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@Swagnarok
The same people insisting Musk is a Nazi are the same ones insisting "Maryland Man" isn't a gangbanger.
Make it make sense.
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@Savant
Hypothetical exceptions like the one described in the op are.
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@Savant
The op is talking about justifying exceptions with hypotheticals.
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@Savant
Do you mean "same thing with any exceptions?"
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@Savant
Yes, which is why exceptions to free speech can easily become extortion scenarios.
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@Savant
So hypothetically speaking, If Donald Trump said he would have a woman raped if you continued to criticize him, you would stay silent?
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@RemyBrown
Your OP basically says: is there a point that an authoritarian state can cross as extortion to shut you up?
Most Americans will have one answer to that.
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@WyIted
Diamonds are mined with the blood of children so I refuse to get my wife a wedding ring that costs more than $50. I just try to do my part
I bought a diamond ring that was factory made instead of mined.
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@AdaptableRatman
That's the establishment's position.
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@RemyBrown
Mass has government healthcare and it works fine for Mass.
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@zedvictor4
And those old smart people are long dead. But they couldn't kill all of MLK it seems. They, on the other hand, died with sheets over their heads. And maybe today's old people will die with their heads remaining in the sand.
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@cristo71
One of the complexities is that the “student” outranked the instructor.Of course, being a female on top of all these factors perhaps made the instructor more hesitant than otherwise? I can only speculate.
I think, according to the sources, that there was an issue of the pilot "outgendering" the instructor. She didn't need mansplaining.
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@zedvictor4
And Trump will die sooner rather than later.
That's what smart people said about MLK.
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@FLRW
Dang Nabit!
They call it a Liberal victory,
But all I see is rationed misery.
Hope on a payment plan, freedom in escrow,
And taxes so high, you choke on credit flow.
Equality? Sure! we're equally broke,
Waiting for handouts while elites snort woke coke.
It ain’t socialism, it’s a slow snow bleed,
Where the cure to poverty is no one succeeds.
They sell virtue in six-month delays,
While housing dreams die in bureaucratic haze.
The rent’s so high, its better than weed,
And mortgage banks laugh as they crush your dreams.
Liberal, they say, the ultimate golden prizes!
But it’s just government waste in a thousand disguises.
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@Shila
It will be a liberal victory.
When we say liberal, we don't mean free. We mean so expensive that everyone is equally miserable.
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@RemyBrown
Again, there are not many countries who would even possibly agree to accept those refugees.
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@RemyBrown
You are assuming there is another country that would take them in. You would be surprised at what the global perceptions are.
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@Swagnarok
Canada is in the late Roman collapse stage with overdiversification and zero loyalty to the economic zone known as Canada.
Whatever the PM says matters little, as hatred for America won't equate to love for Canada with all the diverse tribes squabbling for scraps. If anything, it will only accelerate the squabbling for said scraps.
I spent some time last week in a museum in Ottawa, Ontario where about half of it was dedicated to the Inuit tribes. I marveled at the irony of it all knowing the Inuit would never have built such a thing as a museum, and the fancy blue whale skeleton on display would have long ago been fashioned by the Inuit into easily forgettable tools, cookware and sleds. Let's hope America learns.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Imagine when people like the OP realize the entire Federal system of agencies could end, and the states would be just fine managing things for decades if not longer. In fact, they will probably be much better off.
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@Double_R
When thinking of it in the sense of that money being spent right away (which will in turn pump it right back into the private sector) public agencies are far less likely to sit on that money so it is more economically stimulative.
I don't think anyone is arguing against that. What we are arguing are the things it actually stimulates. You didn't respond to my post about such things creating strips of payday loan shacks, convenience and liquor stores. Things that don't substantially lower the cost of living for the working class people.
It's the age old economic story of good intentioned centralized bean counters with proven failures.
The idea that it would only makes sense of we think of companies as charitable organizations looking for ways to ensure the families of their employees remain fed. That is not the cooperate world works.
In a way, they are charitable from the one fact that they do not have to provide a job to anyone, yet choose to do so. Jobs are rewards for service, not a fundamental right. And that’s the part a lot of people forget. The moment you start treating jobs as entitlements like government handouts instead of earned exchanges, you stop seeing the incentives that actually make them exist in the first place. Companies hire because it helps them compete, not because they’re morally obligated to create opportunities. If you remove the reward-for-service logic, you end up demanding jobs from organizations with no reason to offer them. That’s not how labor markets work. That’s how dependency on arbitrary power grows. Companies operate on natural morality, not a philosophical one, namely: that those who work for survival earn longevity and comfort.
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@cristo71
This is a tragedy which should have been avoided and is avoided 99.99% of the time.
