dennis_jeeves2

>Dancing is good advice because you have a good mix of genders

Yoga, if you are interested in only one particular gender.

>Hey lonely HN nerds,

Har, har, har...

>Just for my curiosity could you name a non-clown industry?

The real clowns union paradoxically is the least clownish industry one can find.

>Non-technical managers don't want to wait for the 'nerds' to 'do it right' because that takes a long time and the nerds don't agree on how best to solve the problem because most capable nerds (who sort of know what they are doing) are working on lower-level problems and making the big bucks (they are not running WordPress for the local News Paper).

>So that leaves non-technical managers telling non-technical nerds to just install WordPress.

Good summary of how the world operates generally everywhere. It's a clown world.

>We're a clown industry. We only made it this far because, usually, buggy code doesn't kill people

Another industry does even better: the medical/health industry. It's both a clown industry AND kills people AND they have made it way beyond what software can only dream.

Good try at the virtue signaling - i.e you care about society and I don't.

A more honest answer is - "I have never done my taxes and I'm 15 years old with very little life experience".

p.s - you won't get too far if you lied to me about doing taxes, because I'll ask you specifics on what you did.

>Perhaps (doubtful) it's possible to earn that much while being legally legitimate, although that speaks more to how fucked up our system is than anything else, but certainly not possible to do so in a morally legitimate way.

So you automatically assume that: Too much wealth = ill gotten gains?

Genuine question: So anecdotally which country is the most free? Hard evidence can be difficult to obtain, but often speaking to locals and/or living in different countries does give a comparative sense of freedoms.

He's only 15.

All 3 points can be blamed on primarily on your govt, not on someone being rich. Even when the rich influence the govt, it's the govt to blame. Aren't they supposed to protect you? Govt, for the people, by the people etc...

Nice way to put it.

>I don’t even understand why anyone cares about equality.

Because most people are (IMO wrongfully) jealous of the rich. They have a problem with the rich even if it's legitimately earned wealth.

You didn't answer my question:

How often do you do taxes? Are you employed and/or do you own a small business?

These will determine your views.

> You're asking a chicken and egg question, I believe it becomes a self-reinforcing loop

Generally true, with a nuance. The root cause is often people, specifically its people with low IQ. When a society is corrupt you will notice that the mean IQ is lower.

> Should we just leave the poor to die?

You can help them personally, not just the somebody else's money.

>You literally had homes burning down because people didn't pay into the right fire fighter service to put out their homes.

You left out many details. For example many people actually used fires to cook. And then there are accounts of fire departments starting fires off on purpose to justify their existence. And why shouldn't people be held responsible for their own fire safety, just like everything else? [For the records - I have lived in places with no fire department and 911 service]

Real question for you: what cumulative[*] tax rate on your income would you be comfortable with for the services that you are currently getting?

* cumulative = income tax + property tax+ sales tax + all other taxes

>A NOTE ON GENDER: just in case anyone complains, on this page we refer to Jonathan as ‘he/him’. He is certainly a biological male and nobody we know speaks Tortoise so we cannot ask how he identifies, so have defaulted to using is biological gender.

>That sounds far worse than the current system IMO.

Nope. How often do you do taxes? Are you employed and/or do you own a small business?

>Of course we already have people not paying in as much as the should.

How do you decide how much a person should pay? Conversely how can you make sure that you are not paying into the pockets of the govt for services they don't render?

>Who else is going to build roads that anyone can use without being nickle and dimed into poverty? Certainly not for profit corporations.

Road are really cheap. ( cheap = cheaper than paying taxes) More than a century ago in the US about 3000 companies existed which constructed/operated toll roads.

It can be like any other system where you need some proof of payment. For example passes for roads where one has to pay a toll. To minimize complexity there can be a common pass for a bunch of services: roads, libraries etc. The important thing here is that there must be a way to opt out if needed. While it does shift complexity to billing each service, it removes more complexity from things like the extremely complex tax code.

(It does raise the question if the govt should have monopoly on roads etc. but that a bigger question.)

> refusing to pay taxes,

Taxes should be optional to start with. If you pay taxes you get services, if not you don't.

> People whining about how there's nothing they can do basically don't engage in democracy and thats how you end up in a US situation

If I tried to engage in the thousands of laws that I do not like, hat is all I'd be doing. So stop your democracy lecturing. Of course there might be exceptions. Like somebody here pointed out it a feature of the system not a bug. The system is rigged at it's fundamentals.

>Could essentially be saying, obey and work.

Teaching kids to be good slaves to the system...

Good point. Money helps. It beats being a loser in the corporate world.

>earn a living

Also, be rich and leave a nice pile of inheritance. Beats every corporate job which is for the losers.

The grass is generally greener on the other side.

>Democracy is mostly an illusion.

This is accurate but most people will not recognize it that way because it's designed that way.

Prior to 'democracy' the peasants revolted and that occasionally had some very nasty consequences for the ruling class. Now when the peasants have the urge to revolt - you just remind them them to do a better job at 'voting'. Like they say in a democracy: Consent is manufactured.

>Wonder how much actual gold value increase is there vs real inflation.

Most likely the latter.

You are a monkey, a code monkey.

>hostile orange individual

Orange guy may make news, but Canada has greater problems from within.

Silicon or Germanium?

>they do know HUGELY more about medicine, disease, interventions, symptoms and so forth than you do (and almost certainly more than you will ever know).

Depends. When it comes you many chronic conditions (example: high cholesterol), their treatments will actively harm you, than when left untreated. There are a lot of bogus treatments out there and certainly they will appear to know a lot, but it's harmful intervention that they know.

Bottom line - you have to take a call depending on the situation. As a general rule complete disregard for authority in case of medicine in a developed country will do more people OVERALL good. I'm not saying that they cannot be legitimately helpful, but those cases are far and few in the developed world.