Taxing the Fiction: Why Alaskans Pay Local Use Tax on Out-of-State Purchases (Questions Answered by Gemini AI)

I asked Gemini to answer a few quest​ions about why I had to pay a local tax for an online purchase of items not manufactured or sold locally or even made in the U.S.A.  The following is what it wrote...

Taxing the Fiction: Why Alaskans Pay Local Use Tax on Out-of-State Purchases 

Alaska is one of the few U.S. states with no statewide sales tax. However, many residents living in boroughs like Wrangell find that purchasing goods essential for daily life—such as a new computer—from an out-of-state retailer still incurs a local Use Tax.

​This scenario presents a persistent legal and economic conflict: How can a local government legitimately impose a tax on an item that is neither manufactured, sold, nor readily available within its local market?

https://suno.com/s/Q2qgSTycbpjIgQME

​This post examines the legal framework that permits this tax structure. We will analyze the constitutional justification (the Dormant Commerce Clause) used to uphold the tax, why it is defined as a "compensatory" measure despite the lack of local commerce, and the legal rationale for distinguishing between individual consumers and businesses (the resale exemption). Finally, we confirm where this revenue goes and explore the limited avenues available for challenging this specific tax policy.
​

 The Legal Basis: Jurisdiction Over "Use"
​The legal justification for the Use Tax rests entirely on one single fact: The item is being used (consumed) within the taxing jurisdiction.
​Taxable Event: The local tax is NOT on the sale (which occurred outside the state). The tax is on the privilege of storing, using, or consuming the goods in Wrangell.
​Legal Nexus: By establishing a home or a place of business in Wrangell, a resident establishes a "nexus" (a sufficient connection) with the local government. This allows the local government to tax activities that occur within its borders.

​The Private Affair: While the purchase is a private affair, the courts view the use of property (and the benefit derived from that use) as something that requires municipal services. Even computer use benefits from a stable, maintained community:
​Police/Fire protection for the residence where the computer is kept.
​Roads and infrastructure that allow the shipping company to deliver the package.
​The basic public safety that supports all commerce, including the ability of external companies (like phone providers) to operate.

​The AT&T Analogy
​This concept is clearest with services like cellular connections:
​When a service is paid for, the Wrangell Use Tax is applied to the service being delivered and used in Wrangell.
​The tax is a percentage of the service cost because the service is being consumed within the municipality that provides the infrastructure and governance for the community.
​

 Why the Use Tax Must Exist (Legally)
​If Wrangell did not have a use tax on out-of-state purchases, the entire local sales tax would be considered discriminatory and unconstitutional under the Dormant Commerce Clause.
​Local businesses in Wrangell would have to charge the full sales tax rate (7.0%).
​Out-of-state retailers would charge 0% tax.
​This creates an illegal economic incentive to buy from out-of-state, and the tax would be ruled an illegal burden on interstate commerce because it favors out-of-state sellers over local sellers.
​The Use Tax is what legally "compensates" for the missing local sales tax, neutralizing the effect and making the tax constitutional.
​

 A Philosophical Divergence: The Court and Taxation
​To illustrate how deeply rooted the power to tax is, consider a hypothetical scenario: How would U.S. tax laws change if the Supreme Court were packed with anarchists?

​Anarchist Philosophy: Anarchism fundamentally rejects the state and all forms of involuntary, coercive authority, viewing taxation as a forced taking of property.

​Judicial Impact: Currently, the Court uses the Commerce Clause and Dormant Commerce Clause to uphold taxes. A majority of justices holding an anarchist philosophy would likely dismantle these legal precedents, viewing any compelled tax payment as a violation of fundamental individual liberty and property rights.

​Likely Outcome: An "anarchist" Court would likely rule that taxation, as a coercive act of the state, is unconstitutional because it violates due process and represents an unconstitutional taking of private property without the state having a legitimate moral or legal claim to the funds. This would trigger a constitutional crisis and effectively end the existing tax system in the United States.
​

 The Bottom Line: Your Options
​The perspective that the tax is on a "fiction" (the potential for a local sale) and is for a "private affair" (personal computer use) is economically and logically sound, but it does not align with the standard used in U.S. constitutional law for use taxes.
​As long as the Use Tax Rate = Sales Tax Rate (7.0% in Wrangell), the courts will almost certainly uphold it as a valid, non-discriminatory tax on local consumption.
​The most effective path to challenging this specific tax is local policy advocacy to persuade the Wrangell Borough Assembly to add a specific tax exemption to the municipal code for items proven to be unavailable within the community. 

