I'm highly in favour of land taxes (Georgism1) and think that between land taxes and pollution taxes (taxing negative externalities) we could get rid of all other taxes (income tax, capital gains tax, etc).
Governments only create shields for organised criminals, everything else is ancient tradition dating back to Hammurabi at least.
Property rights didn't require centralised registries before (and even now court registries are still pretty decentralised), and don't need one now, so what is there left that is a natural monopoly? Nothing.
It was even warned against in the Old Testament:
1 Samuel 8:10-20
10 Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. 12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. 16 Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle[c] and donkeys he will take for his own use. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. 18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”
19 But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. 20 Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.”
Credit Card rewards. Only a small percent of diligent cardholders will benefit on net from rewards points, cash back, sign up offers, 0% interest periods, etc.
These rewards are paid for by less diligent customers who don't pay off their account each period and pay exorbitant interest rates. People also tend to increase their spending more than their reward rate. Many cards make you jump thru hoops to claim the reward.
Most of the time, these rewards don't even cover third party transaction fees (let alone sales tax). Even if you are diligent, the CC company is still selling data about your spending habits unless you call them and explicitly ask to invoke your right (as US citizen) to opt out of third party data sharing.
DAWG YES. Go talk with your merchants that you regularly buy from, get a business relationship to only pay cash, and ask for a cash discount from them. They will love you for being a loyal repeat customer and using cash, and you will love them for the discount.
As an adversarial thinker, I ponder why the absolute hell the legal system is design to make each partner vulnerable to each other rather than empowering them to be independent of each other when need be.
Very scary shit for the way that I think about things lmao
It sort of makes sense if you think about it from the stand point of a time when our society wasn't actually encouraging people to divorce. But it's ponderous indeed in the current social climate. Of course, if you choose to believe the conspiracy theorists, (I do. Don't judge me) this was all done deliberately to weaken the western family structure in order to make everyone more dependent on central authority.
In some places this was expressly stated. Pretty sure the communists had extensive rationales for their creche-society. I mean, you probably heard the saying "give me a child until he is 6 and he is with the church for life" or something like this.
-_- It does not make sense in the context of narcissists, abusers, and other labels we give to horrible people who do horrible things to their children and spouse (both man and woman alike)
So I just think there should be some kind of setup where married people can easily become independent of each other if they need to. People who are abused aren't thinking they need to put up with the abuse to have a roof over their head and food to eat, and even people who just decide they don't like each other anymore can just live in peace.
Only setup I've thought of for this so far, is to have multiple accounts or multiple buckets of money for specific purposes. My money, not my money (give your spouse a paycheck so they have a bucket of spending money and don't make it an unreasonably small paycheck either) and the houses money (joint account)
But that's still not a fully fledged out solution. There's still a lot to be addressed there.
Have had some legendary, face-blistering sunburns in my life. One day a long time ago I read that vegetables contain nutrients that provide natural sun protection, this motivated me to eat a lot more of them and a lot more frequently. Whether it’s true or not, I’ve only used sunscreen a handful of times since then. I’m not saying you can lie in the scorching heat all day long and get out alive, but I haven’t burned anywhere close to the way I used to.
I read that vegetables contain nutrients that provide natural sun protection
I think there may be some truth in this. Plants can't 'move out of the midday sun' so they need to make powerful UV protection for themselves, and it's possible that this UV protection is transferable by ingestion and absorption.
I learned this from a French researcher Jean-Pierre Petit who is not supported by the French academy because he goes against the idea of black holes and dark matter by proposing an alternative model which would make all the papers that have been produced for several decades on this subject are obsolete, putting an end to the income that many scientists enjoy for following the mainstream doxa.
Despite the lack of support, his model looks both simpler and gives more observational confirmation.
It's been +50 years of research in cosmology that leads to nothing, the simple concept of "dark" matter / energy only serves to justify inconsistencies between observed reality and the lambdaCDM model (mainstream)
The presentation of the videos and of his site are a bit "artisanal" because he does almost everything himself. If you look carefully on his site, all these papers are public and verifiable (higher math level)
This is a good one, didn’t even think of it. Not only a completely useless regulation but also a highly destructive on both sides. Inexperienced workers lose access to valuable training and business owners get r@ped financially
Not even enjoy, because you have chores to do and once you have that hour or two to enjoy, you can't enjoy it because the dreadful thought of Monday morning makes it impossible to relax.
