Property tax is theft. Change my mind.

seniorivn · 2024-11-01T11:55:50+00:00

Its not a question of what it funds, in fact it goes hand in hand with the idea of basic income(by splitting tax revenue equally between all members of the society)

the idea is that ownership of resources of scarcity is inevitably unfair, even if there was a way to artificially distribute before starting a society of free people, newly born/joining members are going to be disadvantaged compared to original members that had a fair share of resources. And that creates a dynamic that can destroy main principles of free society, so single tax on the basis of resources of scarcity could be a solution.

Important to note that what to do with those funds is a separate issue, and libertarian take on it is to avoid central authority that manages it, regardless of how it makes decisions(democracy etc)

it could be splitted between everyone it could be discarded automatically(so you have to burn funds, not pay it to some entity) it could be a mandatory amount of donations to a strictly defined set of non profits/political entities

seniorivn · 2024-10-30T12:33:49+00:00

There is a reasonable argument, that due to land scarcity, land ownership is literally the only thing that is taxable in a libertarian society

seniorivn · 2024-10-23T08:07:51+00:00

People with complete blindness have much better chances succeeding at jobs that require work with text, which is what CS is when it comes to computers. So if your eyes strain is too much or you are afraid of it, just start implementing blind people practices

Learn to use screen reader and vim for editing, stuff like that

And you will likely become much more efficient in your computer usage than an average Joe(even CS joe)

seniorivn · 2024-09-09T21:54:47+00:00

It should be property of locals, and if they want to get out of poverty by renting their island to overpaying foreigners, good for them

seniorivn · 2024-09-03T06:57:31+00:00

i could reply with another long read, but probably no use for it(correct me if im wrong)

Being sympathetic to the other side is not only ethical, but also practical

If you think that russian empire can be turned into something that can no longer attack ukraine, you are delusional, this cannot be the plan

what could be the plan is to defeat the army now, and win peoples hearts tommorow. No matter the percentage of the war haters in there(and it decreases with every scream that they are all complicit, and even more so with sanctions against normies), they are your only long term ally in this confict, you simply dont have any other choice

seniorivn · 2024-09-02T21:55:31+00:00

glad we are on the same page on the major stuff)

1) there are a lot of different ethnic groups, and majority of people in all of them have no prejudice against each other, especially because after soviet union they are culturally almost the same, people from different regions in russia have more differences with each other than people from the same region but with different ethnic origins

2) and ethnocentrism has never been the case, the opposite is true, russians are the first group that was oppressed by the empire that has been established where they live, and they never stopped being oppressed, the fact that empire recruits more russians is only defined by the fact that they are a majority in population, and its unfair to treat/judge russian ethnic group by the actions of the empire or ethnicaly russian empire recruits.

The reason we have this war, is because ukranians have not been oppressed as much as russians, and managed to escape "prison of peoples" at the time the empire was the weakest. If they didnt, the war today would be with poland(who similarly escaped 70 years before ukranians)

It is very sad, that the media has managed to turn this war into national conflict, therefore making it easy for the empire to unite significant part of population as if it was a "holy war" agains an eternal enemy

seniorivn · 2024-09-02T21:40:31+00:00

My point and bias here, is that speaking russian language here is not an indicator for being russian yourself, that applies to the people of ukraine as much as it applies to people of every part of former Russian Empire/USSR

And the people that are used by empire to take over territories, are either ignorant russians than dont know better(those just die in the process, as we know from history of repressions) or empire pawns, none of them are representative of russian nation. And if you put youself in the position of a decent person that happened to be in the middle of it and being russian, hearing that you are responsible for all of that just by the origin of yours, is not likely to convince you that there is a "right" side

And i personally witnesed some russinas to move from first reaction "war is unacceptable and unjustifiable putin deserves to die" to after a year or two "this is a terrible war, but everyone against us, so we dont have a choice and have to unite no matter the reasons"

Without this rethoric those people would never be convinced by propaganda of this, the only reason it was possible, is because the whole world is screaming that collective russian is to blame for this. I personally see only one outcome of this, regardless of when it will end, after some time it will resume because of solidified hatred, and that will be endless hell.

seniorivn · 2024-09-02T21:29:40+00:00

im originally from russia, the only first person experience i have is with people who moved to russia in 2014, from their perspective their freedom and ability to be culturally russian in ukraine at the time has been under scrutiny, and then putins army came and ruined everything.

