Anyone who owns a home probably paid a different price for their house than the government assessed for the purposes of land tax.
That isn't fraud, it's just how it is. You don't pay the city for your house, you pay the current owner, and the current owner accepts market rate, not the price the government has deemed your house worth.
We aren't yet living in a soviet utopia, so when the government says your property is worth one value, that isn't the actual price. The actual price is based on what the current owner is willing to take and what you are willing to pay. Then you go to the bank (you know, the ones with billions of dollars and entire buildings filled with risk assessment people), and they look at your property and say "ok, the amount you're asking us for is about right" and then they lend you the money.
I strongly doubt that Jon Stewart, if he has a mortgage, paid the city assessment for his property. He probably, like the rest of us, paid the market rate which was probably quite different. I wonder if he'd be willing to be fined millions of dollars for his "fraud"?
That isn't fraud, it's just how it is. You don't pay the city for your house, you pay the current owner, and the current owner accepts market rate, not the price the government has deemed your house worth.
We aren't yet living in a soviet utopia, so when the government says your property is worth one value, that isn't the actual price. The actual price is based on what the current owner is willing to take and what you are willing to pay. Then you go to the bank (you know, the ones with billions of dollars and entire buildings filled with risk assessment people), and they look at your property and say "ok, the amount you're asking us for is about right" and then they lend you the money.
I strongly doubt that Jon Stewart, if he has a mortgage, paid the city assessment for his property. He probably, like the rest of us, paid the market rate which was probably quite different. I wonder if he'd be willing to be fined millions of dollars for his "fraud"?
Libertarianism works as a general philosophy that sits in a basket of governing philosophies, but can’t work well on its own.
First, we live in the least libertarian era of all time. Taxation at the level we see would be considered tyrannical, kings would hang for the level of taxation we see. Governments micromanage our lives to an extent previous eras couldn’t possibly imagine. When people try to imagine a more libertarian world, it isn’t really possible at this point because government is so baked in.
Second, corporations are government entities. They exist as entities because government created that superstructure. It could change that superstructure and has, to make them more powerful. When people say “government need to control everything because corporations will otherwise” it’s a misnomer since they’re both government.
The world would be a lot better with much less government. There’s been times when more than one dollar of government money is spent for every dollar spent by the private sector. This has a destructive effect on the world. Even in the so-called “private sector”, the largest companies are the companies best able to leverage government largesse, not the companies best able to sell products and services to customers. People are pissed off at Elon Musk, but internet companies like PayPal grew on government, Tesla was built by government dollars and its stock price is puffed up by inflation, SpaceX is almost exclusively selling to governments, it’s a veneer for taking taxpayer dollars. Same with most other massive companies.
Now part of that basket is also going to be popular social programs whether I like it or not -- for example, the fact that the current government of Canada is evil and incompetent doesn't have any bearing on the fact that the single payer healthcare is quite popular. There are public goods that are worth pooling resources to create, and even libertarians believe in some common goods such as military.
That being said, there are good arguments against government too.
Single payer healthcare doesn't mean government run healthcare. It means that the market provides insurance and it is paid for by the government. The individual actors are private entities with their own freedom.
Progressives believe that capitalism creates greed, and that's backwards: Greed always exists, under every single system. The thing capitalism does is it systematizes it. If you want more, then under capitalism you have to do something to get more, and that usually means serving others in some way. Under most other systems, if you want more then you just need to step on innocent people.
Free market capitalism without the burdens of government tend to be blind. Minorities got power through commerce long before governments or universities recognized that those people could be useful if empowered. Women got jobs before they got the vote, and so on. People talk about the "Jim Crow south", but Jim Crow laws were laws, not anything imposed by capitalism or business. Just getting out of the way was what needed to happen.
Often the people who do a thing are the people who know the most about how to do a thing. State planning has in eras like ancient egypt and ancient sumer been able to engage in large scale planning that worked for a long time, but first, the megastates that formed were unable to deal with changing conditions such as we saw during the bronze age collapse, and when those states fell the individuals were powerless to help themselves, leading to mass suffering. We also know that many times bureaucrats aren't competent, and so the most manmade deaths in history didn't happen during some war, they happened due to central state planning by incompetent bureaucrats. When left to their own devices through mechanisms like liberalism, instead of being harmed, individuals found ways to thrive.
