Alpha Byte

The market, like the Lord, helps those who help themselves. But unlike the Lord, the market does not forgive those who know not what they do.

History’s Oldest Cat and Mouse Game: The Tax Trap youtu.be/Ep0YHcwn9ms?si… 来自 @YouTube

Ancient Rome's "urine tax" is hard to stomach. In the first century AD, Emperor Vespasian had the bright idea of taxing public toilets. When nobles complained it was vulgar, he calmly held up a gold coin to his nose and declared: "Money doesn't stink." The scheme actually worked, funding the construction of roads and arenas. Ever since, pay toilets became a "tradition" that endures to this day — the echo of history lingering in the stench. Think that's absurd? England's window tax of 1698 was even better. Tax collectors would come knocking and count your windows; by the next morning, eleven of them would be bricked up, with just one left for light. On the streets of London, gentlemen sipped their afternoon tea and quipped with a smile: "Terribly sorry, the other windows have caught a cold!" The result was a proliferation of dark, airless "blind houses" — and a surge in lung disease. The government eventually had no choice but to scrap this public health menace. Looking further east, in 1705 Russia's Peter the Great took aim at beards. Keeping one cost 100 rubles, and noblemen lined up to shave with more enthusiasm than people queuing for a new iPhone. Some, unable to part with their whiskers, secretly wore fake beards — only to be caught red-handed by tax collectors. Barbers were delighted by the boom in business, as facial hair became, quite literally, an ATM for the national treasury. Asia had its own clever schemes. As Keen and Slemrod note in Rebellion, Rascals, and Revenue, during the reign of Emperor Kangxi in the Qing Dynasty, tea taxes were so convoluted that even officials were left dizzy. One resourceful tea merchant mixed his tea leaves with herbs and insisted the product was "medicinal" — subject to a much lower rate. Baffled tax collectors could only stand by as the court dispatched inspectors to tea houses to verify goods. The market descended into chaos, but the cunning always found a loophole. And there's more. In 1784, England's hat tax produced its own little farce. Merchants renamed hats "head coverings" to dodge the levy. When caught, they protested indignantly: "I sell fabric — it's the customer who insists on wearing it on his head!" The courtroom erupted in laughter, and the government rushed to amend the tax code to close off this game of wordplay. Down in Oceania, things got harsher. In the 1880s, Queensland, Australia imposed an "entry tax" on Chinese immigrants at an outrageously steep rate. The result? Many trekked hundreds of kilometers on foot, sneaking into the colony of Victoria instead. The tax was eventually abolished, but the hardship endured by those immigrants was etched permanently into history. The most outrageous of all may be Italy's "sunshine tax." In 1999, the government levied a tax on balconies, on the logic that you should pay according to how much sunlight you enjoyed. An elderly woman in Rome was having none of it. She marched into court and declared: "Sunlight belongs to God — what right does the government have to take it?" After three years of legal battle, she emerged a hero. The government quietly withdrew the tax, and the media dubbed it "the great sun robbery." These taxes, absurd yet revealing, are proof that the tug-of-war between power and the purse has never ceased.

Back in 1976, the 21st Summer Olympic Games were held in Montreal, on the banks of Canada's St. Lawrence River. The city's mayor at the time, Jean Drapeau, made a now-infamous boast: "The Montreal Olympics can no more have a deficit than a man can have a baby." As it turned out, by the time the Games were over, the budget had overrun by more than 700%. A local newspaper ran a cartoon depicting Drapeau — a man — visibly pregnant. Drapeau, however, was unfazed. Having secured his legacy, he retired on his own terms before voters could weigh in. The costs of building the various venues were enormous, and the main stadium proved so plagued with difficulties that many parts of the project were not completed until more than a decade after the closing ceremony. The city of Montreal was buried in debt for years, and the full $1 billion was not paid off until November 2006 — thirty years later — making it the most financially disastrous Olympics in modern history. As for the lesson of the Montreal Games, more than a few cynical politicians have advised newcomers: don't be naive — the initial budget for any major project is really just a down payment, and more money will always be needed later. Look around the world's major cities, and you will find projects and events on a similar scale — stalled, delayed, or left unfinished due to policy shifts, broken funding chains, absconding developers, regulatory violations, financing disputes, or runaway budgets. Such cases are everywhere. In How Big Things Get Done, Bent Flyvbjerg, a professor of major program management at Oxford's Saïd Business School, and bestselling author Dan Gardner pose a crucial question: why is the track record of large-scale projects so dismal? And, more importantly, how do those rare and inspiring exceptions manage to succeed? Through comparative research on major projects worldwide, Professor Flyvbjerg found a persistent pattern of "over budget, over time, under benefits, over and over again." From this, he formulated what he calls the "iron law of megaprojects" — a framework for understanding the deep-rooted reasons why large undertakings so often fall short of expectations. His and Gardner's incisive analysis of why big projects "so often fail and only occasionally succeed" offers a powerful dose of reflection and guidance for anyone trying to get big things done.

