I wrote this for the SMH "Heckler" column, but it seems that it will not be published there.

OK, if there’s one thing that annoys me more than anything, it’s this: discounted cash flow. Well, not exactly that, but the way people do not understand it. No, that’s not right either. Ah, I have it. What annoys me is that people do not realise that they do not understand discounted cash flow.

“Live with it,” I hear you mutter, unsympathetically. But that’s the problem. I do have to live with it. I wince every time I hear someone suggest that we all install solar panels on our roofs, as the Mayor of Waverley did the other day. I shake my head when people get their cars converted to LPG, but only use the vehicles for shopping and taking the kids to school. I bite my tongue when a neighbour tells me they’re ripping out their perfectly good hot water system and replacing it with a solar one. And when a friend tries to tell me how much money she’s going to save by installing a rainwater tank... words fail me.

“Why is it so hard to explain?” I ask myself. It usually starts off with no problem “Which would you prefer to have in ten years time; more money, or less money?” If I ever get the answer “less money” I’ll call in the guys with the straight jackets, but it hasn't happened yet. Then I mention interest rates, and their interest rate rapidly wanes. I can tell that their thoughts have drifted off into a reverie about how much money they’re saving. Gritting my teeth, I carry on, until I get to the punch line. Of course, it wasn’t meant to be a joke, but it might as well have been. “Why are you laughing” I ask. “Oh, because that can’t be right” they say.

cont....

...cont

But it is right. Discounted cash flow is the reason our base load power stations run on coal, but peak load power stations run on other fuels. It’s the reason we do not have a high-speed railway running between Melbourne and Sydney. It’s also the reason no sane person puts photovoltaic panels on their roof, converts their low usage car to LPG, replaces a working hot-water system with solar, or, indeed, installs a rainwater tank in the expectation of saving money.

Or at least, it would be reason no sane person did those things, if only they realised that they do not understand discounted cash flow. I wish I’d never heard of it, now. Then I could happily join the others in their expenditure on all these things, with the happy delusion that I was saving money, and being totally oblivious of the cruel truth.

I’ll climb back into my hole now. I have some beans that need counting.

Huh ?? ?? (:>()

Exactly.

Well....

If thought I was bamboozled before, now I know I am.

And flummoxed as well!!

I wonder why SMH "Heckler" did not run your article. It could be that they couldn't understand the damn thing. "Please explain"

Sorry Sylvia, I should have included in my previous post; Please explain how DCF is related to the examples you gave.

OK, I'll have a go at explaining this. I'm going to make some assumptions here. Anyone who quibbles about them will be ignored, because they're only to illustrate the point.

Let's suppose I'm using 100 kilolitre of water per year, and it's costing me $1 per kilolitre. Now suppose that I can buy a water tank for $1800 that will give me 100 kilolitres per year, and that the tank will last 20 years.

So I pay $1800 for the water tank, and save $2000 on water charges. So I'm $200 ahead, right?

Wrong!

The reason it's wrong relates to what I can do with the $1800 if I do not spend it on a water tank. Indeed, if what I do is put it under the mattress, and pull out $100 every year to pay my water bill, then I would be better off with the tank, but a rational person wouldn't do that. The most obvious thing to do with it is put it on deposit at the bank.

Suppose I can get 4% interest on my deposit. Then at the end of the first year, I'll earn 72 dollar in interest, but I'll need to withdraw $100 to pay the water bill, leaving $1772.

Since the deposit has reduced a bit, at the end of the second year, I'll earn $70.88 in interest, and withdraw $100 to pay the water bill, leaving $1742.88 in the account.

And so on, for 20 years, at the end of which the account will contain $966.21.

Now, if I buy the tank, then after 20 years is up, the tank is worn out, and has to go to the tip, so I have no tank, and no cash. On the other hand, if I put the money in the bank, then after twenty years I still have no tank, since I didn't buy one, but I have $966.21 in cash.

