xracy

I think a lot of folks are correctly pointing out that new social media is probably much closer to something like Discord, where individuals can define their own communities and make sure they're only getting the content from their family in that community.

It means they're much more responsible for policing their own content and don't have to worry about agreeing with the central policing platform. Seems like a much healthier direction for Social Networks... At least... healthier than whatever is happening at Facebook.

That's a good to society as well. Arguably one with likely better payoff given that a lot more college graduates succeed in getting a degree than businesses succeeded in paying their PPP loans.

I guess it doesn't help me solve it, but baby steps.

Who is incentivized in this system to say that this product is actually coming from China? Is it the US government regulators who just lost their jobs? Or the Businesses themselves who don't want to pay higher tariffs? Is it China who avoids the tariff? Is it Vietnam who just got paid for doing nothing?

The answer would typically be that the US gov't would monitor this. But that is not a muscle this administration is capable of. That would require nuance and strategy, and it's very clear from this move that this administration doesn't have that capability.

Yes, but the big problem is that these same business leaders and politicians are going to be the ones who get first bite at the apple. And so how they plan is going to impact what's left for everyone else.

I don't care because they burned the system to the ground, I care because they're gonna salvage what they need and nothing else.

But I think the thing you have to consider, and the thing US companies should fear, is if the Tariffs make this a case for a serious commitment. If I'm in the EU right now, I'm looking at all of my dependencies on US, and I'm wondering how many jobs I can create by investing in separating myself from these services ASAP. And given that the US is about to be crippled in their buying power of any silicon I would fully expect to be able to build out Data Centers in the very near future on the relatively cheap because the competition just got hamstrung in the market.

Additionally, you can turn up software pretty quickly and just iterate on it with a small number of developers. The problem they have to solve isn't "how do I write software?" The problem they have to solve is "how do I deploy that software." And the US just gift-wrapped them cheap DataCenters by starting a trade war with the major chip manufacturers.

I think if this continues the most likely thing is that the US Dollar will soon no longer be the world's reserve country. I'm surprised other countries haven't hedged this way already given what happened the last time this administration was in charge, but I would sure be looking for a way out of the US dollar if I was a non-US-country right now.

If the tariffs hold, I would be looking to cut out US-dollars from my transactions as quickly and aggressively as possible. Feels like a couple of cinder-blocks attached to my parachute at the moment, I might not know how to untangle them, but surely it can't be worse than the state I'm in right now.

In the US, I shudder to think what would happen if the economy got this derailed, and everyone's doing everything they can to untangle from it. I would kind of expect China or Europe's stable economies to be a sudden draw that the rest of the world adjust to. And I would be starting to look at what things I can get from the rest of the world as an alternative to the US.

When I voted against this outcome I knew that I voted against the rest of the policy changes from this regime (Encroachment on 1st amendment, General Oligarchy, etc.), but I didn't know I was also voting against a pseudo-scorched-earth economic policy intended to destroy the US. There are real ways in which I hope they are too stupid to know what they're doing because they're digging their own grave. I just also fear the number of people who are going to be in that grave with them.

Musk, Trump and the billionaires in their administration sure look like "oppressive elites" to me. Can you name multiple oppressive elites?

Edit: I think you answer your own question here. The actual oppressive elites have convinced the masses (and you) that there's a different amorphous group of "oppressive elites" that aren't the obvious ones standing right in front of your eyes. Obligatory https://xkcd.com/1013/

The majority of the Democratic party is the group being actually shifted by the Overton window away from the actual political left. They are mostly centrists, and not leftists. Frequently they are conservatives. I wish Harris suggested half of the policies that got ascribed to her, but she was honestly to the right of Clinton.

Worker vs Employer aren't actually 2 groups of people, unless you really consider corporations as people.

I think a lot of companies like to appeal to the idea of a meritocracy. I'm just saying this could make it a convincing appeal.

If you look at the people on the actual political left in the US (Bernie, AOC, etc) are they talking about identity politics? Last time I checked they were talking about the problems that impact non-billionaire Americans: Healthcare, Social Security, Raising Minimum Wage, and other efforts to improve quality of life for Americans.

