[ahelwer]

I donated $12.5k to Plymouth Housing (housing-first org in Seattle) last year, which was matched by Microsoft to $25k. It barely matters, voluntary individual charity won't solve structural problems. Given that half your post is now an utterly wrong & irrelevant personal attack, I have license to tell you your mode of interaction here (and in other comments, from a brief perusal of your profile) comes off as incredibly smug and not nearly so clever as you clearly believe. We've all read Taleb, you don't have intellectual superpowers from knowing what skin in the game is.

The Tax Amazon movement would also levy a tax on Microsoft, because it's a tax on all big businesses which operate within Seattle, which I'm perfectly happy about, but I'm sure you're very used to being wrong about everything so this matters not.

I have no idea how you can care about "successful outcomes" without vision since success is not a value-free metric. That should suffice to make you think a bit, I'm going to cut short the gish-gallop here because interacting with you is generally unpleasant. Goodbye.

[malandrew]

So you work for Microsoft, which explains why you're interested in taxing Amazon. Good to know that your conflict of interest is now laid bare. Your salary may not be paid by the homelessness industrial complex, but it is paid by a direct competitor to the entity you want to see taxed to pay for this. Let's tax Microsoft instead.

[ahelwer]

You're really stuck on this desire to expose my fraudulent underlying motivations for not wanting homeless people to die in the streets. You'll be happy to learn far smarter people than you have taken a crack at this problem! Go read the first few sections of Industrial Society and its Future and you'll have all the ammo you need to attack leftist motivations. Its analysis is quite a bit more robust than your (frankly, extremely basic) idea that everyone must have a financial stake in policy to desire its realization. Happy to help.

[malandrew]

> You're really stuck on this desire to expose my fraudulent underlying motivations for not wanting homeless people to die in the streets

What's fraudulent is your shameless promotion of taxing a direct competitor of your employer.

Many of your comments on this HN story have included a plug for the tax amazon pac, making all those comments basically political spam and spam has no place on HN.

> You'll be happy to learn far smarter people than you have taken a crack at this problem! Go read the first few sections of Industrial Society and its Future

Referencing the Unabomber? Really? Someone sending mail bombs and killing innocent people is your idea of "far smarter people than you have taken a crack at this problem"? In one breathe you say you don't want people dying in the street, and in the next you're quoting a serial murderer.

> your (frankly, extremely basic) idea that everyone must have a financial stake in policy to desire its realization.

People can desire the realization of whatever policy they want. However, if they have no skin in the game, that desire can be summarily dismissed by others, especially by those that do have skin in the game.

[ahelwer]

The Tax Amazon movement also would tax Microsoft, because it's a tax on all big businesses which operate in Seattle. You struck out yet?

[malandrew]

This is a payroll tax for employees that work in Seattle. The overwhelming majority of Microsoft employees are in Redmond, Bellevue and Issaquah and the overwhelming majority of Amazon employees are in Seattle. I can't even find an address for a Microsoft office in Seattle. All I can find is a single Microsoft retail store. This initiative would cost Microsoft peanuts and Amazon tons. It's now clear that you're willfully misrepresenting this initiative.