DuplexFields's profile

DuplexFields Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it. 2mo ago

Happy May the Fourth! Here’s a scene Grok wrote for me from Galen Erso, architect of the Death Star, in the style of (and with the morals of) Ayn Rand. I made a few tweaks here and there for accuracy and to emphasize certain points. May the Force be with you.

My mind is my own, and no force in the galaxy can claim it. The Empire, with its blasters and its threats, its bureaucrats and its banners, believes it can chain a man’s reason to its will. They took my body, dragged me from Lah’mu’s quiet fields, murdered Lyra, and held Jyn’s shadow over me like a blade. They thought they could seize my intellect, bend it to their machine of death. Fools. They do not understand the nature of a mind that creates. They cannot fathom the fire that burns in a man who knows his own worth. I am Galen Erso, and my mind is not theirs to command—it is mine, inviolate, eternal.

In the sterile halls of Eadu, surrounded by the timid and the compromised, I labored under their gaze. They demanded a weapon, a Death Star, a monument to their collectivist nightmare—a machine to crush the individual beneath the weight of fear. They could have built it without me eventually, with blood-thirsty sycophants managing the output of scientific minds cowed by fear. They thought my equations, my crystals, my genius would serve their purpose more quickly, and they were right.

But purpose is not theirs to dictate. Purpose is the province of the creator, the man who thinks, who dares to see beyond the violent herd’s clamor. They gave me kyber, the heart of the stars, and expected me to forge a club for their brutality. Instead, I wove a trap. In the reactor’s core, I hid my truth: a single exhaust port, unshielded, able to cause reactor overpressure; a whisper of defiance that could bring their monstrosity crashing down. This was not sabotage—it was justice. It was the assertion of my right to create, to define the terms of my work, to refuse their perversion of my mind’s fire.

Let them parade their TIE fighters and their Moffs. Let Krennic strut with his cape and his lies. They are nothing—parasites who produce no value, who exist only to steal the creations of better men. I saw their world, a galaxy of gray submission, where the individual is ground to dust for the sake of their “order.”

I will not kneel. I will not let my work, my reason, my life’s essence, be twisted into their instrument of enslavement. The flaw I built is my signature, my declaration that no man’s mind can be forced to betray itself. If the Rebellion finds it, if Jyn carries my spark, they will strike the blow I could not. And when the Death Star burns, it will be my mind—free, unbowed, triumphant—that lights the flame.

They thought they could break me with threats, with loss. But a man who knows his own value cannot be broken. My love for Lyra, for Jyn, is not their weapon—it is my strength, my reason to fight. I am no martyr, no sacrificial lamb for their altar. I am a creator, and I have chosen my stand. The Empire may take my life, but they will never take my soul. In that reactor flaw, I have carved my freedom, my truth, my self. Let them build their empires on the ashes of others. I have built my own monument, and it will outlast them all.

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DuplexFields Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it. 16d ago

Ooh, the unpleasantness jittery fuzz of felt versus the soothingly orderly corrugation of corduroy. Tags have never bothered me, but I used to have to cover my ears at basketball games. (To be fair, UNM’s B-ball arena “The Pit” is famously loud.)

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DuplexFields Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it. 30d ago

What drew me into the FairTax at first were the end to FICA and the concept of permanent untaxed ownership. Since then, the more I compare it with other revenue collection methods, I haven’t found anything I’d characterize as a poison pill, or even anything I’m having to hold my nose over. I’ve only found more to love about it, practically and philosophically.

I personally haven’t run the numbers, but my parents sold the family home my dad spent his working years buying, and moved into a home they inherited. The math for making the former a rental in walking distance from the University of New Mexico campus, one of the highest occupancy areas of town, wouldn’t work out considering upkeep and repairs, a property management company, property taxes, income taxes, and the accountant they’d have to hire at least the first year to add rent to their income taxes. If the FairTax were enacted, they’d pay a simple 23% out of their renters’ check each month. It would be clean income after that, no profit/loss calculations messing up their Social Security, and no worrying about the next administration making their lives hell for 3% in the polls.

