I hear the pubic school system is also run by Foxconn beings. There takeover began when spell checkers was installed.

It was related to me by my father, who was probably told this by *his* father. In regards to the mining town where they lived until my father was 4. People would take home a little dynamite from the mine, much in the way office workers might grab a stapler or some pens. They'd blow it up on the 4th. I guess management didn't mind too much on that one day. They probably did the same thing. Talk about a different era! We're talking almost 100 years ago now. This would be near Uniontown, PA by the way. Does anybody else with roots in that area have similar stories handed down?

Well said. Mere ownership of property isn't hoarding. Hoarding is cornering the market.

Not a bad point. Asymmetric warfare does indeed cause problems. Goooood morning Vietnam... but the geurillas in Vietnam were backed by somebody, and ISIS is getting hi-tech from... well... I've heard some interesting theories. Round up the usual suspects.

It's like a fulcrum I suppose. Asymmetric warfare has always involved leverage. The weight is bigger on both sides now.

Very well, In a system with no property tax, there would be no disincentive to [ synonyms: stockpile, store, store up, stock up on, put aside, put by, lay by, lay up, set aside, stow away, buy up; cache, amass, collect, save, gather, garner, accumulate, squirrel away, put aside for a rainy day; informalstash away, salt away "they hoarded rations" ] please choose the preferred term which you regard as "unloaded". (synonyms courtesy of Google's dictionary).

If you get off on seeing people's wealth seized by force and redistributed,

That's all in your head of course.

Now, if you want to get to basics and discuss the pros and cons of allowing private ownership of what is called "real property" (basically land) in the first place, that is fair game.

OK, at the risk of this whole thing spiraling badly down the drain like my last back-n-forth with a libertarian, I'll bite.

Pro: Once you have the land, you don't have to worry about the government taking it away.

Con: Since you aren't paying property taxes, I see two possibilities: 1. The government gets the money some other way. 1a. Good for you, if you don't get caught up in the "some other way". 1b. Bad or neutral, depending on how expensive and/or inconvenient the "some other way" tax is. 2. The government doesn't provide the services customarily supported by property tax (e.g, schools, police).

Situation 2 is regarded as ideal by some people, and that's where I have a bone to pick. Why? Because if you don't pay the government tax, you pay what might be called the "natural tax" on the property. What's that? It's the cost of defending the land YOURSELF. IMHO, it tends to be much more expensive for most of us. It requires specialized skills most of us don't have--gunslinging, etc. Of course there are people willing to step in and do that for you. One of the most recognized organizations on the planet arose under just such a situation, where people were having a hard time defending their olive groves. This was in Sicily. I think you know where this is headed.

So, long story short, to paraphrase something often said about Unix: "Those who fail to understand government are doomed to reinvent it--poorly".

That's land value tax.

In a system with no property tax, there would be no disincentive to hoard property. This could have serious consequences for the economy. Imagine section after section of productive timber land being held simply on spec, while lumber prices soar..

If you're going to own real property, there's a general consensus that you should put it to productive use, or forfeit. Thus, that vacant lot in the city starts costing you... so you sell it off instead of holding it forever, and then somebody accumulates the lots, options an adjacent lot, gets plans approved for an apartment and... productive use.

Also, property tax is "progressive" in the sense that it's paid by people that have more wealth. Compare and contrast with sales tax which is "regressive"--taking a heavy toll on the poor.

Now of course all the "shrink government to the size of a thimble" people are going to come out of the woodwork. Sorry. It just isn't practical in the 21st century. We are not living in the days when bands of "Indians" with bow and arrow or colonists with muskets gave the British a run for their money. .

The market adjusts the values of these properties accordingly. It's part of the reason real estate is so expensive in CA (there are other reasons, but prop 13 contributes). The problem is that new buyers have to pay those inflated prices, usually with a mortage. So what? Think about it. If you're not swinging a smaller mortage and paying higher property taxes, you're paying more interest on your debt rather than paying higher property taxes. Thus, money that used to go to the state goes to the banks

Once again, it's not the only reason the real estate is expensive. I don't mean to imply that throwing more money at state services is necessarily that answer either--for PEUs have captured the apparatus of government just as surely as the banks have.

