Our society would rather put people in prison for far more than the cost of just housing them.

We need a maximum wealth cap. I want to see a world where you are literally not allowed to have a net worth over a certain amount. I believe capitalism has its place, but unconstrained capitalism leads to innumerable social ills. You want to let people get rich enough to provide an incentive to get educated, work hard, start businesses, and innovate. But you do not want enough wealth that individuals or small groups of individuals can become a threat to society. We don’t allow individuals to own nuclear weapons, regardless of how virtuous they may be. We decided long ago that private ownership of nuclear weapons is simply too much power in the hands of one individual.

Yet with enough wealth, an individual can create human misery equivalent to a nuclear weapon. For example, Elon Musk has a net worth of $400 billion. If he chose to, could spend his fortune on destroying the lives of 400,000 people. He could select his victims based on whatever criteria he chose. And he could spend $1 million per person simply hiring lawyers to make their lives Hell. Target them with frivolous lawsuits. Even if he never won a case, he could drive them into bankruptcy through legal fees alone. Or, he could pick a city of a million people and dedicate his fortune to just ruining that city. He could deliberately fund the campaigns of the worst candidates imaginable, and offer them enormous fortunes to deliberately destroy that city. Wealth is power, and power is wealth. They are equivalent and interchangeable. If you want to have a democracy, you cannot have unrestricted wealth.

I would set the wealth cap for any nation at 1000x the median household income of that nation, averaged over a certain number of years. In the US, that would be at this time about $80 million. That is a level of wealth even the most skilled and high-paid of lawyers or physicians, if they worked til the grave, lived like a pauper, and invested everything else, would still struggle to reach by the time of their death. The only way people reach that level of wealth is by leveraging the labor of others. And it is a level of wealth far, far above the level where increasing wealth continues to meaningfully increase happiness. That level of wealth is only useful to a person if that person seeks to manipulate and control other human beings.

We need a maximum wealth cap. Beyond a certain level of wealth, everything is taxed at 100%. I think 1000x the median household income is a good place to set that level. And I think that is extremely generous. I don’t care what the former billionaires do with their extra income that would put them above this level. They could simply retire when they hit the cap. They could donate it to charity. They could give it all to their extended families. They could give it to their employees. They could hold grand parties in their home city every year that rivaled the excesses of ancient Rome. They could spend it all on giant yachts. Ultimately, I don’t care. The core problem is the concentration of wealth and power in a small number of individuals. Any method of spreading out that wealth will avoid this problem. Even if they just give it all to their extended families, it would still be for the best. If Elon Musk wants to divvy up his fortune to his 5,000 closest family and friends, so be it. Even if every one of them was as much of a bastard as he was, at least they’ll have conflicting interests, and few of them will want to see anyone appointed dictator.

We need a maximum wealth cap. Forget taxing incomes. Forget a wealth tax. We need to drive a dagger into the heart of the evil that haunts our society. The world does not need billionaires. We can have the benefits of efficiency and innovation that come with a free market without letting wealth concentrate to the point of farce. We can provide an incentive for people to work and discover without allowing individuals to become a threat to nation states. Even if you believe in the myth of visionary capitalist geniuses, we don’t need billionaires. If Musk is already capped out on wealth, the board of SpaceX can still hire him as CEO. He can still enjoy the social status as influence of being the CEO of SpaceX, he just has to dispose of that wealth each year however he chooses.

1000x the median household income. No one should be able to have a fortune larger than this.

Why would you post this trash? If people want to read chatgpt’s takes, they can access it themselves.

Place sea mines defending the cables. Post maps for civilian ships to keep out of the mine zones. Anyone goes near the cables anyway? Well, you were warned.

Alright Rorschach…

I just send my stuff to Jim sometime in February or March, and he takes care of it.

The woods.

Well we just need to find some sort of latter-day Napoleon, and we’re off to the races!

The flaw with this scenario is that it assumes Trump would try to simply cancel the elections. Instead, he would be more likely to regulate them in a way that makes unseating him impossible. For example, federal regulations might be implemented that required states to use voting machines, voting machines that are produced by corrupted companies. He just straight up steals the election through rigged voting machines. Or they mess with registrations and voter purges to a level more than the amount that already got Trump elected this time. See the SAVE Act..

Or alternatively, the election systems themselves will be unaffected. However, the candidates will be carefully managed. Any Democratic candidate that would present a significant threat to MAGA will be arrested on trumped-up charges. The courts will miraculously cease to give the Democratic candidate the same leeway they did to Trump when they “didn’t want to interfere with the election.” Or he’ll manipulate the Democratic elites so much that they end up electing someone even more conservative. They end up running Ted Cruz or something insane like that.

Remember, even the citizens of the Soviet Union got to have elections.

Obviously this means that with the US fallen to fascism, only France can carry on the light. France will liberate us all!!!

You know what? At that point, I think I might just be done with computers.

Trump’s next executive order: all computers in the US must be sold with two floppy drives pre-installed.

If you wanted to use an old printer, why buy an HP one? Even buying a used one indirectly supports HP. If there’s a secondhand market for HP printers, then they’ll have more value when sold as new. New cars wouldn’t sell so well if their value, rather than only taking a big hit, literally went to zero as soon as you drove them off the lot.

Simply having an HP printer, even a used one, also serves as an advertisement for them. Every time someone visits you and sees your printer, they’ll be reminded of the brand’s existence. Having and using one, even an old one, is a constant minor free advertising for HP.

If you already have an old HP printer that’s working well for you, I wouldn’t recommend trashing it and buying a new one just for the reasons above. There’s environmental concerns to consider. But if you’re looking to buy a used printer, why buy an HP? There’s plenty of other good brands out there that don’t engage is such evil.

Your reply is nothing more than, “na uh, he did it!”

Ok. Then you just transfer the chain back one level. Who did he buy it from? Think about the logistics of buying one of those. Imagine you wanted to buy a ghost gun. How would you actually go about doing that? Yes, organized crime rings and gangs may make these things, but they don’t just sell them to any random kid who walks up wanting to buy one. They’ll obtain them for their own trusted members. But if a random white kid shows up looking to buy a gun, the thought of most people would be that this guy is planning a school shooting. And no gang wants that type of heat.

What I want to know is - where is Luigi’s workshop?

That kind of 3D printed gun isn’t just something you can print off at the library and start blasting. Even for a skilled 3D printing expert with a workshop full of plastic and metal working tools, you’re looking at months of prototyping, printing, fitting, testing out prototypes at a gun range, etc. It is possible for skilled crafters to build an untraceable gun from a 3D printed frame and pieces ordered off the net. But it’s nothing like just hitting “print” and having a gun.

This is what really gets me. Luigi was apparently living as a drifter for the last year or so. His family had been trying to get in touch with him. A hostel is not the place where you’re going to be able to make a 3D printed gun. You need a workshop, and one that you can operate in with a high degree of privacy for an extended period of time.

So, again, where is Luigi’s workshop? 3D printed guns don’t just materialized from nowhere. If Luigi made the gun, he must have a workshop. Unless the police can show where that workshop is, I’m going to assume the gun was planted on him.

Where is Luigi’s workshop?