The problem being that everybody always wants to force someone else to be the one to have no children and a crappy standard of living, while they get to be one of the people selected to remain.
363 karma · joined October 5, 2019
It's pretty hard to maintain the level of society that we enjoy having without the ability to build stuff, which does require steel to come from somewhere. But even more importantly, if you want to have your large population not starve to death, you need to be able to secure a food supply -- which is not possible without fertilizer.
Some of the other manufactured goods, sure, maybe. But I remember 2021, when it was nearly impossible to get almost everything that we used to think was super commonplace because global supply chains collapsed. Indeed, things haven't really recovered still. Intentionally dismantling supply chains again does seem like a poor strategy for prosperity.
Everything "effects the environment" in some way, after all.
Planet Money did a decent episode on the topic a few years ago, but the summary is this:
The companies that make tax prep software will spend ~any amount of money to fight free-file. It would destroy their business. That's one major faction.
Another major faction is that part of the Republican party which wants lower taxes. Their argument is basically that if we made tax filing too easy/automatic, it would be less visible. If you have to spend hours preparing your taxes, you're likely to notice how much you pay and therefore will be more resistant to policies which raise them. If it all just disappeared out of your paycheck transparently, you might not notice it as much.
A third major faction is very-wealthy businessmen, who benefit from the incredible complexity of our system since they can afford to spend large sums of money (and lots of accountants' time) to optimize for maximum avoidance of tax. A system which was simpler or more automated would likely be less game-able -- and even if it wasn't less game-able, the fact that the vast majority of people would have trivial automated filings would mean that limited enforcement resources would be more available to audit the most-complex cases.
And the final major faction is people who do not trust our institutions. They generally fear that it would be scarier and riskier for people to fight inaccurate automated returns, and that people would feel compelled to pay whatever the automated system said they owed for fear of what the enforcers would do to them if they complained about it.
Getting to simpler or automated filings is going to require addressing at least some of these.
It is possible that you'll end up caught up in some of that. Not super likely, but possible for sure.
The availability of investment money has greatly decreased -- people are no longer willing to pledge huge sums of money to back companies with minimal revenues, no profits, and no plan on how they're going to eventually be profitable.
If the company that you're going to go work for is profitable, you'll probably be completely fine. If it's not profitable, the company might start to feel like all the free cash has disappeared, and things may get less awesome. If your company isn't profitable, doesn't have a lot of money left, and isn't going to be profitable soon, then you're probably going to end up looking for another job before this is all over.
But even if you end up without work for a time, engineers are still in demand. The problems that we can solve aren't going away, and companies will still figure out profitable ways to employ engineers.
Be aware -- pay attention to how your company is doing. But I wouldn't panic.
The stock market represents only a part of the total capital stock, as not all capital is owned by companies, and not all companies are public. But, on the whole, one should expect the stock market to rise over time so long as society is not dying.
There are virtually zero republicans or conservatives on any social media site -- they know they aren't welcome, so they don't engage very much.
You don't see them being censored because, at this point, they self-censor.
Who wants to be doxxed and have their employer harassed into firing them just for trying to have a calm conversation with people who want to murder them anyway
Of course, if Google doesn't approve your content, nobody can find it, and if Cloudflare doesn't approve of your content, it isn't actually online.
And, with everybody locked up, you can't go advertise it in the physical world.
So, basically, unless Google and Cloudflare like your content -- or the major media bullies them into liking your content -- your content does not exist.
Given that several states have already indicated a further 12-18 months of lockdown at minimum, we're looking at >90% of all businesses of all sorts disappearing.
He said that he won't ever release the lockdown, no matter what people say or do.
There is nothing in those rules mandating being a leftist, or putting your head in the sand, or begging to be enslaved.
Indeed, those rules talk about curiosity and discussion.
You can have neither when only the party line is allowed to be posted.
They show that there are a minimum of 50x as many cases as reported, which brings the fatality rate down to somewhere between "the flu" and "about three flus"
But, I know, WaPo is shilling for the dictator squad, so they have to make it seem like 100% of Americans are going to die, because otherwise we will all realize that they're enslaving us.
