Where does the chain end? I burn diesel in my tractor to harvest corn. Should the feedlot that buys my corn pay for the tractor’s emissions? Should the slaughterhouse that processes the cattle pay? Should the supermarket that stocks the beef pay? Should the family who grills the steak on Sunday pay? Or just the one who eats the largest portion?
You either tax the fuel and pass the cost down to the consumers, or decide as a society to share the cost of the externalities and use general taxation for that.
Here, in the first scenario it directly punishes consumers for consuming more. In the second, it punishes everyone equally on everyone's consumption, which is unlikely to lead to behavior change. So yes, we should tax fossil fuels much more.
However, the first scenario will pass the increased cost of fuel down to the consumers affecting poorer people disproportionately. Example: some good that is produced with fossil fuels (including food) will become too expensive for low-income people, while richer (and more polluting) people will not feel the difference that much.
If you go for general taxation, you distribute the cost proportionally to income, making rich people pay more. Probably the ideal is a mix of both.
Ideally in the first scenario where we have well-functioning government, necessities like food and low-income housing would be well subsidized. Other things like random junk from Temu and large gas-guzzling trucks will be less accessible to poorer people by design.
Why should all of society pay for these externalities? If some people manage to improve their energy supply and don't require dirty fuels, why should they be forced to subsidize those who won't?
Taxing the carbon at the source is simply correctly pricing it, and because it makes it impossible to shift the externalities away from the producer it fixes the accounting problem that falsely makes fossil fuels appear cheap.
So… it’s like you completely understand the issue :)
And obviously, you tax the fuel at the source, right when it comes out of the ground. Higher prices get passed down, changing behavior because the products externalities are priced correctly from the start.
To be clear, the source would still be the consumer. Hydrocarbons can be used for non-CO2 emitting purposes such as chemical feedstock for pharmaceuticals, solvents, etc. We should only be levying a tax upon uses that emit CO2 into the atmosphere, i.e. burning them in your ICE vehicle. It’s not the fracking company that’s emitting the CO2 (unless they’re gas flaring or similarly emitting carbon during extraction but this is a rounding error on total emissions).
You can. Everything- including basic things like food, transportation, construction, healthcare- will become more expensive, of course. My objection was to ask fossil fuel companies to pay after you already bought and burned your fuel cheap.
Castrati never mattered for choruses - you just use a large choir of boys. They were important for opera/theater, where you need a single voice with enough power.
Looking at migration trends for billionaires (so not billionaire creators but rather billionaire magnets) over the last 30 or so years - synthesis of various sources:
Top attractors are London (non-dom era), Singapore, Dubai, Miami, Austin, SF, NYC, Hong Kong (pre-[1])
Top repellers/outmigration are London (post-abolition of non-dom), Moscow, Hong Kong (post-[1]), China, high-tax zones in Europe, India, developing nations
For places that are in both lists but at different times, you can see the massive impact of public policy (non-dom tax haven, Chinese hand)
SF and NYC are the surprising ones there, because the rest are low tax (0-25% income tax, give or take).
Goes to show it is possible to tax people quite a lot and still be an attractive place to live, but you do need to bring something special (which in 2026 means "be the centre of the world for either tech or finance").
If you're good at that stuff but still very much second tier (London), the tax rate seems to matter a lot
human dissection (grave robbing)
translating the Bible into English
silk production outside of China (death penalty for exporting worm eggs)
rubber production in Asia (seeds smuggled out of Brazil)
the Underground Railroad
heliocentrism
AIDS treatment (see Dallas Buyers Club)
Needle exchange programs for IV drug users
Ridesharing/airbnb/napster (obvious ones)
SF gay marriage licenses (in defiance of CA law)
The context of this is the list of examples was of things done illegally for the first time - it lists these things as "also" in response to a claim that water was *first* chlorinated illegally.
While there were bans or a requirement for authorisation of translations of the Bible in certain times and places (mostly the 1300s to 1500s) the first translations of (parts of the) Bible into English had been done centuries before this, some as early at the 7th century. This makes them some of the oldest written works we know of in English at all. They were also done by the church.
> You can nitpick that "the church executing people for it" is not exactly the same as "illegal" but that's missing the point.
When did this happen? Tyndale was tried and executed by the secular authorities in a place where there were no laws against translating the Bible.
The earliest translations into English were done by the Church.
Sublingual is even harder. The sublingual mucosa is thin but selective. It strongly favors molecules that are small, lipophilic and uncharged. Semaglutide is about 8-10x too big, highly polar and charged.
Injection is really the only method with any substantial bioavailability. BUT, low (<1%) bioavailability does not necessarily mean useless.
If the drug has a relatively low marginal cost of production, and the stomach just breaks down 99% of it without side effects, you can just manufacture 100x more, give it orally, and eat the cost of the 99% that gets lost along the way.
Injectable Semaglutide/Tirzepatide (>99.8% pure) are currently sold at a profit from China for around $2-3/weekly dose. Rybelsus (oral semaglutide) is sold at roughly the same cost per milligram, even though it's made in FDA-approved facilities (you just need to take >= 40x more milligrams per month, bringing it to $1000/month in the USA)
So manufacturing oral doses 100x higher than injectable seems to be economically viable.