Work on Solving Mendenhall Glacier Flooding Release- Not Just Forecasting Them

 There is an Icelandic term for a sudden release of water from underneath a glacier- a Jøkulhlaup, that occurs in Alaska and especially in Juneau in a populous area during late summers. Maybe the borough could use some seismic survey researchers or another kind of diagnostic imaging to locate and release with hot drilling, robots, lasers or some other method to govern water flow content capable of flooding with early, controlled release from glacial reservoirs in artificial, temporary channels.

Remembering the Reagans, etc

 I used to spend a fair piece of time boating in S.E. Alaska. I saw several interesting vessels- one a stern steered boat with a large oar for a rudder, the sailing ship Lady Washington etc. I also saw former President Reagan's yacht near Wrangell as it passed on the way to town. I will recount that experience after mentioning briefly a pair of experiences myself- one on a skiff, to leave a chronological note.

For a few years when it was 32 my feet would turn black from cyanotic blood and I restored circulation by taking a hot shower-then the skin would turn back to pink or flesh color from a line above my ankle moving down eventually to my toes. It wasn't frostbite- it was something like trenchfoot that did it. I spent a day walking through deep water snow and creeks in combat boots. Comparable to keeping my feet in a bucket of ice and slushy water for a day. A couple days later they were swollen up like balloons and I had to get extra wide tennis shoes sizes to big for temporary use. I reinjured them in 2018 while bringing a skiff down from Juneau in October and nearly drowned crossing Taku Inlet. My boots had a leak and they stayed cold and wet for days. Then I returned to the shed and it was like my feet were on fire and hell for a week. I got snowed in and couldn't leave to go to a clinic in town. I made it eventually and got a drug that makes the brain not feel pain. My feet were nearly all recovered before that last injury.

https://suno.com/s/xWfqJoHuby5E4Rrg

Sometime around the Republican National convention of 1992 Ronald and Nancy Reagan yachted up the inside passage and put in at Wrangell.

https://suno.com/s/z2nno76Ttde4VdQ0

Ronald Reagan like seemed a tool of God, a man of peace and Christian- wise as a serpent yet gentle as a dove in a political ecosphere of vipers, and yet he seemed to be fading and looked under the weather. Nancy was on his arm and seemed healthy enough and to be reinforcing him as they walked along the sidewalk with a small entourage. Nancy was also an actress.

Ron looked at me as I was taking my last $100 from the bank when he walked past outside the bank window. He was wearing a wool sweater he had bought at Hickok's- a clothing store that opened shortly before his visit and closed not long after the Reagans left Wrangell. I had served as a reservist mostly for 6 years of his administration and that changed the way I looked at things perhaps. Reagan was taking heat for the Iran contra connection with Oliver North at the time and was perhaps getting away from the media spotlight in Alaska on a yachting sojourn. I thought I would help him out so I wrote an letter to an editor asking if Reagan had secretly been a communist -really counter-intuitive to what the public thought he had been. The premise was that he had been a Democrat and admired Franklin D Roosevelt when a young guy, and added several trillion dollars to the national debt as President (the debt excusable as a one-time thing in order to end the Cold War- no subsequent President should have followed that deficit spending example).

Shortly after that it was announced that he had Alzheimers and went into seclusion for the remainder of his days. I worked for a temporary agency at a construction site years later with a guy for a day that looked like Reagan's twin brother; he was a bricklayer. Nice guy. Interesting times. Maybe the Reagans used their acting skills to get some of their political work done.

Reagan was somewhat transparent- there is a lot of biographical stuff written about him. I think Nancy not so much- well I haven't read that. At that level the public persona needs to coincide with the private. Interesting thing I read that was somewhat biographical was a history by an insider of how Reagan de-escalated nuclear missile stocks with the Soviets. He was the only one who thought about that much in his administration- his goal was to eliminate all nuclear weapons. Everyone else in the government; and this continued into the start of the Bush administration, was aboard the traditional hawkish point of view. 

