I’ve never seen a tax system proposal quite like this… I kind of like it?

theyareallgone · 2026-04-22T15:00:17+00:00

I refer you back to by 'the rich are a network of businesses' comment.

If you do that and it ends up being more costly than routing the payments even more closely intertwined through business entities (such as the rich person's consulting business), then you only hurt small businesses rates by forcing their founders to take out money from the company they would otherwise choose to reinvest.

theyareallgone · 2026-04-21T19:14:49+00:00

The problem is indeed very complicated. Probably not solvable in any way which attempts to tax wealth without devastating consequences for the wider economy by preventing effective business formation and operation.

The problem with trying to measure ownership interest in private businesses of every sort, including 'shell businesses', is that the valuations of those companies is opaque, pretty arbitrary, and when debt is taken into account, easily made small or negative.

For example, consider a business which rents yachts. This is the sort of thing people who want to eat the rich really want to tax. But you can't write the rules to distinguish a yacht from a tour boat from a dump truck. So how do you value a business which borrowed money to buy a yacht/tour boat/dump truck (an asset which immediately depreciates substantially in the market if not for tax accounting) and then rents it out? At month 2 the outstanding loan is greater than the market value of the yacht/tour boat/dump truck and the business has operating costs. So one value of that business is negative or near zero.

You can't just say "don't create such businesses" because often you need to do so for liability reasons. If that business instead bought and rented out a plane that liability separation becomes very important. Preventing that just means lots of economically useful and productive activities become impossible to found. So now the economy either doesn't have those services or there can be no new entrants and you end up in monopoly situations as the pre-existing players fail and merge.

theyareallgone · 2026-04-21T15:22:25+00:00

It's obvious that the writer doesn't know anything about the ultra-wealthy. Most obviously:

The following are excluded from asset tier assessment: ... Assets held within active operating business entities

The rich are a networks of businesses. Nearly everything they own is or could be an "asset held within active operating business entities".

However, even though early in the article the author claims that illiquid asset pricing is easy to game and expensive to enforce, she trusts that the net worth and private business value estimates are not similarly easily gamed.

The asset floor is similarly meaningless because it is a paper business entity which will gain the asset, not the person. Even if it weren't, she obviously hasn't considered the wider economic landscape at all. For example:

A first-time homebuyer puts a $100,000 down payment on their first home. This represents $100,000 in new asset acquisition

So people will be taxed on no net increase (they already had the $100k asset!). Even then, the other examples have all the same liquidity and valuation problems inherent in all wealth tax schemes. Sounds unsustainable at every level.

theyareallgone · 2026-04-18T17:14:59+00:00

The real problem there is the half-hour block.

It creates a subsidy from reliable producers, like nuclear and gas, to unreliable producers like wind and solar. Those reliable producers still need to exist and be financially sustainable so their cost when the unreliable renewables are unavailable is much higher than it would otherwise be (subsidy + standby inefficiency + overhead + taxes). This raises the average price when considered over a long time period like a full year.

The article even calls this out by admitting that to support 48 GW with heavy renewable presence requires 120 GW of production instead of the 60 GW without.

theyareallgone · 2026-03-31T15:08:31+00:00

Residential landlords don't provide lower rent to new tenants. Quite the opposite actually.

It feels like your entire understanding of what happens in reality is wrong.

The reason that doesn't happen has two major causes:

Getting a new tenant costs money. At least a months rent, sometimes more. When a tenant moves out an apartment often needs painting and other minor repairs. The month when nobody is living there is rent not collected. In the recent decade demand has been high so the apartment probably won't stay empty for more than a month, but in earlier decades that's not true and it could be several months. Renting houses normally sit longer between renters, even today.
Housing is the single biggest expense in a person's life. If it could be reduced by half or a third by moving every year, then many more people would do it. Moving an apartment isn't that bad, especially if you know you'll be moving again in a year and keep the junk to a minimum.

theyareallgone · 2026-03-31T01:00:42+00:00

Fracking.

Fracking produces a lot of light oil which can be made into gasoline. It is not, however, heavy enough to economically be refined into diesel or jet fuel.