Clearly, I'm better off if I don't buy the tank. In fact, to break even on the deal, I'd have to be able to buy the tank for less than $1360

What Tha ??

Thanks for that, now I understand.I think? That is a little understating DCF. Just for kicks try Googling "Discounting Cash Flow".

This is good Sylvia. Now I understand your perspective.

I did google Discounted Cash Flow straight after I read your initial post. But I must say it didn’t help much.

OK, so what you are really saying is that we need to consider the true economics, or financial comparisons, including interest rates and things that we might be able to do with that money if we don’t spend it on a water tank for example.

Fair enough. But we also need to think about a few other things. For example, with water tanks, we should consider the principle of supplying one’s own water in a water-stressed public-supply regime and how that adds to one’s feeling of secure supply and not having to worry about restrictions, one's sense of wellbeing, one’s impression on neighbours and friends and one’s sense of positive contribution in the wider community.

Different people place very different values on this sort of thing. For many people, this would completely override hard financial considerations.

So, could you now please explain why “Discounted cash flow is the reason our base load power stations run on coal, but peak load power stations run on other fuels. It’s the reason we do not have a high-speed railway running between Melbourne and Sydney. It’s also the reason no sane person puts photovoltaic panels on their roof, converts their low usage car to LPG, replaces a working hot-water system with solar…”

Thanks

ALAMO

Certainly my approach to presenting this is not classical DCF, and I reached the limit on words and posts.

I'm trying to explain it in a way that will be believed, rather than seen as an obscure, and therefore questionable, accounting technique The results are the same, though doing it the way I described has its limitations, the most obvious being that it's difficult to compare alternatives solutions that have different lifetimes.

What classical DCF says is that each item of income and expenditure should discounted by a rate that depends on the period between now and when the item occurs. In the rainwater example, the discount rate is 4%, or 1.04, so the first payment should be discounted by that factor, giving $96.15 cents, the second is discounted by 1.04 squared, giving $92.45, and so on until last payment is discounted by 1.04 to the power 20, giving $45.63. The point of these discounts is that they give what is called the present value of the future payments. They can then be added together, giving $1359. This is the "Net Present Value", or NPV, of the future payments, and is the amount I should be comparing with the NPV of the tank (which is just its price in this case) when making my investment decision. If you put that number into my bank deposit analysis, you’ll find that at the end of 20 years, the account balance is zero. That is, it’s the break even point.

The essential point in my original posting was not that people should rush out and start learning investment accounting techniques, though that wouldn’t hurt, but that they should be aware of their own limited understanding, and not assume that a simplistic approach gives the correct answer, nor that counter-intuitive answers are necessarily wrong.

I’d make an exception for some Greenies though – they should be forced to study this, and not be allowed out of the classroom until they’ve got it, because they spout a lot of total nonsense due to their (sometimes wilful, I think) ignorance of it.

Ludvig,

The thread is about finance. In the quoted sentence, you cut off the trailing words “in the expectation of saving money”.

There are sometimes valid reasons for not adopting the cheapest solution, but if one knowingly adopts a more expensive solution, one is not doing so “in the expectation of saving money”.

However, if one has, for example, decided on some other grounds not to generate power by burning fossil-fuels, DCF does allow one to compare the alternatives. Do this analysis on photovoltaic cells and wind farms, and the conclusion is that wind farms are cheaper, so why would one use photovoltaic cells?

There are indeed non-financial reasons to install water tanks. The existence of restrictions is a particular one. However, DCF quickly allows the conclusion that it’s cheaper to extend the public water infrastructure than to have everyone installing water tanks. One could argue that this is a form of yield management – those who value water more highly pay a higher price for it by installing water tanks. But the difference in cost is significant, and there must be plenty of people who value water more highly than the current tap water price, but not highly enough to want to pay rainwater prices.

I don’t know that I can explain in simple terms how DCF impacts on the way that base load electricity is generated from coal, but non-base load power is not. It relates to the fact that coal fired generators are expensive to build but cheap to run, and things like gas fired generates are cheaper to build, but more expensive to run. Base load stations run all the time, and peak load stations do not. The finance types run the numbers, and the answer comes out – coal fired, or not coal fired.

