[RE]

Son is going to buy a hacienda in Mexico or Ecuador in the next couple of years with a nice little Abuela Cassita in back so I can raise goats and turnips again. No, I don't give a flying fuck about 'merica as it is today, and if shtf before we escape, East Flannel Oregon is as good a place for a heavily armed white motherfucker like me to stand ground on as anyplace I can think of.

I'm an Epictetus fan, myself.

Given the fairly rapid progress of global cooking and the fact running A/C in countries with energy deficit will be problematic,  I'm not sure it's the best location for a retirement casita.

Far as Epictetus is concerned, I'm not sure the things he classifies as in our control really are, and the ones he labels not can always be ignored.  So it's not a real clear cut division.  What are the "lesser" things not to be carried away with?  At what point is something important enough to care about, even if it's not in your control?  Property may not be in your control nor is taxation, but if your taxes are raised, the tendency is to care about that.  Few people are at peace with having their taxes hiked up.  Particularly when the taxes are used to fund something also not in their control that they don't agree with.

RE

[RE]

I am at peace.

Nonsense.  You're only at peace because currently the taxman's cut doesn't constitute an existential threat.  Once it does, the only way you'll be at peace is dead.  You either have to rebel and not pay up or you'll die.

A similar strategy is that of the ascetic or monk who takes a vow of poverty.  If you're OK with having nothing but subsistence level shelter and food, you're free of the taxman because of math.  Even a 100% tax can't touch you, because 100% of 0 is still 0.  Knarf here chose the monastic life, although it's not necessary to be at zero income here in the FSoA, simply low enough to be below the poverty line.  I have also done this for the last 25 years, keeping my income threshhold just below where once I took the standard deduction, I either owed $0 or I got an annual tax return, usually in the neighborhood of about $500.  My income from SS and my pension comes to just $80 less than the maximum allowed by Medicaid to be eligible for that.  For the 10 years prior to that I only worked part time, about 25 hours a week to keep myself at the poverty line.

However, you can't go lower than this and still not care and be at peace.  If you're homeless, even if you're OK with living in a tent, the Gestapo won't let you do that, they'll show up one day and toss it in the dumpster.  I've never had to face homelessness, the closest I came was after my divorce.    I had my mom to fall back on though and ended up moving back home with her, after 6 months living in my van while I worked 2 jobs and worked on my Master's.  I slept in the van and showered at the university gym.

Doomsteading is another method, but as you noted the schools out in the boonies ain't so great, so if you CARE about your kid's education, you gotta quit on it and move somewhere.  This was in the sphere of something you could control, but you weren't at peace because your kid wasn't learning anything.

Stripping yourself down to be able to be at peace and be happy with just what you NEED rather than all the things you WANT is fairly difficult to do.  You wanted a good education for your kid, but it wasn't an existential threat.  You could have stayed on the Doomstead and homeschooled.

Anyhow, no biggy, we all compromise sometimes on our philosophy.  Despite my Jonne Donne philosophy,there's a certain point at which I stop caring about a homeless person.  After enough years on the street, drug addicted and alcoholic, he's beyond salvation.  Kids in my 9th grade Physical Science class who couldn't do basic math and busied themselves disrupting the class fit into people I stopped caring about also.  Nobody's Perfect, even Jesus.  He got ticked off enough to throw over the tables of the banksters.  He didn't have infinite patience. lol.

RE

[RE]

Anyone who thinks taxes are an existential threat needs to harden the fuck up.

Currently here in America, they're not.  However, in many societies over the millenia, the land owner would set the tax rate so high that when the harvest came in, after you paid the Crown its tax and the Tithe charged by the Church, there wasn't enough grain left over for the family to eat.  You'd end up eating the seed corn and not have enough to plant the next season.  Particularly if the King was at war and the treasury was bankrupt this would happen.

Few people are at peace with having their taxes hiked up.

I said I was, and gave you specific reasons why taxation never bugged me. And then you dismiss it as "nonsense". I'm putting you on "ignore" for the rest of the month. I don't have a cooler button.

Well, now you know why we have the cooler.   Sometimes you just don't want to deal with somebody who won't buy what you are selling.  I can't just ignore people because the Diner is my responsibility.   So when I need a break from what that person is trying to sell, I turn them off for a few days.  But you are free to ignore me, I have no problem with that.

RE

[Surly1]

https://poweringautos.com/is-the-smoke-from-a-lithium-ion-battery-harmful/

Info on the smoke.

Holy shit. Don't get caught downwind.

[Surly1]

Quote from: comrade simba on Jan 22, 2025, 06:11 PM
    I am at peace.

Nonsense.  You're only at peace because currently the taxman's cut doesn't constitute an existential threat.  Once it does, the only way you'll be at peace is dead.  You either have to rebel and not pay up or you'll die.

Anyone who thinks taxes are an existential threat needs to harden the fuck up.

Few people are at peace with having their taxes hiked up.

I said I was, and gave you specific reasons why taxation never bugged me. And then you dismiss it as "nonsense". I'm putting you on "ignore" for the rest of the month. I don't have a cooler button.

.


Boy, this thread is vintage RE. I told you what I was, I told you why, and then you turned around and called it nonsense. From the Greatest Hits collection.

[RE]

Boy, this thread is vintage RE. I told you what I was, I told you why, and then you turned around and called it nonsense. From the Greatest Hits collection.

I try to stay consistent. 

RE