up.

3. Everyone knows that we're eating up our resources and dump the rest into the seas all the while doing so. The result is that a lot of things available today will be luxury super rich items in the not too distant future. Tuna and Cocoa amongst them(just wait and see). If I had money I'd invest in huge warehouses to make money with those things in 20-30 years. That's exactly what superwealthy do. There have been more than one buyouts in bankrupt countries in the last couple of years. Buying resources while everyone is hoping for the utopia where we can create something from nothing.

4. The only way this stuff could possibly change we pull the handbreak right now. But it's absurd to think that that's a possibility. Nobody even so much dares to talk about the consequences of a full stop change. If you do, you're the pessimist. People don't want a change of course, they want the illusion of change so that can stay happy until they crash in the cement wall at 200mp/h.

At the very least I have enough Schadenfreude in me to always enjoy these arguably predictable changes like the refugee "crisis" in europe

Everyone knows that we're eating up our resources and dump the rest into the seas all the while doing so. The result is that a lot of things available today will be luxury super rich items in the not too distant future.

Not sure how old you are, i.e. did you live through the '70s "Limits to Growth" Zeitgeist era? If not try, say, watching the 1973 movie Soylent Green, where the two protagonists just marvel at a jar of strawberry preserves they found in the dwelling of a rich person, and then go to your favorite grocery store's jams and jellies section....

Maybe someday we'll see that future you envision, but having already lived through at least one cycle of this, not to mention the ongoing global cooling -> global warming -> climate change one, I don't worry quite so much (and by now have a lot more than just these surface level observations to base that on).

ADDED: And this was a major theme of Heinlein in his '50s juveniles, most directly his 4th, published in 1950, Farmer in the Sky, but also see his last really good book, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress in 1966, where it was plot significant that the moon colony (or was it colonies?) grew wheat and shot it back to the Earth using a mass driver.

Have you considered the possibility that those scary predictions were only wrong about the timeline rather than the eventual outcome? Humans are very bad at reasoning about things that happen at earth scale and over long periods of time.

Yes, I both can and do do math, "Humans are very bad at reasoning about things that happen at earth scale and over long periods of time" is not a true let alone useful statement. Although I'll grant it's demonstrably true of the doomsayers who made and continue to make such confident predictions while not accounting for many things, most especially human ingenuity (look at Paul Ehrlich for example).

They tend to have little or no grasp of the market mechanism ... well, they tend to be central controller types, without realizing the information theoretic limitations of that approach. For example, when faced with externalities, they invariably go high without even considering low (one example I remember reading was some European country requiring plant water intakes being downstream of outflows, and that's about as simple as you can get).

Anyway, one of my points there is that the demonstrated inability of those guys to predict the future should not be extrapolated to the rest of us ^_^.

Plus we haven't tapped the tiniest fraction of the the Solar System's resources, and much of the Earth's remain their for the picking, at some cost in money, and as of late in the West, to the fashion sense of our elites (although I grant you coal is nasty stuff).

Yeah, some day we'll run out of resources in the Solar System, but that's so so far in the future, we probably have to worry more about the Singularity, or too many nuclear wars ... see The Moat In God's Eye for a look at that, which has one co-author who thought well and deeply of the '70s Limits to Growth garbage. (And even took advantage of it to be able to write more realistic SF, if you freeze most scientific developments....)

How does anthropogenic climate change fit into your understanding of events and how our future on this planet is developing?

This apocalyptic view of climate change isn't based on reality. What is the big danger to the human kind?

Warming? Cooling? It won't make the earth inhabitable. Humans live in a wide range of temperature.

Permanent flooding? It won't happen overnight but over centuries. Humans move.

Drought? We're making huge progress on solar desalination (thanks to Israelis efforts). Humans are ingenuous.

And this is without taking into account Alaska and Siberia, two gigantic regions that would become more and more hospitable.

Fear-mongering is a useful persuasion weapon, until it backfires.

Ethically speaking, what should developed nations do to assist people living in, for example, sub-Saharan Africa, who have no resources with which to relocate, and are already suffering the consequences of climate change? I consider it a catastrophic situation, even though I'm personally not among the sick, dying, or refugees. I don't think it's fear-mongering to acknowledge the massive harm industrial nations are causing to real human beings, and to demand solutions of policy-makers, even if those solutions are costly.

That might be reasonable to consider if we didn't keep getting better at making the resources we need and making them accessible. For something like 14 of the past 15 decades food production per capita has gone up worldwide despite a preposterous increase in population.

Some things are losing out, like the rainforests and it sucks. But them being cut down is not an existential threat to humanity. If can encourage even more globalization and event better trade maybe we can feed those still starving before they cut down all the rainforests for subsistence farming.

Sadly we have to trust that we can come up with some difficult but possible technical solutions to big problems. How are we going to capture CO2. If we can do that we can mitigate wars caused by droughts caused by climate change.

I'm probably one of the people you hate. Global warming is real and is accelerated by humans. I still don't give a damn. I will throw all my waste in the trash and drive gasoline vehicles. I'll let someone else fix it.

I'll care about the Earth when I can feel like I can actually own a piece of it. I have no skin in the game, really, other than some vague dread of total environmental collapse.

Ted Turner, now, he has a great reason to be an environmentalist. Let the burden of environmental protection fall primarily on those who claim the most ownership of it. If Ted wants me to separate my recyclables and watch TBS on a TV constructed from recycled material and powered solely by renewables, he can damn well pay me something to do all that.

You don't ask the team that loses by 50 points every game to start playing with their shoelaces tied together. And you don't ask the poor to sacrifice for the benefit of the rich. Developing nations are going to burn coal, and non-rich people are going to eat from disposable paper plates and then not recycle them. Environmentalism is a luxury, and only those who already have a sense of economic security will buy in to it.

But as long as I have an "at will" job and no more attachment to the land than a one-year lease, I'm not going to feel all that motivated.

Well some might consider their children as "skin in the game" but still. As far as I am concerned having children is also a luxury. At least it should be considered so, from my moral perspective.

Kids are not inextricably attached to any particular part of this planet. And many parents have no piece of it to give to them after they die, anyway. If I have kids, they would be in roughly the same situation I am in.

The situation is roughly analogous to the entire world being a city block filled with apartment buildings. A few people own all the buildings. Most people rent apartments from them. The buildings are not extraordinary. They need maintenance and repair, or they will deteriorate. But for whatever reason, the building owners are not responding to maintenance requests in a timely fashion. (But woe to you if your rent check is even half a day late!)

Some tenants, alarmed by the state of their surroundings, spend their own time and money, over and above their monthly rent, to do repairs. But none of the tenants can address all the problems on their own. At most, they can patch up a cracked window, re-wrap the ductwork with better insulation, tighten plumbing connections. No one has the resources to both pay the rent and also pay extra for all the repairs they might want.

Some tenants do nothing, because it is the landlords' responsibility to maintain the properties. Also, they don't have enough money to spend on it, anyway. If the landlords want to be slumlords, then surely it would be possible to move to a better-kept building when things get too bad. Except--whoops!--the landlords that do invest more in maintenance are not accepting new tenants. The properties for sale are too expensive for any slum-renter to buy.

In analogy form, the solution seems obvious, does it not?

And you have at most a 110 year lease on the matter of your body.

I'm going to try to leave this place better than it was given to me. Even if it is a small corner.