The LPG car scenario is like the rain water tank. You pay money up front for the conversion to LPG, and then make savings down stream on the fuel. But if you don’t drive that much, then the savings on the fuel are not enough to compensate for the initial investment.

Sylvia Else. A well written argument on a difficult subject. All I can say is thank you and good luck as I understand where you are coming from.

Alright, thanks Sylvia

It all makes eminent sense now.

So can you tell me why I can’t access your website from the link at the bottom of your posts?

I also note that you have again (the first time was on another thread) suggested that I have stepped outside of the bounds of the discussion with my comments on other considerations.

Two points; there is no indication that the parameters of the discussion exclude such comments, and I feel that it is often appropriate to view things in a broader perspective.

And secondly I note the very different approach from you and me: one of confining things to tight parameters compared to one of taking a holistic view and always thinking about the subject in a wide context.

No criticism intended… just an interesting observation.

But I do express a bit of concern about many (most?) economists and profit-motivated people, and politicians, for not seeing things in the bigger picture, or not placing much significance in it if they do

Ludvig

The forum rules require that responses remain on topic. In a thread about finance, no matter how much you might feel that finance is overrated, a response that seeks to take the conversation in the direction of non-finacial matters is not on topic.

Similarly, in a thread about whether or not water is currently scarce, no matter how much you may be concerned about the effect of population growth, responses that seek to introduce the impact of population growth are off topic.

A hollistic approach may provide suggestions of where problems can lie, but it does little to indicate what can be practically done to address them. That requires detailed analysis.

In your concern about the focus on profit, and failure to focus on the bigger picture, I think you do economist and politicians a disservice. Ultimately, any proposed solutions have to be acceptable to the public. If there are difficulties in implementing some of the sustainable solutions, it's because groups with their own agenda have been telling the public that these solutions are available at no cost if only the government didn't support big business. The truth is otherwise. If the public believed that they had to pay extra for sustainable development, then the government would be in a better position to implement it.

Sylvia, this is a very interesting topic.
Like Ludwig, I would also prefer to discuss things from a broader perspective, but since it is your thread I'll try to be good ;)

Just one point I would like to stress though, because there is a financial connection to almost everything under the sun, is that: the more solar panels or water tanks are installed, the cheaper they will become as it will be possible to mass produce them. This will then give a better return for everyone.

So it doesn't really matter for what reason people are installing these things- whether financial reasons or environmental reasons. As long as enough people install these things for mass production, everyone will then reap all the benefits.

There's one other thing as well- if people install these tanks and panels in their investment properties they will benefit from the depreciation of those items, making them financially more attractive as well.

If only the govt would allow these things to be depreciated when installed in people's own homes, there would be a greater interest among home owners to think about installing the items.

Celivia

There's something of a myth going around that solar panels are produced in a sort of cottage industry. In reality, solar panel manufacture is already a multl-billion dollar world industry. We may see price reductions as the result of technological improvement, but not from economies of scale - we already have those.

Consumers have got used to consumer goods, and in particular electronic goods, constantly dropping in price. It is a characteristic of those goods that the materials of which they are made cost next to nothing, and production can be increasingly automated. This is not true of solar cells. The materials are expensive, and indeed require a lot of energy to produce. A typical solar cell takes 2 years or more just to generate the energy used in its manufacture. Such cells are so expensive that DCF shows that they would never pay for themselves, even if they lasted forever, which they don't.

The lead-acid battery is a good example of something that been around and mass produced for ages. There's one in pretty much every vehicle on earth. For all that, they still cost somwhere in the region of $100 per kWh of capacity. There are limits to the cost benefts that can be achieved with mass production. Some things are just expensive. Water tanks are probably another example, and their material feedstock derives from oil.