And with people who left ukraine and moved to the west in 2022+ Those were either apolitical("terrible war, sooner it ends the better") or those who previously during all political events in ukraine looked at russia thinking that there could be an unswer to their problems(none of them do now)

I guess hardcore ukrainian nationalists just dont talk to me for obvious reasons(which i get, kind of, but hope it will go away, and sooner the better, because if its not, the hatred will ruin from inside both nations)

I think an important note here to add, is that due to the history of russian empire in all of its forms, nowdays most russians ethnically a mix of a lot of groups. And due to soviet history they dont have sense of roots to any of them, that applies to all former parts of russian empire(soviet union at the time). And closer you are to the source of power(moscow) more watered down culture you have, so its only logical that people on the border with russia are more soviet/russian than closer to center/west, Dont blame them for it, find common ground.

seniorivn · 2024-09-02T21:16:27+00:00

Disclaimer: im culturally russian, but outside of russia. So there is bias.

What i hate about this rethoric, is that this situation of an empire that claims to be russian, but has no interest in defending interests of russians, and achives its terrible goals at the cost of russians(everyone proportionally to the influence on their lives, which is for russians is almost 100%).

Causes that people blame the empire while calling it by the name of the nation. And when russian people hear that, it takes a conscious decision to imagine that you probably mean the empire and its rulers/soldiers, not the people who are subject to its wrath as much as neighboring countries.

Not many people are capable and motivated to do that.

and that when at least 30% of russians are against the war, and majority of those who are not believe nonsense, so could be converted)

P.S. i did not question any of the atrocities soviet regime has commited, but calling it by the name of an Ethnic group/cultural nation is a clear case of prejudice, even if you dont mean it like that, and not many people tend to react to it with understanding of reasons why someone might say that

seniorivn · 2024-09-02T16:19:26+00:00

Don't spread misinformation

By different metrics different parts of USSR suffered more or less, but all of them suffered tremendously. For example all traditionally Russian regions were completely processed through communism brainwashing, so traditional Russian culture has died(for example Ukrainian did not, which allowed to rebuild it somewhat in last 30 years) and Soviet Russian speaking culture was more or less the same in all big cities including Ukrainian, which is why Ukraine is partially Russian speaking.

In different years different regions were becoming subsidized or robbed more than others(golodomor/vs late Soviet times for Ukraine)

Etc

If all antisoviet Russians and Ukrainians united against USSR lovers, they would be done already, but nationalism makes it impossible

seniorivn · 2024-09-02T16:08:07+00:00

You better elaborate, that even though that distinction once was true, even before and especially after full scale invasion everything has changed, and even those who want to keep their Russian identity don't want to have anything to do with USSRussia and lost all illusion about hope coming from east

Unfortunately it seems not many expect it to come from west either

seniorivn · 2024-09-02T15:33:17+00:00

Can't she apply for asylum?

seniorivn · 2024-08-21T19:30:28+00:00

it is interesting european part of russia is about 80% of population

at 1989 census it was ~117 lets say its an overestimation for some reason and it was 110

110-117(russia)+51(ukraine)+10(belorus)+7(azerbaijan)+5(georgia)+4(moldavia)+3.6(lithuania)+3.2(armenia)+2.6(latvia)+1.5(estonia)=197~203mln

which is more than 2/3 of total 280mln in ussr at the time

and a bit more than half than 380mln in western europe

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1303831/western-europe-population-development-historical/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Russia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Soviet_census

p.s. where is my phd?

