Trust in the markets is a brave thing, yet most people I have spoken to about the recent turbulence have voiced that view: in the longer term, the stock market only goes up. Of course, there are glitches and some losses when big companies collapse, but overall one can expect to make money on the markets. They conclude that an allocated pension drawing down a modest 4 or 5% tax free, with their money making maybe a modest 10%, is a safe bet. In any case, it appeals more than making 6% in term accounts or rentals, which get taxed. All reasonable, based on the best knowledge and understanding they have at hand.
I have always believed that policy complexity is, of itself, a design flaw. The tax system is now more than epic, our social security system convoluted. At what point do these circuits become so dysfunctional that ordinary people no longer know what path to take? The intricacies of financial instruments like Collateralised Debt Obligations, and other exotic futures and derivatives seem to have masked the real underlying issues. These generally turn out to be more mundane and familiar: greed, stupidity, and regulatory passivity. In my own way, I fell for all the promises, eyes too big for what needed to be digested.
But what if the fundamentals are really changing, and this volatility is just a precursor? But, these optimists say, no one has a crystal ball and even property can crash.
Regarding the ‘R’ word, Harvard economic professor Martin Feldstein, writing in the US magazine Foreign Policy (
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4143&page=0) is sceptical that Bush’s package of handouts to households will be effective. He says that aggregate demand is not the problem. He thinks the challenge is to grow the economy through ‘more investment in capital equipment, people working harder, more innovation…’ Feldstein thinks there is a more than 50% chance that the US is already in recession. Well, if a leading economist has that level of confidence, why should we kulaks even think we know anything? (Kulak is a lovely term the Russians used for ‘rich peasants’, really subsistence farmers, around the time Stalin stripped them bare and carted them off to Siberia. Kalashnikov was a rich peasant, and the book about the social history of the AK47 by Michael Hodges is a fascinating read. Now at least I know my social class.)
A little squeak of common sense would lead you to agree with Feldstein that cash to individuals won’t fix the underlying problems. It also doesn’t make sense to think that more junk floating into people’s cars, houses, mouths, etc. is advisable on any other level. That much is clear, at least to me.
It has now taken me and my spouse several hours to work out how much I actually lost from my super account. Various statements finally led us to understand that between what I put in, the 15% taxes, what the fund earned, the fees, and then the losses, it was not a good strategy, from either a tax or an earning perspective. Luckily, my hit was not mortal, unlike stories I have heard of people in self-managed funds who have lost 150K and are now forced to return to work. Such individuals will be very interested to know if the losses can be claimed against future capital gains.
It is not just my super statements, but even my phone, internet, electricity and every other bill that leaves me in confusion these days. Why can’t I easily fix my mobile phone settings so that it doesn’t go to ‘missed call’ if I don’t answer within 2 rings? My paranoid side says this is a ploy to increase the number of calls and therefore the phone company’s revenue. Another interpretation is that I am an idiot. But perhaps there is method in their inefficiency. Who benefits from such administrative leger de main? When Societe Generale finds it too difficult to maintain an administrative structure that detects a loss of $8b over several years, then perhaps it is time for a rethink. According to the Economist, Societe Generale had a risk management reputation second to none. Makes you wonder how bad ‘none’ could be.
But these musings (well, maybe they are ravings, you have a point there) are a side show compared to the skullduggery of international relations. I strongly recommend this book to those who are interested in how terrorism took root in the last few decades:
House of Bush, House of Saud, by Craig Unger. (Gibson Square Books, 2004).
Unger has carefully deciphered the documents, media reports, government policies and public statements of a long trail of intimate friendship and business dealings. In itself the theme of Bush family involvement with the Saudis is not a secret. It was noticed when members of the Saudi ruling class, including members of the Bin Laden family, were whisked out of the US without questioning after 9/11. I’d heard of the aggressive Project for a New American Century, but I had missed the Carlyle group, that actively leverages political connection into military funding and profits.
Some of this was hidden in varous US bills and defense appropriations, some was more obscure. A media desperate for access backed off from asking tough questions of Dubya about funding terrorism through the Saudis. Little fuss was made when the Saudis poured literally billions into building mosques in the US, some headed by extremist muftis.
