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Cake day: August 6th, 2026

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  • Imagine there are no taxes and no welfare programs. Spending resources on the welfare of others is entirely voluntary.

    Let’s say 20% of the population does this. What happens? The 20% of the population which is the most altruistic has fewer resources, some of which was goven to the 80% least altruistic people.

    If you do this repeatedly, ahat happens? The least altruistic people end up with the vast majority of resources. This is bad.

    What do we do instead? We establish a governmental welfare program, and we make everyone contribute to it, regardless of whether they’re altruistic or not.


  • I’m immune to propaganda because I’m smart.

    That’s not how that works. A smart person would recognize that there are degrees of smartness and degrees of immunity. Even if we accept that smarter people are less susceptible to propaganda, there is no threshold of smartness that grants immunity to propaganda.

    The most important service one can provide to a kind-of-smart person is to tell them when they’ve said something stupid. I’m happy to provide this service. Please rate 5 stars.