Consider these 2 possible opinions of folks who don't care too much about fighting climate change:
1. Climate change is an unsolvable problem, requiring coordination on a massive scale by billions of actors who have been shown to defect whenever given the chance. Any plan we are likely to implement is unlikely to succeed. Humans overall are adaptive, adrobust to change, and when the changes caused by climate change happen, we may suffer a bit, but it will not be immense suffering.
2. Climate change isn't real.
Often when I've tried to argue position 1, which I actually believe, my friends are extremely frustrated and essentially think I'm trying to argue for position 2. Left-leaning folks are too idealistic to understand that position 1 is an entirely internally-consistent position.
What does "arguing position 1" amount to, though? Your phrasing here seems to be saying that you're throwing up your hands and giving up. But that's not an "argument".
My guess is that you're actually arguing for inaction, that you're opposed to regulation, and that you're taking your stand with all the people with position 2. If so... why are you surprised to be forced to defend their wrongheadedness?
I argue from position 1 that we should be looking for the next breakthrough, CO2-emission-free power source. I'm extremely grateful that some people are. Wind and solar are highly inefficient, expensive and difficult to scale[1] and are very unlikely to be an effective solution long-term. Nuclear power sources have great potential among technologies we have access to today and while there are real, technical drawbacks (setup cost, security, waste) there are ongoing, significant research projects in each area[2]. Beyond nuclear, the seeming holy-grail would be to find a CO2-emission-free power source that is 10-100x more effective at the same or lower cost. And why can't we? Our ability to imagine what is possible in the future has been shown time and again to be very limited, in general.
Arguing position 1 amounts to taking an interest in and investing in efforts that will allow the world to progress along its current trajectory without CO2-emitting power sources.
"... why are you surprised to be forced to defend their wrongheadedness?" - I'm not... I just avoid having conversations with folks that would jump to this conclusion without hearing my point of view.
You nailed it, many of us are "1" or "1"-adjacent.
Consider this... if you don't think The West should be fighting a massive trade-war against India/China around climate change, if your solution to a GLOBAL problem is a NATIONAL solution, then you're just spinning wheels. Trump's tariffs are ironically the greenest policy choice he could possibly be making and he's not exactly getting praise for it.
EDIT: Thus, I think the most likely "solution" to climate change is for humans to adapt or die. The most likely scenario in which we adapt best is the one in which our economies and technology grow the fastest, such that massive-scale geo-engineering becomes possible, so I support those economic growth policies instead, because they don't suffer from prisoner's dilemma defection. This happens to look exactly like climate change denial to leftists.
EDIT EDIT: I don’t care about karma but my post will be “dead” soon, along with many other people who dared to share the same position (and the chilling effect on people who choose not to even speak up). So I ask how I can communicate my position more constructively? Maybe my opinion is just wrong, but I’d like to be convinced by someone who is willing to dialogue with a potential ally.
In point 1, I think it's worth pointing out that there likely will be immense suffering, it will just not likely be by those who cause/impact the problem. My grandchildren will lose their beach house. But they'll have robots build them a new one. A few dozens extra million people in poor areas will die of drought induced starvation. And on net, people won't care.
I'm not saying this is morally wrong I'm just saying we should acknowledge it.
When I see this, I wonder if the shaving industry is fated to always have high margins, just due to the fact that brand power is very strong in the shaving industry.
People don't trust razors they've never heard of. Too dull. I really like my chinese Weishi brand double edge safety razor w/ standard barbasol, and have shaved for about $5 per year for the last 5 years (capex included), so I feel like an outsider looking in.
Honestly I'm not sure why safety razors aren't more common. They aren't that difficult to use after some practice, and they shave equally well. But the cost of razor blades is practically zero! It's such a huge win.
I would compare safety razors to mechanical watches. When quartz watches hit the market, everyone ditched the old technology.
Now mechanical watches are popular again -- but a cheap mechanical watch manufactured today keeps far better time than a cheap one you could buy in the 1970s. This leads people who have only experienced modern mechanical watches to wonder why they ever went out of style.
Similarly, the market for safety razors today is far different than it was when cartridge razors were introduced. Back in the 1960s consumers could get their hands on just a few kinds of razors and blades, and the blades were not generally as good as the blades available today. There are simply far more, and far better, safety razors and blades available today than there ever were before.
Similar observations can be made about the fountain pen market.