Allowing advanced tax depreciation on things does not affect their real cost. All it does is shift the cost burden from the purchaser to the tax payer. That makes good policy sense only if the taxpayer receives a benefit. In the case of solar panels, there is no such benefit. The taxpayer's interests are better served by the construction of windfarms, because they are cheaper.

Interesting thread Sylvia,

I agree with others that there are other things that should be considered than just the straight dollar for dollar trade off. Not really fair of you to attempt to limit others’ (probably valid) points because it doesn’t fit your narrow parameters.

I am not a “greenie”, however I do believe that we should be looking at alternative energy sources. The benefits and practicalities of all options should be compared, and as it presently stands, solar panels may actually require more energy to produce than they “save” from standard energy production.

The problem with it all is that everything is obscured by the profit factor. Companies that produce energy sources, whether it is coal fired, gas or oil based, solar or wind technology etc. do so to make profit which artificially inflates the “cost” of producing the energy.

Then there is the wasted energy used in producing consumer goods for profit.

Were it not for the profit factor, human beings as a community could take all evidence available and make the most rational decision based on the real needs of humans and the environment in which they live.

Your “parameters” are an illustration of the current culture which encourages us not to give weight to social, health and environmental considerations narrowing the debate down to pure “economics”. Anyone who wants to make other points is drowned out.

In my opinion, we are all the poorer for it.

tao,

Nowhere have said that financial considerations are the only ones that sbould be used. All I've said that to the extent that one wants to take financial considerations into account, there is a right way to calculate them, and a wrong way. The right way is DCF.

As for "profit", I know it's become a dirty word in the minds of some, but it's really nothing more than an incentive to act, and to take the risks inherent in that action. Without it, few people would bother to do anything that didn't provide a direct benefit to themselves. Our entire society depends on profit.

If there were no profit motive, then it would be left to governments to provide every service. That's been tried, and failed miserably. In the absence of profit, there are no funds available to borrow, so any services provided by governments have to be financed by capital obtained from the tax payer. The tax payer might well prefer to be doing something else with that capital, and consequencely perceive that providing it to the government represents a cost. The only way the government can compensate the tax payer is to charge more for the service than it costs to provide, and give the surplus to the tax payer. Oh - but that's profit again.

You really can't get away from it.

Non governmental entities generally cannot afford to take non-financial considerations into account, because if they do, their products and services will be more expensive than those of the competition, and they'll go out of business. By way of an example, note that the market for renewable energy is quite small. For all the supposed public angst, few are willing to dip into their purses and pay a premium.

So the parameters have to be set by the government so that the financial analysis produces the desired result. E.g., if and when the government decides that CO2 production has a cost, and imposes a tax accordingly, industry will adjust its behaviour. But for that to happen, the public has to be willing to pay extra.

Sylvia,

Do you only do things because of the profit incentive? Perhaps you wouldn’t get out of bed if you couldn’t make a profit? If so, I suggest you don’t judge others by your own standards.

Most people in the world just struggle to survive. Most people get up in the morning and go about their meagre lives trying to scratch enough food to put on the table. Even most of us in the richest countries in the world only want a decent house, enough food, decent health care and good education for our children.

I’m sure all most of us really want above and beyond all of that is more time on our hands to spend with our friends, make a useful contribution to society, and be a bit creative. But I grant you, there are a few in the world who think that making profit is the be all and end all of life – and those are the people who tell the rest of us that we have to be “more productive” which is code for make us more profit.

You say “In the absence of profit, there are no funds available to borrow, so any services provided by governments have to be financed by capital obtained from the tax payer.”

However, if it where not for a system in which profit can be accumulated in the hands of a few people as capital (or stored surplus labour) who only invest it to reap more profit (or more surplus labour), all of that surplus labour would be available for the benefit of the whole of humanity.

continued...

You also say “For all the supposed public angst, few are willing to dip into their purses and pay a premium.” Most people cannot afford to pay the premium. In fact, they already pay the premium which is the profit on their labour which, if they really had a say, could be put to better use – hospitals, schools, or maybe even green energy research.