It's just one of the many facets of the ways in which California is disfunctional; but the whole USA is disfunctional in one way or another these days. There is no real escape. There is no easy fix, even though many people would like you to think there is.

Yep, it's not the relative strength of the currency that causes problems. It's the stability of the currency that causes problems. Having 1 Yen == $0.0098 is not be a problem even though the Yen is weak relative to the dollar.

Having 1 Yen == $0.01 today, $0.001 tomorrow and then $0.005 the next day would be a problem. It's an obvious problem for people with Yen in their bank accounts because they lost a lot of purchasing power. It's also a problem for anybody trying to write a contract that involves payment, since you don't know what the payment will be worth when the contract is complete.

So. While people may be worried about the USD exhibiting that kind of instability, it hasn't. Bitcoin, OTOH...

Because, in America, we threw out the old, broken notion of a one-hour road test and just give licenses out if you can show that you can operate a motor vehicle.

This is part of a larger problem as exemplified by the Bullit County, KY exam questions for jr. high that were widely circulated a while ago. Most college students these days don't have the level of education required for those questions.

My mother told me how she got her license in Rhode Island in the 50s. I don't know how much driving time was required, but she had to parallel park on a hill with a stick. She'd always tell me about that, I guess because it was the hardest part of the test.

Just use pneumatic or hydrolic actuators to raise a plat 45 degrees facing the cars at the stop line, goes down when the light turns green.

Finally, the impossible jumps seen during car chases in the movies will happen in real life.

I used quite a bit of tech in my last gardening endeavor, but not in an "Internet of things" way. I used Craigslist to scrounge for everything except my tomato seedlings. I used bamboo that was growing by the side of the house to cage the plants. It was like a big scavenger hunt to see whether or not I could get "something for nothing". I even saved seeds for the next year; but I think they got lost in the move. I moved too late in the growing season and had too much else going on to garden this year; but I can't wait to get back into it. My new place has an almond tree, so at least I've got nuts. Ummm... let me rephrase that...

We have to agree to disagree at some point. We can't even agree on what it is we disagree on. I think this is also a fine example of how the Internet fails as a communication medium in some ways. If this were a conversation IRL, I think a lot of problems would be smoothed over by facial expressions, gestures, tone of voice, etc.

Of course I've had a *few* conversations IRL that were just as bad as some of these things that blow up on the Internet. A unionized teacher in a certain cafe comes to mind. Me: We won't really fix education until we bust the union. Him: Explosion, including all kinds of odd assumpitons about me such as, "you were raised in Marin County and know nothing about the inner city" when in reality I was raised 3000 miles away and have at least a passing familiarity with "the hood" of both a large city and a small town.

Anyway, let's just agree to disagree. I'm not what you think I am, and you're probably not what I think you are. If you're ever in Northern California, you're welcome to have coffee or a beer... but no 420. I've got long hair and people offer me free pot sometimes because "surely the hippie would like to toke with us", but I have no interest. That kind of stereotyping IRL gets dismissed quickly and politely. On the Internet it's a PiTA.

Anyway, I'm done. You sir (m'am?), may have the last word if you so desire.

I have no FOF; but my inner ears are such that certain types of motion can induce panic attacks. This includes boats, high-rise elevators, and as I've gotten older it unfortunately also includes being a passenger in a car on the freeway--but not stop-n-go or windy country roads.

People have a devil of a time getting it through their heads that I DON'T have FOF. It's apparently a problem with my brain not being able to process subtle signals from my vestibular system, or with that system sending faulty signals. No doctor has every really given me a good way to fix it. Popular OTC drugs are almost totaly useless.

If it were FOF, I wouldn't ask for a window seat and feel *better* during mild turbulence. Mild turbulence feels like a bumpy road, and my system seems to handle that better. Looking out the window gives me a horizon and that helps a little, but not nearly enough. The subtle motion is always there. I took my last flight in the early 90s.

You have to label ideologies in order to discuss them. It's the labeling of *people* that IMHO, is unconstructive and just leads to primitive tribal conflict.