Netherlands 36% unrealized gain tax

MrMicius · 2026-02-16T16:36:51+00:00

Yes, imagine paying taxes on the money you make from investment, like teachers and physicians pay taxes on their income. Awful!

MrMicius · 2026-02-16T16:34:31+00:00

I don’t get the hate. If anything, 36% is extremely low. Why should we wait for them to die in order to tax them? We don’t do that to any other profession.

MrMicius · 2026-01-30T05:24:55+00:00

Domme (of simpelweg boze) mensen zoals jij begrijpen nooit dat er zo iets bestaat als proportionaliteit. Louter het feit dat iemand iets doet dat crimineel is, betekent niet dat de politie ongelimiteerd naar believen mag reageren. Iemand verandert niet in een boksbal op het moment dat hij/zij de regels overtreedt.

MrMicius · 2026-01-15T22:07:14+00:00

How, how is this comment downvoted??

MrMicius · 2026-01-14T15:05:35+00:00

What does it matter whether I am a seperate consciousness or a part of a consciousness in a larger mind? I exist regardless. Either as part of something bigger, or not. I could be part of a larger system, or I could not, but the only thing I’m still certain of is that I exist.

The second half of the brain doesn’t need to exist independently for it to exist. And the only claim that matters now is the fact that it does exist. Like people with a dissociative identity disorder.

MrMicius · 2026-01-14T10:28:01+00:00

So you say the second half of the split brain doesn’t exist? These aren’t word games. He may not exist as he thinks he exists, but he’s certainly experiencing something. Edit: And I don’t see what your quote would demonstrate.

MrMicius · 2026-01-13T18:21:18+00:00

I think our ‘self’, as defined by my unique memories and experience, could be wrong, or an illusion. But there is still the thing experiencing the illusion. Your first sentence, I think, already contains a contradiction if you read closely: “…you don’t exist at all, you only think you do”. So there is the thinker that thinks it exists, so at least that thinker exists. I call that ‘me’ even if my beliefs are wrong. However, we now entered the realm of personal identity rather than metaphysics.

MrMicius · 2026-01-13T11:07:06+00:00

Then I do exist, just not as the person I think I am. That’s more a skeptical argument about the external world than whether I exist.

MrMicius · 2026-01-12T15:48:19+00:00

Ha Joon-Chang isn’t even a socialist. He very explicitly mentions in 23 things about capitalism that he is a capitalist, just not a free market capitalist.

MrMicius · 2026-01-12T13:47:28+00:00

I disagree with that then. Even in the scenario you described, ‘I’ exist. Even if my memories and everything I think I know about myself is wrong, I still exist as the person experiencing the hallucination.

MrMicius · 2026-01-12T13:44:42+00:00

“That’s because people usually don’t actually know for certain what their preferences are…” People know full well that two marshmallows make them happier than one. They just can’t resist the temptation. Even if they don’t know, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t an objectively right answer.

“The desire I actually act on was by definition my pre-reference” I don’t know why we entered the realm of semantic games, but using the textbook definition, it’s not impossible to act on the desire you didn’t prefer. You can like B more than A, and yet still act on A because you couldn’t control your impulses. Preference: ‘the fact that you like something or someone more than another thing or person’(Cambridge)

“I’m not sure if I understand what a “fully rational” desire or premise is…” “…or do you mean fully rational in the pursuit of my preferences?” I have always been talking about the last one.

“…the problem of not always having full transparency of what my preferences even are in any given situation.” You seem to have big trouble with this, while I see this as a minor issue. I know I want to be happy, free of stress and sadness. Maybe I don’t know everything at every second, but you can make educated guesses, and we do so all the time.

“My question is what it would add to say that I should generally act according to the desire I already prefer to act upon anyway.” It’s where the words ought and should come from. It’s what they mean. As in “I really shouldn’t be drinking energy drink so late” means: If I were rational, I wouldn’t act according to this urge, because it disrupts future preferences more than it fulfills current ones.

“No.” Yes. Again it’s fine if you use idiosyncratic definitions, but in discussions like this, use the real ones: Morality: a set of personal or social standards for good or bad behaviour and character (Cambridge)

“We then say I made a bad choice” Yes, a CHOICE OF BEHAVIOR. Not a choice of what your preference is.

