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It’s not completely over if folks help with porting more Fossil models over to Asteroid OS - https://asteroidos.org

It’s not out yet, but there is a kickstarter from German company Volla, coming in the next few days for a 12" tablet running a Mediatek soc that will be capable of running Ubuntu Touch - for which you can use UT native apps, webapps, some Linux desktop apps via their “Libertine” container, and some Android apps via “Waydroid.” And Volla has an excellent track record of delivering on their product promises - in contrast to Purism.

https://volla.tilda.ws

Or you can use browsers that can be set to not “phone home” - e.g.Brave, Librewolf - there are in fact a few privacy respecting options in this.

Edge is better if you are wanting to always have your data mined by Microsoft, for sure.

All I know is I received so many daily texts and emails from her campaign begging for money that it seriously turned me off, and I don’t even live in CA.

Yes, Chromium, from which Chrome places proprietary parts on top of, is an open source project, so anyone can fork it and remove telemetry and tracking. Most browsers are in fact forks of Chromium - e.g. Edge (which replaces Google’s trackers with Microsoft’s own), Opera (which puts in trackers going back to a Chinese corporation), Vivaldi (which doesn’t seem to do tracking but has proprietary parts so is not verifiable) - or, on the privacy respecting side Brave (which is all open source and doesn’t track you once you click opting out on its reporting back to Brave and crypto rewards stuff), Ungoogled Chromium (which tends not to be updated all that quickly) and a few others.

The Librewolf project is up to date Firefox core with some hardening and the telemetry going back to Mozilla removed - good stuff.

Other options are Fairphone, Volla, Murena - or flashing “vanilla” custom ROM’s on phones other than Pixels - or using Ubuntu Touch, Plasma Mobile, Mobian, Droidian or Sailfish OS.

2025 will likely be way more the year of massive e-waste than the “Year of the Linux Desktop ™” - but I still think it is in the realm of possible that Linux market share close to doubles into the 5 to 8 percent range.

While I already regularly use Ubuntu and Ubuntu Touch for my “infotainment” desktops, laptops and tablets - I have 3 desktops in my studio that run Windows 10 that work great for my pro audio work needs, none of which qualify for Windows 11 according to MS’s “PC Health Check” app. So I’ve been investigating running Ubuntu Studio dual booting on one of my machines as a possible way of keeping these boxes going after Win 10 stops getting security updates. Some things look promising, but given I was not able to get the available kernel module device driver to build for my Merging Anubis (which is my main audio interface for my mastering studio) I will likely still need to get a Win 11 box in order to be able to continue my current work flow.

Basically I think the Land Value Tax should apply to any land that isn’t under either a primary residence, or isn’t under a building that solely provides primary residences for others. So that way developing housing is not discouraged, and people aren’t paying rent into perpetuity to the gov for their actual home. In that way, yes, second and vacation homes would be taxed, But the thing to understand is that an LVT is different from standard property tax, in that you don’t charged more tax depending on what is built on the land, you are only assessed based the value of the unimproved land.

You make some really good points here. I’m a Texas resident as well, so I’ve seen the f’ery the State gov does in favor of the politically connected cronies first hand too (e.g. the 5000+ uncapped nat gas wellheads that the tax payers are stuck with health and clean up costs on instead of the companies that profited on them). But the thing with a nationally applied tax is not subjected to the cheaply bought corruption of the State and local officials (although I will agree that on a Federal level even more f’ery can happen, which is why the Federal income tax is being turned ever more into a penalty on so called “middle class” earners, rather than a tax solely on the wealthiest among us, which is how it was done when it was first introduced in 1913).
The thing is that income can easily be hidden, moved or not reported, and it takes lots of resources at both the business and bureaucratic level to track and account for it. And it’s way easier for the uber-wealthy to hide their assets, or to use political influence to create income tax loopholes, than it is for to do that for those that live from paycheck to paycheck. Where as it’s a lot easier to know who owns a property and what they are doing with it. And a nationally applied tax can’t be avoided simply by moving to another State.

As for “What is an acre of land worth?” - with a Land Value Tax you are basing that on the market value of solely the “unimproved” plot of land in an area, so that someone with an empty lot pays the same tax as someone with a huge apartment tower on the plot next door. That way, the LVT does not discourage developing, farming, mining or building in the way a standard property tax (which charges more based on what is on top of the land) does.

As far as exemptions to the LVT goes, I’d say no one should ever be forced to pay rent to the government in perpetuity on their actual home, so a homestead exemption for primary residences should be put in place for sure. Multi-million vacation homes and air bnb’s, seem to me should be paying a national LVT though. But buildings that are all apartments seem to me should also receive exemptions, so that housing development is not discouraged by implementing the tax. Another positive thing with putting the LVT on office buildings is that it incentivises allowing remote working for businesses.

Also - on an ethical level, I’d say by default people are entitled to the entire fruits of their justly engaged in labors, and that taxes are optimally applied via “pigouvian” paradigms, where those that are creating “negative externalities” have to pay the rest of society for the damages in health, clean up and congestion costs they are putting onto others. In other words, in a better world we would just tax polluters rather than wage earners. I will grant that creating a purely pigouvian taxation system has some big issues in how it is assessed and applied though, so that’s where the LVT can help as alternative.

I can also grant that completely replacing the massive revenues that come from income tax with an LVT might shift too much taxation onto some - in which case I’d say a good transition to try would be replacing the payroll tax (for which the Federal gov takes in over $1 Trillion in revenue a year) with the LVT. Payroll taxes to me seem to be the most evil tax, as they penalize both those who are earning wages as well as burdening businesses that are employing people.

Anyway - not holding my breath for any of these proposed changes, just playing wish upon a star, trying to think of better ways of funding needed services without descending into enabling blatant governmental theft and corruption.

Get rid of income taxes and do a national Land Value Tax on all business properties instead, like Henry George talked 145 years ago, problem solved.