The upshot is that the US pretty much was a midwife at the birth of Al Quaeda, through their good friends the very nasty, repressive, corrupt, anti-democratic and Wahhabist Saudis. No need to chase them out to bring democracy, they go hunting with the Bush dynasty.
And let us not forget that the Keating mob allowed our own ‘women are like uncovered meat’ mufti to stay in Sydney, against the warnings of ASIO. In writings about ‘the risk society’ there is a stream that says the evidence of people on the ground should be taken carefully into consideration when designing policies and regulations. This is the approach that underlies the open source philosophy, as applied to software, journalism, and Wikis.
My ears hear concerns about sustainability, not cries for more passwords, unusable features on electronic gadgetry and innovations in softdrinks. In the financial world, soothing homilies remind me of the fox in Brer Rabbit. For a while, I played the rabbit, now I’ve hopped away scared, but also confused. Someone is poised to profit from every foolish or confused investor.
Who, indeed, do you trust? From which sources? And what do you really understand about the global financial dynamics?
January 30, 2008 | Ronda Jambe
Confusion by design?
January 30, 2008 | Graham
Sorry split
The Courier Mail reports today that Brendan Nelson’s agreement to an apology to Aborigines for the stolen generation will “split” the Liberal Party (although the only splinter they can find to quote is Wilson Tuckey).
The state governments have all made their apologies, and today The Australian has a run down on when they made them (no link). Out of the six state administrations, only one of them – New South Wales – was Labor. And of the remaining state administrations you’d have to say that most of them were pretty conservative. Apologies were moved by Richard Court (Lib WA), Jeff Kennett (Lib Vic), Bob Carr (ALP NSW), Kev Lingard (NP Qld), Dean Brown (Lib SA) and Rony Rundle (Lib Tas).
It would appear that in the whole of Australia, John Howard was probably the only Liberal leading a government who was opposed at the time to making an apology. Now Howard has gone, you would have thought it would be easy for Nelson, and that the weight of opinion inside the party would be fully with him.
January 24, 2008 | Graham
Opposing from Government
Labor won the last election by convincing enough people that it would be little different to John Howard while convincing enough other people it would be completely different. One group was always going to be crying into its beer, and that group was always going to be the “progressives”. Early signs of it have started appearing – see here .
No group harnessed progressive opinion and chanelled it towards the ALP more skilfully than GetUp. It did this by opposing the government on issues with narrow appeal which were unlikely to be taken-up by the MSM or the ALP, while still appealing strongly to a sizable minority. As a result GetUp often had the field to itself and was able to tap a rich vein of funds by appearing to its constituency to be ahead of public opinion, and the sole protector of it. It’s the market position that environmental groups like the ACF, Greenpeace and WWF are familiar with, but the big difference here is that GetUp acted as a third-party recruiter of supporters for Labor in a way which environment groups don’t.
Which raises the question of how they survive when their side is in government.
GetUp’s solution is to ask their members to vote on an agenda for the new government. This is dangerous for them. Advocacy groups survive on the perception that they achieve results. Winning on an issue can easily achieve that, particularly if you pick the right one. And securing a win for your party in a general election is the most stunning demonstration of power. But succeeding in having a whole agenda implemented is a lot harder than being on the winning side in an election, so I was interested in having a look at the results of their survey.
The agenda is interesting from a number of points of view. In the lack of contradictory evidence, I’ll assume that the results represent “progressive” opinion, in which case they show how priorities have changed over the last few years, and also how much this opinion divides both from public opinion, and the government’s likely priorities. Get ready for a steady saline drip from the Left into their collective tipples.
Top priority is “Becoming environmentally sustainable (e.g. climate change, water, forests, marine habitats)”. As the last election was primarily fought on climate change, that’s a reasonable choice. Second priority is “Making high-quality primary, secondary, and tertiary public education accessible to all Australians” which is where things get a bit harder. Pity they lumped all three sectors together, but I’ll bet that a large proportion of respondents wanted to see funding changes in tertiary and secondary education, and while electors always want more money spent on education, it’s hard to see that being compatible with Lindsay Tanner’s $18 billion surplus.
Third priority is “Respecting the rights and improving the living standards of Indigenous Australians”. That’s where it gets really tricky. While the Howard government probably didn’t win any votes over its Northern Territory intervention, it did demonstrate that the orthodoxy of the last 30 years on Aboriginal affairs is dead for some time. The public have rejected it, and so has Kevin Rudd.