Reagan was a kind of voice crying in the wilderness in his own way and Gorbachev met him halfway. I suppose there is a secret history of Mikhail and his philosopher wife Reza that hasn't been written and never will be. I suspect that the Gorbachev's were the tip of an iceberg of high level insiders that wanted to end communism in Russia yet had to be rather careful covert and indirect to get that done because traditional, conservative communists would not tolerate that movement toward liberalization directly. 

https://suno.com/s/yL347Rks88vUjIqB Night Rises in Darkness

Presidents may have a lot of secret communications, methods and means perhaps unknown to history. Heck, I thought I saw Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky in a ferry terminal parking lot in Juneau in 1994 I believe it was. She had on a fishnet sweater kind of thing over a t-shirt and asked if I had change for a dollar so she could use a pay phone to call a taxi- She said 'I've got to get Randy home'. Bill was dressed casually like a regular grunge Alaskan, yet wearing a very large gold star like a sheriff badge some place down south that no one in Juneau wears anything vaguely resembling it, and appeared to be drunkish. Secrets people keep lol Everyone has seen celebrities though at some time. I did see Sean Connery at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in New Orleans at 2 in the morning getting out of a limousine in the parking garage where I was cleaning the gutter as a temporary over night worker.

Alaska Wants to Spend 84 million of Public Education (an increase of more than $600 per student)

 I am not a fan of Alaska education after being denied admission to a U.A.F. graduate school three time with a 3.7 g.p.a. as an undergraduate. (including CLEP exams) and an 85% on the G.R.E. with an Associate from U.A.S.E. So I continued reading outside the classroom and learned a lot of history, philosophy, logic etc. Instead of going about education the traditional way.

II prefer using more technology and A.I. instruction and spending less on physical infrastructure that serves to to give kids and c student teachers with B.ED.s a place to hang out and go over textbooks with paint by the numbers pedagogy. Teachers don't need to be replaced with robots the next decade, yet the day may be approaching. Instructing in discipline issues and constructive socialization instead of youth learning gangsterism is an important function of schools yet that could be addressed in some way besides through teachers.

Training for little kids has different requisites than for those more able to self-supervise (grade 7 and up). Perhaps education in specialized theme parks instead of schools could educate small children effectively, combining functions of day care, motor skills, weapons training, speed reading, multi media, acrobatics, wildlife management, botany, zoology, astrophysics etc. Education might be more fun for little kids.

School buildings should be super-insulated and have renewable energy to cut down on electricity bills. Efficiency in delivering education need be perpetually upgraded. That includes lowering the cost of education until costs fade away and youth can meet legal education requirements in an information rich culture without going to schools becoming legally free to pursue other life activities than sitting in classrooms.

China has far more engineering graduates than the United States and going about higher education in ways that other nations can match and surpass will not result in a winning position for the U.S.A. or Alaska. Another problem is that a lot of education and even excellence can lead nowhere without a relevant occupational connection. In my opinion anyone reasonably good at learning should be able to afford to do so and take courses such that passing courses count yet failing won't. People should be encouraged to try and not worry about failing. Online coursework should be evaluated and accredited by the state and students pursuing lifetime learning should have a state education account that keeps track of their courses passed.

Higher education needs more flexibility and on-line adaptability so students that want to work at a faster than average pace can do so without any corresponding facility and material structure issues. Students should be allowed to sign up for coursera courses at any age if they have an interest and ability and find a seamless integration of passing coursework to their credit in a personalized high school catalog. Just ditto’ing traditional ways of education will not make American education great again. Creating higher costs and expenses on inefficiency will not lead to modernized effectiveness in education.

Besides the above I like the Governor’s edits.

McKinley or Stuck?

Denali is one of the many names for the biggest hill in Alaska, and Nalley’s chips are great in flight. Hudson Stuck- the first to summit McKinley didn’t even get a hill named for him in Alaska. Stuckeys is close though; great jelly. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_Hudson_Stuck.jpg

Canadian Tariffs Bring Opportunity for Zinc Ore Processing to Alaska

 The Red Dog mine is America's largest zinc and germanium producer. The ore is processed in Canada travelling hundreds of miles. The new tariffs have unintentionally made an opportunity for a new source of good jobs in Wrangell, Anchorage or Fairbanks should mine owners decide to build.

Creating new quality jobs in Alaska isn't easy. Besides tourism the employment numbers don't change a lot. The opportunity to create a new heavy industry employer doesn't arise every day. The state could pursue bring ore processing to diversify the economy.

https://alaskabeacon.com/2025/01/31/a-major-alaska-mine-could-end-up-in-the-crossfire-of-trumps-trade-war-with-canada/

Writing and the Point of No Return

I read somewhere that one should always finish what one starts if it was worth doing to start with. Just put your head down and ride into the wind coefficient of adversity typing late through the night until dawn's early light at the last line of the final chapter.