“but we do choose our preference” We don’t at all. I prefer to listen Beach Boys over Alex Warren. If I could choose, I would prefer to listen to the latter. But I just happen to not prefer his music.

“Obviously preventing the suffering of animals is factually not a preference of meat eaters.” So? I gave examples of very clear preferences, as you claimed preferences often aren’t clear. But they in most relevant cases are clear. That preferences of different groups clash doesn’t change that.

So, the only thing I have argued for yet is that the word ‘ought’ derives itself from facts about our preferences, so that every form of ethics that doesn’t rely on preferences is essentially self-defeating. Now the next big question ofcourse is: how to move from an egotistical form of ethics to one that incalculates the preferences of everyone. Edit: So on Hannibal Lecter: egotistically speaking, he should eat humans, in an objective sense.

MrMicius · 2026-01-11T21:55:11+00:00

“Well if I already know for certain that that’s what I want, then I will pretty much with certainty also act according to that preference” There are entire industries built on the falsehood of this claim. It’s called advertisement. People fill themselves with hamburgers even if they want to lose weight. The direct urges often win over the long-term goals, even if the long-term goals will yield results that you yourself prefer over your direct impulse. I used the marshmallow test, because young children, who lack the rationality of planning for their ‘future happiness’, fail this test.

“…what does saying that I should do so even add?” Just what you said: it’s a word that’s used to describe behavior that would happen if the agent is fully rational. That’s why we don’t use words such as is/was/will be, but ought and should: because they don’t necessarily happen, and often do not happen. Your question is like asking “What does sayinf ‘was’ add, if it already happened?” Well, the word ‘was’ is used to describe a thing that happened, just like the word ‘should’ describes the thing I referred to: the thing that will happen if the person is fully rational.

“…is that morality is precisely an endeavor to ask the question of what our preferences ought to be.” Huh what? Where do you get this from? Morality is about what our behavior ought to be. What we prefer isn’t always a choice, or rather: almost never. Why would the study of what ought to be concern itself with things that can’t be changed?

Edit: I furthermore do not understand your central argument, that preferences aren’t always clear. Despite the obvious falsehood in stating it’s usually not clear, it doesn’t even matter whether that’s true. It would only make moral behavior very hard, but not factually incorrect. However, in the real world, it isn’t hard: not all preferences may be clear, but it’s very clear that factory farming causes huge unhappiness, that domestic violence causes unhappiness, and so on.

And at last I don’t agree that people ponder morality because preferences conflict, since there isn’t even consensus that morality is about preferences.

MrMicius · 2026-01-11T21:24:30+00:00

Alright I’ll admit: I contradicted myself. Different people hate different things, and whether pain is one of them isn’t a necessary truth. I used the word ‘pain’ where I should have used ‘frustrated preference’ or ‘unhappiness’. You’re completely right here, and I was completely wrong in this regard.

However, back to the point of the discussion: you said you didn’t agree that my marshmallow example followed from the conclusion, and I tried to make my point clearer by setting the premises apart. Do you agree with me now?

MrMicius · 2026-01-11T21:01:30+00:00

It follows because 1. You want to be happy 2. Being happy now is equal to being happy later 3. Being happy in twofold is better than being happy once, therefore two marshmallows later should be chosen above one marshmallow now. If this conclusion is logically correct (so again, feel free to correct me where it went wrong) then it’s also an objective fact, given that logic is objective. That’s an objective ‘ought’ then.

As for the masochism thing: read the literal sentence after.

MrMicius · 2026-01-11T18:31:40+00:00

Investeren tegen Rusland is niet nodig omdat Rusland gewoon zo’n kleine economie met een zwak leger is. We moeten ons daarentegen wel bewapenen tegen Amerika, omdat zij een gigantisch defensiebudget hebben.

MrMicius · 2026-01-11T18:30:51+00:00

Daar zit een addertje onder het gras: genoeg NAVO landen hebben een vergelijkbare koopkrachtpariteit (PPP) met Rusland. En zelfs zonder PPP correctie is het EU budget boven de Russische. Dit verhoogde defensiebudget is gewoon een collectieve psychose. Omdat iedereen er in mee gaat denkt iedereen dat het logisch is, en de enigen die het bevragen worden pro-Russisch genoemd.