The list is also interesting for what didn’t make its top priorities. Health, poverty and withdrawing troops from Iraq weren’t in the top three , although they were in the top six. Maybe this indicates that these issues aren’t as important as they once were or perhaps respondents think Labor will perform here, so no need to pressure them. Refugee policy, uranium mining and media diversity were close to, or at, the bottom. Perhaps for the same reasons.
It may also be that priorities change when your side is in government. Often the issues that are important when you are in opposition are the ones where you can criticise your opponent. They are totemic rather than substantive. Once the heat of the election dies down, you breathe a little more deeply, and some of them don’t seem that important. Labor could probably more easily licence exporting of uranium than the Coalition.
You can read the whole list here. GetUp is well-worth following – their corporate and networked approach to politics is the way I think that it is heading in Australia.
January 23, 2008 | Ronda Jambe
The not so super sting in the tail
Having bitten the bullet and removed my remaining funds from my industry fund, other questions arise. Namely, who ‘owns’ the loss? The following is based on my understanding and limited knowledge of how super works and what was said over the phone, and is therefore hardly rock solid. I hope to leave you in some confusion, which is where some of the legalities apparently stand.
My spouse spoke to the Australian Taxation Office, who were taken by surprise by the simple question: can I claim a capital loss? They hadn’t heard that one before, perhaps because during previous slumps in the share market there wasn’t such a collossal amount of money invested. Now there is over $1 trillion, and baby boomers like myself want to use that money for fun and income.
Investors in super are not taxed on the profits the fund makes during the accumulation stage. The quid pro quo is that losses cannot be claimed for tax purposes either. Fair enough, so far as that goes. However, my industry fund, in acting as my agent, is apparently able to claim a a tax loss on my money, which they can use to neutralise future gains. That is where things get a bit fuzzy.
You see, it seems that technically the fund has made the loss, not me. How can that be? And since I have left $1000 in the fund, they are still my agent.
Surely my deductible contributions, which attracted 15% tax on input to the fund, were an investment. They were intended to grow. But having lost money, why can’t the losses be claimed?
The best advice the ATO could give was to request a private ruling, which I will do. The ATO lawyer indicated that there are some unclear aspects. Since so many people are in my position, many requests for clarification are probably going to follow. Meanwhile, any enlightenment is welcome.
One comment on my previous article about super said that super is not an investment, it is a tax strategy. But surely the intention is to grow the money? It was for me. And all the calm advice to just ‘hang in there’ might be viable if I was younger. But to look at possibly 2 years before I get back to square one is not acceptable, especially with current levels of inflation. I need to make my money work a bit, at least paying off new debt or bringing in some income. Otherwise I am going backwards, and we all know the only way to coast is downhill.
There is really no escape from actively managing your money. If I had any appetite at all for learning about the stock market, well I probably could have lasted the distance in those programming courses I dropped out of, or at least learned how to set up a spread sheet. Terrible confession from someone whose first degree was mathematics, but I hate detail and manipulating numbers.
This last week will probably be a watershed in how Australians view superannuation. My spouse was salary sacrificing 80%, counting the future growth until it should hit a magic number that would guarantee a comfy retirement. Now he has pulled back to the minimum, and is more inclined to agree with me that you can’t trust institutions with your money. I like playing with houses and renovating and designing, and I’m pretty good at that. Wouldn’t you die for a carpet like this one in your bedroom? But perhaps most blog readers are still male, and therefore impervious, like the men in my life, to profound cuteness.
Every financial advisor I have ever had a preliminary meeting with (must have been at least 6) suggested I sell all my property, sit back, and let them manage it for me. Especially in the last year or two, they dangled the tax free carrot. Several of my friends have these situations, no worry to them about leaking rooves [is that form of the plural still correct, or has orthographic change also left me behind?]
So last year I hesitantly sold one apartment, put the money into super and sat back to watch. Not only did I find it difficult to ascertain, without independent personal records, just how much I had either put in or how much it had earned, but now I’ve taken the proverbial bath.
This may sound scatterbrained, but I do not think I am unusual in finding even electricity bills hard to decipher, and my industry superfund’s web site does not provide this detailed information. This is all part of the outsourcing of record keeping and management to the individual; my spouse spent a full 4 hours on the phone with Telstra, just trying to get them to send him back copies of his phone bills. You wouldn’t think it was that hard.
