Ah! Thank you
Readit Newsouroboros1 commented on Interview with Paul Graham pullrequest.substack.com/... · Posted by u/sprague
If I didn't know whether I'll be born in the bottom 1% or top 1%, I'd still choose a society that incentivizes wealth creation. Poor people in those societies are the richest poor people in the world. They have more prospects, they have more rights and they have more access to the benefits of civilization like education or electricity than the societies that promote the idea of taking away someone's property and make it difficult to start businesses.
Wealth taxes are common in Europe. But not in Africa.
ouroboros1 commented on Interview with Paul Graham pullrequest.substack.com/... · Posted by u/sprague
It's dis-incentivizing wealth creation in general and taking ownership away from people that build companies.
There's a compelling argument that growth (that accounts for human rights and protecting the environment) is the best way to help the most people the fastest: https://press.stripe.com/#stubborn-attachments.
Policy that dis-incentivizes wealth creation creates perverse incentives that limit growth.
We're better off with policy that limits how wealth can be leveraged into political power, and policy that helps protect and improve the lower bound of society. That said, I think it's likely reasonable to limit how wealth can be passed down generations (to prevent things like dynastic wealth, but that's a separate issue and I don't know enough to really comment on it).
Wealth creation isn't zero-sum, just because someone builds a business and creates wealth doesn't mean they're taking it from others. We want a society where people are incentivized to create and grow wealth as much as they can (within bounds for environment protection and human rights), not just to some arbitrary cap before it gets taken by the government.
All of the above ignores real modern examples that directly leverage their wealth to do things that would not be done otherwise (Elon Musk: SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, Boring # Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin # Gates: Health and Public Policy). I think the general argument in favor of growth is better than these specific examples though because it's a more systemic argument about incentives for the structure of a society rather than relying on individuals and their choices.
There's also the implementation issues (which are real), but I'm not going to argue that bit just because a lot of good ideas are hard to implement but still worthwhile. The wealth tax though I think is both a bad idea and hard to implement. The bad idea bit is more important.
Billionaires often make compelling arguments for why they should get to keep their money (Paul Graham and Elon Musk being two examples).
I disagree with their point of view because:
1. My neighbour having enough food to eat and a warm house is a form of wealth FOR ME.
2. If wealth that is generated is taxed, this means that it is harder to accumulate wealth, this means that the people that do manage to accumulate wealth have better qualities than the people that do so in a tax free environment. And thus they make better decisions about how to allocate their money.
3. Billionaires are not accountable to anyone for how they spend their wealth. This is fine if they are all like Musk. But they are not. Of the countless number, only two are trying to build rockets to Mars. Counter examples are Osama Bin Laden and the guys who funded the NRA. If the wealth is taxed then it is fought over in a shared space in which we all have a say, no matter how small.
I like the argument that Rawls made in "A theory of Justice", where he said that when you are deciding how to make a fair society you should think from a perspective in which you do not know what role you will have in that society.
This is a good and interesting report, thank you. As you implied, this is about averages, which is useful though incomplete.
"Global Warming"/"Climate Change" is, to state something pretty obvious, about additional energy in an active system. That means, of course, more total heat across the entire system.
However, I think a far more important aspect is how much more active the system as a whole gets. I don't have time to get into it in detail here, but overall that means there will be more and more extremes. More droughts. More floods. More severe winds. More heat waves. More freezing storms. We're already seeing that in action and the rate at which the number of extremes increase will tend to increase as more energy is sent into a somewhat chaotic system.
> However, I think a far more important aspect is how much more active the system as a whole gets. I don't have time to get into it in detail here, but overall that means there will be more and more extremes. More droughts. More floods. More severe winds. More heat waves. More freezing storms.
I don't think there is much evidence to support this relationship. I'd be glad to be proven wrong.
Another way of looking at it is: what proportion of your wealth would you give to be wealthy for e.g. 60 years. This tax doesn't transform wealthy a wealthy person into a non wealthy person over time.
ouroboros1 commented on Graphical Linear Algebra graphicallinearalgebra.ne... · Posted by u/guerrilla
This looks interesting! I get the impression there would not be much friction to implement some of these mechanisms in Haskell.
I don't support this legislation. My opposition is based on the fact that enabling someone to have a peaceful death involves a interplay of numerous environmental social and biological factors. The new legislation will need to fit into this complex environment without disrupting the practices which have built up to manage EOL care.
For example suffering for a patient will be significantly eased if the doctor explains clearly what is expected to happen and what the patient is likely to experience.
A patient with COPD, might be afraid to experience breathlessness. But the medical team explain how it will work, the nurses introduce it gradually and the patient does not suffer. Its the interplay of the technology, the professionals, the biological process and, obviously the patient and the beliefs and uncertainty.
Likewise a completely dependent MND patient will requite 16 full time nurses to provide for his needs. They might feel like a burden. Again its an interplay between the patients needs, symptoms and the professionals and technology we use to meet these needs.
If we overlay on this situations the knowledge that the patient could simply take their own life, its not clear to me that this would alleviate suffering.