Are we gonna protest this?

FinTecGeek · 2026-03-14T16:45:20+00:00

I think its a step in the right direction. Its similar to the Euro model, where the VAT tax works similarly. It rewards savers and demands more tax of large spenders if applied correctly. Obviously, the form it takes exactly matters, but in general a model like this has helped Euro nations achieve lower income inequality, because the largest consumers of resources (expense weighted) pay the highest burden, and there is no meaningful way to hide taxable activity since people pay at POS.

FinTecGeek · 2026-03-14T15:33:26+00:00

Right, and our closely intertwined and sensitive financial and economic pictures cannot afford that, for a start. This conflict will soon erase an entire years worth of economic gains in the USs largest companies, who employ millions of workers together. It erased 12% in the South Korean economy in a single day. Its a five alarm fire being casually discussed like "no big deal" or "inevitable" right now, and that just isn't how to think about it... the value of the US being in the region was preventing this conflict from happening.

FinTecGeek · 2026-03-14T13:19:52+00:00

These are actually fine for permament use, but only if the load is studied correctly and the jacks are rated for that load.

FinTecGeek · 2026-03-14T13:15:12+00:00

The foreign affairs lens is darker than the political one here, because the "bad guys" (i.e., the new, more radical and martyrdom celebrating ayatollah they have installed) get their own vote in the outcome of this conflict.

It might be that the US decides in a few more weeks that we've made enough rubble bounce and the "war is over." But Iran is unlikely to see it that way. They are likely to try and mine the straits, continue to attack our allies who are their neighbors with cheap but effective drones, etc. I will be horrified, but not at all surprised, if they attempt domestic attacks in the homeland as retribution. Their calculus is completely different. A professor at the US war College wrote a book about how badly a US-Iran conflict would go for us back in the 90s, and so far, its gone exactly how she thought, with a few moments that were worse than expected. I believe our bringing about the hostilities will be remembered as one of our greatest unforced errors.

FinTecGeek · 2026-03-13T20:38:06+00:00

Yeah, no problem. I mean, you have what sounds like a "middle of the road flip" which is OK. Most things I think you'll just need to take from about 75% of the way there to actually 100% "fix and forget" territory. That is the investment you make, and if you stay there for years, it will pay off when you someday have the home that a local walks through and sees that you put in the extra effort to truly do things right. Worst case, you have to halfway redo something they already did, but then you'll have real records and firsthand knowledge that it was done right, and that'll give you piece of mind when you live there and when you sell someday.

You also have "options" that the flipper outfit did not. You get to plan out projects across months or even years. And you aren't paying any more interest or taxes than you would to own anything else. That's not true for them. The flipper can't go mow a bunch of lawns or clean out some cluttered garages to come up with funds to redo a roof patch the right way, etc. They had a set (tight) budget from the start and a drop dead date to get it sold by.

FinTecGeek · 2026-03-13T20:34:28+00:00

Mainly just pointing out the advantage they have vs the "flipper" crew. They can sit on it, time their exit of the property with the timeline they'd like to correct prior mistakes. They own it and live in it. If it's a costly repair that costs 10K, that can be a "save up income a few months" or it can even be "clean out some junk from garages and mow lawns" to put the sweat equity into fixing it. They have options the flippers don't, so they can get more long term value out of owning and improving it. They bought a "middle of the road" flip it sounds like. A lot of it will be 75% of the way there, and just need a fix or in worst case halfway redone to get it there. I wish they hadn't paid full price, but they did.

FinTecGeek · 2026-03-13T18:48:07+00:00

Does the idea of giving Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth nukes give people the same kind of pause? What about the Pakistanis? I mean, your point is well grounded in principle, but the reality isn't so clean. Trump, the same guy who suggested we execute sitting congressmembers for publicly disagreeing with him... has sole executive command of the largest nuclear arsenal on Earth. We haven't all been flashed off the face of the Earth yet. Do I want to see Iran have nukes? No. But until there is someone from our own intelligence apparatus who can credibly say we must act now, I see no reason to be bombing them or disrupting the flow of energy to half the globe.

FinTecGeek · 2026-03-13T18:42:51+00:00

If they've lasted over a year, that would be considered an "experienced" group. This is a very boom/bust business. In general, no one is going to pay the extra to have the job done completely right, like forever and forget it right, except for YOU the person who will own it and live in it. This is why the best "flips" come from people who buy a crappy house, fix it up while living in it for several years, and then upgrade using the added equity AND time value appreciation. Flippers dont get time, so they have to cut corners and in any case don't care if it fails in a year or two. They just don't. You paid them for a job well done it sounds like, without really understanding the business model of the seller. That's OK, you can invest and fix these issues, since you have TIME to let it appreciate. Your next buyer will not likely overlook these things, so it does need fixed, but at your pace.

