Actually we could give them transponders and put electrical infrastructure in the roads for inductive chargers, whereby your car could report your account to the utility company and the utility could charge for your power usage.
Alternately, we could just let the Government do it, but when you renew your registration you have to turn in your mileage, and they forward that to your utility, and bill you.
Top-tier solar panels are now close to 19.2%. Solar collectors using polished metal parabolic reflectors concentrating sunlight onto sterling engines are close to 40% (38% actually).
Heh... I guess you understand then why I'm not a soldier and why I find war sad. In times passed, before unified governments (UN) and world-wide backroom politics, war meant something. You had the bad guys--the ones that were rallying under their great and powerful expansionist empire to go out, kill people, rape women and children, burn down houses, and conquer; and you had the knights in shining armor that were trying to stop it, with the single-minded goal of protecting themselves, their families, and a whole shitload of total strangers that just didn't deserve to be trodden upon.
Now we send people to die for political shows, and we tell them it's to "protect their country" or "ensure freedom" or "kill the infidels that wish to come and defile our virgins!" and they buy it.
People sign up in the US thinking they'll be part of something great. I wish we could withdraw our military from this bullshit and send our soldiers out to do actual great things, not play pawn in shows of military strength and political banter.
Tijuana! You're right, I was off by an order of 1000, shit.
Also, I pay for a "flush tax", plus I pay municipal (city) water on my property taxes, plus the water flow is used to calculate my sewage usage and added as a sewage bill. The "flush tax" is an additional standard sewage tax(!) that aims at a fund to restore our wetland assets from damage caused by all this sewage being spewed into the environment. I pay my electric bill to Baltimore Gas and Electric, a privately-owned corporation recently acquired by the conglomerate private entity Constellation Energy; they charge me for distribution, as the distribution network is privately owned by BGE, but they forward my commodity payments to the private entity American Power for 100% 'green' (non-air-polluting, containable) electricity and to Mount Washington Gas and Electric for 100% offset natural gas (I pay a LOT more for natural gas commodity, but the extra buys carbon offsets that go into programs to improve air and water quality).
So yes, I pay a bunch of private entities for some "public" infrastructure, and a lot of public entities for other actually-public infrastructure. I pay the government based on my usage of water and on estimated usage of sewage infrastructure, and I pay the power company based on my metered usage of supplied commodities and on distribution of said commodities through their privately-owned distribution network. Our state asserts that the fuel tax is used to fund our roads, although I know better: they get federal funding that comes from my federal income tax, although I know I don't do $15,000 of damage to the roads each year.
I'm actually advocating the mortgage interest deduction be fenced because it pushes up the cost of houses disproportionately. That house was more expensive because most people are convinced they get the interest back, and they treat it at sale as if they will pay $5000 and the government will get $5000 back to them. The thought of a big windfall also makes people accept paying more, so rather than just $5000 they accept a $10,000 increase in house price. And so on.
Of course over 30 years that winds down to some $100,000 extra in costs. Then there's the fact that it's on top of your standard deduction--for me, taking my interest as an itemized deduction has been a loss since day 1, and I'm single. My itemized deduction is less than my standard deduction. Now, my parents, married, bought a $250,000 house... the first year, they claimed ~$12,600. Problem: Their standard deduction is $11,600. They got $1000 more deducted, about $300 back in taxes. The second year, it was less than the standard deduction, so there's no longer a benefit.
Have you compared your total itemized deduction with your mortgage against the greater of either A) your standard deduction; or B) your itemized deduction sans mortgage? Because it sounds like you're deducting $16,000 per year, which at the current rates (my rate is 2.785% but let's say 3%) means you have a half a million dollar house. I'm shedding the tiniest tear about your $1350.
For reference, he pays $10,000 per year to walk on sidewalks that are built with $5000 of cement, which last 15-20 years.
Electricity and phones are private infrastructure, which he pays for in something called a "Utility Bill".
Sewage and water are public infrastructure, which he pays for in "Water" and "Sewage" usage taxes, plus a mandatory "flush tax" of roughly $150/mo.
Roads are maintained by the gas tax, which he pays for per fuel in the car he actually drives. His car won't do much damage to the roads, which last 15-20 years passing thousands of cars per hour per day.
Perhaps he's using about $200 of services he doesn't directly pay for, and paying $10,000 for it. Also, last year, the US Government spent $500,000,000 to purchase and distribute condoms in Tijuana to clients of sex workers--i.e. they bought condoms for dudes picking up hookers with our tax money. The US Government also gives rice to Europe, Asia, and Saudi. I don't think the US Government gave this guy $10,000 of condoms and rice, either.
