Taxi Pilot
@everydayswithin.bsky.social
My faith in republics rn
November 5, 2025 at 5:33 AM
My faith in republics rn
Not me leaning into the propaganda
July 31, 2025 at 2:31 AM
Not me leaning into the propaganda
Where she's always been. You just hear about her once every four years. She has no proven links to Russia. Why are you, as a Canadian, carrying this water for the American political duopoly?
July 6, 2025 at 11:53 AM
Where she's always been. You just hear about her once every four years. She has no proven links to Russia. Why are you, as a Canadian, carrying this water for the American political duopoly?
Against Economics
David Graeber
December 5, 2019
David Graeber
December 5, 2019
![At this point, all the pieces were in place: tight-money policies (which benefited creditors and
the wealthy) could be justified as “harsh medicine” to clear up price-signals so the market could
return to a healthy state of long-run balance. In describing how all this came about, Skidelsky
is providing us with a worthy extension of a history Karl Polanyi first began to map out in the
1940s: the story of how supposedly self-regulating national markets were the product of careful
social engineering. Part of that involved creating government policies self-consciously designed
to inspire resentment of “big government.” Skidelsky writes:
A crucial innovation was income tax, first levied in 1814, and renewed by [Prime
Minister Robert] Peel in 1842. By 1911–14, this had become the principal source of
government revenue. Income tax had the double benefit of giving the British state
a secure revenue base, and aligning voters’ interests with cheap government, since
6
only direct taxpayers had the vote…. “Fiscal probity,” under Gladstone, “became the
new morality.”
In fact, there’s absolutely no reason a modern state should fund itself primarily by appropriating a proportion of each citizen’s earnings. There are plenty of other ways to go about it.
Many—such as land, wealth, commercial, or consumer taxes (any of which can be made more
or less progressive)—are considerably more efficient, since creating a bureaucratic apparatus capable of monitoring citizens’ personal affairs to the degree required by an income tax system is
itself enormously expensive. But this misses the real point: income tax is supposed to be intrusive
and exasperating. It is meant to feel at least a little bit unfair. Like so much of classical liberalism
(and contemporary neoliberalism), it is an ingenious political sleight of hand—an expansion of
the bureaucratic state that also allows its leaders to pretend to advocate for small government.
The one major exception to this pattern wa…](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:iz56io3ox4l7xslbswdz2p6u/bafkreic46x2weuouqsg6hmnv2csfvk24a6jyqn64za7lam2sji3yvkjzem@jpeg)
July 6, 2025 at 10:38 AM
Against Economics
David Graeber
December 5, 2019
David Graeber
December 5, 2019
Ford doesn't pass by the poster out front of Sovereign Smoke to buy his weed, so he won't have this golden map etched into his mind, nor does he seem to grasp that ignoring your own land conferment decrees isn't very "cap in hand." This promise was why they fought the American Revolution.
June 19, 2025 at 3:14 AM
Ford doesn't pass by the poster out front of Sovereign Smoke to buy his weed, so he won't have this golden map etched into his mind, nor does he seem to grasp that ignoring your own land conferment decrees isn't very "cap in hand." This promise was why they fought the American Revolution.
From chapter 5 of Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber by Mike Isaac
May 28, 2025 at 7:25 PM
From chapter 5 of Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber by Mike Isaac
I collected local taxi bylaw PDFs going back to 1999 and discovered the definition of a taxicab changed last year (when a TNC/PTC/PTP/VFH/Rideshare section was first added) from not mentioning street hails to being primarily defined by them:
May 21, 2025 at 5:00 AM
I collected local taxi bylaw PDFs going back to 1999 and discovered the definition of a taxicab changed last year (when a TNC/PTC/PTP/VFH/Rideshare section was first added) from not mentioning street hails to being primarily defined by them:
The Arsenal of Freedom
May 19, 2025 at 12:20 PM
The Arsenal of Freedom
There are historical precedents to all this, and they involve a "war." The same story included a high minimum wage that was ignored in the face of well-monied cut rates and similarly unenforced. The same snobbishness around unmarked luxury cars propelled the company to their UberX banditry launch.
May 19, 2025 at 3:21 AM
There are historical precedents to all this, and they involve a "war." The same story included a high minimum wage that was ignored in the face of well-monied cut rates and similarly unenforced. The same snobbishness around unmarked luxury cars propelled the company to their UberX banditry launch.
First Twitter instances of
Uber app working (licensed chauffeur unmarked black cars, February 15th, 2012),
Beck Taxi app in the Apple App Store (May 10th, 2012),
and UberX (anyone with a car and what we now mean when we say Uber, September 8th, 2014)
in Toronto:
Uber app working (licensed chauffeur unmarked black cars, February 15th, 2012),
Beck Taxi app in the Apple App Store (May 10th, 2012),
and UberX (anyone with a car and what we now mean when we say Uber, September 8th, 2014)
in Toronto:
May 19, 2025 at 1:17 AM
First Twitter instances of
Uber app working (licensed chauffeur unmarked black cars, February 15th, 2012),
Beck Taxi app in the Apple App Store (May 10th, 2012),
and UberX (anyone with a car and what we now mean when we say Uber, September 8th, 2014)
in Toronto:
Uber app working (licensed chauffeur unmarked black cars, February 15th, 2012),
Beck Taxi app in the Apple App Store (May 10th, 2012),
and UberX (anyone with a car and what we now mean when we say Uber, September 8th, 2014)
in Toronto:
Here's what I don't get. You had a good enough job to purchase a new enough car for Uber's standards. Now you want to be a fucking taxi driver? Compete with people who have to rent a car for the day? Come from out of town for 50 bucks more a day, extracting from both local and national economies?
May 18, 2025 at 2:05 AM
Here's what I don't get. You had a good enough job to purchase a new enough car for Uber's standards. Now you want to be a fucking taxi driver? Compete with people who have to rent a car for the day? Come from out of town for 50 bucks more a day, extracting from both local and national economies?
I don't believe in guarded borders, but let's say no less than 49 trillion, or this:
January 8, 2025 at 1:33 AM
I don't believe in guarded borders, but let's say no less than 49 trillion, or this:
I'm glad my top 5 songs progress like a weekend swing shift in a 🚕
December 6, 2024 at 9:07 AM
I'm glad my top 5 songs progress like a weekend swing shift in a 🚕
Another successful daylight rescue from the brutish hands of time
March 10, 2024 at 10:40 AM
Another successful daylight rescue from the brutish hands of time
Does anyone know which of Karl Popper's works led to this excerpt (from a Medium article entitled "IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle")? I'd like to read more.
And yes, my first thought was also Jordan Peterson.
And yes, my first thought was also Jordan Peterson.
January 20, 2024 at 8:03 PM
Does anyone know which of Karl Popper's works led to this excerpt (from a Medium article entitled "IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle")? I'd like to read more.
And yes, my first thought was also Jordan Peterson.
And yes, my first thought was also Jordan Peterson.