Does a grain of sand have agency? Does it want to be caught by a specific size of classification sieve?

Because that’s exactly the level of agency that drives natural selection.

Um, why is tungsten green?

Really there’s a lot of green there that I wouldn’t lick.

Genes don’t have agency either.

I also have some trust issues. I’d rather not have spyware built into me.

That said if I could magically wave those problems away, I wouldn’t say no to improved senses. Eyes that can see any wavelength from radio to x-rays, with different filters for wavelength and polarization available. Same for ears too.

I have actually considered(but not super seriously) getting a magnet implant so I could detect magnetic fields and current flowing in wires, what do you think the limit of that would be if you took it to an extreme?

Mental augmentations are a bit scarier. For multiple reasons.

Maybe the value of real estate held by corporations is assigned proportionally to the shareholders? Maybe the tax rate is determined by whichever intermediate owner results in the highest rate.

I don’t see why you can’t make it enforceable and effective with less complexity than the current tax system.

I have a bit more confidence in kitten space agency.

Modern geocentrism

kinda. It’s more that “center” of the universe can be picked completely arbitrarily. I can say I’m the center of the universe, and when I spin on my chair, the universe revolves around me. You can define the frame of reference however you wish to. The change of perspective does not change how orbits work.

Lunar effect – the belief that the full Moon influences human and animal behavior.

by that short definition sure, but probably not how they mean. If you’re active at night, the amount of ambient light is surely going to impact your behavior. Not so much in areas with artificial lighting.

Memetics.

Insofar as there are self-replicating ideas, and the ones more likely to self-replicate become more prevalent…sure. Not the whole story either, as ideas can also be pushed by people that don’t believe those ideas.

Money represents things you do deserve, like the value created by your own work, as well as things you have no moral claim to, like natural resources. What makes sense to me is that the land is owned collectively. The property taxes are effectively rent to the rest of the population, and those that consider it most valuable should get to use it. I also think there should be separate taxes for things that devalue the land, like extracting minerals. You can still make a profit from extracting minerals based on the value added by your own work, but you need to pay the rest of humanity for their share of the minerals themselves.

Have to consider both the ideal and the existing situation for the best next step. Housing is a combination of value both created by human effort, and an accumulation of natural resources. I think what I’ve proposed is a big step towards fair allocation of housing, but critically, also something that could actually be implemented.

Why? You can force them to sell you a property and pay less on the mortgage than they pay on the same property on taxes.

The fault in your assumption is 1. that this would discourage corporations from buying up;

Did you plug in some numbers to see how much you pay when you own multiple homes? Rental units are not profitable when people can buy a house for cheaper than your property taxes on the same property. And normal people can do hostile buyouts from corporate landords too.

Land is a natural resource, and like air or sunlight, nobody deserves to own it more than anybody else.

“But my family has live here for generations!” sounds awful similar to “I deserve it because my great great grandfather killed the people that used to live here.”

You get to decide how much the land is worth to you. If you value it honestly and somebody else values it higher, a trade benefits both of you.

So rent is several times more expensive than a mortgage on the same property. Now what?

What does someone deserve to own? The value created by your own work yes, but nobody deserves to own natural resources like land more than anybody else. The whole point is that you get to decide how much the property is worth to you. If it’s worth more to someone else, you’re both better off for the trade. The only losers here are people trying to cheat on their taxes by giving a “low” appraisal, and people trying to hoard multiple properties.

Plug some numbers into that formula. If you own a $100k property, you pay 1k in taxes/year If you own 10 of those properties, you pay 100k/year. This would mean you have to charge more in rent than a mortgage would cost to buy the same property. The business model would become unprofitable.

Think about what the investment company’s tax rate would look like. They’d be bankrupt instantly. They’d have to pay 10M/year in taxes to maintain ownership of $10M in property.

Eh, probably paid like 25k for a house that’s worth 500k now or something. Really what we need to do is make property taxes scale more aggressively, so it isn’t economical to hoard more resources than you can actually use. Maybe something like annual tax owed = (value of all real estate owned by one person)^2/10,000,000. Perhaps with a grace period for new construction/renovations.

As for appraisal, let people declare what their property is worth, and force them to sell if someone offers 20% more than their claimed value.

I caught a (wild) rabbit with a bucket.

It was running from a dog and fell into a window well. It got so panicked when I climbed down it almost made it out on it’s own (it was about 8 feet deep). So I set the opening of the bucket against the wall with a small gap, to give it somewhere to hide, then went to the other end of the window well, and it crawled right in when I approached again. Covered it with a towel and lifted it right on out.

After a couple thousand hours in KSP1, I still managed to dodge that bullet. The only new feature I really cared about was multiplayer, and I knew it wasn’t going to happen when they they started early access without it.