like_any_other

> The point is that to justify the concentration of capital

Why does that need additional justification, beyond investor confidence? And why does "justification" take the form of paying money? That's not any kind of moral justification, it's just an indulgence.

> the company should be doing well enough to tank the tax.

Saying it should be doing well enough now to tank a tax based on estimated future earnings requires that a lot of otherwise unnecessary assumptions about access to financing and revenue timelines hold.

It's all just throwing a bunch of extra stress at entrepreneurs when they're most vulnerable, instead of waiting for when their labors bear fruit. Since the state is extremely able to endure that wait, it all just comes across as malice.

That's unrelated to my question.

> de facto realize their gains in the form of collateral for loans that allow them to live without ever realizing their gains from the perspective of the tax code.

Can you explain how this works? I have my wealth in stocks, I use those stocks as collateral for a loan. To pay back this loan, I have to either get money from somewhere, or hand over the collateral to the bank. Let's say "get money from somewhere" is taxed (to avoid circular reasoning), so that leaves trade loan collateral for loan cash, which is on net no different than selling the stocks.

This is not taxed? And wouldn't it be infinitely easier to close that loophole, than taxing the estimated profit for the next N years, which is what unrealized gains tax amounts to?

So what's the point of taxing unrealized gains specifically? Why not wait until the gains are realized, tax them then, and still collect on average the same tax income? This would result in the same yearly tax income for the government, except in the years immediately after implementing or increasing unrealized gains taxes.

Is it just to force entrepreneurs to sell more stock and get more loans, as a gift to the financial sector?

Edit: On second thought, taxing unrealized gains results in lower tax income - the financial sector will take its cut, and that cut has to come from somewhere.

But they're not saying "bad thing is worse for some people than others", they're saying "thing is bad because it treats people differently and sometimes malfunctions". What will happen when those faults are corrected, but the public has not been educated about any other drawbacks, and doesn't know any other objections?

Will they suddenly learn eloquence and introspection, and be able to translate their instinctive misgivings into strong, logical arguments about the dangers of surveillance?

If you believe that, then you have far more faith in the common public than I. Misplaced faith, given how poorly they've resisted surveillance so far, even in their personal habits.

So if we "safely" and "equitably" turn schools into surveillance nightmares with zero privacy during children's tender years, there would be no concerns?

Sure, I'll play along: It does not make you MAGA. Wearing a MAGA hat is evidence of being MAGA (or to be more accurate, of sharing MAGA beliefs), but it is not conclusive proof. In your hypothetical, the next steps would probably be interviewing your friends and family, and poring over your social media, to determine if you really identified with MAGA, or if it was a false flag deception.

Supposing it was not a false flag, then no, it would not mean MAGA as a whole are serial killers, but it's a gamble if the killings would be attributed to MAGA as a whole. E.g. wikipedia immediately attributes the Charlottesville car attack to white supremacists [1], but doesn't attribute the Prairieland ICE detention center attack to any group [2], nor the Tacoma attack [3], despite perpetrators being associated with BLM, or running explicitly anarchist and Antifa clubs and social media accounts.

This (including the double standard) is how all groups are treated. E.g. when the media says liberals or conservatives banned some books [4], it doesn't mean there must be a central organization of liberals/conservatives, or that liberals/conservatives on average are censorious or pro-free-speech, as any group, loose or tight-knit, official or informal, has internal differences. That's why the news will say "environmentalists glued their hands to the street" or "BLM activists toppled a statue", and not "some individuals did something, but those actions don't represent everyone that shares the beliefs that motivated them".

In fact, this is how you yourself treat groups. Your words: Trump ran as a republican because he thought it would be easier to sway republicans to vote for him because they're sheeple - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49466394

So basically this commenter is projecting, because that is all that far right people do - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49465924

See? No "actually the far right doesn't exist, if I did a Nazi salute and said trans rights, would that make the far right pro-LGBT?", no "they voted for republicans but are they republicans?", no "is the far right in the room with us now?" - you're able to talk about groups just fine! And you can define those groups based on behavior and espoused beliefs!

So since I've been more than kind and seriously answered your question, and re-explained human group categorization that you demonstrably already understood, do me the courtesy of answering my question as well: Why is pretending not to understand basic concepts such a common tactic for the left? Or if you won't speculate for the left as a whole, I'll be happy hearing why you did it. Is it just that you have no better arguments, so you just try to waste time instead, and hope that your opponent, forced to re-define all of language on the spot, will bungle something, and you hope the audience will misinterpret that bumbling as your victory?

