Wednesday, April 10, 2019

The Market Cap Based Scaling Capital Gains Tax

Oh they're not gonna like this one...

It's simple. Market Cap / GDP * 50, and it maxes at 50% (or whatever number they want). Basically if you invest in any company worth more than 200 billion in today's money you would pay the maximum capital gains tax. But if you invest in a $2 billion company, you pay less than 1% on capital gains. The minimum could be 5% or whatever. This would basically end most huge corporations. The end-of-day market cap for the date of sale is what would be used for tax purposes.

Tracking gains and losses would be a bit more difficult, but its all done in software nowadays so it's no big deal. My Form8949 was 12 pages, generated by software. The tax on each sale would have to be itemized into its own column on that form. Any losses would have to have a "tax loss" calculated which would also be based on market cap. Assuming a 50% max rate, If you made $100k off Apple stock and $50k off MSFT, you owe $75k, and if you lost $20k on Apple put options and $10k on MSFT put options, then you get to deduct $15k from the $75k tax. This is slightly different from how it works now, but it wont require any new forms. The only new reporting requirement would be the tracking of daily market cap for each stock. Obviously this is already done, but this information would have to be made fully public rather than hidden behind various paywalls.

Tuesday, March 26, 2019

LENR is not a threat to fossil fuels

At this point it should be obvious that LENR is being held back by powerful interests, and it is safe to assume that they are well rooted in the fossil fuel industry. If you built your entire wealth off of the oil you have sitting under your property, what lengths would you go to to protect that investment?

But really, this is the wrong question to ask. The real question is, if you were sitting on billions of dollars in oil and gas, does LENR actually pose a threat to your wealth? The surprising answer is NO, it does not.

As we saw in late 2008 and again in 2015, lack of sufficient economic growth can and will cause demand destruction which leads to price collapses all across the energy spectrum. The way to make the most money possible off fossil fuels is to have demand high and steadily increasing. A million LENR devices powering everything from homes to cars might sound frightening to an oil tycoon, but it really is nothing to fear and in fact should be fully embraced. At this point it is going to take every ounce of petroleum to power the infrastructure to build all these LENR devices, as well as the generators connected to them, and the motors connected to those generators, not to mention all the actual end products that people want to buy. The sheer demand for raw materials that this revolution will create will cause entire fleets of mining equipment to be built. And what is going to power them? Not LENR. No its too small scale, and lacks energy density. Petroleum is going to power them. The demand for fossil fuels will actually rise steadily even as depletion fully takes hold, even when the day comes that half the world's vehicles are powered by LENR. Factories are still going to be powered by coal and gas. The more you look into it, the more you realize how dependent we are on fossil fuels, and its not going to change until they are essentially gone.

Saturday, February 16, 2019

The Cycle of Trauma and Abuse

This is for women with an ACE score of 7 or above.

Dont know your score? Find out:

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/03/02/387007941/take-the-ace-quiz-and-learn-what-it-does-and-doesnt-mean

Why is there so much domestic abuse? Why does it seem to follow from parent to child? How do I stop it before it starts? How do I find someone who won't be violent? How do I "see" it in someone before falling for them?

So many questions. So many complicated answers. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) one of the questions is very simple to answer. It does no good to look for the seed of violence in someone because it is in all of us.

It happens to every dude at some point. It starts off really subtle. He gets angry about something. He balls his fist and makes like he gonna punch the couch or some shit. He looks over and sees his babe is scared. The thought flashes through his mind for just an instant: She is afraid of me. She hates me. Why does she hate me? This type of thought gets buried immediately. Swept under the rug if you will.

A while later it happens again. Over time, the mess under the rug gets bigger and bigger. Eventually he begins to notice there is something under there. He starts to process it. He thinks "She has PTSD, I can't be like that around her. Fine. Anything for my baby."

But it's not fine, because so much of this stuff happens beyond our conscious control. When he sees you being afraid of him, it invokes resentment. This is not easily controllable, it takes many years of experience. What ends up happening is this resentment also gets swept under the rug.

