The scarcity is technically real, but practically pointless.
Every Bitcoin represents 100,000,000 tradable assets. If there are 30,000,000 Bitcoin in circulation that means there are 100,000,000x30,000,000 individual assets available to hold and trade. Do the math, and then realize that we’ll arrive at the heat death of the universe before Bitcoin is ever actually scarce.
Scarcity is about the rate of supply meeting demand. In most commodities, as demand increases, suppliers will move to increase supply to meet that demand. Even with gold (of which the earth has some unknown finite supply), the rate of which it is mined and extracted will increase as market price increases.
Bitcoin has a fixed supply, Bitcoin's daily rate of creation cannot be increased or decreased unless everyone agrees to it.
Taxes are already too high in NYC. A single adult in NYC with a $100k salary has an effective overall tax rate of 31.5%, and 9% of that is city and state.
Trying to raise the rates higher is insane. We have a spending problem, not an income problem.
Not to mention that the timing of this is just absurd. Everything that makes NYC great has been closed for a year. The next mayor wants people to pay more, but won’t commit to reopening the city? Why would the “rich” stay? Why would anyone stay? For the trash, and piss?
In Germany, you'd be paying 42%. You'd get subways, a national rail system, universal healthcare, and college would be free. America doesn't have a "spending" problem, it has a history of mal-investment and neglect. But those F-35s. And nukes! Enough to wipe out most of humanity.
Proceeds to list things that we spend and invest unnecessarily on.
We have a subway system in NYC. Run by the MTA. A bloated and incompetent organization that needs a billion dollars to extend a subway line a single mile, and will routinely spend hundreds of millions of dollars on unnecessary bridge painting and other shenanigans.
There’s a reason we don’t have nice things, and it’s not because our taxes are too low.
London's 2 mile northern line extension costs about $1.7b, so doesnt sound out of whack. Berlin did extend the U5 about 1.4 miles for $600m but it's the right order of magnitude.
I don't know which city would be most comparable to New York, but Germany recently announced 120+ a billion dollar investment in upgrading rail infrastructure nationwide[1].
The high-speed rail connnection between Berlin and Munich cost 10 billion Euro. Even then, it was criticized for being over budget. It travels at 200km/h+ and is over 600km long. I think that project is completely infeasible in the US, at any price. It seems like a bargain to me.
Of course, high-speed long-haul lines are a different thing than subways. I lived in Munich for several years and I can say firsthand, subways are magical. As an American, it's embarrassing we cannot dig holes. It's not because money.
Person from Germany here. The 42% is the top rate so that on 100 k$ the effective rate would be less than that. Healthcare costs come on top of that.
Free college is included.
45% is the top rate. 42% kicks in 57k income. 45% at 274k. You're right that the effective rate might be less for $100k, but not much. The curve is quite steep.
Based on that chart, the effective tax rate is not near 42%. It actually appears to be closer to 31-35%, which is almost exactly what the $100k person in NYC would pay.
I think the issue that most non-US citizens fail to realize or comprehend is that most people in America don't pay any tax at all. The labor participation rate is 61.5% and then half of the people that do work still don't pay any effective taxes due to all the credits and deductions. A minority of earners support the entire tax base.
...and then, of course, we frivolously waste the revenue we do generate.
I am a US citizen, and I've lived abroad. Americans are being fleeced, and the entire mindset is that infrastructure is a cost, rather than an investment. It's crazy that we spend so much on "defense". The words of Eisenhower's parting address were not heeded.
But, regardless. If I were in charge I would fire the entire management of Amtrak and all Metro rails and just put the Germans, Swiss or Japanese in charge of it.
Who pays vat? Less than 10% of my monthly outgoings are on VATTable things, and most of that expenditure is because I bought a new car rather than a second hand one.
$100k is £72k, in the UK you'd be paying 30% (£22k). 36% if you're still paying off your student loan (which would be about 6 years to repay the fees and another 7 to repay the cost of living loans)
> But those F-35s. And nukes! Enough to wipe out most of humanity.
Doesn't these F-35 and nukes give the US trade advantage and wealth transfers (aka free money from unstable countries) and thus make it possible for Americans to be that rich?
Getting to the point where we’re going to need phone, email, and SMS to be deny all by default. Can’t reach me unless you’re information is already in my contacts.
My phone number (and some other details) were part of Nano Ledger's database that got stolen last year. So, some entrepreneurial scammer started calling me on a daily basis a few months ago. Really annoying. I'm well aware my phone number and email addresses are pretty much public information at this point. I actually put that on my web site even. But stuff like this makes me even less likely to answer unknown numbers. Hilariously, the scammer actually called me while I was giving a security briefing to our company about enabling 2FA. I put him on speaker and we had a good laugh while the guy insisted in broken English laced with expletives that he "had my money".
