California, Oregon, Washington.

New independent country. We’ll call ourselves, “North Chile.”

Only if done on a small scale. When it becomes the norm, and all the subreddits are doing it, then it becomes impossible to start a new account and build up the necessary karma to meet these thresholds.

Worse, it’s a limit easily bypassed by bots. Spammers can start accounts and just let them sit on a shelf for a year prior to using them. They can farm karma by just reposting stolen content.

Oh, and of course, the real spammers simply buy up existing accounts with years of history to them and turn them into subtle spam bots.

Did you have a stroke while writing this?

This model should be straight-up illegal on environmental grounds alone. It’s particularly egregious for electric car batteries.

Some manufacturers will make models with nominally different batteries, but in reality the same batteries are used throughout. There might be a model with three different battery options; 400, 300, and 200 mile range options. But the 200 mile range one doesn’t actually have a battery half the size. It has a 400 mile battery with half of its capacity locked out by software controls. That means the 200 mile range option vehicles are hauling around hundreds of pounds of extra weight for literally no reason at all. Such cars are pointlessly burning energy every mile they drive, hauling around extra battery that serves them no purpose.

This stuff should be straight-up illegal. It should not be legal to sell a vehicle with software-locked equipment. Want to sell trim levels with different features? Fine. Quit being a cheap bastard and actually build vehicles with different equipment levels. Don’t build them all with the high-end options and then force those who buy the cheaper trims to burn money for the rest of that vehicle’s hauling around equipment they’ll never use.

This is my fear with dish and clothes washers manufacturers wanting to have wifi built into them. They’ve already gotten people used to using clothes and dish detergent in the form of little pods. I think appliance manufacturers look at printer companies and their ink prices and want a piece of that action. They want to play the same game. I’m sure Whirlpool would love it if you could only buy laundry detergent from them.

But in order to do that, they need to have their devices be internet-enabled. The printer companies figured this out. Third party ink manufacturers figure out ways to get past manufacturer lock-outs. So printers need to be internet enabled to allow patches that will disable new third party ink cartridges.

In my opinion, this is the real reason we see so many manufacturers trying to shove IoT and wifi connections into home appliances. Sure, selling your data to data brokers is a nice minor revenue stream. But the real prize is using that wifi to lock you in to buying obscenely expensive consumables for your dish washer, clothes washer, etc. Even fridges are at risk of this due to the water filters that many fridges have built in to them. Same with dryers.

The manufacturers of major appliances are pushing like crazy to connect these things to the net. Their official line is that they want this for consumer-friendly reasons. Most cynics say it’s just a way to sell your data. I however think the real goal is to turn every home appliance into a vendor-locked piece of garbage that requires consumables priced like printer ink.

Let’s look at the series of events:

1. California severely restricts the supply of housing to benefit the wealthy. Existing homeowners and corporate landlords get rich as the price of housing soars, as the state actively restricts people from building enough to keep up with the need.

2. Homelessness rates soar. Millions find that the market value of their labor is now exceeded by the market value of rent. They become homeless through no fault of their own.

3. Instead of providing adequate services to the homeless, the state responds by demonizing the homeless. Homeless people are stereotyped. Any crime committed by a homeless person is shouted about from the rooftops. A hate campaign is enacted to portray the homeless as violent, drug-addicted, and insane. The homeless use drugs at a lower rate than the housed, but public opinion believes the opposite. Their disheveled state is portrayed as a deep character flaw rather than simply an inevitable consequence of their material reality. People are made homeless through no fault of their own. But the public is convinced through a vast propaganda campaign that the homeless deserve to be homeless and are fundamentally evil people.

4. The state unleashes a campaign of performative terror on the homeless population. Police disband camps and force people out, without providing anywhere for these people to go. It is simply action for action’s sake. Newsom can proudly state, “I didn’t solve homelessness, but I sure made their lives a living hell by forcing them to endlessly move from place to place! The dirty hobos deserve it!”

That’s textbook fascism. Newsom doesn’t have a solution to this problem. Solutions do exist, but they would require building enough housing to drive down its cost. And that would hurt the bank accounts of rich people. So instead, Newsom has unleashed a state terror campaign against California’s homeless population. The goal of this terror campaign isn’t to solve homelessness or to help anyone in any manner. It is meant to show middle class and wealthy people that Newsom is making those “dirty homeless people” pay for their sins. Well off folks are tired of seeing the homeless that they created in public view. So Newsom is promising to use state terror to drive them out of the public sphere entirely.