Now there is "she fears me, and I hate it" buried under the rug. With each incident, it grows. Eventually it becomes "She is afraid of me. She hates me. I resent her. I hate this cowering little bitch. I want to fucking punch her in the face. That will give her a reason to be afraid of me." At this point there is rage under the rug.

It is important to understand that this is all subconscious at this point. He's not sitting there next to you brooding about this shit. He's not consciously thinking anything like that. They're just little flashes that happen when you have a conflict. Fear and hate are the opposites of love. The subconscious mind cannot process those opposites at once. Cognitive dissonance occurs. Any time that happens, it immediately gets shoved down into the subconscious. Because he loves you with all his heart, any opposite emotion instantly gets buried the moment it happens.

Eventually the inevitable moment comes where he hurts you physically. Of course he's sorry. He didn't want it to happen. Bla bla bla, big drama unfolds. He buys you flowers and worships you for the rest of the day. You know the drill. But why did it happen? He knows your past, chances are he swore he would never be that guy. So why??? The answer is that part of his subconscious did want it to happen. There is that Rage buried in there. That desire to hurt the one he resents for being afraid of him. It is subconscious contempt manifesting into conscious violence. It is the root of most domestic abuse.

If things deteriorate to the point where you have to escape, you will repeat the cycle again. It will keep happening until you are dead or old enough to where the men you date have learned enough and are mature enough to handle the nuances of their own psyche. And of course some never do. There are lots of dudes in their 30s and 40s who beat on women. There are many women who just accept it.

What you really want to do is break the cycle. You can't talk your way out of it, because this is all subconscious. A professional therapist could make progress, but this would take months if not years, not to mention big dollars. Chances are, if you had the kind of money to spend on a therapist, you would probably not be dependent on a man for shit and thus would not get close enough to a man to put yourself in a position to be abused.

But that's not the world most of us live in. In the real world, chances are you need a man just to share in living expenses, to say nothing of love. So you need solutions that don't involve dumping whole years worth of incomes on therapy. You need to bring this subconscious shit to the surface and force it to be processed. A way to do that is to go to the gym, find one with a punching bag. You stand there and hold the bag and literally tell him to pretend like it's your face. And you tell him all the shit that is gonna piss him off. And get him to spill his rage.

You want to hear him say whatever it is he needs to say. "I hate that you're fucking my best friend. I hate that he fucks you better. I hate that your pussy is all over the internet. I hate that you have a fucking sugar daddy. I hate that I can't be myself around you without worrying that I'm gonna scare you. I hate that you're such a fucking pussy. Poooor wittle baby can't take a joke without crying booo frickin hoo." I don't know if these are his feelings, I'm just making shit up, it doesn't matter. What matters is that you stand there and take it all and not show fear.

If you attempt this, it is very important that you don't fuck it up. Have a strong grasp of the physics involved. Don't be getting knocked the fuck down by the bag when he hits it. You want him to see your face. You can't be behind the bag the whole time. But you don't want to be accidentally getting hit because that would destroy the entire purpose of the exercise.

After he is done, you talk about what was said, and the conversation should be free from emotion. Here you can make real progress toward controlling violent tendencies. The goal is not just for him to be able to express everything that's buried. The real goal is for you to be able to accept his moments of anger and not give in to fear. Because we are animals that sense fear and are not quite evolved enough to control our reactions to it. Fear is the nourishment for the seed of violence. You have to be resolute and ready to stand behind the declaration that you will not tolerate abuse, and that if it happens you will either leave or die trying. And then you have to have faith that no matter what happens, he is not going to hurt you in his anger, and thus there is no reason to give in to fear.


Monday, October 08, 2018

Test of Spirit

A simple / not so simple question for anyone aspiring to make it big doing something they love:

Would you rather have tons of wealth and popularity, or achieve complete spiritual fulfillment? (Assuming the two are mutually exclusive and you had to choose one.)

Which is more important, and by how much?

When you're at the end of your life, would you rather lay there thinking, I'm rich and famous, but I don't know what it all meant? Or would you rather be broke and relatively unknown, yet have a profound spiritual connection with your creator?

