Glassnoser
11d ago
I have Android 14, but I didn't know it had this ability.
I'm saying it isn't because you can control notifications within apps on Android. For example, on Instagram, I can click my face on the bottom left, then the three lines at the top left, and then notifications. Every app has something like this.
In Instagram's case, controlling notifications through the OS doesn't work because they're labelled too vaguely. They don't even mention Threads.
Glassnoser
11d ago
Android
Glassnoser
16d ago
One issue that I've heard from friends and relatives who have had to hire contractors lately for construction and renovation work is that they are extremely unreliable. They will just drop a job at the last minute even though they agreed to do it and the rest of the project depends on them doing it. This has caused people to have to scramble at the last minute and go around begging people to help them out or it has delayed projects by months.
Glassnoser
17d ago
They don't have to wait for their parents to die. Their parents can sell their homes or take out mortgages. Yes, if you have siblings, your parents have an above average number of children and you are probably not coming out ahead in this system, but the average Canadian does.
I'm going on a 3.5 hour drive tomorrow to get to the centre of the path of totality for the solar eclipse. I have the solar glasses. I have solar binoculars and regular binoculars. I know about shadow bands and am thinking of bringing something to make them easier to see. Is there anything else I should do to take full advantage of it that I'm probably not thinking of? How hard are shadow bands to see? I saw videos of people using white sheets to see them. I'll probably be on a beach if that matters.
UPDATE: I saw the shadow bands in the snow. They were very faint at first but very clear right before the eclipse. Overall, an amazing experience and totally worth the trip. It's hard to describe the impression it made. A few minutes before the eclipse, it got noticeably darker, slowly at first and then faster and faster. Then, very quickly, it's as dark as night with a full moon, and you can suddenly see this back orb where sun was a moment ago, ringed with bright light and extraordinary white whisps of still smoke coming out of it. I am not a religious person, but angelic is best descriptor that comes to mind.
He's not trying to smuggle a plan for the rich. Read the part where he advocates for a progressive consumption tax again.
At this point you might be thinking “Yes, but wouldn’t eliminating all income and consumption taxes be a giveaway to the rich?” No, it would be restoring fairness by taxing the thrifty and spendthrift at equal rates. If we think the rich should pay more tax, then let’s put a progressive consumption tax into effect. This is easy to do, just turn the regressive FICA into a progressive payroll tax, with much higher rates for those with high wages and salaries. This sort of tax can achieve any desired degree of progressivity. Unlike most libertarians, I think a progressive payroll tax is desirable for simple utilitarian reasons.
He is explaining that there is no reason to tax capital gains if your goal is to reduce inequality. From the second article:
What “principle” suggests that patient people should be taxed at higher rates than impatient people—even if they have the same lifetime wealth?
Your only answer that seems to be that they have different wealth, which he explains is not true, so what reason remains for taxing capital gains?
As for what is wrong with discouraging saving, he never says that saving is inherently good. He gives a very clear and specific reason for why it's bad to discourage saving.
The inheritance tax discourages saving, and thus reduces the capital stock. This lowers the real wage of workers who work with physical capital.
This one may clarify a few things.
Glassnoser
1mo ago
A lot of the effective altruist types seem to be saying we should all stay home instead of enjoying the party because there is a small chance the punch is poisoned. I'm willing to take that risk. Staying home sucks and the party looks way more fun.
This is politically impossible. Canadians have a very strong national identity which is based at its core - and on little else - on not being American. Remember, it's the only country in the world that was actually founded in direct opposition to the principles on which the US was founded. The entire point of Canada, for its entire history, has been to not be part of the United States. Furthermore, the Canadian population has been heavily selected over 250 years for people who don't want to be Americans. So despite the cultural similarities, most Canadians very much don't want to be part of the United States.
Most Canadians don't appreciate how much richer the US is, and those who do, mostly think it's only the very richest who are better off. They falsely believe that the average person is richer in Canada.
There are also constitutional issues. Quebec's language laws would violate the first amendment, and nothing is more important to French speaking Quebeckers than protecting their language. They would far sooner become independent than give up control over what language speak in order to join the US.
Our gun control laws would violate the second amendment, and most Canadians have no interest in giving up their safety in order to have that right. There are lots of Canadians who like to hunt and are upset and some of the recent changes to the gun laws, but there is nothing like the broad support that the second amendment has among American conservatives. The gun situation in the US is seen by most Canadians as crazy. and it would be top of mind in any discussion about joining the US.
Canada's talented engineers (who also conveniently speak English) can easily move to the US and find jobs, instead of trying to kickstart some mini Canadian engineering industry that competes with Silicon Valley
Most Canadians wouldn't see this as a good thing and would prefer to keep them here where they can support our local industry.
