FWIW, he came out with a social media post late last year (edit: maybe in 2019 actually) showing a tattoo spelled “whackd”, I think, and warning ppl that he would never commit suicide, so if he mysteriously died of suicide, it wasn’t him. Pretty strange stuff. To his credit, he seemed to have called it. Makes me more curious about whatever he was getting into. I didn’t follow him so I’m not really sure.
Did he “call it” or was he cornered, suffering paranoid delusions and reacting publicly to his own private thoughts of suicide? Governments don’t kill people for tax evasion.
I suspect your entirely reasonable and rational argument will be mostly ignored because people don’t like rational and reasonable when they can promote crazy and outlandish crap.
FWIW, he came out with a social media post late last year (edit: maybe in 2019 actually) showing a tattoo spelled “whackd”, I think, and warning ppl that he would never commit suicide, so if he mysteriously died of suicide, it wasn’t him. Pretty strange stuff. To his credit, he seemed to have called it. Makes me more curious about whatever he was getting into. I didn’t follow him so I’m not really sure.
Did he “call it” or was he cornered, suffering paranoid delusions and reacting publicly to his own private thoughts of suicide? Governments don’t kill people for tax evasion.
From his messages on twitter it sounded more like prison wasn't how he wanted to spend the rest of his life and he probably wanted to leave an anti-government sentiment behind:
It's an interesting twitter feed to read through, there are some insightful messages. He was strongly opposed to paying income taxes and refused to file his returns:
He invested in cryptocurrency to avoid taxes and likely has millions in crypto somewhere. There's something strange about libertarian types who would rather go to prison and ultimately die than pay taxes. In his tweets, he even criticized the super-rich from gaining so much wealth during the pandemic while the poorer classes suffered.
Being greedy is not paying taxes, which goes to support people worse off, supporting right-wing interests against the environment, against inclusion, promoting greed and self-interest. This seems to be lost on libertarians who think that looking after themselves ahead of everyone else means a better world for everyone and who would rather give up their life than give up any of their possessions.
Thank you for this post. This is one of the best things that could’ve been posted in this thread. Thanks for the sharing of his tweets and your commentary. I feel some compassion for this messed-up guy as a result, and that’s how I prefer to feel about my fellow humans. It gets so hard, sometimes.
Being greedy is not paying taxes, which goes to support people worse off, supporting right-wing interests against the environment, against inclusion, promoting greed and self-interest. This seems to be lost on libertarians who think that looking after themselves ahead of everyone else means a better world for everyone and who would rather give up their life than give up any of their possessions.
This is the first time I've noticed a moderator expressing political views. Is this the view of all AI staff?
This person is a moderator making commentary alongside the rest of us. What are you going to do if the response is “yes”? Leave the site in a rage that they dared expressing a position on ethics and how they intersect with political ideologies?
Politics is everywhere. Trying to opt out is self-blindness.
Being greedy is not paying taxes, which goes to support people worse off, supporting right-wing interests against the environment, against inclusion, promoting greed and self-interest. This seems to be lost on libertarians who think that looking after themselves ahead of everyone else means a better world for everyone and who would rather give up their life than give up any of their possessions.
This is the first time I've noticed a moderator expressing political views. Is this the view of all AI staff?
And why would you assume one moderator’s opinion is automatically the opinion of the whole of AI staff? That’s absolutist. People aren’t usually monolithic inside organizations.
Being greedy is not paying taxes, which goes to support people worse off, supporting right-wing interests against the environment, against inclusion, promoting greed and self-interest. This seems to be lost on libertarians who think that looking after themselves ahead of everyone else means a better world for everyone and who would rather give up their life than give up any of their possessions.
Their argument against that viewpoint is that governments are more corrupt than private companies. Which, like all blanket oversimplification statements, can be true in some situations and false in others. My argument is that a lot of government corruption comes directly from those private interests trying to gain an upper hand/competitive advantage (e.g. lobbying and party sponsorship). So, in essence, you're saying: "The government is corrupt, so don't pay taxes and instead allow the money to go to private interests which are often the source of that corruption".
Wasn't MacAfee accused at one point of actually creating some of the viruses that the software he was selling was protecting against? I seem to remember hearing that in the mid 90s.