This is a prevalent theme of Naomi Klein's "This Changes Everything" (https://thischangeseverything.org/)

That the current system as it stands is not built to let us combat climate change, and we need to change the system too.

the tragedy of the commons

"There's no universal concept of morality to begin with."

There is universal morality, the one embedded in genes of most people. We are social creatures, and we understand concepts like tit-for-tat.

For a contrary opinion, I turn to the character of Lord Vetinari, written by Terry Pratchett:

> [...] "I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I'm sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy.

> One of nature's wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior."

The fact that we have morality (on average) doesn't imply it's always pretty. Nor does it imply that it scales well to modern society with billions of people.

If there is evil in this world, it lies in the heart of mankind.

-Edward Morrison

> universal ... most

wut

>Institutions like Landmark Forum that are actually requirements for certain management positions

Can you elaborate on that? I always thought of them as some occultish clowns.

Landmark forum is scary. I know a few people who are members. Most are deeply in need of mental health treatment.

There's nothing stopping you from buying cocoa futures and rolling them over indefinitely for the next twenty years. In fact, in an efficient market the cost of doing so is equal to the cost of maintaining your own warehouse.

Why "crisis"? The situation is not bad enough to warrant the term crisis, in your opinion?

Hedge fund managers are usually not causing collapses, they just see the reasons why a collapse is likely and pile in before everyone else knows what's going on. Black Wednesday 1992 is a very good example of what I mean.

It's too easy to blame and hate hedge fund managers as a group, but personally the only ones I detest are the lawbreakers. Apart from them, these guys have virtues and vices just like everyone else.

I think your comment is missing the point here: their actions themselves have consequence for the market. Indeed, their existence and their practices have an effect on the market even if they don't act. Their existence and expectations do that alone. 'If I don't do it, somebody else will', which is a poor selfish excuse for sociopathic values.

On the contrary, I think you don't know what the point is in the first place.

Like it or not, if there is a difference between the value of something and the price at which it can trade, eventually someone will come along and trade it until either the price moves back in line, or the value changes.

Hedge fund managers, the ones who abide by the law at least, spend a lot of time trying to find these inefficiencies. That's the nature of the job. Nothing sociopathic about it. In fact, there are many benefits to having a liquid market where (often universally discoverable) pricing reflects the current state of the world.

How do you think airlines hedge their fuel cost and get a sense for the future cost of fuel? How do pension funds determine when they should buy protection for their investments due to high expectations of volatility? They look at the market.

There are institutional traders and investors who manipulate stocks and trade on insider information, sure. They are lawbreakers and their counterparties often report them to the relevant authorities. But even the market manipulators generally have to be somewhat correct, because if not then there is always someone with equal or greater capital willing to take the opposite, better side of the trade. And the further a security's price is impacted, the juicier the opposite side's payday if the first guy gets it wrong.

No offense but I sense that you have a small amount of exposure to the function of the market as a whole, who the participants are, and how they do business. You can't just run around with a label maker that only prints the word "sociopathic" and expect to understand everything.

This entire comment is dismissible because it operates under the naive delusion that the majority of Hedge Fund managers abide by the law.

If you have evidence that it's not the case, especially for the majority, in other words, you have enough evidence to accuse thousands of people of crime, why are you not in touch with the police yet?

Obviously I don't have evidence, but it's just common sense. They have huge incentives to cheat, very few incentives to play it safe. And it's very hard to get evidence and prove guilt.

Do you really think people gambling with billions of dollars are doing so without an edge?

Think about it.

If I saw countless examples of cheaters getting caught, losing everything, and going to jail, I would be pretty disinclined to cheat.

Hedge funcs, i.e. betting against the herd, has a moderating influence, not a destabilizing one.

If they actually did bet against the herd. "Hedge fund" used to mean a fund that actually hedged their bets, but there's no law that says they have to, and a number of them just bet.

What seems to happen is that during boom times, a lot of unskilled and unaware of it money managers get into the market, and they tend to bet with the crowd. We get a big bubble as a result, the bubble pops, and all the shitty fund managers get flushed out of the market. Then we get several years of stability as the prudent money managers who thought for themselves rule the show, until their performance attracts new entrants who don't know what they're doing, and the cycle repeats.

I actually think that we're in one of those prudent periods right now - most securities seem fairly valued, at least now that the unicorn bubble is deflating. But in 05-08? I worked in financial software then, and a number of my peers (straight out of college!) were hedge fund managers. There were some good ones, but many of them had no business being near anyone's retirement fund.

>The people fleeing to remote places because of instability are the very same people causing these issues in the first place.

Are they the same? How do you know? The finance world is a big place. In Canada alone it employs over 1 million people, which is one quarter the population of New Zealand.

Crappy software and models also contributed to the crisis (and other crises). Do you build either? Do you accept blame for your profession?

Great points. We are a profession that would rather use Python instead of more principled choices such as OCaml/Haskell, because it is superficially easier. I chose Python as an example here as that is what Knights Capital were using. I'm sure even the folk behind Python would admit it may have problems scaling to large complex algorithmic trading systems.

KC blew up because someone copied the wrong software to their deployment servers. If Haskell's typesystem has solved that problem then I'm sure it would have a lot more takers.

On the flip side, if Jane Street were to screw up I hope no-one would blame OCaml as it would more likely be someone making a mistake.

Programming languages can be poor or geat but you need to wield them wisely.

I thought it was more the result of an accumulation of mistakes, for example dead code and repurposing boolean flags (we can do better with types).

ben elton's "stark" is a great if heavily satirical novel on these themes: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/242242.Stark

> And what will your island paradise look like with no one to trade with or if your financial firm collapses? NZ doesn't have much of an economy in itself, what are you going to do, go back to farming?

these locations aren't just for vacations. they are stocked with supplies and probably guns and ammo. if the SHTF, they'll be on the first (private jet) flight out of london, hk, zurich, or new york. why do you think they chose a place so remote? there are nicer places a lot closer. they just don't have the infrastructure that new zealand has, and the natural oceanic protection.

as a bonus, they also have a military that is closely tied to the commonwealth crown. how convenient.

it used to be normal to prepare for disaster. in california they taught us how to do it in elementary school in the 90s, for earthquakes. now people think it's crazy. it's not. normal people do this too. who do you think is buying up all the ammo before elections? i know people who have boats, trucks, etc. for the purposes of preparedness.

one thing a fund manager or CEO knows how to do is hedge against risks.

"as a bonus, they also have a military that is closely tied to the commonwealth crown. how convenient." ... well seeming NZ is a commonwealth country it's not some convenience, it's history.

And it sounds like you think NZ has some huge military power. I think we have like one jet plane, so stock all the guns you want, I imagine in the case all the allies die and Russia invades we'd probably just give them a welcome ceremony.

i didn't mean 'how convenient' in any sarcastic way, i was literally saying.. it's convenient that your getaway island also has a military. most don't.

and nobody said any of it was rational. it's just what people do. i live in earthquake country so i have water and canned food and a means of defense. some people have taken this mindset to an extreme, including buying large homes on remote island countries and a private jet for trips there.

> Russia invades

Unless they are using one of those world maps...

they also have a military that is closely tied to the commonwealth crown

They have unit that is world-class in the NZSAS, which trains with the original SAS, but the entire NZ Army would be considered a mere brigade anywhere else. Their Air Force has zero fighters. They were booted out of a mutual defence pact with the US when they refused to allow nuclear-powered vessels to dock.