For my part, not at all inclined to enjoy gambling of any sort, I will cut my losses and move on. I like to see volatility on the big screen, not in real life. (My own emotional excesses, of course, do not count.) You can expect a trickle of formerly retired professionals to fill some of the workplace skills shortages. That’s where I’m headed.
January 23, 2008 | Graham
Terminator
Mark Bahnisch has taken to calling Lawrence Springborg “the Borg” which brings to my mind images of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Terminators. Queensland non-Labor politics seems to be caught in a continuous “B” Grade loop with a script they can’t change, which doesn’t make any sense, and which always leads to the same unsatisfactory conclusion.
Springborg spent the last term of government pursuing his vision of a united conservative party, almost to the neglect of all else. It was a doomed quest. There were no terms that could be acceptable to both parties, and in the end the National Party scuttled the last arrangement because it involved the liquidation of the National Party with assets and members being taken over by the Liberals. (I know that’s not what the papers are saying, but you can follow the saga on this blog, with appropriate documentation, starting here).
Springborg has been on the backbench for around 16 months but appears to have learnt nothing. Queensland politics, indeed all politics, is not about Liberal National organisational arrangements, it is about satisfying the wants and needs of voters. Ultimately, voters don’t care who satisfies those needs as long as someone does.
Over the course of the federation of Australia various coalition arrangements have been more than equal to the task. To do so they have ensured they had the right people and policies. Springborg’s obsession with a merger substitutes institutional change for policy and personnel reform. This is unsurprising: if someone with leadership potential was in the National Party parliamentary ranks, Springborg would probably not be leader! Real leaders know when to give up and move on.
The best thing that could happen for Springborg would be for the state organisations to fairly quickly quash the idea at their meetings early in February. Letting it run on might be entertaining for new premier Anna Bligh, but boring for the rest of us – we already know the ending – they’ll be back.
January 22, 2008 | Graham
Surplus of fashion risks economic growth.
Why is Kevin Rudd set on running a budget surplus of somewhere around $17 billion?
The conventional economic theory is that governments should run surpluses in good times so that they can spend them in bad times as a way of stabilising swings in the economy. But after 15 years of expansion and with negligible government debt, there is plenty of fat to nurse us through the next recession.
The other reason for governments running a surplus is to damp demand in the economy to head-off inflation. Australia’s CPI is at the top end of the Reserve Bank’s targeted range, but in today’s deregulated economy, with a weak union movement, it’s not clear that inflation is the problem that it was when price rises could be compensated for by increased wages which then fed back into price rises. Too high an increase in prices tends to lead to import substitution which dampens price pressures because a more flexible economy passes the effects on quickly.
In any event, even if inflation is an issue, it would appear that it is not our biggest problem. Today’s news that shares on European exchanges fell by up to 7.2% (Germany) yesterday, suggests that the greatest risk facing the economy is a US recession.
Australia has a history of mishandling financial crises. The Great Depression was worse here than anywhere else in the world because of the credit crunch imposed by the Bank of England. Similarly, the 1987 sharemarket crash was worse in Australia than elsewhere, largely because of a subsequent credit crunch. Austerity is not the right dish to serve up when the economy turns down.
US central bankers and governments have learnt that the best thing to do when you have a financial crisis is to increase credit, not ration it. When everyone is worrying about the next fall in their personal wealth, inflation is not a big problem, and you can wait until sentiment picks up to deal with any inflationary potential you may have caused by increasing money supply. Under Greenspan and his successors these practices have delivered enviable economic stability.
The Goss government came undone because it uncritically followed “expert” advice and was so desperate to establish its conservative credentials that it tried to out-conservative the conservatives. Rudd appears to be following a similar line with his government. The only reason that makes any sense for running a $17 billion budget surplus is desperation to impress financial market participants and financial journalists. While they might be impressed, they only get one vote each. If Rudd wants to be a long-serving prime minister he has to impress voters. A 59% approval rating today can drop tomorrow faster than a European bourse if your results don’t meet your promises.
It’s time to lay down the law to the Reserve Bank and take evasive action. Proving that he is a “financial conservative” is only a problem in Rudd’s mind – the debate has moved on.
