It's time for the result of our latest survey! And it had 7252 participant! So thank you everyone that took time to answer those questions.
You should be able to see the answer if you go there : https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1KfHOyWHQTyFEEeAYvCZRxBc3_ZGZxJn6ZUztiwMdVjE/edit

Community section :

What country are you from?

Country	U.S.A.	Germany	India	Australia	Canada	U.K.	Bazil	France	Spain	Sweden
Percentage	33.1 %	7.4%	5.4%	5%	4.8%	4.4%	3.1%	3.1%	2.1%	1.7%

Is nice to see that we have users from all around the world, even if nearly 50% are from English speaking countries.
Image 1.

How old are you?

The average age of a /OnePiece user is 23.62 years old. We have roughtly 10% of users that are underaged, and 10% that are 30 years old or more.
Image 2.

Gender

Gender	Male	Female	Other
Percentage	88.6%	8.9%	2.5%

There is no surprise there.
For the others, we have some Gender Fluids, transgenders, Bigenders, quite a lot of Non-binary, a Loli, a Furry, and nearly a 100 Oden (You wish), as well as some rude people, but I won't put up what they said.

Manga or Anime?

Both	Manga Only	Anime Only
49.8%	46.2%	4%

No real surprise here either. Considering the subreddit has a lot of spoilers and is focussed around the chapter release, it's obvious there are only a few Anime Only people here. So thank you for Sticking Around, even if it the best place to avoid spoilers.

For approximately how long have you been following One Piece?

1 Year or less	2 years	3 years	4 years	5 years	6 years	7 years	8 years	9 years	10 years or more
8.7%	6.2%	6.8%	6.1%	8.1%	7.1%	6.7%	7.1%	4.6%	38.5%

Nearly 40% of our users have followed the series for 10 years or more. (To give an idea, this mean they followed the series since Before the timeskip, as chapter 597 was released at the end of August 2010).
For the rest, we have roughly the same number of new readers that stays with the series. So it's quite good to bring new blood and not have a decrease of new readers.

Where does One Piece rank on your list of favorite manga?

N°1	Top 3	Top 5	Top 10	Bellow Top 10
70.1%	21.6%	5%	2.6%	0.6%

Well, you are in /OnePiece after all. So it's kinda obvious the manga is either your favorite or in your top 3.
If it isn't your number 1, what series are better than One Piece for you?

Do you own One Piece Merchandise?

No	Manga Volumes	Figurines	Clothes	Poster	DVD/Blu-ray
44.2%	33.1%	24.5%	18.4%	17.2%	6.3%

Those are some good numbers I would say, 55.8% of users have some merchandise and are probably supporting the series (depending on where you bought those)
For the OTHERS answers given, some good ones are : autograph from dub VA of brook, Alvida pre devilfruit bodypillow, Chopper teddy bear, Sountracks, Custom made and 3D printed Keychain, Databook.

Subreddit Section :

Do you visit OnePiece mostly on mobile or on desktop?

Mobile or Apps	Both	Desktop
50.6%	29.5%	19.9%

If you are using desktop, are you using the old version of reddit? Or the redesign?

Redesign	Old version
63.3%	36.7%

It seems like most users are using Mobile and Apps, as well as the redesign on desktop, so it's probably time to pay more attention to that than to the old version, this way we can get banners/flair for users that are on the new version of reddit.

How often do you make : a submission on OnePiece?/Comment?/read the rules?

Submission :

Never	Rarely	Sometimes	Often	Very often (Daily)
67.1%	24.7%	5.6%	1.6%	1%

Comments :

Never	Rarely	Sometimes	Often	Very often (Daily)
41.2%	32.7%	17.6%	6.7%	1.8%

Check the rules :

Never	Rarely	Sometimes	Often	Very often (Daily)
49.1%	17.1%	13.7%	8%	12%

This really shows that there are a lot of lurkers on the subreddit. Most of you won't ever post or comment on the subreddit. With 8% of users creating submission and 25% commenting.
As for the rules, there isn't any surprise since nearly every post respect the rules. (Only 1/5 of the post needs to be removed), so thank you to all of those that read them.

Content you enjoy the MOST/the LEAST.

Content you enjoy the most :

Theories/Discussion	Fanart	Polls	Cosplay	Merchandise	Youtube Video	Media (Photo and Video)
89.6%	47.9%	19.7%	16.7%	14.4%	14.1%	11.7%

So without surprise, people in this subreddit enjoy the Theories/discussions the most out of every type of post, it's then followed by the Fanarts.
Which is good since like 75% of posts made are Discussion (50% total)/Fanarts (25% total).
Content you enjoy the least:

Youtuber Video	Merchandise	Cosplay	Media	Fanart	Polls	Theories/Discussion
36.7%	35.1%	31%	15.7%	15.3%	6.9%	4.2%

Here there aren't any content that most users enjoy the least, but it still seems like users don't want to see that much Merchandise or Cosplay post. (Youtuber video are very rare)
Also, a quick reminder, Discussion/Theories are mostly found by sorting by New. This is where you will see all of them, as it's hard for them to show up on the front page of the subreddit (but if it shows up on Hot, then it's a very good one).

Do you only use the subreddit for the Spoiler and Chapter Discussion thread?

No	Yes
63.4%	36.6%

It's nice to see that roughly 2/3 of the users are here for more than just the Spoilers and Chapter discussion. But there is still a huge part that only use the subreddit for that.

Do you want the spoilers gone from this subreddit?

No	Yes
86.7%	13.3%

Rate your overall experience on OnePiece.

Here it's seems that out of 10, the Overall Experience on /OnePiece is 8.35
Image n°3

One Piece related questions :

Who is your favorite Straw Hat?

Luffy	Zoro	Nami	Usopp	Sanji	Chopper	Robin	Franky	Brook	Jinbe
34.8%	29.1%	1.3%	6%	10.1%	1.8%	6.5%	2.4%	5.4%	2.6%

Who is your least favorite Straw Hat?

Luffy	Zoro	Nami	Usopp	Sanji	Chopper	Robin	Franky	Brook	Jinbe
0.8%	3.3%	10.6%	15%	6.5%	21.3%	4%	19.2%	8.3%	11.1%

As it was expected, Luffy is the Favorite Straw Hat for a lot of peopel, he's also the Straw Hat with the fewest "Least Favorite". After him Zoro is second favorite, followed by Sanji, Robin, Usopp, Brook, with the other Straw Hat having very few votes (and Nami having the Least "Favorite" Straw Hat.)
After that, it seems like Chopper, Usopp, and Franky are the one people like the least out of the Straw Hat.
I know it was a hard question for some of you, but the result are still interesting to know.

Which Strawhat has the saddest backstory?

Robin	Brook	Sanji	Chopper	Nami	Other
50.9%	25%	9.3%	7.1%	5.8%	1.9%

The Straw Hats with the saddest backstory is Robin! Followed by Brook, then Sanji, Chopper and Nami.

What is your favorite Yonko crew?

Red Hair	Whitebeard	Big Mom	Beast	Blackbeard
34.7%	31.1%	14%	10.6%	9.5%

So the favorite Emperor's crew are the Red Hair Pirate! Which is very impressive since we haven't seen much of them. I guess Oda better delivers when it come to see them in action after Wano.

Who is your favorite Admiral?

Garp	Aokiji	Fujitora	Kirazu	Akainu	Sengoku	Green Bull
28.4%	28.2%	20.8%	15.8%	4.7%	1.7%	0.5%

While Garp was only a Vice Admiral, he was put in the poll, and he won it! Whitout him, it's Aokiji that is the favorite, followed by Fujitora.
Image 4

Who is your favorite Supernova (outside the Straw Hat)

Law	Kid	Bonney	Urouge	Bege	X Drake	Hawkins	Apoo	Killer
63.5%	12.4%	5.5%	4.5%	4.3%	4%	2.8%	1.7%	1.3%

Who else than the character that nearly managed to defeat Luffy in the 5 popularity poll? Law is the Favorite Supernova outside of the Straw Hat!

Which is your favourite canon arc in One Piece?

The Favorite Canon Story arc are (You could vote for more than 1) :

Position	Story arc	Result
N°1	Enies Lobby	43.3%
N°2	Marineford	39.8%
N°3	Wano	30.2%
N°4	Water 7	23.3%
N°5	Impel Down	19.6%

Which is your least favourite canon arc in One Piece?

The Least Favorite Canon Story arc are (You could vote for more than 1) :

Position	Story arc	Result
N°1	Long Ring Long Land Arc	37.2%
N°2	Fishmen Island	16.9%
N°3	Syrup Village	15.8%
N°4	Thriller Bark	10.1%
N°5	Punk Hazard	9.7%

Favorite Cover Story?

Position	Cover Story	Result
N°1	Enel's Great Space Operations	24%
N°2	From the Decks of the World : "The 500.000.000 Man Arc"	11%
N°3	The Stories of the Self-Proclaimed Straw Hat Grand Fleet	10.7%
N°4	Ace's Great Blackbeard Search	9.8%
N°5	Straw Hat's Separation Seria	9.6%

Character Design in One Piece :

Do you like the female character designs in One Piece?

Yes	No	I have no opinion.
63%	19%	18%

Do you like the male character designs in One Piece?

Yes	No	I have no opinion.
89.6%	0.9%	9.5%

It's true that Oda isn't the best when it comes to Female character design. However it seems like the majority of users don't have a problem with that.

Are fight a determining factor for your enjoyment of the series/arc?

Yes	No
52.6%	47.4%

Now this is rather surprising I must say. What do ou thing about this?

What is/are your (absolute) favourite aspect(s) of One Piece?

From the result we have, it seems like the World-Building is the favorite part of One Piece (With 88.6% of voters choosing this).
It's followed by The Adventure (69%), The characterization (54.4%), the Inter-character relationship (49.4%), the Action (36%) and the Art Style (26.2%).
And those result are obvious. Some of the most upvoted chapters of this subreddit are when we have huge world building moment, like 907 (Shanks talks to the Elders), or 957 (ULTIMATE).

Post-Timeskip is?

On Par with Pre-TS	Better than Pre-TS	Worse than Pre-TS
59.8%	28.2%	12%

This question is one of the most asked. With a lot of vocal voices saying that post TS is worse than Pre-TS.
It's different for sure, but now we know how the community feels about that.

If you could eat a Devil Fruit, what type would you want?

Paramecia	Zoan	Logia
28.9%	8.6%	62.5%

Most people could choose to eat a Logia, and it seems like becoming a Furry is the lesser choice in this subreddit.

The Final Antagonist of One Piece will be :

With 48.5% it's Blackbeard!
Really? That is surprising for me since it's obvious that Oda will make the SH fight against the World Government after they find the One Piece. And I honestly don't see Blackbeard being the final Antagonist because of that.
So people who voted for this, what was your reasoning for it?

What is One Piece Biggest Flaw?

Some of the biggest flaws mentionned are :

• The Pacing
  
• The Lack of characters' death outside of Flashback
  
• The Anime.
  

Which are all fair flaws to the series.

Random Questions about the Series :

As of Wano, is Jimbei stronger than Zoro?

Yes	No	Yes but Zoro will be stronger soon
9.8%	60.3	29.9%

I guess people really want Zoro to always be the second strongest no matter what... I expected this result, but I was still disappointed...

Was Zoro as strong as Luffy just after the timeskip?

Yes	No
31.5%	68.5%

I... Really? 31.5% said yes?

Will Sanji get laid by the end of the story?

Yes	No
49.6%	50.4%

Nearly the perfect split, and it's easy to see why it's very divisive. (Also shows that every vote counts).

Will Usopp be part of the 1 Billion Club by the end of the story?

Yes	No
76.4%	23.6%

The Straw Hats will go to Laugh Tales :

Before fighting the WG	After Fighting the WG
71.1%	28.9%

It's been hinted at a lot that the SH will go to Laugh Tales before taking on the WG. So for me it feels rather strange to have more than 1/4 voting for them reaching the final island after.

Who will be the one to defeat Kaido? (So give the last hit)

With 66.3% of the votes the one who will give the last hit to Kaido is : Luffy!
Followed by 11.5% with someone else (that isn't Law/Kid/Zoro/Big Mom/Scabbard/Admiral) and 11% by one of the Scabbard.
Zoro received 6.4% of the votes.

