nz has no meaningful economy. they have a real estate market and agriculture which has maxed out its productivity, because they have completely run out of land. they have cheap, generally low quality colleges, and attract middle class/rich asians to live there for a few years and get a strong passport.
they also have a big problem with alcoholism and domestic violence, and an absurdly complicated tax system. 15% first nations and 15% asian immigrants, the 70% euro population is skewed elderly and contributes most of the tax receipts, and that includes a lot of brit retirees
the problem is they run the country like canada/norway/australia/alaska, except those places all have enormous resource exports that pay for the welfare state. nz just has milk farms
the median salary is less than USD $50k, and these people can get the EB3 greencard or just move to EU/ Australia
I'll give you most of those criticisms, but I'm a little surprised you think our tax system is overly complicated. For the vast majority of people it's pretty much just a progressive PAYE income tax handled by your employer and a flat 15% GST/VAT on purchases without all the carve outs that seem common elsewhere.
the capital gains tax system in nz is complicated and inconsistent compared to most countries, bright line tests
the way that nz taxes foreign sourced income is also very complex with 'deeming rules' etc
it results that rich people probably pay 10% total tax and normal people pay 20%+ income tax, and then normal people cant afford real estate and move to australia.
... have you never been to another country? I've lived in the UK, USA and Denmark, and NZ has, by far, the simplest and easiest tax system. Especially for running a business. The UK and USA are especially complex with so many rules and carve outs.
My first job in the UK involved reading through mountains of tax laws to write a payroll system.
Not that that's necessarily the best thing in the world, I believe there was some trouble a few years ago because being easy and cheap to register a business led to a lot of dodgy shell companies.
yeah man what a mediocre loser all he did was create the first cloud based ecommerce platform , sell it to yahoo for $49m in the 90s, then co-found the most successful early stage VC firm of all time, which made THIS forum which you are using to attack him
its reasonable praise. a 19 year old social outcast who grew up in the midwest drops out of ivy league and starts a company before smartphones exist that he sells for $43 million dollars at age 27, then invested almost all the money into more startups, became a billionaire, and hijacked chatgpt from the richest person in the world.
sama looks like he has been punched in the face hard and is scared of being punched in the face again. he also
dario comes across like a guy who has never even been in a fight and cant believe a fight is even real.
there is something very dangerous about a person who believes that they are "good" and then believes that in fact their version of good is superior to the government, and they should ignore the government which ostensibly represents the people, while building a technology that will make millions of white collar jobs go away (democrat voters) and revolutionise violence (dod/dow - republican voters)
imagine if IBM decided in 1960s they were going to start telling NASA/DOD how to use their mainframes and saying USgov couldnt have an IBM if they were going to use it in vietnam etc
well yeah but should Smith and Wesson just be like man the US Gov doesnt align with our corporate values so we are just gonna start selling belt fed machine guns to civilians
absurd yes but same principle. companies have to be subject to government especially in technologies that enable or manage violence. this is because the role of the government is to collectively manage and allocate violence in the manner the people desire
> companies have to be subject to government especially in technologies that enable or manage violence. this is because the role of the government is to collectively manage and allocate violence in the manner the people desire
I don’t know what you’re describing, but it’s not how the US works.
Companies aren’t extensions of the state; they’re private actors that have to follow the law. If Congress wants something prohibited, it passes a law. Otherwise firms are free to choose who they do business with.
agencies create many regulations which affect companies, with no input from congress. the ATF in 2017 banned 'bump stocks' by reclassifying them as machineguns with zero input from congress.
companies and the people who work for them are subject to the state via the law and regulations. if they violate the law, the state will use violence to enforce the law, with a government entity called law enforcement and law enforcement officers.
if new technologies are invented, like the internet, missiles, nuclear power, and so on, which represent an ability to manage and allocate violence, or remove the state ability to control violence, the government needs to reassert their monopoly on that violence and take control of it. without this monopoly, how will they collect taxes and enforce the law?
without the monopoly on violence the government is little more than an idea
You’re kind of losing the plot here. The original topic was whether Anthropic can set conditions on a contract with the government, which they obviously can. If Anthropic says “we won’t sell this unless you agree to X safeguards,” the DoD can either accept the terms or buy from someone else.