Many people think our anti-libertarian utopia is perfect, but in reality there are some very bad indicator -- according to many scholars, we're facing birthrates well below replacement levels in the majority of the world's countries -- Asia, Europe, Australia, North and South America, with the only region with lots of population growth being Africa, and I've heard reasonable arguments that such conditions are going to be temporary and are being bolstered in part by material conditions brought about by the massive amount of capital held by baby boomers who are slowly having to liquidate that wealth to live off of. Some really rough times are going to be ahead, with relatively tiny youth populations having to support multiple retirees, and an overproduction of elites who are all jockeying for power in a system that's already top heavy. We're in an era where Gen Z (and presumably Gen Alpha after them) are facing historic levels of mental illness and historically low levels of wellness by several measures. The whole world order is about to change, and it'll probably be into something completely different in response to the catastrophic failures of the bureaucratic state.
My hope is that the next phase will look at the eras of massive governments and reject that, bringing something considerably more libertarian. People cannot live by money alone, and we need connections to the people around us, to our local communities, to our spiritual sides, and I don't think you get any of that by relinquishing control to a heartless soulless bureaucratic machine.
That being said, you can't just eliminate government. The times libertarianism works is when you don't need government, and that happens when you have institutions other than government that are strong, such as religion or other social institutions that can bring people together and help support prosocial actions and oppose antisocial actions.
First, we live in the least libertarian era of all time. Taxation at the level we see would be considered tyrannical, kings would hang for the level of taxation we see. Governments micromanage our lives to an extent previous eras couldn’t possibly imagine. When people try to imagine a more libertarian world, it isn’t really possible at this point because government is so baked in.
Second, corporations are government entities. They exist as entities because government created that superstructure. It could change that superstructure and has, to make them more powerful. When people say “government need to control everything because corporations will otherwise” it’s a misnomer since they’re both government.
The world would be a lot better with much less government. There’s been times when more than one dollar of government money is spent for every dollar spent by the private sector. This has a destructive effect on the world. Even in the so-called “private sector”, the largest companies are the companies best able to leverage government largesse, not the companies best able to sell products and services to customers. People are pissed off at Elon Musk, but internet companies like PayPal grew on government, Tesla was built by government dollars and its stock price is puffed up by inflation, SpaceX is almost exclusively selling to governments, it’s a veneer for taking taxpayer dollars. Same with most other massive companies.
Now part of that basket is also going to be popular social programs whether I like it or not -- for example, the fact that the current government of Canada is evil and incompetent doesn't have any bearing on the fact that the single payer healthcare is quite popular. There are public goods that are worth pooling resources to create, and even libertarians believe in some common goods such as military.
That being said, there are good arguments against government too.
Single payer healthcare doesn't mean government run healthcare. It means that the market provides insurance and it is paid for by the government. The individual actors are private entities with their own freedom.
Progressives believe that capitalism creates greed, and that's backwards: Greed always exists, under every single system. The thing capitalism does is it systematizes it. If you want more, then under capitalism you have to do something to get more, and that usually means serving others in some way. Under most other systems, if you want more then you just need to step on innocent people.
Free market capitalism without the burdens of government tend to be blind. Minorities got power through commerce long before governments or universities recognized that those people could be useful if empowered. Women got jobs before they got the vote, and so on. People talk about the "Jim Crow south", but Jim Crow laws were laws, not anything imposed by capitalism or business. Just getting out of the way was what needed to happen.
Often the people who do a thing are the people who know the most about how to do a thing. State planning has in eras like ancient egypt and ancient sumer been able to engage in large scale planning that worked for a long time, but first, the megastates that formed were unable to deal with changing conditions such as we saw during the bronze age collapse, and when those states fell the individuals were powerless to help themselves, leading to mass suffering. We also know that many times bureaucrats aren't competent, and so the most manmade deaths in history didn't happen during some war, they happened due to central state planning by incompetent bureaucrats. When left to their own devices through mechanisms like liberalism, instead of being harmed, individuals found ways to thrive.
