the darkerside to rants

Darkness before the light?

For many years, Harris Decima pollster Allan Gregg has asked respondents whether they consider themselves conservatives, liberals or centrists, and he’s also asked them how they vote. In recent years, he told the Manning Centre conference, the number of self-identified conservatives has been growing. But what’s almost more interesting is that the political allegiance of self-identified centrists has shifted, too. In 1997, 41 per cent of centrists voted for the Chrétien Liberals. In 2008, 48 per cent voted for the Harper Conservatives. Two things have happened. As the population ages and is buffeted by polarizing events like the struggle against international terrorism, the centre has shifted rightward. And the Harper Conservatives have pushed the Liberals, sometimes with their hearty co-operation, off-centre.

Gregg found that 89 per cent of respondents, nearly everyone, agrees that “nothing is more important than family.” Sixty-seven per cent agree that “marriage is, by definition, between a man and a woman,” 60 per cent that “abortion is morally wrong.”

This is interesting to me for a few reasons.

Human being are well known for their gift of self delusion. Be it that the “love of our life” can do no wrong until they finally can and we realize just how badly mistaken we were. I am pretty sure there are very few people out there in this world who did not fall into this trap.

Or the delusion that we need to do something out of reason X, where said reason is purely made up in our mind to justify our choice.

The list of course could go on and I am sure if you think for ten minutes about your life you will find a handful of examples as well.

While all of this can be emotionally tragic or have tragic realities on a personal level over the last 30 or so years we have witness a much bigger delusion with much more risk to all of us.

Take this headline for example:

Now this reads good, doesn’t it? We’re all better now, and wasn’t it just a hard time this 2008 / early 2009? But now it’s all better according to this headline, even though the subheadline tries to dampen the mood a bit.

But is this really the case? Are we really better off now? The articles has this little nugget in it:

The bank’s economists looked at another measure of debt, the ratio of assets to liabilities. Before the recession, households held from $5.6 to 5.8 worth of assets, for every $1 of debt. Currently, households are holding a record low $5.1 of assets for every $1 of debt.

Ah, now here’s the rub. The problem is that the net worth is wishful thinking only, you know, like the guy or gal you had a crush on high school from afar until they opened their mouth and you realized that they had the voice of a chipmunk. The problem with this whole headline and statement is simple: This isn’t real money.

Let me try to explain.

The way the networth is calculated is: Your Liabilities (e.g. your mortgage) vs. your assets (e.g. your paid off car). Well, that’s how it should be done. The problem is that they do not do this. They actually take the price they think your house will fetch on the market and count it as an asset. So they deduct the perceived house value from your mortgage and give you the difference as an “asset”.

That’s just delusional.

Think about it. They take a value that only exists on paper and has no real world application and make it out to be real so that you can feel better about the hundreds of thousands that you own to the banks. The problem with these house prices is that they aren’t set in stone. Sure, the papers were rife earlier this year and late last year of people getting into a bidding frenzy and paying more money than asked, but this can also go the other way if you suddenly have nobody able to afford / wanting to buy property, it always cuts both ways. Hence why you shouldn’t count your chickens until all the eggs have hatched.

Furthermore, the one thing they do not take into account in this calculation is interest.

When you go and get a mortgage in order to finance the purchase of a property (let’s be clear, getting a mortgage is not buying a house, it is getting a loan) you not only pay the principal (the sum you borrowed) but also the interest on it. In most cases (current artificially low interest rates ignored) this amounts to almost doubling the purchase price over the course of the average loan (of course if you pay it off faster you pay less interest and you’re better off. But people who could do this would not go for a 0/40 or 5/35 mortgage, and even at just 25 years you still pay a hefty sum in interest).

What this means though is that you are probably in negative equity, meaning you actually lost money on that “investment”.

And yet, if you talk to your bank they will continue to tell you that you are actually building equity on your house, they will look at your credit rating and tell you that you are actually doing well etc. It is smoke and mirrors, not to outright say you are delusional and the bank is doing it’s best to keep you that way.

Here’s another example from a message board:

Who cares if prices come down 20% when they already went up 30%?

Someone who can do a bit of math?

Say, you have $100 and magically they become 30% more (== $130), then drop by 20% (130 x 0.8) you are left with $104 or just a 4% increase (which will be eaten up by associated costs like closing costs, interests paid, repairs, taxes etc.).

Meanwhile, presume you only started out with $70, they then increased in value again by 30%, you now have $91, now it loses it’s value by 20% and you’re left with $72.8, or again 4% in “profit”.

The reason I point this out is because it exemplifies the utter lack people seem to have when it comes to finances and money and just how delusional we as a society have become.

The reason why this is all not so good for all of us is simple and answered in the CBC article from above as well:

TD said liabilities increased four percentage points faster than income last year and interest payments remain high, despite low interest rates.

You may want to chew on that for a bit and come to your own conclusion what this means for Canadian networth.

And by the way, this isn’t the only place where things like this are happening, it seems to be a global phenomenon and not only limited to the world of finances and real estate. Remember the whole “We’re going to use Ethanol in order to remove ourselves from the need of oil”? Yeah, similar scam, they conveniently forgot to mention that most of the corn is grown using fossil fuels, that the refinery / distillery is run on fossil fuel etc. But in the end it made people feel good at the pump, because it was ethanol, plant based, renewable and so much less CO2, fill her up.

Welcome to the age of global delusion, anybody want to guess how the crash landing will look like?

Last night I had a wonderful example on how limiting online communication can be.

The whole thing started out when I noticed that Raincoaster had a poppy on her Twitter Avatar. I sent her a (private) direct message on twitter saying (in my mind at least mockingly) that I was surprised she actually did show a poppy.