Basically anyone with a blue-water navy and a Marine Corps could roll them in a day. Counting on the NZ military to protect you in the event of an apocalypse is likely to be unwise.

>normal people do this too. who do you think is buying up all the ammo before elections?

The people behind the prepping industry are just affiliate marketers for the most part.

Errr, it's a lot more complicated than that. People in the US have been buying up ammo at > 10 billion (thousand million) rounds/year rates for more than a decade now (US civilian production is > 12 billion/year, which doesn't count imports and not, I think, surplus and seconds from Lake City production), and I haven't noticed big movements before elections (after, for sure).

> the system incentivizes short term greed

This is the alpha and the omega of the whole thing.

Opportunistic vs Equilibrium :https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory

It's amazing how the narrative of paradise, sin, and the need to repent before the world goes to hell is so hard wired into the human psyche. Almost everyone seems to believe it in some form or another.

So much acerbic criticism of the mega wealthy. Odds are good there are a billion people that would consider you crazy rich. Yet, I bet you have not peed on a tree today - and will also dismiss the idea as not any kind of means to "turn the ship around."

But you should totally go pee on a tree instead of pointing fingers while doing nothing to turn the ship around yourself.

http://peeonatree.blogspot.com/

Which way do we turn the ship and how do we convince everyone or even just enough of everyone?

That is an honest no snark question.

The fact is that there are people with will and interest and they are working hard every single day, but they're all pulling in disparate even opposite directions.

> The people fleeing to remote places because of instability are the very same people causing these issues in the first place.

Do you have any evidence for this, or are you just spouting generic edgy anti-capitalist tag lines?

The vast majority of crime in first-world nations is associated with generic poverty-related activity like gang violence, not imaginary cabals of evil hedge fund managers.

This. Also a lot of debt issues are government caused like the crippling and non-dischargable student loans the USG gives teenagers to the tune of six figures. Or all the incentives and propaganda for those who can't afford to buy homes or other large purchases. Or government waste and corruption and war. Or out of control entitlement programs and other welfare abuse. And anti-investment, anti-prosperity, high tax, and high regulatory environments that guarantee places like the south side of Chicago will never, ever recover.

The blame pie for economic issues and social issues is pretty big and 'hedge fund managers' are going to be a very tiny piece. The institutions you may hold dear may be the ones with the largest piece. That should be sobering realization on top of the realization that we tried not-capitalism in the early to late 20th century in some countries and it was responsible for nearly causing WWIII, 100m+ dead, and a legacy of human right abuses that humanity has not seen since or before. Be careful what you wish fore. The society hanging investment managers, business owners, and guys trying to make a few bucks so their kids can goto disneyworld is not a compassionate society leading to utopia, in fact, its the opposite. History has proven this over and over.

> what are you going to do, go back to farming?

Oh no! How will we make money so we can buy food to eat!?....oh wait

What exactly are you concerned about here, ruin? Insanity?

It is written like a generic rail against capitalism but seems to be more concerned about assets trading at a tenth of today's prices

It'll be alright

>The system is rapidly growing out of control and no one seems to be able to stop or halt the insanity. It's like we're all marching towards oblivion and everyone knows it but no one has the will to turn the ship around because the system incentivizes short term greed.

Except for those of us shoving all the rest of you towards safety and being called crazy for our troubles, yeah.

Fantastic. As a NZ expat currently resident in London it's depressing the way global market conditions have sent house prices skyrocketing in the places I'd like to live. My partner and I are doing well here, and we plan to go back to NZ one day, but in just 6 years since my partner's brother was here what we'd go back to has changed immeasurably.

He and his partner managed to come over here when the pound was worth $3 NZD, rent was cheaper, save well and move back to Auckland when houses were depressed (2009-2010). Since then they rode the wave and now have a beautiful home with a view straight down the Waitemata harbour.

My partner and I? We came here when the pound was at $2.10ish, not so bad I thought, not as good, but y'know, we make good money, we can deal with it. Then BREXIT. BOOM. Now the pound is $1.70, our salaries are, of course, still the same. Also a shithole house in Auckland in a bad suburb now costs at least $700k NZD - the first house that my partner's brother bought cost $650k NZD, in a nice suburb on transport links.

The world is mad.

So you're pissed with people who made money elsewhere then went to NZ to buy property. And you're pissed because it messes with your plan of earning money in London and then using it to buy property in NZ.

The same international market that employs you in London priced that house in Aukland.

Also, do you imagine your presence in London increases or decreases property prices there?

No, not pissed, incredulous. Their luck is theirs, mine is mine. That didn't stop me observing the situation though, observing that the policy settings pursued by western govts have lead to a crazy asset price bubble while wages - even for people as privileged as my partner and I - have stayed relatively stagnant.

I'm not an idiot, I know that I'm doing well, but that almost makes me point for me: if a household like mine can't afford to buy a basic asset like housing, what happens to everyone beneath our household in the income scale? (Rhetorical question btw, we all know what happens. Also before anyone says it, yes we could reallocate spending, that is 100% not my point)

OK, I withdraw 'pissed'.

Now you're finding 'western govts' to blame for 'crazy' house prices in NZ. But your own plan is/was to buy NZ property with London wages. How can you be incredulous that other people have done the same?

Same situation, but Australian.

Australia is quite a few steps ahead of New Zealand on this delightful journey toward outright social and generational conflict. At least in NZ you now seem to have a real public debate and perhaps some hope for change.

In the last election the Prime Minister (ex-Goldman, owns many properties including a literal mansion on the harbour), and the Treasurer (ex-honcho at the Property Council), openly campaigned to maintain the huge tax advantages investors hold over owner-occupiers. They won the election.

There are many, many weaknesses in enforcement around money-laundering and foreign "investment" in property. These have been called out for over a decade by international and local anti-corruption organisations. The Reserve Bank and other financial regulatory bodies periodically wring their hands and do nothing.

The major banks are hugely profitable and "not risky at all" based on revaluing their collateral upward as the bubble grows and they lend more into it.

At this point it's quite obvious the people who can fix the problem do not want to.

Why? Because the Australian government successfully turned housing into a one-way investment for the demographic majority (mainly baby boomers). They cannot taper the ponzi scheme without making those people poorer, and those people are their electoral support. Those people have come to believe they are clever rather than lucky, and this psychology prevents them from understanding they are hurting their children.

Most if not all government MPs own investment property, i.e. they have taken a leveraged bet on this arrangement continuing.

The way property has permeated every aspect of the culture and it's political and economic strategy really needs to be seen to be believed. I've been returning every couple of years over the past decade or so and it's like visiting an alien planet.

More here for anyone interested: http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/

It certainly is insane how expensive property is in Australia. I live in Sydney and the price here make SF and NYC look cheap.

To give more context for non-Kiwi's: New Zealanders have traditionally valued houses above all else, treating them as their retirement plans. We don't have capital gains tax or stamp duty, so house flipping has been a valuable side-business for many.

It's great to offer context, but you should realize that this isn't some neutral interesting fact. It's a direct contributor to the problem.

When large numbers of politically powerful middle and upper class voters make plans dependent on their home prices growing faster than the rate of general inflation politicians figure out a way to make that happen. Homes can't be both affordable and a great investment for very long, the two goals are in direct opposition.

