How do you "properly compensate" non-human species that are displaced, endangered or harmed under your morally questionable standards of conduct?

11/14/2011 3:52:21 PM

Quote :

"Assuming they pay the damages then sure."

Yes let's destroy our planet as long as we have dollar bills to fly around space and find another to inhabit. I hate stepping down to just calling someone stupid, but you're either just that, or arguing illogically for the sake of your own entertainment. Either way, you have some things to work on in your life. Best of luck to you we out this bitch.

11/14/2011 4:10:52 PM

^ "The Planet" is why we have a political system.

^^ "Non-Human Species" are why we have religion and charity organizations.

No point scrapping the whole of civilization to save two birds and a badger.

11/14/2011 4:29:09 PM

Why is anyone even arguing with Lonesnark? This is they guy whose global warming solution involved surrounding the continental United States with twenty-five foot high concrete walls. You know, to keep the water out. This is the guy who argued against the avalanche of evidence supporting climate change while burning 5% of his annual income trying not to melt in his own house. There is literally not a point that LS can be taken seriously.

Like, look at this thread. Read the comedic gold this guy contributes to American society through his fingertips:

Random TWW Poster:

Look man this water has some turbo toxic shit that will probably cause you to develop super cancer and melt your innards at the same time.


Lonesnark Response:

"we have shockingly cheap filtration systems."


That's right. Just go ahead and run that instantly flammable, plastic melting, Cancer breeding death juice through a Brita filter if you're so worried about a couple of bad parts per million. Honeybadger don't give a fuck.

11/14/2011 8:53:12 PM

Always nice to hear from you. Too bad a rational conversation remains unlikely with you. How's that $100 coming along?

11/15/2011 12:48:59 AM

I only deal in gold-pressed latinum.

11/15/2011 7:08:11 PM

11/15/2011 7:59:15 PM

^^ Fine, then all you owe me is just over 1/18th of an ounce.

11/15/2011 11:01:03 PM

lol what was the bet about again? Can't it be outweighed by the millions of times you're factually incorrect here on a daily basis?

I bet it's some goofy prediction that's near impossible to police

Just laughing over here that you want to give SandSanta, Shrike, and others shit about that one time you remember them being wrong, yet I've never seen you acknowledge being wrong on here once. Not even about the inclusion of housing prices in the CPI. Heh. You just slink out of the thread, and later, I'll be lucky if you aren't posting the same exact lies.

[Edited on November 16, 2011 at 9:33 AM. Reason : .]

11/16/2011 9:32:47 AM

I'm sure I make mistakes here and there. If I said house prices are in the CPI I was both right and wrong. "Rent equivalency" is in the CPI, a factor which is supposed to include house prices. But as studies showed it was a poor factor, as house prices doubled "rent equivalency" in the CPI went up only 10% because the calculation was offset by mortgage interest rates which fell during the period.

SandSanta put his money where his mouth was and lost over an easy to measure but impossible to enforce bet (he refused to pay, after-all). Being wrong about the future was not a moral failing, but saying he would pay when he should have known it was a lie was a moral failing.

I have never knowingly spread false information on this board. If you can ever point out factually incorrect statements I will happily own up to them. But I suspect the issue is not over facts but morals, opinion, or estimations about the future which you disagree with. I don't call you a liar when you say a worker run economy would be great. Besides, why am I singled out? When was the last time you admitted to remembering something incorrectly?

As for Shrike, his errors in the "bailouts" thread were not opinion, but transcription errors. He said the bailouts paid off, when he meant to say "TARP bailouts to banks paid off, although all other bailouts lost and continue to lose taxpayers their shirts."

11/16/2011 10:05:04 AM

Quote :

"I'm sure I make mistakes here and there. If I said house prices are in the CPI I was both right and wrong. "Rent equivalency" is in the CPI, a factor which is supposed to include house prices. But as studies showed it was a poor factor, as house prices doubled "rent equivalency" in the CPI went up only 10% because the calculation was offset by mortgage interest rates which fell during the period. "

Hmm no you were actually flat-out wrong and continue to defend yourself rather than simply acknowledge your mistake. Housing prices and rents are different, and often move in different directions. This is because prices don't reach equilibrium instantly, but take time (and real people take real time to move from one real place to another).

