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Is anyone here not from reddit?
  • I've used reddit.com before but I never made many posts or comments and I haven't used it in years. I'm pretty sure there was a period where I visited it regularly though.

    I don't think I've ever posted anything with facebook.com or twitter.com either. I never browsed them for fun, and if I want to coordinate with someone in my family I just contact them directly. I do use youtube.com a lot though.

    I tried using pleroma but I haven't used that in a while either. I prefer lemmy much more (probably because posts being different from comments provides more structure).

  • Alternative to Discord ?
  • Programs that do multiple things are not simple, so successfully using or understanding what they do is less likely to be possible for you. I expect that wanting to avoid interacting with many programs will lead a person to use programs that are nonfree more often than they otherwise would, so it would be more likely that a program controls the users.

  • Do drivers in the USA have to yield to alien UFO's?
  • It doesn't matter if anything is behind you or not: any other road users would also be obligated to give up their right of way (by stopping) if you chose to stop, if doing so would help prevent collisions.

  • Is it just me or is protonmail aggressively pushing the premium subscription?
  • I got a subscription last year and I don't have a memory of seeing an advertisement at https://mail.proton.me/u/0/inbox after that, and I didn't see one just now when I checked.

    If you want to use an email service without seeing advertisements, maybe you should pay for a subscription starting from https://proton.me/pricing or https://www.privacyguides.org/en/email/ or maybe instead you should consider something like https://www.lifewire.com/best-free-email-accounts-1356641

  • Why do some people defend the billionaires and capitalism?
  • This might be relevant:

    https://youtu.be/J_fZ9o6P0-A?si=-fl7rLryYZBDVgTN&t=194

    Conditions here were deplorable by any objective measure. And if you'll recall, one of the hallmarks of early Russian industrialization was: the workforce was often transient. People moved back and forth between their home villages and jobs in the cities, and this flux meant that the places people lived and where they ate and bathed and got medical attention were only ever temporary expedients. It was a bit like you were going off to some particularly crappy summer camp. It was only meant to be temporarily endured, not lived in full time, and so conditions just never got better. People were not just renting rooms; they were renting corners of rooms. You could rent not just a bed, but part of a bed. Sanitation was, of course, practically non-existent, and the food was disgusting. The work itself, meanwhile, was long and grueling. There were no safety standards in the factories. There were hardly any rights for anybody at all. And pay was literally inadequate. The ministry of finance itself surveyed conditions and concluded that a family of four needed about fifty rubles a month to purchase basic necessities (that is, food and shelter and heat) and then they found that 75% of the workers were making less than 30 rubles a month. The economic and moral math was just not adding up.

    https://youtu.be/J_fZ9o6P0-A?si=FtaiY47HVyXXBeAP&t=340

    The lower skilled, less educated, and still mentally "peasant" workers tended to remain culturally conservative. They were orthodox christian and believed strongly in the divine benevolence of the czar. And indeed one of the things reported by both social democrats and SRs back to their respective central committees was that they struggled to recruit among these workers because they were out there pitching "overthrowing the czar" and everyone was like "What? We... we love the czar, and he loves us too!"

    To them, the czar was not a villain, but a hero. Not the devil, but their savior. It understandably made recruiting for a political revolution to overthrow their "hero and savior" very difficult.

    https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/revolutions_podcast/2020/02/1033-bloody-sunday.html

  • Forgejo is now copyleft, just like Git
  • I think the tax system in the USA is designed to reward people who form corporations and then get people employed. People who are employed don't have as much time to work on reforming institutions, so giving a tax break for employing people makes powerful people's lives easier. In order to keep this process revenue neutral, earned income is taxed instead of taxing business as much. After extracting money from people's labor (since labor is clearly necessary in order to create wealth), the remainder of budget needs is made up from whatever resources are easily available (which is currently the assets of rich people, since they have been given a lot of money to get people employed).

  • Forgejo is now copyleft, just like Git
  • I've been told Hungary does, though I haven't heard much about it until recently: https://www.uscisguide.com/dual-citizenship/u-s-dual-citizenship-and-taxes-with-hungary/

    I've also been told South Africa and Eritrea do, and I wouldn't be surprised if places like North Korea and Turkmenistan do too.

    Somehow Hungary gets a score of 30/50 for taxation for 2024 from https://nomadcapitalist.com/nomad-passport-index/ (United States and South Africa and Eritrea get 10, North Korea and Turkmenistan get 20) but I'd be suspicious of anywhere with a lower rating than 30.

