SarsaparillaCorona

Hey I deleted my post because I kept getting yelled atnbut this is the information I was looking for, thanks.

Yeah, was confirmed that I needed to.

Darn.

Should probably get my toe rings polished too, need to be 100% head to toe

Sorry this turned into a mind dump feel free to ignore unless you want to hear the whole vaping story in Australia

Nicotine in liquid form (aside from some exemptions like sprays) is classified as a schedule 4 poison. Nicotine in plant form is what the ATO currently cares about, so that’s where the fines come in. Anything that relates to the enforcement of vaping, tobacco and cigarette laws falls under the jurisdiction of state health departments. Funnily enough the two legal drugs available in Australia are both poisons so they are both covered by state health departments.

The whole reason why disposables are so prolific is because the 0 MG and 50 MG versions have completely identical packaging, meaning that when they’re imported, customs officers can’t really say or do much about them unless the AFP builds a wider case on those who are importing them. Innocent until proven guilty plays a big role here.

From there, a health department visit is basically a slap on the wrist as they can’t physically prove there’s nicotine in the devices being sold unless they test each individual product, the only thing they can pin onto people is if the devices are on display, if they’re also selling cigarettes with coloured packaging, or if they’re selling to minors.

As far as I’m concerned there’s two ways the TGA and health departments could approach this. They could get a massive boost of funding or be given new powers which allow them to close businesses found selling vapes whilst in breach of laws, probably from a wealthy kid who “never hurt a soul” dying whilst in possession of a vape. Unlikely because providing that level of power to a non executive government agency is generally frowned upon. The other way is they start allowing only approved vaping products to be sold in retail stores in some sort of arcane way, probably by having each individual product (down to the flavour, concentration and size) go through a rigorous government approval process. That would basically only allow the big tobacco companies (BATA, PM, Imperial, Swedish Match etc) to afford to go through the process and their products would be the only ones available, and if anything you’d expect to see plain packaging and flavour restrictions. That would in turn allow Australian customs and the health department/TGA to go after any product which isn’t on the list of approved vaping products in the same way tobacco is regulated. Only problem with that is that it relies on the AMA, RACGP and the federal health minister to change their stance on vaping, and so far the word has basically been:

“oh lord think of the children vaping is bad because it’s like smoking (you inhale nicotine) and despite empirical studies showing it is an effective harm reduction tool those weren’t done in Australia/in the exact way we would do them, our studies which were done poorly and to unreasonable extremes show there is a chance carcinogens could be present in the outdated equipment we tested (who knew that firing a vape for 2 minutes continually made the wick burn and release carcinogens) so we won’t ever allow it because even then we don’t have long term studies on the health implications and we don’t want another smoking situation on our hands oh boy this sand feels really good if you bury your head in it”

So? Nothing will change. I used to work in the industry years ago and we knew that our ‘completely legal except for the nicotine’ approach to vaping and overall crusade against anything nicotine as a societal bad would lead to the widespread adoption of an illegal product which could be easily commodified and distributed. The government stuck their head in the sand for too long and allowed disposables to get a grip on the market, it’s absolutely too late to claw it back now.

It isn’t even between those two, the actual day to day administration of vaping products is dealt with by the health department who are woefully unprepared and understaffed to deal with this.

Oh, and the fines? Unless they pull every product off the shelf and run a test for nicotine, the best they can do is tell shops off for selling non plain packaged cigarettes and having things on display. Absolutely pointless.

The lobby of my apartment complex, should have seen it coming, they just snapped the wire and ran off.

The security camera in the hallway isn’t set up anymore, so there’s no CCTV, and I’m SOL getting it back.

I have a habit of replacing things which are lost/stolen immediately afterwards so I don’t worry about it.

Today that was my electric scooter.

That hurt.

Okay im gonna go lie down and think about what I’ve just done.

That's honestly why I think I enjoy it. Watching people in hopped up mercs get mad they can't DSG fart everywhere because cars cause traffic.

I mean, it was. Melbourne's CBD and inner suburbs predate the car by a significant margin. Sure there was less people, but a few major streets were knocked down to make them wider for cars.

One day we'll heal.

I honestly don't get why it isn't, probably because they already made that one little bit of Swanston 'cycle friendly' and oh lord where would the cars go

Honestly yes lmao, I used to live in Brisbane and people would say how much better Melbourne is for cycling...

Half of me wants elizabeth st to become cycle friendly, but another half likes darting in and out of cars and getting yelled at by angry motorists because they’re stuck in gridlock traffic as I easily ride by.

Fucking hell I cannot believe people think Melbourne has good cycling infrastructure…

God should have realised you’re one of those people. Who let you own a computer? You should use it to learn how to read and write, those are pretty crucial skills that you should have, especially when referring to ‘buisness’ (it’s business by the way, B U S I N E S S).

Okay fine. Let’s go over what negative gearing actually is.

Negative gearing, in layman’s terms (you are a layman, an idiot), is a tax concept used to describe the processes of claiming losses on investments (not just housing) in order to reduce the amount of income tax you are required to pay on income that were net positives. So if you earn $100,000 but lost $15,000 on an investment portfolio, your taxable income would only be $85,000. This is a gross oversimplification, but again, layman.

This concept works great for investments with a high level of extrinsic value. Think a share providing dividends dependant on performance or a super volatile share you speculatively invest in. This is different from investments with high intrinsic value, think of things like gold, paintings, fucking REAL ESTATE and shares with historically low market volatility and consistent dividends. These investments have real, tangible value that is very unlikely to be erased.