The left owns the online media, and they ban all non-left thought.
Meanwhile, if you try to speak in person, the cops come and beat you up.
We gambled that the virus was so bad that destroying our economy, wrecking the lives of 10s of millions of people, and seriously risking famine, was all worthwhile to slow the progress somewhat.
And boy does it ever seem like we were wrong.
In 10 seconds, it would be a crime to disagree with the left -- just like they've succeeded in doing online and in places like Europe.
These days, each election is potentially the last one.
Especially when you consider things like the dramatic drop in reported mortality from things like heart disease the last few months according to the preliminary data.
But preliminary data isn't very good quality ever, so it is hard to tell how much of that is just bad data, how much is coronavirus killing people that were going to die in only weeks anyway, and how much is misreporting.
But in six months or so, when the data start to settle down, we will find out which direction we are miscounting in. (Clearly we are miscounting in both directions by significant amounts, but it's hard to tell the comparative magnitude)
You don't need the presidency when you can make the presidency meaningless. Look at Trump -- every time he tries to take any position at all, he gets wrecked and ultimately loses. The media destroy him, the tech companies disband any gatherings of his followers.
Besides, unlike the left, the right and Republicans are a fractious, disunited lot. They can't hardly agree on anything -- too many incompatible viewpoints -- so they're almost completely ineffective anyway.
First, there's not much secrecy involved. It isn't a secret at all that, Hollywood, the American mainstream media, and the political left are all on the same side. It's been obvious for 30 years now.
What we are currently living through is a left-authoritarian consolidation of power. Like other similar consolidations in the 20th century.
That is why, within 24 hours of the first house-arrest orders, propaganda about how our old lives of freedom are gone forever because they were "irresponsible", and how we must all get used to "the new normal" began.
Dr. Fauci says that physical human contact is a thing of the past ("nobody will ever shake hands ever again"), governors, especially those of "blue states" have all acted to either make their house-arrest orders indefinite (like in CA) or to declare that they will continue for multiple years (as VA announced yesterday, for example).
Enforcement is gradually increased everywhere, and citizens are increasingly encouraged to snitch.
Political protests are banned. Even organizing them online is being locked down, with states pressuring Facebook and Google into deleting people's accounts if they even mention the existence of a protest.
The thing is, it takes time to take a society used to freedom and fully consolidate it.
The house arrest orders are the start -- now, when the government eventually let's people out of their houses, but only on conditions (like wearing a tacking wristband, showing your papers to any government official, having to have "a legitimate purpose"), people will be so desperate to leave home that they'll agree.
With "contact tracing" apps and "mandatory isolation", the government will be able to declare any person they need to silence as "contaminated", and they go back to imprisonment, with no recourse, no due process, no burden of proof. Even better, having communicated with a "contaminated" person automatically adds you to the list of the unpersoned.
The economic disruption has already made 1 in 4 Americans dependent upon government handouts to survive. Every week, another 4-5% join them. An authoritarian government needs it's people to be dependent for survival, in order to ensure cooperation.
Meanwhile, the food supply is being turned off. We already have a third of our food production offline, and are most of the way toward driving all independent farmers and ranchers into bankruptcy. We are pretty much guaranteed to have widespread hunger by the fall. This will leave the way for a government takeover of food production.
But, in order for the consolidation to work, they have to keep us all imprisoned willingly until they finish consolidating enough power to make it permanent, or we will all just go back to our lives as free people, the economy will recover, and people won't be dependent upon the would-be dictators for their continued survival.
The next 3-6 months are critical to breaking the back of the capitalist system and soften everyone up to accept the new freedomless world. It will take that long to drive enough people to poverty, hunger, and desperation for them to be willing to go to the authoritarians and beg to be ruled.
This isn't a secret, and it isn't really new. It's more or less how every current left-authoritarian state was formed -- only with more technology and fewer guns.