Gun-Free Zones...

The very idea of “gun-free zones” as a method for reducing violence involving guns has always seemed completely stupid to me, for two reasons:

1. It assumes that someone willing to shoot another person would meekly obey the law forbidding the possession of guns in such zones.  To which I say “Really?  You believe that?”
2. It produces a pool of defenseless victims in a known place and at a known time.  Imagine you were evil enough to want to shoot a bunch of people.  Can you imagine a better place to target?  You know you can shoot a whole bunch of them before the cops manage to get there!

The statistics bear this out:

[John] Lott offers a final damning statistic: “With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.”

I avoid “gun-free zones” myself, as I consider them to be dangerous places – the precise opposite of the intent.  I don't have a concealed carry permit myself (they are darned hard to get in California), but I'm confident that in any public place there are likely to be some law-abiding people who are armed.  I want them around me, where they can confront a criminal.  I don't want to be in an area where I know the only armed people are criminals.

Sandy Hook Elementary School is a gun-free zone.

Read the whole article...

A Taxing Situation...

Recently I consulted with a tax professional about the consequences of changing the state I reside in.  Most likely we will be moving to Idaho when I retire, but we have to build a home there so the residency situation was murky to me.  We'll probably have a home in California for a while, but at the same time have a rented home in Idaho while we're building our “real” home.  For tax purposes, I wondered, which state do I reside in?  Idaho taxes are lower, so it would be better for me to be an Idaho resident.

The tax professional told me something about the stock obtained through exercising my Incentive Stock Options (ISOs) that surprised me: California would claim the proceeds as taxable income no matter what state I lived in, no matter when I sold them.  Furthermore, the state I moved to (she didn't know for sure about Idaho) might also claim the proceeds as taxable income.  I could be taxed on the same income by two different states!  WTF?

Here's the explanation, but the really interesting part is what that explanation implies.  California claims the right to tax the proceeds of stock obtained through ISOs based on when those ISOs vested.  For me, and for virtually everybody else with ISOs, that means the first “n” years of their employment (four years, for me).  In those years I was clearly a California resident, ergo, California claims those proceeds as taxable income.  California is the only state to make this claim, and they only started doing this in the past few years.  All other states claim the proceeds as taxable income based on what state you reside in when the stock was sold.  So someone like me could be taxed by California (because my ISOs vested while I lived here) and again by Idaho (if I lived there when I sold the stock) – for the same income.

Think about what California's behavior implies.  They would only be pursuing such a path if the situation were a common one.  California's high tax rates make moving out-of-state attractive to people who suddenly make a lot of money through ISOs – so California comes up with a way to ensure they collect those taxes anyway!  When this becomes broadly known (it doesn't seem to be as yet), you can bet your sweet bippie that startups are going to think twice about establishing themselves in California – because for a startup, it's all about those ISOs.

What a frickin' stupid government California has! 

Human Stupidity...

An excellent essay.  Here's one fragment, titled “The Power of Stupidity”

It is not difficult to understand how social, political and institutional power enhances the damaging potential of a stupid person. But one still has to explain and understand what essentially it is that makes a stupid person dangerous to other people - in other words what constitutes the power of stupidity.

Essentially stupid people are dangerous and damaging because reasonable people find it difficult to imagine and understand unreasonable behaviour. An intelligent person may understand the logic of a bandit. The bandit's actions follow a pattern of rationality: nasty rationality, if you like, but still rationality. The bandit wants a plus on his account. Since he is not intelligent enough to devise ways of obtaining the plus as well as providing you with a plus, he will produce his plus by causing a minus to appear on your account. All this is bad, but it is rational and if you are rational you can predict it. You can foresee a bandit's actions, his nasty manoeuvres and ugly aspirations and often can build up your defenses.

With a stupid person all this is absolutely impossible as explained by the Third Basic Law. A stupid creature will harass you for no reason, for no advantage, without any plan or scheme and at the most improbable times and places. You have no rational way of telling if and when and how and why the stupid creature attacks. When confronted with a stupid individual you are completely at his mercy. Because the stupid person's actions do not conform to the rules of rationality, it follows that:

a) one is generally caught by surprise by the attack; b) even when one becomes aware of the attack, one cannot organize a rational defense, because the attack itself lacks any rational structure.

The fact that the activity and movements of a stupid creature are absolutely erratic and irrational not only makes defense problematic but it also makes any counter-attack extremely difficult - like trying to shoot at an object which is capable of the most improbable and unimaginable movements. This is what both Dickens and Schiller had in mind when the former stated that "with stupidity and sound digestion man may front much" and the latter wrote that "against stupidity the very Gods fight in vain."

As I said: excellent!

Bullet Trains...

Warren Meyer (of CoyoteBlog) has an excellent piece in Forbes on the stupidity of high speed rail...