> Once, the one time 5% is spent the state will have to figure out how to do the one time 5% more than once to keep feeding the spending machine.

The money to be raised is already budgeted as a separate fund for a specific purpose. It is not intended to be general funds nor is it intended to be ongoing funding.

Think of as a bond. When the government wants to raise money for a project or investment in the future, they will often issue and sell bonds to raise that money. Bonds mature and pay back with some interest, and are not recurring or factored into the normal budgeting.

This is functionally the same thing, except instead of borrowing via bonds and paying back with interest, it's just a straight up tax on billionaires.

=Smidge=

Government will buy people food and healthcare if they are poor enough. Saves businesses a lot of money!

when I can't schmooze my way on a private get (G550 last time), then I would fly commercial on the cheapest fastest flight I can get. Especially when flying domestically where sitting on a plane for 4-5 hours isn't the worst part of the trip, it's the airports. And paying more and still having to get naked body scan pictures taken of my wife seems like a pointless way to spend extra money.

Seems redundant, I already use a private terminal at SFO (and a few other airports). Maybe it isn't fancy but the staff returned my rental car for me. Flying privately is super convenient compared to commercial carriers.

A sign that civilization is in decline.

I'm not going to carry water for trillion dollar corporations that rake in record profits every year through subtle and not-so-subtle anti-competitive practices.

The users currently get a walled garden system. With Apple locking other markets out almost entirely. And Google playing whack-o-mole with user-installed open source markets and subtle limitations for OEMs that want to maintain capability with Play store but also run their own store and own search partner.

The current market is not consumer friendly. And doing nothing is not going to change that.

Yes, it's fine.

I agree that this sector needs to be regulated in order for there to be a fair playing field for all participants. But let's not forget that DMA was written with Apple and Google in mind, it is not much surprise that their cases are going to be lost in the EU.

A regulatory agency has no business regulating. This is how you get big government, by letting bureaucrats do their job.

Micron stock is about 9X what I paid for it. So even though I can't afford RAM, I am happy that nobody else can either.

... and shit out a loose stool for you to consume.

This is the future that Zuck, Elon, Altman, Pichai, Nadella, Ghodsi, Admodei, and Huang envision for us. A circle of consumption like a human centipede, with AI datacenters as the head and the rest of us on the back end.

QIC-80 was such a good deal for what you got back in the day. I went the DAT/DDS route when I had a little money and found a used SCSI DDS-1 drive for a reasonable price. My most recent is a SATA Quantum DAT 72, but it only works in my old tower, my new PC's BIOS freaks out and refuses to boot.

It's really obsolete though, I'm running two BD-R M-DISC drives (one internal and one USB). I can make archival media that is far easier to pack away than tape, and even in 40 years it's going to be pretty easy to find a reader. I can't say that my DAT media is going to be terribly accessible in 10 to 20 years.

I used to send got bundle straight to DDS/DAT tape. I still have a box of tapes kicking around.

Bernie asked people to "Fight Oligarchy", and the Right said "that's communism!" and the neoliberals said "let's not be hasty, some of my closest friends are oligarchs."

We can all be gig plumbers and do each other's plumbing, and like the gig app take 20% of our income.
Since that alone won't support us, we can also all be gig drivers, gig delivery, gig pet sitters, etc.
I'll definitely need to do some gig pet sitting to help pay for the pet sitters I'll need while out on gigs.