You signed up to be a lap dog and a tool, not to do anything great or even get a guarantee that you wouldn't be a political pawn sent to murder others who are also political pawns with the only quarrel between the two of you being that somebody is telling each of you that the other person is evil and wants to kill you.
"We have to pass this bill so you can see what's in it." She said that the American People didn't understand the 800 page document being discussed and wouldn't get it until it was implemented and they could see it in action and understand.
Yes but you have to convince gas stations to carry fuel cells, which take up space. They don't have extra unused space, this is expensive and wasteful and you use that extra space for something profitable.
Yeah, when you suddenly require infrastructure, you get problems. We have gas stations. Now we need battery stations? Charging stations are easy enough, parking garages can provide them and they're easy to install--but the electrical power infrastructure itself needs upgrades. Again, we already have gas stations, and those were slow enough to get rolled out (but they rolled out naturally as cars rolled out), so the problems of initial deployment weren't as severe as the problems of changing or, worse, fragmenting technology (the overhead of all this fragmented infrastructure is huge).
(3) Every gay man has HIV too. Also every woman with heels and/or tattoos is a hooker. Every guy with tattoos and/or a tank top shirt is a rapist. Everyone who drives a white van is a serial killer.
(4) I've bought plenty of stuff for less than 20% of its value. Garage sales, ebay, etc. Ebay must be a giant fencing operation to unload stolen goods. (It probably is) (don't tell me it's not more than remotely likely--you know damn well a ton of shit on ebay is probably stolen goods)
(5) Drugs are traded in Bitcoin.
I'd expect a courier to have plenty of cash on him yes. The concept of an illegal bank hadn't occurred to me, and what you're talking about sounds like banking underground. In any case it makes knowing about this stuff sound even less appealing than knowing about legitimate transactions, for the same reason: the next guy is tailing the first guy, and wants you to tell him all about any large amounts of cash you saw that he wants to steal... and not talk to anyone else... which we can arrange with a little thing called Portland Cement.
Man you've got a lot of complicated movie plots. Real life actually has money couriers for collectors secretly moving around antiques and art pieces, but man. Trafficking a million dollars to Mexico? Is this the plot for Lethal Weapon 5? You have a million dollars and they're in Mexico; go to Canada. Or Japan. Fuck man, you're a criminal, why aren't you stealing shit?
(3) I know there's a lot of drug dealers around me, dunno if they deal in a lot of cash. Maybe they do, who knows? I've met people who probably had large quantities of cash and probably weren't drug dealers, though.
(4) is invalid. He didn't know what the cash was for. I've seen cash I didn't want to know what it was for. I've seen cash in huge sacks I didn't want to know any more about, up close. Closer than I'd want to be, in fact.
(5) he attempted to not be a part of anything involving large cash. This is smart. If I'm dealing with legitimate collectors or bounty hunters trafficking large amounts of cash for legal purposes, while academically and from a distance this is interesting (like the drug trade, actually), I don't want to specifically be a part of this. There is a possibility, a very real possibility, that people are trafficking drugs without trafficking a lot of cash; I've known drug runners (well, people who were drug runners in the 90s, but 15 years had since passed) going from Jersey to Baltimore every weekend, and they didn't carry around $800,000. Some interesting stories came out of that, like having an 8 year old kid rob you at gunpoint demanding all the cocaine you have? Yeah that makes me want to be a drug dealer.... (that occurred IN the city I live in, not along the way). Honestly I wouldn't expect a drug runner to have nearly $1M on him, but I sure as hell don't want to be a part of that.
The lights are off and I can hear them giggling and talking across the street. I can hear peoples' cell phones ringing in houses 3-4 units down. In the apartment I could hear everything in all 6 units in my building as well as the top two floors (4 units) and the closest bottom floor unit in the next building. There are windows in these units, and when the shades are down you get an off-white square or a black square facing you. It's off-white if the lights are on, black if they're off. Yet people are in the room... at least 5 distinct voices. What are they doing? Must be smoking pot.
You're not required to have or declare a registered business to get a trap. Installers are legally allowed to put them on anyone's car barring explicit knowledge of illegal use. Is money illegal?
"Basically said" is a loaded term. Stop using weasel words.
His knowledge moved from "suspicion that some of my clients are probably drug dealers" to "holy SHIT that's a lot of money!" His knowledge did not move to "Oh wow, you're a cocaine runner! I know because people don't get money!"
