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Comment Re:ok cool (Score 1) 137

As I understand, people who are in your first category (earnest desire to avoid crime in the future) find that nobody trusts them. Their criminal history follows them around so jobs are unavailable to them, promotions are unavailable, etc. This creates the very economic conditions that drive them right back into crime.

I don't know how much this actually happens, it's just a plausible narrative that I read about a while back.

Yeah, there is a stigma, that if anyone deciding to commit crimes, might possibly give a little thought to the future before deciding that committing a crime is a good idea.

It's kinda like the story of would you want your daughter marrying a man who just got out of jail after killing his first wife? There is a value to having impulse control, and looking beyond what they want to do right now.

There are all manner of narratives - I guess I have one too. There are narratives that if everyone has money, free health care, and society accepted them, there would be no crime. That society forces people to perform criminal acts. It is similar to the idea that society causes insanity.

Comment Re:ok cool (Score 1) 137

I do not think there are mysterious cases. There are just some where people chose not to cooperate enough for us to make a determination and that is their right.

Well. we learn over time. Before Herbert Needleman, the dangers of lead poisoning were known, but it's effects upon people, who from childhood were exposed, and they ended up being violent criminals - that was fairly new, and compelling enough to knock some sense into people.

Another case I know personally, a friend had adopted a young boy, who was troubled, and the thought was a better environment would eliminate those issues. I liked the kid. Most of the time, he was great. Outgoing, friendly, smart. But he was still getting into trouble. I noticed that it was three months behaving, then a short period of bad. I mentioned it, but everyone thought that was 100 percent coincidence. Eventually they figured out I was right, by that time, he'd committed some serious crimes.

Some sort of chemical imbalance? That was my guess. Point is, yeah, we're going to find out more reasons as time goes on. The question is what makes the people in your example not cooperate?

Also note that there are quite a few "too important to jail" cases, see, for example some prominent stock scammers or rapists and child abusers or murderers/war criminals. These cases are probably the worst, because they give not-smart people the impression that you can get away with it. And hence overall ethics decline.

People should not ever decide that since "the man" got away with something, so it is perfectly alright to do the same things. If that is the case, they deserve the punishment, even if "the man" is not. That. is the most masochistic example to whataboutism on their part.

Comment Re:ok cool (Score 2) 137

Sounds like they are not releasing people with a high risk of recidivism. In other words, they haven't fixed the problem of recidivism, they've just kept people in jail longer.

Exactly. There are many people who just know they messed up, and in reality, have no intention of doing more crime. Then there are people who perhaps have little to no impulse control, or for one reason or another just think criminally. There are some people who just can't be rehabilitated.

Occasionally , it is a chemical thing, like lead in gasoline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... His research was pretty shocking, as lead damaged people tended to be involved in violent crime.

But there are some cases that remain mysterious. Just broken people, I suppose.

Comment Re:In related news, (Score 1) 106

Small difference: drugs are known to be harmful, and illegal. The harm of social media to developing children has only recently been documented

If it is known that social media harms kids, then doesn't the state share some of the blame? Why is there no law?
If it is not known (or only recently came to light), can you really blame the social media companies? You could blame them for trying to block relevant legislation, but not for harm done in the past.
If the harmful effects were known to the companies and they kept it quiet, then you'd have a case, morally speaking. Bit like the tobacco firms.

Comment Re:taxing unrealized gains is problematic (Score 1) 290

So how about closing that particular loophole, and make them pay capital gains on the profits that they do realize? For instance, by taxing such loans with no "normal" repayment schedule as dividend. We've had similar issues, with business owners borrowing money from their company with no intention of ever repaying it, thus avoiding dividend tax. A new law caps these "non market conformant" loans at 100k.

A cash grab like this is pretty sickening. Even in the rather socialist leaning country I live in, this would probably not stand, local courts and the ECHR might well consider similar taxes to amount to appropriation, and illegal.

Comment Re:How exactly does a 50% tax on stock value work? (Score 1) 194

I'm also not opposed to the idea. Not because of a supposed concentration of wealth. Musk does not have a trillion dollars, taken from elsewhere, sitting in a giant warehouse somewhere; it's all stock in a massively overvalued company that he built. His riches do not make us poorer. And I don't envy him his wealth, he's welcome to it.

What I do have an issue with, is the concentration of power this represents. Wealth, whether in actual dollars, publicly traded stock or private stock, represents an undue amount of influence in politics. If we're doing a tax on large companies, or a wealth cap, this would be the reason I'd agree with it. Not a sense of "fairness".

"OpenAI hasn't had their IPO yet, so couldn't they just find some kind of workaround to avoid this?"
Not necessarily. The tax could be paid in stock, in fact that would not be a bad idea. So that the control of important companies does not remain in the hands of a handful of individuals. Again, the only justification of this would be to prevent a concentration of power.

Comment Re:Dystopian framing (Score 1) 75

There is something at the core of being human, that needs to do something productive. This is not unhealthy. We have evolved to be compelled to work not because we are somehow "slaves to the system" but because for all of human history, survival literally required work. Work is not a "necessary evil"--work is, in itself, an important part of who we are. This is not dystopian, this is to be celebrated.

Couldn't have put it better myself. I'll note that some take it to an extreme - such as myself, and I've taken guff for being a workaholic, but my work and hobbies take up a lot of my time, and it doesn't bother me at all.

Comment Re:Dystopian framing (Score 2) 75

I'm not trying to infer that working gives meaning to life but work does help stimulate and provide social networks for people.

Working does give a purpose to life. As a social species, we are built for it.

I do work with some wheelchair bound people. They are generally as happy as everyone else. Working, supporting themselves, driving their own cars. Living a life with as much normalcy as they can achieve. Isolation is not good for humans,

Comment Re:redundancy (Score 1) 92

Deliberate antisatellite destruction is something we reasonably ought to worry about, but it is not the same thing as Kessler syndrome.

That is very true. It certainly could start one if everything aligns.

While looking for NORADs site, I came across a couple gems: https://pocketworld.org/space-... https://orbitalradar.com/track...

Not like all those things are in one area, it looks worse than it is. But the "nothing to see here" folks remind me of people looking for RF spectrum. They so often think of bandwidth as something infinite. I sometimes have to point them to the Big NTIA map on the wall and say "Find a place!" It's a cool map, so I might as well share that as well. https://www.ntia.gov/sites/def...

Comment Re:The SpaceX Valuation is Insane (Score 1) 67

Not just "the future", but the future of AI. If you go by future projected revenue as predicted by SpaceX (which is the only projection that justifies their valuation), they are an AI company with a small space division. An AI market in which they are not at all well-positioned. Buying Cursor may improve that somewhat. Maybe that's the plan - buy every promising AI startup with stock, until they hit gold.

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