Who will be the first SH to realize their dream?

Luffy	Zoro	Nami	Usopp	Sanji	Chopper	Robin	Franky	Brook	Jinbe
16.2%	12.5%	3.2%	32.7%	7.8%	1.8%	15%	6.8%	2.8%	1.2%

Most users believe that Usopp will be the first one to realize his dream!
I also think the same as it's the easiest Dream to realize really. I could bet you it will happen in Elbaf.
After that, we have Luffy and Robin, and it make sense since their dreams are linked. Both can be done once they reach Laugh Tales.

How many members will the crew have at the end? (With Luffy)

And most people want 11 members total in the crew! (With 28.6%), 27.5% wants 12 members, wile 19.8% want the crew to be complete right now with Jinbe.

Who do you think wins in a 1v1 : An Emperor or an Admiral?

Yonko	Admiral
92.3%	7.7%

If you are active on the subreddit, you know it's one of the question that creates the most discussion/arguments about.
So it's nice to know the overall opinion of the subreddit on this question (Doesn't mean it's always correct mind you).

Is Mihawk emperor's level?

Yes	No
57.7%	42.3%

Also a very divisive question on this subreddit.

Is Aokiji emperor's level?

Yes	No
38.3%	61.7%

Is Akainu emperor's level?

Yes	No
66.2%	33.8%

So they fight for 10 days in a very close battle. With Akainu winning in the end, but after a long and hard fight. And one is Emperor's level while the other isn't?
Really? I find that hard to understand.

If Oden was alive would he be stronger than Mihawk

Yes	No
63.7%	36.3%

How strong was Oden at the time of his death?

The strongest	Top 3	Top 5	Top 10	Top 20	< Top 20
1.4%	15.4%	32.5%	37.5%	11.9%	1.4%

I like Oden, but sometimes I feel like people are overestimating him.

Who is stronger between Shanks and Mihawk?

Shanks	Mihawk
85.6%%	14.4%

This is also one of the question creating the most arguments on this subreddit, after all Mihawk is the World Strongest Swordman. But Shanks is an Emperor and became one after losing his arm.

Is Kaido stronger now that 20 years ago?

Yes, he's stronger	Same level	Weaker
64.5%	26.3	9.2%

Had Ace survived, would Wano be liberated by now?

Yes	No
17.9%	82.1%

Could the Marines take on ALL the Yonko at the same time ?

Yes	Yes in Marineford only	No	2 at the same time	3 at the same time
2.4%	3.3%	68.6%	23%	2.7%

This question is also linked to how you see the Emperor vs Admiral. So depending on which side you are on, you are more likely to pick Yes or No.

Which character do you want focus on next?

Rank	Character	%
N°1	Vegapunk	24.7%
N°2	Dragon	18.8%
N°3	Shanks	14.6%

All very good choices, and all of them are character we have known for a long time without really knowing.

Will Blackbeard find the One Piece before Luffy?

Yes	No
18.7%	81.3%

How strong is Monkey D. Dragon?

The strongest	Top 3	Top 5	Top 10	< Top 10
3%	18.8%	31.8%	37.5%	8.9%

Here, most people seems to think that Luffy's father, Garp's son is part of the strongest characters of the series. Oda better respond to our expectations then.
As for his Bounty : Well, 31.6% think it will be more than 6 Billions and 28.1% think it will be between 5-6 billions.
That remind me, I once made a poll asking people what Sabo's bounty would be (since we knew it was getting revealed in a magazine soon). So maybe I will do the same for Dragon? That could be nice.

Who is currently the strongest Emperor?

Kaido	Shanks	Blackbeard	Big Mom
43.1%	26.4%	26.3%	4.2%

I wonder if the recent chapters made people change their perception on this...

What are the fights you would want to see?

Fight	%
Blackbeard vs Shanks	55.5%
Garp vs Rocks	54.9%
Garp vs Roger	54.8%
Mihawk vs Shanks	52.6%
Akainu vs Aokiji	44.6%

How long do you think One Piece has left? (At a rate of 40 chapters a year)

Image 5.
As you can see, most people think One Piece has at least 5 years left to go on. We will know Oda is terrible with respecting his own objectives. And this is good. The more One Piece the better.

On a scale from Spandam to Whitebeard/Roger, How strong is Im?

For this question, it seems like most people put Im at the same level as Whitebeard/Roger with 28.6% voting Im being there.
I honestly don't know how strong I want Im to be.

What arcs, after Wano, do you want?

The arcs people want the most are :

Arc	%
Elbaf	79.8%
Laugh Tales	68.6%
Vegapunk	67.5%
The Final War	66.3%
Red Hair Pirates	38.2%

So arcs teased for years (Elbaf/Laugh Tales/Final War) and about character that people want to see (Vegapunk/Red Hair pirates).

How is Blackbeard able to use multiples Devil Fruits?

Reason	%
More than 1 soul	29.5%
Weird Body	29.7%
Yami Yami	35.2%
Other	5.6%

It's one of those question were people have very different opinion about. And right now there isn't really a major concensus in the fandom, even if the theory about it being related to the Yami Yami is more popular.
In the Other catergory, there was the Cerberus Devil Fruit option, Blackbeard being a Triplet, him being actually 2+ kids in a trenchcoat, him being a failed Vegapunk experiment, having several stomachs him being pregnant (Stop reading fanfiction), him putting the power inside his rings, being a great guy and him being a cunt.

Haki is :

Image 6
Overall, People like Haki in the series, with a 4.38 out of 5!

How many arcs are left after Wano?

Image 7
Here, it seems like the answer for the community would be 4-5 arcs left. Which would then make (base don the How long One Piece has left), like a year per arc on average.

The final war of One Piece will be :

Reason	%
SH+RA vs WG+Marines vs BB	50.8%
SH+RA vs WG+Marines	37.6%
SH vs RA vs WG	6.8%
Other	4.8%

I just don't see Blackbeard being in the final war, as my opinion is that he will be dealt with before it. For the other answers, there was Straw Hats vs Blackbeard Pirates, Family of D vs vs im sama, Total civil war in marines, Straw Hat vs Shanks, Straw hat vs Pound, Zoro vs World Goverment, Dugongs vs buggy.

Will Luffy die at the end of One Piece?

Will Luffy die?	%
Yes	28%
No	72%

An ending were Luffy died wouldn't be a good ending for me. He needs to survive and go on more adventures.

Are Shakky and Rayleigh Mihawk's parent?

Answer	%
Yes	10.2%
No	89.9%

Will the crew still be together at the end of the series?

Answer	%

Yes, they will keep going on adventure together.| 57.6% o, they will move on, like the Roger Pirates| 42.4%
Like with Luffy living, I want the Crew to stay together, and sail together for many more adventures. I could see them taking breaks from time to time, but them staying together would be the best ending for me.

Can the Red Line be destroyed with Ancient Weapons?

Answer	%
Yes	91.9%
No	8.1%

What is the biggest mystery left to be revealed?

The most common answers were : The Void Century, the Will of D, Im, The One Piece, Joy Boy, Luffy's mother and Who is Pandaman?

What is the One Piece?

Here, there was plenty of : "No idea", The friends we made along the way, a Devil Fruit, Knowledge, Uranus, History, a book, my mom.

What sort of Devil Fruit do you want to see in the story?

The most common answer was : Water Logia! Followed by Wind Logia and people wanting more mythical Zoans.

What is the craziest theory you believe?

Here are a few of them :

• Shanks is a Celestial Dragon
• That Vegapunk is going to flip a switch in the Pacifista programming to fight the marines at the end.
• Luffy's mom was a celestial dragon
• Devil fruits are all artificial from the void century
• That Finland doesn't exist
• Zoro is going to get Rodger's disease
• D's were the original Celestial Dragons
• Weevil was made by Vegapunk using Whitebeard's cells and then was discarded until Bakkin picked him up
• One of the Roger Pirates (probably Scopper Gaban) is on Laugh Tale waiting for whoever finds it, sort of like how Crocus and Rayleigh seem to be positioned to monitor rookie pirates
• Onigashima is an Oarz like skeleton and Big Mom is gonna bring it to life.
• The different races came from other planets/moons
• Tama is a Kurozomi
• Ussop is a descendant of Mont Blanc Nolan
• Luffy hatched from an egg.
• The fish that bit Shanks's arm off was Joyboy's pet
• Bon chan is Kin'emon's son
• Oda no longer draws the manga
• bonney and ace having a child
• That Perospero is going to help kill Big Mom.
• Dragon being former Admiral

What are your favorites?
And here it is, the 500K survey! Took me far too long to make, as I underestimated the time needed to sort the answer and create this post. Like damn.
I hope you enjoyed it. The anwers for the Survey Saga will be up next in some time.

Introduction

Hello everyone, Petar and I are here to present a video critique of another video by Economics Explained (EE). We met in a thread here on /badeconomics and decided to work together. Petar is studying Economics from Australia and I am an International Relations Major from Mexico.
In the following sections, I’ll give you a run down of EE’s theory, and a brief version of our critique on two grounds: a statistical and a more historical one. I’ll give a summary with some complementary information in case you don’t want to see our video or EE’s, but I won’t fully lay out every single point made in video for the sake of brevity.

The Theory - Where do Economics meet pseudoscientific racism?

Broadly speaking, EE talks about how there is a correlation between temperature and GDP per capita. He does name some outliers but intentionally ignores the entirety of Central Asia, Eastern Europe and the southmost part of Latin America as colder places that are, in fact, not wealthy at all.
He then uses “statistical analysis” to provide evidence for the theory and plainly states that there’s no hidden variable between GDP per capita and temperature. He gives no proof of this claim, even though temperature there are many imaginable and pertinent variables such as soil fertility.
Historically speaking, the correlation was inverse: the burgeoning empires of old (Sumer, Accadia, China, Mayans, etc.) lived in climates that were not cold. EE acknowledges this and solves it with a massive hot take, explained below:
EE claims (without citation!) that colder weathers are harsher (ignoring how harsh hot climates can be) and force societies in them to become better economically speaking. He claims that, due to evolution, people in cold weather would have to become somehow objectively better at managing resources and more hardworking, while people in hotter climates have “everything handed to them” and don’t need to put much effort into survival.
Although this section of the R1 is still about EE’s theory, I invite you to look at this graph by Our World in Data: lower GDP countries (“hotter” countries, if EE’s theory was correct) work much, much more hours. The GDP info is by the World Bank and the Working Hours is by the American Economic Review. You can cross-check this information with the OECD database and look at the labor stats to find a similar graph, like the one we did with that dataset.
Finally, EE claims that it is pretty much common knowledge that people in hotter climates are more violent than people in colder climates, possible because they don’t have to learn to live indoors through the winter.
So, when the industrial revolution came, societies grown in colder weather were “naturally” more competitive because they were “naturally” more apt for industrialization and technology. This is how EE “solved” the “correlation inversion” problem. This is not considering that evolutionary theory would say that more competition (i.e: living in a hotter climate with many neighbors) would produce more competitive societies, even with resources available.

The glaring statistical problem

I don’t want to spoil too much of the video, but the core issue is that EE creates his own definition of what an R² test does, by saying:

“Statisticians have a knack for making everything sound more complicated than it actually is. So what the R squared value means in plain English is how much of the result is determined by the variables in the model compared to other factors that haven’t been considered

For some of you out here, the issue here is already pretty evident. The problem with this self-made and very convenient definition is that it is flat out wrong. A proper definition, like the one on Stat Trek, is provided below:

“the proportion of the variance in the dependent variable that is predictable from the independent variable.”

We’ll spell out the issue: to interpret an R² test as measuring a percentage of determination (one of the names for R^2), you need to make sure there is a determination relationship in the first place. When there is no reason to believe that there is a causation relationship, all R² does is how much of variable Y can be predicted with variable X.
In the video we go into an example that I’ll include here as well:

• Our atmosphere contains hydrogen and oxygen.
• Altitude alters hydrogen and oxygen concentration
• You can measure oxygen density at different altitudes and infer the hydrogen density from that measurement, maybe finding a really high R² value
• This does not mean that hydrogen density is caused (in EE’s words, determined) by oxygen density.
• Just because the value of one variable can be used to predict the value of another, it does not mean that one variable determines or influences the other.

