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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!