  • Forgejo is now copyleft, just like Git
  • Wealth tax does not block economic growth, rather the opposite, because it forces wealth to be reinvested to not lose too much value.

    Do you have a source for this? I see that "wealth taxes have failed in Europe", and it seems that places with a wealth tax were mostly in Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264290303-4-en

    One example that caught my attention is Belgium, which introduced an "annual tax on securities accounts", which suggests that they were taxing resources that were invested already.

    I can imagine that it's possible for government spending to produce more economic growth than would have happened without taxation, but the entire point of money is to have a multitude of people working towards prosperity in ways that can't be predicted by state authorities, so if there are more taxes it seems likely that economic growth will be reduced.

    Of course, an analysis would have to account for things like using resources from a wealth tax to make cheap/free healthcare available, which might then make people vastly more productive such that any negative effects of a wealth tax are neutralized. Also, providing an obviously higher quality of life might be worth some cost.

    You clearly need a lesson in proportional taxation if you think people would have their personal property appropriated.

    Is a car or shirt or house personal property? It seems things like that are seized in response to people not paying revenue services: https://home.treasury.gov/services/treasury-auctions https://www.treasury.gov/auctions/treasury/gp/index.html https://www.cwsmarketing.com/?p=36139 https://auctions.cwsmarketing.com/auctions/1-9DDP42/gp-dayton-nj-live-wsimulcast-august-21 https://auctions.cwsmarketing.com/lots/view/1-9DE12Y/wearing-apparel-riverside-ca

    I do see that items had bids much higher than I'd expect, and they were being auctioned at the same time watches and jewellery and electric motorcycles and trailers, so I suspect any clothing was "luxury" in some way, or the auction was for more clothing than is documented with pictures.

    I do not give a fuck about you placing your dignity in ownership of material assets, that is a you problem.

    I reference "dignity" because it's part of "the unshakeable foundation of the Republic of Poland", and thinking about dignity seems like a good way to tell if something is a bad idea, and I probably wouldn't feel like I had more dignity than 1 month ago if I was having my car or house seized because I hadn't paid as much taxes as a revenue service thought I should. I expect that you will have more trouble implementing policies you like if you express that you're disregarding dignity.

    The top 10% pay less income taxes as a fraction of their income than the bottom 10%.

    I expect that this is true.

    Really, we should remove the capitalist class because they will fight back to the detriment of everyone else.

    I'm certainly for social change, and people with entrenched interests will probably try to hamper it. However, other people might not want to cooperate with you if you remind them of the Soviet Union, and I expect that saying "we should remove the capitalist class" will do that.

    I do not give a fuck about the IRS. I am not an American. My country actually has a wealth tax.

    If you don't care about the IRS, why are you talking about a wealth tax using English? I suspect that that the majority of people who speak English as well as you do are U.S. citizens, so I'd assume you were interested in speaking to U.S. citizens. Are you trying to talk to people in Europe / worldwide in a common language?

    Who is the target audience for your messages? I'm interested in where/how you're focusing your efforts.

    You are repeating misinformation and capitalist propaganda with little understanding of what you are saying. Have you even reflected on what “the economy” really is? If you are a trickle-down Reaganomics-follower, you might want to get your brain checked.

    What misinformation am I repeating? I wouldn't have written a statement that I don't think is true, so I suggest you point out anything you think is incorrect and explain your perspective, and maybe share a URL for some more interesting sources.

    Note: I originally pressed "Reply" too early by mistake, so I edited this text. Originally I had only written "Is a car or shirt or house personal property?" and one URL.

  • A community that is probably similar to this one
    sh.itjust.works Nowhere Else To Share - sh.itjust.works

    I didn’t know which community to post something in and so here we are. Please comment if you know a more appropriate community for a post.

    Nowhere Else To Share - sh.itjust.works
    0
    Superiority brings controversy

    Re-creation of someone else's post because the original was removed and I found it funny when I first saw it

    271
    Fuck Subs @sh.itjust.works LemoineFairclough @sh.itjust.works
    A song I feel is relevant

    This community immediately reminded me of this classic video.

    Have fun being able to pay your own rent!

    0
    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)LE
    LemoineFairclough @sh.itjust.works
    Posts 4
    Comments 129