It's disappointing to see how these sort of articles mix "wealth growth" (i.e. a paper gain such as the increase in the value of your house), with income tax. How easy it is to mislead people to take a side on the rich vs poor politically-driven fight.
>> If it is income, wealth tax, capital or some new form, the outcome has been clear.
In 1980 the US Govt collected $517 billion in taxes ($1.68 trillion in 2020 terms). In 2020 this number was $3.71 trillion. So then, the US Govt is collecting over 2.2x in taxes and inequality keeps getting worst.
How can it be that with more tax revenues, people are worst off?
The 2017 event in Catalonia was a slow-motion, low-cost coup d’etat, dressed as a democratic movement, and an event the European Union already warned was illegal. The result is that second-tier Catalan politicians and activists are now in jail.
The fact that something is illegal doesn't really address the issue of renewing/maintaining the legitimacy of a social organization. If anything saying that something is illegitimate or unjust because it is illegal suggests that one benefits from the status quo.
> vote for a party that legitimately changes the law through the defined channels
So what if no party is willing to do that? Gay marriage in many Western countries has consistently had over 50% support going back a long time[0], despite overwhelming polling, no elected governments on Earth were willing to change it except in the last few years. This is the same for other issues like marijuana decriminalisation. By your measure of legitimate change: Who does an American vote for to stop the 20 year war in Afghanistan? [1]
1. there are opaque ballot boxes,
2. there are no official ballots or envelopes,
3. the electoral census is hosted on online servers,
4. there is no electoral board, and
5. there is no counting system.
That doesn't really work in this case though. A majority in the Catalan parliament voted for the independence referendum but it was disallowed by Spanish law. Support for Catalan independence is necessarily going to be of limited interest to voters outside of Catalonia, so changing the law at the Spanish level isn't something Catalan's can really hope to achieve.
Your "Texas vs. Federal Government" argument is weak:
1. The local Catalan parliament is not above any national law. Your argument reminds me of the Texas Government vs any US Govt.
2. The pro-independence seats in parliament in Catalonia is a voter minority... in Catalonia. Check your math.
Most secessions are illegal, the US from Britain, Texas and California from Mexico. I personally don’t see anything wrong with Texas becoming independent from the US should it choose to. (Confederate secession was wrong because it was about perpetuating slavery.)
The referendum law was passed by a majority of members of the Catalan parliament. It just seems very odd that Spain would not work on a mutually acceptable structure for an independence vote. Especially if a majority of people would vote against it!
Laws and their use are not inherently just, legitimate, necessary, effective or reflective of society. Often laws provide advantges to segments of society at a cost for other segments. In that case we must evaluate whether the law is just or necessary. If the segment of society that benefits unnecessarily or unjustly from the law refuses to be held accountable, then civil disobedience by the affected segment is to be expected. There are countless instances of social and legal change achieved through disobedience instead of "following the law".
"In that case we must evaluate whether the law is just or necessary"
It is a common view that a degree of redistribution is necessary and desirable, and the social benefits are rather clear.
Even then, there are some spectacular failures at penalizing tax evasion. There are known loopholes in the Spanish and EU tax system that remain unclosed because...? Also, for comparison I'd like to point out that the fiscal amnesty enacted by the Popular Party in 2012 was evidently unconstitutional, but somehow it was not until 2017 that the Constitutional Court settled the issue. It took this court about two hours to reach a conclusion regarding Catalan independence laws.
So if the goal is to have a progressive tax system, but political parties and the courts fail at even following the current laws, what should a reformer aim at? We've seen multiple leaks about tax evaders (Falcianni, Panama papers). The information contained in those leaks was illegally obtained. Does that mean they were also unjust and illegitimate, and therefore disregarded or condemned?
Not sure how these facts fit in your legalist perspective, and I don't understand the insistence in equating legality with justice, unless, as I said, one is benefiting economically and culturally from unjust laws, but doesn't want to feel like the bad guy. "Are we the baddies?"
You tell me how those who do not want independence "benefits unnecessarily" from such. Curious to know what civil liberties those who seek independence are being taken away from them.
It's not about being dispatchable or not, it' about the volatility renewable generation and the problem this generates... and how other non-renewables need to be called by the TSO.
I was just going to say this. This is what many people do not understand, it's "the cheapest" technology but the cost of the necessary ancillary services, balancing mechanism, FFR, inertia, etc., to make this happen is not baked into the LCOE models. That's how shortsighted this sort of messages are.
While that's true, it's also true that the total cost of solar (taking storage into account) is far lower now than it was even 10-15 years ago. The logical thing we should be doing now is building massive amounts of storage, rather than complaining about how solar costs don't take it into account. As an added bonus, large pumped storage or fuel cell batteries can be reused for any renewable source (unlike solutions like concentrated solar), so any improvements in one can be mostly decoupled from improvements in the other, which is why I find the insistence that people add the cost of the batteries to the cost of solar to be pretty wearying. And I don't find arguments that pumped storage takes a long time and has high maintenance costs to build very convincing when the alternative, nuclear, has exactly the same requirement.
Since you seem to be from Germany, you must be fully aware that the emissions problem we have is one caused by our coal power plants and not by renewables (which also means that the emissions stats that you repeatedly posted here no longer feel like an honest mistake but rather disingenuous)
You are also conflating production cost and end user prices.
Germany counts a bunch of incredibly dumb stuff as "renewables," including wood burning, which is just one of the many reasons Germany's emissions are far higher than France's (another is continued support for coal use for political reasons). It gets only about 10% of its energy from solar.
