constantius

I think it was your reading that is faulty, the commenter wasn't subtle and didn't undermine anything.

Can you stop playing the game of owning people with teenager level zingers based on you yourself being too thick?

Thanks for surfacing this. As another user says below, Mitchell had more leeway in choosing his investors than most anyone. His is a dispiriting choice.

Bought the documentary and will be buying it for some friends, thanks!

You're strawmanning, or having difficulty reading.

Whatever my personal opinions about copyright, this whole thread is about copyright set at 2000 years vs 20, so that answers your first 2 points.

For the last one, 'losing value' obviously doesn't mean they can be safely binned, but that the publisher has no return on keeping it in publication. Again, this is what the entire thread is about.

A famous paper argued that, from 1960 to 2006, nonviolent resistance was twice as likely as violent resistance to achieve its goal: it's a paper that most activists I've ever met had heard of. The reasons are largely the perception of violent resistance by the bystanders, meaning the population.

However, there have been a number of criticisms to the paper about data coding, methodology, and interpretation/motivated reasoning. Recently, the author has also acknowledged that governments have adapted since 2006: her data says nonviolent resistance is still more effective, but that the success rate has cratered.

I tried to find some of the criticisms, but it's recent, so all AI generated, so I won't link before reading, but the criticisms I'm aware of I think are robust. All this to say, the idea that nonviolent resistance is more effective is comfortable and feels better, and there is a paper that says so, but your examples and those of a child comment are not about resistance to armed colonial oppression and it's not enough to form a blanket opinion about violent resistance.

This is an edge case. The vast majority of intellectual output loses value extremely fast. If a new Kafka comes along and their writing becomes popular 30 years after publication, they will have 0 issues getting a fat contract for a new book.

Justifications for copyright are always built on edge cases, seemingly moral justifications of an empirically immoral practice. Yes, it'd be nice if a single handicapped mother of 2 coild see her children rise out of poverty thanks to her writing talent after 50 years. In practice, this person doesn't exist and building society around that scenario is not a good thing.

These 'what ifs' have the same value and do the same damage as 'who will think of the children' do for human rights.

To your second point: a company (or any kind of organisation) is continuous work. It's a very obvious retort to your analogy. It would be akin to the author writing a book in a series every year for twenty years, then giving their rights to their child who keeps writing books every year, and every book only has 20 years of copyright. Seems fair to me.

To your first point: inheritance has a concentrating effect on wealth. Concentration of wealth is not a good thing, as it breeds inequality by definition.

If your grandparents gave you a house for free, and you used that enormous advantage to pur your money elsewhere and then own 2, 3 houses, and your child then gets 10, that's 10 houses that people could own themselves, instead of paying the highest rent that your child can get away with.

If you have any experience of poverty, you should understand how viscerally unfair the existence of 'rich kids' seem, and how damaging it is to society.

> Is there a spiritual way to kill an animal? How would Jesus kill an animal?

Amazing question. I'm not spiritual, but regularly debate this topic with others (including here): this will be a useful way of approaching it. Thanks for posting the link!

As another sibling points out, creation before the fall, so.the animals and humans in the garden of eden, were vegan.

There is also a theory that Jesus was vegan and a belief that Christians should be too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_vegetarianism#Biblic...

The idea that wars, epidemics, and catastrophes lead to wealth redistribution is the thesis of "The Great Leveler" by Walter Schneidel: it's not an absolute rule (and as far as I remember, another book was published to criticise this one), but it seems to hold through a change in power dynamics, supply and demand of labour, and coordination between the previously oppressed classes.

I'm not using this to post religious flamebait, and to anyone thinking I'm attacking their faith: this is not my intent, and I'm for sure not singling out Christianity.

I find history fascinating, especially the history of religion, and my views on it are in line with my contributions and discussions on HN about authoritarianism, surveillance, oppression, etc.. It's unfortunate that wanting to give some visibility to a little known episode of history and then engaging in debate about a passion of mine is seen by you as disingenuous.

As a preamble, I don't want to attack your faith.

However, the argument here is not that Christians side with the elite, but that the Church does. The Church has sided with the powerful again and again over the centuries, to great effect for its own wealth, going against what was objectively (ie not only by today's standards) morally right, and very much against scripture.