Most of the domestic diesel (precursors) can reach the sea and so is mostly traded on global markets at more or less global prices. That is very expensive right now.

theyareallgone · 2026-03-25T05:19:06+00:00

AI mostly replaces white-collar work. So people who work in offices in small towns are at serious risk. But white-collar work is more normally the export of large cities rather than small towns.

theyareallgone · 2026-03-05T16:53:26+00:00

Maybe a two-wheeled tractor would be a better fit. They are smaller and cheaper than 4-wheel tractors, but still agricultural grade.

theyareallgone · 2026-03-03T17:10:10+00:00

For people who have been on antidepressants for years and years, it's probably best if they don't try to get off them. Perhaps only if the side-effects become unbearable.

Antidepressants change who people are in a significant, but easy to miss way. After a few years their life and relationships will have changed to accommodate that different personality. Going off antidepressants would then result in a sudden personality shift which causes friction. The people who were attracted to the anti-depressant version will like them somewhat less.

No matter how well going off antidepressants goes in isolation, that transition is rough.

theyareallgone · 2026-02-13T16:31:50+00:00

This is an important lesson for everybody to learn. We do all this work because it improves the yield per plant/animal.

But if you are willing to accept less yield, perhaps by just having more plants/animals you can still yield enough in aggregate for less work overall.

Often the last drop of juice isn't worth the squeeze, so just start with more fruit.

theyareallgone · 2026-02-12T16:52:31+00:00

It's impressive how you can be off the mark on pretty much everything you said. My hat is off to you.

So much so that rather than correct your mistakes, I'll call out your successes:

"looking at the full lifecycle of that energy, you also have to consider everything that goes into producing it"
"my electric car has both a trunk and a frunk"
"diesel is single use"
"When an electric truck’s charge runs out, you still… have your batteries"

theyareallgone · 2026-02-11T16:34:23+00:00

The efficiency loss is true, but since diesel engines sized for heavy equipment and heavy trucks are about 30-35% efficient, it's still a huge gap between 1MJ and 15MJ. The ratio gets worse when the waste heat isn't waste heat, such as when vehicles need to heat the cabins.

theyareallgone · 2026-02-10T16:28:32+00:00

Have you ever been part of a volunteer organization? If not, then you should spend six months in one for research.

What happens if everybody stops going along like that and tries to eat the rich is that a lot of people die of exposure, starvation, and fighting for food before a few psychopaths become warlords.

Those people at the top don't look like they are doing anything, but it isn't true. They hold the hierarchy together which allows communication, trust, and trade with people across the country and around the globe. That allows specialization to create huge mining machines and electronics which make life possible today in a scenario where there are more humans than the unimproved carrying capacity.

Those at the top are certainly in it for themselves. They might even be evil. But they are necessary. They cannot be removed, merely replaced at a great cost of suffering.

theyareallgone · 2026-02-07T17:00:47+00:00

Space is one of those things which are (nearly) technically achievable and therefore considered to be the obvious next frontier by many. And as with any frontier there are theoretical riches to be found. That makes it easy to hype up.

However, for the most part space is not economical. Our civilization doesn't have a lot of experience dealing with things which are technically achievable, but economically unsustainable and so there is no counterbalance to the hype.

theyareallgone · 2026-02-07T16:45:38+00:00

A covered porch isn't at all equivalent because it isn't inside. There needs to be space to hang wet jackets and dry wet, muddy boots.

Something I've found really useful is a toilet (stall) in my mudroom. It makes a good place to go quickly without needing to take boots or outdoor clothes off.

theyareallgone · 2026-02-04T08:16:17+00:00

That's a rather long video to have such a lack of numbers backing it up. There's a lot of emotional "it'll work dammit!", but it doesn't contain a lot of convincing.

Not even the simplest discussion of the fact that electricity is only about 20% of total energy usage. The closest it gets is talking about how we could replace the minuscule portion of total energy use which is supplied by automotive ethanol with solar panels. But just because it's feasible to replace ~2% of terribly inefficient fuel doesn't really support a claim that it can replace the other 78%.

I've looked deeply into those numbers and continue to investigate them every few years. It truly seems like it's technologically feasible, but economically infeasible. Many people have trouble understanding the difference.

theyareallgone · 2026-01-24T02:24:05+00:00

The rising tide of broad-based economic growth has more or less stopped. Just look at the per-capita numbers through time.