A few months ago some criminals social engineered themselves past my bank's security as well. The first I learned about this was a funny conversation (by phone!) from an actual Deutsche Bank employee asking me if I recently changed my address and phone number and whether I opened ten new accounts. "eh no?!..." Basically their fraud detection system kicked in before these people did any damage. I made a point of not doing anything else than confirming information they already knew (like my old address, email address) and asked for an on site meeting to discuss things in more detail. I realized instantly I had no way of verifying anything I was being told on the phone and might very well be talking to a scammer. As it turns out this was for real and the person actually managed to find my "old phone number" in some archive. Otherwise all my contact information had already been changed by the scammers. Thankfully I answered that call. Apparently, this happened to several people.
Basically, what happened was some persons just called the bank's help desk, asked them to reset my online banking access codes, and then somehow intercepted the pin codes (thanks Deutsche Post) before they reached me. The theory is that somehow the security of the distribution system was compromised. As far as I an tell, nobody broke into my building or mailbox. Then started they using them to change my address, etc. They got caught only when they created sub accounts and started transferring money.
I've been called twice by my bank to warn me of possible fraudulent activity. Both times I hung up on them and called back at the bank's own public customer service line and asked them if that was really them calling. Once it was and once it was not, so I'm glad I was that careful.
The phone scammer, no. Just some idiot trying to get me to do stuff I should not be doing. Given how he conducted himself on the phone, he probably does not have a great conversion rate. People that do this are not exactly criminal master minds. But I guess some people get bullied into handing over their private keys, which I assume is what he was after. He clearly had some setup that auto dials numbers. After this, he apparently removed me from that list. So, tip: annoy the hell out of them and waste their time as much as you can when this happens to you. Putting him no speaker got a few giggles out of the team.
The criminals that got into my account got too greedy. The bank's fraud detection system kicked in and rolled back the transactions. But at that point they had complete control over my account. Very scary. If they had been more subtle, they could have likely stolen quite a bit. So, also not criminal master minds probably.
Possibly, but we can't do that either. What we need is some balance of both worlds. OOH, we do actually need to be contactable. OTOH, being too contactable means spam. I doubt there's a perfect balance, but either extreme come with too many problems.
Email has decent spam filtering, and I think that kind of cat-mouse system will persist. That said, there's "room" for more whitelisting.
"I doubt there's a perfect balance, but either extreme come with too many problems."
In principle, "pay me a small fee if you're not on my list, if I put you on my list now it's free" would work well (optionally refund someone who contacts you out of the blue that you approve of), but there's a lot of both engineering and social details between where we are now and such a system.
It doesn't take much cost friction to deter mass spamming. I don't think much problem would be left behind from the handful of overconfident spammers who think that they can bust the odds and it's worth 25 cents a message or something.
This is one of those ideas that appeals to economists and nerds, but rarely works out irl.
Artificially or intentionally aligning interests tends to be a "genie, make me a sandwich^" problem. There are lots of places where "reversing the charges," seems good in theory... but it never happens.
Anyway, linkedin have something like this. In practice, it feels like a better quality of spam, rather than a solution to spam.
Sounds like a good idea on which to base an ISP startup.
"Anyone not on your contact list will take $1 off your monthly bill for each phone call, SMS, or eMail they send to you (through our phone line & email servers)"
I found a novel solution by accident to this. I moved to a new area but kept my old number. 99% of my spam calls are from my phone’s area code. If you are not a contact and a number comes up from that area code, it is spam. If it is my new area code, it is a person or business trying to reach me.
Same (though "I moved to a new area" happened in 2004). At this point I've just blocked the entire old area code and neighboring ones, aside from existing contacts.
As do I. This is a difficult problem to solve especially as the signal to noise becomes worse as abuse becomes more common.
Ive had to wildcard block my area code (since I don't live there anymore) which captures 95% of my daily spam calls - but people can still leave a message to break through my wall if it's truly urgent. I don't see how this could work with SMS.
Even message requests on facebook/messenger have problems where you are unlikely to even see the request unless you check regularly.
No, I have never bought an extended warranty. However, I did today make good money on a business transaction because a stranger was able to reach me. I also had to delete some voicemails about extended warranties. This is a worthwhile tradeoff for me.
It's a hard problem to crack. Some legitimate places need to be able to call you without you knowing them ahead of time. Say your sibling was mugged in Mexico and the local little police station let them borrow the landline to call the only number they still remember without having to check their contacts in their phone. Are you not going to pick up?