My neighbors are black and they stay up at night with the lights off not having sex. They're probably smoking weed. I should call the cops 'cause I know they're smoking weed.
No, he installed a new trap even though he knew it was being used to transport a lot of money he knew nothing about and didn't want to know anything about. Look, when a licensed bounty hunter pulls up to me and he's got a footlocker and I see him checking the locks and notice it's loaded with a million dollars, I don't want to know about that money. It's probably (almost guaranteed) to be a legal deal; I want no part of this. Do you know why bounty hunters are paid to transport money from time to time? Hint: it's not because shit you want to be around happens around that money.
There are lots of cases of collectors trading things like paintings and statues for a lot of money. Objects get transferred low profile, in vans and pick-up trucks with secret compartments, with cash transported the same way. These are legal deals, but for security (Paranoia) reasons people don't want to stick it on a big ass Dunbar armored transport. A big part of that is people don't want you to know what deals are happening, they don't want the general public to know who has a DaVinci in their house, those things go from place to place and so does the money and all that's invisible. You obviously don't know much about the collector's trade.
The shoes/foreigner/spy one is actually a well-known example. I'll let you figure it out, or maybe someone will fill in the blanks for you.
You're contradicting yourself here. The guy didn't know these people, he didn't deal with drug dealers, so he wouldn't have been able to accurately determine who is a drug dealer... yet you claim he 'knew' they were drug dealers and was liable? Because they had money and a car and he didn't know what they did for a living but knew they had money and a car?
Look I don't want to know about your massive cash bank in your pickup truck. Shit comes back to me, people will kill me for your money because they think I know something about that wad. Money is not something you need to know about in general.
So there are no receipts for those shoes you're wearing. And I haven't seen shoes like that. You must be a foreigner, that means you're a spy!
Dunno, didn't ask. But it was obvious, you know? Stuff you just know. Like how you just know that dude that you don't really know but that has money and a nice car is a drug dealer. Because who has money and a car? Drug dealers.
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Actually we could give them transponders and put electrical infrastructure in the roads for inductive chargers, whereby your car could report your account to the utility company and the utility could charge for your power usage.
Alternately, we could just let the Government do it, but when you renew your registration you have to turn in your mileage, and they forward that to your utility, and bill you.
Yeah Old McNinja says that's not true.
Splitting hydrogen is hard.
You can safely lift airships with Hydrogen.
No, it's because they're pumps. You can create water, or you can use an Archmedes screw. One of these is easier.
Hydrogen has the opposite problem that if you don't drive, you lose power. It leaks. Through a half inch of solid steel.
Top-tier solar panels are now close to 19.2%. Solar collectors using polished metal parabolic reflectors concentrating sunlight onto sterling engines are close to 40% (38% actually).
You know how I can tell you've never tried to store and transport hydrogen without loss?
It's your lack of esoteric materials and liquid helium coolant tanks.
Heh... I guess you understand then why I'm not a soldier and why I find war sad. In times passed, before unified governments (UN) and world-wide backroom politics, war meant something. You had the bad guys--the ones that were rallying under their great and powerful expansionist empire to go out, kill people, rape women and children, burn down houses, and conquer; and you had the knights in shining armor that were trying to stop it, with the single-minded goal of protecting themselves, their families, and a whole shitload of total strangers that just didn't deserve to be trodden upon.
Now we send people to die for political shows, and we tell them it's to "protect their country" or "ensure freedom" or "kill the infidels that wish to come and defile our virgins!" and they buy it.
People sign up in the US thinking they'll be part of something great. I wish we could withdraw our military from this bullshit and send our soldiers out to do actual great things, not play pawn in shows of military strength and political banter.
Tijuana! You're right, I was off by an order of 1000, shit.
Also, I pay for a "flush tax", plus I pay municipal (city) water on my property taxes, plus the water flow is used to calculate my sewage usage and added as a sewage bill. The "flush tax" is an additional standard sewage tax(!) that aims at a fund to restore our wetland assets from damage caused by all this sewage being spewed into the environment. I pay my electric bill to Baltimore Gas and Electric, a privately-owned corporation recently acquired by the conglomerate private entity Constellation Energy; they charge me for distribution, as the distribution network is privately owned by BGE, but they forward my commodity payments to the private entity American Power for 100% 'green' (non-air-polluting, containable) electricity and to Mount Washington Gas and Electric for 100% offset natural gas (I pay a LOT more for natural gas commodity, but the extra buys carbon offsets that go into programs to improve air and water quality).