Your own argument that submission to God supersedes submission to government is one that the Church, as an institution, rarely abides by. By any reasonable reading of his sayings, Jesus would have preached against oppression of the poor, slavery, war, politically-convenient massacres, even the selling of indulgences. From the 4th century on, the Church has been part and parcel of oppression in all its forms, at enormous benefit to itself, and often against what the oppressed wished.

The changes that the Church made to early Christianity (centralisation, violent standardisation of beliefs, empowerment of the clergy) might have been sincere, but the continuing plight of the poor while the Church became one of the richest and most powerful institution in this part of the world is difficult to see as an an unfortunate coincidence.

If the Church is happy to call for the killing of peasants while at the same time initiating and celebrating massacres during the Crusades (a period of a Christian caliphate), among many many examples, it's only right that the institution be seen as an oppressor that has not much in common with Jesus or Christians.

Again, I'm not talking about Christians, or even individual priests, but the institution itself. I think Jesus had beautiful ideas, but it's difficult to know anything about history and not despise the Church.

Agreed, and the fact that he's not today recognised as a martyr is telling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_M%C3%BCntzer

No religion is unscathed: joining with the powers that be and lagging behind every ethical development is the rule, for sure, but I had mistakenly believed that at least the founding had been devoid of the usual hypocrisies and blood. Alas.

i discovered this event by reading Sartre's play "The devil and the good lord" (Le diable et le bon dieu): not historical in any way, simply takes the uprising as context, but a masterpiece nonetheless.

Which speaks to Paul's credit.

An episode of history I had never heard about. 100-300,000 peasants killed.

As someone who reads a lot about the early history of religion, the most interesting part of this for me was the role of Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism: "In Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants, Luther condemned the violence as the devil's work and called for the aristocrats to put down the rebels like mad dogs". My study of history of Christianity had left Protestantism relatively unscathed up to now. Well, no longer.

Fair. I believe the Empire only ended with Byzantium, and as far as I know the edict was never repealed, but I do differentiate between Rome and Byzantium elsewhere, so I see the point.

Yes, the idea of empire as being something bigger than a kingdom is a popular misunderstanding.

However, Rome (and Byzantium) were actually very good at integrating conquered populations into their culture.

Very early in the empire, a law made all conquered people officially Roman, with all the benefits and protections it entailed.

After 2-3 generations, there was not much difference between a Roman from Gaul and a Roman from Rome: they spoke the same language, worshipped the same gods, had the same education, and viewed themselves as Roman. And critically, the Romans from Rome didn't see their compatriots from elsewhere as different.

The Senate was composed entirely of men, but apart from that it was a DEI dream. Some of the emperors were dark-skinned, originating from current Syria: we only know because of their genealogy, their portraits, but otherwise no one cared enough to mention their skin colour, especially in a negative way.

To such an extent that, for most of their existence, Rome and Byzantium did not actually fit the definition of empire.

You seem to have decided that people who are against immigration are stupid, racist, authoritarian, and evil: by all.means, that's an understandable bias, as the most noticeable part of most countries' populations who hold this view indeed appear to be what you think. However, it is still a bias, that leads to you engaging in the kind of self-righteous, irrational rage that might make you feel like you're standing up for the oppressed when you're actually not.

Most people seem to conflate immigrants with refugees, which is false (refugees are a small minority of all immigrants), to see immigrants as poor, hard-working people who just need one chance, which is also false (most immigrants are skilled workers, generally not the poor of their country, and most immigrants you see are probably family members of other skilled workers), and to view immigration as a leftist cause (again not true, immigration is something that's mostly lobbied for by corporate interests).

But many more people feel opposed to migration for entirely different reasons: personal hardships directly due to immigration (loss of job or house), political leanings (pro-working class can mean anti-immigration), social cohesion/sustainability/community considerations, etc.

Not empathising with those people and having a reductionist view of immigration, which often stems from simply being shielded from any negative effects of it, as most on this forum are, lets people take a position like yours, which further polarises society and plays into the cards of the powerful you seem to oppose.

We probably agree on almost every political view apart from this.

I'm supporting your position elsewhere: mentioning to avoid being dismissed as right-wing/ethno-nationalist.

However, support for migration is not a left or right issue. Accepting refugees might be (and I fully support that), but non-refugee immigration (the vast majority of it) is not an unalloyed good.

Immigration has a number of negative effects, on housing, employment and wages, inequalities, social cohesion, political direction.

Being a radical leftist and against immigration is not contradictory.

The claim made was that all crime is linked to refugees.

