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@3RU7AL
People jaywalk less in Singapore, because instead of getting a fat payout from lawsuit if a car hits you and zero consequences if it doesn't, you get up to $1,000 dollars in fines if you step out onto the pavement and if you get hit outside of a crosswalk you don't have right of way. If you argued against the Singaporean system by citing the frequency of jaywalking in the US and then trying to argue that X amount of people would be bankrupted by fines or mowed over then you are making either a dishonest or an ignorant argument.Gross bodily injury and possible death is not enough risk for you? You make it sound like people are jumping in front of cars in order to get a free paid tropical vacation. Please cite your sources.
"For not to know of what things one should demand demonstration, and of what one should not, argues want of education."
- Aristotle -
- Aristotle -
You ask someone to cite sources when they're referencing an event or a statistic. When they make an argument from analogy, you either pick apart one of their points or the structure of their logic. That's exactly what this example was: an analogy to show the principle of behavioral psychology which underlies the phenomenon in question, and to illuminate why arguments attacking changes in risk from the assumption of persistent trends in behavior are misguided.
This is because when you introduce a risk to a decision, people decide differently. The end result of not shielding people for economic risks is that they would take fewer economic risks, which means that there are a whole lot of stupid risks which the system no longer needs to absorb.The problem isn't with the pedestrians "taking stupid risks". Do you have any thoughts on the automobile designer who makes a vehicle capable of traveling 120kph over any speed limit in the country? Do you realize that it is possible to design vehicles that drastically reduce pedestrian injuries?
How many automobile-pedestrian collisions are at 120km/h are over? How many pedestrian-heavy areas even offer the physical possibility to accelerate to those speeds before running into traffic or a stop light? Which is easier on society at large: for everyone to drive 55mph on the freeway, or for idiots to not step into a road outside of a crosswalk?
That's part of the problem. When people like this start talking about "personal responsibility" it always seems to focus on the people who have the least. Doesn't the driver have "personal responsibility"? What about the city planner who builds hundreds of blind corners into their street plan?
The driver does have personal responsibility. When the pedestrian is in the cross walk, the driver has the responsibility to stop. When the driver is on the road, the pedestrian has the personal responsibility to stay on the side walk. As for city planning, Singapore receives a lot of complaints from certain corners, but it's usually considered one of the best planned cities in the world.
Another example of this is student loans. Make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy again, and you would see a lot less lending, and colleges would charge a lot less in tuition. This is because you would introduce risk into the equation, and the bank would actually have to ask themselves 'will this girl with no capital be able to pay back a loan using the skills obtained during her undergraduate in feminist studies with a minor in lesbian basketweaving?' Combine that with the revocation of tax-free status on endowment capital gains and you could fix the student loan debt problem overnight.You don't seem to understand how money works. The banks have lobbied to get government guarantees for student loans. Not to "help" anyone, but in order to boost their profit margins. It's not the student's own personal failure. The banks are in a rush to loan to any student regardless of their potential earnings simply because they've (the banks themselves) lobbied to have those loans guaranteed. I agree this also inflates tuition. I would love to see an end to guaranteed student loans. I just don't blame the students for any of this mess.
Where did I blame the students? I rather explicitly said that the banks had divested themselves of risk and that said risk should be returned. The students are mostly dumb kids, society should protect them, not throw them to these fucking usurious vultures. If the bank gave a student a loan of $70,000 to pursue a degree in queer theory, then the bank deserves to lose every single penny.
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@3RU7AL
It's not idiotic, what's idiotic is letting some rich dickhole kill around 100,000 people and retire into the sunset with generous stock options. You fail to realize that a system like the one which Taleb advocates would restructure incentives. People jaywalk less in Singapore, because instead of getting a fat payout from lawsuit if a car hits you and zero consequences if it doesn't, you get up to $1,000 dollars in fines if you step out onto the pavement and if you get hit outside of a crosswalk you don't have right of way. If you argued against the Singaporean system by citing the frequency of jaywalking in the US and then trying to argue that X amount of people would be bankrupted by fines or mowed over then you are making either a dishonest or an ignorant argument. This is because when you introduce a risk to a decision, people decide differently. The end result of not shielding people for economic risks is that they would take fewer economic risks, which means that there are a whole lot of stupid risks which the system no longer needs to absorb.
Another example of this is student loans. Make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy again, and you would see a lot less lending, and colleges would charge a lot less in tuition. This is because you would introduce risk into the equation, and the bank would actually have to ask themselves 'will this girl with no capital be able to pay back a loan using the skills obtained during her undergraduate in feminist studies with a minor in lesbian basketweaving?' Combine that with the revocation of tax-free status on endowment capital gains and you could fix the student loan debt problem overnight.
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@Greyparrot
We don't. The same thing will happen that has happened every other time that society became too decadent to support human life: civilizational collapse, mass migration, and a resolution to a more suitable level of technology. When an ecosystem tilts out of balance, one thing corrects it: death on a massive scale. Just look at the Bronze Age Collapse or the Dark Ages. DNA doesn't get outdated; man outpaces nature and is then violently corrected.
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@Greyparrot
Technology didn't necessitate capitalism. Capitalism arose after most of the technological developments which sparked the industrial revolution. It's perfectly possible for healthy human social structures to produce the requisite technology, as happened throughout much of the middle ages. Also, the idea that technology is the aim and goal and that what is human should be deformed and broken in order to fit that mold is also insane; we're human first. Our technology is just something that we do, not the purpose of our existence.
