travisathougies

I mean property tax is already rent.

Actually, zoning laws are not part of your property rights. Zoning restriction dictate what you can build on your property, but ownership interest in your property does not entitle you to 'buy' zoning laws. This is easily seen as you cannot sell zoning laws.

Zoning laws ultimately restrict your property rights as you lose the right to do what you wish with your property. They ought to be abolished to protect property rights.

Most societies did just fine without zoning laws for the entirety of human history.

Note, that I don't approach this from the YIMBY or woke side of things. Rather, as a pretty staunch free market advocate, it is painfully obvious to me that we should not restrict people's rights to do with their property as they see fit.

As an example, I was recently going to buy land to develop into a business. However, zoning laws in this area of the county (in the middle of nowhere mind you) meant I would have to jump through endless permit and red tape. Any so-called supporter of property rights should be livid that this goes on in this country. Buying the land should be enough to give me rights to do what I wish with it. Environmental laws should deal with actual human health hazards, not how much shadow I'm spilling onto a neighboring property or how much view I'm blocking.

A lot of the issues with zoning is people attempting to own that which they don't. You don't own your neighbor's property.

Sweden and Finland should not be allowed to join NATO until they pay backdues. It is obvious that a large portion of countries depend implicitly on the United States for their defense against certain bad actors, like Russia, North Korea, and China. They ought to pay us, because right now, American military spending which guarantees these country's security is being disproportionately paid for by Americans, who are enjoying only partial benefits.

NATO is not just a defensive alliance as we saw in Afghanistan. Defense activities don't result in a twenty year occupation.

Umm... Europe is not the only territory in the world. There's all of central asia, and Mongolia, former soviet territory.

> How do you know who filled in the ballot at the polling place? All I would need is to show up and know someone else's name and address and I could vote for them

Presumably by some kind of voter identification? Like the way most countries do it.

> The poling place is open on exactly one day, and you have to wait in line for your turn. Have to go to work that day? Well, tough shit. For some people this is simple, but for quite a lot of people in overcrowded polling places and inflexible working conditions it is not. The option of a mail in ballot provides a convenience for people less privileged with the ability to make it to a polling place during a sub-24 hour window.

I guess I don't get it. The polling places open at a ridiculously early hour and end at 8. You could have multi-day polling too, that's fine. I don't understand why this is so hard in this country.

> Notice I said option. If filling out a ballot is difficult for you, you can still do it by showing up in person.

No I can't because I live in Oregon, which despite being a high tax state, is unable to conduct even the most basic election.

> Perfect is the enemy of good.

It's not when we have an easy answer to this problem -- have a physical place to vote. I've voted absentee in California, and one year, my ballot got lost there. Do you know what I did? I went to a polling location. In Oregon, because it was COVID, there was no place to get a ballot. EIther you use the byzantine system set up by the state which was too complicated, or tough shit. That's not acceptable. Why aren't these 'voter suppression' tactics used in liberal states not up to questioning? Why is only the motivations of one party suspect? I don't think it is easier to vote in Oregon than any other state, despite what everyone here wants you to believe.

> regurgitating Tucker Carlson and “just asking the questions” in bad faith

In my experience, non-conservatives tend to believe conservatives are 'regurgitating' Tucker Carlson. Most of Carlson's audience are actually democrats. Polls show that most conservatives distrust fox news. And the whole 'bad faith' thing is a way to dismiss people. You shouldn't every think that what people are telling you is in bad faith. If you think that what someone is telling you is so preposterous as to not possibly be in good faith, perhaps you need to recalibrate as to what is normal.

> And it just so happens that turnout is negatively correlated with republican election victories.

This is increasingly not true. The democrats have kind of maxed out on their voter turnout. It turns out that they mainly have voter turnout efforts for people who will vote democrat. They've ignored the non-democrats (not their fault of course), and these are the bulk of the people who don't vote. Several South Texas districts for example have seen higher turnout amongst formerly non-voting Hispanics, and most of these are new GOP voters.

