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At least 280 Palestinians were killed by Israelis in 2021. With a population of ~5,000,000, that alone accounts for 5.6 deaths per 100k lives.

Here's a list of those killed: https://israelpalestinetimeline.org/2021deaths/. Pay special attention to all the women and children.

This is not a country to we should aspire to match murder rates.


War deaths aren't criminal homicides, they are a problem but a different kind of problem, not something related to the crime rate in a country.


There was no war declared then. The actions were identical to Mexican immigrants coming over and going on murdering spees here. Would you not consider that an example of crime that should be accounted for?

And the falseness of that distinction is exactly my point. Nobody watches their baby get murdered and says "Well at least it was at the hands of a government agent! My country is still a very safe place to live!". Yet if you were to believe those stats that's exactly what they're claiming: deaths at the hands of government agents "don't count" when considering the safety of an area.


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We've banned this account for egregiously violating HN's rules. No matter how right you are or feel you are, you can't post like this. It's abusive and destructive of the type of forum we're trying to preserve here. Moreover we warned you many times before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35619490)

Of course I understand that this topic (though it was entirely off topic for this thread) is among the most sensitive and divisive of all, for deep reasons, and I'm sure that you have good reasons to feel the way you feel. But the site rules could not be clearer about such situations, you broke them extremely badly (and repeatedly) in this thread, and we obviously can't allow that if we want HN to survive for thoughtful, curious conversation.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.


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We've banned this account for egregiously violating HN's rules. No matter how right you are or feel you are, you can't post like this. It's abusive and destructive of the type of forum we're trying to preserve here. Moreover we warned you before.

Of course I understand that this topic (though it was entirely off topic for this thread) is among the most sensitive and divisive of all, for deep reasons, and I'm sure that you have good reasons to feel the way you feel. But the site rules could not be clearer about such situations, you broke them extremely badly (and repeatedly) in this thread, and we obviously can't allow that if we want HN to survive for thoughtful, curious conversation.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.


More lies, I didn't say any of that... why are you fake quoting?

Here's Golda's famous quote again, study it, maybe you'll change:

“When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons. Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.” ― Golda Meir,


Does anyone know of a second source to back this claim up? These numbers are "estimates ... based on machine learning algorithms using data from various websites and apps". We all know machine learning algorithms produce the outputs you train them to, and the nature of the company producing the data combined with current events gives me reason to pause before accepting it at face value.

That said, I haven't been able to find a good second opinion on this.


Rather, the answer (as always) is carbon tax.


But the rate can't be flat. Some types of carbon emissions are more important than others. That has to be taken into account, otherwise carbon tax will never be feasible morally or politically.


Eh… that’s an invitation for lobbyists and politicians to buggar the whole thing up for every self-serving interest imaginable. The simpler the better.


Flat rate just won't work, ever, it's a doomed idea. We need political decision about what kind of emissions are acceptable and what kinds are not.

No way basic necessities, food, transportation should be taxed the same rate as luxury houses and yachts/private jets.

It's not realistic.


Why not? If it’s truly about the environment then everyone should pay based on their environmental impact. Sure, if carbon/methane/whatever can be shown to have a higher environmental impact when emitted at altitude or whatever, take that into account.

But placing the environment second to specifically target the “luxury” as some sort of way to “get” the rich is only harming your case.


No. It's about maximizing value per emission. The value of luxury goods is less than basic necessities (it's stuff we can live without by definition) so the rate should compensate for that.

I would accept a flat rate if each person got a fixed amount of emissions assigned to them and each person could decide to sell or keep their "emission right". Then everyone would have enough for basic needs.

In practice the results would be similar.


Better to simply charge emissions based on the cost required to scrub them.

Trying to inject value judgements into it turns the whole situation into an absurd government mandated ethics board. The precise task governments have shown themselves to royally screw up time and time again.


This is why the game is really screwed up. To make these decisions when coming up with carbon credits, or any other decisions regarding resources in a market, policy makers have to defer to industry because they simply don't understand industry and will never have the time to fully understand it like a domain expert would. Now, its not necessarily that the industry's own scientists and experts are corrupt, but that the business models naturally disincentivize hard truths if they come at a cost to profit. Shareholders don't want to hear that their investment is being taxed above others in this case. They will hire lawyers to fight fight fight their battle until its won. There is no opposition here to that, no balance to that sort of reaction, so it continues unimpeded towards this way just as easily and unstoppable as a gunpowder reaction to flame. As such, as soon as you think about putting a restriction on industry, it will serve to benefit investors of that industry first and foremost as it will be penned by that same industry you seek to regulate.


Didn't work in Canada.


Canada's current carbon tax is at 65 CAD per ton of CO2, working out to roughly 15 cents per liter (typical gas price right now is 1.75ish per liter).

The degree of tax is just too small right now to realistically expect major impact on behavior.

We'll see what happens as tax continues to ramp.


The big issue I think with the tax is that its ultimately paid for by consumers and not capital, as a result behavior won't shift, people will just get poorer in need of more subsidy and wealth will be more concentrated. Rather than a carbon tax, we should tax wealth for carbon used to generate such wealth in the American economic system. We could do this by taxing the holdings directly, or having a progressive tax rate that is effectively zero for the sort of purchases a middle class individual will make in their life, and quite steep for the sort of purchases that are more common among the elite with substantially larger carbon footprints.