Documentary research and reflection

EE claims that there had been “no conclusive studies ever done on the subject”, apparently because he didn’t do his homework. Theories of geographical or environmental determinism are classical in the worst way possible: they are pseudoscientific ramblings from the XVIII century.
We tracked down the first mentions we could find of “scientific” environmentally determinist economic theory. We found that Montesqieu (not an economist) wrote an essay titled On the Laws in their Relation to the Nature of the Climate in 1748, more than 20 years before Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.
Here’s a relevant quote from the chapter titled “How different people are in different climates”:

Cold air1 shrinks the extre­mi­ties of the exte­rior fibers of our bodies, and that increa­ses their com­pres­sion and favors the return of blood from the extre­mi­ties towards the heart. It decrea­ses the length of these same fibers2 ; the­reby fur­ther increa­sing their strength. Warm air on the contrary relaxes the extre­mi­ties of the fibers and leng­thens them ; it thus redu­ces their strength and com­pres­sion.
People the­re­fore have more vigor in cold cli­ma­tes. The action of the heart and the reac­tion of the extre­mi­ties of the fibers work bet­ter, the fluids are in bet­ter balance, the blood is more stron­gly pro­pel­led toward the heart, and reci­pro­cally the heart has more strength. This grea­ter force must pro­duce many effects : for exam­ple, more confi­dence in one­self, in other words more cou­rage ; more awa­re­ness of one’s super­io­rity, in other words less desire for ven­geance ; more sense of secu­rity, in other words more can­dor, fewer sus­pi­cions, less manoeu­ve­ring and guile.

I personally believe that all theory is political, but I won’t make an outright political statement here due to R1 rules. All I can say is: draw your own conclusions from the implication of Montesqieu’s theory or its spurious transformation into a statistical model (based on a wrong definition of R^2, willful ignorance of outliers, and failure to examine intermediate variables between climate and wealth) by EE.
We hope that you will enjoy the video, and we’re interested in discussing it with you!

As a long-time contributor to this sub, I know we love nothing more than discussing our degeneracy. If nothing else, hearing such stories makes you realise there are other people out there who have lived similar experiences to you. Stories of epic failure provide a sense of comfort. Stories of unexpected triumphs provide a feeling of hope.
The following bets - and the circumstances surrounding each - were not necessarily story-worthy. However, there were a number of intricate details which I felt were worth highlighting. Aside from the statistical rollercoaster than one experiences throughout a game (i.e. going from "how can this lose?" to "this bet is over"), there are other factors which can have significant ramifications for one's betting endeavours.
This is where the factor of timing comes into play. How often have you bet on something purely due to the fact that the game was starting shortly? It could either be a straight wager on the game. Or, you might have decided to add the short-priced "lock" to boost your odds. How often has this then come back to bite you? Or conversely, this random event - where your betting urge coincided with the scheduled timing of this event taking place - results in a recuperation of losses from previous games that you "studied" prior to placing your losing wagers?
Without further ado, this is my story. It is but a speck in the ocean that is my entire betting career. But it was a Sunday night full of swings, sweats and... well I won't spoil the ending.
As you read this, I want you to keep the headline in mind. Specifically, the words timing, luck and degeneracy.
It's early on a Sunday evening in Melbourne, Australia. Approximately 6PM to be exact. We are currently under the world's strictest COVID lockdown. We have an 8PM curfew, and I was keen to get in a 1 hour walk before returning home to make dinner. Now typically - as I had already walked my dog several hours earlier - I would not go for another on my own. But for some reason, I just had an urge to get some fresh air. Here is the first element in play: timing. At 6:10PM, an AFL (Australian Football) was scheduled to begin. As I begin my walk, I inevitably flick through my preferred bookmaker's iPhone app and this game catches my eye. Part of me says "don't bet it". The other part of me curb-stomps that voice in my head and says "don't be a pussy". Now on another note, I placed a daily deposit limit of $3000 on my account. To some, that is insanely big. I generally bet $1000 or so, and so this stops me from stupidly chasing the day's losses. Here is where another element peaks it's head: luck. I had deposited $1750 that day. Had I reached my limit, the following events would only have existed in a parallel universe. But as luck would have it, I had $1250 to play with. So I said 'fuck it' and made the deposit. It's about 6:05PM now and I don't have much time. I sift through the markets on offer and decide it's best to play a Same Game Multi (parlaying multiple events from the same game). With not much time left to make a decision, I quickly check the weather forecast in Gold Coast (where this game is taking place) and note that there is meant to be rain in the second half. (Spoiler: there was no rain in the second half). As this sport is played outdoors, this would favour the unders. So I come up with a bet that looks like this:

• First quarter OVER 23.5
• First half OVER 48.5
• Full match UNDER 125.5
• West Coast +34.5 handicap
• Margin: either team by 1-39
• Bontempelli 15+ disposals
• Macrae 20+ disposals

ODDS: 4.10
A bet of $1250 would pay $5125.
​
I was ready to place the bet. The problem? The match was only seconds from beginning.
The time stamp on when the bet was accepted:
18:09:55
I made it by 5 measly seconds.
​
Ok, so game begins rather uneventfully. Now it's worth noting for those who aren't familiar with AFL that you can score by 1's and 6's. It's late in the first quarter and the total is sitting at 22 points. Needing over 23.5, I'm in desperate need of a goal. The whole bet is about to come crashing down without it. With only seconds remaining a player marks the ball from a score-able position. The siren sounds. Now in AFL, if a mark is taken before the siren ("buzzer"), the player may take their kick. As luck would have it, this legend kicks it right through the middle of the goal posts, and the first quarter score ends on 28. We live on!
Second quarter ends, and the combined total is 52 points. Again, we survive the over 48.5 by less than a full goal! (But this one cleared with a handful of minutes left to play, so there was no sweat involved).
I'l wrap up the remainder of the game fairly quickly, as it is rather uneventful. The final score is 47-49, so the total under 125.5 hits easily, the +34.5 and margin 1-39 hit comfortably, and both players rack up well over their required disposals. Fantastic. My account hits $5125.
By this stage, some would be satisfied. I wasn't. I was out for blood.
The smart move would have been to withdraw, say, $4000. Play with the remaining $1125 (house money), and lock in a profit. But what's the fun in that?
I scroll through the upcoming events and see that there is a Chinese Super League (soccer) match starting in a few hours. This isn't the first example of degeneracy in this story, but it's probably the biggest.
So what do I do? Another Same Game Multi of course. And how much do I bet on it? $5125 of course.
The bet:

• Beijing Guoan: win or draw
• Total corners: OVER 7.5
• Total goals: OVER 1.5
• BOTH teams to score in BOTH halves: No

ODDS: 1.95
A bet of $5125 would pay $9993.75
​
Here's where the rollercoaster of events begins.
5 minutes in, we have our first corner.
13 minutes in, we have our second.
Corners are looking good.
Fast forward to half time and Beijing are leading 2-0.

• BOTH teams to score in BOTH halves: No = WINNER
• Total goals: OVER 1.5 = WINNER
• Beijing or draw = TBD, but looking good!
• Corners OVER 7.5 = ONLY 2 FUCKING CORNERS IN THE FIRST HALF!

Remember, they had already accumulated 2 corners 13 minutes into the match. 32 minutes without a single corner!
The live odds for over 7.5 were now over 3.00, and I was losing hope.
The second half begins and approximately 10 minutes passes without a corner. I'm fucked.
The next 15 minutes feels like God (aka Bob from NBA Daily Discussion) had blessed me. A flurry of corners results in an 8th corner before the 70th minute mark!
What looked like a total sweat, turned into the easiest of victories. Or so I thought...
The final leg: Beijing or draw - who by the way, were 1.50 favourites to win the match - were still up 2-0. One book had the opposing team at 81.00 odds to win from here. But you guys can guess what happened next.
Wuhan goal!
I'm still leading 2-1. My brain: "it's all good man, you still have a 1 goal buffer".
Barely a few minutes later...
Wuhan goal!
It's now 2-2. My brain: "it's cool, you just need a draw, you're still likely to win this".
Including the 6 minutes of added time, I have to sit through approximately 20 excruciating minutes of soccer, with just under $10k on the line.
Luckily, Beijing did 75% of the attacking. Wuhan did have a few minor chances, but nothing that made the heart sink.
The referee blew the full-time whistle, and I slowly unclenched my ass cheeks.
I waited to see my account balance, just to make sure all was kosher. (You know, we've all been there, when we thought we bet on a certain team, but because their names are all Chinese, you actually bet on the wrong Beijing or something like that).
My balance appeared at $9,993.75.
It was time to call it a night.
I reflected on the past 6 or so hours that I had just been through, and the 3 things that kept popping up in my mind again were timing, luck and degeneracy.
P.S.
Sorry to all the Djokovic and Heat backers. Brutal. Especially Djokovic. I'd say that's a once-in-a-career circumstance, but I think that would be understating how unlikely it is that the best player in the world get's DQ'd because he inadvertently hit a ball into an official's neck out of frustration.

