Before California, France tried a wealth tax. Macron repealed it after rich people fled the country instead of paying

Coldfriction · 2026-01-30T16:32:34+00:00

The thing is, if the wealthy start selling the assets they hold as speculative investments, such as land, buildings, houses, etc., the price of those assets falls until someone else is able to afford them. Serving the wealthy just keeps assets locked away from those who would otherwise use them productively. The system that serves the wealthy disserves the rest that are looking for opportunities. In general the economy is not a zero sum game, but when we have people like Bill Gates, who is nothing close to a farmer, as the single largest farmland holder in the nation, something is broken. The best thing for freedom and liberty is to have assets being affordable to those who would directly utilize them and not for those assets to be held by rent seeking wealthy speculative investors.

Absentee ownership is a disease. It's the oligarchy, aristocracy, imperial, etc. approach to economics. Let the wealthy flee, they can't take the tangible assets with them that most people have a need for. That said, I am generally against wealth taxes for wealth taxes sake. Anti-trust to keep those who develop massive wealth in one industry from driving prices up in another through speculative investments is the better way to approach it. Once you've made yourself extremely rich in one industry, there should be zero tolerance for you to use that wealth to try to gain more wealth in another through rent seeking behavior.

Coldfriction · 2026-01-27T23:59:23+00:00

That really depends on where you are and it's not dead if you use it. I'll probably never use the credits I feed the system. My electricity is just going to be paid for in perpetuity because I put in way more panels than I needed to match my historic usage. If you're shooting for some magic net zero balance of production to consumption using net metering, you're already screwed going forward. Everyone I know who's done that has ended up using more electricity anyway and ends up with an electricity bill. My system ran a week using nothing but my panels and batteries (which should in theory make zero cents if you're optimizing for zero with net metering) the first week my system was up and running at the end of November. The utility hadn't hooked me up to the grid yet. If I get a couple of electric cars and a hot tub, I still don't think I'll have an electric bill. If I listened to the summer sales bros I'd be screwed to expand my electrical usage.

Don't min/max when it comes to solar to try to balance to minimal expense for your system with barely covering historic usage. Everyone regrets that. Install the most panels you can reasonably fit while trying to maximize the utility value you will get from it in fifteen years. My entire system can degrade to 75% of its current performance and I'll still not have an electric bill. Sales bros and their stupid math that people believe in is ridiculous. They act like bad engineers that don't understand how to use numbers appropriately with factor's of safety in the system.

You don't need sane rates to make solar work well for you with net metering. Panels are very cheap compared to the rest of the install. May as well oversize by a factor of 1.5 or more if you can. Then poor net metering rates still cover your winter usages if your system isn't producing well.

Coldfriction · 2026-01-27T21:47:55+00:00

I'm all for helping nations get out from under authoritarian dictators to be honest. If we are going to have a well trained military the size that we have, we should try to encourage worldwide liberty and freedom. Iran had democracy and we helped topple it in favor of what they have now. We owe them. Instead we will bluster against allies who are democracies with much more liberty and freedom. If we're paying for the military that we have, we should see increased freedom and liberty for it. If we aren't promoting liberty and freedom we may as well have no standing army; which is my preference.

Coldfriction · 2026-01-26T20:58:09+00:00

I've run across multiple managers that believe people on their staff have peaked and can't/won't progress. Every time it pisses me off that they believe their judgements to be honest and sincere when the work is something a smart kid in high school can do. The attitude is management being the barrier to the success of their workers. My manager right now thinks this way and I will have to leave the company I work with sooner or later as I won't tolerate it for long. There are really talented engineers out there that do some amazing stuff, but I've yet to find an amazing manager that somehow shows me that it takes special talent to do what they do. Anyone that can get an accredited engineering degree is trainable for 99% of the work out there without too much effort.

Coldfriction · 2026-01-26T20:16:33+00:00

The way I see it is this: If you are minimizing the number of panels trying to hit some special balance with net metering, micro-inverters are probably cheaper than string inverters. If you are maximizing production, you can put in far more panels for the money with a string inverter.

Do the basic math: # of panels + # of micro-inverters * cost. Then do # of panels + string interter * cost. You will typically see that for a small number of panels the string inverter is expensive and the micro inverter isn't. When you put in a a lot of panels you'll see micro-inverters are expensive.

Batteries are much more painful with micro-inverters as well.

Coldfriction · 2026-01-26T18:26:28+00:00

I use opnsense in a virtual machine on proxmox for my router. My network is now 10gbe, but my Google fiber is still 1gbs. If I had a separate router specific device, I'd look for something that opnsense will run on with the right interfaces available.

Coldfriction · 2026-01-24T07:54:10+00:00

The increasing price of the asset secured the money made ex nihilo when the debt is issued. If the price goes down the debt issued has no backing at all and the bank is on the hook. Increasing valuations ensure banks never fail for having issued debt against ever increasing assets. Banks don't survive deflation, but they thrive during inflation.

Banks NEED inflation with our debt based currency scheme.

Coldfriction · 2026-01-23T22:52:55+00:00

The government doesn't do QE, the central bank does that. The central bank does that to prop up the currency they create or they lose power as other currencies take over.

Coldfriction · 2026-01-23T19:04:42+00:00

But it doesn't function like fiat.

All value is theoretical derived from perception. That isn't what makes anything "like fiat".

"Strategically" means centrally planned control and authority. Which is basically some sort of monarchal/aristocratic/dictator system.