American Oil companies can help develop Canada's massive oil deposits and other natural resources, which cost a lot to develop and would benefit from economics of scale
Is there something preventing them from doing this now? The environmentalist movement is very strong in Canada, and outside Alberta, most people don't actually want the oil industry to be further developed.
Quebec would fit in nicely as yet another ethnic/language minority in the US, instead of being this one persecuted minority in Canada with a chip on its shoulder
Quebec isn't persecuted in any way and has much more autonomy than it would as part of the United States, in particular, regarding laws on language usage and immigration. It would also face more pressure to assimilate into anglophone culture. Canada has a lot of federal laws enforcing bilingualism in the rest of the country. These wouldn't exist if it were part of the US, and Quebec's exposure to anglophone culture would increase. Quebec also receives large subsidies from the richer parts of the country as part of Canada's equalization payment system, which the US doesn't have.
It would also lose its ability to separate. US states don't have the right to secede, whereas in Canada, it is not clear, but they likely can if there is enough support among the province's residents. Quebec separatism may be dormant, but francophone Quebeckers do not really see themselves as Canadian and it's quite possible Quebec will try to separate again in the future if it's relationship with the rest of Canada worsens. It would not want to give up that option.
Glassnoser
1mo ago
You do get people advocating for specific popular policies that they think are obviously good, and when they don't see politicians doing enacting them, they assume they must be corrupt. For example, in Canada, there is a strong push right now to ban AirBnb completely or to ban corporations from owning houses, or even to ban anyone from owning multiple properties such that renters would only be allowed to rent from government owned housing or co-ops. Whenever these ideas come out on social media, the support to opposition ratio is easily 100:1.
Whenever there is any discussion about why these policies are not being enacted, there is always agreement that the problem is that politicians either don't care about the people or that they have investment interests that they're trying to protect. They never consider that some people might think their ideas won't work.
Politicians could maybe avoid this problem by increasing the housing supply, but if there are any problems with housing at all, then there will be a lot of outrage directed at them for not enacting these specific policies. I read a paper once that argued that this is South America's problem. There are lots of educated people who know that their policies are terrible, but the electorate has so little trust in politicians, that in order to get elected, you need to promise to enact these populist measures. In the West, the electorate tolerates the political class not doing exactly what they want because they have a certain level of trust.
Glassnoser
16d ago
I think you're imagining someone with a greater future housing need than what they have already paid for while my point is that Canadians, on average own more housing than what they need. This necessarily true because of the fact that homeowners and landlords are disprortionately Canadian while renters are disproportionately foreigners.
The boomers also have parents who own or owned property they inherited part of and they also own investment properties or REITs.
Glassnoser
16d ago
There is no reason why it has to be delayed. The parents can sell at any time.
We are talking about housing affordability? What do you mean I'm being too materialistic? If materialism doesn't matter, why complain about high housing prices or a reduced standard of living?
Glassnoser
16d ago
Yes, there is no reason why am increase in property values should mean an increase in property taxes. Cities don't need more money just because property values are higher. They should fall and as a percentage of property values when property values rise.
Glassnoser
12d ago
Why wouldn't the ecumene include Ethiopia and India?
Regression to the mean is an argument for having higher or lower trait thresholds for certain races, but not for excluding those races altogether.
Glassnoser
12d ago
You do avoid some of it though by delaying it. The rate is effectively higher. The original investment was the same in both cases. There was no rebalancing.
Glassnoser
17d ago
Here is another proposal: https://www.themoneyillusion.com/tax-luxury-not-wealth-or-income/
Glassnoser
5mo ago
It's worth pointing out that Canada doesn't have separation of church and state. The constitution recognizes the supremacy of God and the head of state is also the head of the established church. It also guarantees the funding of demoninational schools. We even had a law against blasphemy until 2018.
Glassnoser
18d ago
I'm a bit confused by this concept. Elsewhere, I've read that Scotland should also be on the other side of the line. Is this actually a robust concept and does it really explain anything?
The pro-regulation argument depends on the highly unlikely belief that AI will soon reach a point where we cannot control it. Alignment, I strongly believe, is a complete non-issue. The problem is entirely about control. I think our experience with LLMs shows that alignment is actually pretty easy. The problem will not be AI that we can't get to understand exactly what we mean when we ask it to achieve some goal. The problem will be people deliberately designing AI to do bad things. The question of whether AI destroys us in the short to medium term will depend only on whether we can stop it. Only if AI makes destruction vastly easier than protection will it pose an existential risk.
