A) Because I paid alot for the CPAs, tax lawyers, private letter rulings and case law.
B) Actually talking about it to those struggling with taxes would result in them noticing they can't participate any more than driving to the neighboring municipality for cheaper gas tax, instead of anything more convenient, and could result in the tax laws changing from their widespread annoyance.
C) tax clickbait publishers like ProPublica won't figure it out for them for another two decades, which is long enough.
This reminds me of a set of poems, Knots, by R.D. Laing, the first of which goes: > They are playing a game > They are playing, at not playing a game > If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me. > I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game. It's a lovely collection, and though I haven't thought about it recently, I think there's a lot of value in considering these kinds…
I shall break the rules and they will punish me
~Julian Assange
>You are "pushing a view that has absolutely no advantage to anyone". Really? I'm of the opinion that doing less, working less, and doing things like having your own garden would lead to much greater health and happiness for the average person. The only way I can see "no advantage" is when viewed through the lens of modern capitalism, then my suggestions are certainly blasphemous.
It's not they're blasphemous, it's that there's no clear way to incentivize a critical mass to change their behavior. Put another way: the destination is clear enough, but how to get there isn't. Reminds me a bit of nuclear disarmament.
Exactly, it is more the transition that is impossible rather than the end state. You can't tell people to give up international travel, visiting family members, eating non-local foods, air conditioning, and the overwhelming majority of society's leisure activities and replace it all with gardening. Maybe that is a desirable end result that would be healthier for both humanity and the planet, but there is no way to get there voluntarily. That is just asking people to give up too much.
Reading this gave me a kind of horrifying idea that goes something like: You know about a deadly disease whose most serious outcomes can be avoided by getting a shot. Many members of a group in your society have decided they don't want to get the shot. You are annoyed by the way they talk about a lot of things, including the way they talk about avoiding the shot. They, in turn, call you "smug" for the way your group…
Consider that causing 1% of the group's population to die might not weaken the group and in fact might make the group stronger.
Disease doesn't kill "weaker" members of a group, it kills susceptible ones.
The Spanish Flu notably had a much higher mortality amongst younger, healthier people.
Reading this gave me a kind of horrifying idea that goes something like: You know about a deadly disease whose most serious outcomes can be avoided by getting a shot. Many members of a group in your society have decided they don't want to get the shot. You are annoyed by the way they talk about a lot of things, including the way they talk about avoiding the shot. They, in turn, call you "smug" for the way your group…
I keep my tax plans secret. A) Because I paid alot for the CPAs, tax lawyers, private letter rulings and case law. B) Actually talking about it to those struggling with taxes would result in them noticing they can't participate any more than driving to the neighboring municipality for cheaper gas tax, instead of anything more convenient, and could result in the tax laws changing from their widespread annoyance. C) ta…
I don't talk about my side gig for the same reason.
If it was widely hyped among the people who have the capital to enter it all the money would be driven out of it.
Reading this gave me a kind of horrifying idea that goes something like: You know about a deadly disease whose most serious outcomes can be avoided by getting a shot. Many members of a group in your society have decided they don't want to get the shot. You are annoyed by the way they talk about a lot of things, including the way they talk about avoiding the shot. They, in turn, call you "smug" for the way your group…
Some part of modern consumption however is not really making lives any more enjoyable at all, for instance all the low quality clothes and items sold in large quantities to fill some internal void for people for a short while. If there was for instance a carbon tax on the raw materials and transport then I’m fairly sure the price difference between high quality and low quality items would become minimal so people wou…
>to fill some internal void for people for a short while. You just answered your own point there. It makes people happy. Maybe that feeling is fleeting, but it is still a good feeling that people will not give up voluntarily unless there are no other options. >If there was for instance a carbon tax on the raw materials and transport then I’m fairly sure the price difference between high quality and low quality items…
Nah, I don't buy that.
People wouldn't be "giving up" anything for the benefit of the planet by not buying a new pair of shoes every month or something.
It would actually be for their own benefit to be more content.
That's kind of the whole problem, the people who would lose are the sellers and advertisers who cultivate the insecurities in discontent people for their own benefit, not the consumers.
> The absolute best thing for the Planet would be for every human being to do nothing at all. The planet doesn't care what lives on it or if anything lives at all. There is no best for the planet outside of goals humans set for it. > It's so odd that all our frantic doing is what's thrown the Planet out of balance The planet has never been in balance. And even if we stop anthropogenic climate change something else wi…
FYI, when people are talking about helping "the Planet" they're not talking about lifeless rocks, they're talking about preserving the diversity of life on the Planet. And by balance I mean not precipitating another extinction event. Sure, they're going to happen anyway eventually, but we probably shouldn't cause an extra one if we don't have to...
Humans might indeed cause one or more large extinction events, but there are also several known causes (and perhaps many more unknown ones we could discover) of large extinction events which seem to be unpreventable except through the actions of humans (or another intelligent and technological species). If you were to permanently halt all technological progress now, or perhaps revert to before nuclear weapons or even before the industrial revolution, you could prevent extinction events from, say, human-caused climate change, nuclear war, or Skynet. But you'd also effectively guarantee some other eventual extinction event, perhaps from an asteroid impact, a supernova, or any number of phenomena we haven't even discovered yet.
Reading this gave me a kind of horrifying idea that goes something like: You know about a deadly disease whose most serious outcomes can be avoided by getting a shot. Many members of a group in your society have decided they don't want to get the shot. You are annoyed by the way they talk about a lot of things, including the way they talk about avoiding the shot. They, in turn, call you "smug" for the way your group…
Consider that causing 1% of the group's population to die might not weaken the group and in fact might make the group stronger.
He’s effectively describing Trump’s leaked plan to let covid ravage blue urban areas before the election, but here framing it as a liberal plot as a narrative device
Maybe he’s a Republican astroturfer
Someone just learned the root language of real human economics taught to us as abstractions through story and pie chart.