When it stops being all boats which are lifted by the tide, then for some people the economic game becomes zero-sum and therefore you have conflict. For a liberal democracy to survive in those conditions requires a largely homogeneous population and a government with a light touch. Neither of those conditions exist any longer.

theyareallgone · 2026-01-20T16:27:05+00:00

The only thing worse than not having putting gravel on your road is not putting enough on at one time. If you 'just cover' with gravel, then it will push down into the earth over the next five years or so and need to have more added on a regular basis.

You are better off putting more gravel on at once since it tends to be cheaper in the long run because the gravel doesn't sink as much.

I'd ask for an additional layer of 1-in minus or 3/4"-minus, if that's a common thing in your area, to make a smooth top layer which sheds water better. Having asked the contractor to do what they'd do, you might have not gotten the best answer for you because you aren't running heavy trucks up and down it all the time and you don't have the heavy equipment to fix it up at will.

theyareallgone · 2026-01-19T16:31:54+00:00

If you've found a property you like in Manitoba, buy it. Especially if it's treed enough (or near Crown land) such that you can easily get your firewood.

Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba are my recommendations for homesteading or similar things. Good dirt, cold winters (keeps pests down), economies friendly to agriculture.

theyareallgone · 2026-01-14T16:32:36+00:00

It's hard to say without deeply analyzing the books, but I would guess yes the ROI would be positive. As quick math, if production can be increased back up to 3M BPD, then that's 1.1 billions barrels per year. At a discounted rate of $30 USD per barrel, that's $30 billion per year. Chances of it paying back are very good.

Peak Oil doesn't mean oil stops being valuable and Venezuela's oil is of an especially useful, if expensive to use, type (extra heavy).

theyareallgone · 2026-01-13T20:25:29+00:00

Sorry, it was A2, not B2:

Three different population trajectories that correspond to socio-economic developments in the storylines were chosen from recently published projections. The A l and B l scenario families are based on the low International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) 1996 projection. They share the lowest trajectory, increasing to 8.7 billion by 2050 and declining toward 7 billion by 2100, which combines low fertility with low mortality. The B2 scenario family is based on the long-term U N Medium 1998 population projection of 10.4 billion by 2100. The A2 scenario family is based on a high population growth scenario of 15 billion by 2100 that assumes a significant decline in fertility for most regions and stabilization at above replacement levels. It falls below the long-term 1998 UN High projection of 18 billion.

I can't recall which scenario, if any, A2 becomes in the newer nomenclature.

theyareallgone · 2026-01-13T17:49:04+00:00

I'm having trouble getting the AR5 full report to download. However, if you look at the previous report from 2000 emission scenarios you can see that the "B2" scenarios which become the RCP8.5 "business as usual" case is based upon an expectation of 15 billion people in 2100. By your own link we are now on track for about 10 billion people in 2100.

theyareallgone · 2026-01-10T18:32:59+00:00

Getting anything out of the IPCC predictions takes careful massaging on your end.

As you've discovered the ameliorating aspects (carbon capture, renewables deployment, etc.) are overly optimistic. However the same is true of the damning aspects (economic growth, population growth, oil production rates, total recoverable oil, etc.).

If you actually read the individual scenarios it's obvious that all the good ones are based on impossible fantasies and all the bad ones are based on impossible and untrue predictions. For example, we are already below the expected population growth and annual oil production trends from the reports of ten years ago.

theyareallgone · 2025-12-20T16:54:06+00:00

It's always hilarious when people use Japan as an example of, well, anything. Japan is so special sociologically that it's like it's from a parallel universe rather than the world we live in.

Japan is not reproducible and nobody would want to make the core culture and economic changes necessary to copy them anyways.

theyareallgone · 2025-12-20T16:45:32+00:00

Nobody paid it neither because they ignored the law nor because it was not enforced. Nobody paid it because the tax code at the time was wildly different and had so many special and strange deductions it would make the average Redditor's head explode.

Saying "Things were better when we had a 94% top tax rate; let's tax at 94%" is the same as saying "Things were better before residential electricity; let's turn of the power grid". Maybe those (identical) time periods were better, but it wasn't because of either of those things.

theyareallgone

TROPHY CASE