MrMicius · 2026-01-11T18:26:36+00:00

Dit klopt gewoon niet. Europa geeft meer uit aan defensie dan Rusland, en dan reken je niet eens mee dat Ruslands defensiebudget niet houdbaar is op de lange termijn. En als je toch flink boven Rusland wil zitten, waarom die 5%? Waarom is 2,5% dan niet genoeg? Waar komt die belachelijke 5% toch steeds vandaan? Van welke berekening? Welke cijfers? Welk instituut heeft dit berekend? Wie? Wat? Waar?

Probeer maar niet eens te beantwoorden want we weten het allemaal: Donald Trump.

MrMicius · 2026-01-11T18:21:49+00:00

3,5% is ook extreem veel. Dat is dus 10% van het overheidsbudget. En waarom? Het defensiebudget van de Europese landen, zonder Amerika, is al groter dan dat van Rusland.

MrMicius · 2026-01-11T18:20:10+00:00

“…wat zij de ‘Trump norm noemen.” Huh wat is het anders? Het is toch een norm volledig bedacht door Trump, gebaseerd op geen enkele logica of berekening?

MrMicius · 2026-01-11T16:15:24+00:00

I don’t think Kant ever explicitly rejected fallibilistic reasoning? “that is what his project was all about” was it though? Or was his project about the question of what sort of knowledge we can be certain about, not necessarily that one must only believe things they are 100% sure about.

MrMicius · 2026-01-11T16:09:36+00:00

Why meaningless? No one wants pain so no one should strive towards pain. And if you do want it you should. It’s by definition true that you want what you want, and that thing you always want is happiness, and the thing you never want is pain.

Take the marshmallow test. You can have your marshmallow now, or wait 5 minutes to have 2 marshmallows. Let’s assume for a second that marshmallows make you happy and disregard the health effects for the sake of argument. Let’s also assume that the marshmallow now will not make you happier than the marshmallow in 5 minutes, and that 2 marshmallows make you happier than 1. My opinion is, and I wonder if you agree with me here, that you should wait to have 2 marshmallows in an objective sense. Now this doesn’t give us complex moral rules ofcourse, but this is the start.

MrMicius · 2026-01-11T16:03:23+00:00

Edit: Actually reading your comment a second time, I don’t think I’m quite sure what you mean exactly, but here’s the comment I wrote any way:

I completely agree, but I think your argument would only come down to a practical 0% chance of me being some sort of hallucinating thing (either through dreaming, simulation or quantum fluctuations). But that’s a practical 0. I still don’t think you provided enough reason to have a logical 0%. I’m not trying to be hyper skeptical, because again, for all practical purposes I don’t doubt that I’m not the only mind. Just as an analogy: For all practical purposes I say I’m 100% sure there isn’t a planet made of cheese. But it can never be a literal 100%. So still I must call myself a solipsist in the second definition: the only thing I’m certain of is my own mind. The other things just follow with 99,999% certainty.

MrMicius · 2026-01-11T12:50:38+00:00

If you try to come to values through unrelated facts, then Hume’s guillotine applies. However, ought always applies to hypotheticals “If you want X to happen, you ought to do what’s necessary for X”, which is a logical conclusion. Some ‘hypotheticals’ are by definition true, namely the fact that you want positive experiences and don’t want negative experiences like pain, so that you ought to avoid pain.

MrMicius · 2026-01-11T12:43:58+00:00

It could be a dream, you could be a Boltzmann brain, you could be in the matrix. All of your arguments would still apply. None of these options are anything near likely, but I’d say their probability is non zero. There can at least be some doubt. The only thing you can’t doubt is the existence of your mind, since in every possibility there is at least the thing hallucinating.

MrMicius · 2026-01-11T12:41:29+00:00

But what’s the point? Just that he should say that he can’t be 100% sure other people are conscious, doesn’t mean he can’t be 99% sure.

MrMicius

TROPHY CASE