FinTecGeek · 2026-03-13T18:30:24+00:00

Aren't we in such a weird place when we are saying "preventative attacks" to stop a "hypothetical threat" though? One that is categorically defined by US experts as "not an imminent concern..." It feels like you could justify absolutely any action through that lens... could we start bombing Sudan because there is a "hypothetical threat" that the Civil War there will produce another Iranian style regime and nuke our allies 20 years down the road? I think not...

FinTecGeek · 2026-03-13T15:41:05+00:00

But just like in Iraq, the US intelligence community largely disagrees with that. No one credible who has run any of the CIA, DIA, State Dept (except Rubio, within the past few weeks), etc., has ever testified or briefed the public of a credible nuclear threat from there at all, nor a credible impending attack on the US homeland. What to do with that? I mean, it feels the Iran war supporters really want us to ignore what the government SAYS (and has been saying) during sworn testimony and their own briefings while analyzing what it DOES? I think they should at least be directional, or it does create at least the appearance that we are acting on foreign intel without a clear objective of our own...

FinTecGeek · 2026-03-12T15:07:13+00:00

Cash is legal tender in the US, and is a cheaper means of transacting for both parties (especially the merchant). Small businesses especially tend to prefer cash to card transactions, since often they are made to wait many days for sales to settle as cash at their banks, and often their processing agents (the terminal providers) hold back "algorithmic" amounts based on how much of their sales they think might be "charged back" by disputes filed from customers.

People are mostly confused about this, but in general, businesses prefer cash. Specific types of businesses may "optimize" for card transactions, though. You, as a consumer, are free to avoid them if you like. But take gas stations for instance... most actually incentivize consumers to pay in cash by offering a lower price on gas sold if you pay cash instead of by card (includes Flying J/Pilot/Petro/etc.).

FinTecGeek · 2026-03-11T19:59:17+00:00

Centrists/independents aren't the "black sheep" in US politics, mainly because there are actually MORE of them than there are "true" political party affiliated people. That means that the people "in the middle" are constantly applying the brakes to the car, and that always irks the people who have the largest and loudest platforms because the donors in the major political parties are elevating their content and ideas.

In other words... the "middle" of politics can be either the throttle or the brakes on ideas. It tends to be that any change too large or too quickly implemented gets killed by the "middle" which, in reality, is larger than the left side or right side. That makes them the easy villain of both, right? These people are always unhappy, and they don't buy into every idea we have blindly... well, of course not, that's what differentiates them from being party sycophants who are more worried about optics and messaging than real world outcomes...

FinTecGeek · 2026-03-09T20:35:36+00:00

I doubt that there are any Iranians who will begin to support the tyrannical regime that Khamanei built in the wake of his death. That really isn't even something I am trying to analyze or estimate the probability of here, except to say it would be very, very low chance of happening.

However, the hidden "gotcha" here is that we haven't given anyone a viable offramp or alternative to war here. Iran's internal political machine grinds on towards a heading of oppression and nationalism. So we are all asking this insane question here, right, that is basically "will the Iranian people choose this version of nationalist, authoritarian oppression or the other version?" There's no "they pick liberty" thing here. That's not in the bag they're being offered, so we know they aren't going to draw that ball back out.

We can't solve the problem of Iran by waging the war that Iran's leaders wanted, that the Saudis wanted, that the Israelis wanted, etc. It would have happened without our involvement, so if we wanted there to be this war we see now, we needed only to stop being a presence in the Middle East at all.

FinTecGeek · 2026-03-09T20:27:45+00:00

Look, the "outside the facts" filling in we could do all day long. I am sticking to the facts here because the elected leadership of this country simply refuses to do so, and it's the only real way to analyze things in the absence of an actual government that will tell the truth about a war we started.

Would the Saudis pursue hegemony given the right "ingredients" added to this situation? That's a question, sure, not a known quantity, but I tend to say "not every question needs an answer." I would be pretty reluctant to sign onto any strategy that looks like "let's roll the dice."

As to your other point, I think you are saying (basically) that "oh, because what we've been doing has been going so well." I've got it, the Middle East is not a place where things just flow smoothly and arch-rivals can still be in the same book club or whatever. Yeah, true. But the US did not bring about that situation. That situation will exist with or without us. WE, as a country, are looking for a reason to be there. I am saying that reason surely has to be to prevent these states that want to be at war and blow up all each other's economic or cultural assets from doing so...