1st point: I’m not seeing how you think Marvin is stating your quoted text.
2nd point: Antivirus companies have long been a target of conspiracy theories that they create viruses to further justify the need for their products.
I think it’s not entirely unreasonable to imagine such conspiracy (the US’s so-called healthcare system does seem to act from the angle of charging people for drugs and perpetual treatment, rather than investing in preventative process and actual cures)...
...but it’s probably more likely that there are enough cheating assholes out there who make malware for their own selfish interests (in efforts to make quick cash) that antivirus companies don’t need to lift a finger to continue this cycle. The religion of capitalism, and toxic cultures encouraging human greed, do enough to perpetuate malware.
No doubt they have the same conversations at every Coroner's office...
Q: Is this guy REALLY dead? A: Yes. He didn't have much money.
You completely missed the point. He didn’t want to be extradited. He might have paid someone or many people to fake his death to avoid extradition.
Oh god almighty, here we go already with the conspiracy theorist wackos. McAfee isn’t dead. He faked his death and is now living on some island with Elvis, Hitler, and Tupac.
Agreed!!
What you’re expressing here is how I feel about your posts when you act like Apple is being persecuted, or like there’s a virtual collective of anti-Apple “haters” who only critique Apple as an irrational & egotistical attack. It comes off as a conspiracy theorist’s response.
This is not an attack, by the way. I’m trying to draw a parallel for you. I like some of your viewpoints because they’re sensible or ethical, but the anti-“haters” thing seems a frequent knee-jerk, out of proportion response to people making legit criticism of Apple. Sometimes you leap to Apple’s defense when no one has even criticized them.
R.I.P. This man’s virus alerts nagged all Windows machines across the world.
I don't know about early on, it might have been good at one time. When I was doing IT support though MacAfee AntiVirus was a plague. It was one of the thinks we nuked new machines to get rid of.
Back in DOS days, it was one of the best.
I don't recall McAfee being available on DOS. The ability for viruses to infect PC's in the MS-DOS era was next to zero wasn't it? Unless it was transferred via infected floppy disks?
That was pretty much the only way that viruses spread early on. Mostly through pirated software being passed around.
Curious if that is what you publicly declare at the funerals of your own loved ones. If it is, may I suggest those two lines as the perfect inscription for your own tombstone. It would certainly make your stone the most popular in the cemetery! :-)
I don't go to funerals. They're barbaric.
Death itself is "barbaric," my friend. But it's a part of life. We all must deal with it. Whether we deal with it negative or positively is key. A positive attitude alone can put the FUN back in FUNeral! :-)
There's something strange about libertarian types who would rather go to prison and ultimately die than pay taxes... Being greedy is not paying taxes, which goes to support people worse off, supporting right-wing interests...
I enjoy your post for the sake of the Tweets, but I did not enjoy reading the above commentary. There's nothing strange about Libertarian thinking if you are a liberty advocate. And I say this as someone who isn't a Libertarian party member either. It's only when we come to the point that we can only feel warm and fuzzy in our heart by reaching into the pocket of our neighbor, stealing his money, then donating it to a so-called worthy cause, that our true left-wring ideology is exposed. Theft is theft, even if we try to cover it with the law and power of government. This remains true even though I acknowledge that taxes are needed in society. The difference is, I view taxes as a necessary "evil" not a necessary "good." Our power to steal from each other and allow wealth redistribution happens at the ballot box when people vote for the most left-wing candidates who think the remedy for all the world's ills is tax-and-spend. That, my friend, is "something strange." But America wasn't founded on tax-and-spend, thank goodness. It was founded on the ideals of individual liberty, and that is what made our country great. The understanding and acceptance of freedom is what defines a true American, and in that sense, I am proud to be an American. You know you're a freedom advocate when you afford your neighbor more liberty than you afford your own self. If my neighbor tells me he has avoided US Taxes legally, I harbor no ill will toward that person at all. Tax-and-Spend doesn't make any country great.