[1] The Charlottesville car attack was a white supremacist terrorist attack perpetrated on August 12, 2017, when James Alex Fields Jr. deliberately drove his car into a crowd of people - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlottesville_car_attack

[2] On the evening of July 4, 2025, a civil disturbance and shooting occurred at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, United States, during a protest - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Prairieland_ICE_detention...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Tacoma_immigration_detent...

[4] https://abcnews.com/US/conservative-liberal-book-bans-differ...

Just call your group "the anti-bad guy good guy club", and then by definition everything you do is good and centrist. Therefore the following is centrism:

An Oregon leftist and antifa ideologue seeking to stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement was arrested on Feb. 4 over a manifesto and weapons procurement plan detailing his desire to stalk federal agents at the Portland ICE facility to their homes and kill them. - https://www.ngocomment.com/p/leftist-extremist-arrested-over...

33 anti-Israel protesters get slap on the wrist for causing $1M in damage to U. of Washington science building - https://nypost.com/2026/03/04/us-news/33-anti-israel-protest...

A German interior minister and author for "Das Antifa Magazin" said asylum seekers should have the right to vote after 6 months on German soil, and called for mass censorship - https://www.bild.de/politik/inland/politik-inland/auslaender...

Stabbing black conservatives - https://thepostmillennial.com/andy-ngo-reports-no-prison-tim...

Mobs physically attacking political candidates - https://www.lefigaro.fr/faits-divers/bordeaux-un-candidat-rn...

Making people who condemn arson unemployable - https://reason.com/2021/06/15/daniel-elder-cancel-culture-ch...

On the night of July 4, 2025, 11 members of a North Texas Antifa cell carried out a coordinated attack on the Prairieland Detention Center. Earlier that day, they had conducted reconnaissance (including reporting on security of the facility), and had assembled a cache of dozens of firearms. The group planned the attack ahead of time, including a “gear check” where the leader discussed bringing rifles and ominously “not getting arrested.” They dressed in black uniforms and brought 11 firearms, body armor, and military-grade first aid kits (including tourniquets for gunshot wounds). They disabled CCTV cameras at the facility, and threw fireworks and explosives to flush the officers out for a planned massacre. When officers called 911, Lt. Thomas Gross responded. Bodycam footage shows one of the attackers yelling “get to the rifles!” as the group opened fire. Gross was shot once in the neck, with the bullet exiting through his back, but survived and continued to fight back. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Prairieland_ICE_detention...

Beating leftists with clubs for the crime of carrying the US flag on US soil - https://www.newsweek.com/antifa-violence-portland-bernie-san... (The article comes with a nice photo! Can you spot any antifa in that photo, or will you continue to play dumb?)

I can keep going. If you're not convinced I can make a new post with 10x as many incidents. But it is true that there's no central antifa office with paperwork listing all their members. Nor is there one for white nationalists, but I don't see anyone arguing that doesn't exist.

The reason this keeps happening btw is because we haven't sent anyone to jail over it. Not even when it's clearly criminal, like when Google tracked location data despite opt-out [1], or when LG did what they're doing now but forgot to bury something about it deep in the EULA [2] (we're all totally on board with click-through EULAs having such power, right?)

The 2nd story is crazy - I wonder if I hack LG and start downloading all their trade secrets, when caught, the government would just let me stop the download and face no punishment, if I say I just forgot to ask them for consent. Or maybe it's different if I do the hacking through a backdoored cable I sell them, like they hack us through backdoored TVs.

[1] https://inews.co.uk/news/technology/how-to-stop-google-from-...

[2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/smart-tvs-that-send-data-wit...

And Hamilton Police are trying to intimidate potential venues to prevent the conference. They've also put out a call for information on X: https://x.com/HamiltonPolice/status/2092995595325591902

They've already gotten one venue to cancel, and are promising to use any excuse to harass them:

She added the [police] service is listening to community concerns, and will maintain a "visible and appropriate presence," taking enforcement action "where lawful grounds exist." - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/dominion-society-ham...

Democracy.

> America does still manufacture a huge amount of products

US industrial (absolute, not per capita) production hasn't grown since 2007: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/INDPRO

But the population has increased by 13.5%: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...

It's one hell of a gamble to rely so much on software "products", while anything that software actually runs on is made in Asia. Building up a software industry will be a lot easier than it was to grow the industrial and tech ecosystem. And that ecosystem will give sweetheart deals to homegrown software, while extorting yours. Sorry, did I say "will"? I meant it's already doing so:

Apple CEO Tim Cook "secretly" signed an agreement worth more than $275 billion with Chinese officials, promising that Apple would help to develop China's economy and technological capabilities - https://www.macrumors.com/2021/12/07/apple-ceo-tim-cook-secr...