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@Greyparrot
No, the Clearances and Enclosure did that. It didn't just move the women, it moved the whole family. That's when capitalism began, that was the beginning of the proletariat as a large, exploitable class. Whenever they were able to manage it, they returned to domesticity, and whenever capitalists were able to manage it they pried them away, diluting the labor pool and reducing the economic power of the working class. Now the wealthy get a two-for-one deal in terms of labor cost, and families struggle to raise children.
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@Vader
Feminism is just a symptom of capitalism. Schumpeter predicted this ages ago. When people succumb to individualism and materialism in a mass society which inculcates those attributes (capitalism), an hedonistic, solipsistic calculus begins to override collective concerns. What would appear to be insanity to any impartial observer proliferates, and social structure breaks down. Feminism is just that process, dressed in ideology. There's a reason that the upper classes still follows the old rules about things like out of wedlock births: they have the resources to resist the antinomian orgy that is consuming the lower classes, and in doing so will maintain their political dominance until systemic failure sets in.
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If the right continues to suck corporate dick and be apologists for corporate capitalism, then they fully deserve to lose to someone like Sanders, and the country will be better for it.
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@thett3
really? Why? Were you raised in that faith or was it something that came to you?
Fiora is a League of Legends character.
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@Mharman
Capitalism works because the hardest workers rise to the top and the one make the poor choices sink to the bottom, then ensuring success for those who earn it.
Have you ever held a real job in a large company?
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Presidents should be 'elected' through barefisted mortal combat.
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I'm so glad to see the warm acceptance of trans people, and this very relatable, uplifting depiction of the gender confirmation experience.
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@Greyparrot
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@Swagnarok
No, that misses the point. The point is that we live in a horrible country which ruins entire nations so that the spoiled, indolent American masses can revel in the latest wave of distracting junk. Every single person in this country who doesn't live in a self-sufficient cabin in the woods is culpable for murder, rape, theft on a colossal scale. Furthermore, we are culpable of supporting a brutal domestic political machine which oppresses and divides its citizenry in order to enrich a tiny, stratospherically wealthy caste of disloyal and amoral 'global citizens'. But instead of doing anything about it, we just look for the tiniest admissions of moral fault to pounce on, maintaining our own veneer of 'respectability' while refusing to criticize a brutal system. It's cowardly and distasteful. As Christ put it:
'Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you tithe mint, and anise, and cummin, and have left the weightier things of the law; judgment, and mercy, and faith. These things you ought to have done, and not to leave those undone. Blind guides, who strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you make clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but within you are full of rapine and uncleanness. Thou blind Pharisee, first make clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, that the outside may become clean. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you are like to whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear to men beautiful, but within are full of dead men's bones, and of all filthiness. So you also outwardly indeed appear to men just; but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.'
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Why am I not surprised that our hypocritical, self-obsessed society takes an attempt to honestly address the ugliness of human nature, and one's own sins, as a chance to attack? I guarantee you that anyone attacking Liam Neeson over this is a much bigger piece of shit than he is; they are just cowards with the luxury of hiding their faults. None of them would ever be honest about their shortcomings in public.
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@Death23
Many of the state estate taxes have exemptions in the 1-3 million dollar range. This means that any middle class family which is gaining money and might be able to move into the upper classes will have a huge chunk taken out of their wealth if the patriarch/matriarch of the family dies. And as you pointed out, corporations don't die, so this directly incentivizes corporate ownership instead of human proprietorship. In my book, things which erect a barrier to class mobility while encouraging corporate power are never good. I think that tariffs combined with equity taxes would be much more fair across the board, as tariffs punish the offshoring of productive capital and equity taxes cut broadly across corporate and personal wealth. This is why the ruling global capitalist class (and the media mouthpieces which they own) clamor obsessively against both proposals.
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@dustryder
So you just admitted that my argument was correct. It means that privately owned farms will never be big enough to challenge, economically, corporate power. And I have relatives who are very, very wealthy. They don't pay estate taxes on the huge majority of their wealth because, as Grey Parrot has said, it's held in trusts and corporations (or just offshored). The estate tax is a tax on the middle and upper middle classes. It is a barrier to wealth mobility, not a tax on wealth. It ensures that the richest families stay rich, with many ways to dodge the tax, while anyone rising up in wealth gets taken out at the kneecaps because they do not have enough resources to navigate the system. As I pointed out, agriculture is low margin, high volume. It's very heard to pay a huge estate or gift tax when you have such thin wiggle room.
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@dustryder
Only federal estate taxes are capped that high, state estate taxes are usually much lower (though thankfully many of these have been repealed). What it does is put an upper size ceiling on privately owned farms which doesn't exist for corporations. This gives the corporation leverage over the private owner. They don't even have to own the land, they can use economic pressures to reduce the modern equivalent of a yeoman farmer to the modern equivalent of a serf. It isn't just about ownership, but about structural power. Look at the demographics in farming, Farms are getting bigger. Land is getting more expensive. That ceiling is going to get tighter and tighter, especially since there's a coming population crunch in rural America. Any family-owned farm which gets too big will bump up against that ceiling, and big ag corporations will always be there ready to squash any challenger to their influence.
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@Uther-Penguin
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I don't really find black people annoying unless they are talking in a movie theater. White yuppies are many, many times more aggravating. Close behind them are rich Indian people and Mexicans who can't speak any English.
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@Alec
I don't think western culture is ruined. Some things the west has done that many other cultures haven't done:-We treat women better.
Debatable
-We treat homosexuals better.
Bad.
-We are capitalist.
Bad.