Fair warning, this will be a long post and I won’t be throwing down any rocket emojis. If you’re looking for that turn back. This post is me seeking some legit discussion about whether or not Next DC (NXT) is a buy at the current price.
For those not in the know, NXT (Next DC) builds and operates data centers Australia wide. I’m looking at it as a potential multi-year buy and hold. It's currently sitting at $12.77 a share or about 5.88B on market cap, and made minor losses in FY19 and FY20 (more on why later). I’m going to talk about it at ~around $12 because $12.77 is a short term high and it could probably be picked up for less if you were patient. Another thing to keep in mind is that it has come up off $6 a year ago, with a capital raise in 2020, so it has more than doubled in market cap.
Since I’m considering this as a long term hold my decision to go in has to be based on fundamentals, not price sentiment. I’m aware that this is a foreign concept to most denizens of ASX_Bets, but you retards are the closest thing to ASX stock analysts (*) I have on reddit. I consider myself to be a beginner at this kind of thing, so I welcome all kinds of feedback (good and bad) on my analysis.
One of the first things I do when I’m trying to put a valuation on a company is a dive into the consolidated financials of the last few annual reports. This approach isn’t the be all and all of DD, but I like it as a starting point because it provides quick insight into how the company does or does not generate earnings, and trends in that behaviour. So, I tabulated the consolidated profit and loss statements of NXT’s 2017-2020 annual reports, and it only raised more questions for me.
You can find my table at this imgur link. The numbers are rounded figures in millions, and the ‘scaling’ rows at the bottom are my own addition (sum of the ‘blue’ rows in the actual statements).
https://imgur.com/nSYNdeI
This table tells an interesting story, but before I get to that the number one thing to know about these figures is that the D&A Cost is Depreciation and Amortisation and it represents the continual loss in useful life of the company’s buildings, plant and equipment. So, when the company invests truckloads of cash into building a new data center the cost does not all appear on these statements in one lump, it gets spread out over the entire ‘useful life’ of the assets. This means it would be wrong to assume that the P&L statement looks bad just because the company is growing. Those growth costs simply don’t hit the P&L that way.
You will observe that I’ve highlighted figures in blue that I consider to scale with the size of the company’s core business of building and running data centres, including lifetime D&A of those assets. These figures show a very nice underlying profitability to that business.
Secondly, you will observe that the company made a profit in 2017 and 2018, and only made a loss in 2019 and 2020 because of the arrival of large financing expenses. If you dig through the 2020 annual report, you will find that this financing is mostly in the form of short term corporate bonds, about $800M worth. Some of the bonds mature in 2021 and some further out, at rates of 4% to over 7% per annum.
Now, with the cash from the recent capital raising NXT could technically just pay out the bonds when they mature and be debt free, but they don’t really want to do that. The company has been growing at about 20% YOY by investing capital into new data center capacity, it needs cash on hand to continue this strategy. If the management of a company thinks that they can get a return on investment greater than the cost of capital then it makes perfect sense to take on some form of debt. NXT used that bond financing to fuel growth in the last couple of years. Read the section titled ‘Funding’ on page 23 of the 2020 report for confirmation that the company will seek continued financing.
On page 73 of the annual report you will find a summary which shows a debt gearing ratio of 35% in 2019 and no gearing in 2020. However, they have used a Debt-to-Capital ratio there, which makes the debt cancel with the cash for technical reasons. To get a different view of gearing I worked out the Debt-to-Assets ratio (still factors in cash) and got 47% in 2019 and 32% in 2020. I don’t think the company will go back to shareholders for more cash again soon, so they will either need to draw down on their $300M debt facility or issue new bonds to roll over the old ones (hopefully at lower rates). The important take-away from this is that in order to keep growing (as shareholders will expect) the company will have to carry debt, and should carry debt if they can get a return on investment. They only need to hold cash temporarily while they set up the next expansion project.
What this means for earning figures is that ‘financing expense’ scales with size of the annual growth for now, and will only later morph into an annual asset replacement cost proportional to the size of the business. This will never go away and it will eat into that ‘underlying profitability’ I mentioned earlier. It will also be a bit patchy and unpredictable from year to year as the company gets funding from different sources. Note that (the way I think it works is that) the financing impact on the profit and loss statement is the interest coupon on the bonds. I.e the -$57.7M in 2020 is about 6.5% of the total outstanding bond amount, equal to the average coupon which gets vaporised and forever disappears from shareholder value. The repayment of the principal on bond expiry will not appear on P&L, just like the initial funding injection did not appear as revenue.
I know that was a lot to take on, but understanding the capital structure is a necessary foundation to valuation in this instance because the business model is so capital intensive. Company management is happy to blow past year’s ‘profit’ on next year’s financing if it will allow continuation of growth. You can expect the company to keep doing this until it hits some kind of growth ceiling or slowdown, at which point financing would drop to an asset turnover rate and the company would start paying dividends. The share price of the company, or I prefer to use total market value of the company (5.88B), should reflect earnings potential once the company stops growing, discounted depending on how many years in the future that point is, and should also count book value of assets at that time.
The problem for me attempting a valuation is that the assumptions going into that method are all guesswork. Can the company continue to grow at +20% revenues for the next however many years? What about the growth rate in asset value? What if there is a significant shift in finance cost? Basically it is one of those situations where you can make present value come out at whatever number you choose, just by tweaking the assumptions.
What’s worse, it looks to me like almost all of the present value is counted in the future value of assets. I won’t bother showing you the discounted cash flow because the numbers are meaningless, but in summary the annual profits generated are small in comparison to the value of assets, and once growth slows down the growth in profit is eaten by inflation and risk anyway.
Even now (in 2020) the ‘scaling profit’ in my my original imgur link is less than 10% of net current asset value in each year (50M vs 1700M in 2020), which supports the view that a large portion of any debt fuelled infrastructure valuation is just book value of the assets. NXT will grow until management does the maths one day on return on capital and decides it is not worth it to keep growing at that cost or at that rate of return. In this way NXT is very much like an airport, a port or or a toll road company, just with data instead of physical goods. Valuation will trend towards nominal replacement cost or purchase price plus a return rate only slightly better than cost of capital (very low right now).
Conclusions and Questions
On the one hand, the rapid growth in net asset value looks likely to eclipse current market cap in a few years. Net assets (inclusive of debt) have grown at an average x1.6 for the last three years. 2017 506M > 2018 893M > 2019 875M > 2020 1683M (includes 862M cap raise). Now while that includes a capital raise, i.e. shareholder money, Net Current Assets (mostly just property, plant and equipment) have been growing at a similar rate. So, just project that rate out a few years, throw in reasonable revenue (beating cost of capital as a ROI) on top of that and you might consider it a buy at $5.88B today. It certainly would have been at $6.
As far as risks go, I think the data center business is probably resistant if not immune to most foreseeable economic disruptions. The black swan stuff is not a reason not to invest, if you are diversifying properly. Direct threats would be mismanagement or competition. A near term (<3y) increase in cost of capital would also be problematic because it would put the brakes on growth. However, that would also affect competitors and would allow NXT to set prices. For upside risks, if the company can access cheaper debt it would be a great boost to shareholder value because it would slash the annual financing costs.
On the other hand, I have difficulty making my preferred discounted cash flow model arrive at a $5.88B valuation. I figure that the company will return in the order of 10-15% of revenue as profit after the rapid growth phase is over (e.g. Replacing 5% of current assets value each year at a cost of 5-7% debt finance.), or a smaller percentage as return on assets. So, if it grows revenue at +20% for another 5 years it might make 75M in profit in 5 years time. If you run that into a cash flow model you get nothing like $5.88B present value (more like 2-2.5B). However in that model the present value is clearly dominated by underlying asset value (which I always count in total valuation) and that has been growing much faster as noted above. It would be silly of me to say that NAV will still be $1700M odd in 5 years time, which is what is happening in that 2-2.5B calculation.
Some of you might be saying ‘but ASisko, you can’t use a DCF to value a growing, capital intensive business!’. Well, I think you can still make some ballpark guestimates, especially if you take the company’s depreciation and amortisation of capex at face value. However, this still leaves me wondering how to reconcile the rapid expansion in net asset value with the relatively paltry free cash flow. I can just project NAV at x1.6 (or a lower multiple for risk) and it comes out much higher than accumulated free cash.
I guess my first open question to you guys is what the f**k to do with this weird NAV growth in a discounted cash flow? Or alternatively, is the DCF right and the NAV figures are wrong?
Secondly, does anyone know of a superior fundamental analysis model for this type of business?
Thirdly, would you invest or are you already invested in NXT, and why?
Lastly, any other comments on my analysis or on NXT itself?
Cheers guys and if you read all the way here instead of looking for the TLDR; I appreciate it.

• TLDR: This is a long read and discussion. Do not bother if you are not interested spending 15 minutes.
• Part 2

Preface
As one of the regular ‘lockdown skeptics’ here, I thought it would be worthwhile more carefully laying out rationale on the essential points of the contrary position to the strategy of elimination (and lockdowns – note: plural). I would like to be able to start with laying out the position and then move into more detailed conversations and data-points in subsequent comments or posts. I do not imagine it is possible to address every nuance in a single discussion.
In being a skeptic of the current strategy, I tend to occupy a similar or adjacent position to several other regulars. However, I do not pretend to represent their position, nor am I necessarily adopting their positions either. As with all topics there is a spectrum of views.
So, the reasons for this post are three-fold:

1. Articulate the position as clearly as possible.
2. Engage with productive and considered critique; and
3. Discover where common ground might be.

For the purposes of framing any discussion moving forward, it is worth calling out a couple of things :

• If you think zero deaths (or zero further deaths) from COVID-19 is realistic or the only acceptable outcome, then I think there is no point in reading further. There are no issues with anyone holding this position, but there is simply not going to be much to talk about.
• If the extent of your ability to engage with a contrary view is ad-hominem attacks, then feel free to add your comment below. Reddit is here to get the anger out and that is better for you than keeping it bottled up, hopefully (and also good for the people you are not yelling at from on top of your milk crate at Flinders Street Station).

So, in the words of our Premier… You right to go?
The premise – three essential assertions of an alternative strategy
Australia’s current strategy is being called “aggressive suppression” by the national cabinet and federal government. This is a bullshit term invented for political expediency and to avoid admission that the strategy changed because of our “early success”. I doubt anyone will vehemently disagree on that point, but for the purposes of clarity I am taking the goal of “zero community transmission” as broadly equivalent to elimination.
You will no doubt notice the adoption of the #FlattentheCurve moniker. This is both a jibe at the fact that the strategy changed and, more importantly, that “the curve” (community transmission) is inevitable and we will need to accept that fact (which I get into below).
The three essential assertions of the contrary position are as follows:

1. Elimination is not a sustainable strategy.
2. Avoiding SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 is an unrealistic and imagined goal. Instead, we should be evaluating our strategies with reference to mitigation of excess mortality against background mortality. The costs of those mitigations (including adverse impacts on lives and livelihoods) need to be balanced realistically against the potential benefits of those mitigations.
3. Repeated and continued use of lockdowns (which is the currently preferred tool for attempting elimination) is inherently wasteful and deleterious to the public good.

It is important to recognise that the first and second assertions are more important than simply “opposing lockdowns”. Opposition to lockdowns is largely a product of holding the first two positions.
So, to understand why an alternative strategy might be better, we need first need unpack why elimination will not be sustainable. This alone is not fully sufficient because we must also weigh and observe the impacts of COVID-19 within the context of our established understanding of mortality. We also need to consider lockdowns and overall public policy (including border closures), and whether there are not better options available to us to address the virus moving forward.
A contrary strategy says that we must accept a level community transmission in those parts of our community that are not at significant mortality risk from the virus. Our failure to do so will mean our outcomes are no better than other countries and could well be much worse overall.
Sidebar: I predict that we will not see another lockdown in Australia like we have in Melbourne and Victoria even if there is another outbreak. There may be localised lockdowns or potentially lockdowns of a less populous cities. But, if the virus gets away again in Sydney or Melbourne, I cannot see the nation bearing another lockdown near this scale. Obviously, this prediction could be wrong, but if it eventuated then I expect it would be a trigger to change back to #FlattentheCurve.
Unpacking elimination and isolation
The first assertion is simple. We live in a globalised and interconnected world, and that is quite fundamental to how the country operates normally and how we remain a prosperous nation. To remain part of that world (and not become a hermit nation) we will need to open ourselves up at some point in the relatively near future. Ipso facto, the virus is going to get back into Australia at some point in the near future.
We are currently attempting to lockdown our borders just hard enough so that the virus cannot get through the quarantine layer until we have and deploy a vaccine. Although this is obviously very difficult and subject to failure (as shown by both Victoria and New Zealand) it is most certainly what we are trying to do right now. Aside from New Zealand, we are a real outlier on the world stage in this regard. We are the guinea pig countries for an experiment in lockdowns and eliminations.
Why is that important to recognise? In the normal course of life (i.e. absent the virus), we absolutely know that those countries which isolate themselves and their populations (or are isolated by others) tend to generate much poorer outcomes over time.
This brings us to some key assumptions. A successful strategy of elimination and temporary isolation relies on two critical things eventuating:

1. A safe vaccine arriving and being deployed relatively quickly so that our condition for re-opening is met. The acceptable timeframes have not actually been stated by the government (which is a massive gap in the current strategy), but we can roughly guess that we have a general expectation for no later than mid-2021.
2. That the vaccine is sufficiently effective to either prevent transmission of the virus or to largely attenuate the level of mortality that we are observing from COVID-19 in other countries. Again, we have a significant gap in the strategy, what are our expectations for attenuating mortality with a vaccine? This is absent too.

We could say the second point is far more important than the first (because avoidance of mortality is the implied goal), but both are necessary for the strategy to be successful. So, what sounds as simple as “eliminate and wait” is actually very difficult, an outlier compared to most of the world, and not without substantial risk of its own. We will come back to the hopes of the vaccine at a later stage.
SARS-CoV-2 transmission and COVID-19 mortality
It should be uncontroversial to say that the original models made assumptions regarding SARS-CoV-2 transmission and COVID-19 mortality which were significantly overstated. The trend of meta-analysis has consistently shown two things:

1. Mortality is both much lower than originally feared (2%+) and is clearly stratified in the elderly and older populations with comorbidities. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v4.full.pdf
2. Natural herd immunity benefits (note: not complete herd immunity) are accruing at lower transmission levels than originally assumed. Likely due to population heterogeneity, as well as climate factors https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6505/846

Recognising this is important, but why?
The data has changed, but our strategy has only become more rigid. We are less tolerant of the virus within the general community despite a lower actual risk. Preliminary observations are supporting a view that the virus becomes significantly less deadly to the population once a level of natural immunity is established, but this is not discussed by our government or health leaders. They have not come back to the public to explain what is being observed overseas and how this deviates from initial fears.
Regardless, let us all agree that COVID-19 is too serious a threat to simply let it run wild without any mitigation whatsoever. In other words, the contrary position is not a “let it rip” proposition. In fact, that is a lazy strawman thrown around by people who simply want to maintain the narrative they have already established rather than engaging in the fact there are multiple options open to us (more on this soon).
Perspective on mortality and tolerance of mortality
To properly engage in a conversation around whether our current strategy is the right one, you would need to recognise that background mortality, and acceptance of that mortality, is a feature of life, every year, in every country.
As a developed nation and reasonably educated populace, we know a few truths I hope:

• Every year a percentage of the population will die from various causes. In Australia that is ~160,000 people per year based on recent years. Different years have different peaks. Some years have higher and lower mortality than others.
• We take action to attenuate overall mortality and improve quality of life, but our policy makers do in fact, put “a price” on whether those measures are “worth it”. This is how the government determines what medications and treatments it will fund or subsidise for example.

