Tuesday 6 October 2009

Fun Online Poll Results & Home-Owner-Ism

Thanks to the 100 people who took part in last week's Fun Online Poll. The results strongly suggest that there is no "endemic" of pornography in the workplace (TM, the Farrah Fawcett Society), as only 16% thought there was more since they first started working, 44% thought about the same and 40% thought there was less.

I suspected as much, to be honest.
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On a completely different topic, it never ceases to amaze me how deeply engrained 'Home-Owner-Ism' is in this country. It's a bit like IngSoc, only instead of surplus production being diverted into warfare to keep the masses down and hence preserve a heirarchical society, what we're doing is keeping economic growth (and the enjoyment of what it can bring) at well below capacity by virulently opposing every new house, road, railway line or factory that anybody wants to build, and diverting surplus production into pushing house prices ever higher (which adds nothing to national wealth, of course).

Sure, some developments may adversely affect the capital value of some properties (far fewer than you think), but the more economic activity there is, the richer we all are; and the more houses are built, the cheaper they'll be. I accept that most of us have the urge to keep up with the Joneses, or even better, keep ahead of them, but aren't we cutting off our noses to spite our faces? What's better, preening yourself that you live in a three-bed semi when the others can only afford a three-bed terrace, or for everybody to be able to afford a four-bed detached in the first place (if they so wish)?

So that's the topic of this week's Fun Online Poll.

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

1 comments:

DBC Reed said...

Your comments about the Ingsoc economy ,where production is deliberately wasted is very apropos.The problem is that we have an Invisible World Government of home-ownerists (or home ownernists/onanists) where Big Brother ,and his equivalents in Eastasia and Eurasia presumably ,were very in your face.
Having voted in your poll I was shocked to find a lot of people had voted the other way: you could not have spun the wording of the question much more.There is Bunuel film where everybody hates liberty:
people obviously love their mortgage chains as long as some people are suffering more than they do.