> vote by mail which helps alleviate the latter while, as far as I can tell, not being significantly worse than voting in person for security.

How anyone could state this with any particular confidence is beyond me. The truth is, when someone votes by mail, you have no idea who filled in the ballot. How could anyone possibly collect metrics? No one can possibly say what's going on, unless you trust the populace at large, which not everyone does. Many countries have systems for dealing with this. In many countries, they ink your finger to indicate you voted. Why not just do that at physical polling stations.

Honestly, mail-in ballots are very difficult for me. They get mailed to you, and by the time I finally have a chance to sit down, I often have to go searching for where it went / whether my toddler put it somewhere. On the other hand, when I voted in person, I would just go to the polling booth in the morning and be done. Super easy. I don't understand the desire for pure vote by mail.

One year, I didn't even receive my ballot, and it was difficult to get a replacement. Whereas, when I lived in CA, it didn't matter. You show up to the polling station (which is conspicuously noted), and just vote.

> Your friends may be for election integrity, but the people they're voting for most certainly are not.

I mean they have a name for these people: RINOs. I think I read an article that showed that most conservatives distrust their own politicians more than liberals distrust theirs. The feeling I get is that they have a clear idea of a politician they want, but no one who believes that runs, and they feel there is a mass conspiracy to prevent people like them from running -- namely funding. That sort of thing doesn't bode well for a country's stability.

I don't understand the us v them mentality. I have lots of right wing friends and family and many of them have been against electronic voting from the beginning. For example, in my home state of oregon, many right wingers are against vote by mail and have been since oregon became the first state to go fully vote by mail. These issues are not so binary as you're making them out to be, and I think everyone would do well to put aside partisan differences to come together on issues where they can agree.

My point is the following:

1. Photonics is a new technology. It is more expensive than silicon 2. Silicon can do the compute as fast as photonics, and we understand silicon. Building a silicon chip is 'easy'. 3. The problem is data transport, which silicon cannot do fast enough. We can compute inferences faster than we can get the data

Photonic compute doesn't help with (3). Photonic data transport does, and there are several companies who have entered this market, including several who have already exited with large deals. However, photonic data transport can terminate at photonic compute or silicon compute, and silicon compute is fast enough and cheaper / better understood.

> Student debt forgiveness is an incredibly far left idea

Student debt forgiveness is an incredibly aristocratic idea by which the slowly establishing american aristocracy seeks to tax peasants for their failed lavish lifestyles. It's not 'far left', and it shows just how duplicitous the supposed 'left' in this country has gotten. They're openly advocating for wealth transfers from the poor to the rich, and are attempting to portray themselves as the sole party of empathy, working class sympathies, etc. It's really something to watch from the outside.

> The way it currently looks is the right want to ban abortion no matter what context.

While it's true that some republican run states are going this direction. If we look at the original case that will likely lead the SC to overturn Roe v Wade (again, it hasn't even happened yet), would be a European style ban, where abortion is allowed up until 15 weeks (this is a typical European cutoff). I believe the Mississippi law also has exceptions based on maternal health or fetal disability, which in countries like Germany, would actually require government approval in the late second and third trimester [1]. After the Roe v Wade leak, only a few GOP states have attempted to ban abortion outright. Popular GOP governors like Ron Desantis, whose name keeps coming up for 2024, signed a Mississippi style 15-week ban in Florida, instead of a full on ban.

So, while it's certainly true same in the party want a 100% ban, it's also true that the mainstream ones (again, DeSantis is extremely popular, so is a good indicator of 'centrist' republican thought) are not going that direction and instead making our laws more similar to Western European countries.

I'm going to guess most electronics is not going to be super high-speed. Sort of like how fiber optic was once the realm of only large businesses, then small businesses, and now is commonly available at home (although nowhere near 100% adoption). I think the copper PCB will eventually go away, but not for many decades.