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Europe != Obscure department of the European Commission issuing unsolicited opinions

I think it's impossible to have a pro-choice viewpoint in discussion websites. People get too nervous and defensive.

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Good. But at the same time it should be possible to buy through private channels. So we can circumvent and get rid of the terribly inefficient bureaucrats.

Exactly. He could donate 99% of his wealth, and still be billionaire.

Yet he won't do that, he asks others to fix the public finances. While doing virtue signalling in public about equality.

His company, along with google and Facebook are the biggest tax dodgers on earth.

You see totally different demographics between software design/development and the politics of software.

In this letter I see names that have never done anything significant, yet they feel entitled to correct one of the forefathers of software development.

We can compare the audience of an flamewar post about racism in US, vs the readership of a paper on fixed point theorems, and it makes sense that organizations that don't care about science like US universities choose to favor the former.

From a business perspective it must be more lucrative to select candidates by their cultural projection and the money connections than on the basis of academic potential.

I suppose that is true for MIT, for mainstream media, and for US corporations.

Well you paint a very gloomy dystopian picture, with scarcity and fighting for every square inch.

This issue is present in any political system, even full egalitarianism, increase population by an arbitrary amount to reduce land per citizen to an epsilon.

Provided you are a good neighbour, it will always be possible to find space to rent at the marginal cost, without a rent-seeking political class.

Who said we won't have nukes?

Okay, you claim 50% taxation is beneficial for all. It's highly debatable.

But the point it's that taxes should be phrased and understood for what they are, a whitewashed extortion. It has no proportion at all with costs of running a rule of law society. Be grateful that we take just 50% from you because we could take everything!

I know, I understand. Societies become mafias and they start extorting high-income individuals to guarantee the peace and the welfare.

I just applaud fair countries that don't extort their own citizens.

I enter all of these interactions voluntarily

I choose the family, I choose the job, I choose what I consume and where I live

Unfortunately I can't walk away from being stolen 50% of my revenues every year.