If only all those academic economists were as loud about how to keep tech and industrial capacity from withering and moving to China, as they are with their criticism of attempts to prevent that. They don't even complain when China engages in protectionism, dumping, and general "market distorting" subsidies. Listening to them, you'd never learn that none of the advanced economies got that way by following their laissez-faire trade prescriptions [1].

And of course they limit their analysis to "welfare of the people", first-order, ignoring how loss of industry will (and is already) come back to bite us. As if our only interests were those of passive consumers.

[1] " ... none of the world's most successful trading regions, including Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and now mainland China, reached their current status by adopting neoliberal trading rules." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage#Criticis...

Like climbing free solo once disproves the need for a safety rope.

If the GPL [1] got the same government support as trademark law [2], this violation would not be "ongoing". Why doesn't it? Nominally, the law protects both equally.

[1] I won't say "copyright", because if this was about pirated Marvel movies, it absolutely would be getting the same treatment.

[2] $30K Worth of Multimeters Must Be Destroyed Because They're Yellow - https://news.slashdot.org/story/14/03/19/1721253/30k-worth-o...

If you insist on nitpicking, I'll spell it out for you:

> look at how the FBI treated [white supremacist] labor groups versus fascists ones in the 20s [..] no need to worry about the decades after, they killed enough [white supremacist?] leaders to stop [white supremacist??] leftwing voices in the US

So the fact that the labor groups the FBI targeted were white supremacist by today's standards makes those sentences complete nonsense.

It's not a "gotcha", it's correcting the GPs deceptive contrast of labor groups versus white supremacists, when they were one and the same.

Labor groups up to and including in the 60s were fiercely anti-immigration [1], and wanted to expand laws like the Chinese Exclusion act. You would call them white supremacist today. But as you say, the FBI did its job, and eventually the unions accepted immigration, just like capital wanted. Now Amazon can release a study showing diversity impedes unions [2], and Wikipedia helpfully summarizes it to give the opposite impression [3], while the FBI can better spend its time investigating "It's okay to be white" as terrorism [4], libeling whites with fabricated extremism cases [5], and taking instruction from the ADL [6].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_policies_of_Americ...

[2] Whole Foods' heat map says lower rates of racial diversity increase unionization risks - https://www.businessinsider.com/whole-foods-tracks-unionizat...

[3] Factors including racial diversity, proximity to other unions, poverty levels in the surrounding community, and calls to the NLRB were named as contributors to "unionization risk." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amazon

[4] Ohio universities involve FBI in investigation of ‘It’s okay to be white’ and white nationalist group’s postings on campus - https://www.thefire.org/news/ohio-universities-involve-fbi-i...

[5] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/sep/15/biden-accus...

[6] Did you know ADL trains every new FBI agent on their role as protectors of the American people and the Constitution? - https://x.com/ADL/status/472384478464061441

This consolidation argument only works up to 1-3 processing plants. After a company owns more than that, there's no more efficiency from automation, only market dominance and abuse.

Take one glance at history, and you'll see that having a sovereign ethnic homeland is crucial to that "freedom to exist". So you're wrong on both counts - they are also taking a stance for the latter, and the two freedoms can be separated. Distributing FOSS does not require one takes a stance on every ethnic and political conflict on Earth. The GNU manifesto never once talks about the occupation of Tibet. This "cannot be separated" is nothing but a cheap attempt to attach your own cause to some other, more widely accepted cause.

> You need an account to read there don’t you?

Normally yes, but if you use nitter then no.

> Rogue government officials who break the law and abuse their power to target private citizens should not be able to remain anonymous and free from consequences simply because they launder their unlawful conduct through a reporter.

Following this logic, whistleblowers are only protected if their whistleblowing follows the law (I sure hope national security law or employment contracts would never provide cover to make any disclosure illegal), and/or no "private citizen" is affected by the leaks.

In other words, they are not protected, ever, and you can always be forced to disclose your sources.

> Because merchants charge everyone the same price regardless of how they pay, those fee costs are factored into prices for all shoppers. However, credit card users get that money back and then some through rewards, while cash and debit users get little or nothing.

And they charge everyone the same price because credit cards contractually force them to. Merchants can either accept these terms, or forego credit cards entirely. This way credit cards prevent other payment methods from competing on price. Free markets for thee, contractually forbidding competition for me.

Like most media, it's non-fungible. Many people post there and nowhere else. You may as well say "Oh the book you liked got pulled? Just pick a different book to read."

Those things seem odd if you view a country as a territory and economic zone. But not if you view it as a people, i.e. a nation.

