|
|
Musings Report 2017:46 11-18-17 Solutions Are Local: Housing, Neighborhoods, Cities, Workplaces, Jobs
You are receiving this email because you are one of the 500+ subscribers/major contributors to www.oftwominds.com.
For those who are new to the Musings reports: they are basically a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights. Thank you for supporting the site and for inviting me into your circle of correspondents.
Solutions Are Local: Housing, Neighborhoods, Cities, Workplaces, Jobs
In the big-picture view, most of the perverse incentives in our system come from the top down, from central banks and centralized government policies that encourage growth for growth's sake, taking on more debt, financial speculation, and so on.
It's tempting to think that the way to reverse these perverse and destructive incentives is to change the centralized policies, but given the incentives to maintain the status quo by those reaping the benefits, this is an essentially impossible dream.
But that doesn't mean there are no solutions. It simply means solutions arise on the local level rather than on the centralized-government/bank stage.
This dynamic is nicely illustrated by an article on housing and urban renewal in Japan:
Raze, rebuild, repeat: why Japan knocks down its houses after 30 years.
Many visitors to Japan (myself included) are struck by the insane policy of devaluing perfectly good homes to zero after a few decades of use.
The reason behind this policy is obvious: growth for growth's sake demands that perfectly good vehicles and houses must be replaced long before their time to keep the economy chugging forward.
This is an especially absurd model in Japan, which suffers from housing shortages and sky-high rents/home prices in job centers while a significant percentage of rural and small-town housing is abandoned.
I've mentioned the Half-Farmer, Half-X model of living in Japan over the years, and a recent video segment I saw on NHK (Japan's national TV) was filmed in a rural village where young people were moving in to take over abandoned farms and houses, renting the land and houses for $150 or $200 a month, a mere sliver of what they were paying for cramped quarters in the Tokyo urban area.
The above article does an excellent job of describing how local cities and communities can bring new life back into neighborhoods that can no longer support the "tear it down and replace it every 30 years" model of postwar Japan.
Abandoned commercial buildings are being cut up into affordable workspaces, old homes are being converted to charming cafes, and small flats cluttered with multiple partitions are being opened up and modernized without tearing down the entire building.
These local initiatives are largely private, though the public sector can contribute much in the way of easing the development process.
Japan is being forced to innovate as its working-age population declines; it has a DeGrowth economy for demographic reasons. But DeGrowth isn't just the result of population declines; it's the result of the old models of growth for growth's sake and debt-based speculation no longer working.
The good news is solutions abound--at the local level.
Summary of the Blog This Past Week
The Demise of Dissent: Why the Web Is Becoming Homogenized 11/17/17
The Superhero Complex: Are We Incapable of Saving Ourselves? 11/16/17
Is This Why Productivity Has Tanked and Wealth Inequality Has Soared? 11/15/17
Mideast Turmoil: Follow the Oil, Follow the Money 11/14/17
Forget the Bogus Republican "Reform": Here's What Real Tax Reform Would Look Like 11/13/17
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
Our good friends' dog recovered from being paralyzed, an amazing turn-around from a bleak and potentially life-ending situation 8 days ago. He's still not 100%, but can now walk a bit unsteadily under his own locomotion. Very good news indeed!
Market Musings: Santa Claus Rally On Tap?
It's always a challenge to look at charts with few preconceptions or expectations-based interpretations.
With that in mind, let's look at the Dow Jones Industrials (INDU) in the context of a year-end Santa Claus rally, a well-known and fairly reliable market pattern.
If you follow the market, you've been reading about weakening internals and narrowing breadth--both warning signs of an Aging Bull Market. These are sound indicators, but they don't tell us much about timing.
Aging, weakening markets can loft higher for months, or even a year or more.
There isn't much weakness visible in the daily and weekly charts of the INDU--yet. The recent wobble has pushed stochastics near oversold, while the Bollinger Bands are tightening, a reliable indicator of a major move higher or lower.
MACD has trended down, a sign of weakness, but there's not much here that screams "crash!" or seasonal weakness.
Maybe Santa fails to show up this year, and something like weak retail sales could short-circuit the expected Santa rally. But real weakness would appear in things like lower highs and lower lows, MACD pushing below the neutral line and oversold stochastics that stay oversold.
This looks like a market that could stumble/ fumble around for the next 6-7 months, edging higher under the positive seasonal influence of the November - May period.
As a side-note: the real-world economy could already be sinking into recession and the market could edge higher for another 6-7 months. Markets aren't the discounting mechanisms they once were.
From Left Field
Bitcoin Is the New Crisis Currency -- sending cash home...
Who can you trust? How tech is reshaping what we believe
We've lost faith in experts, but increasingly rely on strangers we meet online. Is it wise to replace long-evolved instincts at the click of a button? -- the Yelp reviews add up...
This is how your world could end. In an extract from his book Ends of the World, Peter Brannen examines mass extinction events and the catastrophic outcome of rising temperatures for all the world’s population -- our doom-and-gloom serving of the week...
Greek town creates its own alternative currency (via Simon H.)-- 5 years old but still worthy of study...
Why do people care more about benefit ‘scroungers’ than billions lost to the rich? -- because we see the scroungers but not the super-rich?
World's witnessing a new Gilded Age as billionaires’ wealth swells to $6tn
Why hard forks are good for Bitcoin -- HODLing is a term referring to Hold On for Dear Life...
How will crypto markets change with the involvement of institutional investors?
Russia-Obsessed Media Shocked To Discover Facts About Russia Stories That Discredit Their Narrative. -- please don't ruin everything with the facts!
The Infinite Suburb Is an Academic Joke -- gasoline still cheap, but commute times are absurd...
It's getting clearer — the diet-cancer connection points to sugar and carbs
Japanese student sues over school's order to dye hair black -- hmmm...
Shocking photo shows Caribbean Sea being 'choked to death by human waste' -- out of sight, out of mind...
Divers Freeing Whale Sharks From Fishing Nets Is the Most Beautiful Thing You Will See All Day (1 min) (via CNF) video loaded slowly, but worth the hassle...
"You do not merely want to be considered just the best of the best. You want to be considered the only one who does what you do.” Jerry Garcia
Thanks for reading--
charles |
|
|
|
|
|
