Don’t forget the second amendment.

You're on HN. Expect downvotes.

Meta has made more positive contributions to society and the world than every HN commenter combined, and more than most of the other FAANGS (Amazon being the exception).

Damned for virtual signalling if they make posts about their contributions, damned for destroying tech when they don't. I love these kinds of articles and share them with students all the time.

While contributing back to ffmpeg is great, this is insanely hyperbolic lol. Do you genuinely think Instagram and Facebook are positive contributions to society?

Yes, I do.

In your mind should people with criminal record be barred from holding jobs forever? At that point why not just exile them?

I knew this response would come up. Would you be okay to give Sam Bankman-Fried a leadership position? How about Martin Shkreli? Elizabeth Holmes? It's one thing to give someone that made a few minor mistakes a 2nd chance. It's another let a convicted child molester work at a kindergarden. Executives that committed fraud shouldn't be executives again.

I don’t agree because I’m somewhat left leaning and believe in reform (except for violent crime).

I sympathize, and also tend to the left, but please, I beg of you, redefine violence to include long term, intentional creation and operation of fraudulent or harmful enterprise. It takes energy to keep doing things wrong to that degree, and without real signs of behavioral modification that stick, the safest damn thing to do is keep them the hell away.

Violence has a specific meaning, and twisting yourself into knots in order to define things you don't like as violence is dishonest.

> I’m somewhat left leaning [...]

Um, really? If I were to look at your comment history, what would I see?

EDIT: ok, yeah, I actually checked. The threads on page 1 include: 1) this one, 2) "National sales tax would be significantly better than income tax.", 3) "Meta has made more positive contributions to society and the world than every HN commenter combined". Can you feel the left leaning?

How are any of those contradictory?

plenty of jobs for them to hold.

they can drive uber, clean toilets, work at a starbucks, etc

Sorry, as someone who believes in reform this is unconscionable to me. Someone reformed should be able to hold any job (exception for violent crimes of course).

Thank god for that. I can’t imagine spending more of my limited lifespan doing more busy work

Why do the corporations pollute so much? Is it just for the love of the game?

To some extent, yes, it is deeply for the love of the game: planned obsolescence, single use products, nothing built to last, "razor blades and ink cartridges" where worse user experiences sell more products, intentional over-production to drive over-consumption through consequent demand for artificially low priced goods ("the Wal-Mart effect"), and so forth.

If we don't find ways to price in externalities into the markets and/or the regulations, companies find ways to push things to externalities to cut corners and artificially increase sales and/or profits or have easy ways to market "cheaper" products versus better quality products.

You may want to point fingers at the demand side, but even the most basic, simplified micro-economics is all about how supply-and-demand is a complex dance, supply has more tools up its sleeve than it seems, and a lot more control than demand. Consumers can demand more durable, more reliable products until they are blue in the face, but suppliers are free to just not supply them because cutting corners makes more profits and somewhat happy return customers are more profitable than a very satisfied one-and-done-for-life customer.

> planned obsolescence, single use products, nothing built to last

Planned obsolescence is a conspiracy theory and there’s no evidence of it occurring at any kind of broad scale.

Consumers generally prefer cheaper, less durable products, which is why the market adapted to better fit that preference.

Better for whom? Wealthy people?

If your argument is that taxation at sale is harder to dogdge than with income, and thus an obviously regressive scheme would still be advantageous for the average American, then I'm not buying it at all.

I see no evidence whatsoever that the wealthy would have any more difficulty in dodging sales tax than income/capital gains taxes.

That’s not my argument.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a more regressive tax scheme. Bill Gates and I consume approximately the same amount of resources. I don’t see why he should have to pay a significantly different rate than I do.

I'd argue that ressource consumption/pollution are on the contrary pretty strongly correlated with wealth.

But I don't see the primary justification for taxes as "keeping consumption in check" (whatever that would mean for you): In my view, we pay taxes to keep our society functional.

Progressive taxation is required to prevent escalating wealth inequality (and I'd argue that US administrations have done a really poor here over the last decades).

