BlameThePeacock

Thats fine, but then restocking fees become part of you wanting to test things.

That shouldn't be on the manufacturer or other customers.

Our court systems are setup to require "beyond reasonable doubt" but sexual assault cases struggle to meet that threshold anytime there is even a little bit of grey area, then they also struggle on the defendants side when it comes to reputational loss.

Do your research before buying something?

There's no restocking fee for an item that you didn't get, because it's not a return.

A company charging you a restocking fee in that situation is a scam.

The customer always pays, not the business.

Do you want to pay extra because other people return items?

It has nothing to do with discounting it, it has to do with paying for the labour involved in the sale and refund process, which takes worker time.

You misunderstand how the tax works. It's only on the land. The buildings on it have no impact on the monthly tax amount. That's why it's beneficial to densify the land, because then that amount is split between all of the people who live there (or among multiple businesses using it)

The whole rich capturing it all can't really happen. They can't actually profit from it sitting there, it all has to be used efficiently or it loses money. People wanting a house don't have a problem paying for it every month.

If they try to monopolize all the rents (which would be prohibitively expensive) then the government can simply step in and force a sale because its their land and prevent certain groups from bidding on it. Instant monopoly break, or rather the government is the one with the monopoly.

Land is still zoned. If it can only be used for farming due to the zoning, then its not as desirable to most people and therefore has a lower lease rate from the government.

If the government decides to change the use of that land, the rental price would increase and then the farmer would likely give it up and lease something else.

It's not really that different from the current property tax reductions that apply to farms.

My hot take of the month:

Nobody should own land but the government. You should lease it directly from the government. In order to lease land, you should bid for it in an auction based on the monthly amount you will pay the government for it, plus a fixed cost for any buildings already on the property that is set by a government assessor.

The monthly amount should then be regularly updated (probably yearly) based on the value of the property (using effectively the same method for valuation we have for doing property tax assessments already)

If you build a building on land you are leasing, the building is effectively owned by you for the duration you continue to lease it. When you decide not to live there anymore, you don't sell the land or the buildings to anyone though, the government just takes control of them. The government can then assess and auction that property off to a new leaser and then transfers the fixed building assessed amount to the previous owner. The government makes no money off the building components transaction, and therefore has no reason to under or overvalue the amount.

The total amount the government leases ALL land should replace all current Property taxes, Income Taxes, and Sales taxes (remove those three taxes entirely) currently being collected, and then on top of that fund a universal basic income (including a partial amount for kids). This factors into the yearly updates to the pricing.

Business taxes should be re-imagined around this new paradigm, but would require some more thought in order to handle businesses that use zero land (foreign entities) or have a limited footprint in the country.

Renting (from an existing landlord who is leasing the property from the government) still exists, but landlords can no longer make money by just waiting for property values to increase over time. They have to pay the same amount per month as every other land owner based on the same amount of land in the same area. They become essentially just a long-term hotel business where you pay for the convenience of not having to pay upfront for the building or deal with the maintenance.

In terms of a transition over, current owners should be given a monthly number from the government to keep their current property rather than having to go through an auction process. The value of their building can be reimbursed if they move under the new system. Current owners essentially lose the entirety of the value of their land, which for a lot of people would actually be quite significant, especially those who have had the land for a long time, have too much land, or have too much land in a desirable location, or some combination of the above. Condo or other high-density owners, despite "owning" a portion of the land would actually not be impacted very much, since the monthly amounts are scaled on land, not the buildings.

This whole system has some serious benefits for everyone involved (except current owners of signficant land)

First, the removal of private land owners removes the massive drain that real estate is having on our economy. It's mostly non-productive capital sitting there earning money without doing a damn thing, and removing the incentives around investing in it will make it massively property ownership affordable.

Second, the removal of income and sales taxes is a huge economic boost for the population. You work for $20 an hour, you get to keep the vast majority of it (still probably some minor stuff for union dues, employment insurance, etc.) If you choose to spend that renting more housing, great, you're paying into the tax base to make life easier for everyone. If you are happy with a smaller property, then great you are leaving more space for others and get to keep more of your money.

Third, the pricing of land and it's return via a basic income (including kids) will drive people to be more likely to use the correct amount of land. Fuck the Boomers with their 3500 square foot 5-bedroom house on a 10,000 square foot lot in town that they raised 2 kids but that currently only has 2 occupants. Move your ass out to something more reasonable, and make a space available for a family that's raising their kids now.

Tl;dr: Private ownership of land shouldn't exist, burn it to the ground and make things better for everyone by taxing property properly.

Disclosure: I own a home, this would hurt me. I still think it's a good idea because my kids will not be able to afford a home at the current prices, let alone at the prices in 10 years when they start looking, and that's more of a problem than the pain implementing this would cause me.

It's "fewer than" not "fewer then"

Yea, we can probably keep a head alive by itself for a short period, I suspect as you pointed out that the "immediate risk of dying from a complication" means if we attempted it the first person wouldn't even last weeks or months.

The ethics of doing so on the other hand are stupidly complicated, which deters almost all effort in the development of this kind of system. You couldn't ethically do it to anything smarter than a pig without huge problems, and you may even have trouble with that.

I'm honestly surprised we haven't seen any hint of this coming out from some random billionaire funding a bunch of doctors to work on it behind the scenes. I'm sure there are doctors who for the right price would be willing to move to some country with less-stringent regulations and attempt some tests on chimps.

Protect workers from ai?

Wtf...

Are we back to buggy whips again?