🎓 Dr. Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@social.cleverlibre.org

@admitsWrongIfProven

> Oh, i was under the assumption that you had to declare your taxes and would be punished (financially or with jail if you cannot pay) if you did not declare anything.

This is mostly correct except you have to remove the "or with jail" part, remove that and its correct.

> So that is wrong, you can just not do anything and the default tax is payed/deducted in the US?

If you do nothing then the IRS will call you in for an audit and demand you pay and give you a chance to argue the amount owed. There will be a very hefty penalty of interest for back taxes owed you didnt file (As they dont tend to come after you until youve done it for a few years). If you refuse to cooperate the IRS will do their best to estimate the value for you and just forcable deduct from your account. But it wont be a fair amount it willb e a HUGE amount over what you would have paid if you did it the right way. Both that they overestimate by a huge margin, and because there are huge financial penalties.

You are only safe from jail time, not from financial penalties.

@Hyolobrika

@admitsWrongIfProven

> So you would be in favor of the company going under because nobody works for them

If people feel the demands the company have for employment, along with the offer of pay, is not fair then yes, I am ok with people choosing not to work there and having the company go under as a consequence of that companies unfair bargaining position.

> but if people do work for them, it’s fine

Don't follow what your saying. Perhaps you missed a negation somewhere. It is fine for companies to go under whether they have employees or not if the reason they go under is because no one wants to accept their employment offer.

@Hyolobrika

I only know the USA for sure. I can say this it was a fundemental thing for the USA when it was founded. In the England at the time the UK seperated debtor prisons were common, and as yous ay not paying taxes could get you in prison, as could not paying other debts.

In the USA we established early on debtors prison was a human rights violation, so you can never be jailed in the USA for not paying something you owe, even taxes. That said I am not sure if the UK still employees the older unjust laws of a debtors prison or if they have gotten some common sense and improved their approach.

@admitsWrongIfProven

@admitsWrongIfProven

> Not paying taxes in germany is more complicated.
>
> Most taxes are deducted automatically. Stores collect added value tax, income taxes are deducted from wages. You can get some back, so you could cheat by declaring fraudulent returns, but if you do nothing, the tax is payed.

In this regard the USA and germany are the same, income and sales tax and everything else happens at the point you receive it. So your ability to simply not pay taxes is fairly limited. There are a few ways you can do it (these will result in lawsuits fromt he IRS but jailtime only in situations where you outright lie or something illegal).

So one way is if your full time if you list more deductions than you actually will have, then dont pay the difference at the end of year on income.

The other way is to work as a contractor, in whcih case you pay taxes at the end of the year and not when you are paid.

@Hyolobrika

@Hyolobrika

As established, simply not paying taxes will never equate to a death of threat. Not paying will never get you jail time or any criminal threats. You will be sued by the IRS, loose, and have your money taken virtually without a single threat being made.

Not saying if this is right or wrong, but trying to equate taxes with a death threat isnt accurate (even though associating criminal laws with death threats has some validity)

@admitsWrongIfProven

@admitsWrongIfProven

Were the employees promised enough money to live off of when the employees decided to take the job? If so I see no attribution error. Everyone knew the arrangement going in, dont like it, dont take it. Thats how free markets thrive, when both sides have marketable value to offer.

@Hyolobrika

> Welfare is funded by taxes. Is not paying tax a civil offense or criminal in the US or Netherlands (your countries of residence) or Germany (admitsWrong's)?

No, simply not paying taxes is a civil offense, not a criminal one. They will come and take your money, but no risk of jailtime in and of itself.

Now it **can** be criminal but only indirectly. Like **lying** on your tax returns can absolutely be criminal. But simply not filing them at all, and therefore not paying taxes is not.

> What if you refuse to give them your money?

Then they will just take it by either directly taking it from your bank or by calling your employer and directly taking it from your paycheck before you get it.

If you have no bank account, or pay check they may take your property in a lawsuit such as putting a lein on your home. But it wouldnt be criminal to simply not pay. Civil cases dont become criminal when you dont pay. However if a judge makes a very explicit injunction in a civil case that you arent allowed to do something, and you do it anyway, then it can cost you much much more. If you misbehave in court you can get jailtime for contempt too, but again thats a bit of a stretch.

@admitsWrongIfProven

@admitsWrongIfProven "fundemental" in what sense? and what is the nature of the contribution? I mean if your asking if there always needs to be attribution, what if i pay you specifically for your silence (not to tell others you contributed)?

@Hyolobrika

I think there is some truth to it. True by hyperbolic and lacking some nuance, but true enough to be a discussion point.

