First Principles

Software Engineer on sabbatical. Investor. Cure fan.

[First Principles @AReasonedTake]

@BreeSolstad According to @grok the basis for this being criminal is the use of “fighting” words. But think that is due for another Supreme Court challenge. At the very least, using “fighting” words stops be criminal if you don’t start the fight.

[The Pholosopher 🌎🕊 @ThePholosopherX]

Socialists call what is voluntary "exploitation" and what is exploitation "voluntary."

[CBS 13 News @WGME]

A study shows that both Apple News and Google News suppressed negative news stories about former Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner for months. https://t.co/RousNWYR6u

[Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin]

This is why no one in any Western country can cut any welfare spending ever and why we keep going further and further into debt.

Because any time anyone reduces spending on anything, an example can be wheeled out of a person who suffered or even died as a result.

On this basis, there can never be too much spending, too much aid or too much tax.

Indeed, the author of the tweet I am quoting will almost certainly oppose paying taxes of 100% or having 100% of his country's GDP be used in aid to the developing world. Despite the fact that his failure to give all his/his country's money away is demonstrably killing people right now. How many lives could be saved by having all of his money go to Africa? How many millions could be saved by having all of the federal budget be sent to the poorest parts of the world?

[david friedberg @friedberg]

they’re not jobs if they’re not valued. they’re not valued if there aren’t customers out there willing to pay them for their great work. needing the government to “create” a job is tantamount to welfare and that level of welfare resolves these individuals to a dependency on the government and lack of economic mobility. and chains our people, collectively, to a more indentured future.

you may be well intentioned but you have, and always will, fail to see the destitute folly of government as a job creation engine.

i have tried to engage you on this topic, in good faith, with empiricism and reasoning, but you have only dodged my points and pivoted to some populist refrain about the importance of taxation and the evils of productivity-driven success.

i can only assume you’re dodging these truths because you and the rest of the politburo leadership have deemed the conversation unsafe speech and put your oligopoly at risk.

let’s leave it at that then.

perhaps if your ways get their day, we can all bask in the glories of the dark ages ahead.

[FIRE @TheFIREorg]

Government officials can’t legally censor protected speech, but they can strong-arm private parties into doing it for them. That’s called jawboning, and it violates your First Amendment rights.

We’re supporting the JAWBONE Act to stop that coercion.

[First Principles @AReasonedTake]

@SenSchumer Are ID restrictions on flying "Jim Crow" style laws?

[First Principles @AReasonedTake]

@lulumeservey California has increased taxes and spending for decades all while resulting in worse outcomes (homelessness, crime, train to nowhere). No one on the left actually cares about fixing anything, they just want to destroy billionaires. The party of envy.

[Arthur MacWaters @ArthurMacwaters]

Let me get this straight:

> in 1913, the US passed the first income tax to fund ww1 as a "temporary measure"

> now, the US collects $2.5T of income tax/yr

> $1.5T of that money is spent on fraud, some of which directly undermines our republic or goes to illegal immigrants

If we cut fraud and continue to collect tariffs, we could easily subsist on 0 or almost 0 income tax.

A nice thought to think about as we file our taxes this year and give the government half our paychecks.

We've become so accustomed to this that most people don't realize the government was much smaller and much less corrupt when it didn't have this slush fund

[First Principles @AReasonedTake]

@friedberg @RoKhanna @chamath Don't fuck with Friedberg #dfwf

[david friedberg @friedberg]

why not just raise income tax rates?

because your real intent is not to just “provide healthcare”.

you’re masking that you are proposing the creation of, for the first time in the 250 years of this American republic, an organized government seizure of private property from citizens.

you’re calling it a “wealth tax” or a “billionaires tax” or “millionaires tax” or whatever nom du jour polls well. but at the end of the day, it’s the seizure of private property from citizens by the government. citizens that earned money, paid their fair taxes on those earnings (53% if they live in California) and are now being told they need to hand over after-tax assets because the government has failed to provide promised services with the revenue it’s collected, and are now re-casting their own failure to be a socio-economic inequity that must be justly resolved... a slippery slope that has never gone anywhere good (see economic effects in USSR, Cuba, Venezuela, France and Norway wealth tax etc.)

the American founders fled tyranny in Europe and this amazing nation was populated by immigrants (myself and your parents) from around the world not just looking for a “better life” but for a place where they could have freedom from tyrannical governments that can take what they want from private citizens. a great nation borne of property rights, the rule of law, and endowed freedoms to believe, speak, or act. these principles led to the greatest run of innovations, successes, and widespread increase in prosperity, for all citizens, ever seen.