Rent prices (estimated potential rent, whatever) does not rise and fall pari passu with housing costs. You were wrong, as you so often are, and yet you still refuse to take responsibility.

Quote :

"SandSanta put his money where his mouth was and lost over an easy to measure but impossible to enforce bet (he refused to pay, after-all). Being wrong about the future was not a moral failing, but saying he would pay when he should have known it was a lie was a moral failing."

I don't remember what the bet was, that's why I just asked you. I wonder if it's any worse than the hundreds of intentional lies you post here daily.

Quote :

"I have never knowingly spread false information on this board. If you can ever point out factually incorrect statements I will happily own up to them. But I suspect the issue is not over facts but morals, opinion, or estimations about the future which you disagree with. I don't call you a liar when you say a worker run economy would be great. Besides, why am I singled out? When was the last time you admitted to remembering something incorrectly? "

http://brentroad.com/message_search.aspx?searchstring=&type=posts&username=Lonesnark&usertype=match

I admitted to "remembering something incorrectly" the last time somebody provided me with clear evidence that I did. The miss-rate of your basic facts is absolutely outrageous, and I've seen you repeating defeated arguments using defeated "facts" many, many times on here.

Your failure to revise and your pretendo-certainty amount to intentional deception. You are despicable, or at the very least, you belong far away from communication devices that record input.

I know you imagine all of your opponents are mirror-images of yourself, but I don't make factual claims without internal and personal familiarity with what I'm talking about. Even when you talk about things that I am not confident about (and that you should not be confident about, apparently), even simple google searches turn up litanies of contradictions. You simply make it up. That's why nobody here with a shred of intelligence takes you seriously.

Face it Lonesnark. A decade in the hole here, and you haven't learned a damn thing. It's a shame that the invention of google passed you by, because if you even used it ONCE per post you'd be 90% less ignorant.

[Edited on November 16, 2011 at 1:56 PM. Reason : .]

11/16/2011 1:55:19 PM

Quote :

"Rent prices (estimated potential rent, whatever) does not rise and fall pari passu with housing costs. You were wrong, as you so often are, and yet you still refuse to take responsibility. "

Educate yourself. Google CPI and "owner equivalent rent" which is a technical figure which includes far more than just rental markets. I guess we should really expect you now to admit you were wrong?

Quote :

"I wonder if it's any worse than the hundreds of intentional lies you post here daily. "

Such as the one you just told about how housing prices are not included in any way in the CPI?

Quote :

"I admitted to "remembering something incorrectly" the last time somebody provided me with clear evidence that I did."

Same here. But I can't recall an instance right now. Since according to you it happens so frequently, perhaps you could help me out and link to just the most recent example? Perhaps my memory is that bad. Or, perhaps you are just upset others don't take your opinion (or the opinions of people you like) as fact?

11/16/2011 2:47:52 PM

Quote :

"Owners' equivalent rent is obtained by directly asking sampled homeowners the following question: "If someone were to rent your home today, how much do you think it would rent for monthly, unfurnished and without utilities?" It is also referred to as rental equivalence. Read more: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/owners-equivalent-rent.asp#ixzz1dtxfuCNW"

Took your advice and googled "owners' equivalent rent". Took the first link which produced the above.

Do I need to explain to you why the price of rent and the price of a home is different?

Quote :

"Same here. But I can't recall an instance right now. Since according to you it happens so frequently, perhaps you could help me out and link to just the most recent example? Perhaps my memory is that bad. Or, perhaps you are just upset others don't take your opinion (or the opinions of people you like) as fact?"

Apparently you're still unable to get past being wrong about the CPI so I don't know what to tell you. You wanted to tell me that a crashing housing market was going to "depress" the CPI artificially, when if anything, it should cause it to rise (as the cost of rent went up after people were dumped from their homes in the housing crisis).