This is the point where someone yells that I am happy to “sacrifice the old” and there is “no cost too high to save a life”. This is nonsense thinking. Have these people been asleep in every single year prior to this one?
Our society works by balancing a range of factors associated with health outcomes, economics (wealth and prosperity), personal rights, cultural norms, etc. etc... Public policy weighs all these factors (not just one factor) and by extension attributes a value to the various factors. In the real world, where resources are limited and trade-offs are real, sensible policy will attribute a value to life and a quality life year:

“Based on international and Australian research a credible estimate of the value of statistical life is $4.9m and the value of statistical life year is $213,000 in 2019 dollars.”
https://www.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/publications/value-of-statistical-life-guidance-note_0_0.pdf

What is particularly interesting about COVID-19 is how unmoored the political and public narrative seems to be as compared to established public policy on mortality risk and risk aversion. From the Abelson paper ‘Establishing a Monetary Value for Lives Saved: Issues and Controversies’:

“Not surprisingly, willingness to pay to reduce the risk of death varies significantly with the type of death.”
https://www.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/publications/Working_paper_2_Peter_Abelson.pdf

COVID-19 currently holds a very special place in this regard. Governments, at least in Australasia, have had a sudden and massively increased willingness to incur unprecedented costs (not just financial expense) to reduce the risk of death. The appetite to do “whatever it takes” is not being applied simply to those who are truly at risk, but also to prevent any transmission to those who are not at much risk at all.

The estimated IFR is close to zero for children and younger adults but rises exponentially with age, reaching 0.4% at age 55, 1.3% at age 65, 4.5% at age 75, and 15% at age 85. We find that differences in the age structure of the population and the age-specific prevalence of COVID-19 explain 90% of the geographical variation in population IFR. Consequently, protecting vulnerable age groups could substantially reduce the incidence of mortality
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v4.full.pdf

When you stand back from it, the reaction by many western governments’ approaches towards COVID-19 has the strong appearance of moral hazard. Australia and New Zealand’s leaders stand out in this regard, with a “safety at any cost” attitude and an attachment to our early “success”.
These are very hard narratives to escape from. However, we must recognise that these leaders will not need to pay the actual cost – the people will and are. They will be able to say, “we defeated the virus” and “we kept you safe”, even if that supposed safety is only temporary, illusory and at enormous cost.
Are we being successful; by what standard?
People will generally preference what they see around them as being right and normal, looking towards the data that fits that picture and selecting data from examples of worse outcomes as the supposed alternative (everyone does this, so this isn't a claim against proponents of the current strategy). Australian’s undoubtedly have a narrative of success that is quite different to other countries around the world, but is it the best one? Could it be better?
It is very hard for one individual to attempt to process these questions and there is scant government information or resources being put into answering the question or exploring possible alternative approaches (there currently appears to be no political incentive to do so). To try and break outside of normal mode of thinking, let us keep it simple and start a discussion using a couple of overseas observations to guide us. Assume the following:

• Australia abandoned the idea of elimination early on (for whatever reason, it does not matter).
• Australia decided to take other mitigation actions, either as a national response or as states.
• Australia is now managing ongoing community transmission and consequent mortality risks.

What are a couple of experiences we could draw on?

• United States – widely derided as having a terrible response. Their states also controlled their responses, and most of their states did take actions to mitigate the virus. Some undertook severe lockdowns, others did not. Their mortality, to-date, is ~185K from a population of ~330M and annual background mortality of ~2.8m.
• Japan – centrally coordinated, very strong controls over aged-care facilities, minimally invasive measures of the rest of the population. ~1,300 deaths from a population of ~126.5M.

Both countries have ongoing community transmission and will need to “live with the virus”.
If Australia did “as poorly’ as the USA in our thought experiment, we would have approximately 14,000 deaths to-date. Much higher than our current deaths and about 9% of the deaths we would expect in a typical calendar year. Would mortality double over the subsequent six months? Likely not given current trends.
If we did “as well as” Japan, then we would have only 258 deaths.
So clearly, we already know there are alternative strategies, and we can have reasonable expectations of what the outcomes might be under a community transmission scenario. Of course, there is no reason that Australia would need to go down the USA path. Why not learn from the Japanese path? Why are they able to the protect aged-care, and yet we assume that we cannot? Why are they able to accept community transmission, and yet we cannot?
These are the questions we (and the media) should be asking of our leaders to answer. Instead, to date, many have largely bought into a narrative which essentially says ours is the best strategy and we must wait for a vaccine.
You have just got to have faith…
So, back to the vaccine. The narrative we are all working towards says that it will be “all good” once the vaccine arrives. Let us assume it is going to be here and ready to deploy in the first half of next year (I have a charity bet going with u/smileedude on this). All good right?
Except, it is not particularly likely that a vaccine, including our leading candidate vaccine (the Oxford vaccine), will confer sterilising immunity or full protective immunity for the population. It is more likely we see something like the following:

• A vaccine which is only effective for part of the population, probably the young and healthy who are already low risk.
• A vaccine which confers only some benefit to the at-risk population (i.e. elderly and immune compromised). Is the benefit going to be significantly different to what a natural level of immunity would confer?
• The continued transmission and spread of SARS-CoV-2, with COVID-19 forming part of background mortality.

So, then reflect. By that point been locked down and isolated for 12 months+. What happens when we re-open and COVID-19, influenza, and other communicable diseases, reach the elderly and at-risk populations? What level of mortality is acceptable in that scenario? Surely, we will need to take protective measures to maintain our goal on minimal excess mortality knowing that communicable disease will continue to circulate?
So, why aren’t we taking those steps now instead of putting all our hopes into a silver bullet? It seems that the political calculation is that we will not care about the consequences by that point.
Next time; cost versus benefit
I would like to continue this post with another that explores the costs of our strategy and how this compares to potential benefits.
… but I will have to leave that to next time.

