absGeekNZ @ absGeekNZ @lemmy.nz

Posts

103

Comments

1,821

Joined

2 yr. ago

Moderating

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There is always the go of stuff that is annoying you.

Unless it is actually important, let it go, life is too short to dwell on unimportant shit.

Read some Stoic philosophy.

This is true; you have to be able to tell a good story.

It helps if the story teller is charming....but as ACT shows it is not a requirement.

One of TOP's problems is it seems like the party of the highly educated. But their policies are helpful for everyone...they have a communication problem, not a policy problem.

Medical advertising is bad!

Our recent analysis explores why most other countries outlaw this controversial practice. We review evidence that direct advertising can lead to overdiagnosis and unnecessary treatments, causing potential harm and higher health costs.

NZ and USA are the ONLY "first world" countries to allow direct to consumer advertising.....this is not a good thing.

The global withdrawal of the arthritis drug Vioxx (rofecoxib), one of the most heavily advertised medicines during its five years on the market, heightened these safety concerns. Vioxx raised the risk of heart attacks, but the manufacturer continued to promote the drug to the public in the US and New Zealand long after internal company documents indicated an increased risk of death.

Just one example.

Evidence based policy, as a core principal... Got me very interested., so I vote finds them.

It took the greens a few elections to get in... TOP will get there.

Keeping an open mind is important.

I like hearing ideas that challenge my views.

Keep learning 👍

TOP has proposed a 0.75% LVT, as part of their tax policy.

The grower/farmer would have to declare where the produce was going.

I'm not sure how much of this is already done, for traceability reasons, but some is done.

I would make sure it was NZ production into the NZ market.

No produce heading offshore would get subsidised.

That is to help with the seamen sample collection, obviously.

This is a good idea; one way to look at taxes are market signals.

By subsidizing healthier foods whilst at the same time taxing unhealthy foods; we signal to the market what we want to happen.

In my opinion; this is far better than either outright bans; or the current free-for-all system.

One could easily paint it as social manipulation; but the government engages in this kind of manipulation all the time anyway.

We also have no true capital gains tax. Without this, GST is practically the only way we get tax from the ultra wealthy, right?

This is a major problem with flat taxes; the ultra wealthy pay a tiny portion of said income/wealth in GST; vs the poor who pay a huge portion of their income in GST.

but that seems to also be making the system more complex by balancing tax collection against subsidies for the same thing

Not true; complicating GST, complicates it for all businesses. It adds compliance overhead to everyone; even though it would be minimal extra for most businesses, it is not zero. Not zero multiplied across all businesses is still millions in compliance dead weight cost.

So do we just hand cash to supermarkets to make certain products cheaper? This seems more complex than just removing GST.

A targeted subsidy; could be applied at the producer end, making the bureaucratic overhead much smaller. Thus giving NZ producers a leg up compared to overseas producers.

This isn't as anti-competitive as it first seems either. Since feeding ourselves is a national security concern. It behooves us to prioritize local production, even in the event we have to subsidize production.

No we shouldn't.

If we want to subsidize a set of foods; well why not just do that. A subsidy also will not limit you to 15%; it will not complicate a very simple tax.

We can get the effect we want in a more targeted and logical manner. We can also target any subsidy at NZ producers and make our locally produced foods more competitive against imported produce.

Flat taxes are regressive and generally bad; but making a bad tax worse by adding carve outs will not give us the outcome we really want.

I run mint 22.1 and have a 9070xt.

I used mainline to install kernel 6.14, works flawlessly.

First of all.
Life has no inherent meaning; there is no grand plan or objective purpose to your life or any other persons.
Thus; what you choose has meaning is objectively meaningful (to you).

On a grander scale. As far as we know currently, we are the only example of advanced intelligence in the universe. We are almost certainly not; but we have no evidence at this stage. This is objectively meaningful; for humanity as a whole, if you choose to participate in ensuring the continuation of the only example of intelligence is totally up to you. As long as some people choose to continue the species intelligence continues in the universe.

Seems like something Jack Black would wear.

Carbon credits are secondary.

What we want to do is lower emissions; one way to achieve this is to place a cost on those emissions. Thus giving an incentive to lower the emissions; carbon credits are a bit of a shit way of doing this. But it is better than nothing.

I think this is a valid concern; but you have to look at the challenge of measuring the emissions over the entire country.

There is no other way to capture this data.

This is true, but there are other ways.

Setup a VPN on your home node and use RSync when it is connected.

At some point you have to evaluate your threat model and decide at what point in the security/convenience slider you sit.

RPi at home as third node

Use Syncthing, encrypted device to device sync. No online storage required.