There are a lot of these little edge-cases. Journalists, lawyers representing class action suits, government id expiring, and so on.
> Say your sibling was mugged in Mexico and the local little police station let them borrow the landline to call the only number they still remember without having to check their contacts in their phone. Are you not going to pick up?
Just wait for the deepfaked voice call scammers. Their best bet is to work up the hierarchy; a tiny local police station knows how to get in touch with a bigger police station that can contact an embassy, etc.
> There are a lot of these little edge-cases. Journalists, lawyers representing class action suits, government id expiring, and so on.
All of these use-cases allow someone to spend the time to contact you via your preferred contact method, whatever that might be.
I'm in my 30s and I can't think of a single time I have ever received a phone call that I didn't expect. I get several spam calls every day. I would make the trade (and recently have, I block all unknown numbers now).
I'm in my 30s and I can't think of a single time I have ever received a phone call that I didn't expect.
I've read that people not answering their phones is the number one reason that COVID contact tracing doesn't work.
But your comment makes me think that you've never had food delivered. Never used an Uber. Never owned a business. Never bought or sold real estate. Never rented a place to live. Never went to a restaurant with a wait list. Never done a lot of things that are perfectly ordinary, and require allowing people to contact you when they have questions.
Most delivery services with an app have messaging built-in so you don't need to rely on calls, but I also know when I'm expecting a delivery or a driver to pick me up, and if an unknown call comes from my area code (the one I'm actually in, not the one my phone number is in), I'll answer that. It's pretty easy to distinguish between times I might expect a call and all other times.
For all those other things, though, I'm not sure why you need to answer unknown numbers. I've never owned my own business, but did manage a small business and we had dedicated business lines. No one needed to call my personal phone. For buying and selling real estate, there are agents that act as go-betweens and you can put their number on your contacts list. For renting, put the management company on your contacts list.
Most delivery services with an app have messaging built-in so you don't need to rely on calls
I've used dozens and dozens of delivery companies over the years, and the only delivery company I've found that doesn't have its people calling on phones is DoorDash, and even that uses SMS. Plus, most of the best places don't use services, they have their own people.
we had dedicated business lines
Doesn't help you when someone needs to contact you in an emergency, like the alarm company, or the landlord, or security, or the police, thousand other things.
For buying and selling real estate, there are agents that act as go-betweens and you can put their number on your contacts list.
Sounds good in theory, but doesn't work in practice. There can be dozens and dozens of people and companies involved in such a transaction, and you can't predict who they all are.
For renting, put the management company on your contacts list.
When the management company sends a vendor over to fix something, you don't know what number they'll call from.
To "never" get an unexpected, important call sounds like a side effect of a quiet life. I envy you.
You're pretty much right on all of those. I do own a house (don't remember getting any calls, but that was a decade ago) and I do occasionally get food delivered (why would they call?). Otherwise you're right, I've never done any of those things.
All I can say is that I've had to make these calls myself and I was indeed quite happy when my family members picked up. It's hard to imagine it until it happens to you, but when you only have two phone numbers you have memorized and nothing else in your possession someone picking up is magic.
I know that we deserve something better than what we have now. I know we shouldn't have to put up with spammers calling constantly, but we don't live in a perfect world yet. We live in a messy world where sometimes people need to make a phone call and hope their loved ones pick up. I can think of a plethora of possible technical solutions, but that's besides the point. We need phone numbers to work. Let's focus on solving that problem, not trying to imagine it doesn't exist.
My iPhone is set to "Silence Unknown Callers." It's the perfect compromise. If a call is legitimate they'll leave a voicemail and I just call them back.
I discovered recently that my Verizon phone service’s voicemail had been full for several months. I’m not sure how I was ever supposed to discover that, but I ignored what turned out to be an important phone call and got burnt because I assumed I’d get a voicemail.
>If someone has a problem with dogs, or anything else, then they are not qualified to perform a job that requires interacting with dogs, or whatever their particular disability involves.
An allergic reaction is not just a "problem with dogs." An allergy to dog hair is no more or less important than any other disability. The law requires reasonable attempts to accommodate the individual with a service animal, and the individual with an allergy. In the case of Uber or Lyft, it seems relatively trivial (to me) to classify drivers with allergies, riders with guide dogs, and to prevent those two groups from connecting for a ride.
The real problem here is that Uber/Lyft don't want to take any action that would further blur the line between employee and contractor.
Uber lost $8.5 billion in 2019, $6.77 billion in 2020, and recently reported a $968 million loss in Q1 2021. As a company, Uber has lost around $35 billion total.
Which really begs the question of... who the heck is making money here, how, and why?