-We can sustain consumerism. It's not like people are buying luxuries by the masses much in China.
Yeah that's why our national debt soars to dizzying heights with each new year and we have rock-bottom savings.
-Highest GDP per capita in the world on average.
Oh boy I'm sure that the homeless veteran gets a big dopamine spike when he opens the newspaper and sees that the dow is up 100 points!
-We Created the concept of, "human rights"
The Church did that, specifically the School of Salamanca.
-We Abolished slavery(ISIS still has sex slaves).
We outsource that to third world countries now (or, heck, we invite the third world here and 'pay' them under the table!) Besides, it's not like that sex trafficking industry is fed by the richest people on the planet or anything.
I don't think western civilization is bad.
In its current state, it is.
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@Alec
Black kids start puberty a year earlier, which can cause a lot of bullying and tension in schools with large, multiracial populations. It also affects learning styles, so it makes it hard to run a class when you have kids at two different stages of development. Puberty also causes a general decline in motivation when it comes to academics, which may cause black kids to lag behind white kids and give them a bit of an inferiority complex. If your group starts struggling for the most part, and the white kids are mostly still focused and docile, that just strengthens group identification. lowers self-perception, and can lead to resentment. Teachers are also liable to being to perceive black students as 'problem students' or 'troublemakers' because of this. The human brain likes narratives, and if you see the black kids getting rowdy and falling behind, and then the white kids getting rowdy and start to slip academically about a year later, it's very likely that our pattern recognition will pick up on that and unfairly blame the black children for 'starting it'. There are also differences in athletic ability (both basically and due to early puberty) and learning style/behavior (https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED226077).
I don't think that public schools should be de jure segregated, but I do think that districts should follow real, organic community lines (like parishes in the parochial school system). In that scenario, most schools would probably end up being either majority white or majority black. Schools should also focus more on career preparedness than on standardized testing.
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I disagree with this, as it causes, in the long run, for land and the means of production to shift from private control to corporate control. If a small farm is to stay in the family, the owners have to pay an estate tax on it every time that a family member dies. In a high volume, low margin business like farming, this means that farmers often have to sell off some of their land each generation in order to survive. Since corporations are essentially fake people who never die, they don't have to do this and so, over time, they accumulate more and more land. Corporate control of agricultural land leads to fragile supply chains, monocultures, overuse of herbicides, corruption, and other deleterious effects (not to mention an ever tightening death-grip on an essential good). The law shouldn't favor corporate ownership over small businesses; it should do the exact opposite.
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@bsh1
1. Should DART moderation be able to punish users for sever misconduct which occurs on the site's discord?
Yes, only for doxxing and violent threats.
2. Should there be a public ban log?
Yes. It increases transparency, allowing people to know exactly why people were punished instead of gossiping or just wondering. If someone did something bad, people should know for themselves what it was and then decide whether they want to forgive the person or not. It's silly to say that the best way to help people rejoin the community is to avoid confronting the central issue (what they did to get banned in the first place). Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
3. Should COC-violating conduct be deleted?
Absolutely not, with the only exceptions being links to pornography and doxxings.
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You're welcome, buddy.
I just can't help it. When I see a poor child like you, so innocent and fragile, subjected to the crushing indignity of observing heated online conversations from the sidelines, it just moves me to such depths of pity.
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@Alec
Next point:You know, the philosophical and political system which built Europe up from an imperial backwater into the beating heart of the civilized world.How is Europe a Catholic theocracy? Most Europeans are pro choice, most base their economic policies on what they think will be best for the country rather then what they believe God wants them to do, and many Europeans are atheists/agnostics.
Europe has existed for thousands of years. For most of that history (the part where it transitioned from a backwater to a cultural and material powerhouse) the Church held a huge amount of power over the economic and cultural life of the continent.
All capitalism has done is plunder that civilization's corpseThis is a false accusation. Capitalism has made society great, increased lifespan, created technological progress, and created the huge GDP per capita of the west.
Lol, yep, that's why there was no technological advancement before capitalism arrived on the scene, and there wouldn't have been any without it. It's not like all of the inventions which precipitated the industrial revolution where discovered before capitalism as a system came into being... oh wait...
transforming it into drag queens, dragon dildos, and WalMart.For those who don't know, a "drag queen" is a transgender. Capitalism did make these, I'll concede this point.However, it created dildos, which I don't know too much about, so I don't know if this is like porn or like contraception.Walmart is pretty legitimate. I mean, it's a profitable business that helps the American economy, prevents tens of thousands of people from being unemployed, and provides products to hundreds of millions of Americans and maybe some more people internationally.
Slavery was pretty legitimate. I mean, it was a profitable industry which helped the American economy, gave thousands of poor Africans a place to sleep and food, provided lots of nice cotton doublets for thousands of Americans and maybe some more people internationally.
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@Alec
Where in the bible does it say to kill the rich as what you advocated for below:We should put all of the rich people in televised death-matches
2 Samuel 12
1 And the Lord sent Nathan to David: and when he was come to him, he said to him: There were two men in one city, the one rich, and the other poor.
2 The rich man had exceeding many sheep and oxen.
3 But the poor man had nothing at all but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished up, and which had grown up in his house together with his children, eating of his bread, and drinking of his cup, and sleeping in his bosom: and it was unto him as a daughter.
4 And when a certain stranger was come to the rich man, he spared to take of his own sheep and oxen, to make a feast for that stranger, who was come to him, but took the poor man's ewe, and dressed it for the man that was come to him.
5 And David's anger being exceedingly kindled against that man, he said to Nathan: As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this is a child of death.
