I am reading a book called "Die Broke."

It is a plan to spend your last dollar on your last day on Earth. I am ahead of schedule. I just don't know by how much.

Why Governments Tax: A List

If governments that issue currency don’t need to tax, why do they do it?

We’ve been naive. To beat the tobacco mafia, we need to think like the mafia

Six years ago, the Commonwealth collected $16.3 billion in tobacco excise. That figure will have collapsed to $4.1 billion this year, Treasury estimates, and by the end of the decade it’ll be just $2 billion. Meanwhile, investigations of wastewater by the Australian Bureau of Statistics suggest that since 2017 nicotine consumption (including from illegal vapes) has increased by 40 per cent.

Let’s face it: the mafia has won the tobacco wars.

The Commonwealth now faces competitors in the form of black market shops on every second suburban strip. Those competitors have 80 per cent market share to the Commonwealth’s 20 per cent. The Commonwealth is a bit player now with the main field of competition between the black market suppliers – and that is why we have seen more than 200 firebombed tobacco shops in Victoria alone.

Billions of dollars of revenue are going up in smoke while the crime bosses are cashing in. MARIJA ERCEGOVAC

Let’s be clear about who we are dealing with. Organised crime is run like a business. It has suppliers, logistics, retail outlets and market share estimates. Its product costs a couple of dollars to make and sells for $15 to $20 against a legal price of $40 to $50, of which about $30 is tax. It responds to margins as any firm would, and uses arson the way a legit business uses advertising.

Imagine an organised crime business watching its revenues fall from $16 billion to $4 billion. It would not have watched. It would have organised itself so that the leak was noticed early and made sure that people who could stop it were rewarded for stopping it. If you are going to fight the mafia, you need to think like the mafia. That means thinking like a business, and thinking about incentives.

Ours are wrong. The Commonwealth sets the tax and collects every dollar. The states run the police, the inspectors, the licensing schemes and the courts that actually determine whether the tax gets paid. The states bear all the costs of closing down the mafia but get none of the revenue. Preventing an illegal sale sends $30 to Canberra of which the state governments in Spring and Macquarie Street get nothing. What Spring/Macquarie Street do get is the costs of enforcement: a police taskforce, a licensing bureaucracy, more cops on the beat, more time taken up in courts and space taken up in remand/prison. The revenue they would protect belongs to somebody else…

Is The Internet Dead?

“It’s no longer strange to think that AI might be everywhere, edging out all forms of human interaction: bots talking to bots, all the way down.” This is … not great. - The Atlantic

Epstein Files Transparency Act II

Thomas Massie just dropped a bombshell on the House floor. He named 14 Epstein co-conspirators, some of whom had previously been redacted and or as not identified co-conspirators in the incomplete library of documents released by the DOJ. Massie and Ro Kanna are demanding immediate prosecutions.

• Jes Staley
• Leon Black
• Les Wexner
• David Copperfield
• Lapo Elkann
• Tom Pritzker
• Glenn Dubin
• Frédéric Fekkai
• Eduardo Teodorani
• Jean-Luc Brunel – purportedly died by suicide in a French prison.
• Daniel Siad – found dead in his apartment in France this summer.
• Ramsey Elkholy
• Andrew Albert Christian Edward Mountbatten-Windsor [formerly known as Prince Andrew] – who committed crimes in the United States.
• Lesley Groff – who participated in trafficking girls and young women along with Jeffrey Epstein.

Rep. Thomas Massie announced the introduction of H.R. 9694, the Epstein Files Transparency Act II. This bill gives standing to state attorneys general, the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators, and members of Congress to challenge the Department of Justice (DOJ) in court for the DOJ’s failure to comply with the disclosure of materials required by Public Law 119-38, the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA). Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Teresa Leger Fernández (D-NM), Chair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, are co-leading the House legislation. Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) are leading the Senate version of the bill. 

The Epstein Files Transparency Act II is a proposed law designed to enhance accountability regarding the release of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein. Massie warned s that Mike Johnson may recess the House early just to dodge a vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act 2.0

The Electronic Frontier Foundation – Doxxing is the deliberate disclosure of personal information in order to bully, harass, intimidate, or instigate a chain of harms against someone. 

It’s a tricky thing to protect against when the jerk doing it is often able to use legal and accessible means to do so. The odds are stacked against everyday internet folk when there’s little to no comprehensive data privacy legislation keeping us safe. The responsibility is on each of us to protect ourselves, but the good news is that there’s a lot you can do to reduce your digital footprintand take control of your data. 

This post is part one of a two-part series discussing safety and response to doxxing. This first part focuses on prevention and ways to reduce your overall footprint. The second focuses on incident response, as in, steps to take if you’re in the midst of being doxxed. There will be some crossover and redundancy between these two posts, so it’s worth reading each and gaining familiarity with the steps well ahead of time.