Many people think our anti-libertarian utopia is perfect, but in reality there are some very bad indicator -- according to many scholars, we're facing birthrates well below replacement levels in the majority of the world's countries -- Asia, Europe, Australia, North and South America, with the only region with lots of population growth being Africa, and I've heard reasonable arguments that such conditions are going to be temporary and are being bolstered in part by material conditions brought about by the massive amount of capital held by baby boomers who are slowly having to liquidate that wealth to live off of. Some really rough times are going to be ahead, with relatively tiny youth populations having to support multiple retirees, and an overproduction of elites who are all jockeying for power in a system that's already top heavy. We're in an era where Gen Z (and presumably Gen Alpha after them) are facing historic levels of mental illness and historically low levels of wellness by several measures. The whole world order is about to change, and it'll probably be into something completely different in response to the catastrophic failures of the bureaucratic state.
My hope is that the next phase will look at the eras of massive governments and reject that, bringing something considerably more libertarian. People cannot live by money alone, and we need connections to the people around us, to our local communities, to our spiritual sides, and I don't think you get any of that by relinquishing control to a heartless soulless bureaucratic machine.
That being said, you can't just eliminate government. The times libertarianism works is when you don't need government, and that happens when you have institutions other than government that are strong, such as religion or other social institutions that can bring people together and help support prosocial actions and oppose antisocial actions.
What do you mean? I was literally just walking down the street in NYC just as I read your post and I got punched in the face too! How does this keep on happening?!?!?!
I always explain the cloud as follows:
You go to a whiteboard and draw a cloud, then inside you write "not my problem". That's the cloud. It isn't anything special, it's just a concept of this other thing that isn't your problem because you're paying Amazon to deal with it. You could have an identical server to theirs in the same data center on the same internet connection running the same software, and then you'd have to draw all of that and it wouldn't be "the cloud" anymore.
You go to a whiteboard and draw a cloud, then inside you write "not my problem". That's the cloud. It isn't anything special, it's just a concept of this other thing that isn't your problem because you're paying Amazon to deal with it. You could have an identical server to theirs in the same data center on the same internet connection running the same software, and then you'd have to draw all of that and it wouldn't be "the cloud" anymore.
The ephemeral nature of the fediverse is sometimes kinda annoying. It's annoying enough for mastodon, but it's really annoying for community based stuff like on Lemmy. You might have a vibrant community and then -bam- the site goes down. You're stuck with thousands of posts on your instance and maybe dozens of communities just sitting there taking up space.
One of many reasons why I think an alternative to server based communities on Reddit clones probably need to exist.
One of many reasons why I think an alternative to server based communities on Reddit clones probably need to exist.
Tbf there's lots of civilian branches. Pharma, food, a lot of domestic manufacturing is just idled military capacity... The world wars got America into total war mode and it never wanted to leave. As empire declines it'll have to or it won't be a United States much longer. Ask the Spanish empire how great being overloaded with debt and military obligation is.
I don't care, anime has been fire the last bunch of seasons. Solo leveling alone has been just so damn good, but there's all kinds of stuff.
One financial guy I used to follow was adamant that you should invest in REITs. "Don't worry guys, it's not residential real estate, it's commercial real estate. It's safe!"
How's that working out for ya?
How's that working out for ya?
I'm awfully happy that we're not on any of their platforms... Imagine how much of a waste this is -- 20 billion dollars is enough to change the lives of millions of people permanently, and instead it's being spent on election fuckery.
Something that I've been thinking about a lot lately is the effect that drones could have on the democratization of war. Hearing stories out of Ukraine about drone attacks being extremely effective against extremely expensive military hardware makes me think a lot about the difference between the bronze age and the iron age, or the dawn of the firearms age against armored cavalry. Suddenly you can have some people with some extremely inexpensive weapons with extremely high effectiveness against modern arms.
Yes, unfortunately I think we can all agree that there is a massive amount of State corruption in the US right now, which is one of the reasons why the empire is so badly in decline.
Another way that all of this helps to hurt everyone is by basically forcing the destruction of the accumulated wealth of the nation. You might think that those cars were wasteful because they burned a lot of fuel, or because they were too old, but they were highly complicated devices that already existed that people have the option to use if they wanted to. The cash for clunkers program took cars that were perfectly serviceable and destroyed them. It has resulted in vehicle prices in North America overall being on a completely different level than for example Europe where such a program didn't exist.
