Interesting Links for 23-10-2013

[andrewducker]

• CurrencyFair: A P2P platform for currency exchange
  (tags: international money )
• Fulfilled by Amazon: How to get rid of old stuff immediately, sell it for more, and use Amazon as a cheap storage facility
  (tags: amazon )
• Why we keep doing bizarre things in order to finance public works
  (tags: politics uk economics )
• An excellent collection of free

Comments

[bart_calendar]

I don't get the point of the condom ban. Saunas are where gay men go to have sex with other gay men. It's not as though most of the men in a sauna are prostitutes they are just horny guys who would rather get laid on their lunch hour than not.

If you have a place where the entire purpose is for sex and you don't allow any condoms in there you are creating a giant disease vector.

[andrewducker]

Hence the objections.

The point of the condom ban is that they're trying to stop people having sex in the saunas (many of which are actually straight brothels). It will, of course, not work. And yeah, create an epidemic.

[bart_calendar]

Oh. I didn't realize in the UK a lot of the saunas are straight brothels.

In this part of the world they are universally gay cruising spots. You pay 10 euros to get in, you walk around in a towel, gay porn is playing on televisions everywhere and then you meet one or more people to suck and fuck with and then shower and leave.

[gonzo21]

I'm not sure if it's UK wide, the Edinburgh ones however are widely recognised as such. It was part of the cities quite sensible approach to trying to get street-walkers off the streets and into more controlled premises. Worked quite well, except of course it is running into increasing NIMBY pressure from neighbours.

[andrewducker]

Good Lord I seem to have read a lot of stuff in the last 24 hours.

[gonzo21]

I was gonna say, that's a particularly large link list today. :)

Thank you for that book download the other day btw, I got it and have started reading. Will redraft my energy post once I've had a chance to digest it.

[nancylebov]

Number of links is a very rough metric for amount of reading.

[gonzo21]

Not convinced by the Amazon thing, in my experience the fees you wind up paying on Amazon marketplace are around 33%. And the fees you wind up paying on EBay are closer to 15%. I shifted pretty much everything to Ebay a couple of years ago.

Plus I noticed that for a lot of items they actually wind up selling for more on Ebay than they do on Amazon marketplace. (Which is bizarre, for some reason Ebay buyers don't seem to ever google what they are buying to see if it is cheaper elsewhere. I've even seen second hand items sell for more on Ebay than a brand new one would cost on Amazon. I assume it's to do with people using EBay who don't have credit cards and thus can't use Amazon.)

[ashfae]

The being able to ship things to Amazon in advance and have them store it as you try to sell it is pretty tempting, though, and worth a bit extra. I haven't tried this, however.

[danieldwilliam]

I bet the two Ed’s have been practising that WTF look.

It’s probably what distracted Ed Balls when he was searching for himself on Twitter instead tweeted his own name.

China Mutterings

[danieldwilliam]

The article that the NBF links to on the Gini Co-effcient in China is very Austrian

Re: China Mutterings

[andrewducker]

Yup, it's much harder to care about the very rich when you're constantly getting richer.

The West now seems to be hollowing out, and that's going to need a change in the social contract.

Re: China Mutterings

[danieldwilliam]

I was thinking about this on the way to work this morning (blissfully undisturbed by prostitutes or chuggers touting for business as I was).

Saw a guy pushing a dustcart towards me and I was wondering what we’re going to do with someone who’s job is pushing a dustcart about when a robot is cheaper and jobs with decent pay involve either or both of being quite intelligent or good with people.

We either need to provide an educational system that is sufficently good that even folk in the lowest quartile of intelligence can take part in knowledge or skills based work or we can operate our economy with lots of people unemployed. If we go for the second option then our choices are letting them starve in a Victorian stylee, providing a decent standard of living for free - like a citizens’ income, or keeping them (or maybe me with my unemployed Rawlsian hat on) on starvation rations in penury until we riot.

I’m a little sad that the government doesn’t think through the implications of stuff.

Re: China Mutterings

[andrewducker]

I actually think that a citizen's income will _increase_ work.

You completely remove the benefit trap - and it's in people's interests to then work for money. If you can spend four hours earning a few pounds, why wouldn't you?