9 The light of the just giveth joy: but the lamp of the wicked shall be put out.
20 A faithful man shall be much praised: but he that maketh haste to be rich, shall not be innocent.
21 He that hath respect to a person in judgment, doth not well: such a man even for a morsel of bread forsaketh the truth.
4 And when a certain stranger was come to the rich man, he spared to take of his own sheep and oxen, to make a feast for that stranger, who was come to him, but took the poor man's ewe, and dressed it for the man that was come to him.
5 And David's anger being exceedingly kindled against that man, he said to Nathan: As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this is a child of death.
Proverbs 13
8 The ransom of a man's life are his riches: but he that is poor beareth not reprehension.9 The light of the just giveth joy: but the lamp of the wicked shall be put out.
Proverbs 28
19 He that tilleth his ground, shall be filled with bread: but he that followeth idleness shall be filled with poverty.20 A faithful man shall be much praised: but he that maketh haste to be rich, shall not be innocent.
21 He that hath respect to a person in judgment, doth not well: such a man even for a morsel of bread forsaketh the truth.
Ecclesiastes 5
9 A covetous man shall not be satisfied with money: and he that loveth riches shall reap no fruit from them: so this also is vanity.
10 Where there are great riches, there are also many to eat them. And what doth it profit the owner, but that he seeth the riches with his eyes?
11 Sleep is sweet to a labouring man, whether he eat little or much: but the fulness of the rich will not suffer him to sleep.
21 And with thee I will break in pieces the horse, and his rider, and with thee I will break in pieces the chariot, and him that getteth up into it:
22 And with thee I will break in pieces man and woman, and with thee I will break in pieces the old man and the child, and with thee I will break in pieces the young man and the virgin:
23 And with thee I will break in pieces the shepherd and his flock, and with thee I will break in pieces the husbandman and his yoke of oxen, and with thee I will break in pieces captains and rulers.
24 And I will render to Babylon, and to all the inhabitants of Chaldea all their evil, that they have done in Sion, before your eyes, saith the Lord.
25 Behold I come against thee, thou destroying mountain, saith the Lord, which corruptest the whole earth: and I will stretch out my hand upon thee, and will roll thee down from the rocks, and will make thee a burnt mountain.
26 And they shall not take of thee a stone for the corner, nor a stone for foundations, but thou shalt be destroyed for ever, saith the Lord.
27 Set ye up a standard in the land: sound with the trumpet among the nations: prepare the nations against her: call together against her the kings of Ararat, Menni, and Ascenez: number Taphsar against her, bring the horse as the stinging locust.
28 Prepare the nations against her, the kings of Media, their captains, and all their rulers, and all the land of their dominion.
29 And the land shall be in a commotion, and shall be troubled: for the design of the Lord against Babylon shall awake, to make the land of Babylon desert and uninhabitable.
30 The valiant men of Babylon have forborne to fight, they have dwelt in holds: their strength hath failed, and they are become as women: her dwelling places are burnt, her bars are broken.
10 Let his children be carried about vagabonds, and beg; and let them be cast out of their dwellings.
11 May the usurer search all his substance: and let strangers plunder his labours.
12 May there be none to help him: nor none to pity his fatherless offspring.
13 May his posterity be cut off; in one generation may his name be blotted out.
14 May the iniquity of his fathers be remembered in the sight of the Lord: and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.
15 May they be before the Lord continually, and let the memory of them perish from the earth:
16 because he remembered not to shew mercy,
17 But persecuted the poor man and the beggar; and the broken in heart, to put him to death.
10 Where there are great riches, there are also many to eat them. And what doth it profit the owner, but that he seeth the riches with his eyes?
11 Sleep is sweet to a labouring man, whether he eat little or much: but the fulness of the rich will not suffer him to sleep.
Jeremiah 51
20 Thou dashest together for me the weapons of war, and with thee I will dash nations together, and with thee I will destroy kingdoms:21 And with thee I will break in pieces the horse, and his rider, and with thee I will break in pieces the chariot, and him that getteth up into it:
22 And with thee I will break in pieces man and woman, and with thee I will break in pieces the old man and the child, and with thee I will break in pieces the young man and the virgin:
23 And with thee I will break in pieces the shepherd and his flock, and with thee I will break in pieces the husbandman and his yoke of oxen, and with thee I will break in pieces captains and rulers.
24 And I will render to Babylon, and to all the inhabitants of Chaldea all their evil, that they have done in Sion, before your eyes, saith the Lord.
25 Behold I come against thee, thou destroying mountain, saith the Lord, which corruptest the whole earth: and I will stretch out my hand upon thee, and will roll thee down from the rocks, and will make thee a burnt mountain.
26 And they shall not take of thee a stone for the corner, nor a stone for foundations, but thou shalt be destroyed for ever, saith the Lord.
27 Set ye up a standard in the land: sound with the trumpet among the nations: prepare the nations against her: call together against her the kings of Ararat, Menni, and Ascenez: number Taphsar against her, bring the horse as the stinging locust.
28 Prepare the nations against her, the kings of Media, their captains, and all their rulers, and all the land of their dominion.
29 And the land shall be in a commotion, and shall be troubled: for the design of the Lord against Babylon shall awake, to make the land of Babylon desert and uninhabitable.
30 The valiant men of Babylon have forborne to fight, they have dwelt in holds: their strength hath failed, and they are become as women: her dwelling places are burnt, her bars are broken.
Psalm 108
9 May his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.10 Let his children be carried about vagabonds, and beg; and let them be cast out of their dwellings.
