It's just my opinion, I could be wrong

I want to write a bit about what I perceive as issues with the housing market in the US, but first a hot and very controversial take: rent should be automatically cancelled for renters in months where they have a significant and documented financial hardship. I'll let that simmer, and get back to it; first, though, what's wrong with the housing market. Housing, like food, water, and basic medical care (and clothing, to a lesser extent) is in most cases a necessity of life in a modern society. You need access to food and water to live, clothing and shelter to protect from the elements, and basic medical care for ailments which would otherwise dramatically shorten the general societal life expectancy (eg: stopping bleeding, setting bones, antibiotics, etc.). These could be considered the "basic essentials" of a modern civilized society, and most countries have figured out ways to make each of them generally available to everyone. This is not without cost, though, and th...

I would like to write a little bit about a wealth tax; motivated by, but not specifically in the context of, Elizabeth Warren's recently proposed tax on high net wealth individuals. The title might give away a bit of my feelings on the matter, but first, a bit of more general context. Taxes are a tricky subject, societally speaking. The first-level goal of taxation, of course, is to support the activities of the government: to pay salaries, to pay for services, to pay for defense, etc. However, how taxes are levied, and on what, can also have a fairly substantial impact on the trajectory of a society. Governments frequently use tax policy to encourage or discourage types of behavior, for example, as a short-term leverage point over societal trends. In another facet, tax policy can also have longer term indirect implications for societal trends, some of which may not be obvious to the majority of the public even years after the policies are implemented. To give a specific examp...

There are not too many things which I would give Trump credit for as the President so far. Initially, for example, I thought that perhaps his public persona of an uninformed, insensitive, abrasive jerk might have been somewhat contrived, in an effort to appeal to a specific subset of the population. However, as all of his personality traits have persisted far beyond the election, and there is no apparent evidence to the contrary, I've long since concluded that Trump actually is an uninformed, insensitive, abrasive jerk. In such, he is singularly bad at being in a diplomatic leadership position; in fact he's quite possibly objectively the worst President in the entirety of the history of the country. However, that being said, he has managed to do one thing which is somewhat impressive in context, even though I give no credit for purpose or planning in such. Trump has managed to weaponize stupidity, to remarkable effect. He has, in some sense, managed to take what for any other...

As a preface, this post is more about an opinion on the current state of events in the US, and less on-point to a specific topic. It was, in part, motivated by this piece  and related events, but my thoughts on the topic are a bit more general. The US is going through a period of transition currently, one which will likely span several generations. As this piece accurately notes, "as societies become more modern, they become less religious". This is, I think, generally accurate, as can be observed in the recent history of the world. It is also somewhat intuitive: as people learn more about how the world works, there is less need for superstition to explain how and why things happen, and hence less need for religion. Unfortunately, this is not something which can or will change overnight. Primarily, this is because so many people have so much of their own self-worth and self-identity inexorably associated with their religion, that it's practically impossible for them ...

So recently I've been thinking a bit about the old adage, meant to serve as sorta a litmus test for the longer-term value of decisions: try to leave the world a better place for your children. I don't honestly know the origin of the sentiment, and/or if it's American or otherwise, but it seems self-evident enough in meaning. Basically, you want the world to get better over time, and especially if you have children directly, you want them to live in a world which is at least as accommodating as the one you lived in. The thing is, though, that's not always easy to do. The world has quite a lot of "bad" people in it, and absent meaningful efforts toward positive change, there's certainly no guarantee that the world of the future will be better than the world of today. This seems especially true in the current time in the US in particular; the list of pending worrisome things is getting quite long indeed (eg: spiraling national debt, partisan divisiveness dr...

Since there's no end in sight for the current government shutdown, and both sides are giving indications that no progress is being made and no short-term end is likely, I have a few additional thoughts on the current state of political gridlock. As I said before, the system should really be more resilient against this sort of "using the American people as leverage" political fighting strategy; the current state of sorta absurd. Beyond that, though, in the context of Trump's Russian ties being investigated, I think the Republicans in Congress are doing a substantial disservice to their own political careers (not to mention the damage to the country) by not tossing aside solidarity with Trump, and his wall-funding tantrum. In my opinion, the Republicans in the Senate should pass a basic budget and dare Trump to veto it, and they should override him if he does. After all, Trump himself gave them an "opening" to do so, so to speak, when he raised the possibi...

Autonomous vehicles are a hot topic these days, as auto makers rush to add more self-driving and vehicle communication technology to their offerings. The state of the market is somewhat reminiscent of the internet boom, where tech companies rushed to produce every type of service/product they could imagine, and any consideration for societal impact (and/or hope of thoughtful regulation) was left hopelessly behind . It also reminds me of the rush to create AI for everything, where business and government interests are rushing far ahead of any consideration of the societal effects, even though the people closest to the technology have serious concerns about the direction the development is going. Let's get this out of the way first and foremost: Autonomous vehicles are going to kill people, and in ways which would have been avoided if humans were driving. Why do I feel entirely confident making that claim, when most proponents of the technology advocate the opposite (ie: that au...