January 20, 2008 | Graham
Bush’s stimulus puny
$145 Billion sounds like a lot. That’s the amount that President George Bush is promising to pump into the US economy in an attempt to avert recession.
Using the latest World Bank data on a purchasing power parity basis this is the equivalent of releasing $7.86 Billiion into the Australian economy. To put this into perspective, promised tax cuts are worth $32 Billion, and no-one seems too worried that these will have a significant effect on inflation or be overly expansionary in the economy.
If the US is going into recession I don’t think this is going to make much difference.
January 19, 2008 | Graham
Are they missing Warnie?
Just a thought. Australia’s been lucky not to have lost one or other of the first two tests against India, so losing the test in Perth was no surprise. I think it has been more a batting failure than a bowling one, so why would it strike me that Warne might have made the difference?
The Indians are almost exclusively playing spinners. So, I’m wondering if the difference is that Australia no longer has a spinner on the team to really test the batsmen in the nets, and as a result, they’ve lost the edge when they go to the crease against the Indian spinners.
Well out of my area of expertise here, so maybe a reader can set me straight.
January 18, 2008 | Ronda Jambe
In Praise of Older Goods
…or the African Freecycle Boogie.
I guess it is rewarding to live long enough to see my youthful concerns become mainstream alarms. Or at least fashionable. And that is what is now happening with recycled goods.
Second hand goods have appealed to me since my childhood. At about age 7, with my equally naughty friend Laura, we raided a box of goodies placed at the kerb. It held treasures fit for a queen: lavish ball gowns, encrusted with beads and cut glass, with matching wraps and handbags. We carted them off and dressed up in them for years. These treasures of the 1950s would surely be sought after now, and one wonders how they have blended into the biosphere since that time.
As a US university student in the late 60’s second hand goods were a fun statement of rebellion against the mainstream, and in the 1980’s as a single parent in Canberra clothing from the Salvo’s or St Vinnies was helpful in managing the budget (as was the rent from the dancer living in third bedroom)
It gradually dawned that there is an extended benefit in purchasing second hand: someone has already paid the rip off tax, and any remaining value is real and probably persistent. I remember once reaching into the jumper bin at Vinnie’s, and knowing instantly that I had touched cashmere. And sure enough, it was a pale grey cashmere twin set from Harod’s of London, in my size and going for just $5. For many years I wore them happily, and I can only hope they rest in peace. I even picked up a cute Swiss guy once at Vinnie’s, but he soon needed repairs.
Recently I heard chatter on the ABC about discouraging consumption by saying ‘It is more important to enjoy the history of what you have.’ But of course! Last weekend we gave a little table and chairs to friends to use as their breakfast table. Years ago they gave us their old kitchen. Isn’t there a lovely symmetry in that? And the exchange becomes a pleasant part what connects us in time and space.
All enduring goods eventually have a provenance, and who dares to disconnect such feelings and esthetics from the wider barter of valued antiques, lost treasures, marks on canvas, graffiti, even seeds? Surely there is a dimension of sustainability in there, but perhaps the human stirrings are more critical. It is good to know my friends are sipping their morning coffee at that small but respectable table that we bought in Melbourne for our back room.
The investment or collector dimension does not appeal to me. Practical intelligence, which I admire so much in my table and kitchen swapping friends, is more precious. Why change something, if it works? Does the change enhance functionality, or is it just a silly design feature that says ‘NOW’? Sharp corners on bed holders and sinks with dirt collecting areas underneath spring to mind, along with inward sloping canopies, that direct rain to the weakest point in the structure.
Older goods are often more practical, their interface is less ambitious, less electrical, hopefully repairable. Today we are paying $400 to fix one window on a Mitsubishi. I prefer the old wind down window openers in cars, but they can break off, too. The unsustainability of industrial design can await another blog, if anyone is interested in providing examples.
Things become more expendible when they cost so little, as they have already served their time. After my partner rejected a $39 computer desk at Woolies, I couldn’t pass up one already put together for $15 at the Salvos’. Problem solved, the lap top can now get off the dining room table. What’s to lose?
And the older something is, the less likely it is to have been made under exploitative environmental and social conditions. Maybe. What do I know about all my clothing from China? A retreat into the past can also be a retreat from current accountability, but ultimately there is no escape from the consequences of consuming.
Whereas the occasional visits to big shopping malls generally leave me feeling enervated and confused, a visit to a second hand store is low key. Serendipity without pressure.