my point is the government/DoD/DoW/state can set conditions that it wants, and do what they want. DOD can literally invoke DPA with trump and force anthropic to sell them the product
"On October 30, 2023, President Biden invoked the Defense Production Act to "require that developers of the most powerful AI systems share their safety test results and other critical information with the U.S. government" when "developing any foundation model that poses a serious risk to national security, national economic security, or national public health."
for the same reason people had to start using microsoft excel when windows 95 came out
yes you could wait a few years as an accountant until quickbooks/intuit/whatever was built out, but arguably being good at spreadsheets+basic VBA between 1995 and 2010 paid about as well as being a python dev these days
eventually i realised it was cheaper just to vibecode and buy put options over my company
by managing the risk of failure and technical debt with a financial instrument, i have a lot more freedom to move fast and break things, and scale aggressively
it is if you have specific event driven knowledge that the put options would gain from
but if you just buy deep out of the money put options every year, say 50% price drop, in a 10b5-1 structure, its ok. you will get sued a bit more than usual
not much different than buying life insurance, except if your company crashes like monday.com , some schmuck who sold you the puts will have to pay you a tonne of cash then you can do a dilutionary rights issue or just use the cash buy a boat in miami and start something else
>The number of international students studying in Australia totalled 833,041 for the January-October 2025 period
>The United States hosts the highest number of international students on record, with approximately 1.1 to 1.2 million
The US has 32% more students than Australia and 1121% more people. Imagine if the US took on 13 million foreign college students per year lol
It does help them in the long run, because it ensures they get to reside in australia. after 4 years they get permanent residence rights and benefits, etc
you are both correct, but what if there is no trauma?
two teenagers move into the same house because their parents started a relationship. they see each other little because both step-parents have shared custody arrangements. they have no biological connections whatsoever. four years later they are both 19, alone together a lot, et cetera. but simultaneously, this is a huge taboo, a betrayal of the parents, a great psychodrama
i knew one guy in college whose girlfriend cheated on him, with his biological father. a great betrayal, a great freudian cuckolding. what kind of strange fantasy will this man have now?
this is one of the most popular themes in pornography for whatever reason. incest titles increase click through rates to any porn video, even if they contain no incest content or even reference to incest
why this is so huge is fascinating. i suspect it is not really about the age gap, but rather the emotional trauma and sexual confusion so many people experience living in the same house hold as non biological "family members". the tension between "it is taboo to be attracted to my family" and "I am sexually attracted to a physically attractive person of no biological relation who lives in my house"
a male and female 19 year old of no biological relation, who only met each other 4 years earlier when their parents started dating, would very naturally feel sexual attraction to each other. indeed, they would share many of the social and biological traits of their parents. yet, this would be a massive taboo. consider the huge trauma of the mother being betrayed by her daughter sleeping with her step-sibling, or even her step-parent, fear of this, jealousy, fantasy.
of course the combination of taboo with sexual attraction will result in an entire genre of erotic fantasy much like adultery, cheating, professor-college student, or any other relationship of power and betrayal
the real question is, at what point does expressing the human condition become illegal? especially when as others have noted, it is legal to do the thing in real life but apparently not photograph it
and if this content is harmful to the consumer, why is other pornography apparently not? Should we ban also onlyfans?
In a similar vein, imagine the step parents aren't married, they're just platonic friends. They would probably be overjoyed if their children connected romantically.
Also, I can just see the industry changing from "stepbrother" to "my mom's boyfriend's son." Suddenly if the parents aren't married then it's not illegal. What about if the parents are divorced? Does ex-step-sibling count? The whole thing seems absurd. These are works of fiction that have not "graduated", as Preet Bharara would say.
> why this is so huge is fascinating. i suspect it is not really about the age gap, but rather
Alternate theory: it's a genre tag that implies a whole pile of arbitrary features. Kind of along similar lines as how calling a movie a "space western" tells you quite a lot about it, despite making absolutely no sense if you try to take it strictly literally.
they also have a big problem with alcoholism and domestic violence, and an absurdly complicated tax system. 15% first nations and 15% asian immigrants, the 70% euro population is skewed elderly and contributes most of the tax receipts, and that includes a lot of brit retirees
the problem is they run the country like canada/norway/australia/alaska, except those places all have enormous resource exports that pay for the welfare state. nz just has milk farms
the median salary is less than USD $50k, and these people can get the EB3 greencard or just move to EU/ Australia
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