I don't get it, did the author finish by having a stroke? ELI5?

Just download the podcast from the source. Ads are injected by 3rd parties.

A voltzwagon jeep? :)

Taxation doesn’t take into account the fact that wages are stagnant, but corporations have posted record profits

Something akin to this?

I would generally agree that taxation as we normally use the term may not be adequate to describe this great squeezing effect, unless you stretch the definition of tax to include inflation too, as a hidden pervasive tax that is invisibly collecting value from everyone.

Small businesses are impacted as well, due to the nature of supply chains, most people cannot create something from nothing.

Supply chains have to start somewhere, and I tend to favor and think of bottom-up solutions very near people creating value from nothing to compete with the mega-corps (washing cars, mowing lawns, sewing, carpentry, metal-working, programming, gardening)... there is probably more business opportunities within the reach of the individual than we are trained to believe, and I wonder how much we automatically lose once we assume that we must be an employee.

That doesn’t seem like a non-sequitor or people arguing past eachother like some kind of verbal 4-D chess match, typed in this case.

Absolutely agree, it is way more disruptive than it could possibly be of strategic value, especially in verbal conversation. I would hazard to say it has never been useful outside of my family.

It seems to me that you’re saying you assume what the other person might say, then you reply to that assumption.

I'm sure I do that too, but to some degree one must make assumptions about what others are saying, as that is the nature of natural language communication.

Can you clarify?

An example would probably be best, but I skimmed over this thread's post and did not see an obvious example, so probably not in a time-effective manner... this aside might barely qualify (maybe when I mentioned this tendency I thought you were reacting to something not on this thread), or maybe my initial post could be an example (as I unconsciously skipped over the obvious answers of "inflation" and "greed" which are positions I knew others would consider and take, and therefor have little value in me harping on).

iHome

uBlock may have enough support to start their own maintained fork, and be the upstream for all the other quiet browsers. That dude is like THE ONE GUY that makes chromium sane, and doesn't even take donations?!

I check my person for belongings, identification, cultural hints, and if I am still "me".

This must unironically be the first "big data", where it is cheaper to move the computation than the data.

Are you sure that's a cat? :)

lol... it did not even occur to me. I don't have a straight answer for you because I don't ordinarily consider bifurcating the problem along a public/private line.

It's such a blurry line, like in this case where you have public funding for private schools, or in other cases where you have private corporations that produce only for the public government; or tax-funded incentives to private products or private payment networks replacing government currency.

Instead, I usually consider the size of the political system or corporation in question with a heuristic of "smaller is better", and bias towards presuming enmeshment: like the whole system is one gigantic oppressive blob and the public/private labels are just superficial colorations.

I guess if I had any suggestion, it would be to somehow excise schooling from the blob, and find the smallest size where it works, and use the ones that work well as templates to repair or replace those that fail.

Insomuch as the power to tax is the power to destroy, yes.... But I'm sure there are better examples (military?), and the oppression is less caused by the ACTUAL cost of such things, and more the oppression of what is LOST in providing such things.

If those are the only options then it is probably the last one, as I'm often not even sure what to call the unfamiliar positions I see others taking here, but it could be a bit of "can't debate" too as I find a tendency in myself to address the secondary or tertiary consequences of peoples arguments (assuming they are aware of [and already accept] the obvious primary consequences) which can be quite jarring and read like a string of non-sequitors, or like people arguing past each other.

I agree and do understand that the original post was not about self owned businesses, so I agree that it is a bit off topic here. I was only trying to point out the absurdity of the statement that "taxes are a drop in the ocean compared to [labor value theft]". As if that were true (or even a less-hyperbolic ratio of 1-to-99), then it would logically follow that freelance work would produce staggeringly higher yields, and we see that is not the case. The intent was an informal proof by contradiction, but that was not made clear.

I think it could also be shown by induction (as the more people/layers/intermediaries you add the more loss/expense is incurred) if you accept a profit motive and a steady state, but large businesses can and do temporarily sell products at a loss to kill competition in the short-term, so that would probably be less convincing.

I recall my first exposure to this idea was via L. Neal Smith, so I tried to coax a breakdown out of GPT. Keeping in mind it could be hallucinated (and not his actual position or sourced values and math), so minimally just for your entertainment...

Certainly! Here's a more detailed breakdown of how L. Neil Smith might conceptualize the distribution of value:

• 12.5% Retained by the Individual: The portion of value that individuals actually keep for themselves after all deductions.

• 20% Income Taxes: The portion of value lost to federal, state, and local income taxes.

• 15% Social Security and Medicare Taxes: Contributions to social security and healthcare systems.

• 10% Sales Taxes: Taxes added to purchases of goods and services.

• 10% Property Taxes: Taxes on real estate and other property.

• 15% Regulatory Compliance Costs: Expenses related to meeting government regulations, such as environmental standards, labor laws, and safety requirements.

• 10% Corporate and Business Taxes: Taxes on business profits, which can indirectly affect individual income through reduced wages or higher prices.

• 7.5% Miscellaneous Fees and Other Taxes: Including tariffs, licensing fees, and other smaller taxes.

This breakdown illustrates how various forms of taxation and regulation can consume a large portion of the value generated by individual effort, aligning with Smith's perspective on government intervention.

So... body odor? :)

8BitDo what nintendon't

A series of coffee tubes!

When the only tool you have is a book, all problems look like a... bookshelf?

Yes, corporate overhead is quite real, but it is literally zero effect for the self-employed... so by your logic all would be or become so to be rich by avoiding a CEO altogether.

That depends on if you refer to banking or inflationary spending.

The collapse of society, visualized.