Taxes — who doesn't dread them? The dreary numbers, the endless forms, the madness of tax season. For most people, taxation is simply the government's legitimate way of reaching into your wallet. But under the pens of Michael Keen and Joel Slemrod, taxes become a funhouse mirror, reflecting both human ingenuity and our collective absurdity. The stories spanning millennia in Rebellion, Rascals, and Revenue: Tax Follies and Wisdom through the Ages read like episodes of dark comedy — leaving you laughing, then thinking. The authors' credentials make their insights especially worth heeding. Keen served as Deputy Director of the Fiscal Affairs Department at the International Monetary Fund. Slemrod is a professor of economics at the University of Michigan and director of the Office of Tax Policy Research, having also served on the U.S. President's Council of Economic Advisers. Both have received the field's highest honor — the Daniel M. Holland Medal for lifetime achievement in public finance. As Benjamin Franklin famously quipped, "In this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes." Yet Keen and Slemrod show us that while taxes may be certain, the stories behind them are far richer — and stranger — than anyone might imagine.

To become a better version of yourself, go see more of the world, meet more extraordinary people, and seek out broader knowledge. You don't need constant praise from others — you know how good you are. Inner strength will always outshine outward glamour.

"Waiting" is the investor's friend, but too many people cannot tolerate it. If you lack the gene for delayed gratification, you might try working incredibly hard to overcome it.

Three rules for your career: never sell anything you wouldn't buy yourself, never work for someone you don't admire, and only work alongside people who share your values.

Three reasons a man can't sleep at night: he's stressed about making money, he's too hungry to sleep, or he's lying awake thinking about someone else's woman. So which one are you?

Be shrewd about stock prices — shop for them like groceries, not cosmetics; truly devastating losses always come after investors forget to ask "how much?"; high growth does not equal high profitability. A rising stock becomes more risky, not less; a falling stock becomes less risky, not more.

Buying stocks is buying a piece of a business; the market forever swings between excessive excitement and excessive pessimism, and the wise investor buys from the overly pessimistic and sells to the overly excited; your own behavior matters far more than the performance of your securities in determining your investment returns.

From financial history we must draw this conclusion: it is not inflation itself that makes it a powerful force in the stock market, but rather the psychological tendencies of investors influenced by it that make inflation an inherent driver of bull markets.

The true investor, when holding listed common stocks, should be in a position where, according to his own judgment and inclination, he can either seek to profit from daily market prices or simply ignore them. He must pay attention to significant price movements, for otherwise his judgment would have nothing to go on.

It is both laughable and unsurprising that when common stocks are available at highly attractive prices, buying them is widely regarded as speculation or reckless risk-taking; yet when stocks have soared to levels that past experience would unmistakably mark as dangerous, purchasing them somehow becomes "investing," and those who buy them become "investors."

When asked to distill the principles of sound investing into a single phrase, what would his answer be? Facing this self-posed challenge, Graham wrote his answer in capital letters: "MARGIN OF SAFETY."

小区门口有家便利店，老板娘人好，逢年过节会给附近的老人送点东西，上次中秋送了月饼，这次元旦备了几份年货，糕点饮料装了一袋，挨个送到门上。 我帮她跑腿，最后一户是三楼的陈阿姨，八十多岁，腿脚不好，很少下楼。 敲门，里面有动静，过了一会儿门开了，是个四十来岁的男的，头发乱着，穿一件旧棉袄。 我说，老板娘给楼里老人备了份年货，送给陈阿姨的。 他接过去，往里喊了一声，妈，有人送东西来了。 里面传出陈阿姨的声音，谁呀，拿进来吧。 他把袋子往里一放，转头对我说，你们送这个，能不能也给我算一份，我最近也不容易。 我说，这是给老人备的，专门给楼里上了年纪的老人。 他说，那我妈的份能不能多给点，她年纪大了用得多。 我说，每户一份，都一样的。 他还要说什么，里面陈阿姨的声音出来了，说，行了，人家好心送来的，你少说两句。 他把门带上了。 我下楼，老板娘在门口等着，问顺利吗。 我说，顺利，陈阿姨中气足。

如果上班让我们失去对灵魂的关照，那么上班的意义是什么？

能追忆者，此始是吾生命之真。其在记忆之外者，足证其非吾生命之真。

华为、监听、合法？！所以最好别买华为的汽车和手机，都有监听哦🥲

不爱一个人的时候就要对他更好。 这就叫报仇。