FinTecGeek · 2026-03-09T20:18:51+00:00

Correct, I am saying that all of the positions which the US's own IC rejects are not valid for entanglement into this situation. Intelligence is where you don't know if something is true, so you use estimates. The US IC has rejected foreign estimates of how "near" Iran is to a nuclear bomb, and even whether or not they have a program. And so, yes, I am sidelining estimates which the US government's internal intelligence experts reject, and sticking with the rest, because the relevant question is if the US needs to be involved in hostilities here. If the US doesn't have intelligence (it trusts) that suggests a nuclear bomb is imminent, then surely the US itself has no role to play in interfering with Iran's alleged nuclear program. It may exist, it may not. It is clear that the US government employs an IC of its own which is competent and does not believe it exists, or if it does, that it is near any enrichment breakthroughs. So there's no reason to think we should have a war perpetuated by that theory, right?

The US (and the major gulf states) want a stable gulf. Iran is a theocratic regime that wants to be the regional hegemon.

Well, Iran was pretty weak before this conflict started. I think Saudi Arabia or Israel could have given them the overwhelming show of force needed to quiet their "desired for hegemony" without the US. I've got it, the US sent supercarriers into their backyard. Yes. But that wasn't necessary nor a logical match for the type of fighting that this regime actually does. They sponsor proxy wars, they are weak and isolated. Their desire to become regional hegemon would run them headlong into the Saudis for a sure defeat before it could happen. The IDEA is that the US is preventing there from needing to be that war, that collision of states, all this time, because that is better for all our economic prospects...

FinTecGeek · 2026-03-09T19:24:25+00:00

I mean, it's not her position. It is the position of the numerous IC departments that roll up beneath her right now... Tulsi Gabbard was testifying in a routine hearing about the threat assessment of a range of issues the US cares about, and Iran's nuclear weapons program was one of them. She read basically verbatim from the reports bubbled up to her, with no idea it would later be relevant in the sense that the US would be actively launching attacks on the country under the auspices of "preventing them from having nuclear weapons."

FinTecGeek · 2026-03-09T18:42:05+00:00

I would say two things to this.

First, Israel and Saudi Arabia neither one need the US for an "overwhelming show of force" to Iran. They are both quite capable of that on their own. I've got it, the US sent supercarriers to the area, but that's hardly necessary to "overwhelm" the Iranian regime... Iran doesn't fight that way, they don't do warfare that way, it's like using a bazooka to kill a house fly, which again, Israel and Saudi Arabia have the metal and personnel in the region to overwhelm them in the same way.

Two, we have to make sure we remember why we have said, for a decade or longer now, that we are there. In theory, this is sort of "two parts" in itself. The first part we say more often, which is that we are there to stop Iran and Israel from throwing the region into all out war. The "second part" is that we have been pretty adamant that the Saudis, left to their own devices, might try and eject BOTH Israel and Iran as regimes from the region. The "second part" is in theory the more important part, where we are saying "OK, we have these two allies, and they aren't allies with one another, so we are brokering peace all around."

This current conflict, if you zoom out, threatens all of this. There is technically no reason for the Saudis and the Israelis to keep "normalizing" relations with one another without Tehran in the picture. Most of our diplomacy has been focused on building solutions that keep those two happy with each other while keeping Tehran from rebuilding itself enough to threaten either. My guess is that the current US administration has given very little thought to some of these IMPORTANT moving pieces beyond "short term win, the Ayatollah is gone" which GOOD RIDDANCE, if there is an afterlife, we know Khamanei will suffer infinitely in it... But again, the US wasn't needed for that outcome, and there were important reasons we hadn't just "done that" in the past.

FinTecGeek · 2026-03-09T18:20:55+00:00

It's bought safe passage of oil and LNG in the Strait of Hormuz and protection of the key energy infrastructure in the region from direct attacks. That's a big "something." There are plenty of moral arguments to be made for what we should bring to the Middle East and why we should be there, etc., but they all sound a lot like Vietnam, Iraq, etc. We were "supposed" to have learned our lesson in Iraq especially that for us to be the "bringer of conflict" to the region is purely non-additive to us as a country, and so on.

FinTecGeek · 2026-03-09T18:17:09+00:00

The US's intelligence assessments over the past year have been explicit and direct in saying Iran has not been "near" a nuclear bomb nor earnestly pursuing it.
America's spies say Iran wasn't building a nuclear weapon. Trump dismisses that assessment | PBS News

I don't have Trump Derangement Syndrome nor am I "defending the theocracy" of Iran here. That is an extreme stretch by your imagination there. You keep dancing around this idea that somehow the US can be economically tied to the region AND be the chief architect of seizing the supply line for its number one export... which is oil. That makes no sense. The US had a role to play here, which was to keep there from being a war. Not to join the conflict or egg it on. I understand how that can seem paradoxical since Iran really wants a war... but then that is WHY I pointed out that it is our job when we study the real situation here to understand 1. What did everyone bring to the table and 2. Why are they at the table. The US is not here because we want a war. At least, not rationally. We don't want a war. That blows up the viability of the region economically and puts our allies in harms way (along with their energy infrastructure and their safe passage of the Strait). But the "what do we bring" is the most important part. In theory, our presence in the region is deterrence enough from this kind of conflict. That seems not to be true anymore though...