The reply that came back was essentially: “There are many things you don’t know about me.” Which is fine, I don’t. I continued in a (to me) sarcastic tone and replied:

Shocking, Raincoaster giving in to peer pressure AND promoting Groupthink.

And this is where things took a turn to the utterly bizarre.

If you ever read or talk to / with her you realize very quickly that she is, how shall we call it, sarcastic and outspoken. Things that show up on her radar that she does not approve off she relentlessly mocks.

So imagine my surprise when the next reply was not a private message but a public one, and not only was it a snarky one but she also proceeded to retweet some of my replies (My tweets are private). Next thing I know some of her “friends” decided to kick me in the shins too, that even though they pretty much only knew (and retweeted) her tweets to me. So at best someone got only half the story.

The main accusation around this was that I didn’t bother to ask her as to WHY she was showing it, which is funny, because in the entire two preceding messages there was really no intend to seriously discuss this. In turn I could also say that she never asked what my problem with the poppy might be.

Now clearly, my remark seems to have hit some kind of nerve with her, which is fine; you don’t always know how people react to things you say, and if she would have indicated what she thought about my remark we could have easily cleared it up. Instead though she chose to make me a target for her “friends” and put words and opinions into my mouth that I don’t have (if you want to read my opinion on what I think of Remembrance Day and similar holidays, you can read it here).

The end result for me was a simple one. I ended up closing down the lines of communications this morning after sleeping over it. I removed her from my networks and I blocked her.

No, this is not about me being miffed that she shows a poppy or that she felt hurt or insulted by my remarks, it’s about the simple fact that she decided to take a private matter into the public domain in order to… Well, whatever it was / is that she decided to make out of it.

A few minutes ago, before I started writing this, she decided to kick after me yet once again. It is “funny” how she decided to make a big deal out of it that I am German and thus my opinion doesn’t count and any criticism of Remembrance Day by default should automatically be disregarded. If someone reduces me to my place of birth, how could I ever deal with that? Racism in reverse, but I am sure she’d disagree and would say it’s nothing like that. Let me channel my female here for a second: Whatever.

It is also interesting that her second argument was essentially: “Because you work for a large multinational, you have absolutely no right to criticize anybody in the DTES, many of whom who have served.” I love these kinds of “holier than thou” attitudes, but having been involved with some people in the DTES poverty industryThe Georgia Straight has a piece that echos many of my thoughts on the subject of the military.

My opinion of the excitement level when it comes to Vancouver as a city as always been rather low. But I think last night must have been a new low point.

A friend was in town from out of town and had organized some tickets for an event somewhere in Kits at a restaurant. I wasn’t quite sure what was supposed to go on there outside of a “party” and it sounded interestingly enough.

There were a few problems with the organization, mainly what time, what place, how to get there etc. etc. but in the end we’ll figured it out (I thought).

Because public transit works rather well but can be slow in Vancouver I decided to cab it, not realizing that I wasn’t the only one with that idea, but no fear, he and a buddy of his were “on their way” to pick me up; and they did, at around 22:15 they picked me up.

This is where the evening went…. Well, very Vancouver.

Instead of heading over to the “advertised event” buddy’s buddy decided that he wanted to check out something on Robson. Some small little place who’s name I can’t remember right now. Essentially it was supposed to be a club with a DJ. We arrived there around 22:20 and… No DJ was playing, we were “spared” the cover charge and stood around in a place that had less than a dozen people in it, talking in hushed tones, no music nothing. Why we went there I still can’t quite discern, I think the idea was that buddy’s buddy was looking for a girl that wasn’t there.

After standing around for 10 minutes or so we decided to leave again, and we did. But it wasn’t as if we were heading to the “party place now”. Because it was still early, at around 22:30 we landed at some odd pub in Kits. I know that pub (though I can’t remember (and don’t really want to) the name) and had been there before and it didn’t strike me back then, nor did it strike me now as party central.

But in we went, mainly because I made a poor choice in shoes and with the ice that was forming walking anywhere was… Well, not recommended.

To short circuit this, at 20 to 11 the cover band was still setting up, when the band finally started playing the feeling in that place quickly became that of being at a wedding reception, at 12:30 the next morning the place was essentially deserted.

I am not a big fan of new years eves parties, mainly because it strikes me as rather contrived in most places and mostly I treat NYE as just another night, but I figured 2008 was such a mixed bag of things that “drinking it out” wouldn’t have been a bad idea.

But seriously, Vancouver, WTF? I mean I know that Kits isn’t renowned for it’s high life, but every time I ended up at a NYE event the place started hopping at around 10, partying into the inadvertent countdown at midnight with continuous partying until 2am at which point people were starting to “chill out”.

This was just utterly pathetic. Not sure if it is due to my “tour guides” or if this is a general Vancouver tendency (I tend to think the latter, mainly because of my exposure to the Vancouver scene in a large part).

This way 2008 didn’t end with a bang, it ended in the geriatric version of New Years Eve. I think I go to bed early on December 31st 2009.

Okay, this is a few days old now and in some way was overtaken by Harper’s acts since then. Still a good rant through and pretty much on the money.

Oh, and here is a little bit that may make you think, you remember, these “backroom deals” that the coalition did are “undemocratic” and a “powergrab” ignoring the “wishes of the voters”. But once upon a time…..

No no, don’t think for a second he was serious back four years ago, only the now matters.

Two photos from the new Elysian Room Cafe on West 4th and Cambie (actually a block West of Cambie on the south side).

Click on the image for full size

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