Foundation (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4834#55106),

No, our raising of the issue of population is not an attempt to hijack the discussion and steer it in a different direction. If property speculators, who wish to drive up the cost of housing, believe that immigration driven population increases achieve that as I have extensively shown, then I would have thought that we are entitled to also argue that that is the case.

You wrote:

"Over the last decade, the supply of new dwellings (~1.8 million dwellings) has exceeded underlying demand from population growth (~2.2 million persons), yet prices have risen dramatically. This would be evidence enough for a qualified economist to rationalise that population growth is not increasing the cost of housing, only the STOCK of housing."

Firstly, it needs to be pointed out that statistics from the ABS, presuming that that is where you got them from, have become less reliable due in part to the outsourcing of their collection at airports.

Nevertheless, in a superficial sense, if we accept these figures they seem to suggest that immigration pays for itself and that only factors other than immigration are causing the current housing hyper-inflation. If we take a narrow view that doesn't take account of the costs to our natural environment and which equates the ever more cramped and ever more shoddily built 'dwellings' of today, lacking outside sheds and gardens, with the free standing homes many on quarter acre blocks that were the norm a generation or more ago, then this may have some validity.

However, we can't. For a start, immigrants don't bring with them their own land, particularly land in pleasant locations next to natural beauty and/or amenities (aka 'positional goods'), and this, rather than 'dwellings' is the commodity that property speculators ultimately speculate on, and the value of this investment has clearly skyrocketed as a direct consequence of increased population size. Furthermore, it would be reckless and irresponsible to implement policies to achieve affordable housing which disregard the costs to our natural environment and long term sustainability.

(Continued here: http://www.candobetter.org/node/9#continuation)

Daggett “firstly, I don't particularly care whether or not you engage in personal attacks.”

Then do not insinuate same in pursuit of “spicing up” your postings.

Most people of the 1970’s struggled to afford a house, most people of the 2000’s struggle to afford a house. “Affordability” is always hardest for any individual in the first year of house purchase and easier with each subsequent year of occupancy. Whine all you want, your perspective is not proven by social history, regardless of the ramblings of The Age, a rag of which the has pretensions on a scale insulting to most, would not know how difficult it was to buy a house in London in the 1970’s. As one who did, I can assure you, Australia still has it sweet.

Btw, your ramblings about France. A significant influence on French provincial property prices is the influx of English Pounds into the peasant economies of non-metropolitan France, the wealth of London having bought up the available properties in other parts of UK (namely Wales) back in the 1970’s and 1980’s, making home ownership less “affordable” for the locals.

Before we have to read any more of your good-old-home-spun-economic-rhetoric,

Sit back and watch as house prices become more “affordable” in the coming months.

As the recent interest rate increases “bite” they will slow down the economy, reduce consumer confidence and spending, edge us closer toward recession (versus boom) and push the marginal borrowers and the foolhardy, who are in over their heads into bank repossession sales.

AND it has all happened before - like the early 1990’s when, under socialist incompetence we had the recessiOn we had to have. Australian property prices cosequently fell, which immediately lead to greater housing “affordability”.

As for me, I am sat on a war chest, thinking about taking advantage of the coming soft housing prices (although, investing being a competitive thing, I do have projects which promise far better returns, so might give housing a miss).

- as the old saying goes, "Speculate to Accumulate"

Mr Bartlett,

In a subsistence society a legitimate child is born with land rights; illegitimacy equates to being born in a situation that does not entitle the person to land. Not having land-rights means that a person has no means to survive independently. Having to slave to keep a roof over your head is a step well down from land-rights. No citizen should have to put up with this.

Following the lines of the British system and lacking the land-redistribution of the French Revolution, English speaking societies have evolved where the land-tenure system allows legitimate children/citizens to be disinherited. They are born to parents who have nothing but their labour and who can accumulate little in our system.

The State may accord them certain rights of citizenship, often of a marginal variety such as right to compete for employment and housing but no guarantees.

Industrial societies rely on a working class which lacks sufficient land-rights for independent self-support, because, otherwise, it could not get enough workers for the many socially and environmentally costly industries that profit a select few and cost the majority more than money.

These differences in social structure and function are well illustrated by the quote below from: www.humanities.cqu.edu.au/abtorres/52246/52246sg,p.73..

"...In ... Aboriginal societies ... there was/is never any need to produce ‘surpluses’ so that the labour of many could/can sustain the wealth of a few — a primary characteristic of what we usually call ‘civilisation’- where oppression of both our fellow humans and of the natural world are fundamental to what passes for ‘civilised’ society. [Add slavery, widespread conquest by warfare, writing, and building in stone, and you get a ‘Great Civilisation’, such as ancient Rome or China!]"

You can add Australia, Britain and the USA to that list!

Between hunter gatherer society and Anglophone capitalism, there are some choices. If we care about citizens rather than a self-appointed caste of rentiers, we should emulate France in housing, citizenship and population policy, IMHO, Mr Bartlett.