Your question 1, “am I [to assume] this tax policy will make people tilt even harder towards ownership vs rental?” I have a feeling this is so. I’ve always understood home ownership to be a part of the American Dream which (question 2) society is invested in encouraging. In America, every citizen is a nobleman, and his home should be his estate.

The most disordered people I know have been lifelong renters. An “efficiency” apartment is an abomination, a box built to impart pain and despair, but even the townhome apartment one of my best friends had stank of fear and giving up. And with vulture capital buying up complexes, it’s an even worse situation.

But aside from philosophical and psychological ideals, I’m sensitive to structural inequality. There’s a point to be made about giving everyone slack at once, not just one class. My gut says the slack is to be found in ensuring owners of second homes are renting them long-term to families that want to escape apartment life instead of renting them as Vrbos and Airbnbs. It seems abominable to me that hotels are long-stay while houses sit empty three out of seven days a week.

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DuplexFields Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it. 30d ago · Edited 30d ago

Let me add a thought experiment: what would be the effect on the housing market were all rental property owners exempted from the portion of income tax derived from renting? Grok suggests three outcomes:

Grey Tribe: Tax exemptions for rental property owners would incentivize investment, increasing rental supply and potentially lowering rents. However, it might inflate property prices as demand for investment properties rises.
Blue Tribe: The policy could exacerbate inequality, favoring wealthy landlords while offering no relief to renters or low-income homeowners, potentially widening the wealth gap.
Red Tribe: Exempting landlords from income tax might destabilize public finances, reducing funds for community services like infrastructure, which could harm housing market stability and neighborhood quality.

Distorting the market in favor of “necessary” goods usually ends up with those goods costing just as much, other goods costing more, and inequality rising. That’s the primary reason the FairTax has no loopholes for housing, food, or medicine, just a flat pre-calculated rebate that makes governance effectively free for people at or below the poverty line.

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DuplexFields Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it. 1mo ago

Second buyer doesn't get taxed on the appreciation; the developer pays FairTax out of the first “retail” sale if the first sale occurs after the FairTax is legislated into existence, otherwise the govt. already got embedded taxes a myriad of ways. Sell at a loss, the govt. doesn’t pay anything.

As a renter, you’re already paying the income taxes of your landlord and property mgmt company’s hirelings, embedded in the price of your rent, similar to “utilities included”. This is a market distortion which is expected to be compensated for by rentals dropping 23% and then having the 23% added back in (30% exclusive) on the receipt as FairTax.

Used homes not being FairTaxed (except renovation/remodel costs) is a philosophical reward similar to owning DVDs costing less than renting them a dozen times or paying streaming and rarely watching. Besides, the homeowner will be paying FairTax on everything they’ll use for upkeep in the future.

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DuplexFields Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it. 2mo ago

In my attempts to turn Triessentialism from "noticing an interesting pattern" into "a viable philosophy for life and business," I've recognized possession of things and territory as part of the vertebrate brain's instinctual ontology. It's so powerful and human an instinct that the only thing which does more damage than following it is trying to squash it entirely. (See the history of socialism.)

Possession, linguistically, indicates a relationship, not specifically ownership. Its default use as an indication of ownership is a sign of the power of the proprietary instinct. C.S. Lewis wrote in The Screwtape Letters about demonic tempters who are quite keen psychologists and studiers of the human condition in their quest to gain souls for their "Father Below." One passage on linguistics has always stuck with me and has shaped my view on ownership:

We produce this sense of ownership not only by pride but by confusion. We teach them not to notice the difference sense of the possessive pronoun - the finely grade differences that run from 'my boots' through 'my dog', 'my servant', 'my wife', 'my father', 'my master' and 'my country', to 'my God'. They can be taught to reduce all these senses to that of 'my boots', the 'my' of ownership.

I've written elsewhere about my ontology of values: utility, experiences, status, and agency. Everything someone values as a possession (or makes an object of commerce) conveys at least one of these four values. Possession of land conveys the status of landowner which fulfills the deep-seated mammalian need for territory, makes experiences on that land relatively controllable, and enables both utility (toward goals) and agency (control). It is seen as something to pass down to one's heirs. Ownership of land (as with any owned thing) can also convey the four debts: hassle, bad experiences, negative status, and loss of other choices.