The marketing for high margin disposable cartridge systems is highly effective. I find people fear the that a safety razor will be too complicated or difficult to use.. without ever trying one. I bought into this too; before the first time I tried a safety razor, I was predicting disaster. But then the shave went off flawlessly and faster than it would have been with disposable. The supposed difficulty curve just isn't there.
The marketing for disposable systems also misleads people as to the price. Some of the people I've talked into trying safety razors were previously under the impression that safety razors were incredibly expensive, something like $200 or something nuts like that, and they had no interest in making that sort of investment. But in reality the first time you buy a safety razor and blades, you'll be spending less money than you'd spend for a new pack of cartridges. I got my razor for less than $10. It's stainless steel, I've had it for about 10 years without a spec of rust. Perfectly serviceable and cheaper than even a pack of totally disposable bic razors you find at gas stations (I used those once during a vacation; boy was that awful...)
I dunno, I did have a bit of a learning curve when I started with a safety razor. They don't flex like the cartridge razors do, so you have to pay a little more attention to how you hold it. After a bit of practice, though, it did become just as easy.
The way I was already holding disposable cartridge razors was at the neck of the razor relatively loosely with two fingers, with the rest of the handle loosely supported in my palm by my other fingers. I found this technique transfers to safety razors without modification. I guess I was never really relying on the flexible neck of disposable cartridge razors in the first place though.
Razors[1] must have been horrible if safety razors have the word “safety” in it, but needs practice and care to avoid cuts and nicks. Modern razors make it nigh impossible to hurt yourself, but point taken.
[1]I can picture old western movies, ala High Plains Drifter, with grizzled characters cleaning up before/after some event.
Sure, I was just pointing out the history of the name.
I do it every other day, sometimes in quite a hurry and with a slant-head. I occasionally nick myself but even that is infrequent. And as others have said, it’s dirt cheap. Since starting with a safety razor a few years ago, shaving is no longer a chore.
>Razors[1] must have been horrible if safety razors have the word “safety” in it, but needs practice and care to avoid cuts and nicks. Modern razors make it nigh impossible to hurt yourself, but point taken.
The safety razor was the advancement over the straight razor. It's an entirely different (and at the time, new) technology from what it was replacing.
I tried it once and my sink looked like I sacrificed a lamb afterwards, figured it wasn't worth it to relearn how to shave my face to save a couple bucks a year. I stick my cartrige blades in mineral oil and they stay sharp all month. Before I started doing that they wouldn't even last a week.
I split my time between a safety razor and Harry's. I usually shave before getting in the shower in the morning.
Nicks: I have uneven skin. I also damage myself with a cartridge razor. I get nicks with a safety razor. I get bad razor burn with a cartridge razor, depending on how much growth I have. The nicks go away after a shower. The razor burn does not. After my first safety razor shave, I've only gotten minor nicks. Pick up a styptic pencil if worried.
Time: I need two full passes to match a Harry's. Three passes exceeds a Harry's. I can do it in 10 minutes, but, if I'm in a hurry, I use a cartridge razor. Taking 15 minutes, relaxing, getting a great shave is awesome when I have the time. Sometimes I shave before bed so I can do this.
Choices: Several online companies have variety packs of blades. Get one of those, find the blade you like, order a bunch. Buy whatever razor fits your price range. Buy the most popular blade shaving cream (not soap) you think will smell OK. A cheap brush will get you going, though you don't "need" one for shaving cream. You don't need a bowl.
Hope that helps some if you decide you're interested. Watch a few videos on YouTube to get the basics. The critical rule: don't move the blade side-to-side.
It does take some practice to get the hang of it, and in that time, you are more likely to nick yourself. For me, it took about a month or so to be as good with the safety razor as a cartridge one.
Now it takes me about an equal amount of time as it did using a cartridge razor, and I rarely nick myself (about as frequently as I did with a cartridge).
There are some good lists for cheap "beginner" razors online - I'd suggest trying out one of those. You can just use your normal shaving cream, too.
The bottom line for me is the crazy cost of razor cartridges. My razor blades cost 25 cents apiece, and that's on the expensive end.
I can speak for me. I remember my father had been using one all his life. I think it is the risk/danger of handling the razors. Anyone with a small child at home would rather have a wilkinson/gilette that are safes (blade-wise). Also cinema has given those blades a bad name.