We do need soap (and detergents) to clean our clothes but I think the scam is moving this genuine use of soap over to 'cleaning' the body, which has mostly only happened over the past century (and just the last ~50 years for use of detergents on the skin & hair, which can be much more harmful than soap). One of the earliest big advertising/consumer campaigns was to get ppl to buy soap in the first half of the 20th Century, from which the name 'soap opera' derives (these radio entertainments were sponsored by the soap companies as an advertising vehicle).
Taking politics out of it you have a group of people that don't want to be there that were not sharp enough to get out of it. And these people are being manipulated by lawers with another person's life in the balance.
Companies hiring social media managers and expecting them to do photography, videography, graphic design, copywriting, brand strategy, monitor metrics, host YouTube, make tiktok dances. The work of an entire marketing team, w/little to no pay
"College is a great investment" has been repeated for decades, despite the cost rising many fold. The truth is that the returns to college accrue almost entirely to the best students in a small number of STEM fields.
Basically, the return to college is zero if you aren't one of the top 10% of students in engineering, chemistry, or computer science.
One deeply entrenched deception that often escapes our notice is the illusion of unlimited resources on our planet. The notion that our planet's resources are boundless has been perpetuated for generations, leading us to believe that we can extract and consume without consequences. This fallacy, akin to a galactic mirage, blinds us to the reality of finite resources and the ecological balance required for our existence.
Just as the Sith Lords manipulated perceptions to further their agendas, this belief in boundless resources has been exploited to justify overconsumption and environmental degradation. The truth, however, is that our planet operates within finite boundaries, much like the delicate balance between the light and dark sides of the Force. As we awaken to this concealed truth, we must strive to mend the fabric of our planetary ecosystem and embrace a more sustainable path, transcending the illusory narrative that has clouded our collective vision.
I am forced to pay for resources at whatever public school is closest to my property. If I don't want to use that public school's resources, I can try send my child to another public school where they use resources paid by other people's tax, or I have to pay EXTRA for private school tuitions.
Pthalates and estrogen. Estrogen is why new car smell is appealing. Estrogen is in the water from birth control and all the other sources such as soy and soy derivatives. It's causing early onset puberty. Every store cashier touches receipts full of bpa all day and then handles your food and then you get bpa from touching it and it gets absorbed by your skin. Even just showering your skin is absorbing it.
Masculinity is dying from estrogen overload and Alex Jones was right, they're turning the frogs gay. Whether it's an accident due to the nature of plastic or on purpose
You can earn 500k sats if you use stacker news 4 hours a day for 12 months and post quality content! Sounds like a really big number, right? But its only $150 usd which is what the median earner in the US gets to take home in a single day of work.
Using SN as an income source is a scam. Your time is better spent elsewhere if you're here for money.
I remain SN bearish. Reddit has 10,000x the users and they're struggling to pay their 2,000 employees without paying any users directly.
But sure, I guess a niche reddit clone that pays users instead of a SecOps team to prevent wallet draining bugs could someday give their users a meaningful wage. As long as the users exploit said bug lol
Here's another one - it's easy for women to have children after age 30 or 35. No worries if you want to focus on your career first, and get married and have kids later.
It's actually nowhere near as easy as mainstream media portrays. You may very likely end up with no kids, or fewer than you want. Even if you have kids - many, many women discover later in life they would have preferred to have more children.
Public school system, insurance all forms, systems of law, government, anything that seeks to gain off of you rather than give to you, I could go on here for a long time. Oh oh this is a good one, Trust the Science!!!! Climate change, capitalism, globalism, debt!!!, the pharmaceutical industry, the medical industry, holidays, etc. you get the picture I’m sorry to say that with the exception of very few things like love, friendship, spirituality, and true knowledge everything is a scam.
Fiat is a scam, banks are a scam, politicians are scammers, big pharma are scammers, student loans are scams, education is a scam, pensions are scams, almost everything in life is a scam.
Want to avoid scams and have a successful life? Question everything, don't follow the herd, think from first principles, be exceptional.
Footnotes
Government
1 Samuel 8:10-20