This, kind of. Though it's not just NZ, a majority in the U.K. aspires to home ownership as well, from what I can observe.

The fact that you're talking about $650k - $700k being in your price range means that you're doing better than a lot of people.

It seems explicit that $650k is not in the poster's price range, but they offer those valuations as examples of the lower end or nicer housing options available.

Is that the metric you want to choose to decide how happy you should be about a given situation?

Comparative performance with people in the same demographic and income range seems a lot better. Otherwise you can pretty argue ad absurdum that yeah, you aren't starving, you aren't dead so everything is good! R-r...right?

Comparative performance with people in the same demographic and income range seems a lot better.

That seems like a great way to always be depressed about your position in life. Someone is always doing better than you are.

well, the reality is that level of optimism is required for the 800 million people living on a dollar a day, and if they can do it then perhaps those more fortunate could learn something there, as the Somalian I met said, 'nobody promised me tomorrow', or the popular 'yesterday was better than today, and today will be better than tomorrow'...

None of those dollar a day people are living in London or anywhere within 2000km. You need to earn a dollar a minute to even have a hope of a basic apartment in the city. Even then it's a long-shot.

525k a year to rent a basic apartment?

I guess you could choose the ridiculous interpretation that the poster meant $1/ minute, 24 x 7 x 365....

Or you could have picked the more charitable (dare I say reasonable?) interpretation that they meant earnings of $10k/mo, which is a little bit low tbh, if we're talking pre-tax dollars.

You don't spend a year of salary on a house, most people don't have anything close to that cashflow. And here, OP is talking about their budget which implies they are taking a mortgage on at least 15 years.

Grandparent said:

>You need to earn a dollar a minute to even have a hope of a basic apartment in the city.

Thats about 75K a month...

$60/hour is 75k/mo?

Ha. I had an extra 8* in there...9600 per month.

Oh please, I am barely holding back my tears.

Is that unreasonable for people to improve their living conditions and be disappointed when those don't even match the ones of their parents? Or should they just accept the extreme poverty threshold as the sole upper bound required to be content about their lives.

I can't say whether it's unreasonable. Doing better than their parents and is certainly what many people have come to expect. But it seems like an unsustainable expectation at least in the absence of some revolutionary breakthrough in energy and food production.

And our parents' lives don't have to serve as a measuring stick for our lives. There is no law of nature that says we deserve to live better than our parents, or in fact live in this world at all.

Ok, if you go that route, don't complain about rich people wanting more and more. They are just "improving their living conditions".

There's 'sweet, a promotion, I can finally afford that nice car' "greed" and then there's 'lets destroy 6000 people their jobs to make the shareholders happy so I can get a $1.000.000 bonus' greed.

So, accumulating ever more amounts of personal wealth is fine as long as you aren't the the top 1%, er 0.1%, er 0.01%, er, as long as you have less than someone you know.

There has to be a line somewhere. I don't claim to be the person qualified to draw it, but society has to be willing to define it and say "Wealth accumulation on this side of the line is OVERALL healthy for promoting fair and evenly distributed prosperity, and wealth accumulation on the other side is OVERALL destructive and benefits only a small few."

And what if that line was drawn and you are on the wrong side?

That would be a nice problem to have.

>don't complain about rich people wanting more and more.

I don't. That's the basic human thing to do and harnessing that greed has lifted billions of people out of poverty.

But the comment you were replying to was implying that nobody is going to get sympathy because they are in the top 1% and feel like they must be in the top 0.5%.

I think your rhetorical questions distill down to: "Is it unreasonable that societies expect conditions improve over time and act so as to bring that about"?

No, I don't think that's unreasonable at all. I think it's a good value to adopt and a good goal to strive for. No guarantees of success, of course, but it's the road I wish more of us would choose.

why is it reasonable ? what right did your gene line earn to be a permanent recipient of privilege?

While it may be true that the OP is "doing well" salary wise, your comment detracts from the point he is making. just because someone makes a lot of money doesn't mean that their problems are any less valid.

I think it is more OP calling the world mad when $6000,000NZ is the price range for a "decent" house. Heck, even the ability to move to another country is luxury enough. The 1% calling crazy what the 0.1% do is laughable to most I presume. I'm in the 1% so I'm not sure how the 80% really view such comments but I imagine it's farcical to them.

600k NZD is mad, in my life experience. It's a crazy amount of money compared to average incomes in NZ - especially for a house that likely needs work.

OP is upper middle class, at best. Let's not use rethoric that would only apply to people that are actually considerably wealthy regardless of the comparative entity you choose to rank them against i.e billionaires and millionaires.

A couple trying to buy a nice house with their combined salaries isn't insane. In particular when that is the norm they were used to and who is slowly disintegrating.

In terms of purchasing power for the world they are not upper middle class. They are in the higher eschalons in terms of wealth and economic means. I don't decry their plight but rather seek to put context to it. People in their income bracket have driven up land and housing prices in Belize, Costa Rica, Panama, Thailand, and elsewhere. That didn't make the world crazy in their eyes but having prices driven up in Auckland did. That perspective is crazy.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/07/16/are-you-in-t...

$80,000 USD for 4 people is "High Income" globally.

Of course it does. People with money have options - they have no excuses for not being comfortable with their life.

The poor guy can only choose among a few places on earth to live, needs to work a lot and will have a hard time surviving otherwise.

This complaining guy can live basically anywhere or could have been living at the level of the poor guy and retire after a few years of earning his 99th percentile income.

I just can't fathom the mindset of people who think they deserve to live a high society lifestyle. Their position is FAPP strictly better than 99% of people currently alive on Earth.

Standard of living is relative but largely local/regional. Saying that everyone in NZ has it made because they should just be happy they weren't born in Bangladesh or something is incredibly short-sighted.

Thinking on a global scale is the literal opposite of short-sightedness.

The median home price in Auckland is > NZ$1M. He is saying a house he would refuse to buy costs $700k.

Unfortunately for those in many industries, Auckland is one of the few viable options for those that want to live in New Zealand and have access to a good job market. It has effectively priced out many from owning a home, even those earning a good income.

Those are median prices in the area.

He didn't say that's his price range, he said those are the prices.

Big difference.

I'm also an expat kiwi (in the US) and definitely agree re the shift about 5-6 years ago. It's not just the house prices it's also the potential salary. Higher housing costs (and you get a lot less for that money in NZ) and lower wages isn't ideal when contemplating the move back.

You're not the only one... I'm an American married to a kiwi and we have been considering moving to NZ from the US for the last couple of years. We are seeing exactly the same thing and it's unfortunately continuing to delay our move, maybe permanently. Sad what's happened the last 5 or so years. Our friends in Auckland who did not get into the housing market 3-5 years ago or earlier are completely priced out and looking to move to more affordable areas.

If you can work remotely, A+ for "more affordable areas" ... NZ is beautiful all over, and if there's a particular type of outdoors you love (mountain biking, hiking, skiing, diving, whatever) then The Provinces are great for you. (Hello from Leigh)

Time for a Foreign investment tax[1]? I am a big proponent of global trade and having money flow easily but I can't find a good argument against what Vancouver did here.

[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-22/foreign-bu...

> Fantastic.

And, of course, we can no doubt expect them to be pouring money into disassembling New Zealand's health, education, etc systems.

