Are you forgetting how the Americans blocked Stormfront and Silk Road? They don't have full access to the Internet either, they're just not so obviously totalitarian about it as the Europeans.
Property taxes are the most evil of taxes because they force you out onto the street if you're unable to pay them. Qualifying it with the words "very valuable" to solve the problem creates an arbitrary two-tier system that is inherently unfair.
>Claiming that you have ownership over land on this planet is odd, you didn't create the land and governments change overtime.
Property taxes are the most just of all taxes because they are the most correlated with your consumption. Speficially, the land value tax portion of property tax (ideally, that is the whole component).
>The government didn't create the land either.
The government did create the peace and order that allows you to sleep at night on your land without having to worry about another tribe taking your land from you. Without an ability to defend it, "your" land is a tenuous label.
The government, and the rest of society, also pays a hefty price routing utilities, police, ambulances, and people around your property's borders. The more property you have, the more it costs the rest of society, not just in money, but in time.
Earned income taxes are the most evil of all taxes. Why would you have to pay for the act of providing value to society?
There's no such thing as a free lunch. Because it is politicaly unpalatable to tax landowners, we tax economic activity instead.
The result is that return on effort are reduced. That mean labor, entrepreneurs, and capital bear the burden of supporting government budgets as opposed to landowners who benefit from the economic activity making their land valuable.
Taxes as a rule discourages whatever get taxed. The exception to this is land, because land isn't created. It already exists in nature.
> To me religion isn't Christianity or Islam. It's following orders of arbitrary leaders who give themselves titles via narrative. Priest, Minister, CEO, General... just words.
Religion = doing what your boss told you. Got it, that makes sense why so many people are religious.
That's better, but it's still wrong, because there are plenty of organized belief systems whose leaders don't demand blind loyalty. To say that these don't qualify as religions is absurd.
You could say that one of the elements of religion is having faith in something that is not provable via the scientific method and I'd agree. But then you'd lose generals, managers, politicians, etc... from the list above in which case the comment has lost its meaning.
I'd actually go a step further: even science and scientific method require a sort of "faith" that the underlying assumptions (axioms of formal logic and algebra at the very least) are true.
The core difference is that science invites questioning those unprovable assumptions, whereas religion usually does not (and sometimes forbids it as part of the canon).
"Do what we say or lose your income" does require blind faith in the correctness of the hierarchy. The business model and whether or not useful work is being done or if the biological is just shuffling capital around as political rules allow.
It requires ignoring management is just another random person, wielding fiat authority. Physics has not imbued them with special properties. It's allegiance to made up semantics.
> "Do what we say or lose your income" does require blind faith in the correctness of the hierarchy.
That just describes anyone who worked under management. Recognizing that you may be fired for disobeying orders != believing that your manager is physically special.
How do you define blind faith and informed faith? Can't you conceive of someone who follows orders without blindly believing in them?
You seem to have this caricature of an XSXJ in your mind but your definition is so broad it lumps the majority of the world into it, and that's what I'm calling you out on.
Imagine if Russia produced their own technical components - how much of an effect would sanctions have on them? If Russia relies on our computer chips, we have leverage over them. If we rely on Asian factories and silicon, they have leverage over us. President Biden wouldn't have had to go begging to Prince Mohammad for oil if we had enough production at home. It's the way the world works.
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