Keep digging, man, you do more for the plausibility of the left than anybody. Only you and aaronburro are onboard with the kind of bullshit you're selling at this point.

11/16/2011 3:21:59 PM

Ok, see, you might have me right there. Of course, I'd say it's a funny story. You see, I read a blog in my RSS feed written by Mike Munger of Duke University. Well, awhile ago he wrote a post attacking the inclusion of "owner equivalent rent" in the CPI because it tracked house prices so poorly:
http://mungowitzend.blogspot.com/2011/04/you-cant-hit-what-you-cant-see.html

Well, six months passed and it morphed into the statements I have made on this forum. I remembered it was an attempt to measure house inflation,just a poor one (hence the "right and wrong" I said). It seems my memory was faulty, as it turns out to in fact have nothing to do with home prices, as you said.

It isn't as you said it would be either, as the "rent" in question falls after home prices begin falling, not rising as people lose their homes:

"owner equivalent rent" is somewhat tracking house prices, just time delayed and severely dampened. It is clearly an attempt to measure home prices over time. Otherwise they could just survey renters or the owners of rental property what their rent is, rather than asking live-in homeowners which may have never rented a home in their life what they'd expect to rent the place for. So that is how that happened. Anything else you'd like cleared up?

11/16/2011 4:06:54 PM

Holy shit you can't do it, can you.

"I was wrong."

Housing prices and rent prices are not the same fucking thing. You were flat-out wrong. In some cases (such as the one your statement applied to) they can move in opposite directions. Any questions?

11/16/2011 4:27:58 PM

Quote :

"Same here. But I can't recall an instance right now. Since according to you it happens so frequently, perhaps you could help me out and link to just the most recent example? "

what about when you repeatedly tell us that Canada's banks aren't regulated

message_topic.aspx?topic=620171&page=1#15077624
message_topic.aspx?topic=618911&page=8#15034176

when IMO that is blatantly not true. Canada has different regulations from the US (possibly worth mimicking?) but it certainly isn't the type of "deregulation" we see banks in the US lobbying for. If our disagreement is merely a difference of what "deregulation" means then I apologize for this post.

Canada has had a Financial Consumer Agency making banking rules for 10 years and the Canadians have been the primary players in crafting the Basel rules (which US banks oppose at every turn). On the other hand, I've read that Canadian banks are implicitly backed by the government in many ways and it that was understood even before the US coined the term "too big to fail." I really haven't totally sorted through it all, but it is clear to me that calling Canadian banks "deregulated" is pretty disingenous.

11/16/2011 4:32:19 PM

^^ How do you not get "I was wrong" from "my memory was faulty"? I was wrong. I was mistaken. My understanding was in error.

That said, why do you keep harping on rent? The index doesn't measure rents either. It asks people who do not participate in the rental markets to guess what the current rental price is.

^ "Deregulated" does not mean "aren't regulated." Or is it your opinion that Airlines today "aren't regulated"? In discussion people are talking about aspects of behavior. Airline pricing is deregulated, doesn't mean an airline can murder nuns and get away with it.

Well, we were talking about Glass Steagal, which Canada has no version of. You call the repeal of Glass Steagal deregulation. As such, Canada not having said regulation makes this aspect of their behavior deregulated. Canada is different, as you say. Those differences had a lot to do with their stability, including Canadian bank's ability to sue those defaulting on their mortgage for any losses, which both protects banks from losses and makes borrowers weary of borrowing speculatively.
Here are some other differences between Canada and American banking (also out of my RSS reader in May 2009):
http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=1150

[Edited on November 16, 2011 at 4:55 PM. Reason : .,.]