House prices are high everywhere. Pick a place, for my choice I put in Kazakhstan and found this house for $550,000.00 USD and numerous others for similar prices.

http://kazakhstan.realigro.com/for-sale/house/almaty-1/25386...

The best house prices are in the United States. You can find good house prices in most places other then California.

You seem to be choosing a house and comparing it with the median. Find the median in the largest city in Kazakhstan and compare it with the median in Auckland. Then do the same for wages, and you'll have something worth looking at, otherwise you're simply citing one example and calling it a trend.

The ultimate NIMBYs. The same people that are responsible for the many uncertainties multinational corporations bring and therefore stimulate the dangerous populism in this global age now go to Queenstown, have a pint and wait for this to all blow over.

Money does not buy style if you see all those new houses by the way...

> Money does not buy style if you see all those new houses by the way...

Always thought it must be something with my taste but every time I see houses by 'the (super) rich' I think; why didn't you hire an actual talented architect?

There's a method to the McMansion madness: the houses are designed in a sort of modular style that assumes the owners will regularly reconfigure and remodel to keep up with the latest trends.

Kitchen out of date? Gut the kitchen module and replace the parts. Home theaters are out, and home gyms are in? Gut the theater module and reconfigure it into a gym. Sticks-and-drywall construction can be demolished and rebuilt in practically a day. Room "pods" can be torn down, merged, or separated at will, with little impact on the livability of the rest of the house. There's a lot more (ostensible) flexibility in an amorphous blob of room modules than there is in attempting to maintain a coherent, symmetrical, balanced architecture. The traditional house is a fixture; the McMansion is a living, changing, multicellular organism.

McMansion developers aren't selling houses; they're selling services. All of this runs parallel to, and feeds off of, the macro-social trend favoring interiors over exteriors. People care more about kitchen appliances and countertop surfaces than they do about architecture. It's crass, tasteless, and economically silly. But it's the prevailing culture. And it's designed to keep selling things.

McMansions aren't bought by the rich. Mansions are.

McMansions are an exercise in echoing certain features of the latter on the cheap, but they are primarily an embodiment of social positioning within the upper middle class.

Exactly correct. McMansions are expressions of middle-class "success" yet are often just "normal" cheap houses built on a bigger scale -- same contractor-grade fittings and finishes.

For example, I bet you'd rarely see actual Venetian plaster in a McMansion, but you'd see a "faux finish" version of it. McMansions are movie sets and the owners are playing a "role" of a "successful" person/family.

> McMansions are movie sets and the owners are playing a "role" of a "successful" person/family.

Ah, I love that. Applies to so many people I know. Well, at least, it DID apply to them before they lost their McMansion and, in some cases, went bankrupt.

Someone who can afford a McMansion is definitely rich, even by American standards.

As I posted elsewhere: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/07/16/are-you-in-t...

$80,000 USD / 4 people in America is the lower bound of high income.

You are comparing apples and oranges.

That pew study is income relative to worldwide range, which is fairly pointless in this context. Nobody is talking about upper/middle class boundaries in these terms, and McMansions are largely a US (North American?) phenomena.

Any family in the US with a very low six figure household income (or even a very high five figure) can choose to finance a McMansion. They are not rich by US standards.

That's only for America (and maybe Australia/NZ? I wouldn't know at least). Most houses in Europe are solid brick on the outside, and solid concrete walls on the inside. Not something you remodel in a day.

It's a good thing we're not talking about homes in Europe, then :)

What? You don't like columns?! Columns everywhere! What enormous weight are they lending their support to keep aloft? Why, it's THE EAVES! Those immeasurably heavy goliaths of the architectural world.

Here come the roof ridges!!

> What? You don't like columns?! Columns everywhere!

Form follows function when you're a fifth column.

You might like (or already be aware of) this blog: http://www.mcmansionhell.com/

Money doesn't give you taste. Neither does architectural talent. (Architectural talent, without taste, gives you "let's see what's the craziest thing I can build that won't fall down". The talent is shown by the building not falling down.)

Zara Hadid proved that point brilliantly with the new Antwerp fire station -- a €55 million monstrosity. The sad part is that the taxpayers got to foot the bill.

55 million euros for a fire station? I'd fire the architect for the cost alone, never mind what it looks like.

Builders love the style because big is cheaper than good. I suppose that the really rich may like big over good style because it makes its point so obviously.

Because McMansions are cheaper per sq. ft.?

https://goo.gl/maps/7a8oygnoyzr

I mean, why not just buy/build a smaller, more normal house and leave more land for gardens and lawns?

Because somebody has to maintain the gardens and lawns, and if you're a two-earner couple you may not have time for that.

This is true about a lot of expensive things. Richard Mille watches (http://richardmille.com) for example look like cheap watches.

I've long expected these kinds of stories. The same people who have benefited from climate change and bred a lot of the chaos we're now experiencing will be able to live quite comfortably while the rest of us are left to deal with the consequences. This is one of the most distressing things about climate change: so much wealth was created at the expense of the planet and so little of that will ever go into fixing it. We will pay for it in terms of higher energy prices a million other ways instead.

As the arctic continues to melt I expect there to be some nice openings in northern canada that are even more remote.

Nearly everyone benefitted from climate change. The only people who didn't are the ones living in remote villages that don't have electricity or any other modern technology.

Those who benefited the most are those who will be affected the least.

Can you not understand why some people might be upset by this?

For some time now, we have been in a era where we have the knowledge and incentive to act, yet we haven't acted strongly enough to combat climate change.

Nearly everyone benefited in the short term, but those with great wealth also have much more power to speed or slow the change away from fossil fuels. I think in general that power has been used to slow the fight against climate change.

According to studies, public opinion has almost zero effect on politics in contrast to the opinion of the very few wealthy individuals and businesses who can focus their influence and lobbying and have custom legislation written for them.

At least in the USA.

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

We are ruled by a small oligarchy which sees itself as invulnerable to economic and climate change. This is why we're incredibly late to the game of correcting it.

Well yes, most people have benefitted, but their point was the extremely wealthy won't have to care about the consequences.

Funniest thing I ever heard about it was a girl from Cornwall saying "Ah, New Zealand, the thinking man's Australia."

Ah! Which brings to mind the quote from former NZ prime minister Rob Muldoon, commenting how the large numbers of Kiwis emigrating to Australia resulted in raising the average IQ of both countries.

Simpson's paradox!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox

I don't get it. Is that a Kiwi joke?

You must be from Australia.

I'm a Kiwi and I don't get it either. We like to point to Australia and say "Sure, we've got racism, but have you seen those guys over there?" so, we're a thinking man's somewhat racist post-colonial society?

Erm, cool?

Australia is dumber than NZ. So the "dumb" NZers are leaving, and leaving makes them dumb, but their presence in Australia makes Australia smarter.

So the average IQ rises in both countries, then. Sounds like a win to me.

Extra funny that she's from Cornwall, which is like the New Zealand of England.

Or as I heard it: "New Zealand: Australia's Canada".

Though you've got to swim a bit further to cross the border.

"House prices in New Zealand increased 12.7 percent in the year through October, and the average price in largest city Auckland has almost doubled since 2007 to more than NZ$1 million." That's about $730,000 USD which would make me worry if I was a New Zealander.