Now as to McAfee having not filing his taxes in protest, well, that was done in deliberate error because no one escapes the IRS' death grip. He allowed his personal ideology to cloud judgment, akin to those who stormed the US Capitol. Even so, I'm not going to condemn the man. He is deceased after all. It's all too easy for us to condemn others, and much harder to sympathize with people who choose to Think Different, outside the mainstream. With that said, I must admit he was a very odd fellow. I think that began long before he attained wealth though. And now his time on earth is finished. He chose to end his life and not allow the tax collectors to gain the upper hand. Some call that greed, selfishness, and an evil mindset. Others call it taking control of a seemingly hopeless situation.
Rich eccentric man recently says If I am found dead in a jail cell they'll say it was suicide but I will have been murdered. Same rich eccentric man ends up dead by suicide in a prison cell. If that isn't worthy of a raised eyebrow or conspiracy theory conjecture then nothing is.
There's something strange about libertarian types who would rather go to prison and ultimately die than pay taxes... Being greedy is not paying taxes, which goes to support people worse off, supporting right-wing interests...
I enjoy your post for the sake of the Tweets, but I did not enjoy reading the above commentary. There's nothing strange about Libertarian thinking if you are a liberty advocate. And I say this as someone who isn't a Libertarian party member either. It's only when we come to the point that we can only feel warm and fuzzy in our heart by reaching into the pocket of our neighbor, stealing his money, then donating it to a so-called worthy cause, that our true left-wring ideology is exposed. Theft is theft, even if we try to cover it with the law and power of government. This remains true even though I acknowledge that taxes are needed in society. The difference is, I view taxes as a necessary "evil" not a necessary "good." Our power to steal from each other and allow wealth redistribution happens at the ballot box when people vote for the most left-wing candidates who think the remedy for all the world's ills is tax-and-spend. That, my friend, is "something strange." But America wasn't founded on tax-and-spend, thank goodness. It was founded on the ideals of individual liberty, and that is what made our country great. The understanding and acceptance of freedom is what defines a true American, and in that sense, I am proud to be an American. You know you're a freedom advocate when you afford your neighbor more liberty than you afford your own self. If my neighbor tells me he has avoided US Taxes legally, I harbor no ill will toward that person at all. Tax-and-Spend doesn't make any country great.
Now as to McAfee having not filing his taxes in protest, well, that was done in deliberate error because no one escapes the IRS' death grip. He allowed his personal ideology to cloud judgment, akin to those who stormed the US Capitol. Even so, I'm not going to condemn the man. He is deceased after all. It's all too easy for us to condemn others, and much harder to sympathize with people who choose to Think Different, outside the mainstream. With that said, I must admit he was a very odd fellow. I think that began long before he attained wealth though. And now his time on earth is finished. He chose to end his life and not allow the tax collectors to gain the upper hand. Some call that greed, selfishness, and an evil mindset. Others call it taking control of a seemingly hopeless situation.
RIP, John McAfee.
People need a better understanding of what taxes are used for. Mcafee tried to run for president under the libertarian party (he had no expectations of winning and used it as a platform) and you can read their ideology here:
They commonly use terms like theft and suggestions that politicians are 'lining their pockets' - this phrase was used by Mcafee in his messages. They think all publicly funded programs should be supported voluntarily - basically only pay for something when it affects them directly e.g if you don't have kids, don't support education. The government posts publicly what they are funding. A significant portion is for retirement and another significant portion is directly employing over 20 million people, many of them are your neighbors too:
Everybody gets old and dies, that's a fact of life. When people get old, they retire but they still need to survive and few people have the foresight to financially prepare for retirement while they are young. If people are so against paying 25% tax, they're not going to save 25% of every pay-check for retirement voluntarily and employers would just lower their salaries if they found out employees were able to save 25% as surplus. The reason why salaries are at the level they are at is because they include taxation, they wouldn't be that level if taxes were removed. Over multiple generations, people have seen the effects of not taking care of the elderly so universally countries implement the system of taxing the young, working class to support retirees and this process continues for every generation.
Healthcare coverage is in there too. Even the libertarian author Ayn Rand used state healthcare and social security when she got old and sick because private healthcare would have bankrupted her. They try to spin this as though it is compatible with her ideology of selfishly taking things for their own self-interest. In reality it's just her finally figuring out for herself how the system is designed to work but only when it affected her.
