leifaffles

I don't think you're calm enough to have a rational discussion about all the untruths you just stated.

US politics was intentionally designed such that the majority doesn't get its way. It's the single major innovation in liberal political philosophy in the past 500 years.

Saying "it's not democratic!" isn't a useful comment.

We know.

It's actually spelled "gerrymandering".

You might have learned that by now if you weren't so busy spreading dumb conspiracy theories on the internet.

Okay, but the same can be said for Media Matters, Sean Hannity, Rachel Maddow, and so on.

They're all doing shady shit, but sometimes one of them hits on something useful.

This doesn't mean anything.

Which ethics? Which morals? Yours?

They're activists, but sometimes activists stumble on the truth too.

There are existing answers to these questions. It's not a grand mystery.

Instead of merely repeating the questions, you should explain why the answers to those questions are wrong.

I think you're overly consumed with the political dramas of the present and haven't really thought through questions about what a good system of governance looks like.

I honestly don't really think you've thought this out.

You might want to understand the existing structure of government before you propose replacing it on a whim.

Here are some questions to get you started:

* Why is there a Constitution?

* Why are there 3 co-equal branches of government? What are they all there for?

* Why is there an electoral college?

* Why are Senators allocated by state while House members are allocated by population?

* Why do House members have 2 year terms and Senators have 6 year terms?

* Why do the courts exist?

* Why does the executive branch exist?

Given the track record of social interventions, what if this backfires?

Why is pure democracy a good thing in and of itself?

Why does basically every economist disagree that "capitalism is fundamentally broken"?

Is that because they don't "understand the dynamics of how economies work"?

I do. See above comments. I spend $18k per year in a HCOL area. Plenty of room to save $5k in there and still have buffer for expenses that come up.

I mean my living expenses, including rent, utilities, food, transportation, health care, etc, add up to $1.5k per month (or ~18k per year).

As in, I could make $25k (at a level where the tax rate is effectively near-0) and still save > $5k per year.

Coming up with utopian ideas like this are easy.

The hard part, which barely gets any discussion is:

* How do incentives work? How do you incentivize the production of new wealth?

* How does immigration work? You can't have open borders and mountains of free stuff.

* Does this replace or augment existing welfare programs?

* Does this actually make people's lives better? How do you know? What happens if it doesn't work out?

And so on.

Most people make more than $12 an hour, which is great news! Not having kids outside of marriage is something everyone can do as well.

It's extremely rare to make only $25k/year for your entire life. Most people improve their earnings over time. Most people get married at some point.

The important point is that even under the most pessimistic assumptions people can get by AND build a secure retirement.

The "it can't be done" mentality is not justified in 2017 America.

It's extremely rare to live on 25k for your entire life. That's a pessimistic assumption.

My point is that even if you do make that for your entire life, you can still get by and build a secure retirement.

I live on 18k/year in a HCOL area. Don't tell me it can't be done.

This is not convincing in the slightest... and a great example of why proponents of basic income need to up their game.

This is true.

It's also true that most people tell themselves that very thing to justify buying dumb shit.

Behavior determines successful outcomes far more than circumstances.

Saving $5.5k in an IRA every year for 40 years earning 7% ARR is a retirement nest egg of $1.1M dollars.

Median family income is $60k, making this 9% of the budget. Even if you earned say... $25k/yr ($12 per hour) for your entire life, you can afford to save $5.5k per year.

There is zero excuse for most people not emerging a millionaire at retirement.

Looking forward to Rachel Maddow's monologue tomorrow night on "dark money in politics".

TLDR of this "strategy":

"Hey guys. We should have a law against being an asshole."

"Nah, people seem pretty nice."

"I'll show you, fuckface!"

If activists are willing to intentionally make the world worse to prove a point, then reasonable people start to wonder:

"How much of the problem is real and how much of it is inflicted by activists who are willing to burn down the world in order to 'win'?"

I don't think CloudFlare improved its image as a result. We all agree Nazis are bad. No sane person thinks CloudFlare is pro-Nazi.

Here's CEO Matthew Price in his own words:

"Let me be clear: this was an arbitrary decision. It was different than what I’d talked talked with our senior team about yesterday. I woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet."

The reaction at the time was the same as the reaction here: I'm glad this guy's against Nazis, but he picked a very infantile way to show it.

People who run their businesses on CloudFlare get a little uneasy when they see a CEO randomly turning off websites because he "woke up in a bad mood".

"People will do bad things if we don't have net neutrality regulations. Let's show them how it's done by doing bad things ourselves."

In what whacky moral universe is this okay?

Most parents smack this out of their kids by the time they're 4.

If you really believed this overly dramatic "extraordinary enemies" and "extraordinary means" rhetoric, you'd be out there staging a defense of civilization instead of writing dumb comments on Hacker News.

"entire Internet is threatened"?

The polite term for this is "concept creep".

If the only way you can defend your position is by invoking apocalyptic rhetoric, you might want to pick another hill to die on.

Regardless of your opinions on net neutrality, a roll back to 2015-era regulatory policy is not an extinction-level event. Obviously.

This isn't funny. Not only is CloudFlare's CEO scheming about going after the FCC chairman, but also those who live near him.

This is the second time in recent memory that this guy has been worked up by his political feelings and saw his company as a tool to punish his opponents.

As a CloudFlare user, this worries me. This is childish. Adults don't pull this crap.

This is really damning stuff. It's not healthy when CEOs of major internet companies are scheming with activist journalists to use their companies to punish people who they have personal political disagreements with.

Full exchange reproduced below:

TechCrunch reporter: "Some tech billionaire, please buy out the local ISP(s) where FCC chairman Ajit Pai lives and give him 14.4k dial-up speeds for killing net neutrality"

CloudFlare CEO: "I could do this in a different, but equally effective, way."

TechCrunch Reporter: "Please, do go on..."

CloudFlare CEO: "sent note to our GC [general counsel] to see if we can without breaking any laws."

TechCrunch Reporter: "Thanks for doing your part and please let me know how this goes. If he wants an unregulated internet, he might not like what he gets"

CloudFlare CEO: "indeed"