davitz

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I mean it's a state election. Even if they gained 100% control of that state's government they wouldn't have taken over Germany.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

I would say that the meme does a good job of producing a Gettier Case, which many philosophers recognize as valid counter examples that disprove the Justified True Belief definition of knowledge, indicating that a complete definition of knowledge requires more than those three elements.

Philosophers (aside from skeptics) were mostly agreed on JTB as a straightforward and elegant definition of knowledge for most of history and they have struggled to reach a new consensus after Gettier and instead are left with a hodgepodge of competing definitions. This could be perceived as something that might frustrate a philosopher, and that I think is why the meme positions this as a sort of "prank" for philosophers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem?wprov=sfla1

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

The difference is scale. If a house is a safe investment that makes a reliable 10% return on investment before tax and then you pay 1% in property tax, the remaining 9% is still an extremely attractive return so the investor appetite for housing remains unchanged by this small tax. Change the tax to 9% and you're only left with 1% return, suddenly other investment options become much more attractive. Once the investors have left, prices can normalize around the price tolerances of people actually intending to live in the space.

This is a simplification using made up numbers, but the overall point is that the mere fact that property taxes as they currently exist (with very low rates) allow investors to run amok, that doesn't mean that a more substantial LVT couldn't change that.

Obviously taxing in a way that makes rentals completely non viable is probably not a perfect solution, and raising the tax dramatically all at once before prices have a chance to react could be catastrophic, but with a careful incremental approach gradually raising LVT and displacing other taxes (starting with regressive ones like sales tax) with those revenues based on observed outcomes, progress can be made to a better equilibrium where people who want to own a home to live in have better opportunities to do so, people who want to rent still have some options, people aren't getting rich by ransoming housing at extortionate prices, and more investment capital is funneled toward productive enterprise over plots of dirt, strengthening the actual economy.

I think it's probable that the Georgist dream of displacing all taxation with LVT may not be achievable due to diminishing returns on raising the tax as property values react, but I think moving in the direction of Georgist policy could absolutely usher in some better social outcomes

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yes, but orders of magnitude less often than random members of the public "doing their own research". And looking at the consensus of the experts rather than individual experts the error rate is further orders of magnitude below that. You need to let go of the idea that information being a good basis for decisions means that it's "absolute truth", because only religion has that; what we have is some sources of information that are less likely to be wrong than all the others, and that's unfortunately the best you can get.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

Saved loadouts

[–] [email protected] 19 points 7 months ago

They didn't say you couldn't appeal a civil case. They said that ineffective counsel can't be the basis of that appeal.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (1 children)

To oversimplify, it's a metaphor about what it's like to go through life relying only on your senses and not using reason to question or analyze the deeper meanings behind your surface impressions. The story goes on to discuss a prisoner who escapes the cave and gets a taste of true reality, that prisoner is meant to represent a philosopher. When the escaped prisoner returns and tells the others of what he's seen, they reject his claims saying how absurd it would be to believe that there's anything more than just the shadows. I think in this day and age it's easy to guess what that interaction represents, but Plato had a particular bone to pick about this since his mentor had essentially been executed for questioning various things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave?wprov=sfla1

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

I don't think that's what it's saying given that "sexual themes" is on this list as well. Seems more like they're saying "we're allowing more sexual content if it's properly labeled, but we're going to start keeping those labels off the home page, and while we're at it we'll take off a bunch of other objectionable content"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

The default wallpaper looks so much like testicles photographed from below and I can't unsee it

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (11 children)

The saying never says that you can make 999,999,999.99 honestly. It just says one amount you can make honestly and one amount you can't. The implication is that the outer limit of what you can make honestly is somewhere in between.

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