Where the hell did you go to see all that? I’ve lived in the US for half a century and never seen any of that. There are some states that need to figure out how to pave roads that will last more than 2 years, but many states have figured that out.
Mine will show “Spam” or “Telemarketer”, but there’s no way to stop it from ringing trough, outside of blocking each number afterward. I’d like to know who thought that just announcing spam was better than not letting it through.
This doesn’t answer your question, but I will take this time to rant about Jackson Hewitt. I’ve never used them, but I had an 18 year old employee making a little over minimum wage that used them about 20 years ago. His taxes were simple and just, at the time, a 1040EZ. It’s a simple one page document that takes about 1 minute to fill out. He didn’t owe any federal tax, so he should have received back all that he had paid in that year. Jackson Hewitt took all of his refund plus about $200. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the places you listed are just as scummy.
I’ve always done my own taxes except when I had to withdraw from my 401k for a large hospital bill. I went to a local independent tax preparer that charged me $100, but she had a special code that saved me several thousands of dollars in taxes and penalties for early withdrawal from 401k. There was no way that I could have done that on my own. The IRS gives accountants special “powers” that make them necessary. The fact that an entire industry is built around just figuring out how much taxes you owe is a travesty.
The only issue with Audile. Is that you have to sign up for AudD. The cheapest option is $5/month. If you use it a lot, then that could be worth it. I would like to find an open source replacement for SoundHound, but since I only use it, maybe 10 times a year, it isn’t worth $60/year.
It’s a constant fight. I grew up in a village. In the 1980s the neighboring city wanted to annex it. The villagers fought against it for about 25 years. Eventually the neighboring city had a vote. All the citizens of that city were able to vote on whether to annex the village. The city ran a campaign saying how good it would be for the people in the village. Obviously the annexing happened because the villagers couldn’t fight it.
That’s just one example, but it applies to every small, non centralized entity. If a government or a large corporation wants to take it over, it can and will. The one thing digital entities have over other things is space. If someone does take over Lemmy, for example, then the people of Lemmy have the ability to move somewhere else in digital space, unlike the villagers who didn’t all possess the ability to leave their land.