In theory a carbon tax incentivises low carbon solutions. In theory the market is frictionless and transparent.


Theory will only take you so far


Is jet fuel taxed? That would be against some international treaties, so I doubt they do that.


So, a big fat scam. No thanks.


Hey Siri, how do I deal with an economic externality?


>> carbon tax

> big fat scam

Care to elaborate?


If it's going to be anything like the carbon offsets, I see zero reason to elaborate since it will inevitably end up looking like arguing with religious people.

I am all for taxing pollution but focusing on carbon alone makes me extremely dubious of the actual intent behind such proposals.

These things appear to be weapons disguised as legitimate efforts to improve things.


So instead of taking the opportunity to educate somebody on a topic you're implying you know a lot about, you've decided it's not worth the bother because I'm probably religious about -- checks notes -- carbon taxes... and there's going to be no reasoning with me?

Why bother commenting on the internet at all?


So, instead of arguing your own thoughts on the matter, you choose to downvote when I share my own. Or, you could just do the usual citations spam to silence any dissenting opinions.

Why bother indeed.


I don't have 500 rep. I'm unable to downvote. I tried to engage in discourse by asking you to elaborate on your position -- the onus wasn't on me to explain anything. Good luck in life.


I did explain but apparently my reasoning wasn't good enough. It's hard to take someone seriously when they are in favour of scams like carbon tax, considering the premise of carbon offsets. It's akin to paying someone to take the punishment for a crime you did.

Take care.


Better than government banning flights all up.


Exactly. HN seems the worst of all wrt the apocalyptic fortune telling. Perhaps a group of well-off people would be expected to fear change the most. But to tell anyone else that in 50 years things will be bad... they'd laugh in your face.


"I'm right because the corporate interests governing openAI's output agree with me" isn't the dunk you think it is.


Well, "I'm right because carefully cherry-picked opinion and misleading statistics agree with me" is arguably worse.

Tell me, would you use the same "reasoning" applied to literally anything else? Will you be taking up a cigar habit in the defense of Ronald Fisher, literally the "father of modern statistics", who disputed the link between smoking and cancer? https://priceonomics.com/why-the-father-of-modern-statistics... While doing this, will you turn a blind eye to the evidence that corporate interests had in maintaining doubt (in this case, it would be tobacco companies, but in the OP case, oil companies)? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2879177/ Or will you stop wearing seatbelts because of some niche cases of it preventing people from escaping submerged vehicles? https://auto.howstuffworks.com/car-driving-safety/safety-reg...

What's the potential cost of you being right vs. the cost of you being wrong? Can you even calculate it with any certainty? Do you know which groups of people it might impact? Do you know what parts will be irreversible? Or are you just another armchair rabblerouser whose day job is... Not remotely connected to studying this stuff at least 8/5?


Yikes. You've gone totally off the rails. Have your handler review your prompting... 10 questions in a row with not a coherent thread connecting them does not a meaningful comment make.


New ecosystems will form, eventually. Humans love to think their time scales are the only ones that matter.


>Humans love to think their time scales are the only ones that matter.

They matter to humans.


Basically any religion is in large part centered around preparing for death.


Maybe the decline of religion is one reason why we've done such a bad job with climate change. If there's no life after death then you have far less reason to care what the world will look like 100 years from now.


From what I can tell the dominant christian religions in the US have turned into death cults seeking to accelerate suffering and death. I don’t think there is any salvation to be had there.


Yes, it occurred to me after I wrote my comment that religious belief, in the US at least, correlates with the same side of the political spectrum that cares the least about climate change. So something must be off in my analysis.


Well that came out of left field. Care to elaborate?


If there is a life after death, then why would you care about the world? Wouldn't it make more sense to care for the one world that exists?

And on a less hypothetical note, I'll point out that in the US at least, the Republican party is both the party of Christianity and global warming denial, so it seems like those two go together just fine.


This is probably accurate. Everything seems about the individual nowadays. Lot's of people aren't even having children anymore, preferring instead "travel" and "fun". Why would they give a shit about what will happen in 100 years?


If voting could change anything it'd be illegal.

In CA we aren't even allowed to vote anymore. Gavin simply appoints senators who look the way he wants and we get stuck with them.

And that's something as simple as senators (who barely have any power in the first place). A change to the world power structure (corporate interests that profit of mass-consumerism) is achievable only through violent revolution.

But nobody cares enough about the climate for that. They just complain online, put soup on things, and pat themselves on the back.


Just route the sender to spam? Do you really put this much work into every spammy sender? Any decent email frontend should fulfill your desire in a single click.


Speaking of CVS, they have one very cool feature I haven't seen replicated anywhere else: the price printer machine. Many places have scanners that will show you the price of an item on a screen, but in my experience only CVS has one that actually prints out a physical paper showing the price of the item.

Accordingly, I make a point to print the price of at least one of my items each time I buy from CVS (for morale).


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