One may experience doubt taking a skiff into rising difficult water. When the point of no return arrives one need put away doubt and focus on the task.

Meaning of Exist, Real and Absolute Philosophically Speaking

 Was it Kierkegaard who hated the use of the word 'absolute'? That word is derived from absolve that means to free from blame. Most people don't use it that way. He didn't like Hegel's work much and Hegel used the word quite a bit. It doesn't add any meaning to anything really. Absolute is used as a sort of super adjective. For instance in Hegel's 'Realms of Absolute Spirit' (if I recall correctly that book is a kind of abbreviation of the Phenomenology of Mind). It is one of the more over-used words in philosophy, or was. Exist does stand apart. It means one is talking about the condition of being itself. Exist is a basic philosophical word; one of reflection on being. Real is a comparable term although perhaps a lesser one. It seems to mean that something does exist.

Free Will in Relation to Consciousness and Subconsciousness

Will is contingent upon consciousness. If one has consciousness one may choose to act or not. Some say conscious decisions to act are not made by consciousness, instead they believe conditioning subconsciously determines conscious decisions.

The will exists in the sub conscious and it is free. Otherwise there would be a lower level, more primary set of instructions controlling the sub conscious and a superfluous deceived consciousness.

Consciousness exists supported by the subconscious. It is not possible for human consciousness to keep all of their experience, memories, judgments and history active in conscious thoughts. Instead there is an innate middle ground of intellect that retrieves data from the subconscious in accord with conscious thought and the lesser intelligent yet active and closer related to emotion will.

Will exist as a modified reflection of conscious thought that needn’t be mentally, internally expressed in order to be present and act. It can retrieve subconscious information for consciousness and may also join with conscious thought and be directed by it. An aware mind freely chooses to act. Thought is in harmony with the will and subconscious usually, yet on some occasions they may not. An example may be a conscious choice to act peacefully while the will is to punch an offender as memory informs the mind of dire consequences of taking the latter course

I have heard a song or thought of something I can’t recall like the title of that song, and directed my subconscious to find it. Some time later the right idea appears in my conscious thought.

A human mind is a continuum of conscious, will and sub-consciousness that each have intelligence. Will and subconscious work for the conscious mind. It is a trinity that works.

https://www.udio.com/songs/u9qu6CYDEWTyZih3sjGd1P

Humans May Have Evolved From Rats; Adam and Eve Were Spliced In

 Humans May Have Evolved From Rats Named Purgatoriuos 65 Million Years BC

I had a concentration in history in college and learned a lot from the past. I wouldn’t suggest people can’t learn from the past- 

Agriculture developed when hunting and gathering couldn’t sustain concentrated populations in towns. The transition period was 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. Hunter-gathering was the way of economics before that going back to when people started eating meat as the human line may have evolved from rodents circa 65 million years BC (Adam and Eve were spliced in to an existing human line).

https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/news/our-earliest-primate-ancestors-rapidly-spread-after-dinosaur-extinction

When people sustained with agriculture could sustain civil organizations with rulers organized wars began. Raiders had something established to attack and civil wars could occur as well for regime change. Organized wars started during the late Neolithic Age too.

https://www.history.com/news/when-did-humans-start-waging-wars

An excavation of Cohokia in St. Louis showed that the preceding ruling dynasty members were ceremonially killed when a new ruling family took over. So it’s an American tradition too.

Metaphysics; What It Is

Metaphysics is an activity. It can use many kinds of tools. It is bigger and smaller, simultaneously, than a bread box while being for-itself.

Free Will; A Binary Question

To be or not to be; that is an example of a binary absolute.In logic and programming there are disjuncts. A logic gate tests for a condition to be on or off. Schrodinger’s cat could live in a state compatible with life and death simultaneously, in theory, until collapse of the wave-function, however that super-position status doesn’t work for all mortal philosophical questions. Either/Or, Neither,/Nor are disjuncts of a sort. One shouldn’t expect philosophy to invariably provide weak, vague, uncertain answers and represent them as Truth because political correctness suggests that constructing ideas that will appeal somewhat to everyone returns the most demographic support.

