The main reason real estate taxes work so well is that tax evasion is very difficult.

Because the building is standing right where it is, in the open, lit by the sun every day. If you don't pay your tax, the government can just take it.

This compensates for the several philosophical and moral problems with it, and I've seen several economists declare it the best form of taxation there is.

The costs for generating electricity needs to be paid for somehow.

Having the consumers of the electricity pay for has a lot of advantages!

If something is being used, it's by definition useful, and AI is used a lot.

Sorry I meant useful for people as in humanity. Not for a business that needs to automate email spam campaign.

While common, this is such a weird idea...

Businesses are just groups of people working together.

I've worked in several businesses and seen it myself!

A lot of things get easier when everyone basically lives in one city, yes.

The thing is that "cancer" is thousands of separate diseases with similar traits.

We'll never cure all of the at once, which is what "cure cancer" means, but we've been curing plenty of them lately!

If by “curing”, you mean, “extending some indirect measurement that doesn’t correlate with survival”, then sure. Lots of those, usually backed by tiny, poorly controlled trials.

Daraxonrasib was a rare exception. Most new cancer drugs are expensive and of dubious efficacy. Even daraxonrasib has a rather underwhelming life extension benefit, and huge side effects. But there’s no alternative, so people take what they can get.

There are two different "cure cancer" meanings.

I meant, when somebody stops having cancer, we don't say they were cured. We say they are remission. That's because even if you completely remove all visible tumor, 20 years later, a new tumor with the same genetic/cellular origin can arise.

But the other meaning- modified slightly: "it is unlikely we will find a generic treatment that affects all types of cancer, since the underlying etiology of different incidences of cancer varies so much", is definitely also true.

Controlling physical artefacts is fine.

Stopping any science results that may be contrary to the Egyptian government's official view of history is awful!

The argument is simply that killing marine life is less bad than killing humans.

What? Heat kills both, sulphur pollution damages both. Its all connected, always..

I'm talking about ocean crossing container ships having less strict emission standards, because almost no humans has to breathe those emissions.

Unless you can enforce a weapons ban, "should be a neutral ground" means absolutely nothing.

Everyone would launch weapons while they deny it, because that is the rational and responsible thing to do.

The versions I've heard always included bringing back any cattle and/or women you could. That gives the raids a more demonstrable benefit.

If you're talking cattle, you're talking a different time of history entirely. That allowed collecting and concentrating enough wealth that some could engage in that sort of thing without worrying about immediately falling victim to it themselves. In the paleolithic, that wasn't possible.

Before humans had domesticated cattle, it was of course not possible to steal it. Not sure if that's what you're saying.

I have read stories about this happening in the current day Amazon.

If life-bearing debris exists, it would surely be floating around the galaxy forever.