Locke

Heroin used to be freely available in drug stores, yet there were few addicts. Why is that? Why do the Pharma companies lobby for more government intervention in drugs markets and more aggressive pursuit of the war on drugs?

Trouble is, those boundaries can easily be changed to buy votes from the poor. Also, A levels are such meaningless crap these days and do not reflect the potential of those taking them. Not when it involves increasing the amount of evil in the world. Taxation is theft is evil.

Also please explain to me how a government employee talking about saving money by letting victims of the government's war on drugs die has anything to do with the free market?

Businesses will always behave in such a way to maximise profits for themselves. This is not greed, but survival. If the government offers to businesses to use its ability to force people to do things, there will be a business which takes up the offer to gain a competitive advantage over its competitors. That is not a problem of capitalism, but Statism.

Did I make a libertarian argument? I said Taxation is theft. This is because theft is the use or threat of force to transfer property. Taxation is enforced by the threat of violence against peaceful parties Therefore taxation=theft To continue the debate, you would have to present a counterargument which shows why taxation is not theft.

It is the consistent view. Taxation is indistinguishable from theft. It is true that Europe has proven extremely susceptible to the Siren song of political violence known as Socialism, but the US is not far behind. Could be that, because the brightest minds fled the European socialist governments of the 17th to 20th centuries, the IQ was 2 standard deviations higher in America than in Europe. The problems in Europe have their roots in government power. The cost of living is anyway far lower and no one starves involuntarily there. Explain to me where you see a lack of compassion?

First you must defeat the argument that taxation is theft. Then you concern yourself with the consequences. Would the question "How will the cotton get picked?" dissuade you from breaking a slave's chains?

Yes, all of that is also theft and /or fraud. That does not make taxation "not-theft".

What other moral crimes would you excuse on the basis that you derive some benefit from them? Where is my social contract? I don't recall signing one? What are the exit clauses? Non-sequitur. Both places have taxation and government power. I legitimately declare these to be the root of every single problem faced by people today.

Paying for stuff you need is called a "service charge", like you pay to the internet company after you voluntarily agree to use and pay for their services. Taxation is theft, because you never agreed to use or pay for the services and you get charged regardless.of the quality or whether you even use them. Should you wish to bring up my education as a reason for me to be stolen from, consider that children cannot enter into contracts.

The government has no right to steal from anyone. Taxation is theft. If the State wants to survive, it needs to default on all debt, and never deficit spend ever, ever again. Any other path is death.

With lower wages, people can afford less shelter, but housing is not for shelter. Housing has become an investment asset whose price is related to its capability to shield wealth from predatory governments or inflation (but I repeat myself). Its price is therefore dislocated from its shelter value and peoples' wages are less important to the housing price than other people's investment wealth which is (pardon the pun) looking for a home. The irrationality is in this dislocation which treats a shelter resource as if it has value outside of that. Once its shelter value decreases (excess housing, decreased population, population relocation, etc) to a point where the fantasy is no longer sustainable to most investors, then the price of housing relocates down, closer to its shelter value. It is entirely possible that this keeps spinning for years, but I find it unlikely, because the sentiment seems to be turning. Do not be surprised if prices continue to rise.

The market can stay irrational for longer than you can stay solvent.

How much is the deposit? Is it protected? There's a member on here who takes particular delight in shafting LL when they don't protect deposits- apparently you can sue for multiples of the deposit. Anyway, if you manage to pay less rent there or elsewhere, you could make up the deposit in rent saved. Your LL sounds like a ***** though, so if I were you I would move out on principle. As 65243 said, he could be playing games, so you could play games in return. Offer £1850, let him spit in your face and laugh as he gets 4 months of void. Sounds like time to start looking elsewhere.

Lol if you think that was a crash, wait to see what's in store.

Interesting how Ireland's debt levels totally collapsed. Why is that, and has it put them in a better position than other nations for the coming depression?

Hmm. Perhaps on Sterling, but real interest rates cannot be controlled to a significant extent to a significant length of time. So while the BOE may be willing to go to hyperinflation to avoid a rates rise, the interest rate in, say Gold, will rise to reflect people's [un]willingness to lend.

Well, for now. There will be a time no one accepts Sterling.

Fiat currency is like a confusing fog. The GBP price of gold is utterly irrelevant. What matters is the price of gold in loaves of bread, cubic meters of water or BTUs of energy. If the price of gold doubles, but the price of bread triples, holding gold will lose you value, but nowhere near as much as if you held Fiat. During hyperinflation, gold historically outperformed other asset prices.

Here's a hint: save in gold and silver. To steal that they actually have to come to you with guns.

I absolutely agree. People like you and I won't take on the risk of the cheap credit, so we do not deserve to profit from the risk taking, but it is disgusting that these wrinkly old ******s expect us to bear the burden of their risk taking. In an environment of tight credit, which is the natural state, these HPI dickheads would not even have the opportunity to bid up prices and you wouldn't have a bubble. The problem therefore, is not the greedy retards, but the cheap credit, provided by the government. This does not make the risk seekers blameless, but it should inform how to deal with the problem i.e. people generally cannot be trusted with cheap money, therefore we cannot tolerate cheap money. Like I said, I broadly agree with what you are saying, but the government is root of the problem and is not going to provide a long term solution.

Think on this: they could have clad it in simple aesthetic panels for less money than insulation+aesthetic. It was the insulation which spread the fire. Why was there insulation? It cost them £80,000 per flat, surely much more than would be saved in energy over the lifetime of the insulation (this stuff needs to be replaced every what, 15 years?) Eco-terrorism should go into the dictionary.

I'd laugh if I weren't crying.

I agree broadly with your excellent post, but I disagree strongly with this. Today, people have two brand new cars, not because they can afford them , but because the government driven artificial expansion of credit enables them to consume now rather than save for later. The same scenario is true for housing. There is not a shortage of shelter. There is a shortage of investment assets relative to the supply of credit, which is driving up asset prices. The price of shelter assets will [most likely] relocate closer to the demand for shelter once some credit trigger occurs, also known as the bubble popping. This issue is entirely predicated upon too much government involvement. More government involvement is not a solution. People are, at a genetic level, greedy. If you provide cheap credit, they will use that cheap credit. Getting upset at their avarice is tilting at windmills, because you will never ever change that fundamental aspect of human nature.

Many people believe that lack of housing has driven HPI, while some of us contend that easy money has blown up asset prices, while much of the housing stock sits unoccupied. I bring to you Savills Farmland Price Index http://www.savills.co.uk/farmland-value/index.html If the HPI is down to housing shortage, how is it that farmland has followed a broadly similar pattern? Is the increase in Farmland price since 2001 an indication of inflation at 9.6% annual, or does it indicate that farmland became an investment asset around that time?