Regressive taxes ruin society by nurturing pseudo-parasitic rent-seekers controlling most of the wealth (=> exaggerated for clarity), and the situation is already bad enough without allowing those to basically skip taxes.

I agree that the purpose of taxation is not to keep consumption in check.

I don’t think that wealth inequality is a problem, and therefore don’t agree that taxation should be used to address it.

If you want to shift tax burden from very wealthy Americans onto average citizens, what do you hope to achieve with that?

What is the purpose of taxation then, in your view?

> I don’t think that wealth inequality is a problem

I have a very hard time understanding this perspective.

Wealth can already buy (directly or indirectly) all forms of property, political power and even legal outcomes. I see no real way to remedy any of that, so it seems clear to me that (wealth) inequality must be somewhat kept in check to prevent our society from degenerating into some form of neo-feudalism.

What is your view on that? Do you want a society more strongly stratified by wealth? (why?)

Would you want to provide less equal opportunity in life for Americans is general, or would that be an undesirable side-effect?

Sorry for asking apparently loaded questions-- I'm genuinely trying to understand your viewpoint, and attacking the points that seem most critical from my view.

I don’t see it as “shifting” burden onto the middle class - it’s more about shifting the burden away from the upper class, who carry a disproportionate amount of the burden.

Both wealthy Americans and the middle class consume approximately the same government resources, and it’s not fair that the upper class should have to shoulder the majority of the tax burden.

> What is the purpose of taxation then, in your view?

To fund the government.

> Wealth can already buy (directly or indirectly) all forms of property, political power and even legal outcomes.

I don’t agree with this claim. Bloomberg outspent his opponents to an absurd degree, which resulted in him losing by an embarrassing amount.

> Would you want to provide less equal opportunity in life for Americans is general, or would that be an undesirable side-effect?

I don’t agree that wealth inequality results in less opportunity for anyone.

> it’s not fair that the upper class should have to shoulder the majority of the tax burden.

I don't know what the definition of "upper class" is to you, but from my view anyone that earns most of his income not by working himself but by others working for him in some form (capital gains, rent, employees, ...) draws wayyyyy outsized use from the state compared to an average citizen. Not only does the state provide enforcement, but also infrastructure, education for workers, a framework to solve disputes, ...

So those people should also pay morefor that privilege. Note especially how companies taking over the roles of a state is not really a thing anymore (company towns, providing education, solving disputes, internal paramilitary, etc): Everyone realizes they are getting a brilliant deal, and no one actually wants to take over those functions (despite lots of people whining about government inefficiency all day long).

All this is much more valueable and useful the bigger your whole money making enterprise is, obviously.

> I don’t agree with this claim. Bloomberg outspent his opponents to an absurd degree, which resulted in him losing by an embarrassing amount.

What is your claim? Media/campaign spending most obviously has a large effect on voting outcomes, because otherwise people wouldn't spend billions on it.

I'm not saying that by spending money you can literally win every election ever, my point is just that sufficient media spending alters voting outcomes most drastically. You don't even need to play the political circus yourself to get access (just consider Musk spending a good chunk and basically getting the DOGE thingy in return).

> I don’t agree that wealth inequality results in less opportunity for anyone.

In a very obvious way, wealth already buys you time, the most valuable opportunity cost for anyone-- time that an average person would need to spend breadwinning for themselves/family.

Education, business contacts, employees and machinery of all kinds are up for sale as well.

If wealth is stratified, the number and kinds of opportunities available to people will necessarily become much more different as well.

This is censorship by definition. Just say you’re pro censorship

I can say that the moon is made of cheese, and if you punish me for doing so, you’re engaging in censorship, despite my claim being untrue.

Not even remotely related to what the parent comment said.

Whoever wrote the legislation has my vote for reelection. Anything to make roads safer.

You'd vote companies and lobbyists into office?

Yes.

Yes. They're safer than human drivers. Clearly the tradeoff is worth it.