Yet those who make profit from what we might call dirty energy, refuse to dip into their massive purses for the benefit of society to fund research or subsidise clean energy. They’re not in business for the benefit of society. As you say, their only incentive is profit.

Humanity has the capability to solve the energy/climate change crisis, but the solution does not lie in the profit "incentive".

"Do you only do things because of the profit incentive? Perhaps you wouldn’t get out of bed if you couldn’t make a profit? If so, I suggest you don’t judge others by your own standards."

You're misrepresenting (a stronger word would be twisting) what I said - a strawman argument - and the final part about judging others by my own standards is dangerously close to being an ad hominem attack. Let's keep the personal stuff out of these discussions.

I said that without profit, few people would bother to do anything that didn't provide a direct benefit to themselves. That clearly does not exclude getting out of bed. It does exclude risking ones assets in order to provide products and services to others.

Some would, no doubt, but not enough to make a functioning society. Even personal labour is done for profit - the labour is done because the person attaches more value to the money they get than they do to their time. The difference is their profit.

We have a society that functions with profit. You may believe that a modern society could function without it, but so far that's not been achieved. To argue successfully for a society without profit, you need to do more than merely point to aspects of profit that you perceive to be bad.

Sylvia.

Sylvia,

You said “without-profit,-few-people-would-bother-to-do-anything-that-didn't-provide-a-direct-benefit-to-themselves”

So in other words, you are saying that the majority of people (as opposed to the few) don’t bother to do anything that doesn’t provide a direct benefit to themselves without the profit motive. Correct me if I’m twisting your words here.

Firstly,

Human beings have been “bothering” to do things for both themselves and their communities for tens of thousands of years. Capitalism – or the profit system - has only existed for a few hundred years. Therefore people have been “bothering” to do things for direct and indirect benefit to themselves without profit for far longer than they have been doing them for profit.

There are plenty of examples of people who “bother” do things that don’t directly benefit themselves, without profit. Thousands of people in this country volunteer, donate to charity, coach sports teams, help little old ladies across the street, etc. I would hazard a guess that if people didn’t have to work 40, 50, 60 hours a week they would “bother” to do much more.

Then, there are the billions of people all over the world, who CAN’T do much more than scrounge what they need for themselves let alone “bother” to do anything that provides a benefit to someone else, and I dare say they still “bother” to contribute to their community when they can, and would do more if they could – all without profit.

So I think your generalisation about what the majority of people bother or don’t bother to do, and their motives, is on pretty shaky ground. It is legitimate to ask on what grounds, and by whose standards, you make such judgements.

So to clarify my alleged ad hominem argument, let me rephrase the question – Do you bother to do anything that doesn’t directly benefit you without expecting a profit? If you do, then on what basis do you make your generalisation? If you don’t, then one can only assume you are drawing an inference about the motives of 6 billion people from your own behaviour – all in the face of contradictory evidence.

cont

You can object to the perceived ad hominem attack all you like, but I for one, apart from disputing the validity of your argument, object to being categorised in the way you appear to be doing.

Secondly,

You say that people sell their labour because they attach more value to the money they earn than they do their time. What a load of poppycock. I can’t speak for anyone else but my time is worth far more to me than my boss pays for it. Not only that, my labour is worth more to my boss than he pays for it – that is where the profit is.

You say that people who sell their labour do so for “profit”. Another load of poppycock. People who sell their labour do so because it is the only way they can obtain the means to sustain their lives. They have to do so because they don’t own the means by which humans produce the things that sustain their lives – others do. They do not own the product of their labour – it belongs to their employers, so they can’t sell it for profit. The only thing they can do is try to get as much for their labour as they can so that they can hopefully exchange it for as much of the product that they themselves make, which their employers keep and sell back to them for profit.

And finally,

You say “to argue successfully for a society without profit, you need to do more than merely point to aspects of profit that you perceive to be bad”. And there I was thinking I could do it all in a 350 word limit. Thank you so much for your lessons in Arguing 101.