11/16/2011 4:49:59 PM

Canada doesn't have Glass Stegall because they have a totally different form of regulation. Rather than having endless numbers of rules to follow my understanding is that they have to sit down and open their books to government regulators who then determine how leveraged they are and their credit rating (government serves the role of rating agencies). They are allowed to do this because so much of the banks in Canada are explicitly backed and insured by the government. Can you imagine if we tried to do something similar in the US (if you believe we are past the point of no return on "too big to fail"). There is no doubt in my mind that bankers and many on this board would absolutely balk at the idea of having to open their books screaming OMG SOCIALISM AND JOB KILLING REGULATION all the way. I call regulation any instep that government makes into a market (this could even be in the form of subsidies or any policies handed down from government). Its not enough to just repeal glass stegall and expect our banks will perform like Canada's. You have to also institute the other measures and regulatory culture they have for insuring their banks don't go under.

Would you agree with Jamie Dimon that we need to deregulate the banking industry? I assure you he doesn't agree with the Canadian banking system. When I see the word deregulation I put it in the perspective of what people like him want, not just one particular rule that doesn't happen to exist in another country.

11/16/2011 5:16:06 PM

Quote :

"Can you imagine if we tried to do something similar in the US"

Yes, it would be called the FDIC and already exist.

And you are quite wrong about Jamie Dimon...assuming he cares at all about his shareholders, given the power it would be his due diligence to regulate the hell out of banking to not only keep new competitors out of the market, but bankrupt his existing competitors. No deregulation necessary, just declare his bank the only legal institution in America. Depending on their business model, actual anarchist deregulation might bankrupt them.

11/16/2011 5:25:46 PM

after rereading that its a little rambling but I still think you got the gist.

^and yet thats not what we see

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-09-26/wall_street/30203172_1_jamie-dimon-basel-iii-s-bankers

Dimon explodes on the canadian delegation to the IMF on the suggested new BASEL rules. Calling them job killing (big suprise there)

Quote :

"Yes, it would be called the FDIC and already exist. "

The difference being that the FDIC only insures commercial bank accounts but not investment banking, whereas the Canadian system backs both. That is why glass stegal is necessary in the US but not in Canada. We know that our government will bail out domestic bank accounts, but it has only been since the repeal of glass steagall that they have also supported (although they never explicitly said it) of investment banking

[Edited on November 16, 2011 at 6:52 PM. Reason : .]

11/16/2011 6:45:11 PM

Quote :

"Housing prices and rent prices are not the same fucking thing."

Over what time frame? This is your problem. You never speak in specifics, and for someone that is involved in machine learning and "computers" so much, you don't actually seem to be overly concerned with data.

It looks like to me house prices and rent do move togehter, pari passu

http://www.jparsons.net/housingbubble/

right up until the bubble where they didn't. And...this shouldn't surprise anyone. But, I can't tell if you actually intended to qualify your statement with anything related to bubbles or not.

[Edited on November 16, 2011 at 6:53 PM. Reason : .]

11/16/2011 6:53:03 PM

Quote :

"whereas the Canadian system backs both"

^^ Because in Canada, and much of the world, the government doesn't pretend there's a difference between the two. That said, I don't really know the distinction. I don't think the Canadian CDIC insures investment banking accounts. So you might be wrong that the CDIC backs up investment banking activities. After-all, people are supposed to be able to lose money on their mutual funds, all the CDIC is supposed to do is make sure the bank itself doesn't go under. As such, it most definitely monitors investment banking activities to make sure the bank isn't gambling with its own funds (and thus future), just as the FDIC does here in America does for the few banks engaging in both commercial and investment activities. The difference here, of course, is that a particularly risky investment vehicle in America (namely mortgages) prior to the crash had a AAA rating...no risk there as best the FDIC could have possibly known. Another government enterprise (ratings agencies) told it so.

So, the issue is not one of regulation but of the bubble itself and the losses it threw off. Which is where I think other Canadian regulations make all the difference, namely recourse loans and diversification.

11/16/2011 10:03:15 PM

Quote :

"Over what time frame? This is your problem. You never speak in specifics, and for someone that is involved in machine learning and "computers" so much, you don't actually seem to be overly concerned with data. It looks like to me house prices and rent do move togehter, pari passu http://www.jparsons.net/housingbubble/ right up until the bubble where they didn't. And...this shouldn't surprise anyone. But, I can't tell if you actually intended to qualify your statement with anything related to bubbles or not."