It would be better for all forms of business except corporate and speculation.

Col Rouge(http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4834#55236),

If you choose to reveal personal details about yourself (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=3737#13522, http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4834#55236) then don't be surprised if others point out how your personal circumstances may guide your opinions.

Even though I have shown (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4834#53621) that the private property market costs the community far more than what publicly owned housing would, you see it as in your personal best interests that the costly, inefficient and environmentally destructive private system is perpetuated.

That housing prices may be about to drop is beside the point. Of course they won't go up monotonically without an occasional dip here and there. As it happens I bought into the market in 1989 with my then partner. The market then immediately slumped, and for the next seven years until we sold the house, we paid for the windfall profits of a previous generation of property speculators with our sweat as we worked hard to make the repayments.

You tell us that the same is about to occur now. This would be precisely because, in recent years, some homebuyers would have bought the argument put by yourself (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4834#53848) that "entering the housing market is always tough in one's first year and easier in each subsequent year." As a result, many homebuyers have overcommitted themselves and now, it seems, many people, yourself included, make little effort to hide the fact that they may soon be in a position to take advantage of their misfortune as housing prices fall momentarily before they resume their inexorable rise.

You wrote "as the old saying goes, 'Speculate to Accumulate'"

Speculation, whether in property or in other commodities, is essentially about the transfer of wealth from one sector for society to another. People who have the means to acquire commodities cheaply that may be needed by others at a later point in time do so and charge higher prices when others are in a position to buy.

Speculation creates no wealth in its own right and, as such this form of activity is a burden on the rest of us. In a healthy economy, there would be very little room for speculation.

Pericles(http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4834#55141),

What I find to be 'indefensible' is to ignore the evidence that population growth is the major driver of the decline in our quality of life, the destruction of our environment and a threat to our long term sustainability, not ot mention housing inflation.

What nobody should find to be 'defensible' is to misquote an authoritative source in order to bolster your own position in a debate. Here's what you wrote (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4163#35692):

"You keep exhorting me to read your sources eclipse, but I wonder whether you actually read them yourself. Wikipedia
clearly states:

"'Overpopulation is not merely an imbalance between the number of individuals compared to the resources they
need to survive, or a ratio of population over resources.'

"There goes "Resources / population = lifestyle!" Exclamation mark and all."

However, the Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation)states :

"Sometimes, overpopulation is not necessarily an imbalance between the number of individuals compared to the resources needed for survival, or a ratio of population over resources. This is because such an imbalance may be caused by any number of other factors such as bad governance, war, corruption or endemic poverty. ..."

Note your omission of "Sometimes" at the beginning of the sentence. Earlier on the article said:

"Overpopulation is ... the number of individuals compared to the resources (ie. food production) they need to survive. In other words, it is the ratio of population divided by resources."

Clearly the authors of the Wikipedia article do regard resources/population as the critical determinant of overpopulation. However, your contribution misrepresented their acknowlegement that there are sometimes exceptions to this general rule as their being against this general rule altogether.

You wrote (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4834#55054):

"You can protest all you like, but the quality of both documents as evidence is dubious."

I don't see why we should regard you, rather than, for example, the examiners of Sheila Newman's thesis, to be the unchallengable authority (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4834#55054) in regard to the merit or otherwise of her thesis, especially when you have shown yourself to have been be so loose with the truth.

daggett, the more time you spend breaking this particular butterfly on the wheel of your erudition, the less convincing you become.

For a start, you overstate the significance of the word "sometimes" at the beginning of Wikipedia's entry:

"Sometimes, overpopulation is not necessarily an imbalance between the number of individuals compared to the resources needed for survival, or a ratio of population over resources. This is because such an imbalance may be caused by any number of other factors such as bad governance, war, corruption or endemic poverty. ..."

Despite your pedantry over the omission of one word, it is sufficient to reduce the slogan...

"Resources / population = lifestyle!"

...to the intellectual level of "What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!"

Intrinsically flabby and meaningless, despite the apparent well-intentioned nature of its objectives.

Your assumption that the "sometimes" (qualified, you will note, with factors 'such as bad governance, war, corruption or endemic poverty') reduces it to the position of an exception that proves the rule, is tendentious in the extreme. I am sure that you as well as I can name several countries where natural resources are abundant, the population sparse, but the "lifestyle" is abominable. Are they all, perhaps, "exceptions"?

To use this as the sole hook upon which to hang the charge that I have "shown [my]self to have been be so loose with the truth" is to draw the longest of bows, if you will allow the painfully mixed metaphor.

Incidentally, it was you rather than I who proposes that I am "the unchallengable authority" on Ms Newman's work. I have absolutely no idea how her examiners assessed the value or otherwise of her contribution, but they clearly didn't spend a great deal of time working out whether it made any sense. Quite possibly they were impressed by the sheer quantity of the references, and the fact that some were in a foreign language.

And amid all of your protestations, you still fail to offer an answer to my original question.

In case you have forgotten, it was "why France?"