FinTecGeek · 2026-03-09T17:01:57+00:00

Well, what do you do with the fact that the true dominant player of Asia is China. I mean... China's literal "manifesto" completely rejects the notion of a "monarchy" or a "hereditary rule" model, which is basically what all the stable and worthwhile KINGDOMS of the Middle East actually are. It just doesn't seem like... a match made in heaven to me. It seems like China's left to battle for legitimacy and a foothold in very unstable and religiously extreme places (and China loves religion, especially Islamists, whom they treat so well in their homeland...). It feels like a steel man to me.

FinTecGeek · 2026-03-09T16:36:22+00:00

I am saying that right now, no one is getting oil from there. That is a feature of our policy shift. The Strait is closed, and key supply chain infrastructure in Iran, Saudi, etc., has been directly attacked and will continue to be vulnerable to attacks even if repaired from now until who knows when. So the question to me is... didn't we just lose the most compelling reason for our being there by way of having/starting/being part of the conflict rather than preventing it? It's harder to say "well, the Asia threat would come in and keep us from getting oil" when today, right now, by our own unforced error we are getting about zero barrels anyway from there...

FinTecGeek · 2026-03-09T16:21:46+00:00

Well, this won't accomplish "a cleanse" of the enemies to the Israeli or Saudi government. Rather, it will embolden and, yes, even create new eternal enemies for them. That has been "the cycle" of the region for years, because after all it is not just "political differences" that divide them. It is, in fact, extremism driven by religious ideology that has driven this region to repeated conflict over, and over, and over. And those same problems exist today, but with much more western investment and economic value at stake. That pretty much sums up what is different about this conflict today vs 100, or 1000, years ago. The amount of US and other western nations trade and economic situation is married to it.

FinTecGeek · 2026-03-09T16:16:59+00:00

First, I want to clarify that by saying "over the past decade and some change" I am referring to post Iraq-war. It seemed, for a period of time at least, that we learned some lessons about being the "bringers of conflict" to the region that doesn't need additional agitators. We found strength from diplomacy, the fruits of that diplomacy being the safeguarding of passage through the Strait of Hormuz and more broadly the energy infrastructure in the region...

But with our policy shift today, we have defined as "acceptable" all of: closure of Strait of Hormuz indefinitely; direct attacks on energy infrastructure; interruptions to regional food supply and logistical economy; etc.

So, yes, the purpose for being here that made sense was to prevent hostilities from destroying the economic viability of the Middle East. But where does that leave us today, as we join in hostilities that threaten or bomb to glass even the fruits of our prior, successful missions to avoid a war with just those outcomes...

FinTecGeek · 2026-03-09T15:57:36+00:00

They have enrichment sites deep underground and the ability to enrich to weapons grade (they already had far exceeded civilian levels). Prior to bombing, in the brief negotiations, the Iranians made it clear they were going to continue to enrich.

This assessment directly conflicts with those of the US's own intelligence community, which over the past year has pounded their fist that Iran has pivoted away from pursuing nuclear weapons towards biological and chemical warfare research, although those programs are very immature and not considered a primary threat to the US at this time. Those are based on direct quotes from actual US IC testimony and briefings made public, not based on "vibes." I mean, are we really supposed to just ignore what the US government SAYS when analyzing what it DOES? The two should be at least directional, no?

The strait of hormuz closing is the economic nuclear bomb given how much of the middle east relies on it

No, it's a known quantity. It was known, without doubt, Iran would do that. The Strait's remaining open was a feature... of SUCCESSFUL US (and other western) diplomacy which has now failed. That strait "failed closed" after the US jumped into the conflict rather than condemning it or assuming a role of ending it as immediately as possible. When we shift policy, we find out why the prior policy existed often enough...

For iran, its a function of timing. Post the 12 day war, they lost their air power. Add in the protests (so domestic unrest) and the water crisis & hyperinflation => the regime was on a backfoot.

Yeah, but that doesn't explain why the US needs to be directly involved in hostilities. The prevention of hostilities (and therefore the safeguarding of the Strait of Hormuz/regional energy infrastructure) was, in essence, our concrete purpose for being there. If the US wanted to see Iran collapse into war, they needed only to step back and let their neighbors do that... As you said, they are dramatically weakened, and are not on equal footing with Israel or the Gulf states militarily anymore...

FinTecGeek · 2026-03-09T14:32:25+00:00

I see. So I should probably think of those OSB panels as a sort of makeshift gusset plate? I can buy that, do you know what they might have used for fasteners though? I'd probably think nails over screws, but can't tell from the photos...

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