The terms greed, egocentrism, Objectivism, selfishness are embraced by libertarians as something positive, their literature openly states this and it's why so few people support their ideology because most people grew out of that state of mind when they were children and learned that you can own toys and share them too.
Mcafee talks about income taxes here at 41:40 and promoting using private cryptocurrency coins like Monero to avoid them:
He talks about places like the Bahamas not having income tax as an example to follow. The places that don't have income tax mostly have populations below 1m people or are supported by oil exports:
They don't seem to make that connection; it's not just a different ideology, it's practicality. If countries can support the social needs of a small population with tourism or oil or something else then great but it doesn't scale to a population of over 300 million people.
You say tax-and-spend doesn't make any country great yet the countries widely regarded as the greatest in the world do just that. They do this by providing for education, healthcare, infrastructure and security to allow the opportunity and safety for everyone to prosper. That's not a coincidence.
In most cases debates over taxation are about how much and this has to be sustainable (they all spend too much) but the idea that they should be entirely based on selfish, individual preferences is morally indefensible and not in any way practical or sustainable.
It's typically rich people (Mcafee made well over $100m) who have these views because their tax bills far exceed their personal support needs so they want things like flat tax, consumption tax, anything that means as little of their money goes to supporting anyone other than themselves - the same people who made them rich in the first place.
They're the ones who keep promoting crypto. Guess who owns most of the cryptocurrency and who can afford the ad space to promote it:
Rich eccentric man recently says If I am found dead in a jail cell they'll say it was suicide but I will have been murdered. Same rich eccentric man ends up dead by suicide in a prison cell. If that isn't worthy of a raised eyebrow or conspiracy theory conjecture then nothing is.
He also claimed that the government poisoned his dogs. He lived in a delusional, paranoid world of his own creation that the government was out to get him just as most libertarians do. They constantly try to turn people against the idea of government, painting them as villains, murderers, thieves, looters to encourage new generations of anarchists to behave the same way. Some of it is justifiable, he was heavily against government invasion of privacy, supporting Apple's stance against the government backdoors on mobile devices.
Mcafee also had credible accusations against him of murder and drugged sexual assault so people should keep this in mind. He's clearly intelligent and well spoken but this was wrapped in an ideology of someone who thought they ought to have the right to live however they pleased, regardless of the impact on other people.
Comments
I suspect your entirely reasonable and rational argument will be mostly ignored because people don’t like rational and reasonable when they can promote crazy and outlandish crap.
Politics is everywhere. Trying to opt out is self-blindness.
2nd point: Antivirus companies have long been a target of conspiracy theories that they create viruses to further justify the need for their products.
I think it’s not entirely unreasonable to imagine such conspiracy (the US’s so-called healthcare system does seem to act from the angle of charging people for drugs and perpetual treatment, rather than investing in preventative process and actual cures)...
...but it’s probably more likely that there are enough cheating assholes out there who make malware for their own selfish interests (in efforts to make quick cash) that antivirus companies don’t need to lift a finger to continue this cycle. The religion of capitalism, and toxic cultures encouraging human greed, do enough to perpetuate malware.
Declaring we can never know the truth is like inviting conspiracy theorists to do their thing.
Agreed!!
What you’re expressing here is how I feel about your posts when you act like Apple is being persecuted, or like there’s a virtual collective of anti-Apple “haters” who only critique Apple as an irrational & egotistical attack. It comes off as a conspiracy theorist’s response.
This is not an attack, by the way. I’m trying to draw a parallel for you. I like some of your viewpoints because they’re sensible or ethical, but the anti-“haters” thing seems a frequent knee-jerk, out of proportion response to people making legit criticism of Apple. Sometimes you leap to Apple’s defense when no one has even criticized them.
Now as to McAfee having not filing his taxes in protest, well, that was done in deliberate error because no one escapes the IRS' death grip. He allowed his personal ideology to cloud judgment, akin to those who stormed the US Capitol. Even so, I'm not going to condemn the man. He is deceased after all. It's all too easy for us to condemn others, and much harder to sympathize with people who choose to Think Different, outside the mainstream. With that said, I must admit he was a very odd fellow. I think that began long before he attained wealth though. And now his time on earth is finished. He chose to end his life and not allow the tax collectors to gain the upper hand. Some call that greed, selfishness, and an evil mindset. Others call it taking control of a seemingly hopeless situation.