We have too much mental baggage about what a "number" is.
Real numbers function as magnitudes or objects, while complex numbers function as coordinatizations - a way of packaging structure that exists independently of them, e.g. rotations in SO(2) together with scaling). Complex numbers are a choice of coordinates on structure that exists independently of them. They are bookkeeping (a la double‑entry accounting) not money
> We have too much mental baggage about what a "number" is.
I do feel like when I was young or when I tried to teach some of my neighbour's daughter something once.
At some point, one just has to accept it when they are young.
It's sort of a pattern, you really can't explain it to them. You can just show them and if they don't understand, then just repeat it. You really can't explain say complex numbers or philosophy or even negative numbers or decimals.
A lot of it is visual. I see one apple and then the teacher added one more and calls it two.
Its even hard for me to explain this right now because the very sentence that I am trying to say requires me to say one and two so on and this is the very thing that the children are taught to learn. So I can't really say one apple without saying one but I think that now my point is that I couldnt have said one without seeing one apple in the first place.
Then came some half bit apples which we started calling fractions and mixed fractions and then we got taught of a magic dot to convert fractions -> decimals -> rationals -> real numbers / exponents -> complex numbers -> (??)
A lot of the times atleast in schooling I feel like one just has to accept them the way they are because you really cant get philosophical about them or necessarily have the privilege or intellectual ability to do so.
We are systematically given mental baggage about what a number is because for 99.9% use cases that's probably enough (Accounting and literally even shopkeeping or just the whole world revolves around numbers and we all know it)
I honestly don't know what I am typing right now. I am writing whatever I am thinking but I thought about that we aren't the only ones like this.
We might think we are special in this but Crows are really intelligent as well (a little funny but I saw a cronelius shorts channel and If this sort of humour entertains you, I will link their channel as well)
And I Found this to be pretty interesting to maybe share. Maybe even after all of this/all development made, we are still made of flesh & still similar to our peers at animal kingdom and they might be as smart as some toddlers when we were first taught what numbers are and maybe they are capable of learning these mythical abstract baggage and we humans are capable of transferring/training others with this mental baggage not necessarily even being humans (Crows in this case)
It's always sad to see how humanity ignores other animals sometimes.
We might have created weapons of mass destructions, went to moon and back but we as a society are still restricted by basic human guilts/flaws which I feel like are inevitable whether the society is large & connected creating different types of flaws & also the same when its small & hunter-gathering oriented.
It's really these issues combined with whenever some real problems comes with us that we push for the next generation and so on and so on and then later we try to find scapegoats and do wars and just struggle but once again the struggle is felt the most by a middle class or the poor.
The rules of the game of life are still/might still be fundamentally broken but we are taught to accept it when we are young in a similar fashion to numbers which might be broken too if you stare too long into them.
But I guess there's hope because the system still has love and moments of intimacy and we have improved from past, perhaps we can improve in future as well. One can be sad and depressed about current realities or if the future looks bleak. Perhaps it is, perhaps not, only future can tell but the only thing we can do right now is to hopefully stay happy and smile and just pain/suffering is a universal constant in life but maybe one can derive their own meaning of existence withstanding all these hardships and having optimism for a better future and maybe even taking actions in each of our individual ways doing what we do best, doing what we enjoy, spending time with our family/community. Maybe its a cope for a world which is flawed but maybe that's all we need to chug along and maybe leave a footprint in this world when the days are feeling down.
I don't know but lets just be kind to each other. Let's be kind to animals and humans alike. Because I feel like most of us are similar than different and sometimes we feel empty for very minor reasons in which even minor gestures from others might be enough to make us happy again. Let's try to be those others as well and maybe reach out if there's something troubling anyone.
I am really unable to explain myself but my point is that there's still beauty and life's still good even with these flaws. It's kind of like a sine wave and if one would zoom enough they would only see things flat (whether at the top of the curve or at the bottom) but in a reality both are likely. Both are part of life as-is and if one can be happy in both, and still intend to do good just for the good it might do and the sake for it itself, then I feel as if that might be the meaning of life in general.
Can we be happy in just existing? and still do our best to improve our lives and potentially others surrounding us in a community whether its small or large that's besides the point imo
I feel as if we all are in a loop keeping the system of humanity alive while maybe going through some troubles in a more isolationist period at times. We are so connected yet so disconnected at the same time in today's world. This is really the crux of so many issues I feel. We as humanity have so many paradoxical properties but a system will still work as long as not all people question it simultaneously.
I hope this message can atleast make one feel more aware & more like not being in an automatic loop of sorts and sort of snapping out of it & perhaps using this awareness for a more deeper reflection in life itself and maybe finding the will to live or forging it for yourself and periodically going to it to find one's own sense of meaning in a world of meaninglessness.
This has been cathartic for me to write even though I feel as if I might not be able to make it all positive from perhaps despair to optimism but maybe that's the point because I do feel positive in just accepting reality as-is and leaving a foot print in humanity in our own way. Maybe this message is my way of shouting in the world that "hey I exist look at me" but I hope that the deeper reason behind this is because I feel cathartic writing it and perhaps maybe it can be useful to anyone else too.
reply