“But nobody is going to jail for their heretical opinions.”
This is not true. You don’t have to look hard for examples of people being jailed in the US for holding unorthodox positions.
Defining heresy as “a position they damages trust,” implies that an accused heretic is at fault for believing something that “damages trust.” That is entirely subjective relative to the one whose trust was damaged.
Society has claimed heresy to suppress political and religious opponents since the beginning of human history. We have also shown a track record of being very wrong with regard to how we define heresy in the past.
Why should we believe that we are any better than our ancestors on this front?
“The thearubigins in brewed tea are highly coloured (red-brown) molecules that change according to the acidity of the liquid used.
If the water used for the tea infusion is relatively alkaline (for example, due to limescale found in “hard” water), the colour of the tea will be darker and deeper.
However, once an acid such as a slice of lemon or lemon juice is added, tea changes colour because of an increase in acidity (reduction in pH) of the beverage itself. Lemon juice is quite strong as a food acid – a few drops are enough to alter the theaurbigins, resulting in a dramatic change in colour. Interestingly, theaflavins are not that affected by the change in acidity, and still retain their normal dark red colour.”
I think viewing this a just another instant messaging walled garden is short sighted. This appears to be the digital portion of Amazon's attempt to displace and disrupt the US mail system. Messaging/voice/video provide a secure digital communications backbone to every Amazon account, much like iMessage does for Apple IDs.
As Amazon operationalizes its own physical delivery network (planes, trucks, drones), the USPS is going to be demolished and postal rates will rise dramatically. Amazon accounts link every user one or more physical addresses. Anytime will also link those users to a secure digital "address" appropriate for delivery of sensitive information like financial and medical records.
With this hub in place, Amazon can act as a clearinghouse to functionally displace the physical mail system in the US and throughout the world. Most of what arrives in your mailbox would be more efficiently and securely delivered electronically, but to date there has been no centralized platform to digitally mail items so every bank/medical practice/company has had to create its own internal secure messaging system or rely on email.
Amazon Anywhere can act as the pre-scaled missing link to solve his problem while creating additional benefits to Amazon by functionally requiring anyone without an Amazon account to get one to receive secure communications in the future. It doesn't necessarily have to succeed as an IM or video call platform in order to fulfill this role.
If you want to tax corporate activity, the best (most consistent) way would be to eliminate corporate income taxes and tax capital gains as regular income. It would serve multiple causes:
(1) Instead of spending inordinate resources in tax avoidance schemes, companies would have the freedom to focus on investing human and financial capital in serving customers by providing better, cheaper products and services. Remember, the cost of those tax avoidance schemes are embedded in the prices you pay for goods and services.
(2) Taxes would only be due when gains are realized, thus allowing compounded growth to further spur the economy;
(3) It would raise the effective tax rate of individuals who receive a large portion of their income from capital gains (something that seems to really bother those who worry about such things;
(4) It's a more consistent approach to taxation. Today we are taxing the owners of a company's stock both within the corporation's income structure and then again when income and growth is distributed to shareholders as dividends and capital gains, respectively.
Wealthy people don't "sit on piles of money". That money is either held in a bank or invested. If it's in a bank, it is able to be loaned out to others looking for access to capital now. If its invested, it's being used as capital in a business (assuming it's and equity investment).
Is this post a bad omen for Hacker News? In my experience HN has been a safe haven for higher-level tech posts, news, and information; this seems very elementary.