979 karma · joined November 23, 2016
I'd also like to know how they imagine rendering complex DOM structures. It's still a nightmare to do with just Javascript. Without at least Preact or Vue, as the smallest options, it's just tedious and complex.
Same for me, even the same font as for you, Fira. I just find it very clear and simple and it supports a great set of ligatures. A lot of other fonts I didn't like at all. So maybe I subconciously chose this, but I feel it's also just a reflection of my demands for a coding font.
Also, in comparison to AAA games from the biggest companies like EA (BF2042 Beta, hello) and Ubisoft, I KNOW that Eric will release a "ready to play" game, without massive bugs and missing content looming.
Don't think that's possible after raising such amounts of money. Their way out is now either getting aquired for loads of cash or going public. Going public also means loosing parts or all of your control over the company. Those investors will want to see their money back some time in the future.
It might be because we have a global pandemic on our hands, where the virus is attacking the lung.
Well, I think my employer doesn't care much about this topic, so I feel like you're talking very condescending to me, while I have little to no control over issues like this.
> telling you what to do and how to live, with an implicit guarantee that it would give everyone a decent life.
Why should I need to tell you what to do and how to live? There's gonna be things everyone will have to do from time to time (like cleaning streets, trash drives, maybe canal work, but most of those you can address by making the reward for doing such jobs higher than the average desk job), but other than that, you will have to work less and have more free time in which you will be free to do whatever you want.
I'd argue that our current system forces you way more to do certain things than a socialist system would. If you are poor, you need to work service jobs or hard manual labor, otherwise you die. The system literally forces you to work, otherwise you will not be caught by any social safety net. That's why leftists tend to talk about "wage slaves", because at the end of the day, you can either become homeless and sick, or work.
I'd disagree with the statement, that most of the US citizens live a good life while 40% are in danger of being evicted right now. That's only the first example coming from the top of my head. You could easily make an argument how most people living paycheck to paycheck is not a great status also.
> So you have a dual economy - those in the US who are running the empire's money printing machines, and those who can't help those companies print money.
Wouldn't you consider this amoral from the start? There is proficiencies that won't ever be able to get out of poverity for this exact reason. Most artists, writers, philosophers, social workers, health care workers won't ever be able to get out of poverity / low middle class, because they are not "worth" as much, as people working IT, finance, governance.
> The poor people are actually rich compared to the rest of the world
This comparison doesn't really matter when they can't live where they are right now. If you want to analyse their quality of living you have to only consider their material conditions where they live, not how their money would be able to make them live in South Africa or Swasiland.
> The US is very capitalist in mindset. Keep in mind that in capitalism, companies also help those not within the company by creating better quality goods for consumers (everyone else), so the more empires grow, the cheaper/better the consumer goods are, and the better quality of life is for everyone, not just those who work for the empire.
In theory this would lead to better lifestyles for others, but as the capitalist tries to minimize cost and maximize profit, they are moving away from US based production and produce cheaper in China, South East Asia etc. leaving their US workers behind with no wage to buy their products. Capitalism has reached the stage of maxizing profit through globalization, chasing for the cheapest production possible around the globe. This is why US poverity is increasing and unemployment becomes a more and more desperate issue. The capitalist, in the end, doesn't care about the people outside of his profit scope. He should though, since those people buy his products. If nobody is left buying product, their is no profit. Some people argue this can be corrected by "ethical capitalism" which I think is a dream castle, but you might disagree.
I'd argue that we can reach those goals easier, through socialist companies where not one capitalist is controlling the company, but all the workers collectively. They won't go oversees with their production, as they protect their own jobs. They won't cut safety measures for the same reason. Same for health care etc. Workers will protect themselves way better and lead the society to a more balanced way of living this way in general.
I kind of have the feeling you're not that big of a proponent of capitalism as I thought in the beginning... You have some interesting analysis with the appended criticisms.
> you first have to change the willingness of the American people to willingly accept systematized and distributed personal loss.
