r0dman.com

I haven’t posted much lately because I haven’t been able to articulate my thoughts. There’s just so much going on in my head right now.

I’m unsure about my diet – I don’t know who to believe and what to believe.

I’m unsure about weather patterns it’s affect on the future of this country – I always try to be two steps ahead, but I really don’t know where my fiancee and I should live when we return from our overseas trip. Water is of great concern to me, and from everything I have read and heard Adelaide doesn’t have too brighter future.

I’m unsure about finance – nobody can be trusted anymore. Worldwide, economies will do anything to hold power via money at any cost. Australia’s population is planned to hit 35 million by 2049 despite the environmental issues, in order to keep property values from crashing, keep the economy “booming” and to supposedly keep our nation secure. Do we try and place our money in the perfect location to try and “win” from the instability in the world right now? Do we just do as everyone else does and keep our money in property, assume it’s the best investment ever, or do we just exit the world as we know it?

On top of all this, I just can’t see how I can bring a child into this world. My fiancee feels the same way. It’s just not fair to be making a decision like that. We love kids, but without knowing our own future, how can we possibly bring someone else into the world with that uncertainty?

There are so many to list, and while I want to consider them all and decide where I stand and what I want to do, I also know that I need to clear my mind. I think way too much and need to relax.

Interesting times…

Last night was a late one for my fiancee. I have probably mentioned it before, but she is a teacher. She currently has a student teacher in her class, and had to write his report last night (on top of all the work that she already has to do). I spent last night doing what I usually do – researching anything and everything.

When I had the chance to catch up with her for 15 minutes before bed, we just talked about everything going on in the world and how people handle this information. While she is just too busy to research “the truths” of the world, she hears most of it from me. I always try to provide unbiased information, and let her form her own opinions. She is oblivious to most of lies and deceitfulness of the world, although when I do give her information she takes it on board and processes it as she sees fit.

Others however, just don’t want to hear it. Intentional ignorance? I don’t know.

There’s a hundred different examples I could pick, but to name a few:

• Diet – meat, milk, etc. Unnecessary products that do us more harm than good.
• Finance – the sham industry. Built on debt, and fudging numbers.

They are probably the two most important to me, but even small things like Internet censorship I fear is for the wrong reasons.

Like most people, I have a fairly diverse group of friends. I went to a private school and have some VERY well off friends from there, but after working and spending more time mountain biking, many of my friends are now from the lower socioeconomic side of town. I know people from all sorts of different backgrounds, and with differing life stories. Regardless, a good 90% of them, appear to simply not be able to use their brain. Their life is purely about money, possessions and all of the ridiculous issues that go along with it.

I have mentioned in the past about how I try to get people to think. Trying to tell someone that eating meat will give them cancer is unfair. Not only will your average meat eating Australian bite your head off and disregard what you were trying to tell them, it is only my opinion that our diets will give us cancer. Until the World Health Organisation states that eating meat will in fact give you cancer, you can’t expect people to believe it. Rather, I try to produce the facts and let people do with them what they please.

My main aim is just to make people consider things. Whether it be about diet, or property values or whatever. Just consider it, and then research it. Better your life with the truth!

From the Global House Price Crash Forum, “maveri” wrote:

As we grow up we leave behind our childish view of the world and form our own opinions and source our own data for ourselves – we move on from our parents view and form our own.

What our parents told us about the world is viewed in a different light than what it used to be. We realise that their perspective is limited and designed to portray a certain aspect only and at times, the view that they portray is for their benefit in large measure, either for control or for protection or worse, for harm.

I find that the majority of my friends, and specifically my best friend (who just about disregards everything that I say as a conspiracy theory, even when the statistics are there to prove it) who have trouble “believing”, usually hold the same opinions of their parents. They are the sort of people that vote how their parents vote, and couldn’t tell you why, they eat how their parents eat, sleep how their parents sleep, and work and live and everything else – just as their parents do.

So talking to my fiancee last night, I said “either I have some uncanny ability to be able to open up my mind, and consider the extremes (not necessarily believe them, but entertain the idea), or others are extremely close-minded”. This probably sounds very arrogant – it’s not intended to be that way, it’s just born out of confusion from myself. I genuinely don’t know if others are ignorant because the truth is so scary, or if they just genuinely are oblivious to everything going on, because they just can’t compute it all.