11 May the usurer search all his substance: and let strangers plunder his labours.
12 May there be none to help him: nor none to pity his fatherless offspring.
13 May his posterity be cut off; in one generation may his name be blotted out.
14 May the iniquity of his fathers be remembered in the sight of the Lord: and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.
15 May they be before the Lord continually, and let the memory of them perish from the earth:
16 because he remembered not to shew mercy,
17 But persecuted the poor man and the beggar; and the broken in heart, to put him to death.
Justice for the oppression of the poor is a very common theme in the Bible. God often used the people as his tools, to destroy Babylon, for example. Nathan strikingly convinces David to condemn himself to death through the story of the poor man's lamb, and David is punished dearly by God for it. Rich people are only praised when they put God above riches, and Christ famously said that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Capitalist America and Europe are the new Babylons, and God will use the people as his tools to overthrown and destroy them, as he did Tyre, Babylon, and Rome. The wicked people at the head of that serpent are the richest ones in the world, and they will not escape justice. Our entire economic system is based on usury, which has slowly destroyed even the concept of a Sabbath for the working poor. My proposal was a bit hyperbolic, but if they don't repent and change their ways then the rich will be destroyed completely, and the people will rejoice that God's justice is finally being delivered.
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@Kamikaze
Have you ever seen someone who makes tupelo honey? How do they ensure that they only feed on one specific type of tree? Is there just nothing else in bloom then, or do they somehow restrain the bees from seeking out other flowers? Do they have to stop the bees from harvesting other nectar until the trees start to bloom? I remember tasting it when I was in Apalachicola, and the guy who sold it said that it was monofloral, and that it wouldn't crystallize because of the high fructose content, but he never really explained how it all worked production-wise.
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MOMMY THE PEOPLE ARE SAYING BAD WORDS AND IT MAKES ME CRY
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@Alec
My ideology isn't communism, it's traditionalist Catholicism. You know, the philosophical and political system which built Europe up from an imperial backwater into the beating heart of the civilized world. All capitalism has done is plunder that civilization's corpse, burning centuries worth of accumulated social and material capital and transforming it into drag queens, dragon dildos, and WalMart.
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@Alec
Lol the Constitution is an old piece of paper buddy. If following its dictates leads to wide-scale misery, there is no physical law to stop the heads from rolling. I could care less about percentage points, and an economic system which revolves around 'jobs' is precisely what needs to be eliminated. When the means of production are widely distributed, then there will be no proletariat class, 'jobs' will become a thing of the past, and a bunch of useless mediocrities will have to learn how to gas weld.
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@Greyparrot
Hard to be rich with negative net worth lol.
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We should put all of the rich people in televised death-matches, then redistribute the land and means of production.
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Because most unemployed people lean left, politically.
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Shit like this is why more people each day want to garrotte 'conservatives', and I'm starting to get where they're coming from.
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@Castin
I don't think that being thick skinned translates to being indifferent/cynical about everything. It refers to shrugging off personal attacks and that's pretty much it. A state of cynical detachment seems like the opposite of thick-skinned to me; it just dodges all potential conflicts instead of engaging with what one finds to be wrong.
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@Tejretics
You would probably find this interesting: https://www.conradbastable.com/essays/the-uncharity-of-college-the-big-business-nobody-understands?fbclid=IwAR2NSWDNHwrE8PW6P51i3GTLj1WkYvc0H2av8mNvJojdn2c5_ZtlDcfLCKw
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@3RU7AL
Look up 'strict scrutiny' sweetie, maybe you can begin your introduction to Supreme Court jurisprudence there.
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@Castin
This is the same old shit, the left automatically go up in arms, the right reflexively take the side of whoever the left are against, and the same old identity politics play out along the same old battle lines.
Lol, it's not a 'reflexive defense' as if both sides are the same. A bunch of these kids are high school underclassman and I just got done scrolling through a Facebook feed of people saying that they should have the shit beat out of them, calling them 'rapists' (wtf?), and advocating calling their school en masse trying to get them expelled. There's no moral equivalency between a kneejerk, certifiably insane reaction to a misleading video clip of kids and the few people who say 'hey, maybe stop the lynch mob mentality'. I think that there is a real moral imperative to try and dispel the collective insanity wherever possible. As I said, it's not that I associate your disinterested snark with that mob mentality, but there is context to the situation.
Did the kid look a bit creepy? Sure. But talking about that while refusing to mention that a bunch of people are trying to ruin their lives over a misleading video perpetuates the misunderstanding on which that hostility is based.
Did the kid look a bit creepy? Sure. But talking about that while refusing to mention that a bunch of people are trying to ruin their lives over a misleading video perpetuates the misunderstanding on which that hostility is based.
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A link to video from before the viral one. You can see that the kids who supposedly 'surrounded' and 'harassed' and innocent native elder are standing on the same stairs on which the viral video takes place, while the native protestors are walking down the street. The elder changes his path to walk into the crowd of kids and confront them of his own volition. So no, these kids didn't corner some poor native helpless man and jeer him down. The man walked into the middle of their gathering, started chanting and drumming, and they reacted... like bewildered kids. https://twitter.com/mariajudy_/status/1086681831804674048
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Mostly I think he's just awkward. There are only so many ways to respond to an old Native guy walking up to you and beating his drum and chanting while you're doing a school cheer. The kids were there completely unrelated to the native march, probably didn't even know it was going on, were all chanting their school chant and this old guy they didn't know (who most people who aren't native wouldn't know) just walks up and starts beating his drum and chanting. 'Grinning awkwardly' is one of the least offensive possible responses to that, and piling on to a bunch of teenagers for responding like teenagers to something that probably came out of left field to them seems a lot more distasteful imo. Not that that's what you're doing, as a lot of the videos take it out of context and don't show how it started, but that's my general take on the issue.
