Only if you think inciting hate and violence toward successful people is normal and not despicable in the same way as hating people for their skin color.
Bullying? You couldn’t find a more powerful word to describe the state taking away your goodies?
Making public goods into voluntarist things like charities isn’t benevolence. Robber barons have no problem giving a pittance to the poor, I’m sure, as long as that keeps them from being “bullied”.
Someone who earns 500K a year and who wants to be taxed more isn’t the problem. They are a principled social democrat. A thing that a country like the US could use more of.
People who look out for themselves and their family only and who wants to make public goods into a voluntarist thing through charities are the problem. They are of no use to anyone except their immediates and are only holding progress back.
Also: do you really expect people to live in penury or ignore their ‘immediates’ to deliver more taxes to a govt that has proven itself to be inept again and again and again showing no transparency, accountability or efficiency. That’s just daft. Who really dumps their money voluntarily to the taxman when your family..your friends..your neighbors needs and suffering can be alleviated with immediate results. I literally have no more words for you.
> Who really dumps their money voluntarily to the taxman when your family..your friends..your neighbors needs and suffering can be alleviated with immediate results.
The question I think you are asking is, "If you give your money to the government, you don't know where it goes. Perhaps it is wasted. If you give it to people you know need it locally, you can have immediate results. Why push for the former?"
If I've understood you correctly, that's a totally valid question, and it's one I think about quite a bit. I could, for instance, really focus on helping people in my immediate area. I could buy a lot of meals for a lot of people.
But ultimately, I think I can achieve more by organizing. If I can spend some money on mutual aid to help out some folks locally, and spend some on building coalitions and participating in collective action, I think I ultimately achieve more.
You could organize those who want to contribute voluntarily. A tax is mandatory.
Example: We have a homelessness industrial complex in California. Our taxes go more towards paying activists and those who work with the homeless rather than building homes. The only way to get rid of homelessness is to build homes. It’s not like you can talk your way out of street living with talk therapy. While a portion need help..all of them need to be off of the streets. When California shows some results, I will consider supporting more taxation.
You and I agree here. Build homes. Use tax money to build and operate housing. (Don't do the shitty American thing where you spend on the capital budget but not the operational budget.)
We also need crisis intervention, counseling, drug programs, and support.
There has to be three streams. Housing those who need to get a job/reskill/can’t work. Another for medical intervention. And the third is rehab for addiction issues. This would be the largest group.
I want to share more re problem statement/solution strategy..but a little busy now. I hope to revisit this at some other time. I just have to find it for a quick cut and paste from where I had written earlier. Cheers.
I am not a flaggelist. You must have confused me with someone who would be affected by what you wrote. I don’t expect to carry everyone’s burden because I don’t suffer from a Saviour Complex. I believe in human beings ability to be resilient and survive against odds. By themselves. YMMV.
Burn (1) and (2) to the ground. Is this an attention economy? If so great, get rid of those two things and I will have more time for myself and my kids!
> I do not live in America and the country I live in has it's own set of special characters to deal with.
Yes. I’ve noticed that programmers from all over the world are narrow-minded and view things like international, inclusive standards to be “bloat”, preferring a monoculture since that would make things simpler (technically simpler, which is all that matters if you have no sense of aesthetics or culture).
Okay, um, a readme file is just the lowest common denominator “what the heck is in this directory tree” file. Something to get your bearings from. Something that can then point to some more fancy documentation like a homepage.
But now I guess it’s a landing page with a bunch of tags at the start. That’s not a good development in my opinion.
Who are People? I’m fine with zero-price but I would also do okay with something-price, because I managed to live just fine before all of these “you are the product” (as technologists constantly gloat) services. What would happen if we reached something-price? I think, in my case, I would just stop using a lot of the services, because (1) I won’t have the budget to pay for for all of them as subscription services, and (2) see the aforementioned point about living just fine without them before.
Because here’s the rub: it’s not like people are addicted or have to have these services—it’s more like they are addicted or have to be a part of the network effect of these services. (Oh I don’t know about that guy, Tony, he ain’t got a FB profile...) And once these services become something-price they just won’t be viable any more, because they are not really essential and paying for 8+ services (or whatever?) is not feasible.
But realistically services like FB are just stuck with their current business model; they will not pivot to something else because they know they would be screwed. But they, of course, twist that into some kind of consumer+small business sympathy spiel.