In the long run, the risk is greater because destructive AI may gradually outcompete us. Natural selection might gradually select for AI that does not value humans. However, this is likely to be extremely slow because its speed will not be a function of how good the AI is but how much selection there is at the civilizational, and I think it's currently about zero and is slowing down. Without war, it doesn't really exist.
The biggest risk is probably that we give the AI the vote and then it votes to exterminate us, but that still requires a long period of likely slow selection and a whole series of other unlikely things that need to go wrong.
I won't say the very long run risk is negligible, it may even be high, but really, the problem is we just can't predict the future that far out. We'll have lots of time to figure this out. There will be a long period where we have extremely advanced AI but are still in control. They will be the time to figure out what to do about it and if we can stop AI from killing is now with smart regulation, we'll certainly be able to do so in the future.
The other thing those arguing for regulation don't understand is that regulation almost never works. The only thing it does reliably is to grind innovation and progress to a halt. AI is one of the few areas of technology that is progressing and it's in large part because of the lack of regulation. What regulation that has been rushed out so far has only proven this more concretely by banning many important uses of the technology and raising unnecessary barriers to entry. There is very little that is likely to reduce existential risk beyond the general stifling of the technology.
I don't just say this because the real risk of AI almost certainly comes from it taking over another country which then invades us, but because even the scenario commonly envisioned by decelerationists is one where we cannot align it, and therefore, requiring training runs to be approved by the government and for standardized safety protocols to be followed has basically no chance of ensuring alignment.
The most likely medium term existential risk I can see is that some kind of symbiosis occurs resulting in an AI industrial complex that takes over the government. Regulation is itself our greatest existential risk. The problem of government alignment is our greatest civilizational threat, not AI.
The actual focus of regulators has been all along and will remain fighting minor perceived social problems that they think AI will exacerbate, like racism, involuntary nudity, defamation, misinformation, job loss, and every form of discrimination justified or not. The purpose is to resist change, not to avoid catastrophe. But stopping the few good kinds of change in a sclerotic, degenerating civilization is setting up a catastrophe of its own. Putting the final nail in the coffin of technological progress means that the problems of stagnation, low fertility, dysgenics, environmental destruction, regulatory burden, and organizational rot will continue.
Glassnoser
14d ago
If you owe any capital gains tax, you're almost certainly already I'm the top tax bracket and you pay less tax the longer you go without selling.
Glassnoser
2mo ago
Yes. One of the crazier ones I've seen which is really popular is making it illegal to own an investment property unless it's a purpose built rental. So that's the only that renters would be allowed to live in. Another one is capping the price of food.
Capgains are taxed based on a percentage of the appreciation. It's not like a financial transactions tax that is a flat fee every time a trade is made. A 20% gain will be subject to the same tax as 2 equivalent 10% gains would be.
Yes, but if you have to pay tax on the first 10%, you won't get another 10% gain. Let's say you have a $1,000 investment that grows at 10% per year and the capital gains tax is 25%. If you sell after two years, you'll have gained $210 and pay $52.50 in tax, leaving you with $1,157.50.
If instead you sold and rebought after one year, then you'd have a gain of $100 that year, leaving you with $1,075 after tax. That would give you another gain of $107.50 after the next year, in which you'd pay $26.88 after tax, leaving you with $1,155.62.
Dividends are taxed at either the personal income tax rate, or the capgains rate if they're qualified dividends.
It could be in a tax sheltered account though.
Glassnoser
15d ago
The median Canadian does have siblings. My point was actually that the average (not median) Canadian doesn't have enough siblings and does own enough property such that he comes out ahead.
Glassnoser
1mo ago
Trudeau is not known for being very bright though. I mean this seriously. I know people who know him and they've said this. It's not just based on the many dumb things he's said and done publicly.
Taxing capital gains is not a way of avoiding taxing labour. The capital gain is a return on an initial investment that was earned with labour. Taxing it is taxing labour, just in a way that creates a deadweight loss by taxing someone who saves more than someone who spends. You get all of the deadweight loss of taxing labour and then some.
In my third link, Scott Sumner directly addresses the point about inequality. Taxing capital gains doesn't reduce inequality. The two brothers in his example are equally wealthy. But one chooses to invest his wealth and the other chooses to spend it. The fact that the one who invests it earns a capital gain does not mean he is wealthier. His brother had the same opportunity and didn't take it because he valued earlier consumption over later consumption. Claiming there is a difference in equality is just like claiming there is a difference inequality between someone who bought watermelon and someone who bought blueberries.
He's not saying that at all. You've completely misunderstood. You should read the articles more carefully because he directly addresses this kind of argument.
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