redahs

Yes, but requiring socially undesirable accounts to be compartmentalized and spun-off may allow democracies to start removing the currently blatant conflicts of interest surrounding procurement and lobbying.

A longer term solution would most likely require imposing a scaling import tariff on non-democratic countries in proportion to their level of human rights abuses. This would establish a rule where their ability to acquire democratic foreign currencies redeemable for weapon systems automatically decreases on the margin if they they pursue authoritarian policies, and automatically increases on the margin if they pursue reforms.

Importing goods from non-democratic countries is not an all-or-nothing proposition. The externality created by giving non-democratic countries cash issued by democracies can be partially corrected by assessing a unilateral scaling tariff on imports, in proportion to the level of human rights abuses created by the country of origin.

> if we didn't want them spying on people, we shouldn't be giving them all that oil money

Yes, but if we did something reasonable such as enact scaling import tariffs on exports from non-free countries in proportion to their level of human rights abuses as measured by a legislative scorecard of objectively observable public criteria, the neoliberals would claim that they learned tariffs were bad in Econ 101 and therefore that domestic tax policy on importers must be set by the WTO.

Western democracies should impose a domestic procurement ban on companies which sell to foreign governments without civilian control over their militaries. This would not require new export controls or restrictions on international trade, only voluntary divestment when awarding domestic procurement contracts on the public's behalf. Problem solved.

> News can be false, misleading, disproven, untrustworthy, and many shades in between. In fact there are a lot more angles to information than a False/True boolean.

Ideally this range could be quantified using publisher trust scores where publishers rate the reliability of each other using cardinal utilities and distributed public web of trust.

> sometimes trustworthy news outlets deliver a misleading stories, as in the case of Iraq WMDs or Y2K.

If the conclusions which a rational reader is likely to draw from reading an article are incorrect, then the reliability and trust score of a publisher should decrease, and we should not be able to claim that the news outlet was in fact wholly 'trustworthy'. As you stated, 'shades in between'.

> But since skepticism and logic don't increase readership or viewership, unfortunately those qualities aren't encouraged

News agencies which publish high quality information for an initially small number of readers should in principle still be able to generate profit by generating greater total utility per person. Part of the problem as to why they are not able to do so is that they are not able to implement 'value capture' for this utility using current web browser technologies.

This might be because there is no open one-time payment protocol associated with electronic news reader applications analagous to giving a dollar to the operator of a local newspaper stand on the street, where people used to be able to pay for a 'little bit' of the news on the margin.

George A. Selgin, The Theory of Free Banking: Money Supply under Competitive Note Issue [1988]

http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/selgin-the-theory-of-free-...

A land value tax would be far better than either an estate tax or a real-estate property tax. It is only assessed against the unimproved value of the ground one has enclosed and excluded others from occupying, and not against the value of improvements which have been constructed and maintained.

While the consequences of non-payment would also be forced sale, it is possible for residents to petition and sue the to assessor's office in order to reassess the value and obtain deferments, and the owners are still compenseated for the value of any real property located on the site. This is more just than an income tax, as failure to pay could never result in imprisonment.

Additionally, it would lead to far lower cost of housing, mortgages, and rent. This means less savings and income would have to be allocated toward acquiring the house in the first place. It would also be more just to those who are not wealthy enough to buy a house outright, and must instead rent or obtain a mortgage.

When spending on public services increases the land values and attractiveness of the location for which these services apply, and is financed via taxes on labor rather than taxes on land, this subsidizes land holders and banks invested in mortgages by allowing them to charge higher rent for housing.

If people are overly-thrify, it simply means that there is an under-supply of profitable investment opportunities for them to allocate their savings and labor toward. It is possible to increase the supply of real investment opportunities (investment opportunities which do not depend upon the extraction of "rent" from other investors) through the use of public inducement prize contests. It is possible for government to subsidize the creation of real investment opportunites by raising the nominal value of public inducement prize contest prize pools.

A liquidity glut is caused by savings exceeding desired investment. A shortage in desired investment is caused by an undersupply of investment opportunities. An increase in the supply of real investment opportunities can be incentivized by subsidizing public inducement prize competitions. The 'stabilizers' you propose subsidize the income of individuals but do not necessarily change individuals preference for savings vs consumption.

> tech investor and app innovator who believes that if used right, technology can bring an end to income inequality and a hosts of other social and economic problems.

If this implies using technology to deliver greater public services more efficiently, it is unlikely to solve structural inequality.

If you deliver public services more effectively and make California a more attractive place to live, then land values will rise, and landowners and mortgage investors can charge even higher rent.

The primary driver of inequality is housing costs and the only combination which would allow for high public spending on services and low rent paid to landholders and banks is switching state revenue from income, sales, and personal property taxes to a land value tax.