We can agree that the 'all' part was just the original commenters own biases, but that 'refugee' part is still unfounded based on your quotes.

Refugees are a small minority of immigrants (historically around 10%, don't know what it is in Sweden). The quotes you cite are about immigrants, and the few nationalities mentioned are Turkey and Serbia: neither is a country where refugees originate (except maybe LGBT people, but I'd be very surprised if Sweden is in the thrall of gay Turks...).

So the assertion about immigrant backgrounds seems to hold, but nothing says it's related to refugees, otherwise the large majority of these criminals would be Afghan, Syrian, Eritrean, etc., which doesn't seem to be the case.

I will comment on this discussion elsewhere, but wanted to mention your contributions here have been disgraceful: providing a source that does not support your second (bigoted) claim, obviously feeling caught in your lies, and then weaseling out of it by claiming it's common knowledge repeatedly and copy-pasting that answer about other commenters being more eloquent. Flagged.

It is indeed unreasonable.

No animal evolved solely to produce food for humans and to be property, and I think that's a major blindspot that people have, which allows them to believe into this idea.

Buying an animal, restraining it in your property, subjecting it to whatever's needed for it to produce (look this up if you need to), consuming said products, and in the end of its useful life selling the animal (and let's not imagine that it's sold to animal sanctuaries): none of this is in line with being vegan. All of it harms the animal in some way and normalises the dismissal of animal life, independent of whatever the person wants to believe.

Someone who believes veganism is the right way, but is not personally vegan, can say just that: it's a perfectly tenable philosophical position to have. Self-identifying as vegan while not being vegan is where it becomes absurd.

That quote seems to be reinforcing my point but your excerpts indicate you disagree, so I'm.not sure why you posted this: I will assume you're disagreeing, sorry if I misunderstood.

The adaptations in that quote are about the animals who will be harmed without your intending to do so during your own attempts to survive, like the insects killed during harvest. The essence and the last sentence of the definition are also in line with what I am saying. Eating dairy by choice while identifying as vegan is not due to one coming to the limits of 'as far as possible', under any definition of 'possible' or 'practicable'.

I seriously feel like I'm being DDoS'd, because this position is so absurd and has so many counters to it (can you really not realise this?) that I don't know where to start.

The definition of veganism includes more than just not eating animal products, but that aspect of it leaves no place to ambiguity.

What's the appeal of including vegetarians and carnists into veganism? It's not like vegans wield political power or are privileged in some way, where does this strange type of inclusivity at the detriment of reality come from?

How is this veganism? Or a form of it?

It's by definition not vegan to consume animal products. I'm happy that the term is considered so virtuous that people want to self-identify as such (I've even heard meat-eaters say they're vegan "except from time to time"), but I don't think it's intolerant/bigoted to simply look at the definition.

I always found it weird when people confidently speak from the wrong end. And the crab mentality of "it's only good there temporarily, then it'll.be the same shit as here" is tiring.

If you had lived in the UK, you'd understand that it's not about temporary vegan menus in restaurants but about the whole country, even in a chain in the middle of nowhere, having vegan alternatives and packaging for years and years.

The sibling comment has more eloquent advice, but I'll add that you're neck deep in an echo chamber if that's how you react. Being vegan, mentioning that a country is difficult to live in as a vegan, in a thread about veganism, is not about signaling. Ask the next vegan who'd been to a Global South country instead of imagining people in your head: if it was a pain, they'll say it was a pain, there is no commentary about virtue in there.

Examples of Christian (or any other religion's) priests taking the politically difficult view and living by their own precepts and stated values are few and far between.

From the very beginning. Look into how the churchmen happily destroyed pagan temples and killed pagan priests in the Roman Empire when they had the power to do so. Look at how they justified and clamoured for death (including of Christians) during the Crusades. Or at how long they've taken to take a position against slavery. Or how they've bent the knee to fascists in the XXth century when it was politically expedient to do so. The few who stood by their principles are very rare, even though they've been used to whitewash their institutions later.

And to avoid getting blamed of anti-Christianity: that's also true of Buddhists (look at how they killed Muslims in Myanmar), of Muslims (the Saudis especially), and the way most Jewish synagogues have reacted to the genocide is nothing but horror and shame.

Religion (as in the institution) has almost always lagged behind virtuous developments: it's virtuous people who have largely initiated these movements and sacrificed for their cause. You don't get to the level of wealth and power that the Church has by taking morally right stances.