Anablog

Speaking of futile gestures, this article describes how the state of Arizona is trying to ban the website Zillow.com, a great site you should check out. Zillow is a mash-up of Google earth and real estate listings. If you click on a particular house you can see the Microsoft photo database of an angled view of the house and that can be viewed from the four cardinal directions. The house-detail page also shows a price history and you can further compare the history to the county history. The history shows the huge bubble in prices that hit in 2005 and 2006. What has the realtors (registered trademark, as they always remind us) upset is that Zillow estimates the price of homes. The realtors (registered trademark, as they always remind us) say that Zillow needs an appraiser’s license to do this. Now you see the purpose of most government regulation—to favor the big players and discriminate against the small guy, all at your expense. I hope my pals at the Institute for Justice gets a hold of this. My software buddy Dave Mathis insists the entire real estate profession is based on keeping people ignorant. Keeping buyers ignorant about the market, keeping sellers ignorant about the market and keeping both ignorant about the family jewels, the MLS listing. After trying to sell my dear departed mother’s house this last year I can assure you that all the skills and salesmanship of realtors (registered trademark, as they always remind us) is not in selling the house, it is in getting the seller to lower the price. Well, the Internet is all about ending ignorance, so it is no wonder that the Realtors (registered trademark, as they always remind us) hate the Internet and are trying to ban it. They will have about as much luck as the music companies trying to ban file sharing.

Similar lawyer-pig behavior happened when the Texas bar tried to ban Nolo Press websites that help you do legal filings. They said Nolo needed to be a lawyer to do this. What a pack of lies. My pals at Halt got a hold of that one and made Texas back down. Sorry to the people that think they can get the government to pass laws that give them special favors, this stuff will not stand. (BTW, check out the Nolo books on filing your own patents.)

In case you are wondering, the word privilege comes from Latin, privis, meaning private and legis meaning law. Some people want private law that favors them at our expense. This is America, folks, go to Soviet Russia, North Korea or any fascist dictatorship if you want the government to give some people special treatment at the general expense of the population.