Now that you mentioned it though, and especially what temp1831 said ($5 for a year's shave), it just got my attention!
On the rare occasions I use shaving cream, it’s Barbasol, and I swear it feels like the most luxurious expensive concoction I could put on my face. Nothing feels better to me to matter how costly. I’ve literally spent about $30 on Barbasol in the last 25 years, and that’s largely because I have multiple houses.
Same here. It was a epiphany for me when I could scrape off a week of growth with 1-2 passes without clogging up and with a better shave. Washing with something astringent like Dr Bronners before the Barbasol helps a bunch too.
>This time, organizers said they based the budget on “real” dollars, looking across the next decade to predict expenses and revenues in terms of when the money is actually spent or received.
To be interpreted as: It takes multiple revisions of the budget before somebody in the city government was even realistic enough to apply a discount rate to future cash flows.
No, the original budget was based on an LA 2024 Olympics. After LA accepted the LA2028 Games, the budget needed to be revised. Due to the...uncertainty...of the Trump administration's impact on the economy, it took a while to determine a reasonable forecast for inflation over the next decade.
When posts mentioning obesity crop up on HN, some people advocate personal responsibility to prevent your own obesity (taking the individualistic position) and some people argue that it is a society-wide problem, where changes in our culture have caused this problem to expand over time (taking the social position).
The synthesis of these two ideas: It's easier to get fat than ever before, so you are even more responsible to avoid it than ever.
Let's say you run a gas station, which is a notoriously low margin business. You have $1,050,000 in revenue this year, and $1,000,000 in expenses, so you make $50,000.
Let's say you run a small software company, which is a high margin business. You have $1,050,000 in revenue this year, and $500,000 in expenses, so you make $550,000.
You should be taxed on the $50,000 and the $550,000, not on the $1,050,000. Otherwise, if business expenses were not deductible, low margin and capital intensive businesses would be punished severely. We would have decreased investment in the economy and everyone would suffer for it.
If individuals could deduct their expenses, it would encourage people to spend every penny they make. The mortgage interest deduction is one example where this nudge becomes apparent (albeit real estate has merit as an investment, not just consumption). We already have a low enough savings rate as it is.
By the logic that justifies subsidizing low margin businesses, housing, food, and other necessities should also be tax free.
Let’s say you make $100,000 a year as a school teacher in SF, and pay $7K a month for a three bedroom house for your family. That’s $84K just for housing. Food clearly uses up more than the rest.
If people and corporations were taxed the same, you could carry over the loss to a future year where your spouse cashed out some stock (or you got a job that paid a living wage).
Alternatively, we could pay everyone a fair wage, and stop subsidizing zero margin businesses that can’t afford the labor costs (which means things like gas would cost a bit more).
I’m for the latter. People have to work in these zero margin places, and their employers should figure out how to make more of a profit (and pay better), or go under.
Why should my taxes subsidize petroleum distributors, Walmart, Amazon, etc?
At a high level of just considering taxable income that is true. However, the difference is there are a lot more things a corp can do to reduce taxable income than an individual can do. If you happen to be the owner of a corp you can also use those things to your individual benefit.
If the argument is to say "income is income", then "expenses are expenses" should apply too.
> the difference is there are a lot more things a corp can do to reduce taxable income than an individual can do.
this is exactly it. Rental costs are deducted as expenses for a corporation, but the same rental expense cannot be deducted from income. Arguably, the cost of staying alive for a person is an expense for making the income!
To make it catagorized would be too complex though - i would propose that personal income should be average-able across that person's lifetime. I.e., if i made $1000000 in one year, i should be able to spread the income from when I first started working (and paying taxes), so that my average income per year is the same number. Then you back pay all the "missing" taxes from those years, rather than suddenly jump to the $1,000,000 tax bracket and the gov't taking 45% from you in one go.
Though I agree with the annoyance of high marginal rates for one-time windfalls of income, I think it's more practically workable to only allow forward averaging in the form of "pay all the taxes now and fill out this new form XYZ to allow you to perform the alternative averaging process over the next 4 tax years".