I have concluded that legally recognizing this instinctual reality is a societal good.

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DuplexFields Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it. 4mo ago · Edited 4mo ago

(I wrote a better version of this answer, but the web ate it when I accidentally reloaded the page. Oof.)

I saw what I now call Triessentialism first in a passage which many scholars say was not in the original manuscript but was added by a later hand due to tradition: the doxology of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6.

For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

I had been pondering the make-up of man, what the heck the "spirit" and the "soul" are and how they're differentiated, and "where" they are in relation to each other in the body in a Christian ontology. I'd also been thinking the idea that emotion and logic are as fundamentally different from each other as are the material world and the immutable laws of logic. (You can't hold a "two" in your hand, nor burn a "deduction" to release warmth.)

It was while pondering the differences between the three ontological categories that I realized this distinction was also present in the doxology. My reasoning?

We see the power of God mostly in the Old Testament where God the Father acted with great power on behalf of His chosen people
The word "spirit" is usually used for emotions instead of supernatural beings in everyday life ("the spirit of Christmas" and such) and glory is about our emotions when beholding God
The best king would be someone omniscient: infinitely intelligent, infinitely wise, and who knows everything.

So I identified the power as belonging to God the Father, the glory to the Holy Spirit, and the kingdom to the Son. (Of course, all three Persons have power and glory, and God is rightfully sovereign over everything, so it's not a "this Person of the Godhead doesn't have X" heresy.)

Once I'd seen this pattern there, I started seeing it throughout Scripture. (I don't have the Bible where I highlighted them (highlit?) with me at the moment, and Google is being unhelpful as usual nowadays.)

So do I have more reason to identify Jesus the Son with logic, and not the Father or Spirit? Quite a lot. John described Jesus as both "the Logos"/"The Word" and "the Light." Jesus called Himself "The Way, the Truth, and the Light."

Early Christians said they were followers of "The Way," a word that means both paths and processes. Paths lead the sojourner from the origin to the destination. Processes turn intention into action. Logic is about processes and algorithms as much as it is about interactions of the descriptions of things.

In Chinese, "Tao" means "The Way" and implies "The Right Way". Logos was a Greek concept akin to the Tao: an inherent order and regulation underlying the universe. Heraclitus pioneered the concept and wrote about it in various ways, non-systematically and sometimes contradictorily as a universal consciousness or the mind of a supreme Being, but usually as a receptacle of truth. Other writers picked it up before John, but John identified the Logos as co-equal with God the Father.

Light has taken on a more fascinating meaning to me ever since I pondered waveforms as a carrier of the information of what impacted the wave's medium and holograms as a capture of that waveform. The unknown writer of the Letter to the Hebrews has some of the highest quality Greek prose in the New Testament, speaking with the precision of a programmer and the expression of a poet.

hos ōn apaugasma tēs doxēs kai charaktēr tēs hypostaseōs

"He is the radiance (apaugasma) of the glory (doxa) of God and the exact imprint (charakter) of His nature (hypostasis)..." - English Standard Version

"He is the emittance of His majesty and the hologram of His person..." - my gloss

To perfectly describe God the infinite Being would take an infinitely precise Likeness, as flawless and divine as He. To measure God would take a standard as perfect and infinite as He.

In a way, the logical measurement is the "son" of that physical thing which is measured, existing with it even if the measurement has not been read out or recorded.

The Muslim writers sometimes speak of the Quran ("The Recitation") as God's uncreated word, not something created by humankind, the ultimate revelation, existing eternally with God.

Gödel's incompleteness theorems were among the first of several closely related theorems on the limitations of formal systems. They were followed by Tarski's undefinability theorem on the formal undefinability of truth, Church's proof that Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem is unsolvable, and Turing's theorem that there is no algorithm to solve the halting problem. - Wikipedia

Here, then, is that perfect formal logic which describes God: Jesus of Nazareth, who told the religious elites to love, and was killed for it. His resurrection is the proof of His correctness and their corruption.

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