Given the typically disproportionate cost of housing in most areas, I'm in favour of utterly massive protectionism/nationalization of housing infrastructure and other non-tradable goods fundamental to human need; disallow all speculative investment in property (foreign or otherwise), voila, instant price drops and quality of life increase for anyone who doesn't already own a home.
What isn't usually mentioned in discussions like this are the resulting lack of returns on investment on behalf of future retirees, but to be honest, I can't imagine why anyone would rationally expect an economy to be stable enough that they could plan not to work for 40+ years of their life - looking around the world, this delusion is almost exclusively a Western phenomenon; there are other valid models.
disallow all speculative investment in property (foreign or otherwise), voila, instant price drops and quality of life increase for anyone who doesn't already own a home.
Well, that or massive shortages and black market sublets. I agree that housing is way too expensive, but before coming up with new ways to solve it with central planning, how about fixing the central planning that's a primary cause of the problem (e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4032046).
Why I haven't seen more user-focused applications of graphs is really beyond me (PersonalBrain being a rare, if woefully inadequate, exception). Despite how much effort is expended in the infrastructure, I really don't think we need to build out the semantic web before people can benefit hugely from creating personal ontologies, organizing their thoughts and lives without the useless intermediary of linear text.
Low cost of entry means anyone can try any number of ideas with minimal investment. Commoditization means all of those ideas will be the same, thereby lowering the value of the idea.
What isn't usually mentioned in discussions like this are the resulting lack of returns on investment on behalf of future retirees, but to be honest, I can't imagine why anyone would rationally expect an economy to be stable enough that they could plan not to work for 40+ years of their life - looking around the world, this delusion is almost exclusively a Western phenomenon; there are other valid models.