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@Analgesic.Spectre
It's not really about racial struggle against external threats. One of the best overviews of this is Spengler's The Hour of Decision. Despite the laughably inaccurate synopsis of the work available online (this work was banned by the Nazi party, it didn't 'inspire' them), the essay isn't about white Europeans having to 'fight' the 'colored races'. It is a pessimistic outlook on the future of Europe based on the decadence and weakness of European civilization, which, in Spengler's view, doomed them to lose 'by default' against other, more healthy civilizations in the long run. It's not a question of racial struggle at all, but of the state of fundamental weakness into which the European soul has collapsed.
'Added to all this is the universal dread of reality. We "pale-faces" have it, all of us, although we are seldom, and most of us never, conscious of it. It is the spiritual weakness of the "Late" man of the higher civilizations, who lives in his cities cut off from the peasant and the soil and thereby from the natural experiencing of destiny, time, and death. He has become too wide awake, too accustomed to ponder perpetually over yesterday and tomorrow, and cannot bear that which he sees and is forced to see: the relentless course of things, senseless chance, and real history striding pitilessly through the centuries into which the individual with his tiny scrap of private life is irrevocably born at the appointed place. That is what he longs to forget, refute, or contest. He takes flight from history into solitude, into imaginary far-away systems, into some faith or another, or into suicide. Like a grotesque ostrich he buries his head in hopes, ideals, and cowardly optimism: it is so, but it ought not to be, therefore it is otherwise. We sing in the woods at night because we are afraid. Similarly, the cowardice of cities shouts its apparent optimism to the world for very fear. Reality is no longer to be borne. The wish-picture of the future is set in place of facts - although fate has never taken any notice of human fancies - from the children's Land of Do-Nothing to the World Peace and Workers' Paradise of the grown-ups.
I don't see the whole demographic displacement as some aberration; it is what to expect of a civilization which has become spineless. It's the Wandering of Nations all over again.
The real unique issues that I see are ecological devastation and overpopulation. Overpopulation is not just a matter of 'too many people', but of the collapse in conceptual space which happens in low-trust environments. This collapse makes the deleterious psychological effects of overcrowding become much more pronounced, which can eventually completely dissolve social structures.
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The problem is Capitalism, not 'the free market' (really, just 'markets').
Most of the smoke and mirrors happens because of a muddying of the definitions during the Cold War. The reason that people are against capitalism on a visceral level is because the term capitalism was historically coined to describe the conditions during the onset of the industrial revolution in many English-speaking countries, whereby the control of capital accumulated into a few hands. The huge influence that these people then wielded was used to corrupt every facet of society and cripple the majority of the people living in the country (who had recently been evicted from their families land after the Reformation caused the collapse of feudalism). Markets, of course, had existed for centuries in some form or another, and not many people have a principled loathing for them. But they existed in a context of ownership/access which made the market work for the common welfare of most people. Under the feudal system, a family didn't own their land, but they could not be evicted from it either, it was guaranteed to remain in the family. This system was backed up by the church, who also stymied the formation of large, centralized banking institutions by heavily penalizing usury. Then a lot of stuff happened involving mercenary companies, bankers, and standing armies, and a few ambitious princes took advantage of potential reformers in the Church to break away from the rest of Europe.
Immediately, they started breaking all of the 'rules' that the church had established. Banking exploded, and a process known as 'enclosure' started in Britain. The feudal lords who had supported Henry were rewarded by huge swathes of formerly monastic land. This immediately gave them a huge jump ahead in power, and they realized that they could earn a lot more money on 'their' land if, instead of having peasants pay them a portion of their produce in rent, they just combined all the land and farmed it as a business. The problem is that under feudalism, it wasn't 'their' land in the capitalist sense but in the feudal sense. Often, generations and generations of men had made improvements to that land because the system under which they lived guaranteed that their ancestors would have their lives improved through access to those improvements. If you ever see the jaw-dropping display of a sweeping hillside vineyard terraced in stone when travelling through Europe, that is the system under which such improvements developed, slowly, generation by generation. So what the Lords of England did was basically tell the peasants 'this is our land now, get off' and combined it into the English 'manor house' system.
The same newly rich men often began to take advantage of technological advancements. Contrary to how history books would summarize it, most of the technological developments which lead to advancements in productivity predated industrialism as a system. This newly minted powerful and rich clique had two conditions at play: new advances in machinery, and a newly homeless mass of people desperate for any means to survive. So they founded the first big businesses, and exploited the former peasants whom they had essentially robbed of their land. This is what originally drove urbanization, and the squalor and horror which accompanied it in Dickensian Britain. When you read the anti-Capitalist writers from the following century, the most popular and effective ones are not anti-market or anti-property. In fact, the equation of 'Capitalism' to 'markets' would seem utterly unintelligible to them; that redefining of the word took place in the context of the Cold War and makes sense in no other context, including our current age. They supported the extension of property to the men who had been robbed of it en masse. Their question was 'why is it okay for the rich to declare land which we lived on, which we improved, which we cared for for centuries? If we are suddenly to end feudalism and have property, why does all of the property start off in one man's hand?'
