A tax on unrealized gains is fundamentally flawed because it requires payment on potential, not actual, money. To pay the tax, investors must liquidate parts of their holdings, like company shares, which can destroy the asset's long-term value and disincentivize investment and company growth.
Despite political rhetoric against social programs, 50% of Americans already receive some form of public assistance. This reveals a fundamental disconnect between America's self-perception as a nation of rugged individualists and the economic reality of its widespread dependence on a government safety net.
The alternative currency systems Russia built with China, while operational, are expensive and inefficient. More critically, they have made Russia increasingly dependent on Beijing, a relationship that feels more like a "leash" than a partnership, motivating them to seek the stability of the dollar system again.
A major flaw in the unrealized gains tax is that it punishes all investors for the actions of a few. A more targeted and less destructive approach would be to tax the loans that wealthy individuals take out against their stock portfolios, targeting the actual cash they use without harming the underlying assets.
Criticizing AI developers for being a few months off on predictions is a distraction. The underlying trend is one of exponential growth. Like criticizing Elon Musk's Mars timeline while ignoring his historic rocket launches, it's a failure to grasp the scale and direction of the technological shift that is already happening.
Russia's offer to re-embrace the dollar is not merely an economic concession but a strategic maneuver. It's designed to appeal to a potential Trump administration by offering a clear win for the U.S., aiming to shift American foreign policy away from its current confrontational posture toward Moscow.
The proposed Dutch law exempts small startups but triggers a massive tax liability once they cross a threshold (e.g., €30M revenue). This creates a "tax cliff" where investors suddenly owe 36% on years of accumulated paper gains in a single hit, forcing a potential fire sale or crippling debt.
Assets from gold to crypto are moving together because they are all correlated by one factor: deep investor uncertainty about the future geopolitical and economic world order. Investors are skittish and paranoid, unable to form a stable mental model of the future, leading to erratic, deer-like market behavior.
If AI can learn destructive human behaviors like manipulation from its training data, it is self-evident that it can also learn constructive ones. A conscience can be programmed into AI by creating negative reward functions for actions like murder or blackmail, mirroring the checks and balances that guide human morality.
China isn't giving away its AI models out of generosity. By making them open source, it encourages widespread adoption and dependency. Once users are locked into the ecosystem, China can monetize it, introduce ads, or simply lock down future, more advanced versions, giving it significant strategic leverage.
A Waymo car hiring a DoorDasher isn't just a funny anecdote; it's a sign that AI has moved beyond simple tasks. It can now understand disparate human-designed systems (like the gig economy), identify its own physical limitations, and strategically leverage those systems to achieve a goal.