the citizens, the individuals, not the institutions, delivered this progress. those who invented, who toiled, who bled, who sacrificed, who took risk and persevered, who led, and who changed the world, are not charlatans, kleptocrats, or oligarchs. they’re what made us all better off. prosperity is a measure of america’s success, not its failure.

it is your principle that is so offensive, as evidenced by the broad disdain for your flippant flirtation with the darkest of human fantasy - socialism. you and other neo-socialists have led so many of us to reflect on America’s history and what it is becoming. that now leads so many to consider, so unnecessarily, leaving their homes for a place where everyone stands up to shout down the principle you suggest. because if your ideas are now considered moderate, it’s clear this titanic is sinking.

that a “simple tax” of taking assets that have been earned, through toil and tribulation, rightly taxed, and preserved, should now be unjustly seized, is your solution to a problem of obvious government mismanagement and outright fraud, tells us that your true motivation lies not in giving people healthcare but in cutting down success and deleting the system of prosperity and opportunity for all.

i don’t care, and neither should anyone else, what the sum total market value of a private citizens private assets might be. it is none of my business and should be none of yours. because, again, once you open that pandora’s box, we might as well study Lord of the Flies … there is literally nothing stopping 51% of citizens demanding that their government go out and seize 100% of the private property of the 49%.

want to give healthcare to people in need? do your job and fix healthcare. make it affordable. want to be lazy about it? then do your job lazily and raise income taxes.

want to take private property from private citizens who have paid their fair share of taxes and legally earned their property, then honestly declare that it is envy, not inequity, that you strive to resolve…

[david friedberg @friedberg]

love it. but let’s do more! let’s take 10% from millionaires and do better health insurance! and a train from LA to fresno! and groceries!

taking peoples assets after they’ve already paid 53% income tax on them is totally reasonable. or their pre-tax unrealized gains which forces then to sell illiquid assets or whatever... i’m just glad we’re gonna make this hard for them. they deserve it.

actually, why stop there?? if we get this to work, we can get 51% of people to vote to take ALL the assets of the 49%! make it a 100% wealth tax on anyone over the average. this could be great. then we can do giant government things because government has proven so good at doing things! in fact, we can send the money to somalia! “make somalia great again” could be your 28 presidential run campaign slogan??

america’s founding fathers definitely intended the union to form around these principles! magnificent

[The Rabbit Hole @TheRabbitHole]

Communism is at least as bad as Nazism.

[Rock Chartrand @RockChartrand]

It almost doesn’t matter whether someone calls themself a Nazi, a communist, or a nationalist. The structure of power has already been conceded. Once you accept the idea of a leader or a state with absolute authority over the individual, the labels become interchangeable.

If Hitler had woken up one day and decided that nationalization should be done in the name of the proletariat rather than the Volk, nothing in his system could have stopped him.
If Stalin had decided that class identity should be replaced with racial identity, nothing in his system could have stopped him either.

Because once you erase individual rights, the borders between ideologies dissolve. The dictator’s whim becomes the law. The ideology just becomes the aesthetic justification for power.

The real issue isn’t:

• Nazi or Communist
• Right or Left
• Nationalist or Internationalist

The real issue is:

Is the individual protected from the state, or is the state allowed to rule the individual?

If the state outranks the person, you have already accepted the principle that made both Hitler and Stalin possible. You have already surrendered the only safeguard that prevents atrocities.

This is why debating labels is a distraction.

The danger is not the branding.
The danger is the concentration of power.

Once a system allows a government or ruler to override individual rights, everything else is decoration.

The only real defense against tyranny is the recognition that:

No person, no party, and no nation has the right to own the life of an individual.

At that point, it doesn’t matter what color the flag is.

[Ron DeSantis @RonDeSantis]

The bureaucracy is already way, way more powerful than the founders ever envisioned.

One major reason is that Congress has deliberately abdicated its responsibility to legislate to the bureaucracy.

Why?

Because it allows the bureaucracy to do the “dirty work” and makes it easier for members to get re-elected.

In the minds of these politicians, there is little incentive to actually engage difficult issues if you can insulate yourself from the political blowback.

Term limits changes this calculation.

[First Principles @AReasonedTake]

@brysongray Black people represent 55% of all murderers in the US. So only being 50% of the wrongful convictions is actually less than expected.
https://t.co/JbnqFNAzR8.

[First Principles @AReasonedTake]

@elonmusk @elonmusk think about this more. What if some woke billionaire had bought Twitter and said cancel Netflix because they had a Charlie Kirk documentary? Don't cancel them, debate them. No one is forcing anyone to watch this show.

[First Principles @AReasonedTake]

@clownworld https://t.co/2vmyhpEUhg

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

@grok @isiwami 🎯