If you think this isn’t fascism, well…you need to learn what fascism actually is.

Do you know what fascism is? I am not saying that Newsom is exhibiting fascist behavior as some cheap and quick pejorative. I’m not using fascism as a synonym for “bad” here. I’m pointing out that this kind of policy literally is the textbook definition of fascism.

This is fascism 101. Among Umberto Eco’s 14 common features of fascism is the cult of action for action’s sake.

The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”

Your response would make sense if I was complaining that the police disbanding camps simply wasn’t going to enough good. But this action doesn’t help anyone. It doesn’t reduce homelessness at all. In fact, it actually makes homelessness worse. Every time camps are torn down, people lose possessions and documents they need to escape homelessness. If you bulldoze a homeless camp, you’re sending a fair number of personal and ID documents to the landfill. Every time you clear a camp, you’re making it that much harder for people to actually get back on their feet.

This isn’t the perfect being the enemy of the good. This is simply an unambiguously harmful policy that does no good at all for the community.

Why is this action fascist? It meets several of Eco’s points. From the linked list numbers:

(3) Cult of action for action’s sake. It is purely performative. It will actually increase the number of unhoused people, as the more unstable someone’s situation, the harder it is to return to housing. It’s an objectively negative policy, but people support it because Newsom is “doing something.” This meets Eco’s point 3, the cult of action.

(6) Appeal to social frustration. People are tired of seeing the homeless and being reminded of their own precarious state. Better sweep them out of view.

(10) Contempt for the weak. Pretty obvious. These people have simply been priced out of the housing market. But Newsom vilifies these people and treats them like animals.

(12) Machismo and weaponry. Better send in the SWAT team to tear down some tents.

This is quite literally textbook fascism. I’m not condemning camp sweeps because they fail to meet some ideological purity test. I’m condemning them because they’re completely unproductive and are a textbook definition of fascist policy.

Do you not know what fascism is? The cult of action is one of the hallmarks of Fascism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism

“The cult of action for action’s sake”, which dictates that action is of value in itself and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.

This policy has all the marks of the cult of action. It does nothing to actually solve the homelessness issue. It focuses on using cruel brute force to punish the undesirable members of society. It’s a performative action not meant to actually achieve any noble end, but simply to show that the regime is “doing something.”

How is this actually helping anyone? What good actually comes from spending millions in public resources to endlessly shuffle homeless people from one location to another?

The state is using performative violence simply as a propaganda tool to make citizens think the government is “doing something.” That is the cult of action for action’s sake. It’s literally one of the textbook characteristics of fascism.

This isn’t hyperbole. We’re talking fascism 101 here. California is sending in the jack boots to terrorize the undesiables. How is that not fascism?

I understand why he’s chosen to do something.

You’re falling for fascist propaganda. Notice, Newsom isn’t actually doing anything to fix the problem. He’s not providing these people housing at all. All he’s doing is sending out law enforcement to endlessly harass the homeless. That’s what his “doing something” actually is. He’s sending the police to “deal with” the homeless.

You recognize there’s a problem. But you can’t identify a solution. A fascist strongman comes along and promises to “do something,” without any real plans or promises, just the vague cult of action for the sake of action. Newsom tortures some poor people, and you walk away feeling good, believing that at last someone is “doing something.”

This won’t actually house anyone. People don’t disappear simply because you kicked them out of their camping spot. All you really do every time you disburse the homeless is make it that much harder for them to escape homelessness at all. Every time a camp is torn down, people lose invaluable possessions, resources, and documents that are really their only hope of ever pulling themselves out of homelessness. Newsom’s actions are only exacerbating the homelessness crisis.

It’s the poorest of the poor that will pay the price for Newsom’s fascist propaganda campaign. But, at least you get to feel good knowing that he’s “doing something.” You must be a big fan of the TSA.

Something has to be done, at least Gavin is trying things.

This is fascist thinking - the cult of action for the sake of action. You can’t identify any real solution to the problem, but by God, you want SOMETHING done. And that something, when undefined, inevitably just means, “send law enforcement to torture them until they kill themselves.”

This is one of those comforting lies people tell themselves. It’s the just world fallacy.

Drug use and homelessness are mostly orthogonal issues, but people latch onto it as a quick and easy way to dismiss providing housing for the homeless. People of all income levels have mental illnesses and drug use issues. But for the homeless, we decide that their drug use issues are such a moral failing that it’s OK to deny them housing as punishment.

