free_rms

I don't think they meant literally lost his mind.

I'd be happy to see more reporting on other topics mixed in with the media contrarianism. It's an important point and I agree with it but he becomes the thing he criticizes at a certain point.

I notice you didn't carve out an unconditional condemnation of violence in your comment here. It's implied.

Can we stop being so laborious?

Things You Can't Say change over time though, so you can't keep archives either.

Why is Scott Alexander's real name important in this specific case?

I'm not interested in sloppily applied generalities for the common case where people aren't a pseudonymously semi-famous writer. Give me some reasoning on this case.

"Scott Alexander" is who's famous, not whatever his vastly less-known real name is. His real name adds nothing to the story.

The fact that he slipped up at least once in the past doesn't mean the NYT should go and print it against his wishes, for zero journalistic value. They can of course, it's a free country, but it's a dick move.

Maybe the people who live there, set the policy and literally built everything deserve a little credit?

Worth mentioning that the only lethal force in the capitol was when they were breaching the barricades where (I think) VIPs were being guarded.

That's lethal force in self-defense, not lethal force to clear out the protest.

You ever notice how the only countries with "regimes" are coincidentally the countries the US establishment has a problem with?

But you're only describing poorly executed / counterproductive frugality.

Spending $500 of time to save 10 bucks isn't frugality, it's idiocy.

Spending time reducing unit cost as opposed to customer acquisition or building features might be a different discussion, especially if the next marginal customer acquisition starts bumping up against your cost of services/product.

The thing about building cages and whips is they're inevitably used against the vulnerable.

It sounds good when you're building them..

We've built a society without physical public squares, for the most part, though, and substituted them with the virtual.

In this particular case, IMO, 2 things are true:

* The linked story is way out over it's skis, pulling together partial opinions from a bunch of sources to make a definitive claim that is not really supported. I doubt the Party themselves have even reached a firm decision on the matter yet.

* The (minor!) Radio Free Asia link is a random person they were interviewing, who gave an opinion. It's not RFA's official opinion on the matter, but I'll opine that they pick and choose who they have on based on US interests, that's their charter and raison d'etre.

RFE/RFA's reporting will never, ever, ever undercut US geopolitical interests.

It's not covert, but it's quite literally a propaganda machine.

The reason Radio Free Europe/Asia were founded was to broadcast the benefits of 'freedom' into communist-governed areas. You might think that we're qualitatively the good guys, and I'm all for freedom, but that's definitionally 'propaganda'.

Awfully long to hold a grudge?

We in the west could have stopped screwing them over a couple centuries earlier as well. Might have avoided the whole civil war ever happening.

EDIT: Was being light-hearted about the "holding a grudge". Been a while since Mao is all.

There's a very large pro-money coalition in politics at all moments.

People who stand to make money off of business with China will always win against people who don't stand to lose money by curtailing it. It's a matter of commitment.

As a matter of national policy, you're absolutely right and maybe this whole "outsource our entire manufacturing chain" thing was a mistake.

As a matter of ethics.. they've lifted a billion humans out of back-breaking subsistence farming and have invaded zero countries in the last 30 years.

All economic activity in a nation is going to benefit the government in some way. Is this a call for full cuba-level embargo of the nation of China, or what here?

It's more effort to ban a post than to just leave it up.

Getting into picking and choosing which foreign governments are allowed to post, and which messages they'll countenance, at additional expenses for their mod team? Twitter has a foreign policy?

OP and myself are making the case that, by dipping into politics and labelling certain opinions, rhetoric and/or factual claims as "unacceptable", they're making themselves exactly that.

Does twitter censor US policy-maker's tweets when they trumpet the power of western values to liberate muslim women?

Terrible analogy, newspapers and stations have limited space for what they cover and it's an editorial decision to choose to run something over something else.

Twitter could just let the tweet exist for people who personally choose to follow the Chinese US embassy at no cost to other tweets. I mean, it's from a national government's embassy, their angle is not hidden at all.

Now they open themselves up to all sorts of questions, are they softer on the Saudis? On Israel?

Fox News was founded in 1996.

Fox broadcast stations having nightly news, like your local Fox affiliate news at 11 was and remains different.

> doesn't really have anything to do with a moral or ethical system

Philosophical ethics typically divide into utility-based, rule-based and virtue-based ethics. OP is clearly lamenting some utility-based failures and claiming that virtue without any utility isn't a whole lot of good (but also no harm, so hey).

That requires a vote of 50%+1 of all eligible employees (not just voters) though, to certify the union as the employee representative, followed by regular elections to union leadership. It's not like a few dozen people can just seize control over union dues and negotiation for the whole workplace.

> What government can't do is to steal your money or block your access to your money.

https://xkcd.com/538/

Who else you going to turn to? Someone who was drummed out of the club for questioning things that everyone knows?

> It boggles the mind that anyone could have believed that replacing many of the core productive bits of the economy with fluff like management (and ownership), finance, and hospitality would lead to anything but weakness.

When the decision is largely made by the managerial and financier classes...

All of the "smartest people in the room" come through economics educations based on pat 2-line graphs and ricardian tables that make extremely grand claims about the world, and they all come out thinking the same way. They're not trying to be crooked, they're repeating what they were taught.

We manage to imprison 4x as many people per capita compared to China.

Think of every bad thing you think and have been told about the big bad CCP and then think that we manage to imprison at 4x their rate. What does that make us?

Sure but you're mixing apples and oranges here.

Can we think about how funny it would be if someone was doing social justice rhetoric with that level of energy?

"well, uhh, you see this is, uhh, problematic i guess, they weren't being an ally. cough. you see, there are a lot of, uh, intersectional and marginalized angles here, it's really complicated. lots of microaggressions. anyways, do the odd questions on page 38, see you wednesday."