This post has been inspired by this recent podcast featuring three of the biggest names in the Aussie FIRE blogging community, and the follow on discussions in the Aussie Firebug Facebook group about how much it costs to raise kids in Australia. As all three acknowledge they don’t have kids so it’s not something they really have any experience with.
As someone who has two young kids I thought it would be useful to write about it from my perspective. Obviously my situation isn’t the same as everyone else’s, there are plenty of people who would be horrified with how much we’ve spent, and others who would wonder how we manage to spend so little. Everyone’s situation is different, so what works for my family wouldn’t necessarily work or others.
My oldest child has only just started school this year so I can’t really speak from experience beyond the 0-5yo age range, but I’ll talk through some of the typical costs, what we have and haven’t spent money on so far, and what we’re anticipating in the future.
The costs people actually talk about The first two things that almost always come up when people start talking about the cost of babies are prams and carseats. Yes, you can spend a lot of money on these things if you want to, prams in particular. From a quick look at Baby Bunting the most expensive pram there is nearly 3 thousand dollars, and I’m betting that with a few accessories you can easily get over that mark.
No, you do not need to spend that much on a pram. Yes you can probably pick one up on the cheap from Kmart or Target etc for well under a hundred bucks, but it’s probably not going to be as sturdy or hold much of the gear you take with you. Happily a pram is also the sort of thing where you can pretty easily and safely pick one up secondhand or get a hand me down from someone else.
We bought a Babyzen Yoyo, which is basically a small sized pram although it still has enough storage room for us. It folds up so that you can take it on a plane as carry on luggage, is quite light, extremely maneuverable and very sturdy. I’ve taken it running plenty of times, it’s even got a Parkrun PB of 22:06!
This thing is absolutely gold. Unfortunately it’s priced as though it’s made of it as well. There wasn’t an option to get one second hand because it had only just been released so we had to pay full whack. I think we spent over a thousand dollars on it including all the accessories and the lie flat and sit up seats etc.
It was worth every cent. It’s been going for 5 years and 2 kids and is still in great shape, we’ve never had a problem with it at all. My wife tells me it is one of the best things I have ever bought her, although we both use it obviously.
And at the end of the day a one off cost of $1,000 for us as a family is going to have basically zero impact on when we hit FIRE. Plugging the numbers into a compound interest calculator and using 7% annual return over 30 years I miss out on $8,000, which is about a month worth of returns on my target portfolio. I can live with delaying retirement one month for about 5 cumulative years of having a really good pram that works great for us.
Similarly you can spend a fair chunk of money on car seats. This is one of those things that I wouldn’t want to get second hand because you can’t see if they’ve been broken or not and safety is a huge priority for us and presumably everyone else.
Happily car seats don’t tend to cost that much, you can pick one up for a couple hundred bucks or less pretty easily. If you do that it tends to be one for a much shorter age range, say 0-2yrs whereas I think you can get ones which will take your kid from 0-8 but they cost a lot more. In any case per kid you’re probably looking at a thousand bucks total, and this could easily be a lot less.
Again it’s not going to make any appreciable different to us reaching FIRE. So as easy as it is to point at this sort of stuff as being ridiculously expensive and over priced etc, it’s really not going to make much of a difference to most people. Sure you don’t want to spend any more money than you have to, but you also want to make sure you’re getting something that works for you.
The other one off costs There are also a bunch of one off costs for babies and young kids like cots, beds, mattresses, baby carriers etc. From what I’ve been told you want to buy a baby mattress new, but that’s only about a hundred bucks at Target, potentially cheaper elsewhere. We have an Ikea cot which cost about the same, you could easily get one second hand or likely for free just by asking around your friends who will probably be delighted to get it out of their house.
Some people do co-sleeping in which case you don’t need the cot and mattress although you may like to kid yourself that your baby will actually sleep in their own bed, maybe even through the night. It’s nice to pretend sometimes!
As kids get older you’ll need a proper bed for them, again you can probably pick this up second hand pretty cheap and a mattress can be easily had for a couple hundred bucks. So none of these things are really going to have much of an impact so long as you’re a decent saver already.
The big costs you see When you don’t have kids it can be great to live in a studio flat or one bedroom apartment in the inner city close to all the bars and restaurants and all the rest of it. You can stay in your local area and have plenty to keep you entertained, there is probably a supermarket nearby and plenty of public transport so you may not need a car either.
Once you have kids, it’s likely going to be a different story as your priorities change. It may be that you’re happy renting with kids, but lots of people tend to prioritise stability and security when they have kids and that means owning your own home in most cases. I’m not saying everyone will want this, but a lot of people will.
So now that you have kids you almost certainly want a second bedroom and if you’re planning on having more kids maybe a third or fourth etc. Obviously kids can share bedrooms for a while at least but sooner or later they will probably want their own space, as will you.
You’ll also be wanting parks with playgrounds nearby and somewhere you can easily take your kids for a walk or kick a football around, ideally in a good school district which can add a couple hundred thousand dollars to the cost all by itself if you’re in Sydney or Melbourne. And if you want to live somewhere cheaper but send the kids to a good private school, well that can cost anywhere from the low thousands to multiple tens of thousands per year.
Similarly if you didn’t have a car before, you will very likely want one now. I’ve mentioned before that we drive a base model Corolla which works just fine for us so far, but you’re still probably looking at $20k plus if you buy one new, mid teens if you want one used. If you want an SUV or a luxury model car, be prepared to fork out a lot more.
In the same vein if you were previously going on lots of holidays and plan to keep doing so, well you now have at least one more plane ticket to buy, might need a bigger hotel room etc. As I talked about in this post about big ticket items, that all comes at a real cost. We bought land and built a house, so I can say that we spent roughly $100,000 more on that than we would have otherwise.
The ongoing costs There are also a bunch of ongoing costs for kids as well. They need to be fed, they need clothes and shoes, they need medicine, and a bunch of other stuff that costs money. I wrote here about a bunch of things that we do to keep costs down, but the reality is that you still have to fork over a decent chunk of change.
On top of all that contrary to what you might have been told public school is not free, there are a bunch of things that you have to chip in for here as well. We’re not at the stage that we’re forking out a fortune in extra utility bills etc but we certainly use the washing machine a lot more than we would if we didn’t have kids, there are extra lights and tvs etc on so there are extra costs there as well.
There are also a bunch of extra items that you don’t really need to spend, but probably will. For us this includes stuff like swimming lessons, some sports like AusKick (AFL) and Junior Blasters (cricket), occasionally taking them to a theme park or zoo etc. They also get birthday and Christmas presents, and if they get invited to other kids parties they take a store bought gift with them.
The above is about what I think our 5yo costs us at the moment based on our spending, our 2yo is probably about two thirds of that due mostly to her not eating as much and not getting swimming lessons yet, as well as not being in school or doing sports.
I’ve left the holiday line blank because this is hugely variable. Last year we did a trip to the UK and it probably cost us about $3,000 extra between the two of them, next time it will be another couple thousand dollars more because the youngest one will need her own seat rather being on someone’s lap for the flights.
So our spending for our eldest is about two thirds of the costs quoted in this article for a 6yo girl, I would assume that apart from a boy maybe eating a bit more the costs should be fairly similar. The main difference compared to our costs seem to be education and transport.
Also, it was somewhat shocking to me just how expensive swimming lessons are! This is actually at our local council aquatic centre and is the cheapest in town. We do get to use the pool whenever we want, but that only tends to be once or twice a week at most. At least the lessons will hopefully only be for a few years for each child, although after that we may be forking out for something else instead.
The hidden cost of kids The biggest cost is often actually one that doesn’t show up as an expense, the opportunity cost of one parent giving up paid employment entirely for a while or doing part time hours (I’ve used the phrase giving up paid employment here because looking after kids and a house is definitely work!).
If we say that you’re giving up a full time paid job that’s at minimum wage of roughly $20 an hour for 40 hours a week, 48 weeks a year, then that’s $38,400 a year ($33,605 after tax and medicare levy) that the family is giving up for however long this goes on for. If you’d otherwise be earning more than that, then the opportunity cost each year is even higher. On top of that there is the hit to your career and future earnings, because those are definitely going to be impacted as well.
If you’ve got two kids that are separated by two or three years and you as a family want a parent at home until they go to school, well that’s 7 or 8 years of missing out on that money which works out as around $250k based on a full time minimum wage job. I’m pretty hopeful that my wife would be earning more than minimum wage as well so for us it’s even more than that. On the plus side, she gets to spend more time with the kids although that probably feels like a mixed blessing some of the time!
Alternatively if both parents want to keep working then there will likely be childcare costs for the first 4 or 5 years and then before and after school care, as well as missing out on spending time with their kids. Because we haven’t gone down this route I don’t know exactly how much it costs, I do hear plenty of stories about it being $100 a day minimum around where I live and it’s a lot more in capital cities. There are subsidies available for this, but you can pretty easily be spending tens of thousands each year on childcare while they’re young and then once they’re old enough before and after school care.
You may be lucky enough to have grandparents or other family nearby that are happy to help out with this if they live nearby, but that won’t apply to everyone and it’s unlikely to reduce the cost entirely.
The costs that are yet to come At the moment our kids are still young and fairly inexpensive. Between the two of them they tend to eat roughly what a grown adult eats, but from what I’ve been told that will change fairly dramatically as they get older. They’ll need new clothes more frequently, more shoes, potentially play more sports, go on more school excursions, you get the idea.
Education could be another factor. There is a public high school that will be built in the next few years quite close by, and assuming that it’s decent our kids will likely be going there. But if it’s not, then we’ll have to look into private schools which can cost anywhere from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands.
There will be extra curricular stuff as well. Given my wife and I are both horrible at music it seems unlikely that our kids will be doing extra lessons there, but there are plenty of other areas like sport or extra educational activities that we’d be considering. I know a few parents who have kids who are in elite sports programs (as in regional or state teams) and the costs here can very quickly add up, likewise if extra education is needed or wanted then that’ll be an extra expense.
Government and other assistance I know that depending on your circumstances that there can be government assistance in the form of Family Tax Benefit, childcare subsidy and possibly other programs as well. We don’t get any of these which is fine, we don’t need them and they are presumably meant to be for those who do. If you’re not sure if you should be getting any of these then Centrelink does have this payment finder.
We did get the one day a week Kinder program for 3yos and 3 days a week Kinder program for 4yos, although these both also came with costs of roughly $1,500 a year so it actually cost us money, again this is fine, just a reminder that it isn’t actually free.
Depending on your employer you may also be able to get parental leave for a while, and there is a minimum payment which they have to make so long as you’ve met some requirements. Some employers may also have some continuing support with subsidised childcare and the like. None of this was applicable to our situation but at least some of it will likely be available for others.
So what’s the bottom line? For us the biggest actual one off cost so far has been the bigger house and land that we purchased because we wanted our kids to be able to have plenty of space inside and outside the house. That cost about a hundred thousand dollars more than we would have paid if it were just the two of us. All the other stuff like a pram, car seats, cots/beds, mattresses and all the rest of it have been maybe $5,000 total, which is tiny by comparison.
The opportunity cost has been bigger than this though. When we had our first child when we were in Hong Kong my wife wasn’t working much anyway as there just weren’t that many jobs she could do and my wage easily supported both of us so she was doing some very casual part time work and so not doing that work afterwards didn’t impact us much.
In Australia though she probably would have been earning at least $40,000 a year after tax, so we’ve foregone almost $200,000 on an after tax basis there. Which as I’m sure you can imagine has a pretty big impact on when we will hit FIRE, particularly given we’ve got another few years or her not being in paid employment at all and then likely only working part time after that. So I would guess we’ll be looking at forgone earnings of at least $500,000 by the time all is said and done, and it could quite easily be a lot more.
The actual ongoing costs of the kids so far haven’t been too bad. Between the two of them it’s about $8,000 a year at the moment, although we would anticipate that this will go up a fair bit over time as they start eating more and getting into more extra curricular activities. I get that this is spending that isn’t a necessity, but do I really want my kids to miss out on a bunch of fun stuff so that I can retire a year or two earlier? No, no I do not.
So far the total costs look something like this. You can see that by far the biggest cost has been the earnings that we’ve missed out on because my wife has been at home looking after the kids and doing the household stuff (yes I do some of it because I think it’s important that we share the jobs and to role model stuff for the kids, but the reality is that she is at home a lot more than I am and does more of it). Buying a bigger house and land is next, and the actual costs of feeding and clothing and all the other one off stuff for the kids is a tiny proportion of the actual cost.
All up I’m hopeful that we can keep the ongoing costs to somewhere between $125k and $150k per child from birth through to age 18, although if private school is necessary then that will push up the costs a fair bit. This is less than half of what this article suggests, so although it sounds like a lot of money it’s actually fairly frugal by comparison.
To put it in perspective, it’s basically spending about 7 or 8 grand a year on each child. There are plenty of people out there who spend more than that on food alone, let alone the rest of their living expenses.
As I said earlier travel costs are on top of this, and this can increase the costs quite a lot! Travel is a huge part of the reason we’re pursuing HIFIRE, and we want to be taking the kids on plenty of holidays while they’re growing up.
That’s obviously discretionary spending to a large extent, but we do have close family living overseas who we want to see every couple of years or so, and it’s not fair to expect them to always be the ones travelling. I would guess that we’ll be looking at about $50k per kid in travel costs by the time they turn 18. That’s about 3 grand a year, which doesn’t sound wrong based on the cost of international travel. It may be less than that which would be great, but could also be a fair bit more.
So all up for the two kids we’re looking at about a million dollars from birth to age 18. About half of that is the foregone wages from not working, which is by far the biggest impact. The actual cost of the kids is about another 30%, then travel is 10%, another 10% for the bigger house and land. And then right at the end is less than 1% for the one off stuff like prams and baby seats and cots etc.
How could we spend less? Obviously there are other things we could be doing instead to keep the cost down. The biggest expense is the wages that aren’t being earned because my wife is looking after the kids and the household stuff. We could have chosen to have her work and instead pay for childcare and after school care etc.
If we did though then she wouldn’t get to spend as much time with the kids (which she tells would be welcome some of the time!) and there would be a lot more house work and shopping that would need to be done after work or on weekends for both of us, we’d potentially eat out more often as it’d be more of a hassle cooking meals each night, as well as a bunch of other tradeoffs.
So having her stay at home was our preferred method, and thankfully we’re in the financial position where we can afford to do it that way. Other people make different choices, or they’re unfortunately not in a position to make a choice, they need both partners working or if they’re a single parent have to do it this way.
We could have also gone with a smaller house and less of a backyard. I shared a bedroom with my brother for part of our childhood and we both managed fine. It’s not ideal, but it’s certainly doable, and we could have saved a lot of money by having a smaller house. Again we chose not to because we wanted a bigger house and a decent sized backyard for them to be able to run around in and we can afford it.
We don’t have to travel, although it’d be a bit rough expecting family to travel overseas to see us every year or two and then not reciprocating. Still, that would save a fair amount of money.
It’s pretty hard to say how things will work out with the actual costs of raising the kids. I know roughly what we’ve spent so far, but it’s pretty difficult to know what we’ll be spending in future as they get older. They’re likely to be eating a fair bit more food, s they grow they’ll need new clothes and shoes, they’ll presumably be playing sport and doing other extra curricular stuff which will all cost money.
$150k per kid from 0 to 18 seems like it’s a lot less than what it costs most people, but then we already live a fair bit more cheaply than most others so maybe it’s about right.
At the end of the day we’re happy with the choices that we’ve made so far, but there has certainly been some room to have spent less money than what we have, or to have had more money coming in through both of us being in paid employment. Obviously it has an impact on when we will hit our FIRE number, but I’d rather take a little bit longer to get there than to make different tradeoffs along the way.
Have you got kids or are thinking about having them? How do you think it will impact on your FIRE journey?
Original post with pretty charts, pictures, tables etc is here.

Disclosure - Big fan of Esports and in @ 1.86
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200820005020/en/Allied-Esports-GRID-Announce-Esports-Betting-Licensing
IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Allied Esports, a global esports entertainment company and a subsidiary of Allied Esports Entertainment, Inc. (NASDAQ: AESE), today announced a licensing agreement with GRID, a leading esports data provider, for the monetization of data and video rights to the company’s popular Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (“CS:GO”) Legend Series events. The multiyear deal will launch with the VIE.gg CS:GO Legend Series tournament beginning Monday, August 31, 2020.

“With a global network of properties and popular tournament brands endorsed by leading data platforms, Allied Esports is well positioned to be a major content provider for the projected $20 billion esports betting market.” Tweet this