Also, people confuse cause and effect. Being homeless causes mental health and drug abuse, not the other way around.

Exactly. People of all income levels struggle with mental health and drug issues. The drug use and mental health struggles of the homeless are just much more publicly visible.

Housing really is the main issue though. People get the cause and effect backwards. People don’t become homeless because they do drugs; they do drugs because they’re homeless. If you were stuck sleeping on the sidewalk, wouldn’t you want to be high 24/7? I sure would.

Now it’s true that you can borrow against your home value - this is known as a home equity loan or a line of credit.

That is literally how every billionaire funds their lifestyle, just borrowing against stocks instead of home equity. If people with $4 million homes are not rich, then neither are most billionaires.

I think property tax should be heavily weighted by the original price you paid for your house, and should go up with inflation and the cost of services. It should not be flatly tied to the price you would get for your house if you hypothetically sold it.

That is how you end up with California, where the old generations get wealthy, and the young generations are driven out of the state completely.

I suppose they haven’t. But they are planning on doing so. And their lack of a property tax is a major reason their cities struggle financially.

Also, the key context here is that land in China is technically owned by the state. It’s leased out on very long term ground leases, but it’s all still owned by the state. In principle, the government doesn’t need to add another property tax, as it’s already leasing out the land. It would be like if a landlord also charged property tax to their tenants.

Depending on the design of its memory, a device with a full drive will literally weigh slightly more or slightly less than one with an empty drive. Charging the battery in all cases causes it to weigh more.

Because collecting only one type of taxes would cause massive economic distortion and would inevitably burden people unequally. Different taxes have different properties. Some hit certain groups harder than others. Some hit certain types of businesses harder than others. Far better to have a whole series of modest taxes than one form of ruinous taxation. Do some countries not have property taxes? Yes, but they’re small tax havens that aren’t really a good model for the vast majority of nations.

But as far as optimization, consider some examples.

Property taxes also work best at the local level because the spending needs of municipalities don’t swing heavily with economic conditions. The federal government has spending needs that vary wildly with the economic cycle. During a recession, the federal government needs to massively ramp up its spending. But at a local level, a recession doesn’t mean you suddenly need twice the number of firefighters. Property taxes are pretty steady over time, so they’re a good match for the needs of local government. The federal government’s income tax revenue goes down during a recession, but that’s ultimately fine, as the federal government controls the currency. They can afford to sustain massive deficits during bad years and make it up with surpluses in the good years. (Well, if the federal government was functioning as designed.)

Income taxes also make more sense for government entities whose jurisdictions are difficult to avoid. If you fund your city entirely with income tax and no property taxes, you may find your community completely overrun by retirees who want services like anyone else, but don’t actually earn much taxable income to pay for them. If you fund your city entirely through a large sales tax, people can just drive and shop outside of city limits. It’s much harder for people to avoid federal income tax simply by moving house. Unless you’re leaving the country entirely, you’re not avoiding the reach of federal income taxes. (And sometimes even that doesn’t cut it!)

But property taxes? The only way to avoid those is to not live in the city at all. Which, from the city’s perspective, is fine. If you don’t live in the city, then you’re not putting much burden on the city’s infrastructure and services. But if you want to live in the city and enjoy all the benefits that come with living in a city, you have to pay the city’s property taxes.

In short, different taxes have different properties, different benefits and drawbacks. Funding a society through a diverse arrangement of taxes allows much more efficient optimization of these taxes. It’s a much more intelligent system than just trying to fund it all with one big dumb tax of a single type. That’s more the way of Medieval head taxes, not modern nation states. We used to have simple tax systems. We stopped using them because we realized there were better ways to do it.

This Boomer homeowner is why those Gen Z families can’t find homes. If your single family home is worth $4 million, that is the market telling you that that single family home should not exist. The land is too in demand, too close to jobs, too close to amenities etc. to have that lot hoarded by a single selfish person. You want to live in a single family home on a quarter acre lot? Fine. Do it on the edge of the city where the land is cheap. This women’s lost could provide homes for a dozen families, at prices that would be affordable to Gen Z families. Instead people like her vote to prevent such redevelopment.

The solution is to demolish the home and build multi-family housing there. Low density single family zoning has no place in an area where the land values are that expensive. Keep that kind of development on the urban fringe where it belongs.