The only times I ever hear about identity politics is when I listen to conservatives describe what people on the left are talking about.

If you're a billion-dollar company that only hires college grads, it feels like there's gotta be value to you in making sure there's more meritocracy in the process of getting degrees.

It would also change who the customer is so that the university doesn't "owe" the student a degree which makes the evaluation that universities do a little less rigorous.

A lot of these examples have been pretty thoroughly debunked as either non-existent, or about something other than the professors expressing "conservative views".

This one is, I assume intentionally, anonymized and so we can't actually verify that it happened or what the circumstances around it were. But I'll call out one of the most common "views" I've heard on college campuses from professors that got in trouble for something was that "professors should be allowed to sleep with their students." So if professors are taking heat for thinking that they should be able to take advantage of barely legal kids... I don't really care.

If there are legitimate examples of professors just expressing that they have conservative beliefs, then that is suspicious because school administrators and alumni tend to lean pretty conservative themselves, and often make the final decisions on such issues after a frustrating amount of investigation.

I suspect all of the example(s) you might have are going to be overblown news storie(s) But if there are decades of this, I'd love to see the evidence.

The least the system could do is more to guarantee the innocent person being free too.

If you want to live in the world where we "trust the electorate" you first have to figure out how to make the electorate informed. In the meantime, I would gladly accept equally applied and adjudicated laws as a way to remove corrupt individuals from the electable population. A lot of places do this already, so making it so someone can't run for a given election cycle seems like a relatively small slap on the wrist compared to barring felons from ever being allowed to vote or hold office.

I'm sorry you don't understand how insurance in the US works. This is patently false. Insurance companies absolutely determine your treatment, and not just for "optional treatments" whatever that means.

The thing about MLK, is that he existed as a backdrop to more violent alternatives. He is celebrated for being the better of those options, but when companies are not willing to negotiate with the nicer option, eventually they will make the violent one inevitable.

Additionally, I think the thing people get wrong about the "Luigi as martyr figure" is that UHC is itself a violent organization responsible for many deaths. When you project that you are only able to listen to "profits" and people don't have any way to provide feedback via "profits" to you, then they're going to look for other kinds of speech. And unfortunately, this kind of speech was made clear to work (see insurance companies sitting up and fixing a couple of the policies they had in the pipeline as a result of this action, and people's response to the UHC CEO being not negative).

I don't like this direction we're headed in, but I'd be lying if I said I saw other ways to make headway here. Especially given the current administration's interest in regulation.

Can you name a very wealth NGO owner that's not working with this administration. Or describe what you see as a problematic NGO?

It's wild to me that people think NGO owners might be a problem when the richest man in the world is working with this administration to slash this budget arbitrarily.

But I guess "deflect, deny, depose".

As someone who has taken a sticker off of a car, that someone else put on the car, before... it was fine. I was fine. No one was harmed in the removal of the sticker. Depending on the sticker it takes between 1 and 30 seconds to remove it.

The law is not a disincentive because people don't actually know the law. It will never be a disincentive because people do not understand the law. Which leads me back to my original question:

Why are we okay with a child risking a felony when they put a sticker on someone's car? They think it looks nice? Do we want to live in the world where this is at risk of being a felony? Note, I'm not talking about anything more destructive than a sticker.

It's clear the answer is yes, I just want you to think about what that means.

I understand stickers aren't allowed. I'm saying "Are we okay with living in a world where a 5-year-old could be arrested for felony "putting a sticker on someone's car"?

That's a wild line to draw, to me.

To take your spitting example, what about spraying a passing car with a hose? Vandalism? Really? Spraying with paint I understand, but surprise carwash is vandalism?

Feels like a pretty clearcut case where the law has overreached.

This is literally something I see 5-year-olds do (put stickers on property)

Like, I get there's risk to the paint of the vehicle, but we're talking about putting a sticker (light adhesive) on a vehicle. And describing that this could rise to a felony.

This is an example that at least 4 people think obviously rises to the level of a felony.

Spray paint, I get, yes vandalism. Stickers, baffle me. Also, what does it say about your vehicle, that removing a sticker from it takes off the paint.

What a time to be alive.