> You seem awfully concerned he is being treated unfairly.

Maybe keep your attempts at mindreading to yourself. I'm concerned that secure voting is being treated unfairly.

> Then you should pipe down in this situation because he's stated that [disenfranchisement] is his intention.

I couldn't find claims to that effect. All I found was that he claimed it was to secure elections, and his critics claimed it would result in disenfranchisement. Perhaps you could be kind enough to share your source?

Though regardless of what his intent is, the result will be parity with France and Iceland. I support good laws passed for bad reasons, and oppose bad laws passed for good reasons. The state of politics is not so great that I could be so picky to demand good laws also have good intentions behind them. This is the same.

> a pedantic argument.

Right, the minor detail that a majority of democracies disallow vote by mail. How silly of me to get hung up on this tiny technicality.

> Just make sure you note which countries restrict vote by mail using partisan chicanery

The method and intent by which a policy is enacted, does not change the effects of that policy. But I'm sure you'll find some clever new way to avoid arguing about the policy itself. But you'll have to argue with someone else, I've humored you long enough.

"The Ninth Circuit ruled in 2019 that web scraping did not violate the CFAA in hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping#United_States

I think X is also using breach of ToS as leverage, but if that worked, surely LinkedIn would have also blocked scraping that way?

I'm not making my case "for Trump", I'm making my case that restricting or banning voting by mail is neither disenfranchisement nor undemocratic. If you want to argue Trump is breaking the US constitution in enacting these changes, be my guest. But something is not democratic or not based on whether it abides by the US constitution.

> What other countries do is completely immaterial.

I disagree. I think it's very material that no or minimal criticism about voter disenfranchisement was levied at those other countries on this basis. In any case, following this change, voters in the US will be no more disenfranchised than voters in France, Iceland, Croatia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Ukraine, Turkey, Israel, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Nepal, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Taiwan, Papua New Guinea, Madagascar, and every single country in South America (except Guyana and Suriname), where they have no voting by mail whatsoever.

> I come from one of the countries on that list

Okay, let's be less vague then: Portugal, Belgium, Italy, Czechia, Slovakia, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Greece, Romania, Moldova, Mexico, and Egypt have mail voting only for citizens abroad.

France, Iceland, Croatia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Ukraine, Turkey, Israel, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Nepal, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Taiwan, Papua New Guinea, Madagascar, and every single country in South America (except Guyana and Suriname) have no mail voting whatsoever. As a glance at the map in the wiki article will reveal, this is not even half of the list.

Are all of them disenfranchising their voters, and failing to live up to the promises of democracy, specifically because of the lack of mail voting?

> Do you think Trump's restrictions will have no practical effect

I think even if he bans voting by mail entirely, it would be consistent with the majority of democracies in the world, and would not reduce democracy in any way. In fact it would strengthen it, because one can have more trust in the legitimacy of each vote. I grant that this part is subjective, but the consistency with other democracies is fact.

> If your assumption was that the point of a painting is to accurately capture a landscape or person

I know this is way off-topic, but this oft-repeated disinformation should be quashed wherever it appears. "Accuracy" was never the goal. Look at Hokusai [1], at John Bauer [2], at Jeffrey Catherine Jones [3]. Even at so "realistic" painters as Beksiński [4], or Caspar David Friedrich [5] - even if you were at the site of such a ruined abbey, and it was late evening, and you had the camera of your choice, the resulting photo would look nothing like that - painted in 1810. Look at The Swing by Fragonard [6], from 1768. Trees don't actually grow like that. Light doesn't work like that! You could visit every tree in the world with a camera, and you couldn't even approximate the feeling of that painting.

These were not accidents, it was not that they tried to be photorealistic, and came up short. They were deliberate stylizations. And modern artists, and abstract artists, well educated in the history of art, know this well, but they deliberately spread the lie that accuracy was the goal, that photography made beautiful art redundant, to justify their abominations. Because the sketching and composing and painting techniques were only half about capturing life, while the other half, the more important half (or in the case of composing, the whole), was about evoking a feeling. Something at which they were infinitely better than their modern art successors.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokusai

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bauer_(illustrator)

[3] https://darklongbox.com/2024/08/17/jeffrey-catherine-jones-a...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zdzis%C5%82aw_Beksi%C5%84ski

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Abbey_in_the_Oakwood

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swing_(Fragonard)

I don't care about the correct procedure, I'm only interested in the disenfranchisement angle. So, how does "It's absolutely an attempt at disenfranchisement" square with the overwhelming majority of democracies also restricting mail-in voting? Is it only disenfranchisement when Trump does it?