Your cost is due to how the policies are set up, not because the tech is not up to par. Countries that invested in solar early on have a similar problem, where they funded the progress but their own solar installations are now outdated. To get out of solar now would be a mistake since you'd not even reap the benefits of that early investment.
The reason for this is that we bankrolled much of the initial trajectory of cost decline. Unfortunately, we stopped investing heavily when prices dropped due the black/red grand coalition not wanting to risk losing votes over potentially higher power prices. Now we are stuck at high Co2 and high prices.
USV jumping on the ESG bandwagon. LPs want/need to deploy capital into ESG, and USV is creating a fund to channel that excess liquidity. They will probably mask climate-related investments, with pure tech investments. Very much replicating what other funds have done, but really not making an impact in this space. Nonetheless, for USV this is more AUMs, more fees. On returns, time will tell.
Yes, this falls in the bucket of ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) [1]
Yes, there's a trend of investors seeking to deploy capital towards ESG (thankfully!)
No, this isn't going to gussy up pure-tech with the 'climate' label. I say this as former-USV founder who is now a USV LP. I can also attest to how solid the humans at USV are.
Your comment is the exact definition of a false premise: the use of an incorrect proposition (Catalonia is or was a country) that forms the basis of an argument (the EU doesn't like countries becoming independent).
I've seen the M1 Mac Mini teardown, and this new model has retained the same footprint as its Intel predecessor despite it looking like much less space was needed. I really look forward to a much smaller mac mini version in the future.
Eh...why make it smaller when you can give it room for extra storage? In the 'old days' I'd have also mentioned giving it room for extra memory too. :(
Rather than extra storage, how about just more room for a larger cooling solution, whether there's a fan or not. With Apple Silicon, it seems like performance is going to be dictated by the ability to dissipate heat, so I'd rather have a larger Mac mini that can dissipate more heat and boost for longer than a smaller one.
Nowadays most computer CPU performance is constrained by heat, but M1 on Mac mini is exceptionally constrained by its SoC design thanks to its efficiency.
Why? So far the reviews I've read have found no evidence of thermal throttling. It is so power efficient it doesn't need a large heat sink to run at peak speed.
Half hour compile of Webkit. Seems like a pretty good test. Faster than an 8 core Intel laptop, much less energy usage. 20% slower than 12 core 48 GB Mac Pro. So, per core performance is better than a desktop with a ton of RAM.
I hate non-upgradability as much as the next HN user, but it's worth noting that external USB SSDs (Samsung T7 and others) are now pushing 1GB/second at lower and lower prices. I recently got a 2TB model for $220 or so.
I say that not to excuse Apple, but perhaps some others are like me and are surprised at how fast the portable models have gotten.
So yeah, if we're in the universe where there's zero expandability, and their silicon is super powerful with low heat requirements, I guess they may as well make it smaller.
We don't really know what the needs of the other processors they are going to jam into here will look like. It's likely the next generation M series CPU will need significantly more cooling.
Also, I'd far rather they added an M.2 storage slot (or 2!) rather than making their already small device even smaller.
That said... a fanless, USB-C powered mini of any size would also be A+ as well.
or, maybe they've got a 'Mac Mini Pro' coming using whatever chip they're cooking up for the high-end Mac Book Pro and iMac Pro.. or maybe even more than one of those chips. So in that eventuality they want to maintain the bigger case footprint and much-bigger-than-needed power supply.
I'm an energy investor (primarily focused on renewables), and I couldn't disagree more. I could go on an on with examples of how government intervention has created busts across the renewables space for the past 20 years, and has thrown down the drain billions of tax payer money. I'd like to keep governments out of something that works without them.
My god this is an irresponsible comment. Where to begin? First, it fundamentally misunderstands the history of Silicon Valley tech development, which has been primarily funded by government institutions such as DARPA at its core. This is true for sustainable energy as well — it is federally funded research that is advancing solar panel efficiency, for example.[1]
Second, you have a profit motive to rewrite this narrative and position private tech investors as the key innovation enablers. This happens all the time. The reality is the VC industry cherry picks the fruit that DARPA and related agencies invest in or sustain through government procurement. It takes billions over decades of failures to produce something that can be brought to market, and it’s done at taxpayer expense. The profits are privatized.
I say it is irresponsible in this case because we are literally facing the doom of our planet. This is not time to screw around with easily disproven self-aggrandizing Liberterian narratives that would detract from the political activism we need to solve this problem. We must understand how our system really works if we hope to save ourselves.
It almost certainly doesnt though, and your personal experience over the last two decades or whatever probably means squat.
If the US government is/was capable of succeeding with the Manhattan and Apollo projects, there's no reason to believe that the same wouldn't be true of similar gargantuan efforts today.
I'm not saying that the US can solve AGCC by itself, but I am saying that uncoordinated efforts by loosely coupled private entities cannot.
FWIW, the grandparent's industry specific knowledge is in investment into developing renewable energy companies. This isn't very applicable to the article or problem at hand.
> since when do you have to be vetted/credentialed to participate in a discussion here
Since they're using their credentials to try and lend credulity to their argument. Specifically, it's an "appeal to [their] authority" on the subject, but they don't have that requisite 'authority'.
Since when is providing some background about your experience considered a negative? You should try to be a bit more generous and not assume, on almost non-existent evidence, that someone is being disingenuous.
