You know they aren’t going to do shit. They are just going to wait until one of the ships stops working and then give one of their funders a huge contract to provide the replacement until it gets fixed which will of course never happen.

I know your reflex is to spew hatred towards labour and blame them for everything but the problem is really with you and people like you.

The public is the blame for their opinions and actions. The fact is that the public actually supports and enjoys everything National is doing. They want to hurt the poor, they want to hurt the Maori, they want to hurt immigrants, they want privatised healthcare and education system.

The country is going to shit because the decent people have left the country. What remains are the dregs.

Disgusting habit. Stop pushing this nonsense on us.

Just to follow up with you.

So far the counterfeit pants have been holding up great. My genuine addidas pants have all suffered from pilling but this one hasn’t yet. Let’s see what happens in another month.

Google “starve the beast” strategy.

Isn’t you and I driving also important to the country’s economic activity? I drive to work, I drive to the stores. I drive to the gym and recreational activities. That’s all economic activity.

As I said I was surprised that the counterfeit was actually better than the original in many ways. It kind of sucks that we don’t have access to these goods readily in NZ. Why should I go buy a blank ugly pair of sweatpants from Kmart when I can buy a much. better looking one of same or similar quality one from another vendor?

I do actually like the branding which is why I bought the counterfeit pants. I think they look nicer than the run of the mill sweatpants.

Oddly enough adidas changed the styling on their pants this year and I like the new designs less than the old ones so this makes the counterfeit ones even more desirable.

Is anybody surprised?

But everybody isn’t riding horses. In order for your analogy to work it would have to like this. “If horses are so great why isn’t everybody riding horses to work”

I don’t see it. What is the irony? How wildly popular is lemmy?

If RSS is so great why aren’t people using it? Why isn’t there a dozen readers on the market?

maybe it’s just not that useful and that’s why nobody is using it.

Telling people what they can and can’t do with their property is North Korea.

yes. confiscating property will collapse society. Confiscating property by levying unpayable escalating taxes will also collapse society.

How would a tax encourage building? That makes no sense.

They don’t let people own property in those places. Just up your alley.

If the owner knows the value of the land is just gonna keep going up with no additional effort on their part, why spend the money to build anything on it?

First of all doesn’t the value of land go up every year even he does put something on it? Wouldn’t it go up even more if it there was something on it?

Secondly why do you want to punish the owner just because land values go up.

What are you going to do to make the value of the land go down anyway?

People need to be punished because it’s been over ten years and as I look out my office window right now I can see two derelict decaying buildings and two enormous empty gravel lots.

I don’t think people should be punished because of your feelings though.

You’re really happy for our central city to remain half-finished indefinitely?

If that’s the price of freedom then yes.

It’s a national embarrassment that we haven’t managed to rebuild the city yet

I could go on and on about national embarrassments in this country. You think empty lots are an embarrassment? Take a look at the buildings in most cities, take a look at most houses FFS. Leaky, poorly insulated, mouldy, run down, fragile buildings as far as the eye can see.

Maybe for normal people. He didn’t surrender his passport.

I don’t endorse what the USSR was if that’s what you mean.

You kind of do.

I do think it is worth questioning what value hogging finite land provides to society.

Private property and property rights is the cornerstone of western culture. It’s what made our civilisation. It’s what gave you everything you have.

It’s not that it wouldn’t be profitable to build on it. It’s that it’s more profitable not to build on it.

Why do you say that? What’s the profit in parking your boat on a piece of land?

How would you incentivise these owners to fix their hideous eyesore properties?

I don’t know. How about we round them up and put them in jail? How about public hangings? How about we flog them in the town square?

I mean why do people need to be punished and hurt because they don’t use their property the way you want them to? Why can’t we just leave people alone FFS!

I can’t stand this attitude. Let’s hurt people because they don’t act like I want them to! It’s fucking sadistic.