Otherwise, you end up effectively amending N returns (possibly opening them back up for examination), needing to calculate what taxes would have been due under the then-extant tax brackets and laws, possibly needing to make inflation adjustments for figures that are decades removed from the tax years in question, realistically needing to pay interest on the taxes that you didn't pay in 1972 but are now claiming are part of your 1972 income because you sold a company in 2019, and everyone would have incentive to file a tax return showing earned income from age 1. (Maybe I arrange for my child to have a job posing for photographs and being paid $20 just to get their income tax filing clock started and being able to income average all the way back to that year instead of only to age 17, 19, or 21.) Forward-only averaging avoids (or substantially avoids) those issues.
Computing tax rates against a moving average of the last 5 years income is a simple and elegant way to have the same effect.
Young people would have lower rates while they’re establishing themselves, people with windfalls would end up paying rates in line with their annual compensation (instead of just maxing out the brackets with a big percentage of their income).
Also, people with sustained high income would be taxed at a much higher rate than upwardly mobile members of the middle class.
Similarly, low income people with intermittent income would have a much better chance at building their savings.
Finally, it defeats all sorts of timing strategies, so people could make major financial decisions without first hiring a cpa.
That's interesting. In essence (assuming no tax law changes), you claim 20% of your income for the current year over each of the next 5 years for tax purposes. Has very nice properties for initial wage earners as you say.
Downsides: results in a 3x income tax charge if an income earner dies suddenly (assuming you want to settle their estate in less than 5+ years). Acts as a loan from the feds to the taxpayer, resulting in income taxes due after you stop working (perhaps you became disabled or got fired [or die, as above]), and results in deferral of income tax receipts to the government during the transition.
If you go to a high level of abstraction, you remove useful distinctions. That is not a productive line of thought. Not all income is the same, and not all expenses are the same. Excise taxes and any "nudge" tax laws make this obvious.
It is true that there are some tax deductions that are abused. However, the effect of encouraging investment by businesses is much more important.
>If you happen to be the owner of a corp you can also use those things to your individual benefit.
This could be considered an abuse. However, the benefit of encouraging investment by businesses far outweighs the negative of this abuse. We tend to focus our attention on a few big individuals who cheat, and this excessive focus throws off our moral intuitions. Heck, the gas station owner might have deducted the cost of buying a toolbox needed at the workplace, and then borrowed a wrench from that toolbox to go home and fix his plumbing. That would be fine with me, to the extent that all the damn tax paperwork stops being worth keeping track of.
> If you go to a high level of abstraction, you remove useful distinctions.
That's my point and what I was extrapolating from your high-level comment. If you're going to give an example, it's good to talk about things the gas station and software company do to reduce that income to, or below, zero. Things that can provide direct, positive, net gain impact on ownership of the corp. However, those same things are not available to employees of the corp.
To me, the rules should be the same for _any_ taxable entity.
If you tax revenue, the government can be funded with much lower tax rates. Businesses will always pass costs on to customers. To claim your benefit is really for everyone else seems a bit narcissistic.
Take another low-margin business: supermarkets. Do you want to raise supermarket (or other necessity) prices across the board by whatever the revenue-based corporate tax rate is? That would have a substantially regressive overall impact on consumers (in that the poor would bear a greater portion of that tax than their share of income).
Most bosses that retaliate do not view it as retaliation. I know that when I have acted immorally in my own past, I felt justified about it.
It is not true that he stated women are less suited to the job. It is possible that he was implying it. Firing him for something he did not say, but may have implied, is weak. Destroying a person's livelihood for an imagined offense WHILE the company releases a statement that they encourage widespread opinions is even weaker.
> Most bosses that retaliate do not view it as retaliation.
I don't understand how that's relevant. I mean I grant you that wrongdoers often believe they are doing right. That is true in almost any context. The issue is about whether wrong is being done -- by which I mean, the consensus viewpoint on that question -- not how the wrongdoers feel about their wrongdoing.
(I see your other paragraph, but I'm not responding to it because, as I said earlier, I don't wish to discuss my views on it. I'm not afraid to talk about it, but I don't think it would move this particular discussion forward.)
1. Climate change is an unsolvable problem, requiring coordination on a massive scale by billions of actors who have been shown to defect whenever given the chance. Any plan we are likely to implement is unlikely to succeed. Humans overall are adaptive, adrobust to change, and when the changes caused by climate change happen, we may suffer a bit, but it will not be immense suffering.
2. Climate change isn't real.
Often when I've tried to argue position 1, which I actually believe, my friends are extremely frustrated and essentially think I'm trying to argue for position 2. Left-leaning folks are too idealistic to understand that position 1 is an entirely internally-consistent position.