These people made a good point. Under feudalism, there was no proletariat class. The land was the means of production, and it was widely distributed in a way which gave every man access to the means for his survival. The proletariat class came into place through massive, inherently violent dispossession which has never been rectified. The creation of this class created the preconditions for the rise of socialist and communist movements. Any modern defender of Capitalism who refuses to see this root problem as a problem will never change society for the better. His every argument in favor of markets will just be kindling piled on his own pyre. What he says about big business corrupting regulatory agencies is very true. What he says about the disasters brought about by demand economies is very true. The arguments that he makes about collusion and monopoly are very true. But just adopting 'the free market' will not fix the economic structural problems that exist. At this point, with the means of production concentrated in a few powerful individual hands, allowing 'the market to take its course' would likely lead to a full-on communist revolt. A market only functions as a market when people can play on an equal playing field. That means a redistribution of land. It means that corporations do not exist. It means an equal access to existing intellectual capital (in the medieval system this was managed through a guild system which adopted apprentices to train). Because, ultimately, the class struggle doesn't result from socialist propaganda, or 'evil', or envy, it results from the existence of a proletariat class. The only way to end socialism is to end the proletariat class, and the only way to defend property is to make sure that every person has access to it. If those conditions were in place, no sane person would object to the market, and the insane persons who did would not be listened to.
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@3RU7AL
That ruling has been very narrowly applied. For an example, read 'R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul', which struck down a hate speech law which banned cross burnings. This is because any law banning fighting words cannot be narrow in any way which touches on ideology or belief; this makes it unconstitutional. Cross-burnings may be 'fighting words', but it is against the law to pass a law to ban only one kind of 'fighting words' and not all fighting words. Only someone with a grade school understanding of first amendment jurisdiction would apply Chaplinsky's 'fighting words' to pronouns.
This is the opinion for the case (which was unanimous), authored by Justice Scalia:
The proposition that a particular instance of speech can be proscribable on the basis of one feature (e. g., obscenity) but not on the basis of another (e. g., opposition to the city government) is commonplace, and has found application in many contexts. We have long held, for example, that nonverbal expressive activity can be banned because of the action it entails, but not because of the ideas it expresses--so that burning a flag in violation of an ordinance against outdoor fires could be punishable, whereas burning a flag in violation of an ordinance against dishonoring the flag is not. See Johnson, 491 U. S., at 406-407. See also Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc., 501 U. S. ___, ___ ___ (1991) (plurality) (slip op., at 4-6); id., at ___ ___ (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 5-6); id., at ___ ___ (Souter, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 1-2); United States v. O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 376-377 (1968). Similarly, we have upheld reasonable "time, place, or manner" restrictions, but only if they are "justified without reference to the content of the regulated speech." Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781, 791 (1989) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Clark v. Community for Creative Non Violence, 468 U.S. 288, 298 (1984) (noting that the O'Brien test differs little from the standard applied to time, place, or manner restrictions). And just as the power to proscribe particular speech on the basis of a noncontent element (e. g., noise) does not entail the powerto proscribe the same speech on the basis of a content element; so also, the power to proscribe it on the basis of one content element (e. g., obscenity) does not entail the power to proscribe it on the basis of other content elements.In other words, the exclusion of "fighting words" from the scope of the First Amendment simply means that, for purposes of that Amendment, the unprotected features of the words are, despite their verbal character, essentially a "nonspeech" element of communication. Fighting words are thus analogous to a noisy sound truck: Each is, as Justice Frankfurter recognized, a "mode of speech," Niemotko v. Maryland, 340 U.S. 268, 282 (1951) (Frankfurter, J., concurring in result); both can be used to convey an idea; but neither has, in and of itself, a claim upon the First Amendment. As with the sound truck, however, so also with fighting words: The government may not regulate use based on hostility--or favoritism--towards the underlying message expressed. Compare Frisby v. Schultz, 487 U.S. 474 (1988) (upholding, against facial challenge, a content neutral ban on targeted residential picketing) with Carey v. Brown, 447 U.S. 455 (1980) (invalidating a ban on residential picketing that exempted labor picketing). [n.5]The concurrences describe us as setting forth a new First Amendment principle that prohibition of constitutionally proscribable speech cannot be "underinclusiv[e]," post, at 6 (White, J., concurring in judgment)--a First Amendment "absolutism" whereby "within a particular `proscribable' category of expression, . . . a government must either pro scribe all speech or no speech at all," post, at 4 (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment). That easy target is of the concurrences' own invention. In our view, the First Amendment imposes not an "underinclusiveness" limitation but a "content discrimination" limitation upon a State's prohibition of proscribable speech. There is no problem whatever, for example, with a State's prohibiting obscenity (and other forms of proscribable expression) only in certain media or markets, for although that prohibition would be "underinclusive," it would not discriminate on the basis of content. See, e. g., Sable Communications, 492 U. S., at 124-126 (upholding 47 U.S.C. § 223(b)(1) (1988), which prohibits obscene telephone communications).
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@oromagi
The government is expressly prohibited from ever deciding what people can do based on belief system and stop hiding behind belief systems. If your belief system requires you to tell gay people they're going to hell or to be unkindly honest to elderly people entrusted to your care, then it is time to double-check your belief system; it need not waste the government's time. There is no sympathetic circumstance by which a service provider would repeatedly misgender after correction.Your question is so it's unkind- isn't it protected speech? The answer is yes, except when there's criminal intent.
LOL, if a law is being challenged on a first amendment basis, you can't say that the first amendment doesn't apply because there's 'criminal intent' due to the law in question. The law itself, which makes the speech criminal, is what is being challenged.
