You probably shouldn’t, check out Intel management engine and AMD secure technology.

Yes, we have stamp duty, usually a % of the house as a one off.

Assuming you’re not joking here, if your computers are any way modern they almost certainly have a backdoor.

Come back where? China?

Come, not coke

You are making a lot of assumptions there but setting that aside, I’m not sure I’m in favour of turfing a pensioner out of their home to pay tax because they lucked out. Surely it’d be better to settle up after they die. It’s not like he’s preventing a needy young family moving in - presumably anyone buying this house would need to be pretty wealthy!

Which means he’s paying $12k in property taxes a year. That does sound quite substantial. Assuming that’s somewhat equivalent to rates in the UK, I pay around £1400.

I wouldn’t mind a little faster paced fwiw, the conversation can stagnate a bit sometimes, but it is what it is.