Free will seems to be a question that cannot support affirmative and negative conditions on the same level, or on all possible dimensions.

It is also the case that people want to defend what they believe and sometimes strongly when they don’t realize they are wrong and are duty bound by themselves to defend their wrong, godless atheist opinions.

Marxism; Good Revolution Organizer for a Bad Economic System

Marxism is a practical idea for organizing revolutionaries that are from underdeveloped countries with concentrated wealth. The masses are led to class consciousness as oppressed, exploited people and brought to revolution with the belief they will share equally the wealth of the ruling class when they are deposed. That idea of upward mobility supports the revolutionary esprit. With victory the economic revolution following becomes a challenge to make productive. Alec Nove wrote a book named ‘An Economic History of the Soviet Union’ decades ago that examines some of the problems for Lenin and Stalin.

Marx had good sociological understanding of wealth in England that was his model. He had poor development of post-revolutionary economic models that would work. That sort of economic theory development has always been troublesome. China for instance is a work in progress that has used much of the economic structure of the West retrofitted onto Maoist socialism.

Sports as War Training and Gambling are Still Socially Ubiquitous

Gambling seems to be taking over sports. Betting on events on-line at a profusion of new sites is all over the internet People need on-line electronic gambling machines from international sites. Competition is part of the human condition from wars to martial arts. If WW 3 occurs soon because of competition to own Ukraine and for economic hegemony over the world, that’s because competition is more highly regarded than pragmatism, realism and cooperation.

Sports were developed as training for war. Competition among men to see who could throw a rock or spear farther, and the prestige of skill in hunting and self defense were important to tribes. Warrior and hunter were the original male occupations globally.

I had a concentration in history in college and learned a lot from the past. I wouldn't suggest people can't learn from the past- that's silly.

Agriculture developed when hunting and gathering couldn't sustain concentrated populations in towns. The transition period was 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. Hunter-gathering was the way of economics before that going back to when people started eating meat as the human line may have evolved from rodents circa 65 million years BC (Adam and Eve were spliced in to an existing human line).

https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/.../our-earliest-primate...

When people sustained with agriculture could sustain civil organizations with rulers organized wars began. Raiders had something established to attack and civil wars could occur as well for regime change. Organized wars started during the late Neolithic Age too.

https://www.history.com/.../when-did-humans-start-waging...

An excavation of Cohokia in St. Louis showed that the preceding ruling dynasty members were ceremonially killed when a new ruling family took over. So it's an American tradition too.

V Frankl Thought People Seek Pleasure if Life Seems Meaningless

 Frankl was profoundly influenced by his time in. Nazi concentration camp. He developed theories about recovery and finding meaning afterward.

Those finding life meaningless may not be able to afford pleasure. Such people may feel that without pleasure, life is meaningless.

This prompts me to mention Huizinga, a ubiquitous citation reference in the field of education who was an historian regarded as a quintessential humanist. I don’t find Huizinga interesting or a meaningful philosopher as others have yet he did rather invent or popularize the notion that play is the creator of culture. It is understandable that teachers regarded Huizinga as the greatest scholar of the last 25 years of the 19th century. I thought Sartre and the Apostle Paul distant runner-ups to what Jesus said.

The death camps were unthinkably bad and existential crisis for sure. Europe has a great history of pathos and stupidity concerning conflict and with President Biden’s help is experiencing a Renaissance of pathos in the Ukraine War.

The meaninglessness of pathos may transform the USA, Europe, Russia and China into Ukraine s in the fires of the future. Pleasure is kinda expensive for many of the poor who need satisfy themselves for meaning with observation of the Democrats leading the charge to apocalypse or large waves of disaster scheduled tentatively for 2025.

Capitalism is More Natural Than Socialism

 Capitalism is probably more natural than socialism although economically challenged people are probably happy enough if either works reasonably well.

Thermodynamics for living beings compels the input of material for existing. Accumulating capital is natural. Food, shelter, clothing, defense weapons, tools etc- people built up as much as circumstances allowed. Socialism requires more cooperation than capitalism as well as sophisticated governance. That part often fails.

In primitive societies where things are shared and tools are simple even knives are given to another if they ask for it to prevent jealousy. With such a simple tool kit everything a tribe has is more or less interchangable and of the same quality.

More advanced forms of capitalism with low taxes on the rich can concentrate wealth and stifle competitive capital accumulation by the masses, and that poverty can nip inventiveness and progress in the bud unless the ideas trickle up to the rich.