You can incentivize an incremental switch to land value taxation by sponsoring legislation which would allow residents to obtain an exemption from all state taxes if they lived in a county which made quarterly payments to the state on their behalf.

If a county can figure out how to get around Proposition 13 and raise local revenues from quarterly assessed unimproved land values sufficient to pay for both local and state services, it should be allowed to forward a portion of the money to the state in exchange for exemptions from state taxes for residents.

From a technical standpoint, it would be great if there was a public map of a single land value tax rate for every parcel of land in the state. However private developers could build this using data published by the county governments.

The base assessment rate is only determined by the unimproved land value. The value of real property improvements is subtracted\untaxed. If an abandoned lot is adjacent to a well maintained house, the tax rate is the same for both owners, despite the real estate value of the house being much higher due to the labor invested by the homeowner. Values would be reassessed quarterly rather than only upon change of ownership. There would be no negotiated exemptions on taxes for commercial developers and they would have to pay the land value tax even if they leave the lot abandoned. If commercial developers want to decrease their land taxes, then they can build vertically and leave more land left over for housing and wildnerness.

There would be no sales, earnings, payroll, income, excise, personal property, tariffs,state, or federal taxes for residents. Residents in land tax counties would only pay the single land value tax to the county assessor. The county would then pay negotatiated state taxes on behalf of its residents, and ideally the state would also pay negotiated federal taxes on behalf of its counties.

Taxing capital and labor creates deadweight loss and disincentivizes investment in the production of more goods and services. Capital goods are durable goods which go to wherever they are best treated, including overseas.

If you want to tax the rich without taxing capital or labor, then you want to tax land. Unlike capital, there is only a finite supply of land and it cannot be moved overseas. Wealthy individuals like owning land in areas with high land values in stable countries with high public spending, and with a land value tax they directly pay for it.

> Why would you expect inflation? All sane UBI proposals don't create money, they just move money from rich people to poor people.

If UBI is funded via taxes on labor and its products (income and consumption taxes) then one should expect further inflation in housing prices, and ultimately the transfer of money from productive workers and entrepeneurs to unproductive landholders and mortgage lenders.

If you don't want this transfer to occur, then you need to fund it via a land value tax, which does not allow landholders to charge higher rent in proportion to increased public spending.

If you are funding UBI via increased taxes on income and consumption rather than land, then you run the risk of making the majority of people poorer if housing, rent, and mortgage costs increase faster than their UBI transfer payments increase.

UBI is not guaranteed to make the majority of people better off. Its effects and consequences are highly dependent upon the source of revenue from which it is financed. You have to know the source of revenue for UBI and how other prices in the economy react to it in order to determine if it will make the majority of people wealthier or poorer.

If UBI is funded via taxes on labor and capital rather than taxes on land, it will subsidize landowners and banks and allow them to charge higher rent and make more from mortgages. If the price which a family pays for shelter, rent, and mortagages increases in proportion to the rate which their income increases from UBI, then will not actually be any wealthier.

Society will actually be much poorer, as we would be redistributing money from productive workers and entrepreneurs to unproductive landholders and lenders who were able to capture the increased public spending through higher land prices and rent.

Housing is expensive because public spending is currently paid for using taxes on labor and its products rather than taxes on land.

Public spending on infrastructure and services raises land values, as parks, police, and fire departments make locations more attractive to live in. This subsidizes landholders and allows them to charge higher rent whenever these services are paid for by a tax on labor rather than a tax on land.

With a land value tax, landholders have to privately invest in improving the private property on their land, such as expanding the supply of housing units, in order to increase their profits. Without a land value tax, landholders can earn greater rent and profit without actually privately investing in improving their property. They simply have to lobby for higher public spending paid for via taxes on income or consumption and then they can raise rents without competing to improve their supply.

Housing costs can be solved without massive social transfer payments simply by eliminating all income and consumption taxes and switching to a land value tax in order to pay for public services.

If UBI transfer payments are paid out of a consumption or income tax, then landholders and mortgage companies will simply be able to charge all residents higher rent. If residents experience an increase in housing costs associated with savings which must be put away for purchases, rent, and mortgage payments that is in proportion to the increase income they receive via UBI, then UBI will not have made them better off. UBI will only have redistributed money from workers and entrepreneurs to landholders and banks invested in mortgages.

Under a land value tax, landholders cannot charge higher rent due to an increase in land values brought on by public spending on public services. If they want to increase their profits, they have to invest in real property improvements, such as by expanding the stock of available housing. If UBI is paid out of taxes on labor rather than taxes on land, they will be able to charge higher rent.

A more comprehensive solution would be to eliminate all other taxes and fund all public services from taxes on land. This naturally incentives local ownership because owners of high demand locations do not receive a benefit from the high taxes they are assessed to pay for public services for residents unless they actually live there.

