[arin-ppml] On the topic of longer prefixes...

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

William Herrin wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 7:51 PM, Ted Mittelstaedt<tedm at ipinc.net> wrote:
>> I can tell you that in the area I live in, price for a standard
>> residential city lot of 100x50 feet is something around $100K
>> right now.  20 years ago it was around $35K   Property taxes
>> are 1.5% (as a result of a ballot measure years ago) so over
>> that 20 years the owners of that undeveloped lot would have
>> paid $20,240 in property taxes - and thus would have still
>> realized a profit on the sale of the lot today of $44,760
>> even though they never developed it, allowing for those taxes.
> 
> Ted,
> 
> Factor in inflation and $35k 20 years ago is around $65k today.

You don't realize that $65K if you put it in a can under your
mattress, you have to invest it in something.  Even a passbook
account - which of course you also pay tax on the interest you
would be making.  I didn't run the numbers but I suspect the
passbook option would have been much worse.

> Likewise, you adjust the $20k taxes for inflation and you've paid
> closer to $30k in today's dollars. Of course when you sell it, you'll
> pay around 10% capital gains on the paper increase of $65k, or $6.5k.

You only pay this if you don't turn around and buy more real estate
with it in the same year, creating real estate losses, which someone 
investing in real estate would certainly be doing.

> So, $65k + $30k + $6.5k = $101.5k. In "constant dollars" you're
> actually in the hole for $1500.
> 

No your not because you have to compare it to any other investments
that you would be making with the money at the same time.

Real estate has historically been one of the safest, low-risk
investments out there, particularly a lot in a city.  If you had had
that money in the stock market you might have nothing.  So what do
you expect?  There's not a lot of places that you could have
stuck $35K into 20 years ago that were as low-risk and even have
$65K today.  I can certainly demonstrate to you a certain 401K plan
by yours truly that over the last decade has LOST value if you
compare it against inflation, and I mean -significantly- lost value,
far far in excess of $1500.

>> I know I'm not that
>> good in math but I didn't think I was that bad!!!
> 
> *cough*
> 
> Sorry man, you walked right in to that one.
> 

My point was that merely assessing a fee (or telling people
that if they don't do something they are going to lose money)
doesn't guarantee that your going to see expected behavior in a market.

[begin rant]

People have been told the last 20 years that if they save for retirement 
they would beat inflation, but legions today don't have squat to
show for that logic.  NOT saving was regarded as in essence losing
money - paying a fee you might say - when in fact if they had just spent 
everything they made they would be in the same situation as today - 
with, likely, a lot more toys to show for it.

The unfortunate fact is that there's home-flippers walking around
out there who took million-dollar risks and today, are being bailed out
by the banks and getting off not owning one red cent on failed
loans of a half-million dollars.  Oh sure, the government regards
that as income - which, rightly it is - but the fact is that the
taxpayers have esentially paid each of those flippers a half million 
bucks.  So in other words, the people that did everything wrong got
golden payouts.  Meanwhile, people who paid their mortgage on time
and all of that, missed out - and many of those haven't even been
able to refinance to take advantage of the lower rates, and of those
that have qualified, many have paid their loan application fee and
are still waiting 6 months later for their lower interest rates.

What a financial lesson this is!  Do what your not supposed to do,
criminally steal money, whine to Momma that you really didn't mean to
do it - and you get rewarded.  Do what your supposed to do, and well,
forget rewarding you buddy - and by the way we are going to come to
you with our hands out so that you can fund all those other losers out
there!!!

[end rant]

> 
> One of my favorite strategies for recovering underutilized addresses
> is the lottery-like system. Every payment period ARIN sends out bills
> for $X per IPv4 address. Flat rate, $X times the number of addresses
> you have. For each block you hold, you can pay or return the
> addresses. After all the payments are received, they're divvied up
> among the folks who returned addresses based on the number of
> addresses returned.
> 

I've observed several times on this list that ARIN fees are structured
so that the more IP you have, the less you pay per-address.  I guess
this is just structural societal logic of ARIN being essentially under
the control of US citizens.  In the US, if your big and sloppy and
not efficient, people feel sorry for you and reward you.  If your
small and efficient and doing what your supposed to do, people screw you 
over.

> Meanwhile, ARIN hires an Vegas oddsmaker to figure out what to set the
> payment at to shake loose the number of addresses needed to meet the
> demand. And there's no financial mess at ARIN because dollars out is
> exactly equal to dollars in.
> 

There will never be a financial mess at ARIN because ARIN has graduated
to the status of a bona-fied "too big to fail" organization.  Even if 
ARIN's guiding hands steer the organization into the rocks I guarantee 
the US Government will be right there with it's hands out to catch them!

;-)

Ted

> Regards,
> Bill
> 
> 
> 
>