ErikVandeWater

The FBI has been getting a free pass, if anything. Recently illegally spying on a presidential candidate's campaign (of the opposing party of the sitting president), and currently ignoring corruption involving the President's son and "The Big Guy" (hard to tell who that might be).

The effects of lowering taxes on rental income is complicated.

If you lower the taxes on rental income, more people will buy houses (and build new ones!) to take advantage of the reduction in taxes. However, they will still have to rent the apartments/houses out at market prices. The rental price will go down because now there is a greater supply of houses, and renting out an apartment at a lower rent is equally profitable as before (since you don't have to pay as much in taxes).

The cost of purchasing a house, however will increase, because there are more landlords competing to purchase the house with you.

Overall, the real problem is zoning single family homes everywhere, and rent control that disincentivizes building new housing.

Justice delayed is justice denied.

False dichotomy.

It's all about the tradeoff. 100% renewable energy would nuke the economy.

HN is getting worse with these kinds of posts.

There are thousands of homes/apartments around where I live that are about equally attractive for me to live at. Most sold by different sellers. Housing is fungible.

If you prove it takes 20 years to successfully sue you, you can get away with just about anything.

Aren't there also invasive beetles that kill the trees?

That's not what "associated" means.

You really think the only speech Twitter censors is hate speech? Terrible.

Well this analogy leaves out Twitter censorship, which makes Twitter unlikeable.

> The nature of aviation, where unplanned problems result in unplanned non-optional landings in random locations (instead of just pulling off the side of the road), would rapidly turn aviation into the most dangerous transport mode. Aviation would soon become unsustainable, and available to no one.

I didn't argue for no regulation. I argued for less regulation.

There is regulation that provides almost no safety benefit (because there is already plenty of regulation), while increasing cost noticeably.

Creating jobs is not a goal. Might as well just pay those people salaries to do whatever they feel like doing.

In addition, the extra expense associated with regulation to make planes ultra-safe makes it unaffordable for some people. Those people then go on to use a vastly less safe form of transportation.

I'd say the difference is density of deaths.

When people die in regular road accidents, it's just a few at a time. Not compelling enough for even a mention in national news coverage. When a plane or train crashes, it's hundreds simultaneously. Often with a good debris field too. Good enough to lead with.

I know most money is created by private banks. But that is stable (it is assumed by ceteris paribus). If a government decided to stop taxing then that would be something new.

Off the top of my head, some results would be:

1. No one wants to lend to your country again because you paid them back with currency far less valuable than expected

2. Nobody wants to use your currency as a means of exchange in international transactions because it can fluctuate suddenly

3. Massive redistribution of wealth from savers and lenders to borrowers (maybe a good thing on the whole, but devastating for people headed into retirement)

4. Anything (including govt. programs) that aren't indexed to inflation are suddenly far less valuable

> a sovereign government has no need of revenue in the first place.

Please explain this. Are you suggesting governments can just stop taxing, and print the money to pay their debts with no ill consequences?

Taxing activities that have negative externalities is a positive use of taxation.

It's better than forbidding such behavior for many reasons. The simplest reason is that it's better to make revenue dis-incentivizing something bad (pollution) as opposed to dis-incentivizing something good (income).

They have economically viable solutions. They're just not politically viable because the current system is designed for the profit of wealthy cartels.

I'm pretty sure most of the damage was done before people realized the significance of deforestation.

We certainly now know the impact of deforestation, and that it affects the entire planet.

> Working close to Government... I've never seen any mission specifically seeking large-scale citizen-based tracking capabilities.

They tend to keep those kinds of things pretty secret. We didn't know about all kinds of spying they do on us for even decades after the spying started.

Imposing tax burden. Nothing's free.

People place higher expectations on recycling than is merited. I'm not arguing it's better or worse than nuclear in the long run. Just saying there is waste.

Also, latitude is irrelevant. If central Europe got as much snow as Canada they'd probably have far less solar panels.

In 20-30 years you'll have 1.5 million solar panels to dispose of. It's not zero waste at all.

We're also talking Canada, which isn't the best for consistent sunlight.

Something tells me the HN crowd wouldn't be looking to invest in whether the "Pepsi Energy Fields" are "symmetrical" and "in balance."

I agree though that the HN crowd as a CEO would want lots of effort to study how to make the most recognizable and liked brand.

They weren't the only one that was caught.

Good one!

Lol moving it to an even less accountable regulatory authority is a really bad idea.

At least at the local level if something is insanely broken you can have action to correct it. But getting a law to do anything at the federal level is almost impossible unless you fill it with pork for every lobbyist in the DC zip codes.