RIP, John McAfee.
If that isn't worthy of a raised eyebrow or conspiracy theory conjecture then nothing is.
https://www.lp.org/issues/taxes/
They commonly use terms like theft and suggestions that politicians are 'lining their pockets' - this phrase was used by Mcafee in his messages. They think all publicly funded programs should be supported voluntarily - basically only pay for something when it affects them directly e.g if you don't have kids, don't support education. The government posts publicly what they are funding. A significant portion is for retirement and another significant portion is directly employing over 20 million people, many of them are your neighbors too:
https://usafacts.org/annual-publications/government-10-k/part-i/item-1-purpose-and-function-of-our-government-general/employees/
Everybody gets old and dies, that's a fact of life. When people get old, they retire but they still need to survive and few people have the foresight to financially prepare for retirement while they are young. If people are so against paying 25% tax, they're not going to save 25% of every pay-check for retirement voluntarily and employers would just lower their salaries if they found out employees were able to save 25% as surplus. The reason why salaries are at the level they are at is because they include taxation, they wouldn't be that level if taxes were removed. Over multiple generations, people have seen the effects of not taking care of the elderly so universally countries implement the system of taxing the young, working class to support retirees and this process continues for every generation.
If someone works for 40 years and earns $1m in that time and the government collects 25%, they pay social security for the remainder of that person's life, usually 20 years without working ($250k / 20 years = $12.5k/year - https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/ProgData/retirebenefit1.html )). It's not theft when a person gets back the money they put in (millionaires also can and do claim some of the social security they paid - https://facethefactsusa.org/facts/millionaires-receiving-social-security/ )).
Healthcare coverage is in there too. Even the libertarian author Ayn Rand used state healthcare and social security when she got old and sick because private healthcare would have bankrupted her. They try to spin this as though it is compatible with her ideology of selfishly taking things for their own self-interest. In reality it's just her finally figuring out for herself how the system is designed to work but only when it affected her.
The terms greed, egocentrism, Objectivism, selfishness are embraced by libertarians as something positive, their literature openly states this and it's why so few people support their ideology because most people grew out of that state of mind when they were children and learned that you can own toys and share them too.
Mcafee talks about income taxes here at 41:40 and promoting using private cryptocurrency coins like Monero to avoid them:
He talks about places like the Bahamas not having income tax as an example to follow. The places that don't have income tax mostly have populations below 1m people or are supported by oil exports:
https://globalisationguide.org/tax/countries-without-income-tax/
They don't seem to make that connection; it's not just a different ideology, it's practicality. If countries can support the social needs of a small population with tourism or oil or something else then great but it doesn't scale to a population of over 300 million people.
You say tax-and-spend doesn't make any country great yet the countries widely regarded as the greatest in the world do just that. They do this by providing for education, healthcare, infrastructure and security to allow the opportunity and safety for everyone to prosper. That's not a coincidence.
In most cases debates over taxation are about how much and this has to be sustainable (they all spend too much) but the idea that they should be entirely based on selfish, individual preferences is morally indefensible and not in any way practical or sustainable.
It's typically rich people (Mcafee made well over $100m) who have these views because their tax bills far exceed their personal support needs so they want things like flat tax, consumption tax, anything that means as little of their money goes to supporting anyone other than themselves - the same people who made them rich in the first place.
They're the ones who keep promoting crypto. Guess who owns most of the cryptocurrency and who can afford the ad space to promote it:
https://howmuch.net/articles/bitcoin-wealth-distribution
He also claimed that the government poisoned his dogs. He lived in a delusional, paranoid world of his own creation that the government was out to get him just as most libertarians do. They constantly try to turn people against the idea of government, painting them as villains, murderers, thieves, looters to encourage new generations of anarchists to behave the same way. Some of it is justifiable, he was heavily against government invasion of privacy, supporting Apple's stance against the government backdoors on mobile devices.
Mcafee also had credible accusations against him of murder and drugged sexual assault so people should keep this in mind. He's clearly intelligent and well spoken but this was wrapped in an ideology of someone who thought they ought to have the right to live however they pleased, regardless of the impact on other people.