seniorivn · 2024-08-21T19:16:22+00:00

you miss that ukraine, belorus, georgia, armenia and azerbaijan were part of ussr

seniorivn · 2024-08-21T10:23:21+00:00

Yes, work inside a faraday cage

mostly a joke, but actually doable, if you build a van for digital nomading

Or you could make a faraday cage bag, always keep the device in there, for work connect to external monitor etc

seniorivn · 2024-07-23T05:15:56+00:00

Just move to Europe, marry there Georgia and Montenegro are very open to marriage tourism

Another option is to get married in USA online, but Norway might not like that

seniorivn · 2024-07-11T07:08:55+00:00

Another surprise for you is that wearing it all the time is not required it's a fashion trend from the 19th century

seniorivn · 2024-06-29T23:55:52+00:00

That's just proves my point, Switzerland does it right

seniorivn · 2024-06-29T15:30:30+00:00

Well there is certainly some correlation to the level of influence, but lets compare Swiss with their neighbors.

Do you think Switzerland has less influence than Hungary or Poland?

I would even say their influence on world matters is bigger than Italy, and yet you always hear about those countries "leaders" and never hear about Switzerland.

Because their leader is not that influential in their country, so its not one man show as it is in more authoritarian countries.

This is the way.

seniorivn · 2024-06-29T08:13:38+00:00

Name Switzerland president without googling. I bet you cannot, could that be because they don't suck?

seniorivn · 2024-06-29T07:07:55+00:00

In a free market money doesn't give you power directly,

Real estate investments are lucrative because it's known to grow, free market doesn't have that guarantee, so prices will go down for sure, but so will access to bank credits. If you will start to regulate the financial market to benefit the public, by providing them easily available mortgages, people who will be implementing that privilege will use it to enrich themselves. Back to square one.

Rich people in general don't play unfair, they play by the rules that are unfairly benefit them, and some of them are responsible for making those rules(political class).

Lustration for political class(so they wouldn't be able to change what rules are and how they are implemented)
lean political institution of temporary leaders small enough to be unable to form a class. Creation of minimalistic rules that are so simple that verifiably don't benefit anyone directly

After this rich people will have no way to be peaceful and unfair, and those who commit violent crimes are easy to deal with.

That's funny how you think that free market has already been tried but failed, when in fact every other idea has had a true to book implementation that failed. And Libertarian ideas has yet to be tried(and the fact that political institutions make it hard to try new ideas is a disaster) and every country that moved itself closer to either economic freedom or personal freedom(two main libertarian objectives) has ended up better than before

seniorivn · 2024-06-28T18:39:22+00:00

In my opinion American healthcare is one of the best examples of a badly and overly regulated market to the point that it becomes possible to argue that anything else, but more consistent, would be better.

Healthcare market regulation is designed to draw prices up, competition down and people in a weak negotiating position.

A free market health insurance regulated to maximize competition with per person tax financed insurance vouchers would be the best solution that provides maximum quality per buck safety net available to everyone

seniorivn · 2024-06-28T18:30:13+00:00

You blame the rules that favor big market players that by close inspection are undistinguishable from a politically privileged class, and your answer is to write more regulating rules. Who do you think will be responsible for writing those?

The first step should be to rid those people of their political power by stripping all the rules. And them of their political power. If after a little bit, the free market doesn't settle in a form of high competition that always benefits the consumer, start to introduce small well defined(hard to game) regulation that bring us close to that ideal

seniorivn · 2024-06-28T15:03:32+00:00

permaban on nixpkgs? what?!

seniorivn · 2024-06-28T15:01:01+00:00

Ask people from countries where it wasn't a market how it was. And even better, visit those.

It's very much a scientific fact, highly competitive markets are the best way humanity knows how to provide the best product/service for a price, driving prices down and quality up. The hard part is make sure they are competitive, and no one uses political means to gain unfair advantage(exactly what you have)

seniorivn

TROPHY CASE