Really, it would be better to let the car companies fail and then maybe they would come back with something people actually wanted to buy. On the other hand, as part of that failure maybe they need to start pointing their finger directly at the government for forcing companies make cars that nobody likes.
Another way that all of this helps to hurt everyone is by basically forcing the destruction of the accumulated wealth of the nation. You might think that those cars were wasteful because they burned a lot of fuel, or because they were too old, but they were highly complicated devices that already existed that people have the option to use if they wanted to. The cash for clunkers program took cars that were perfectly serviceable and destroyed them. It has resulted in vehicle prices in North America overall being on a completely different level than for example Europe where such a program didn't exist.
Really, it would be better to let the car companies fail and then maybe they would come back with something people actually wanted to buy. On the other hand, as part of that failure maybe they need to start pointing their finger directly at the government for forcing companies make cars that nobody likes.
And even if they were your servants, what you're not going to treat your servants okay?
I was thinking something a little bit more like somebody pulling a wrench or moving a box, but I guess participating in a glowie op counts too. :p
At some point, somebody somewhere needs to actually do a thing. You need boots on the ground actually doing stuff or you aren't actually doing anything.
This truism being ignored is going to be really bad for our society that thinks everyone can get someone else to do it.
This truism being ignored is going to be really bad for our society that thinks everyone can get someone else to do it.
You know, I've been thinking about that Cash for clunkers program a lot lately. I have a sneaking suspicion it might be the primary reason why used cars are so unbelievably expensive. I mean, I was looking at some used cars, and for vehicle with almost 400,000 km on it they were asking the same as what you would expect to have paid for a new car not that long ago.
So it's one of those things where the people who make the decisions to have these programs aren't the ones who pay the consequences of having these programs. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be a young person trying to get there first vehicle. Mine was 500 bucks, which admittedly was a very good deal for the time, but I'm just imagining going five figures in debt to buy something that could be scrap any day...
So it's one of those things where the people who make the decisions to have these programs aren't the ones who pay the consequences of having these programs. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be a young person trying to get there first vehicle. Mine was 500 bucks, which admittedly was a very good deal for the time, but I'm just imagining going five figures in debt to buy something that could be scrap any day...
I've written at long length about hydroelectric, and it's difficult to argue that it isn't the best possible form of energy anywhere it's practical. There's a direct inverse correlation in most places between the amount of hydroelectric and the price of electricity. Unlike most forms of green energy, it is highly effective in places where it gets cold, such as Norway, Northern Quebec, and Northern Manitoba. You don't need particularly exotic materials to build such dams, you can use regionally sourced iron and copper if need be, as well as local earthenworks and limestone for portland cement.
Now that doesn't help much with transportation, but there's another long proven technology we could bring back which would be beneficial: The electric streetcar. There were cities with extensive public transportation operating using such streetcars at the turn of the 20th century, showing it was already practical 100 years ago. These were also successfully used in cities that are cold. One thing that would have to change for public transportation to be more useful is we'd need to accept that there is such a thing as good behavior and bad behavior and if you're not going to behave in a way conducive to polite society you shall be removed from public transportation. As long as it's ok to be bad in public with no repercussions, then people will want personal vehicles.
Now that doesn't help much with transportation, but there's another long proven technology we could bring back which would be beneficial: The electric streetcar. There were cities with extensive public transportation operating using such streetcars at the turn of the 20th century, showing it was already practical 100 years ago. These were also successfully used in cities that are cold. One thing that would have to change for public transportation to be more useful is we'd need to accept that there is such a thing as good behavior and bad behavior and if you're not going to behave in a way conducive to polite society you shall be removed from public transportation. As long as it's ok to be bad in public with no repercussions, then people will want personal vehicles.
What I mean is, did Gandhi actually say any of that?
It's like Abraham Lincoln famously said: "don't trust everything you say attributed to famous people on the internet, it doesn't cost anything that slap some words on a photo"
It's like Abraham Lincoln famously said: "don't trust everything you say attributed to famous people on the internet, it doesn't cost anything that slap some words on a photo"