What? No response? Hopefully you have gone away to reassess some of your erroneous beliefs (and faulty premises to your agruments) about human beings and society.

"What? No response? Hopefully you have gone away to reassess some of your erroneous beliefs (and faulty premises to your agruments) about human beings and society."

No - we simply have different philosophical viewpoints. There seems little purpose in discussing it further. I doubt I'm going to convert you to my viewpoint, and you're certainly not going to convert me to yours.

Sylvia.

“No - we simply have different philosophical viewpoints. There seems little purpose in discussing it further. I doubt I'm going to convert you to my viewpoint, and you're certainly not going to convert me to yours.”

Don’t you think that is a bit of a cop out?

You make unsubstantiated, and quite frankly insulting, claims about 6 billion odd people and expect them to be accepted. Yet when contested you make a cowardly withdrawal claiming “different philosophical viewpoints”.

What might you be philosophically opposed to? Seeking (and speaking) the truth?

Is it true that, without profit, the majority of people don’t bother to do anything that doesn’t directly benefit themselves, or not?

If you believe it is true, show me the evidence. If you had such evidence, I’m sure you would be pleased to brandish it. However, I bet you won’t answer, and in your silence we will know the truth.

By the way,

I recently heard a quote:

The meaning of life is planting a tree, in whose shade you do not expect to sit.

Sylvia

In response to your post of 2 October:

“The forum rules require that responses remain on topic.”

I thought I had addressed that in my last post. A broad perspective is not off-topic. Anything relevant is on topic. Sorry if you don’t agree, but that’s a definite. And that’s the way it is with all OLO discussions.

“Similarly, in a thread about whether or not water is currently scarce, no matter how much you may be concerned about the effect of population growth, responses that seek to introduce the impact of population growth are off topic.”

This is terrible. I totally disagree. In saying things like this you are effectively turning a blind eye to some of the main causal factors (of the scarcity of water in this case, which is very much due to the size of our demand on the resource, as well as a relative decline in rainfall).

You can’t do things like that. You get a totally distorted picture of the whole deal if you deliberately exclude obvious contributing factors.

“A hollistic approach may provide suggestions of where problems can lie, but it does little to indicate what can be practically done to address them. That requires detailed analysis.”

Extraordinary! Only a holistic approach can show us where the real problems lie and where the real practical solutions can be implemented.

“I think you do economist and politicians a disservice.”

Not in the slightest! Why are we in this unsustainable pickle? Why aren’t we automatically gearing our whole society towards sustainability? Well, it’s got an awful lot to do with the history of politicians and economists chasing short-term political gains and profits respectively, at the exclusion of practically anything else of significance.

Now Sylvia, surely by your standards your whole post is off-topic, as it really is quite removed from discussion on discounted cash flows. Yes?

"This is terrible. I totally disagree. In saying things like this you are effectively turning a blind eye to some of the main causal factors (of the scarcity of water in this case, which is very much due to the size of our demand on the resource, as well as a relative decline in rainfall)."

I am not turning a blind eye to it, I'm simply saying that it is not a financial consideration. There are financial considerations and there are non-financial ones, and both have to be taken into account. No one benefits if the financial considerations are misconstrued due to a lack of understanding of how to calculate them.

Why should every topic be subject to being dragged in whichever direction represents some individual's own agenda?

"Now Sylvia, surely by your standards your whole post is off-topic, as it really is quite removed from discussion on discounted cash flows. Yes?"

It's a problem that I had already noted. Posts remonstrating about other posts being off topic are themselves off topic, yet the alternative is to say nothing, which hardly has the desired outcome of maintaining on topic responses either. Short of allowing topic originators to delete offtopic postings, I see no solution.

By contrast, if you want to discuss sustainability issues, you have the option of creating your own thread for the purpose. You don't have to hijack the ones I've created. Doing the latter amounts to a stifling of debate.

Sylvia.