I believe most folk are worried, and the media has been referring to it as a "housing crisis". Notably the price increase has been limited to Auckland though (and Queenstown, but Queenstown is the NZ equivalent of Aspen, Colorado; which is to say it's a bit of a millionaire's club).

Unfortunately the currently in power government has done a lot to court this outcome, and so has mostly been avoiding doing anything about it. I think they did recently step in to make it harder for Chinese investors to purchase property in NZ though.

Average house prices in Christchurch just hit half a million, so it's not limited to Auckland and Q'Town, it's just that they were already crazy markets in the first place.

LVR restrictions were upped in October to 40% meaning you now need as an investor 40% deposit for a mortgage in Auckland from the NZ banks (previously was upped to 30%). Things might be slowing down - open homes in my area seem to have less traffic on weekends ....

Yes. Fact of life. More or less every day or so there's an article on the house prices. Lots of parts to the problem - trust me we worry. Not dissimilar to Vancouver or Sydney ...

I spend almost 40% of my post-tax pay on rent each week in Auckland. It's mad.

"Twice the size of England, but with less than a tenth of its people" means that beyond the very short term issues, the housing shortage is easily solvable with ample construction. If you can sell a newly built house for 500-700k USD; then they will magically sprout like mushrooms unless you explicitly forbid it (e.g. as in the California housing problems).

New Zealand has the same issue that Canada does, which is that there are too many incentives for buying housing as an investment. The end result is that housing prices have been spiking upward.

This is due to not only global wealth, but also locals that have been trained to believe that housing is the only good retirement investment.

Canada has finally taken some measures to reign this in, with the 15% foreign investor tax in BC and tougher mortgage rules, but a lot more needs to be done. NZ has finally started adding more regulation around housing investment as well, but I feel like they're still far behind where Canada is at.

Are these for listing price or sales price? Average sales price is always quite bit lower than listing price.

By US state, Hawaii's average sales price is $740k (listing = $980k). DC's average listing price is $703k (sales = $538k).[0] If sales price, Auckland seems to be about $100k USD over Santa Cruz County, CA.

[0] https://www.trulia.com/home_prices/

quite the reverse actually. most houses in akl sell by auction and not a quoted price (gotta let the market decide). the numbers you see referenced are almost certainly the average of actual selling prices.

We are very bloody worried, rest assured.

That's why I'm moving back to my rural home town. The lifestyle is better, too.

When vancouver adopted a %15 non-resident house purchase tax, prices and demand dropped a lot. Maybe nz wants to adopt something similar, combined with singapore's for citizen public house purchase program.

We really do, the amount of foreign money in our housing market is quite scary (China is prominent in the internal debates, but there's a lot of money flooding in from the UK also, not to mention all the cashed up ex-pats coming home), as locals are ultimately competing against the entire world for property. A capital gains tax or land tax would be a good idea also. But our incumbent government is very reluctant to do any of that. Some people would suggest that large donations from foreigners with financial interests here may have influenced their thinking, but in reality most of it appears to be catering to the Kiwi baby boomers who a) own a large proportion of the "investment properties" (did I mention no capital gains tax?) and b) are the largest voting bloc. As their perception of their wealth is intrinsically tied to property values, anything that would depress property value increases would be politically bad.

Same reason we're not doing anything about the pending state funded superannuation crisis - we don't even means test the bloody thing, which means that millionaires and paupers alike get the same level of government money when they hit 65 - but touching national superannuation is political suicide.

This does imply an onus on the non-baby-boomer generations to get more involved in politics and start voting way more than they (we) do.

I'm also starting to think that five year terms instead of our current three year might be worth a shot, as our politicians are very much focused on short-term never the long.

A capital gains tax a good idea? No -- that would decrease market liquidity and make the problem even worse. France has high capital gains taxes and it means that people are less willing to sell houses because capital gains taxes eat the profit, so people tend to hang on to houses in the hope that in many years they'll appreciate enough to make swallowing the capital gains hit worth it. I have a place in France that I'd consider selling but I am not interested in giving the government a huge percentage of the profit.

Meaning if I take a risk in buying and renovating something, my profit has to make the whole affair worth it. If I'm giving the government 34.5% of my profit, if my house was bought at €500k and my target profit is €100k, then that means I have to sell the place at roughly €635k instead of €600k. That knocks many potential buyers out of the market, thus means that the house won't sell as quickly. That also means that my capital is tied up in the house instead of moving the market in some other deal or otherwise putting that money into the economy some other way. The net gain from a capital gains tax is actually a negative when you count the lose of market liquidity resulting from capital gains taxes.

Increasing the price of something lowers demand. If you increase the price of selling, less people will sell, causing house prices to increase.

Capital gains taxes are always a bad idea. Capital liquidity is critical for an efficient economy. The only people who support capital gains taxes are typically people with little capital -- they don't actually understand how it works and the stunting effect it has on an economy.

> A capital gains tax a good idea? No -- that would decrease market liquidity and make the problem even worse.

Depends on the level. At the moment, the big problem is that nearly all of NZ's capital goes into housing - the significant tax advantages (no tax on your profits and LAQCs/LTCs) are one factor in this - inflating the price of living, and starving our businesses of capital to grow and actually be productive with.

I'd ask you why it's a good idea for an economy that profit from running a company is taxed along wit the incomes of all your workers, but not the profit from trading houses - especially as a lot of our property investors are rolling by on the minimal amount of capital necessary - their debt is liquid more than their capital.

Note also that capital gains are seldom if ever indexed for inflation, certainly not in the US. So you're frequently paying a big tax on purely paper gains.

Unoccupied property taxes? You want to really disincentivize using housing as a bank account and instead incentivize housing as a business.

Vancouver recently implemented the tax.

1. Prices tend to be sticky. Someone who thought he could get $1M a couple of months ago is still going to try and get $1M now. The time to sale may not be immediate like in the past, but as long as the seller is willing to wait, the prices can remain high for a long time. There has not been a significant drop in price yet, and it is too soon to tell where the market will go.

2. Sales have slowed, but it is not yet clear why. It may be that foreign investors pulled out, but it may be that the locals stopped buying because they thought foreign investors would pull out. Similarly, it may be that the locals have stopped buying because they fear a government that changes the rules on a whim. Once these questions start to become more clear, and confidence is restored, we may quickly see a return to the way it was. Again, it is far too soon to tell.

How has that impacted recent local buyers who perhaps stretched to buy? I feel like I'd be livid and feeling very trapped if I bought right before that happened and was put underwater as a result.

Most local buyers cannot afford the multi millions required to buy, the rental equivalent was much cheaper per month and they knew it was a volatile market going in. It's like getting angry at the central bank for raising interest rates during a stock bubble.

Does this also apply to people moving in?

So, now NZers will not be able to afford to live in their own country.[0]

The mega rich should buy sailing vessels and live on those and leave the housing prices affordable to the rest of us.

[0] Or at least not own a house.

As a NZ university student, I see this all around me. As the youngest in an old family, we got what would now be considered a middle-class home on a working-class budget in the early 90s. All the other students I know with working-class backgrounds have family homes well beyond the city, forcing them to live like broke arts students in broken-down shoebox apartments.

Even middle-class students tend to have "compromise" family homes, either big homes at the city outskirts or tiny homes in the city centre.

As you may have noticed, families who have owned homes since the 90s are doing pretty well for themselves. They also happen to be the majority voting bloc. The opposition parties are going to have to do some serious politicking to break through this firewall.

