I spent the last weekend in St. Moritz (CH) and I have asked about houses there. No way the value of the houses there is going to suffer from fluctuations.
It is pretty hard to get a house there not only because of the high prices, but also because if you are a foreigner, you are not free to buy whatever you want. In fact, by law, only a percentage of the houses can be sold to foreigners. I happened to talk with somebody that has been waiting to get a house there for 5 years.
Indeed, very good policy to avoid indiscriminate construction investments with the consequent pillage of the landscape, but also a very clever way to exploit the existing structures (hotels, restaurants, etc) and to avoid that the place gets invaded, losing its reputation of high level holiday place.
These Swiss are clever!
Water is running low. Whether it derives from the climate change or something else, about one-sixth of the world’s population lack access to safe drinking water. Moreover, the scarcity of freshwater is no longer a problem restricted to poor countries.
The Wired Magazine wrote recently that about 50 percent of the world’s freshwater lies in a half-dozen lucky countries. People are thirsty - and the soda won’t make it easier. Bottled water is an old story, but its future might be enormous. Currently Wikipedia recognises 78 different water brands, the real world might hide hundreds of more bottled water brands. As with all products, some of them represent cheap and everyday, some exclusive and top quality brands. Water might be a supplement, where the brand matters most: HO2 is same in every bottle.
But what happens, when the shortage makes today’s wealthy countries thirsty? Water is expensive to transport, even without mentioning all-time-rising oil price. Despite Wired stating that economically advanced regions face unavoidable pressures on their industrial output, the agriculture spends the most. So thirsty and hungry with decreasing industries.
As the industrial trend has shifted from the local outsourcing to “made in Asia”, the agricultural and industrial future might shift back to the north in long term. Agricultural and industrial society - here we come. With a punch of Bottled Water Brands.
Theathers, operas and ballets are often funded or at least substituted by the government, as culture wouldn’t be able to support itself. How to define culture events then? Hollywood movies are commercial, thus not every one of them a commercial success. But there is also something in between. Movies such as David Lynch’s Inland Empire and Mulholland Drive are arguable arts, yet commercial success stories.
A piece of art might turn out to be profitable. Thus not all the commercial intensions turn cash flowing successes. Outside the Hollywood hills profitable “arts” might be scarcity, but those exist. Take the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow, Vienna Philharmonic orchestra, or fine art names as Manolo Valdes, Salvador Dali or Andy Warhol. Big brands - this case most traditional or shocking brands rule. But also profitable names need to pleasure the audience - the revenue source. And we have seen to what it leads: Hollywoodication of copy-paste movies and television shows.
Might be a time for a debate, but government art support are necesity to keep the art alive. Whether art is biased by commerce or government, there always will be the rebellious ones.
I was reading a really interesting book about the economics of arts and culture. The authors (Baumol and Bowen, 1966) have noted that live shows are fairly insensitive to the technological progress and to the resulting increase in productivity. Performing a play nowadays requires approximately the same inputs that were necessary at Shakespeare’s times: a theater, scenography, technical staff and actors.
If the wage of the artists was calculated on the basis of the average wage that other workers earn in other sectors, the price of the theater tickets would increase much more than the price of other goods or services that benefit from increasing productivity, with the associated risk that the demand would decline dramatically. If instead the artists were paid on the basis of their productivity, today they would earn the same wage that they would have earned at Shakespeare’s times, becoming one of the poorest social classes. This dilemma is avoided because usually governments could pay part of the costs.
However, the public intervention could create distortions in the natural evolution of the supply of cultural and art goods. In fact it might happen that, to obtain funding, the artists would tend to produce something than the politicians, rather than the public, would like.
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