The break through in my thinking came when my financial pressures eased, and spending money on new goods became possible. At that point I realised that my material desires were effectively infinite. There would always be something else to yearn for, to hunt down and drag back home. And then dispose of. I concluded there was no point in attempting to satisfy these desires. Better (for me anyway) to turn away partially from these delights and focus on those that are less frivolous. That led to me at 48 to walk away from a government sinecure and take up a 3 year PhD scholarship. A bit less consuming perhaps, but a lot more satisfaction.
Which brings us (finally, you sigh) to the Feecycle Boogie. For some time, I have wished for a website or organisation that would take my unwanted items and give them directly to a family in Africa, or another desperate place where corruption keeps much formal aid money from being fully effective. (That is going out on a limb, I have no idea how effective my aid dollars are, but I worry that nothing ever changes for the better on a scale that would be reassuring)
Families and individuals, with the assistance of presumably good management of the web site and its third world interface, could put in a request. ‘The Nigono family in Nigeria needs a set of dishes and a solar powered radio.’ (no apologies for the green-badging). Then someone in a richer country logs on, and for some maneagable sum, the web site owners collect, package and ship to Africa by the containerload, and provide some minimal confirmation that the Nigono family received this gift. A direct, accountable transfer. Sure, let the middleman take a cut, he’s not going to get rich off it.
Of course it sounds stupid, but then so do public libraries and public schools, if you come from that perspective. But, having read Chris Andersen’s The Long Tail, it is clear that not all rewards are monetary. Conversely, many people are willing to pay either small or sometimes large amounts to access services that offer an extra dimension, such as personal satisfaction and documentation of accountability. If an African family posts, through their mediated helper perhaps, a note of thanks for the dishes, that might be very rewarding to the overseas giver.
Yes, the potential for graft and incompetence is enormous, as with Wiki. No way to escape from governance issues, that is the big lie of the technophiles.
In defence of this concept, I can only say that Freecycling (http://www.freecycle.org/) is alive and well, spreading across the globe, and completely non-profit. So is an open network of global giving out of the question?
January 17, 2008 | Graham
Greennecks and Aqua Nullius
The general media narrative equates conservationists with civility, and their opponents are most frequently portrayed as rednecks. It’s easy to unconsciously slip into this dichotomy, so I found this thread on the bottom of an ABC article on the detention of two men who boarded the Yushin Maru No. 2 disturbing. If they weren’t greens, you would have to call the commenters rednecks. Racism, nationalist chauvinism, threats of force and sheer ignorance of the subtleties of the situation, legal and otherwise, were on plain display.
“Since WWII, Japanese tended to behave like who and always claim they are the right person for the right conduct,” says one commenter called Helen. Someone called Grommo helpfully informs us “the whalers are all members of the yakuza controlled fishermens/seamens union and ultranationalist bodies…Criminal gangsters are poaching in Australian waters, with the express purpose of killing endangered sentient and self aware mammals. They have stated they are willing to kill humans…”
BizBob wants to send the navy out to confiscate the Japanese ships and break them up for scrap.
The treatment of the Japanese as something less than human isn’t just limited to the commenters. I had to plough through a large number of news reports to even find the name of the Japanese whaling ship, while the Sea Shepherds’ ship the Steve Irwin is named in virtually every report. It seemed like simple even-handedness and respect to me that you’d use both ships’ names if you were going to mention either.
It’s hard to feel sympathetic for the Japanese – their whole whaling operation is based on a big lie, that it is scientific. But that doesn’t justify thrill-seeking exhibitionists in doing anything they like. The captain of a ship at sea is virtually a law unto himself. If you board his ship without permission, then you put yourself at his mercy. He might exceed his authority if he hung your by the yardarm, but I don’t think detaining you onboard and only putting you off into the hands of the civil authorities at the next port he calls at in the course of his business is unreasonable. If the Japanese had decent public relations skills that’s probably what they would say and do, rather than trying to negotiate some sort of exchange with conditions.
They might also have a closer look at Australia’s claim to these Antarctic waters. Much has been made in the past of the doctrine of Terra Nullius. The declaration of Australia’s economic interest in the Antarctic Ocean sounds to me very much like a case of Aqua Nullius. I’d like to know how anyone justifies it in today’s world.