Social governance implies management by uninventive bureaucrats leading to another form of mass social repression that fails to maximize social potential.

There real isn’t a substitute for good political sense that assures universal basic income for enabling initial capital, environmental economics sustainability, great human relations on international concerns and progressive taxation to let creative and productive entrepreneurs prosper yet not concentrate social capital so much that the political economy can’t evolve and adapt to emergent coefficients of adversity.

The Problem of Evil, Omnipotence and a Level Four Multiverse

 Dr. Degrasse Tyson was credited with saying that God can’t be omnipotent and let evil exist at the same time. There are numerous theological responses yet I like this one using physics.

If there is a level 4 multiverse individual minds switch to the appropriate universe with each decisive thought; without being aware. Minds switch between Universes in that Tegmark theory. All of the Universes already exists fully actualized. That is sentient minds follow their own free will world line.

God is good and without sin. If people are willing to have faith in The Son he can save them with the atoning sacrifice. Otherwise people forge their own path to eternity without God that evolutionly becomes hell.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson isn’t a theologian and doesn’t talk about the numerous varieties of cosmology enough. He could even provide a review of good new cosmology books for non- scientists with new theories each year so people would know what to buy.

Religious Historical Research is Millennia Old

 People have researched the origin of particular religions for more than 2000 years. That sort of scholarship isn’t anything new. It is wrong to conflate their separate histories for that does lead to the construction of neo-modern myths in replacement for sound scholarship.

The origin of Manichaenism differs from that of Zoroastrianism and Islam. Many haven’t even read a basic scholarly text like Berhof’s Introduction to The New Testament. I have a free summary to save the cost of buying that public domain book published in 1915.

https://www.lulu.com/shop/garrison-clifford-gibson/a-commentary-on-berkhofs-intro-to-the-new-testament/ebook/product-1qn8ydk5.html

One may read the history of Asian religions and the origin of Hinduism and Buddhism and the way it traveled Eastward as the Mahayana and Hinayana, proliferated and differentiated into Zen, Nichiren Buddhism, Soka Gakkai and other forms

It is a mistake to conflate Taoism and Shintoism or Roman and Nordic paganism with several varieties of aboriginal American ideas of belief in a great spirit.

One may believe that Middle Eastern and fertile crescent religious practices and beliefs had a common origin yet they did not. Marduk, Enlil and the tale of Gilgamesh didn’t have the same origin as Osiris or middle African religious complexes.

It is important to differentiate and learn in depth and detail the several systems independently and with understanding so far as possible, as it is with numerous philosophical and cosmological systems rather than glossing over and making summary judgments that are dismissive or in some cases, affirmative. Good scholarship leads to deeper understanding and may reaffirm faith in the one true God or not as the case may be. A path to God is probably made by God for an individual if that is what the spirit wills.

One should have enough respect for scholarship and investment of life's work that has been invested in research, as well as oneself, to development a sober understanding of field studies.

Avatar Drones Casing New Jersey Joints?

 If you have ever taken a programming course you might learn of the criterion of writing specific instructions in algorithms to accomplish particular tasks. There are test conditions, loops, etc that can be used to send a robot named X to go somewhere, do something and return. That sort of program would be on the very low end of programming algorithms today. Especially if compared to AI. One will need to get new software for home burglar alarms down the road to guard against sophisticated robot thieves with programming to pick locks, bypass alarms and accomplish particular criminal tasks. Maybe avatar drones are casing the joint of New Jersey for future adverse missions.

Quantum Entanglement and Consciousness

 The hypothetical unified field includes space-time. It may all be one kind of thing at T=0.

Energy is defined as the ability to do work rather than a substance. Work coheres in space-time. The prospect of a wave function at singularity is something to consider as if it could be bound to T=0 null space-time.

I tend to believe consciousness is a definite locality encountering experience, at least for human beings. Space-time is experienced as a locality. There isn’t a universal time as I understand it. Time is bound with space locality and change of an observer from point a to b. If it is considered as a substance that seems more logical. There is much to think about in regard to space-time.

There may be a continuing primary field from the singularity hosting the basic fields and space-time that remains in existence. That might help explain inflation and gravity.

I tend to like the idea of quantum entanglement with consciousness since 3D matter is enabled by massless particles entangled on the Higgs Field.