So yes, I pay a bunch of private entities for some "public" infrastructure, and a lot of public entities for other actually-public infrastructure. I pay the government based on my usage of water and on estimated usage of sewage infrastructure, and I pay the power company based on my metered usage of supplied commodities and on distribution of said commodities through their privately-owned distribution network. Our state asserts that the fuel tax is used to fund our roads, although I know better: they get federal funding that comes from my federal income tax, although I know I don't do $15,000 of damage to the roads each year.
I'm actually advocating the mortgage interest deduction be fenced because it pushes up the cost of houses disproportionately. That house was more expensive because most people are convinced they get the interest back, and they treat it at sale as if they will pay $5000 and the government will get $5000 back to them. The thought of a big windfall also makes people accept paying more, so rather than just $5000 they accept a $10,000 increase in house price. And so on.
Of course over 30 years that winds down to some $100,000 extra in costs. Then there's the fact that it's on top of your standard deduction--for me, taking my interest as an itemized deduction has been a loss since day 1, and I'm single. My itemized deduction is less than my standard deduction. Now, my parents, married, bought a $250,000 house... the first year, they claimed ~$12,600. Problem: Their standard deduction is $11,600. They got $1000 more deducted, about $300 back in taxes. The second year, it was less than the standard deduction, so there's no longer a benefit.
Have you compared your total itemized deduction with your mortgage against the greater of either A) your standard deduction; or B) your itemized deduction sans mortgage? Because it sounds like you're deducting $16,000 per year, which at the current rates (my rate is 2.785% but let's say 3%) means you have a half a million dollar house. I'm shedding the tiniest tear about your $1350.
For reference, he pays $10,000 per year to walk on sidewalks that are built with $5000 of cement, which last 15-20 years.
Electricity and phones are private infrastructure, which he pays for in something called a "Utility Bill".
Sewage and water are public infrastructure, which he pays for in "Water" and "Sewage" usage taxes, plus a mandatory "flush tax" of roughly $150/mo.
Roads are maintained by the gas tax, which he pays for per fuel in the car he actually drives. His car won't do much damage to the roads, which last 15-20 years passing thousands of cars per hour per day.
Perhaps he's using about $200 of services he doesn't directly pay for, and paying $10,000 for it. Also, last year, the US Government spent $500,000,000 to purchase and distribute condoms in Tijuana to clients of sex workers--i.e. they bought condoms for dudes picking up hookers with our tax money. The US Government also gives rice to Europe, Asia, and Saudi. I don't think the US Government gave this guy $10,000 of condoms and rice, either.
You signed up to be a lap dog and a tool, not to do anything great or even get a guarantee that you wouldn't be a political pawn sent to murder others who are also political pawns with the only quarrel between the two of you being that somebody is telling each of you that the other person is evil and wants to kill you.
"We have to pass this bill so you can see what's in it." She said that the American People didn't understand the 800 page document being discussed and wouldn't get it until it was implemented and they could see it in action and understand.
Yes but you have to convince gas stations to carry fuel cells, which take up space. They don't have extra unused space, this is expensive and wasteful and you use that extra space for something profitable.
Yeah, when you suddenly require infrastructure, you get problems. We have gas stations. Now we need battery stations? Charging stations are easy enough, parking garages can provide them and they're easy to install--but the electrical power infrastructure itself needs upgrades. Again, we already have gas stations, and those were slow enough to get rolled out (but they rolled out naturally as cars rolled out), so the problems of initial deployment weren't as severe as the problems of changing or, worse, fragmenting technology (the overhead of all this fragmented infrastructure is huge).
(3) Every gay man has HIV too. Also every woman with heels and/or tattoos is a hooker. Every guy with tattoos and/or a tank top shirt is a rapist. Everyone who drives a white van is a serial killer.
(4) I've bought plenty of stuff for less than 20% of its value. Garage sales, ebay, etc. Ebay must be a giant fencing operation to unload stolen goods. (It probably is) (don't tell me it's not more than remotely likely--you know damn well a ton of shit on ebay is probably stolen goods)
(5) Drugs are traded in Bitcoin.
I'd expect a courier to have plenty of cash on him yes. The concept of an illegal bank hadn't occurred to me, and what you're talking about sounds like banking underground. In any case it makes knowing about this stuff sound even less appealing than knowing about legitimate transactions, for the same reason: the next guy is tailing the first guy, and wants you to tell him all about any large amounts of cash you saw that he wants to steal... and not talk to anyone else... which we can arrange with a little thing called Portland Cement.
