A coffee snob? Just the human to ask in lieu of an AI (which will just tell me whatever it thinks I want to here).

I've been wondering whatever happened to percolated coffee. I'm guessing it tastes bad, but I didn't start drinking coffee until decades after I last saw a percolator.

Okay, I think you deserve the Funny mod but I also think it was a weak FP.

Yeah, my Subject is worse, but... The thing that is going wrong is that we are all part of a mad experiment. Some of the people doing the experiment do have good intentions, but the Waymo robotaxi that tries to follow that road... Well, you know where that road goes.

But it's a much bigger problem that the humans controlling the various flavors of the experiment have only one intention: MORE MONEY. They already have more money than any human needs or can possibly use, but they need more money ASAP. I personally rate Thiel and Musk as the top poster children for that madness.

And what is the main experiment? Daily exposure to alien intelligence that too often seems smarter than we are. Not difficult to seem smarter than me in the robotaxi case since I was never a great driver. I'm even remembering a tractor accident in a construction area... Which reminded me of a truck accident involving construction stuff...

Along the lines of the response I might have written if the reply you are replying to was more substantive and cohesive. The inline response format basically lacks sincerity and is mostly used these years to break things out of context in search of cutting responses to "win" the "argument". I only noted one area of possible agreement that might have justified an attempt to respond. I think he [young? MIPSPro with an 8-digit ID] was saying "We can't get there from here", and we would probably agree that "there" is some sort of better place and "here" is the status quo, but the underlying philosophies remain completely incompatible... Dare I say incommensurable? In particular I didn't detect much comprehension of my ideas or any requests for clarification. Rather it sounded like he thought it was a chance to grind his axe and you identified the Libertarian axe.

I like the spirit of what you are saying which sounds to me like "let's increase freedom" or "let's encourage good corporate governance." Freedom and competence are good things, for sure. However, I don't agree that giving the government more power/reasons to rob folks is a good idea. Remember what the government spends the money on. They minimize the good stuff (roads, kids, local defense). They maximize the bad stuff like foreign wars, secret bio-weapons labs, experiments on the population, group-based biased transfer payments, overregulation of things they can't keep up with like tech and pharma, punishing the little guys while letting the big corps run wild, etc... The government is not the good guys that need rewarding. People who create goods and services that aren't harming society are the good guys, not a bunch of evil soon-to-be-tax-donkeys we should stifle.

That is true. It's also punishing individuals, the middle class, and based on the worst possible (most unjust) modalities of taxation: income robbery and property robbery. So, you can't keep what you earn and you cannot own any property because the government can take it the minute you stop paying them rent. The taxes (robbery) is bad. The way they collect them is worse. The things they spend the ill-gotten-gains on are the drizzling Hershey shits. So, the best option in terms of effectiveness and fairness would be to cut spending and radically reduce the size of our incompetent and murderous government.

I don't know where to come down on these types of network-effect monopolies. Part of me says "Well, Apple/Sony/MS built the walled garden let them live or die in it." However, that ignores how big these companies get and how powerful and large the market places start to become. The effect becomes so large that it might actually be at least worth considering letting the incompetent murderers help solve the problem, lord help us. However, I doubt it. I'd assert that in a sufficiently free market, network effects will get nullified by better and more competitive networks. If they don't (like say with Standard Oil) it might because the monopoly is being really well run and competitors cannot break in. General rules against fraud, breach of contract, or actual coercion still apply to walled gardens.

My ideas are more ideologically pure and probably would generate better outcomes (more freedom & wealth) if fully implemented, based on histories precedents. However, my ideas are also less realistic and less easy to implement than yours. Your ideas are at the "Let's radically change tax policy" wonk-level. That's bad, but it's not nearly as bad as "We gotta burn this system to the ground and start over with Capitalism" which is basically my idea. So, the merit of the idea depends on your goals & perspective.

Nah, you're not being a smarmy trite shithead. There is no reason to be trite to you. I just usually match the energy of the parent post, ala Witroth and his "come out partisan guns blazing" crap. You want to have a discussion, just avoid the smarm and ad-hominem that's ubiquitous here and we'll have an actual conversation.

Key part of demoralization of a nation is making people ashamed of it.

Damn, they listened to him during Obama's tenure?

He really is the Immortal Emperor in your minds.

Didn't strike me as a productive FP branch. 'Nuff said.

Back to the story. Seems like a really stupid idea. The destruction of the middle class is a long-term problem. Not going to fix it with a one-time bandage. So let's pretend Slashdot is still a place where solutions can get serious consideration, though my memories of such days are so old as to be dubious. (How many editors where there back then? Down to the last one now...)

The current tax systems seem to favor greedy monopolists. How about pro-freedom taxation in competition with pro-greedom anti-freedom taxation?

One of my (too many) fantasies would be a progressive tax on profits linked to market share and niche dominance. Determining problematic monopolies could use various metrics, but here are three examples: (1) Lack of customer choice, (2) Inability of new competitors to enter the market, and (3) Lack of freedom of employees to move to a competing company. There should be a delay before the higher rates kick in, thus rewarding innovation, but the natural path to higher retained earnings after that time should involve splitting your great company into two or more competing companies. Don't think of it as a tax on success, but rather as a mechanism to make sure the good ideas get propagated into more companies.

A few minor thoughts: One is that mergers that reduce freedom should get no delay time, but should immediately trigger tax rate escalations. Another involves the case of natural monopolies (often related to network effects), where one solution approach would be to use some of the tax revenue to regulate the natural monopoly while funding research into ways to break the natural monopoly.

Your better ideas are quite welcome. Also questions triggered by my poor writing. Unfortunately I anticipate less welcome responses, if any.

Fact check actually said "it was a crocodile enclosure". It was so stupid, it short circuited my brain when typing it out.

Also headlines are epic, going along the lines of "child ended up in the croc cage". How? No one knows, but they arrested "a man". What kind of man? No one knows, but he's not a straight white one, because that would've been all over the news.

Best part is that now there's reporting that this mystery man was so mentally retarded, they couldn't interview him. So they released him on bail until september. Guess there's more kid chucking coming up.

Just kidding. This nonsense made it to X, so they're probably going to have to arrest the poor bastard before he gets to try to see if he can chuck the next one into a lion enclosure, and then get fact checked that it's actually a tiger enclosure.

Ah yes, my favorite kind of a fact check Reminds me of the current story about immigrant who chucked a random 3 year old kid into the alligator cage with obvious consequences.

Then we get Fact check false. It was actually an alligator cage.

Same energy as this "debunk".

You think corporations don't just pass taxes through to their customers? Sweet Summer child, must be nice to be so naive.

That does sometimes happen. That's the great thing about living in a place with freedom of movement and at-will employment. When an employer gives you a raw deal, you change jobs. If that's too hard, move. If that doesn't work, start your own business. Notice how in the most authoritarian countries all those options are restricted. That's because restricting individual freedom is what Fascist and Communists always do. Cheerleading and playing useful idiot for the Commies won't help you any more than goose stepping with the Fascists. In your case, I'd simply work on typing and grammar skills so that people might be able to figure out what the fuck you're trying to say. Partisanship isn't your worst personal trait, unfortunately.

You got me to do the research. Turns out the major accomplishment of the YOB administration is reviving Sharpie manufacturing in Tennessee. Take that, you foreign adversaries and heathens!

Ask your favorite LLM for a list of ROK tech that was cloned by PRC manufacturers as a result of industrial espionage.

c/I came to mind/came to mind/

Minimal edit, though I was probably thinking of writing something like "came to my mind".

Too bad the longer discussion apparently generated no Funny. At least not according to the precious moderators.

NAK