Either that or I’m just going insane and everyone else is right.

I had some mates over on Saturday night, and the topic of property came up. I was half pissed at the time and lost my cool at one of my mates who decided to antagonise me over my opinion about house prices and the oversupply of housing in Australia.

You know those debates that you just can’t win? I don’t cope when having them. It frustrates me how you just talk to a brick wall and there is no give in their argument whatsoever. This particular argument was with someone who has never taken an interest in property or economics, and bases all of his opinions off of what his family has done in the property world (another speculator family).

The issue is, people rely on statistics and charts and newspaper articles to believe everything nowadays. From a statistical point of view, in 2006 (the last Australian census) 10% of Australia’s dwellings were unoccupied. The stats prove my point in a very basic sense, but are they really unequivocal?

When I go anywhere I see for sale signs all over the place – houses, cars, even things like sofas sitting on the foot path! I think garage sales have gone through the roof, and on the whole people are trying to free up their cash. Times are tough for a lot of people. If you are one of the lucky ones who has escaped the bad times, good luck to you, but make no mistake that there are a lot of people are out there hurting very bad.

Talking to friends in real life, or reading forums – people ARE losing their jobs. Some are working part-time now instead of full time, others just suffered a few grand pay cut. Statistics don’t prove this that well, and when you need to take averages into account, it’s often very hard to prove a lot of the things that you argue for.

…in 2006, 10% of Australia’s dwellings were unoccupied.

When you suggest to someone that there is an oversupply of housing in Australia, they absolutely scoff at the idea. It’s hard to get your head around something that goes against everything that everyone had told you when it comes to investing.

The most direct situation is when a tenant loses their job, another tenant will move into their house. As far as the landlord is concerned, there couldn’t be an oversupply in the market, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to fill his property with another tenant. While this can be true for a lot of people, if you look at it from a “whole of Australia sense”, the number of tenants decrease, while the number of properties stay the same.

When in dire straits, people will lower their standards – maybe sleep two to a room. You might find a family home with 10 people living in it. They split the cost of the rent and in the mean time two other investment properties sit empty.

In a deflationary environment rents can back peddle. After all, if people cannot pay your price, they simply cannot pay your price. It’s not a decision, it’s just blatantly not possible. As rents re-adjust and come back down to a reasonable level, the oversupply problem eases and people start to rent on their own again rather than sharing. It’s a very similar situation with the house values themselves.

When faced with this oversupply argument, most people just say that it’s not possible. When you link it to a house price crash, it’s just disregarded as a conspiracy theory or something along those lines.

As always, I just ask for people to consider the fact that I (and the others hundreds of thousands of people), may be on to something here. I don’t have a crystal ball, and I don’t need people to take my word as gospel, I just want to see my friends and family consider it and do their own research, before committing to a rather large uneducated decision.

My fiancée and I took my mum out today for Mother’s Day. We visited a botanic gardens up in the hills which was beautiful, then grabbed some lunch at a bakery. It was a nice day.

We all had a good chuckle at the botanic gardens… People’s laziness never ceases to amaze me. They make all the effort to pack half of their house in their car, along with their kids and then spend the time driving for an hour or so to a nice botanic gardens.

Presumably people go to these places to “escape”, yet when they get there they seem to flock like sheep. Everyone tries to score a park as close to the gardens as possible, then after five or so laps finally concede defeat and park the extra fifty metres away. Being such a busy day at the park there was never going to be a chance that someone would get a close park, but they always try.

After parking they get everything out the car, and everyone in the family loads up with things to carry. It’s time to find a “spot” – they walk to the closest place that they possibly can to sit down and have their lunch. Because so many people think like that, they end up “escaping” to a park where they are surrounded by others that are also “escaping”. Yet they are surrounded by others that they were trying to escape from in the first place. Insanity!

My fiancée said to mum at one stage “I can’t get over these people, not walking five more minutes to get to the nice spots that we go to. Although I suppose it’s good so those areas are free for us!”. Too true.

I really love not being lazy. Today gave me the biggest boost just walking around the gardens. The air was freezing but it just smelt so clean and fresh. Walking around to the much quieter areas the three of us had a good chance for a catch up and could actually talk without others being around. Good times.