Based on what I know of Imposter Syndrome and the Dunning-Kruger effect, it seems you’re at your most competent when you feel like you’re at your least.

I’m not sure how you come to that conclusion, even with the internet meme version of the Dunning-Kruger effect. In the meme version, the incompetent think they are most competent, but I don’t think it follows that the most competent would think they are least competent.

I would summarize the actual Dunning-Kruger effect as: people tend to think they are a bit above average, and actual skill factors in only slightly. Worth emphasizing that these results are over groups of people, and individuals have extreme variation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

Interlibrary loans are a wonder of the world and a glory of civilization

-Jo Walton, Among Others

I guess the argument is that they will raise rent by the maximum, even at excessive risk of losing tenants? Because if the tenants will pay that much, why wouldn’t the landlord charge that anyway?

Every presidential election is important, and it never makes sense to make a “protest vote”. That’s just not how voting works.

I’m sure somebody has cried wolf at every election, but McCain and Romney never aimed to become dictators. Republicans currently have a published plan to institute fascism. It’s pretty obvious that these elections actually are exceptional.

I oppose beef subsidies, but the unsubsidized price seems entirely fabricated. How can $38 billion across 80 billion pounds of meat and 25 billion gallons of milk make hamburger $25 cheaper per pound?

The complete rules are here: https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/refundsfinalruleapril2024

The meat of it is the table on pages 9-14 and mostly comprehensible.

Worth noting:

• A change to your flight number is always a “cancellation” and you may choose to accept a refund
  • The expectation is most people would not, for the same reason most don’t cancel their refundable tickets - they want to go on the flight
• There are no carve outs for weather, etc.
  • I am really glad to see this because airlines could claim “weather” for connecting flights, so any weather anywhere meant they could delay your flight

The carbon dividend makes the policy overall progressive, like a mini-UBI. It seems we agree that helping the poorest people is a good thing, and they will benefit the most.

The carbon tax should not be an exclusive policy. Canada estimates its tax will account for 1/3rd of its emissions reductions by 2030. That’s a nice big chunk for one policy, but plainly insufficient on its own. Absolutely fund renewable infrastructure (including subsidies), public transport, walkable/bikeable housing, etc. Set hard limits / bans where appropriate (banning all emissions is not remotely feasible). A carbon tax is highly complementary to these.

Politics is messy. In Canada the Conservative Party (remind me – are they for or against fighting climate change?) opposes the carbon tax, and associates it with Labor, so they have a ton of propaganda against it. Half of Canadians don’t even realize they are getting a huge rebate back, let alone that it’s more than they are paying in taxes (Abacus Data). That’s why it’s important to get people to understand how a carbon tax actually works.

If you think businesses can just absorb a tax without changes, then great: set the price of carbon emissions at the cost to remove it from the atmosphere and problem solved.

More realistically, theory and practice both predict that businesses will look for cheaper (i.e. less polluting) approaches and consumers will choose cheaper (i.e. less polluting) products. And both will do so in ways that have the highest impact for the lowest effort.

Maybe you can clarify what you mean by taking money out of the equation, because it’s not clear to me what steps that involves or what the expected outcome looks like.

And the best thing to push the government to do is pass a Carbon Tax – tax polluters and give that back to the people.

Note that “could afford” means the rent is 30% or less of their income. This is a pretty reasonable target, but not inviolable, especially when housing is out of whack with the rest of costs.

So to most effectively address climate change we need individuals to change their behavior. So we can just tell everyone to do that, and we are all set, right? Clearly not. We need to:

Tax Carbon

Taxing “carbon” (really all GHG emissions) creates incentives for individuals and companies to use less, making trade-offs and choosing less carbon-intensive products. It moves the threshold for switching over to cleaner and more efficient technologies. People who refuse to acknowledge climate change will still change their behavior for personal benefit. People who want to make the world better will have more options and less reliance on company marketing/greenwashing.

Read what 28 Nobel Laureates and thousands of other economists have to say: https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/

As mentioned on that page, the best use of this tax is to give it back to everyone equally. Those who pollute less than average come out ahead. Those who pollute more pay for it in (indirect) taxes.

This is wrong on top of wrong. First off, it’s 57 entities (including “Former Soviet Union”) producing 80% of the emissions tracked by the database – which covers “88% of total fossil fuel and cement emissions,” and totals 251G tonnes of CO2 equivalent gasses (CO2e) from 2016 through 2012 [1]. So with that we have 200Gt making up 70% of the global total over that 7 year period.

But fossil fuels and cement emissions are not the only source of greenhouse gasses. Human-caused global emissions are roughly 53GtCO2e annually during that time [2], for a total of 370Gt across all sources. So 200Gt is about 54% of that.

Most importantly though, this is a ridiculous measure in the first place. Who cares how many people are responsible for digging up the fuels that people are directly burning themselves in their homes and cars? If every oil well had its own company, how would that improve emissions? Nearly half of emissions are from individuals, and much of the rest is directly driven by consumer demand (e.g. power companies burning coal and gas).

Sources

• [1] https://influencemap.org/briefing/The-Carbon-Majors-Database-26913#briefing_section_bullet-26926
• [2] Our World in Data

The description of the fork incident is pretty misleading. Maccani stormed up to the officers undeterred by multiple bean-bag rounds, holding the fork reversed so that it looked like a knife. Take 20 seconds and see for yourself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwXjrS9bPQ4

A better trained / equipped group may have been able to de-escalate / disarm him, but – unlike many other cases – they didn’t just wander up and shoot him for existing.