Through the agreement, which also includes options to add supplementary programming from Allied Esports, GRID’s innovative, proprietary data solution will be directly integrated into Legend Series events to deliver real-time, official data to regulated bookmakers and sports betting platforms. The partnership, along with the licensing and sponsorship deal with naming rights partner VIE.gg, marks the first time Allied Esports will offer the use of data and video rights for the enhancement of regulated consumer betting.
“The interest and growth of esports wagering creates an incredible amount of value around secure, official statistics, and we’re excited to partner with GRID to deliver an enriched, data-driven version of our Legend Series events to an even broader audience,” said Frank Ng, CEO of Allied Esports Entertainment. “With a global network of properties and popular tournament brands endorsed by leading data platforms, Allied Esports is well positioned to be a major content provider for the projected $20 billion esports betting market.”
“Our vision to unlock the potential of official data and video from high-quality competitions by leveraging the digital nature of esports to provide value to the regulated betting market becomes realized when we partner with companies the likes of Allied Esports,” said Moritz Mauer, CEO of GRID Esports. “GRID and our clients are ecstatic to utilize GRID’s industry-leading platform to enhance the already stellar Legend Series.”
Created in 2017, Allied Esports’ original Legend Series tournament brand was designed to expand the competitive ecosystem and total prize pool for up-and-coming teams. The VIE.gg CS:GO Legend Series, which will feature 12 European teams competing online for €50,000 in total prize money and will be streamed live on twitch.tv/alliedesports August 31 through September 13, will be Allied Esports’ thirteenth edition of the Legend Series and sixth season of the CS:GO Legend Series. Additional versions of the series have previously included Overwatch, League of Legends, FIFA, COD Blackout and VALORANT.
About Allied Esports
Named one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company, Allied Esports International, Inc. is at the forefront of esports entertainment with a global network of properties designed to serve as competition battlegrounds, community experience hubs and content production centers.
Through direct operation or membership in the Allied Esports Property Network, the world’s first esports affiliate program, Allied Esports’ facilities span North America, Europe, China and Australia, and include the world-renowned HyperX Esports Arena Las Vegas, a fleet of mobile arenas, the HyperX Esports Trucks, and the HyperX Esports Studio in Hamburg, Germany.
Allied Esports’ properties serve as the home to a number of online and offline proprietary productions and events, including Friday Frags and Saturday Night Speedway, as well as original partner programs like the Simon Cup.
For more information about Allied Esports, visit AlliedEsports.gg and follow @AlliedEsports. Allied Esports International, Inc. is a subsidiary of Allied Esports Entertainment, Inc.
About Allied Esports Entertainment
Allied Esports Entertainment, Inc. (Nasdaq: AESE) is a global leader in esports entertainment, providing innovative infrastructure, transformative live experiences, multiplatform content and interactive services to audiences worldwide through its strategic fusion of two powerful brands: Allied Esports and the World Poker Tour (WPT). For more information, visit AlliedEsportsEnt.com.
About GRID
GRID is a technology-as-a-service platform designed to unlock the potential of esports data with the goal to improve fan experiences and contribute to the sustainability and growth of the esports ecosystem as a whole. GRID provides data services for over 70% of competitive esports, covering DotA 2, CS:GO, PUBG. Working hand-in-hand with rights holders to maximize the value of their official data assets, GRID protects partner competitions from malicious actors while ensuring competitive integrity. For additional information, visit grid.gg.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release includes “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the “safe harbor” provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. When used in this press release, the words “estimates,” “projected,” “expects,” “anticipates,” “forecasts,” “plans,” “intends,” “believes,” “seeks,” “may,” “will,” “should,” “future,” “propose” and variations of these words or similar expressions (or the negative versions of such words or expressions) are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, conditions or results, and involve a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other important factors, many of which are outside the control of us, that could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. Important factors, among others, that may affect actual results or outcomes include: our ability to execute on our business plan; our ability to retain key personnel; general economic and market conditions impacting demand for our products and services; adequacy of our funds for future operations; our future expenses, revenue and profitability; our ability to develop new products; our dependence on key suppliers, manufacturers and strategic partners; and industry trends and the competitive environment in which we operate. These and other risk factors are discussed in our reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We do not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

Introduction

Now that this summer's T20s are over, I think it'd be a good idea to evaluate how good England's T20I team actually is and what our best T20I team might be. Obviously, you are never going to get 100% agreement on this topic, but statistical analysis, while not a be-all and end-all, can certainly help us in this regard.
When I did this sort of analysis for England's all-time ODI team (you can read that here), I got quite a few criticisms for my methods. One of those criticisms was that I used ratios rather than z-values when comparing batsmen across eras, and another criticism was that I broke the stats down by specific position (i.e. opener, #3, #4 etc.) when it might have been better to break it down by more general position (i.e. opener, top order, middle order etc.).
The first criticism I feel is valid, whereas I'm not too sure about the second. I plan on redoing that analysis at some point and this post, in addition to being used to help determine England's best T20I team, is sort of a test run to see how my new (and hopefully improved) method will be received. What is that method, you ask?
I'll be taking the player's z-values for both batting average and for strike rate, and calculating the arithmetic mean of the two values to determine an overall 'batting rating' for the player, higher being better of course. The complaint I can already see some people having is that some positions in the batting lineup value strike rate more whereas some value batting average, and I think that's a fair point.
To that end, I will be breaking up the stats by position. Openers will remain as they are for obvious reasons. However, rather than taking stats at #3, #4, #5 etc., I will instead be taking stats at #3-#4, #4-#5, #5-#6 and #6-#7. This should hopefully give us a good indication of a batsman's ability in specialised positions while still allowing for fluidity. Without further ado, let us begin.
​

Openers

There has been much discussion over who England's opening batsmen should be in T20Is. First, here are the stats for non-English openers in T20Is since the start of 2015 (minimum five dismissals):
​

Batting average mean	Batting average standard deviation	Strike rate mean	Strike rate standard deviation
23.73	9.93	121.48	24.51

​
Now here are the stats for every England T20I opener with at least five dismissals since 2015:
​

Player	Batting average	Average z-value	Strike rate	SR z-value	BatRat
Jos Buttler	51.00	+2.747	157.73	+1.479	+2.113
Tom Banton	27.85	+0.415	151.16	+1.211	+0.813
Jason Roy	25.05	+0.133	148.69	+1.110	+0.622
Jonny Bairstow	25.00	+0.128	142.54	+0.859	+0.494
Alex Hales	20.61	-0.314	132.82	+0.463	+0.074

​
There are some very interesting observations to make here.
Firstly, a common argument against playing Buttler as T20I opener is that other batsmen can do as good of a job as he does up top, whereas no-one can do as good of a job as he does in the middle order. The second part of this argument will be investigated later, but since the start of 2015 at least, Buttler has been heads and shoulders above every other English opener.
Secondly, Roy and Bairstow seem practically interchangeable as far as averages go, but Roy has a much better strike rate since the start of 2015. If I could only choose one of the two then based on this table, Roy would seem the safer bet.
Thirdly, a statistical point to make is that looking at raw averages, it wouldn't appear as if Banton were much better than Roy and Bairstow. However, the variance in openers' averages for the past five (nearly six) years means that Banton actually does significantly better here. Of course, Banton hasn't played nearly as often as Roy and Bairstow have, which is the main argument against his inclusion over those two.
Finally, Hales' numbers actually shocked me. His overall record while opening is very good, but for almost six years now, he's been pretty average as far as T20I openers go. A lack of games isn't the issue either, as he has played the second-most innings at the top out of all the batsmen in the table, behind only Jason Roy. It's entirely possible that he'd have been dropped from the T20 team even if he hadn't fallen out with Morgan.
​

#3-#4

Here are the stats for all non-English batsmen with a minimum of five dismissals at positions #3 or #4 since the start of 2015:
​

Batting average mean	Batting average standard deviation	Strike rate mean	Strike rate standard deviation
24.87	10.06	118.66	21.93

​
Now here are the stats for all the England T20I batsmen with at least five dismissals at positions #3 or #4 since the start of 2015:
​

Player	Batting average	Average z-value	Strike rate	SR z-value	BatRat
Dawid Malan	52.45	+2.740	148.32	+1.353	+2.047
Jonny Bairstow	46.00	+2.099	159.72	+1.873	+1.986
Eoin Morgan	33.15	+0.822	151.22	+1.485	+1.154
Joe Root	37.50	+1.255	125.69	+0.321	+0.788
James Vince	26.22	+0.134	127.56	+0.406	+0.270

​
As expected, Dawid 'The T20 Bradman' Malan tops the list (although his overall average dipped below 50 in the most recent match against Australia, his average at these particular positions remains over 50). However, Bairstow does much better than I expected him to, although this is with the proviso that he barely squeaks into the list with exactly five dismissals in these two positions combined.
Morgan does pretty well here, but Root, while a good batsman in this role, doesn't appear to be as good as his competitors. His strike rate isn't actually that bad for the positions he's playing in, but other England batsmen are posting much higher strike rates with averages that are in some cases better than what Root offers. Vince also isn't actually that bad, but compared to everyone else, he isn't getting a look-in anytime soon.
​

#4-#5

Here are the overall stats:
​

Batting average mean	Batting average standard deviation	Strike rate mean	Strike rate standard deviation
24.13	9.92	120.72	21.31

​
And here are the stats for England batsmen since the start of 2015:
​

Player	Batting average	Average z-value	Strike rate	SR z-value	BatRat
Eoin Morgan	32.48	+0.841	146.64	+1.216	+1.029
Jos Buttler	28.85	+0.475	139.79	+0.895	+0.685
Ben Stokes	29.00	+0.491	127.19	+0.303	+0.397
Moeen Ali	15.50	-0.870	132.85	+0.569	-0.150

​
This is an easy one. Buttler hasn't batted in these positions since 2018 and both Stokes and Ali have just five and six dismissals in these positions since 2015 respectively (not that Ali's stats are that good anyway). This role belongs firmly to Captain Morgan, and the good thing is that he isn't much less comfortable at #4-#5 than he is at #3-#4.
​

Finishers (#5-#6)

MS Dhoni played most of his T20I innings at #5 and #6, so I think it's fair to say that these are the positions where you want to play your finisher (depending on the match situation, of course). Here are the aggregates for non-English batsmen since the start of 2015:
​

Batting average mean	Batting average standard deviation	Strike rate mean	Strike rate standard deviation
21.54	10.98	122.57	24.36

​
As you can see, batsmen in these positions have since the beginning of 2015 tended to average significantly lower but also score a little quicker. I don't think this is too surprising. Anyway, here are the stats for England batsmen in these positions during that timeframe:
​

Player	Batting average	Average z-score	Strike rate	SR z-score	BatRat
Moeen Ali	22.50	+0.087	156.97	+1.412	+0.750
Eoin Morgan	25.66	+0.375	133.52	+0.450	+0.412
Sam Billings	22.26	+0.066	136.32	+0.564	+0.315
Jos Buttler	22.46	+0.084	128.62	+0.248	+0.166
Ben Stokes	18.00	-0.322	130.12	+0.310	-0.006

​
Well, well, well. There is a lot to unpack here. I think it's fair to say that England doesn't really have a world-class finisher, but other than that, what else can we learn?
Firstly, Moeen Ali of all people has the best stats for England in these positions since the start of 2015. However, he's only been dismissed six times in these positions since that time, so sample size might be an issue here.
Secondly, Morgan is serviceable enough, but he is clearly far worse here than in the previous two positions. As captain, he might be willing to plug this gap at the expense of his personal stats, but I feel as if forcing him into a finisher role will be a waste of his talent.
Thirdly, the notion that no-one else can do what Buttler does in these positions is clearly nonsensical. Moeen and Morgan have been better than him in both metrics for nearly six years and even Billings seems to be a better option here. In fact, Buttler has the lowest strike rate in the entire list. If he is forced into batting at #5-#6 then England will be completely wasting his immense talent as far as I'm concerned.
Finally, these positions are where Stokes tends to play, yet he clearly isn't good at being a finisher. I'm not even kidding when I say that on his batting alone, he wouldn't get in past Billings, and Billings is supposedly part of the B-team. If Stokes is to bat then it must be higher up than #6, and it's debatable if he would displace Morgan.
​

#6-#7

Finally, we have the boundary between the middle order and the tail. These positions probably won't contain a specialist batsman, but whoever's playing here should be able to bat with some degree of competence in my opinion. Here are the aggregate stats since the start of 2015:
​

Batting average mean	Batting average standard deviation	Strike rate mean	Strike rate standard deviation
18.03	8.98	121.79	23.22

​
As you might have expected, players in these positions don't tend to be as good with the bat. Now let's do England players since the start of 2015:
​

Player	Batting average	Average z-score	Strike rate	SR z-score	BatRat
Sam Billings	22.21	+0.466	138.83	+0.734	+0.600
Moeen Ali	18.77	+0.083	144.44	+0.975	+0.529
Ben Stokes	13.71	-0.481	145.45	+1.019	+0.269
David Willey	11.00	-0.782	126.92	+0.221	-0.562
Lewis Gregory	7.00	-1.228	116.66	-0.221	-0.724

​
At this point, we are realistically going to have to consider factors such as bowling if we're only interested in seeing who gets into the team, but I think it's fair to say that you want a bowler who can bat a bit to come in these positions.
England could, of course, play Sam Billings as specialist batsman at #7 if they so wish. He's actually better at #6-#7 than at #5-#6, but whether England want to play a specialist batsman that low is another matter.
Moeen, for all the criticism he gets, is actually pretty handy with the bat. Unlike Billings, he actually bats better at #5-#6, although he has batted far more innings at #6-#7 than at #5-#6. I'm not too confident playing Stokes here, if I'm honest; it seems like the lower he bats, he worse he gets.
Willey only has six dismissals in these positions, and to my understanding, he actually opens in domestic T20. His batting talent is clearly being wasted this low down. That goes even more for Gregory, although he's only had five dismissals here.
​