DEI would be the tamest explanation.
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@Swagnarok
But if, in fact, the small sliver of fraudulent or genuinely predatory transactions within this sector increases somewhat, this isn't the only relevant factor. In 2023 the CFPB reported that platforms like PayPal and Venmo are unsafe because they lack FDIC insurance. Had Biden won a second term, this might've eventually culminated in CFPB shutting down Paypal/Venmo or requiring them to pay for expensive (and thus far unnecessary) coverage that would heavily discourage competition and useful alternative banking services from emerging. Ultimately, it is poor, underbanked demographics that would pay the price for this development if it happened.
I suspect something far more sinister is going on with that. The big bank donors would love to pay Peter to shut down Paul with nobody but the tippy top benefitting from such "regulations."
(what a misnomer, unless grift and corruption are supposed to be the regular way of doing things...)
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@WyIted
To me the bitching makes it seem like they are weak and pathetic so their support would be useless anyway
Last time we bitched at Germany, they just asked Russia for more petroleum.
With cucks like that, who needs allies?
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@Savant
Fund our enemies such as Germany?
This is what I am talking about.
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@Savant
Optics matter. If the US does not support Ukraine's defense, it's seen as a less reliable ally.
That may be true, but irrelevant when we are growing closer to the adage: "With allies like these, who needs enemies?"
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@Double_R
This is why study after study shows that the most economically stimulative thing the government can spend money on is food stamps, because people who receive them will spend it quickly. The least stimulative? Tax cuts for the wealthy.
Money sitting under a mattress is still real wealth. Saving does not destroy the economy, it preserves purchasing power for future use. Fast spending like with food stamps gives a short-term sugar rush, not real growth. Real prosperity comes from creating new goods and services, not just moving money faster. Keynesian spending has gutted inner cities because food stamps do not build real, diversified economies. They create surface-level spending but no serious investment. Instead of stable and diverse industries, you get block after block of convenience stores, liquor shops, and payday loan offices, businesses that survive by draining what little disposable income exists. No manufacturing, no real job growth, no wealth creation. It is economic quicksand disguised as compassion and "economic justice" whatever TF that means... Public sector jobs paid for by government spending are proven to waste more than they build because they are not disciplined by real market forces. Wealth invested carefully by real investors and not some DC bean counter builds lasting growth. Churning money faster without creating value just fuels inflation and bubbles.
You want to answer the great mystery why income inequalty is the highest in cities run for decades by one party rule? One word. Keynesianism.
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@Double_R
I'm really not sure how you're reaching that conclusion, and frankly it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Economic strength is driven by the frequency at which money changes hands. That's why economists hate fear and uncertainty so much.
Keynesian economists for sure hate it when value based economics supersede an economy driven by monetary policies. I will have to grant you that.
As for me, I believe economic strength comes from real value creation, not from how quickly dollars get passed around D.C. like hot potatoes.
As we saw the last administration, when money moves faster without an increase in actual goods and services, you just create inflation. We know that prices rise because there are more dollars chasing the same amount of stuff. People are not richer, they are just paying more for the same things. That is not growth. Thats simply the erosion of purchasing power.
As we saw the last administration, when money moves faster without an increase in actual goods and services, you just create inflation. We know that prices rise because there are more dollars chasing the same amount of stuff. People are not richer, they are just paying more for the same things. That is not growth. Thats simply the erosion of purchasing power.
The big danger of typical Keynesian money flowing is that it creates false signals. Businesses think there is booming demand and expand too fast, only to crash later when the artificial money movement dries up. We see this in all sorts of micromanaged subsidized industries. It is not true economic strength. It is bubbles and collapses on repeat.
But more importantly, there is an opportunity cost too. When the priority becomes speeding up money creation, subsidies, and flows, rather than creating real value, capital gets wasted, intentional or not. Instead of investing in innovation, production, or durable infrastructure, money gets funneled into quick-flip projects and speculative junk (like green energy and DEI.) The economy looks busy, but it is building nothing that actually lasts. Real economic strength used to be taught (at least where I went to school) as built on foundations of productivity, innovation, and the creation of real valued goods and services. Money is supposed to measure value, but Keynesians have taught entire generations to conflate money for value itself.
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@Savant
but it would lose its status as the "leader of the free world."
Judging by the present loss of liberty in NATO countries, I would say USA already lost that status long ago.
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@Savant
I didn't say that, though. The implications are mostly economic.
Fair enough. And the lack of boots screams of insignificance.
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@zedvictor4
The US could be a great and good, global super-power.