> you must be a citizen of the US to purchase real estate in the US

Why would you want to do that? People want to invest in the United States and give us money, we are instead suppossed to spend money and create a blackmarket to prevent them from doing so at a loss?

> People are living on the streets yet there are empty homes available that aren't for sale and artificially propping up home values in the area

Housing prices are high because government spending on public services that increase the attractiveness of a location subsidizes land ownership whenever these services are paid for using taxes other than taxes on land. The solution is not to ban ownership of land but to tax it.

When government spending is not funded by land taxes, it allows landowners to charge higher rent in response to increased government spending on public services, even if they did not inveset in improving the private property located on the site. With a land value tax, landowners are directly charged for the public services which increase their land value. This means that they have to invest in improving their property if they want to increase their profit, such as by increasing the number of available housing units on the site.

Foreign investors may still buy homes and try to lease them, but they will end up funding the government and public services which only benefit the residents which actually live in the US, and they will be unable to pass on this tax burden to renters.

Could this problem be fixed by splitting the NSA into two competing agencies, one handling offensive signals intelligence, and one handling cryptography research and disclosures?

Intuitively it seems when the same agency performs both roles it creates a conflict of interest and bias against disclosure.

What is the point of namecoin and a having a central domain registrar at all?

It seems like a publisher-addressable network (where documents are identified using a publisher's public key) or a content-addressable network (where documents are identified using a file hash) would be good enough by itself, so long as the protocol had builtin support for distributed document searching and ranking.

Casual internet users on the regular internet do not seem to be using domain names to locate resources anymore. They are using Google to locate resources, and only looking at the domain name to verify identity. If the primary purpose of the domain name is not to locate a resource but to verify identity, then it seems like this could be accomplished with a web of trust without a central name registrar.

Open source developers can create a virtual currency which prints shares for developers who complete work on improving open source software, with the quantity of shares to be issued specified in publicly listed bug bounties and prizes.

Approval of prize proposals and recognition of the correct wallet address of winners can be handle via stakeholder voting among existing currency holders. The currency base can be bootstrapped by recognizing the efforts of volunteer developers who would otherwise be performing work for free.

If an API is then added for transferring and proving ownership of shares, developers will then be able to sell their shares in independent exchange markets for other currencies if there ends up being a demand. Third parties might be interested in buying currency from developers in exchange for cash so they can list prize proposals on the network for completing work on software that benefits them.

This would potentially allow the foundation to indirectly compensate developers without having to raise the funds and hold the cash itself.

> Ultimately its high time end-users organize some kind of funded entity to support open source projects and protect user interests.

Create a virtual currency which mints fresh shares for open source developers who complete public prizes and bug bounties for GPL licensed software. Prizes can be publicly listed and disbursed to the wallet address of the correct winner using stakeholder voting among existing currency holders. The currency base can be bootstrapped by issuing shares to volunteer developers for completing work they would have otherwise done for free.

Add in a mechanism for transferring and verifying ownership of shares between, and developers can potentially sell a portion of their shares for dollars in independent exchange markets, without the central organization having to directly collect revenues and hold cash itself.

You are missing the point that the "p@ssw0rd" was for a Windows 8 account, not the gmail account. There was no evidence that the gmail account password was a variant of password. It would still be disingenuous even if he claimed it was a 'variant' of password, because there is no evidence to suggest it was.

We don't know the email password was something like `p@SSw0Rd`, only that a staffer temporarily set a Windows 8 password to a variant of password. This does not mean that the gmail password was a variant of password. It was disingenuous of Mr Assange to claim his email password was password, as the only indication we had of a password being a variant of password was for a Windows 8 account and not the email account.

> His password was an iteration of 'password'

What the email indicated was that someone temporarily set a Windows 8 password to a variant of password.

What the email did not indicate that his gmail account itself used a variant of password as the password. It is disingenuous to conflate the two and claim his email password was password as Assange did in numerous interviews.

A windows 8 password is not a gmail password.

We also know that Mr. Assange did lie about something in the past, his repeated claims that John Podesta's gmail password was 'password':

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2017/jan/06/...

> because they've never published anything that wasn't verified to be true

Mr Assange repeatedly claimed that Podesta's gmail password was 'password' in interviews, which was false:

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2017/jan/06/...

I do use C, but my point is that it is feasible to incorporate both of those features in an embedded VM, by using Erlang style actors for concurrency, and by providing builtin vector types that use SIMD instructions where available. If future language designers were to do so, they would be able to better differentiate their language from Lua, which does not provide these features.

Concurrency is always hard and fibers could be interesting, but looking at src/runtime/gravity_vm.c It appears to be single threaded with max 1 fiber running simultaneously per VM.

I think there is still a niche for something like a Lua/Erlang hybrid where there is a real possibility that the VM will run high level code units on multiple cores.

The other thing missing from Lua and LuaJIT which would be nice in future VMs would be support for SIMD vector optimizations.