It's pretty hard to maintain the level of society that we enjoy having without the ability to build stuff, which does require steel to come from somewhere. But even more importantly, if you want to have your large population not starve to death, you need to be able to secure a food supply -- which is not possible without fertilizer.

Some of the other manufactured goods, sure, maybe. But I remember 2021, when it was nearly impossible to get almost everything that we used to think was super commonplace because global supply chains collapsed. Indeed, things haven't really recovered still. Intentionally dismantling supply chains again does seem like a poor strategy for prosperity.

Everything "effects the environment" in some way, after all.

Planet Money did a decent episode on the topic a few years ago, but the summary is this:

The companies that make tax prep software will spend ~any amount of money to fight free-file. It would destroy their business. That's one major faction.

Another major faction is that part of the Republican party which wants lower taxes. Their argument is basically that if we made tax filing too easy/automatic, it would be less visible. If you have to spend hours preparing your taxes, you're likely to notice how much you pay and therefore will be more resistant to policies which raise them. If it all just disappeared out of your paycheck transparently, you might not notice it as much.

A third major faction is very-wealthy businessmen, who benefit from the incredible complexity of our system since they can afford to spend large sums of money (and lots of accountants' time) to optimize for maximum avoidance of tax. A system which was simpler or more automated would likely be less game-able -- and even if it wasn't less game-able, the fact that the vast majority of people would have trivial automated filings would mean that limited enforcement resources would be more available to audit the most-complex cases.

And the final major faction is people who do not trust our institutions. They generally fear that it would be scarier and riskier for people to fight inaccurate automated returns, and that people would feel compelled to pay whatever the automated system said they owed for fear of what the enforcers would do to them if they complained about it.

Getting to simpler or automated filings is going to require addressing at least some of these.

It is possible that you'll end up caught up in some of that. Not super likely, but possible for sure.

The availability of investment money has greatly decreased -- people are no longer willing to pledge huge sums of money to back companies with minimal revenues, no profits, and no plan on how they're going to eventually be profitable.

If the company that you're going to go work for is profitable, you'll probably be completely fine. If it's not profitable, the company might start to feel like all the free cash has disappeared, and things may get less awesome. If your company isn't profitable, doesn't have a lot of money left, and isn't going to be profitable soon, then you're probably going to end up looking for another job before this is all over.

But even if you end up without work for a time, engineers are still in demand. The problems that we can solve aren't going away, and companies will still figure out profitable ways to employ engineers.

Be aware -- pay attention to how your company is doing. But I wouldn't panic.

The stock market represents only a part of the total capital stock, as not all capital is owned by companies, and not all companies are public. But, on the whole, one should expect the stock market to rise over time so long as society is not dying.

There are virtually zero republicans or conservatives on any social media site -- they know they aren't welcome, so they don't engage very much.

You don't see them being censored because, at this point, they self-censor.

Who wants to be doxxed and have their employer harassed into firing them just for trying to have a calm conversation with people who want to murder them anyway

Of course, if Google doesn't approve your content, nobody can find it, and if Cloudflare doesn't approve of your content, it isn't actually online.

And, with everybody locked up, you can't go advertise it in the physical world.

So, basically, unless Google and Cloudflare like your content -- or the major media bullies them into liking your content -- your content does not exist.

Given that several states have already indicated a further 12-18 months of lockdown at minimum, we're looking at >90% of all businesses of all sorts disappearing.

He said that he won't ever release the lockdown, no matter what people say or do.

There is nothing in those rules mandating being a leftist, or putting your head in the sand, or begging to be enslaved.

Indeed, those rules talk about curiosity and discussion.

You can have neither when only the party line is allowed to be posted.