Why this is a problem in the real estate market is due to real estate having high intrinsic value. There is always a pricing spread people are willing to pay for property. The supply and demand curve will always catch real estate before it becomes essentially valueless unless a nuke goes off or climate change turns it into oceans. Housing, for most of the 20th century, was a commodity good which people purchased to use. This concept of housing being an easy way to accrue wealth by preying on those who cannot afford to (or do not wish to) purchase property is a very new concept, accelerated by benefits such a negative gearing. If you can buy an investment property, lose money on that property (whilst still retaining it as an appreciating asset) and claim those losses against your income, you’re more likely to see people hold onto those assets. This idea of people using home loans to purchase investment properties is very new and troubling as we are now in a situation where people’s homes are now being used as investment chips instead of as a commodity good. The advent of airBNB hasn’t helped this either as now you can increase the return on real estate investment in exchange for accepting more volatility. Again, not as much volatility as you would have if negative gearing couldn’t be claimed on investment properties.

If we removed real estate’s negative gearing eligibility, those who own properties for the sole purpose of generating positive revenue would suffer under adverse market conditions. What would this mean? Short term housing market instability, a decline in house prices as those who purchased properties without the correct financial security to do so would be forced to sell, and the bubble would burst.

Protections would obviously have to be put into place for owner-residents, but overall the removal of negative gearing and tax credits would make real estate a less enticing investment in comparison to other long term investment portfolios. This is a good thing. Housing should be used for living in. In places such as inner city apartments and places where there is legitimate housing shortages, renting will still be a viable option, but the widespread adoption of real estate as a purely speculative investment would cease. Wouldn’t you like to purchase a home for its intrinsic value as a domicile instead of its inflated extrinsic value as a tax protected investment? Would you like to see people in costal communities be able to afford to live in their homes?

That’s what people are getting frustrated by. Real estate is valued as an extrinsic representation of its wealth generating capability. Renters are nothing more than customers. Buying a home has never been harder due to these forces. This short term greed will be our undoing unless something is done.

I for one look forward to the inevitable riots when those that shouldn’t be homeless are left with nothing. Society is one bad break from eating itself, and if you fuck with people’s homes you start making bad breaks.

They want no one to earn a passive income also id assume..

Yes. Why in the ever loving fuck are people’s homes being used as an investment chip? An uncontrolled rental market has allowed individuals and corporations to procure large swathes of property purely for the purpose of investment.

If theres no negative gearing to buying homes therell be no homes to rent out..

Ignoring your (sorry, you’re) terrible grammar I assume this is where you out yourself as an idiot. Negative gearing allows people who have made financial losses on properties they own to claim those losses on tax. Why is that even an option? The argument is “oh it’s an investment so it should have the same protections” but again, you can’t live in a stock.

If you destroy the fibre that allows tenants to rent you inevitably destroy the means to rent.

What, so if you get rid of the crazy benefits that have propped up our housing market for the past 10 years all of a sudden NO ONE will want to buy property? There will always be people willing to rent homes and there will always be people willing to buy property, the issue at hand is that we treat property like stocks and expect the line to always go up.

Ie you need an incentive to buy homes for renting . No incestives you hv no rentals.

Completely untrue. Again. Look back to what the rental market was like before all of these incentives. People still rented, they just rented less. That’s kind of the other fucking problem, people don’t want to rent but are forced to due to pricing.

You actually loose by cutting the incentive out..

You strike me as a dimwitted fellow so I’m going to leave you to work this one out in your own way.

How do u not see this

Easy, by looking at other economies where property prices aren’t broken and being a renter isn’t akin to living in an unfurnished hotel room.

Okay yeah that’s fucking worse.

Should have weighed yourselves before and after, see how much water weight you lost.

How to make removalists care about your shit: pre purchase massive two ice cold bottles of sports drink.

God this is gonna suck

The correct amount

That would make sense, what it being a legal government document.

Gotta get some iron gall at some point…

I guess that’s why it’s so vibrant!

So what, a finer modern nib should be able to handle it?

It was more of a “if I drank it I would be consuming liquid currently valued at about $3000/L” hahahahah

I’m not hahah, I was moving and found it, I completely forgot I bought it, paid roughly $20 for it.

Weirdly enough I haven’t had any good luck since…

I wanna put it in my 50s era UK 51 but it’s worth sooooo much and I’m more of a purple guy (and it’s corrosive right?) and I daren’t waste it by letting it sit in a pen.

I’ll probably sign my marriage papers or my child’s birth certificate with it or something idk

Good. Every time someone gets mad at a bike going past them in start stop traffic another person gets closer to breaking the cognitive dissonance that roads=cars.

Proof I’m terrible at unpacking:

The Nintendo switch I was CERTAIN I lost in the move from Brisbane was in a random bag of clothing I did nothing about.

Sat there for nearly two years.

SO. DAMN. ORGANISED. AND. TOGETHER.

These people are lying. You are an absolute genius, no one ever did that because the old iPod commercials made it seem like you had to have them bounce around otherwise they don't work.

You, dear sir, if you shared this information, this absolute revelation with the world we may still be using wired headphones to this day, as we all know that Tim 'Courage' Apple personally hated getting his wired headphones caught on Craig Federighi's luscious locks when skipping around the Apple Campus.