Civil laws for example, no matter how much you refuse to follow such laws, will ever wind you up in jail or (Assuming you dont have a corrupt cop) a death threat. The only way we could make this assertion is if we consider loosing all your money the same as a death sentance, which also has some truth to it, but is a stretch.

But for criminal laws, yea, at the end you either need to coorperate with the law or the consequences of breaking the law, or escalate the matter to the point of violence or jail time, and if you resist jail time by executing "self-defense" when they try to take you then you will likely end up dead.

So while I do get the point and admit to the principle having elements of truth, to say such a think is highly hyperbolic and lacking a complete picture.

@admitsWrongIfProven

@admitsWrongIfProven Yea I agree, if it helped you make better logical arguments (even if your stance hasnt changed but you argue it more logically) then I too consider that a success.

@Hyolobrika

Sure, thats not relevant here because most interactions where someone fears a cop it is the first time they interacted with that person. So while they have seen cops do wrong to others, or maybe them more generally, and this generates the fear through association, that doesnt apply to this first-time interactions.

@admitsWrongIfProven

> I am curious as to what you think those are. I don’t remember uttering any concrete steps of action in the near past.

I am not talking about any specific recent past suggestions. As you pointed out we often disagree, this is what we disagree on, not intent, but rather your interpritation of potential solutioins

> To clarify: i am aware that randomness is a part of every success, by the very nature of our reality. I merely wish that returns would not snowball limitlessly, as humans are not good at determining a reasonable “enough”.

If that is the case your argument was poorly framed, since you were arguing about why should someone have success by luck of birth. In reality luck of birth then isnt the issue at all, your issue is that having money makes it easier to make money than not having money (in terms of percentage not absolute return)... thats the snowball effect.. and THAT actually would have been a valid argument in my eyes.

> I agree, though still bounded.

I see no need for bounds. There is nothing that needs correcting just because a persons skills are extraordinarily valuable.

@admitsWrongIfProven

> I do not abhor any aspect of success - i merely wish for a good baseline standard of life that is guaranteed regardless of success. Which is a completely different concept. I mean to lessen extremes, not get rid of differentiation.

No one, especially me, is saying you dont have good intent. The issue is the horrible ideas you think get you there. But thats ok, there are lots of horrible ideas floating around to address issues that would actually make the problem worse (despite the opposite)

> If everyone had exactly the same regardless of what they do, that would be as catastrophic mid-long term as if one person had everything and everyone else nothing.

Thats not how I described your stance. You have often argued that people should not be able to have success as the result of "randomness", and you have also argued people should not make more money when they put int he same amount of time and effort for a task. All of that comes froma sense of equality, but as I've said many times simply making an effort is not what is paid for, the value of that effort (Which is partly a factor of skill) is what determines your pay, and should.

@admitsWrongIfProven

> Oh i don’t simply trust any existing gouvernment to do this well. It would be counterfactual to do so, since social services that exist are plagued by many problems.

Well I never claimed you trusted existing governments. But your stance still boils down to, in theory you want a government to do these things. The fact that you want to fix corruption and ineffiency in the government first is a small detail that doesnt really change what I said.

> I do acknowledge that i wish for things that contain unsolved problems, going where i would like would require work.

Thats universally true and vague, not really an accurate description of what I described.

> You did once use the word “communism”, which makes me think you might associate things i say with aspects of a known past dictatorship - i do not want those. Rather, i am in favour of the idea of working together, which was not a feature there - it was top-down, the opposite of what i want.

I typically use communism in jest, i may have seriously applied it to certain specific ideas, but no I dont have any reason to think you ascribe fully to communism, or even partly.

@admitsWrongIfProven or to be more specific equal, as in, you seem to abhor any random aspect of success. An idea that effort, regardless of how poorly it is applied, should result in equal success regardless.

@admitsWrongIfProven I certainly dont doubt that inheritance exists... but you seem to have this idea that the natural laws of the world should either be fair, or government should make them fair... I disagree, and thus why all of your arguments, usually rooted in that concept, also wont land with me.

@dichotomiker

Im sure some people lost their minds over that one :)

@dichotomiker

So our group server has two components, the group server itself, which is not usually where you will be viewing things or logged in. So no special sorting directly on the group server.

However on our normal server where the users live there is a "group directory" which is how they peruse the groups (as is the case for most fediverse activity). For the group support ont he client side there kinda of storting and filtering yes, but the sorting could be extended a bit to make it more powerful for sure.

@til

@dichotomiker

QWhen you say matodon groups do you mean the group server I wrote several years ago that integrates well with the standard, or did Eugene after years finally implement that feature lately?

@til