Conclusion

Looking at those above tables, it isn't particularly easy to construct a Top Seven for T20Is. However, I'll give it a shot anyway, though it'll no doubt be controversial. Here it is:
​
Jos Buttler
Tom Banton/Jason Roy
Jonny Bairstow
Dawid Malan
Eoin Morgan
Moeen Ali/Sam Billings
Moeen Ali/Sam Billings
​
Mo and Billings are interchangeable, and Roy's experience means that I'm not sure if Banton's in the Best XI yet (though his stats so far are pretty good). I'm quite uneasy with Malan at #4 (he's batted one innings in that position and scored 11) but the alternative would be to drop Bairstow and move everyone else up the order (I have no problem with Morgan at #4, but without Stokes at #5, I fear the middle order would be too fragile).
In fact, let's do that right now:
​
Jos Buttler
Tom Banton/Jason Roy
Dawid Malan
Eoin Morgan
Moeen Ali/Sam Billings
Moeen Ali/Sam Billings
???
​
Not the most balanced lineup, I have to say. We're relying quite a bit on our top order there to get the runs. Let's see what it looks like if we add Stokes at #5:
​
Jos Buttler
Tom Banton/Jason Roy
Dawid Malan
Eoin Morgan
Ben Stokes
Moeen Ali/Sam Billings
Moeen Ali/Sam Billings
​
Now that's much better. While I don't think that Stokes is a particularly good T20I batsman, I can see why so many England fans want him back: Without him, our batting lineup isn't well-balanced bar our openers and Eoin Morgan. Until we get a proper finisher, we need Stokes at #5 just to provide some stability.
The big conclusion for me, though, is that Buttler has to open. There are frankly better options than him in the middle order and the other openers just aren't on his level. Not playing Universe Jos at the top of the order would be an utter waste of his ability, in my opinion.
Anyway, that's what I think England's best T20I batting lineup is. I have to be honest, I'm still not sure I've got it entirely right, but I just don't see how the alternatives would be better. Still, maybe I'm missing something. I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks of this conundrum. Next time, I'll tackle the bowling. Oh, goodie.

Crikey Election Predictions

It’s been quite a hectic campaign, with candidates violating covid restrictions, lively debates, with a strong Liberal campaign across the lower house, being countered by a strong SDP and CLP campaign in the upper house, this election is extremely close, and a few key seats are deciding the election. Crikey will be using 4 different categories to rank seats. Safe: outcome is nearly certain Likely: strong, but not certain advantage Lean: slight advantage Tossup: no advantage Crikey aims to have no seat as a tossup, but with an electorate poll only in Denison and Sydney, that may be hard.
So let’s get into it!

Pearce

Incumbent MP: NGSpy (SDP) Candidates: NGSpy (SDP), Umatbru (LP) Endorsements: SDP - (CLP, tobycool2001_1, Explosivo2002) LP - (AD)
Pearce, the only seat in Western Australia, held by the Prime Minister, SDP Leader NGSpy. With an extremely high approval rating, alongside a strong campaign, this looks good for the incumbent here. Umatbru, the Liberal Candidate had a moderate campaign, and was able to receive an Australian Democrats Endorsement, but umatbru’s campaign couldn’t match the campaign of RMSteve last election, who despite running an extremely strong campaign, wasn’t able to unseat NGSpy. Crikey is predicting an SDP hold, with a slightly increased margin.
Crikey Predicts: Safe SDP Hold

Lingiari

Incumbent MP: VACANT Candidates: Anacornda (CLP), nmtts- (LP) Endorsements: CLP - (SDP, AD, Explosivo2002, lieseocia_) LP - (tobycool2001_1)
We see former Senator for the Northern Territory, Anacornda, face off against previous Liberal candidate for Moncrieff, nmtts- for the seat of Lingiari, representing the entire Northern Territory. In recent history, Lingiari has been a key seat to flip, not staying with the same MP since BloodyChrome held it until January 2020. Nmtts- has impressed in the house recently, bringing debate commonly to there, so he may have some name recognition in the community. Anacornda, returning slightly more recently to politics, but with a history in the area and in the parliament, their name would be just as recognisable. With a very equal campaign from both sides here, an important factor to consider is endorsements. The CLP have received an endorsement from their coalition partner and from the Australian Democrats. This is probably what swings the seat towards the Country Labor Party. Crikey feels confident to call Lingiari for the CLP, but there is still a chance this falls to the Liberals.
Crikey Predicts: Lean CLP Gain

Mayo

Incumbent MP: VACANT Candidates: RMSteve (LP), coolstan (CLP) and liesocia (IND) Endorsements: LP - (AD, tobycool2001_1) CLP - *(SDP) liesocia_ - (MBOM, Explosivo2002)
Again in a seat that can’t seem to keep the same MP for an election cycle, a vacant seat is up for grabs, and the Liberals look in the prime spot to win. RMSteve has run a strong campaign, albeit not as strong as his Pearce endeavour, but a campaign that has been far exceeding his opponents. Only a few visual ads from liesocia_ and while the Christmas video and Rap may have been entertaining, cool_stan has little to no name recognition, as opposed to RMSteve. While the SDP endorsement of the CLP gives them a boost, and the Independent preferences will go the CLP way, we find it hard to see how this couldn’t go Liberal.
Crikey Predicts:Safe LP Gain

Capricornia

Incumbent MP: ARichTeaBiscuit (SDP) Candidates: ARichTeaBiscuit (SDP), Matris4565 (LP), model-david (CLP) Endorsements: LP - (tobycool2001_1) CLP - (AD)
Capricornia, held by the SDP’s ARTB since April, winning it from the Liberal MP, TheAudibleAsh. ARTB was able to fight off an immense challenge from the former PM, Riley8583, which saw ARTB hold the seat aided by the CLP preferences. We saw another strong campaign from both political sides, here. The CLP were a no-show on the campaign trail, but did receive an endorsement from the Democrats. With an almost equal campaign, but one that probably favours ARTB, added with the name recognition and preferences, we feel this is a safe SDP hold.
Crikey Predicts: Safe SDP Hold

Moncrieff

Incumbent MP: Riley8583 (LP) Candidates: Riley8583 (LP), Afraid-Range (CLP) Endorsements: LP - (tobycool2001_1) CLP - (AD, SDP)
Moncrieff, held by founder of the AFP, My13InchDuck, and then being won again for the AFP under Riley8583 at a by-election, as Moncrieff proves itself as conservative heartland. A surprisingly strong campaign has been run by a new face in politics, Afraid_Range from the Country Labor Party, highlighting areas where Riley8583 has supposedly failed the electorate. Despite this, Riley8583 is well known in the political game, and Crikey believes he has the edge going into this, but we wouldn’t think it impossible for an upset to happen here.
Crikey Predicts: Likely LP Hold

Brisbane

Incumbent MP: superpacman04 Candidates: superpacman04 (LP), Zak6858 (AD) Endorsements: LP - (tobycool2001_1) AD - (SDP)
Brisbane, held by superpacman04, winning it in a by-election after PineappleCrusher_ was ejected for inactivity. Superpacman04 faces a minor challenge from former Brisbane MP, Zak6858, aided by an SDP endorsement but Crikey cannot see this seat flipping.
Crikey Predicts: Safe LP Hold

Cowper

Incumbent MP: mikiboss (SDP) Candidates: mikiboss (SDP), Greejatus (LP) Endorsements:
Cowper, being won in a surprise upset last election, to the SDP looks to stay that way. Cowper had a quiet campaign, with a few posters from the Liberals, and 2 community events and 2 posters from the SDP. mikiboss has great recognition and approval in the community, and Crikey cannot see this seat changing hands this election.
Crikey Predicts: Safe SDP Hold

Cunningham

Incumbent MP: stranger195 (LP) Candidates: stranger195 (LP), apth10 (SDP)
Held by Stranger since April, again a quiet campaign, very little from the SDP candidate here. Stranger took the time to run national ads, which should help the senate campaign, as he is at no risk of losing this seat.
Crikey Predicts: Safe LP Hold

Robertson

Incumbent MP: Jayden_Williamson (AD) Candidates: Jayden_Williamson (AD), Plupsnup (CLP), SurfingNooty (LP) Endorsements: AD - (SDP)
This is a key seat for this election, a strong 3 way race. Incumbent Jayden_Williamson has been the target of attack from both the CLP and LPA. The important factors to look for here is endorsements and preferences, because in such a competitive race, no candidate will win this on first preferences. Crikey predicts that Jayden will end up ahead on the first preference count, but it’s a coin toss if the CLP or LPA come into second place. Liberal preferences are favouring Plupsnup, but whether we see the voters follow that HTV is up to them, as they may prefer a centrist to a centre-leftist. The CLP is preferencing the AusDems. It’s really a question of who comes last, and where their preferences will flow. Crikey predicts that Jayden has a VERY slight edge here, but it’s really too close to call.
Crikey Predicts: Lean AD Hold

Sydney

Pretty safe bet here with predicting Sydney will be held by yet another Independent, receiving SDP and AD endorsement. Running a very strong campaign against a perennial Liberal Candidate, Crikey see this as a safe Independent Hold.
Crikey Predicts: Safe IND Hold

Nicholls

Edenhopestan recontesting this time for the Liberal Party, opposed to last election, campaigning against them. Yet again on West Wimmera Statehood. She has run a average campaign, but hasn’t face much opposition, so Crikey predict this seat will fall Liberal.
Crikey Predicts: Safe LP Gain

Hotham

Another extremely close race, this is anyone’s game except the Liberal Candidate, vosler. Tobycool2001_1 has returned to politics, and is seeking election against MBOM, running as a Libertarain, local independent, and the Incumbent Deladi0. It’s very hard to call this seat with almost equal campaigns. The CLP have endorsed MBOM, and the SDP have endorsed tobycool2001_1. Liberals preferences will head the way of Toby, but Crikey really couldn’t call this seat. It’s all up to first preferences, and with no polls, it’s almost impossible.
Crikey Predicts: Too Close to Call

Melbourne

NeatSaucer, also known as Pav, is seeking re-election here, and with a scandal from the Liberal candidate, violating covid-19 restrictions, in addition to a strong campaign, we can only see this seat going SDP.
Crikey Predicts: Safe SDP Hold

Denison

A seat that may well decide the government, we have Independent turned SDP incumbent, dyljam, fighting against Liberal Leader, Griffonomics. Griffonomics and Dyljam have run strong campaigns, and the SDP has received AD endorsements, but considering the popularity of the Liberal Leader, and also the vital preferences, this seat is leaning slightly Liberal. The electorate may not take nicely to the seat hopping from the Liberal Leader, so there is definitely an SDP chance. The SDP have had both the PM and DPM visit Tasmania, in hopes that could swing the poll that had the LP at 57% on the TPP. Only time will tell.
Crikey Predicts: Lean LP Gain

Canberra

Another seat that may decide our next government, the SDP are running former senator lily-irl against long time Liberal candidate Kisakuwu. Both candidates have run strong campaigns, and Liberal leader Griffonomics released a signature video advertisement. We see this slighting leaning Liberal, but don’t be surprised to see the SDP hold this. The AD have endorsed the SDP here, which may provide the key swing to hold this seat, but I really don’t know!
Crikey Predicts Lean LP Gain

Senate

It’s been another relatively active senate campaign from the SDP, and quite a few appearances from the CLP too. The Liberal Senate team have run a lackluster campaign, but have aided by Stranger195’s National Ads. The AusDems weren’t to be seen until the 3rd day of campaigning, with a national video advertisement being released, and then BloodyChrome announcing his candidacy for the seat. Crikey see 2 possible outcomes. SDP: 1 CLP: 1 LP: 1 AD: 1
Or SDP: 2 LP: 1 CLP: 1
It's
Whatever the government, fierce negotiation is needed to happen between all the parties in the senate to pass key legislation.
House Prediction/Summary

LP - 7 - Denison, Nicholls, Canberra, Brisbane, Moncrieff, Cunningham, Mayo

SDP - 4 - Melbourne, Cowper, Pearce, Capricornia

AD - 1 - Robertson

IND - 1 - Sydney

TCTC - Hotham

Senate
SDP: 1 LP: 1 CLP: 1 AD: 1
That’s been Crikey’s election predictions!