Adventure Ausrama Blog

It seems the only way to impact on climate change and reduce pollution is regulation. Such ideas as banning petrol and diesel cars by 2030 will not work, however. People have to learn to live without the luxury of jumping in the car and driving down the road. There must be some form of "punishment" for driving your car. Sure using a bicycle is virtually free. Obviously, punishment is not high enough yet to make you use the bike There is no doubt that the cost of motoring will rise dramatically in the future as countries accept the human cause of an unhealthy planet. This is obvious because even now governments are addicted to taxation. The only real answer to change people's life habits is to make it financially painful to do things that damage the environment. It costs less than $1,000 a year now to register a car. In coming years this will rise to a realistic level of $5,000. It will hurt. Prices in the shops will increase, but the standard of living has to ...

For the first time economic theory is being challenged by the Internet. Economics has always put forward the premise that the consumer was all-knowing, in that the "going price" for products was known. Of course, in the past this has been a lie. The demand curve was absolutely false. Buyers did not know where they could get the best price. Now, potential buyers can go to a store, try on a particular brand of clothing to find the correct size, then go and buy it on the Internet. Some shops are charging for such browsing. This will only drive consumers away to another store. There isn't much doubt that there are too many stores in the market selling the same goods. This is a problem caused by local councils allowing shopping center development even when it is contrary to local planning laws. Councils are too easily influenced by cashed-up big business. As chain stores move into populated centers of rural areas the future looks bleak for the corner store. The da...

Australian retailers are in a corner with people turning to the Internet to make purchases. With rents near zero for Internet sellers and high rents for retail shops the odds are stacked against local stores. Travel agents are the ones hit the hardest. It is so easy to buy an airline ticket online. Next are bookshops. They cannot compete with Amazon, though some Australian bookshops are selling online as well. Pharmacists are up against large cut-price online sellers in the US. However, chemists can still rely on the highly subsidized cash cow called the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Some Australian businesses are becoming paranoid. A woman was accused by a bookshop proprietor of making a list of books to buy on the Internet. A sports retailer asks for a deposit before customers try things on. Things are changing so fast. Major stores in the US are allowing goods purchased online to be returned at city outlets. Australian businesses must make the move to the Internet now, o...