> The mega rich should buy sailing vessels and live on those and leave the housing prices affordable to the rest of us.

If housing prices are unaffordable, blame property developers and/or government. If they are unaffordable, that's usually a market signal to build more housing because "all these property developers in city X are making lots of money, let's build there too", which lowers the prices as more people get in, etc. Unless "Ah, but dealing with government there will cost more money than there is profit in the development, let's not build there"

Also, the term unaffordable is relative. Downtown San Francisco is very expensive. It's not "unaffordable" because people have purchased most of those units. And that's just how markets work. You've got a set amount of X (like habitable living space), you've got a certain amount of people that want that thing with a certain amount of money to spend, put it to an auction to determine a fair market price. What's wrong with this equation exactly?

Blaming people for outbidding you in buying a house is ridiculous, even if they outbid you because they simply have more money.

Yeah, this is what doesn't make sense to me. All of these people blaming the buyers for buying and the politicians for not passing laws to disincentivize them from doing so.

The solution is to build more housing. Full stop.

I think that rising populations and income inequality should work together to make home ownership harder for the majority of people in the developed world.

The other piece of the puzzle is infrastructure spending. There's plenty of mostly empty land left in the world. Despite the old adage, building transport networks really is like creating new real estate.

In BC, Canada we laugh at your measly 12.7% and raise you a ~18% [0] for a total of +31.4% 2015aug-2016aug. Yes, you read that right.

It's funny how this article's impression is "prices are returning to normal" when in fact the government's new token rules haven't had a chance to take effect and certainly haven't had time to be analyzed.

Sadly, these new rules are just for show (an election is nearing here) and until effective reforms are put in place the bubble will continue to rise.

[0] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/26-slump-in-v...

...have helped make the South Pacific nation -- a day by air away from New York or London

Isn't that essentially anywhere on the planet?

And by that they mean an actual frigging day - I fly to Germany often from NZ and it's 25 hours at best.

The only thing that could make LAX worse is flying to it from NZ. Awful flight to an awful airport.

I fly via Dubai, 15 hour leg from Sydney to Dubai is the biggest hurdle. And while I've never experienced LAX, Dubai's crassness (who needs that many duty-free diamond stalls, really?) and very obvious classism isn't super appealing after that either.

Try looking at a world map in an azimuthal projection centered on New Zealand, or at a globe. New Zealand is not close to anything. Even the close part of Australia is 2000 km away.

"A day by air" doesn't really connote how arduous a trip it is from the states. It's a long trip, even by air.

I'll bet that flight is less taxing in the company jet.

There's not a lot of corporate jets with that kind of range. It's more Gulfstream ($60MM+) than Embraer, Lear, or Cessna (~$20MM).

I fly it at least once a year and it's not THAT bad if you get an overnight flight. Europe to NZ is a much larger ordeal.

I think the point in this sentence is that most other "popular" places with international airports are closer and easier to reach. It's "a whole day, that's a long time to fly", not "just takes a day, so not too bad".

yep. but it is a polite way of describing just how @#$@#$@# far NZ is from anywhere

“The world is heading into a major crisis,” said Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom in an Oct. 31 Twitter post. “I saw it coming and that’s why we moved to New Zealand. Far away & not on any nuclear target list.”

It will probably ruin his day but the good thing with nuclear fall out is it's globalized nature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_%281959_film%29

You do realise that On the Beach is a completely fictional account of the aftermath of a nuclear war? Fortunately nobody ever stockpiled cobalt salted H-bombs.

Mind you On the Beach is excellent, but not as a documentary on what might happen after a global war.

So the "source" the OP posted is based on something more like the doomsday machine from Dr. Strangelove than a real nuclear attack?

Yes, the book On the Beach is from the 1950s not long after H-bombs were invented - it is mentioned in the book that a lot of weapons used in the war it describes were salted with cobalt to create large amounts of long lived fallout. This is perfectly possible but fortunately was never actually done - I suspect salting with something like cobalt would dramatically reduce the direct effects of weapons.

I can't remember if the cobalt bomb element is mentioned in the film versions but was definitely mentioned in the book.

I suspect salting with something like cobalt would dramatically reduce the direct effects of weapons.

Not based on my understanding of H-bombs. For one thing, you need a tamper made of something dense, and depleted uranium U-238 is used if you want to roughly double your yield while massively increasing the fallout created, then it becomes a fission -> fusion -> fission bomb. Lead is substituted for weapons like the one off 50 Gt Tsar Bomba, even the Soviet weren't willing to damage that much of their territory, and there were minor details like pilot survival (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba). That tamper could perhaps be made out of cobalt, or you could wrap the "physics package" in cobalt.

But it would be a fairly daft thing to do, cobalt-60 has, compared to normal fission products, a long half-life of 5 years, so that which would eventually fall out of the stratosphere would make things uncomfortable for you (normally it will decay to a de minimis level by the time it comes back down in quantity).

On the other hand, it was pure propaganda to suggest such weapons would kill all life on earth. Ignoring details like the impossibility of getting even enough distribution, and that the earth is big, really only issue for humans who want to survive it, who'd be in heavy fallout areas, and who had any time to prepare is having enough food until it decayed enough, more of a lifeboat ethics sort of thing instead of the all but explicit message that we should surrender to the USSR because we and they were so crazy we might do something like that (and evil; if we, the far more evil nuclear power after JFK and McNamara changed our policy to MAD, weren't going to do it, there was no danger).

> the conflict has devastated the Northern Hemisphere, polluting the atmosphere with nuclear fallout, killing all life there. Air currents are slowly carrying the fallout south; the only areas still habitable are in the far reaches of the Southern Hemisphere.

So it is global, but not everywhere the same.

on the beach is one of the most interesting books I've ever read. I'd strongly recommend the book over the film, as the film doesn't hold up at all. The book, on the other hand, has an intro that sounds eerily similar to our current geo-political situation and does a great job of painting an emotional spectrum for the people awaiting their inevitable doom.

expensive, isolated, absurdly beautiful...

i guess "unlikely" probably isn't the word i would use in this situation.

I wouldn't exactly call New Zealand expensive? It's more expensive than say, south-east Asia (or similar regions), but then most places are.

I would consider it cheaper than the US and parts of the EU for most things. Exceptions being certain imports (like cars) being more expensive due to the cost associated with shipping them. From experience this doesn't hold for smaller tech devices, for example I priced up a camera there vs my current residents (Dublin, Ireland) and it was about $1,000NZD cheaper to purchase in NZ (most likely due to being parallel imported from South East Asia).

Reference: grew-up in NZ, and have been living in Dublin for the last year.

Food is a lot more expensive in NZ than in Germany (to give one datapoint).

That's fair, and it's something I've noticed at supermarkets in Dublin as well. I think the price of eating out is comparable though.

That said, I've noticed the portions of food tend to be smaller here in Dublin as well (I suspect being a metropolitan area the supermarkets cater more to individuals whereas the supermarkets back home tend to cater to families). For example, it's next to impossible to buy 1kg of Cheese here in Dublin as the largest you can get from a supermarket is 400 grams.

> I think the price of eating out is comparable though.

Eating out is cheaper in Germany (if you weight prices relative to wages) than NZ.

I can't account for Germany but from Canada it is more expensive but quality of fresh fruit and Veges is way better. Our standard of eating increased markedly moving back.

