get your greentexts, hot and fresh :D

rabbit stew 🤤

I think “personhood” refers to the ability to sign contracts though. It has nothing to do with voting.

The problem is with humanity giving up control to machines.

I mean, humanity (especially in the West) has already given up large amounts of power to corporate CEOs, which can be modelled as soulless machines well enough, but installing AI would take it even one step further.

“personhood” by the law only refers to the ability to sign contracts.

companies and states already have that.

what you’re talking about is a “natural person”.

I’ll have you informed that Switzerland already has a wealth tax (0.5% annually) and they manage to assess total wealth somehow.

Link:

https://karpeo.ch/en/wealth-tax-switzerland-rate-canton/

It even specifically talks about the case of paintings.

it’s worth a try, and better than doing nothing.

but why not?

wages can go lower, but what will the people eat?

the people would need subsidies by the rich, which hurts the economy!

ok so this is inconsistent

i read two fucking weeks ago that economists around the world are waking up to the idea that people should have fewer children because otherwise the rich and corporations might have to pay taxes to provide income to the people that the wages don’t. if there’s fewer people, they don’t need to pay people subsidies so much. trump should talk to his economists.

edit: context: wages are predicted to drop so low over the next 20 years that people will not be able to feed themselves on wages alone. social unrest is painful and to avoid it, some sort of Universal Basic Income will be unavoidable. That would have to be paid for by taxes that the rich would have to pay, since literally nobody else has any money. You see where this is going: the rich don’t like their wealth to be taxed.

billionaires have a lifetime of 80+ years. At this rate, you’re not gonna tax Zuckerberg or Bezos in their, or your, lifetime.

FYI both Islam and Switzerland have a wealth tax.

Islam prescribes people must pay 2.5% of their wealth (above a certain exempt amount) as annual tax to the poor and needy. Wikipedia

Switzerland has a 0.5% wealth tax in most cantons, although the details vary. Link

You may use that knowledge to show that wealth tax does exist in some places already, and the idea isn’t unheard of.

I didn’t find my penis in the trash bin.

but have you looked behind the couch?

is it? i honestly have no idea?

what are the implications on quality of life of various STDs? how “bad” is it to catch herpes? is it even worth avoiding it? (as i read somewhere that most people catch it eventually anyways.)

well i might be wrong about this but last time i checked all infrastructure of modern society (and i assume that includes houses and cities) takes up about 3% of our land. That is not so much, if you compare it to agriculture which takes up much more (i forgot the exact number). So i would argue that gardens aren’t the biggest problem.

Frankly, if you have ten billion people on a planet, of course it’s gonna impact the environment. There is no way to avoid that. I wouldn’t start nitpicking with whether people can have a garden or not, though. A garden can help people with a fresh source of vegetables which can improve health and wellbeing, and strengthen independence and community-building, maybe, if the garden is shared or vegetables are distributed among neighbours. It also reduces the transport distance for vegetables which saves on emissions. So, a garden can be a meaningful part of human life, i’d argue.

well you can’t blame it all on “living on the edge of a city”. IMO HOAs have done a substantial part of the harm, creating the sterile and hostile-to-teenage-life experience, and then there’s zoning laws which make it impossible to get communal activity, like a small bar or club right between the houses, and then there’s the lack of public transport …

yeah, i recognize the problem of power imbalance. in fact, i recommend people sleeping at their aunt/uncle’s house for that reason, because there’s not so much of a power imbalance. just an idea ;-)

We have done nothing new or innovative.

are you serious?

bruh i think you’re making a mistake here.

you’re wrongly assuming that people have sex to make children, hence they should wait till after marriage to get financial stability.

but that is not the case at all. humans are very social animals, and just like we have re-purposed our mouth and throat to speak and communicate, instead of just swallowing food, we have also re-purposed our sexuality as a form of communication, to exchange personality. that is why it is an important part of human life, even in the absence of wanting to make children.

Then why would you wait till after marriage?

there isn’t a single shred of evidence to support it.

Well, to be fair, what would such evidence look like? Would you like to see secret documents (conveniently found in a rich banker’s living room) that detail that single-family homes get easier credit benefits so that more people buy them? I’m afraid that kind of proof will be difficult to get hold of, if the banks or whoever might be behind it don’t show it to us out of their own free will.

Who would look for such evidence? Who can pay for a search after that evidence? The banks won’t investigate themselves and find that they manipulate people.

As such, it is directly natural that there is no proof. That doesn’t automatically make it wrong though, just without proof. The question is: is it likely? is it perceivable? is it consistent?