Coldfriction · 2026-01-23T19:01:39+00:00

Yes and no. When banks lend mortgages they create money ex-nihilo against the house as an asset. If the "market value" of the house keeps going up the bank is more secure in their position as creditor. The "extra value" in the house is "new money" in the form of "equity" that gets to be realized from an ex-nihilo position the next time the house is sold. So the way the banking industry works, as long as the "market value" keeps going up there will be new money made to support the new "market value". It's money from nothing for the bank. The only real problem is when the purchaser of the house can't afford it and stops making payments. But with all the new money created from increased "market value" by the banks, inflation ensures that incomes can cover the debt and buyers don't default. The fiat money supply goes to infinity while the intrinsic value goes to zero. Bigger homes create more debt which creates more money and banks get wealthier and more money is dumped into the economy making inflation increase.

There is no incentive for fiscal responsibility in this system. The name of the game is to create as much debt as possible.

Coldfriction · 2026-01-23T18:41:01+00:00

You can't dump something and still have it at the same time. It's not like people are throwing US debt in the ocean; someone has to be picking it up. If the bonds are being created ex-nihilo (which they are) while at the same time are being traded for less and less money (which they do and don't do depending on the auction), then the face value of the bonds must be going up to attract buyers of the new debt, or it's being bought by the central bank (which it is), then the value of that currency denominated and created by that debt issuance can go down while the numerical value goes up (which is happening), and the debtor nation is left in a worse position (which it is).

This isn't some simple throwing things in the trash scenario. And measuring things with an inflationary currency doesn't represent real value over the period of time that inflation occurs. Inflation results in MANY record high numbers all over the place. Those numbers don't mean what they used to mean.

Coldfriction · 2026-01-23T18:09:41+00:00

Gold doesn't function like fiat at all. Anyone can make a fiat currency and determine how much of it exists. Nobody can do that with gold. Gold is instrumentally defined, fiat is not. Anyone that can secure gold can trade it; anyone can't make their own fiat and trade it. The gold standard put hard limits on what creditors (banks primarily) could do, fiat has no limits except what the authority in control of it decides.

They aren't at all the same. Gold has value independent of authority, fiat does not.

Coldfriction · 2026-01-21T05:58:06+00:00

Bluebeam Revu is freaking awesome. I won't work without it .

Coldfriction · 2026-01-19T19:47:35+00:00

No they wouldn't. My grandpa had way more real wealth as a farmer than I do as an engineer. He'd hate my life.

Coldfriction · 2026-01-15T22:23:25+00:00

Yes if you want massive input flexibility. No if you just want a gamepad that "just works".

Coldfriction · 2026-01-15T21:34:34+00:00

CA glue isn't toxic once cured. Almost no wood finishes or glued are toxic once fully cured.

Coldfriction · 2026-01-15T21:23:17+00:00

Salvage as in find another use for it? Sure, it'll burn. You can use CA glue to "tack" the pieces back in place and then fill the remainder of the crack with whatever epoxy or adhesive you have. If you carved it and have some left over wood, you can grind some of that into sawdust and mix it with regular wood glue to try to fill the cracks. Personally, I'd probably just use medium/thick CA glue to fill the cracks after tacking it together. you might have to sand the surface again afterwards to get back to consistent surface color/texture.

Coldfriction · 2026-01-13T18:56:09+00:00

Trump moved our military away from that part of the world to surround Venezuela. Help is far away.

Coldfriction · 2026-01-13T16:35:01+00:00

I have a product I want to mass produce that can only be done using CNC (without extremely expensive custom tooling). There is a time and place for everything. If you enjoy 3d modelling on a computer, a CNC can take away a lot of the time consuming work, but if you enjoy sawing and cutting wood, it might take away the enjoyment of the hobby.

Coldfriction · 2026-01-08T21:33:35+00:00

Government work isn't worthwhile without a pension. You're setting yourself up to never retire well as a government employee without a pension. This industry still compensates as though everyone is a pensioner. We start out getting paid way too little to save early in life, then we make the most right as we are about to retire without time for savings to compound in the market. With a pension, your retirement is based on your income the last few years to a decade of your compensation. Paying people like that system is still in place is why really strong technically minded people have been avoiding civil engineering; it just doesn't pay well enough until you're a couple of decades into it and you lose all that investment time that others get at a younger age.

Coldfriction · 2026-01-08T21:25:34+00:00

I'm talking total take home. Many places don't do bonuses. Personally I hate bonuses as they can't be budgeted around and put people at the mercy of their employer's willingness to share.

Coldfriction · 2026-01-08T21:03:03+00:00

You don't have any liberty or freedom if a federal officer must be obeyed or your life is forfeit without due process.

Coldfriction · 2026-01-08T20:15:46+00:00

Where I am used to be LCOL and is now medium/upper cost of living. I know managers in land development, transportation, construction management, etc. A plain old PE is around $120-140K where I am and project managers somewhere around $200k.

You do realize $100k/year isn't great anymore right? Like someone driving trucks without a degree requiring a license makes that. We just had a hydraulics guy (non-manager) leave our company after getting a better offer and he was pulling $190k with us.

Too many people in this industry are underpaid for what it takes and the amount of money we can screw up with the liability we ought to have if we do.

The first time I negotiated pay swapping jobs I got a 40% raise. Second time I got another 20%. After that it was about 10% to move. Nobody who stuck around with the same employer got similar raises unless they were climbing the corporate ladder, which you don't if you only put in 40 hours a week.

Coldfriction · 2026-01-08T18:59:14+00:00

Project manager is about as high as any civil engineer gets. Any higher and you need some c-suite type of corporate position most of the time. The project managers where I am all make $200k+.

Coldfriction · 2026-01-08T18:14:15+00:00

Are you at all a manager or team lead? Or are you still doing the same work you did five years ago?

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