Clothes are also more expensive.

Because it's fresh.

> I would consider it cheaper than the US

The US is cheaper. I'm guessing like many people who don't live in the US you are thinking about the popular coastal areas and ignoring 80% of the land area.

I'm talking houses for $125k and a total cost of living around $20k outside of the mortgage.

Your view may be dependent on what you earn and what your housing arrangements are. Wages aren't usually high, and if you're in Auckland housing costs are pretty spectacular. 250% or greater in 5 years is pretty bad.

For what it's worth, the used car market there is very cheap - no tax on buying/selling used cars, and an abundance of good vehicles.

That's because their inspections will pull your car off the road for the tiniest of issues. And inspections are every 6 months. It makes buying a used car risky, IMO.

I really like it when Russian oligarchs buy entire beaches here. :/

Do you prefer locals to buy the beaches?

I'd prefer no one was able to buy the beaches.

How about keeping them public for everybody?

It depends on what your priorities are, but the tragedy of the commons is a real thing.

Really sad to read this in a "wish I could preserve it just as it is" protective kind of way. It's a beautiful place.

If any of you mega-rich are reading this. Please don't fuck it up.

Consider your impact - and I'm not just talking about the enviroment.

If the mega-rich considered their impact--they wouldn't be mega-rich.

I know nobody wants to admit this but this is only going to get worse. India and China are going to eat the world, because this is a numbers game.

It's much more a game of wealth than of population.

India and China were the largest countries (or regions) of the world for most of the period from the fall of Rome through the early stages of industrialisation -- say the 17th century. But they lacked the global reach European nations established -- Portugal ("Bombay" comes from the Portuguese "Bom Bia", or "good harbour"), Spain, the Netherlands, and of course England.

What India and China will need to compete with the West is a large wealthy class. That's going to depend on both the absolute size of their economies (or their capabilities to extract wealth by other means), and the size and wealth of individual members of their wealthiest classes. China's economy is pulling even with that of the US, though how sustainably it can do so remains a question. It has over three times the population, though, so the mean wealth will be smaller.

What we're looking at though is the stratum of the ultra-rich. Here there's a fair argument that, say, China could produce more billionaires than the US, and if I'm remembering recent stats correctly, it's approaching that count. Again, though, that's somewhat shakey, and it helps to remember that such standings aren't based on liquid wealth (cash and equivalent holdings), but on the valuation of held assets. Should the Chinese or Indian economies collapse suddenly, those valuations will fall (of course, the same caveat applies in the US, UK, or EU).

I think there are some good arguments to be made that economic mobility is much more important to a healthy economy than any other metric, and this seems like one place where China may have a handicap. India, though, depending on the way their social structures move in the coming years, may have a good chance at surpassing the US in terms of economic strength.

India ... may have a good chance at surpassing the US in terms of economic strength.

I would think sufficient and reliable electrical power would be a prerequisite for that, and to my knowledge that isn't going to happen in India in the foreseeable future.

I've heard this story in the past. People buying farmland and building air strips in NZ. Makes sense, it would be fairly isolated from turmoils in the rest of the world

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2931325/Super-rich-b...

https://www.theguardian.com/public-leaders-network/2015/jan/...

Isn't the irony here that the world isn't becoming more uncertain?

Here in the US, people seem less certain about the future than they were a year ago.

The US Debt to GDP ratio has turned us into Japan. It's stagnation. It's hard to be optimistic in such an environment because nothing feels right and then we have a lying-ass government to further obfuscate the facts.

Stupid question but how much medicine/drugs does New Zealand produce? Does anyone produce insulin in New Zealand? What about electronics? Components to repair electronics? Cars? Car parts? Lightbulb manufacturers? I'm guessing like most countries New Zealand is very dependant on global trade to make basic things work. If things are so bad you need the remoteness of New Zealand to survive I can't imagine global trade is going to be working all that well.

I always thought someone could make a fortune introducing insulation to homes in NZ. Loved living in Wellington, but my god, the homes there are the draftiest coldest places ever!

ISP pricing/caps?

In the major cities you can get unlimited fiber with 100Mbit/s connection for around $90 NZD a month.

in more rural area's the internet tends to be standard ADSL.

(side note; the governments "fiber to the door" roll out is apparently 68% complete for urban areas as of June this year).

As an anecdata point, I don't know anyone with fibre and I live in Auckland. I get 3mb on a good day when it's still and sunny. Rain and wind lead to dial up speeds.

Really? Similar anecdata, except nearly everyone I know is on fibre. 100/20 for $79 a month, or 1000/500 for $129/month.

Wonder if the rollout has targeted certain areas first - newer suburbs first or those with the dodgiest copper? It really is dire where I am. I tried to get on the Rural broadband (4g) bandwagon but the people at Spark I talked to just couldn't understand why anyone wouldn't want the copper connection.

that's interesting, I (used to) live in Christchurch, and the statement is what we had at the time. Most of the folks I knew were more rural, and either had adsl, dial up, or a 3G usb stick.

I pay around 80nzd/mo for unlimited . Latency is not awesome. That was literally the only thing I was worried about moving back to NZ "how well will Netflix work and will managing servers drive me nuts". Netflix is still awesome, the round trip to US based servers is noticeable - 130ms west coast. That said I get home from work in the largest city and go for a swim in beautiful bay 2 mins walk from my door ...

Don't live in NZ, but somewhere similarly distant to the US West Coast. Server management is a pain in the ass -- all I can say is that deploying from colocated (i.e. close to app servers) jumphosts makes life infinitely less painful.

How's the tech scene in NZ? My (academic) wife and I were looking at the map, and we were thinking that maybe NZ wouldn't be a bad place to work for a few years.

Tech scene: great -- plenty of hungry tech companies looking for talent. Xero, PushPay, TradeMe, Orion Health all hiring hard. Catalyst is the Open Source shop of choice. Happy to answer q's if you're curious. (me@gnat.me if you need to make 1:1 contact)

^^^^^^^^^ THIS IS More evidence that the condition of the world is degrading. Making huge sums of money is immoral. The 62 wealthiest people in the world have as much wealth as the bottom 3.5 billion people. This is completely immoral and should be illegal. The mere fact that a person has billions of dollars is evidence that there is tyranny in the world. The paradox of capitalism is that the more a capitalist succeeds in reducing his costs (labor), the less money the mass of people will have to buy the very products by which a capitalist produces and thus cannot sell the products and services he is producing. It is bound to fail in time... and after it does, we will have to find a system which puts morality and love for one another at the center of its goals.

What i think is funny is that the mega rich thing in a collapsed society they will be able to hold on to these areas? People... will just come and take it.

They'll probably hire some security to keep people out.

Why wouldn't the security people just take it then? in a time like that, clearly asking for help is a sign of weakness...going to someone stronger and begging to keep you in power? doesn't make sense.. in chaos people will _take_.

And then they can acquire more land and spread out. And then they can let people onto their land and dictate laws about it. And then we're back to feudalism. Fun.

Ah. I should start a security business, then. It will remove the "finding the stuff" step from the "taking stuff by force" process.

Rubbish. New Zealand's not that great. It's rubbish in fact.

Please everyone stay away.

Just don't try to plant your own garden!

Can we not do that here please. :/

How odd. A former British colony with a land price problem washed through banks that are making life worse for working people.

Most unusual. /s

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