“…if you want to discuss sustainability issues, you have the option of creating your own thread for the purpose. You don't have to hijack the ones I've created. Doing the latter amounts to a stifling of debate.”

I have done nothing more than mention stuff that is relevant to your subject. The idea that your thread is being hijacked because someone dares to mention things that you hadn’t thought of or don’t like, is a bit rich to say the least.

You seem to consider population-related or sustainability-related or continuous-growth-related matters so peripheral to your subject as to be essentially irrelevant. This really is extraordinary. It seems that any mention of this is to you inappropriate.

Why can’t you simply address the points that are raised instead of branding them inappropriate? Isn’t this the essence of the OLO debating arena….. to discuss all this sort of stuff?

Sorry, but I have to completely reject your comments that anything I have written on ‘your’ threads has been inappropriate.

You have presumably noticed how many threads on OLO evolve, taking discussion away from the original intent. The moderators allow this to proceed. In fact, anything that is even remotely connected to a topic is allowed to stay posted. I agree with this approach. A broad perspective is good.

“Why should every topic be subject to being dragged in whichever direction represents some individual's own agenda?”

Perhaps it is just your perception that things are being “dragged” away from your narrow intended agenda. What do you expect? Of course thinking people are going to have different perspectives (agendas if you like).

You want to debate things… or perhaps you just want people to blithely agree with you. But you certainly don’t give them any room to move. Sorry, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. You’ve got to give anyone who responds the right to speak freely, and take things in their chosen direction. How you respond to that is your business, but to say that it is inappropriate for them to do so is just wrong, I’m afraid.

Hi Sylvia
I'm the first to admit that I know very little of the financial side and therefore I found your new info on discounted cashflow educational and interesting.

However, I do have to agree still with Ludwig.
I really think that almost everything has a connection with everything else and sometimes people just find it hard to focus on one little aspect out of a large range of possibly connected aspects.

I believe that if we would focus on the discounted cashflow topic only, there wouldn't be much left to say- as like in my case: you explained, I learned. Some asked questions, which you answered. I was misinformed about the solar panels so I learned about that as well.

If there is nothing else after that which we can discuss then this discussion was probably over at that point. Unless you come up with new suggestions what else we can discuss!

I don't really see that 'every topic' is 'being dragged in'.
I see it more as an enrichment of the discussion to talk about very closely related aspects.
I think the problem here is that for most people it is not natural to focus on such narrow topic in a conversation. When have you ever had a conversation on one narrow topic only without bringing in something new or fresh that relates to it?

People will always take the bigger picture, or broader topic into account.

Celiva,

It's probably true that this thread has run its course, and that the later off-topic postings have done little harm, but consider another thread I started

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=123

There is not a single on-topic response. OK, maybe that's because my argument was so compelling that no one feels the need to reply, but I think it's more likely that people have been put off by the volume of extraneous stuff.

There is no doubt that if one wants to *prevent* a discussion that might lead to a conclusion one doesn't like, then an effective tactic is to send the discussion off on a series of while goose chases, so that the central issue does not get debated.

I don't doubt that it's true that most people are not used to debating an issue within defined constraints, but that's something people really ought to learn to do. Otherwise we don't get debate - we just get conversation, or even just gossip.

Oh Sylvia, don't you get it?

"There is not a single on-topic response. OK, maybe that's because my argument was so compelling that no one feels the need to reply, but I think it's more likely that people have been put off by the volume of extraneous stuff."

Have you actually thought about the fact that no-one else is interested in a discussion that is policed like Nazi Germany?

Perhaps rather than offering a a compelling argument, your dictatorial attitude just puts people off.

Perhaps people just see a bigger picture than DCF. Perhaps...omigod...there is more to life than DCF. Perhaps... shock horror.... other people believe they have things of value to say related to the topic that don't necessarily fit within your parameters. Maybe people believe that your parameters are too narrow ... isn't that a valid part of discussion? I know its hard for you to believe, but perhaps you are the one with the problem.

Lighten up. Haven't you ever heard that rules are made to be broken?