Posts by BenWilson
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
It’s true that plenty of Pacific people have “European” names, but still.
It is. But, as with the ethnic Asian population in the study, that doesn't really matter much. The method of estimating the proportion of people in the data who are, in fact, Pacific people, is quite sound, when used in the aggregate like this. If 2% of people with the name Smith are PI, then in a sample with 1000 people called Smith, 20 PIs is a very good guess. When you're building their total number using all the different names, you're going to get a number that is very accurate in the end, so long as a person's surname is independent of their propensity to buy property (which is a reasonable assumption). Amongst PIs we don't have any real reason to think that Smiths are more likely to buy than Mataeles.
So yeah, it's depressing all right. And it's also predictable. PIs are poorer, on the whole, than most other groups. We'd pretty much expect to see this.
It's because these inferences also pop out of the data that I find it hard to say the study is racist by design. Yes, there was really only one stand out point, that the Ethnic Asians have this very different proportion. And that really only stands out because people keep disputing it. The idea that Pacific people get a shitty deal on owning property isn't really controversial.
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to Swan,
If you own a house, changes in the prices of houses obviously dont make a difference to your cost of living.
It made a difference to me when the change in house prices meant my equity got bigger and I didn't have to pay "low equity insurance" anymore. It also made a difference when I wanted to make minor improvements. I didn't have to wait years to save up the money, doing without it in the meantime. It was, quite literally, like having more money, and it still is. Until a crash of the magnitude you suggest, that is. Then it will be, quite literally, like having no money. Because I won't be able to go to an ATM and withdraw those paper things that I pay people to do things with any more.
You have got causation wrong
I'm not sure what this argument is about any more, this is a response to a response to a quibble or something. I was saying that modeling property prices involves a lot of factors and that it's babyish to present only a couple of them and try to boil the whole argument down to which one it is. I simply gave an example of two factors that could be so babyishly disputed. I don't intend to then get into a babyish dispute over which one is more important because that would defeat the purpose of my whole point.
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to Katharine Moody,
'sall good btw. I'm enjoying your contributions. It's on my to-do list to understand what the RB is going to do if property crashes out, since you indicated that there actually is some kind of plan.
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to Katharine Moody,
OK…which seems to contradict the point you made:
I think the data eventually becomes public once the title transfers are registered by LINZ
You’re pretty much saying the data isn’t all public, ever, and even what is public is at considerable (at least for a lot of data) cost, which you’re meant to pay to get it?
Hence my point, it’s probably technically some kind of crime to just hand over the database the real estate agent had built up without permission. Not only does it probably contain some information that couldn’t be got any other way, but such public information as it does contain has still been compiled at their cost into a convenient database. The data may not belong to them, but the database does.
Not that we know what Salmond got, and I don’t expect him to divulge it. I doubt pursuing the leaker legally is a good idea – that carries even more risks of reputation loss than letting it slide. Do they really want their customers to know just how unsafe those records on them were?
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to ,
Probably summary dismissal and being slagged off around the entire industry and getting no reference is a severe enough punishment already. Must have been someone that felt passionately about the issue to risk that.
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to Katharine Moody,
The name on titles is public data? Then why was a leak even needed? Surely it could have been purchased from QV or scraped off a website or something like that?
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Speaker: Identification strategy: Now…, in reply to ,
But it’s not racist becouse there is a mass potential votes from to gain from people who are passionate about owning a house in Auckland.
Also people who want to rent a house in Auckland. In short, everyone in Auckland, beyond the age of about 18.
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to ,
Civil matter, surely? Someone broke their confidentiality agreement or something like it? Hardly a police matter. This is an insider...they didn't have to hack anything to get the data, presumably.
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Speaker: Identification strategy: Now…, in reply to ,
there’s not much talk about dairy farm land, or power generators being included in ‘the foreign invester problem’.
Well....not at the moment, and not amongst urban liberals, amongst whom I mostly hang out and who are mostly on this blog. But it wasn't so long ago the the Crafar farms was a daily news item. I had some sympathy for farmers who feel that dairy land is increasingly impossible to get hold of, but also felt the issue smacked of racism. Because it does. Which doesn't necessarily make the farmers' concern invalid. That time, Key dogwhistled a little, but in the end, let it go.
I can't remember who got the most mileage out of it. Peters? Labour managed to get slagged for being racist? Peters managed to get votes for being racist? National managed to hang onto votes despite not being racist? The Greens managed to get hated by farmers because the Crafars were big polluters and cruel to animals? Anyone remember?
It was hard to feel quite the same way for me because farms are businesses. If the money they're making is getting repatriated by rich Chinese, or via rich stockholders in Fonterra, it's hard for me to care which it is.
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to Rob S,
The real estate industry love it as they are usually on a percentage basis for their profit
Yup, which is why they can't be treated as impartial commentators, and it's also why they're crucifying the leaker. Not the only reason, of course - issues of confidentiality come up in data mining, even if they had agreed to it. It's their data and stealing it is illegal. It exposes them to risk, especially of reputation loss with a big client base. But I can't help but feel that they are also extremely pissed off that an insider would be leaking about what a massive, massive gravy train they're on. If the public debate leads to a lockdown of foreign capital, that's the end of the ridiculously good golden weather for them. We're not talking small potatoes. This leak could have cost them hundreds of millions in the long run.
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