Man you've got a lot of complicated movie plots. Real life actually has money couriers for collectors secretly moving around antiques and art pieces, but man. Trafficking a million dollars to Mexico? Is this the plot for Lethal Weapon 5? You have a million dollars and they're in Mexico; go to Canada. Or Japan. Fuck man, you're a criminal, why aren't you stealing shit?
(3) I know there's a lot of drug dealers around me, dunno if they deal in a lot of cash. Maybe they do, who knows? I've met people who probably had large quantities of cash and probably weren't drug dealers, though.
(4) is invalid. He didn't know what the cash was for. I've seen cash I didn't want to know what it was for. I've seen cash in huge sacks I didn't want to know any more about, up close. Closer than I'd want to be, in fact.
(5) he attempted to not be a part of anything involving large cash. This is smart. If I'm dealing with legitimate collectors or bounty hunters trafficking large amounts of cash for legal purposes, while academically and from a distance this is interesting (like the drug trade, actually), I don't want to specifically be a part of this. There is a possibility, a very real possibility, that people are trafficking drugs without trafficking a lot of cash; I've known drug runners (well, people who were drug runners in the 90s, but 15 years had since passed) going from Jersey to Baltimore every weekend, and they didn't carry around $800,000. Some interesting stories came out of that, like having an 8 year old kid rob you at gunpoint demanding all the cocaine you have? Yeah that makes me want to be a drug dealer.... (that occurred IN the city I live in, not along the way). Honestly I wouldn't expect a drug runner to have nearly $1M on him, but I sure as hell don't want to be a part of that.
The lights are off and I can hear them giggling and talking across the street. I can hear peoples' cell phones ringing in houses 3-4 units down. In the apartment I could hear everything in all 6 units in my building as well as the top two floors (4 units) and the closest bottom floor unit in the next building. There are windows in these units, and when the shades are down you get an off-white square or a black square facing you. It's off-white if the lights are on, black if they're off. Yet people are in the room... at least 5 distinct voices. What are they doing? Must be smoking pot.
You're not required to have or declare a registered business to get a trap. Installers are legally allowed to put them on anyone's car barring explicit knowledge of illegal use. Is money illegal?
"Basically said" is a loaded term. Stop using weasel words.
His knowledge moved from "suspicion that some of my clients are probably drug dealers" to "holy SHIT that's a lot of money!" His knowledge did not move to "Oh wow, you're a cocaine runner! I know because people don't get money!"
My neighbors are black and they stay up at night with the lights off not having sex. They're probably smoking weed. I should call the cops 'cause I know they're smoking weed.
No, he installed a new trap even though he knew it was being used to transport a lot of money he knew nothing about and didn't want to know anything about. Look, when a licensed bounty hunter pulls up to me and he's got a footlocker and I see him checking the locks and notice it's loaded with a million dollars, I don't want to know about that money. It's probably (almost guaranteed) to be a legal deal; I want no part of this. Do you know why bounty hunters are paid to transport money from time to time? Hint: it's not because shit you want to be around happens around that money.
There are lots of cases of collectors trading things like paintings and statues for a lot of money. Objects get transferred low profile, in vans and pick-up trucks with secret compartments, with cash transported the same way. These are legal deals, but for security (Paranoia) reasons people don't want to stick it on a big ass Dunbar armored transport. A big part of that is people don't want you to know what deals are happening, they don't want the general public to know who has a DaVinci in their house, those things go from place to place and so does the money and all that's invisible. You obviously don't know much about the collector's trade.
The shoes/foreigner/spy one is actually a well-known example. I'll let you figure it out, or maybe someone will fill in the blanks for you.
You're contradicting yourself here. The guy didn't know these people, he didn't deal with drug dealers, so he wouldn't have been able to accurately determine who is a drug dealer... yet you claim he 'knew' they were drug dealers and was liable? Because they had money and a car and he didn't know what they did for a living but knew they had money and a car?
Look I don't want to know about your massive cash bank in your pickup truck. Shit comes back to me, people will kill me for your money because they think I know something about that wad. Money is not something you need to know about in general.
So there are no receipts for those shoes you're wearing. And I haven't seen shoes like that. You must be a foreigner, that means you're a spy!
Dunno, didn't ask. But it was obvious, you know? Stuff you just know. Like how you just know that dude that you don't really know but that has money and a nice car is a drug dealer. Because who has money and a car? Drug dealers.