Look I understand the hostility towards me on this website, but do I really have to explain myself this carefully and precisely each and every time I talk? I told LS that housing prices are NOT included in the CPI, and they're not. Whether or not housing prices and rent "normally" move together or not is not the question ... a housing bubble and then the subsequent crash is an example of non-stationarity in the housing system. It's a special case in which the prices act differently, *as you pointed out*. LS refuses to acknowledge that his misconceptions about the CPI (which are answered in the "Common Misconceptions about the CPI" tab on the BLS website) were actually misconceptions because, for the most part, OER and housing prices are substitutable. This has NOTHING TO DO with the special case we're discussing (in which this is no longer true, as you say) ... when CPI is calculated 2008, 2009, up until now, do you really think crashing housing prices are holding down estimates of inflation, when the CPI is supposed to track the probable price of rent?

The main point of this scuffle here is that Lonesnark never acknowledges when he's factually incorrect. Either he drags it into some "well I was kinda right, if you talk about something we weren't talking about" or, much more likely, he simply ignores it and reuses the bogus "facts" later. When a person like this rides SandSanta or Shrike for being wrong once or twice, I can't help but drive home what a lousy hypocrite they are.

If two functions f and g are indexed by time, and f(t) =/= g(t), then f =/= g. This is important because we calculate other indices like CPI at a particular time.

I'm going to quote this one more time to make sure it's clear that we essentially agree that LS was wrong.

Quote :

"It looks like to me house prices and rent do move togehter, pari passu right up until the bubble where they didn't."

I hate to make such a big fucking deal about this but LS has evaded torpedo after torpedo and quite frankly it's getting old to see the zombie rise

Also lol: "step by step ... until one starts stepping faster, or turns around"

[Edited on November 17, 2011 at 7:32 AM. Reason : .]

11/17/2011 7:14:47 AM

Quote :

"The main point of this scuffle here is that Lonesnark never acknowledges when he's factually incorrect."

Except that I did.

Quote :

"or, much more likely, he simply ignores it"

I did no such thing. I never read the reply I assume you are talking about, either because the thread had moved on or fallen on the topic list. I don't wolfweb every day or even every week.

Quote :

"reuses the bogus "facts" later"

This only came up again because you brought it up to make sure everyone knew I made a factual error, at which point I agreed it was a mistake and even friggin' explained myself.

Quote :

"When a person like this rides SandSanta or Shrike for being wrong once or twice"

That is kinda different. SandSanta lied knowingly. Neither Shrike nor I knowingly lied, we were merely mistaken and both of us admitted our mistaken, it just took Shrike a few pages.

11/17/2011 8:41:17 AM

Quote :

"Except that I did. "

Had to drag you to the keyboard

Quote :

"I did no such thing. I never read the reply I assume you are talking about, either because the thread had moved on or fallen on the topic list. I don't wolfweb every day or even every week. "

When's the last time a thread has fallen from the top of TSB to the next page? Plus I just clicked on your post history and flipped through the first through pages. At least for the last few weeks you've been a daily poster.

[Edited on November 17, 2011 at 9:12 AM. Reason : .]

11/17/2011 9:10:54 AM

I just checked the thread I think you are talking about (hyperinflation) and the conversation clearly moved on. I dunno, just didn't click on it again. And when I did, it was text bombs.

That said, now that I've actually read what I posted, it wasn't even wrong. The CPI clearly does contain an entry for housing, which is all I said. And your response was wrong that rents were driven up by the foreclosures. It was you that said "inclusion of housing prices in the CPI". You said I said something, when I said no such thing. You manufactured this whole damn thing.

But I was still very clearly wrong. I was wrong to assume you were right about what I said.

[Edited on November 17, 2011 at 9:38 AM. Reason : ,.,]

11/17/2011 9:37:03 AM

ahahahahahahahahahahaha

The only thing I'm left wondering is whether or not somebody would have bet against me on this one.

11/17/2011 9:39:15 AM

Yes they do /thread

11/20/2011 10:39:54 PM