upvote

points

by whatever19 hours ago |
comments
upvoteby rob748 hours ago|
next
[-]
"The ones who pay will pay" is always true (from people using public transport without a ticket to "normal" tax payers having to shoulder the losses caused by loopholes and "incentives" for the upper 0.1%), but resigning to it so explicitly is rare.
reply
upvoteby philipallstar8 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
> caused by loopholes and "incentives" for the upper 0.1%

You'd be amazed at how most of this sort of thing is not done by the same people you blame for everything.

reply
upvoteby TeMPOraL8 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
Yeah. My impression is, small players exploit the loopholes like there's no tomorrow, big players hire external consultants to give them least-effort playbook and take over liability, as anything more clever is exponentially more expensive.
reply
upvoteby sirtaj7 hours ago|
parent|
next
[-]
One of the funniest ideas I heard was that we in South Asia do corruption properly, because unlike the West, even the poorest person gets to be corrupt while in the West you have to have money and know people. Democracy!
reply
upvoteby scottyah5 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
It's just not true at all though, and I don't get where the meme comes from other than the politicians pointing their fingers at the rich so we don't look at them. If there wasn't incentive to be homeless, we wouldn't have so many.
reply
upvoteby lesuorac7 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
[-]
How is creating your own ETFs to avoid paying taxes low effort?

I mean, it's very low effort to have somebody else do all the work. But you'll never see a self-employed electrician creating an account in the Cayman Islands to avoid taxes.

reply
upvoteby philipallstar7 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
You'll see a load of people on benefits being tax-negative, though. If paying taxes is your measure, then an honest assessment of who pays taxes wouldn't land you at the ultra-rich.
reply
upvoteby blitzar8 hours ago|
prev|
next
[-]
> The ones who pay will pay.

Until solar panels came to liberate us from the utility overlords.

reply
upvoteby whatever18 hours ago|
parent|
next
[-]
And handed us over to the mafias that collect protection money for solar panels.

A failed state will be fail-stating regardless of the technology.

reply
upvoteby vagrantJin2 hours ago|
parent|
next
[-]
A failed state is a funny thing. It cannot fail indefinitely and yet it persists in a limbo.
reply
upvoteby TeMPOraL8 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
[-]
Indeed, you need to insure from the risk of brick-rain where this weather phenomenon occurs!
reply
upvoteby inglor_cz8 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
[-]
In places where the grid is reliable, approximately no one disconnects voluntarily from it, and solar panels are just a nice extra.

It is the places where the grid is failing where solar panels indeed liberate you, but not from the utility overlords, but from incompetent and corrupt governance.

reply
upvoteby mixdup8 hours ago|
prev|
[-]
I mean this is the case universally, even if the losses aren't in a specific line item the cost of generating that power has to be covered overall

There's usually an incentive to solve this though because this shrinkage, in retail terms, would be handled at the cost of power generated (without any profit margin) whereas if it was sold to a paying customer it'd have a margin built in. If the Greek utilities are allowed to make a profit on that losses line item, that is insane

reply
upvoteby sokoloff8 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
If a utility is regulated to a set profit outcome, it will make a profit on stolen electricity just via math.
reply
upvoteby mixdup8 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
it depends on how the regulations are written. not every single cost gets to go into the guaranteed return on equity. Probably plenty of examples where it is, but also there are definitely a lot of examples where that's not true. Given how militant most utilities are at preventing theft, either parent comment OP is just being cynical or there is something very off about the situation there vs. most places
reply