That's also how you make a lot of enemies. Average Americans don't want to rule the globe, they just want to have a nice life at home. It's the corrupt elites that want the globe, like Dr. Evil.
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@Savant
victor lex facit, vae victis
Except in this case, there are significant geopolitical consequences to whether Ukraine or Russia wins.
That's misinformation. If it had any real significance, Europeans would have ended the 2014 civil war with boots on the ground. You seem to believe the corporate media narrative that this is "the most important war since WWII." If that were really true, Germany, France, and Britain would have been in Donetsk immediately in 2014, long before Russia asserted sovereignty over Donbas, instead of blithely issuing sternly worded letters and scary talking points for over a decade.
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@WyIted
It's silly to sit here and argue "well does a rapist or a serial killer have the moral high ground". I don't care neither have the right to exist and so if one dominates and kills the other it's a good thing because now we are down to one piece of shit
nice
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@Shila
Your thread spamming proves you do not believe what you say.
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@Double_R
Punishing a news outlet for coverage you don't like is a blatant first amendment violation. That is what this is.
Even if you liked disingenuous coverage, it still violates the FCC.
Like or dislike is meaningless in this context.
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@FLRW
So that's how it became what it is today. But yes, it used to be a smart place.
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@n8nrgim
Most families are dysfunctional. No surprise.
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@Shila
Trump probably thinks you are a lot of fun to be with too.
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@zedvictor4
A Greyku for UK 2025
Race, race, race,
Color, color, color,
Shiny, shiny, shiny,
Now get back to work or else.
– Appendix B: Words No Longer Spoken, 2025
2. Metrics
Form, form, form,
Checkbox, checkbox, checkbox,
We hired the ideal,
Not the person, mind you.
– As written on the back of the HR onboarding pamphlet
3. Celebrating You
Heritage month number five,
Lunchroom flags and cupcakes aglow,
But the raise budget said no.
– “Equity Budget Exhausted,” Memo #348
4. Who's Watching?
Speak your own truth, please.
Camera red, mic always on,
Safe space, we promise.
Or else.
– Posted above the Zoom call with 37 silent faces
5. Promotion Panel
Your scores are the best.
But you didn't swear enough,
You didn’t wear enough,
identity flair.
– Decision letter, with typos
6. Culture Fit
No thoughtcrime allowed.
Just smile at the mission board.
Say “diverse” again.
I said again.
– Room 101, Rebranded “Belonging Hub”
7. EDI KPI
Workplace joy chart down.
Send another feel-good email.
Everyone, please clap.
All better now.
– Mandatory applause at monthly compliance huddle
8. Telescreen Breakroom
You may sip your tea.
Only if your badge agrees.
Your face is neutral.
Approved.
– “AI Morale Monitor v2.1” release notes
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@WyIted
What's sad is that you are waiting to learn if it is true or not that the FBI staged photos. An honest person would just be able to easily say whether the police lying or not is ethical and what it means for trusting them when they create chain of custody logs.
DoubleR is the kind of person that waits for institutionalized authority to greenlight whether he can do basic hygiene.
When American Psychologists wanted to explain why so many average Germans were fine with killing Jews and following orders from authority, they set up the Milgram experiment.
Your average Democrat today would easily fail this experiment and issue severe shocks without hesitation.
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@n8nrgim
any progressive system allows for corruption. It has to be fair or there will be corruption and loopholes.
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@FLRW
well it's too bad he erased that by increasing the debt over the other 6 years. He failed 3/4 of the time. 1 step forward and 3 steps back...
failure
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@FLRW
Under Eisenhower, the national debt rose from about $266 billion in 1953 to $289 billion by 1961, an increase of roughly $23 billion over eight years. His administration focused on balancing the budget and limiting spending, but the nominal debt rose anyway.
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@n8nrgim
Rich dudes ain't gotta buy yachts, it's their choice.
cool, I don't care. If they make a huge bonfire with their money they earned I don't care either. But if they wanna spend their money on stuff that makes you jealous like 365 restaurant burgers a year, they can pay a flat consumption tax and donate 750 dollars to the government for all those burgers.
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@FLRW
sure, 90 percent sales tax.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
I'd be more than willing to settle for a voluntary system.
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@n8nrgim
- **Basic needs** like food, rent, healthcare, and education could be **exempt or zero-rated**.
Like I said, we can easily have exemptions on food (grocery food of course) and rent....the rest of the taxable consumables revenue will overwhelmingly come from the middle class and the rich even at a flat rate. You would get lower revenue with the scale you used because if you have a rich guy that chooses to waste his money eating a 15 dollar burger at a restaurant every day, you want him taxed at the flat rate for the full effect, not 2% for 365 burgers.
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