We agree that this needs to happen. I don't think the numbers have to be quite as drastic as you proposed, if we just take 80% of the wealth accumulated by the rich (there will be enough left for them) and do a sensible tax reform targeting the Top 10-20% correctly. That would be a start. Going the way of reform, we'd start with that and health care reform and see what's the next step from there. The alternative of revolution is an existing alternative, but costs lives and can hurt the system for the next 20-30 years, so not really desirable. The first step towards reform would be getting Biden into office and then pressuring him to actually take the steps he promised after talking to Sanders.
Regarding instead of taxing, making it so that billionaires need to redistribute privately, I don't agree that that's better than a for example workers council deciding what to do with tax money. The Gates Foundation has distributed their donations 96% to US and European organisations and just 4% to African owned and run organsations. I appreciate them trying to help, but I think you need to put more of this money directly into the hands of African orgs as they for sure know best, what their citizens need.
I'll check out your link later today, thanks. And also thanks for not making this an aggressive, unproductive conversation.
Germany. I'd also add that the countries doing the most for their citizens are probably the Nordic European States plus Germany and France. All of them Social Democracies, so what Americans would probably call a "strong state" oriented approach. I have a lot to critize about my own country, but the social support structures are probably still among the best in the world only toppled by aforementioned Nordic countries like Norway or Denmark.
I really don't think we should rely on the goodwill of millionaires and them running the state is, on a scale, mostly an american issue. Of course we also have lobbies, with which I have a problem, but our European countries are less controlled by wealth than the US for sure.
Regarding "good" billionaires, I'd suggest you listen to this: https://medium.com/@CitationsPodcst/episode-45-the-not-so-be... You seem to support Chicago school style approaches, with which I will disagree, being a pretty standard Frankfurt school believer. I'd still like to discuss this further. Find my email in my profile, if you want.
Edit: Okay, whatever, here you go, right from Stanford: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/socialism/
Also this point only applies to the median family with existing property wealth. Not the poor family that has no inheritance. UBI is designed to serve poor families, not the median or upper class families.
Ever heard of tax deductible donations? Also, what makes you think that a private person is better at deciding where to put their money and has less inclination to donate this money to a social cause that has direct positive outcome for them (for example, investing in their already well-financed community and being the 'hero of the town', gaining also political power that way) instead of letting a state, capable of overseeing ALL of its people redistribute the taxed money to the poorest communities or those that need the help the most in some area?
Edit: And I didn't even touch on this point, because it's a whole other discussion but:
> Another way to say it is that the top 10% got there because they use their money to make more money.
Wealthy people are increasing their wealth through financial tools without contributing anything to society. Also, except for a small number of family or solo entrepreneurs, they didn't get rich on their own. They had employees. Most of those people did not benefit like the business owner did, while they actually did the work. So is it really that unjustified to tax this money and redistribute it to the poor and the workers?
That's it. You're feeding on 100 years of western propaganda and neoliberal ideas.
China is state capitalist, UdSSR was state capitalist.
If you want to see a working socialist state, even though it's suppressed by the US government for 70 years now, which explains most of its problems btw, look to Cuba.
If you take a look at the wealth of the average population, two thirds are either pensions or property wealth. This is longterm money which I cannot draw on until retired (and most certainly won't affect my children) and property which I might depend on and therefore not be able to turn into money.
Also people are largely not against generational wealth, they're just demanding that rich people pay their fair share when inherting property wealth to their children. Taxing the top 10% correctly and without fraud would bring in enough cash to support the bottom 30% a lot more through public housing, health care and childcare support.
A UBI for contrast, is direct payment to my bank account that I can use however I like, it's not locked by its form of wealth. I CAN use that payment to save more of my own money to eventually get property wealth, but it gives the people at the bottom possibilities that they won't have without it. Also, poor people don't give a fuck about the median household wealth. Because they won't have any. The UBI however applies to all, poor and rich alike, supporting poor families a lot more than property wealth they don't have.
I do this by closing my eyes while writing. Makes the writing more descriptive and easier to imagine big scenes with a lot of color and vibrance. Using the 10 finger writing system, I am really fast doing this.