If you've ever had a profound spiritual experience, something so deep, potent, and powerful that you could never even explain it to anyone without sounding crazy or like a damn fool, would you trade all memory of it for wealth and fame? Or, if you've never experienced something that matches this description, what would you give to have it? Would you consign yourself to a life of poverty and mediocrity, just for the chance to experience true meaning? Even if it doesnt mean anything to anyone but you?

Some would say you do not have to choose, you can have both! It is ok to choose both, but the risk is that you end up with neither. As an artist, I believe you have to make the choice, and risk everything. True Art is not just the physical manifestation of your own spiritual connection to the universe, it is also the physical manifestation of the risk that you take in creating it.

Friday, September 14, 2018

Is There a Left Left?

It's is actually disturbing what passes for "left" today. The left shop amazon, own apple phones, use facebook and twitter. One has to ask, does this seem like the behavior of leftists? Given the threat these companies represent to the left specifically, one would expect them to be against all of these. But they embrace them, thinking these massive corporations are on "their side" when it should be quite obvious (even to them) that they definitely are not truly on their side. All classical definitions of what makes the left left have been left aside and replaced with cultural marxism. It's actually bizarre that they all fall for it.

The entire left has been swallowed up by this black cloud of SJW nonsense. Now, all they care about is rooting out the offensive. A war on words.

What does this mean for history? The left used to make some good points. They used to stand for something. Agree or disagree, at least there was discourse. Now, all the left represents is simply the desire to shut down all discourse in the guise of eliminating the offensive. How do you grow your movement when it has been consumed by the will to remove any speech that is offensive to anyone?

This is a completely absurd state of affairs. I am more leftist than these people. I realize the dire threat these massive corporations represent. They are circumventing the Constitution in a way that wasnt even conceived of 20 years ago, unless you followed people like Ale_ Jon_s. Funny how you cant even say his name without being censored today, in the world he predicted over and over and over, so many years ago. We now live in a country where you supposedly have a 1st amendment right, yet you really dont. And the left doesnt care.

Leftists used to care, for decades and decades they never lost sight of at least the 1st amendment. Now that they have, one has to ask, are they even leftists at all? You can't even call them liberal because liberals increase the size and scope of the federal government. These leftists arent doing that. They are castrating the federal government by enlarging and enriching these massive Constitution-circumventing corporations. If they arent truly leftists then just what are these people? I know I've asked that question before. But their behavior is becoming more and more erratic. It is confounding.

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

The Test of the Flag

I always saw the national anthem and the "ritual" surrounding it as a sort of test. The test is a simple one: Can we bipedal monkeys agree to do even one thing without fighting? Can we put aside all our myriad grievances long enough to pretend to be united for even just the two minutes it takes for someone to sing the national anthem? Obviously today the answer is no.

This ritual isnt the place for a person to air their grievances. It isnt the place to make a personalized statement. The only statement you need to make is that yes you are indeed capable of getting over yourself and at least pretending to be united for a measly two minutes. Is that really so hard to do? Is that really too much to ask? We do it out of simple respect for all this country has survived through over the past 240 years. You know you've lost your country when so many who are currently occupying it cannot even comprehend this very simple concept.

Friday, May 19, 2017

On Self Driving Cars...

So I read this:

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/why-95-percent-your-driving-won-t-be-your-own-n755571

My visceral reaction: Such utter nonsense. In 12 years 50% of the cars on the road will be cars that exist TODAY. It is therefore flat out false on its face. And if we have another serious economic contraction, that number rises to 60 maybe even 70%. And who the hell wants to pay $3, 4, or 5 grand to have a frickin car drive itself? It’s frickin retarded. I am supposed to get up and go to work for 200 or 300 HOURS just to earn the money to pay extra for a machine to do one of the simplest and easiest tasks I do in an average day? It’s a goddam outrage that people think that is even remotely tenable. My prediction: in 12 years, 8% of cars will be fully autonomous. And 8% of them will be vandalized by the masses of angry unemployed victims of this stupefied economy run by idiots and parasites. Stop the STUPID.