I can show in a court of law that the can-opener is hallucinating. Can you show in a court of law that a transgendered person is hallucinating? As far as I can tell, gender dysphoria is just another human condition, well enough documented to seem present in every time and culture. Established enough to be present in law. I suppose there is a critique-worthy element of fashion to our present embrace of trans culture but fashion skews queer and ultimately I believe that increasing our human expression of gender is just that, increasing our human expression, which I consider beneficial.
Murder and thievery are also 'human conditions present in every time and culture'. So are depression and hysteria. Being a 'common human condition' does not in any sense make things sacrosanct and perfectly acceptable.
Look- if the lunatic can-opener said "call me man one more time and I'll jump" and you say "man" and the lunatic jumps, you are probably going to get charged with something and we both know there's some justice in such a charge. There are circumstances when protected speech becomes crime and so forfeits protection. Willfully violating another citizen's (potentially fragile) identity in the privacy of their homes, in a time of exegesis, that rises to the level of crime. The State of California sees that as minor crime. Why can't you?
Actually, there are no conditions where protected speech becomes a crime. That's what protected speech means. The person in that situation would not be charged with anything, the lunatic would be charged with assault and his lawyers would likely mount an insanity defense.
Perhaps his employer could punish him for doing such things discourteously. But what if the home is owned by people who don't think that a transgendered woman is a woman, and who agree with the employee? That's the crucial issue: the government would force everyone in that situation to lie under punishment of a fine. I don't think that such a case would survive in front of the SC.The Supreme Court has delivered many unworthy readings of the Constitution, I wouldn't trust it to define my sense of right and wrong.
Neither would I, but the Supreme Court isn't there to determine right or wrong, they're there to interpret law which is written and executed by the other two branches of government.
The whole general environment surrounding pronouns remind me of Chesterton's prophecy:"The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face."Great essay, an appeal for orthodoxy in a book about heretics. I'm not sure that you get that Chesterton's being positive here embracing new heresies to better perfect his orthodoxy. He expects that everyone will have their own dogma eventually and such is the natural state of humanity. A fairly heretical orthodoxy for a Catholic, wouldn't you say?
Whew, someone said something about no reading compression, but this one really takes the cake. The central point of this section is that doubt refines and sharpens orthodoxy through contrast, to the point where the truth will end up taking on a religious quality in ways which, for his generation, seemed impossibly absurd.
Chesterton disliked indifference, that doesn't translate to a support for every creed. He once famously said that impartiality was a pompous word for indifference, which was an elegant word for ignorance.
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I don't think that narrowing it to care facilities does anything to address the central principle. That principle is that, to consider this speech to be 'harassment', the government has to decide what people who hold to a certain belief can express on the subject. If someone does not believe that a transgendered woman is a woman, this law would force them to lie. If it's a matter of courtesy, the employer can fire them. If they are actually treating these people unfairly in some tangible way, that could certainly be an issue. But being punished for speaking in a way which corresponds with their beliefs about what reality is by the government strikes at the heart of the first amendment. I'm sure that a Muslim saying that he thinks that unrepentant gay people going to hell is offensive to gay people. The government cannot punish him for saying it. I'm sure that a lunatic who is convinced that he is a can-opener would be very distressed at being called a man. The government cannot force a man to call the lunatic a can-opener. Perhaps his employer could punish him for doing such things discourteously. But what if the home is owned by people who don't think that a transgendered woman is a woman, and who agree with the employee? That's the crucial issue: the government would force everyone in that situation to lie under punishment of a fine. I don't think that such a case would survive in front of the SC.
The whole general environment surrounding pronouns remind me of Chesterton's prophecy:
"The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face."
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@Analgesic.Spectre
While I definitely take a cyclical view of history, I think that the part of the cycle we're in now is historically unique because the scale of society has the very real possibility of destroying the environment, and/or entering a Calhoun-esque population collapse scenario in the West. Once the music stops playing there is going to be a lot of violence.
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@Analgesic.Spectre
I think that you can't just write this off as 'personal responsibility', as people aren't automatons and are demonstrably susceptible to manipulation on many levels.
But putting aside that, I think that the worse effects of this are more big picture. Wages have been flat for years now in the US, yet there has been no mass-revolt, no attempt to rectify this through political action. Why? I hold that credit cards are the answer. They make it possible to maintain a higher standard of living on a lower paycheck for a long while, until it eventually catches up with people. Since we live in a consumerist society with lessened community ties (which are our biggest source of natural happiness), people depend to a large degree on the acquisition of 'stuff' to define how happy they are. If your wages go flat, and you have a family, and you are in this psychological trap, then the credit card company offers a quick out whereby a person can maintain a facade (no father wants to tell his kids he can't provide for them in the same way that other fathers do).
So, big question, what have credit cards offered to people? Have they increased their real income? No. They've essentially offered an anesthetic solution to financial hardship, which as we've seen with widespread historic (and contemporary) opiate epidemics, is something that most people can't reject through 'willpower'. This is even more true when people live in a state with weakened community defense mechanisms. In the big picture, the credit card companies are economic parasites, who serve the interests of the upper class by tamping down the dissatisfaction which a real experience of flattening wages would produce, and funnel off an obscene amount of money from the working class in the process. The rich also use credit cards, but mostly in the manner which you describe, where they farm them for reward points in a conscious way. It is MUCH easier for people to do this when they are more financially secure; poverty tends to breed decisions which keep people in poverty through short-term thinking. People are still wired, in many ways, to pursue short-term survival strategies when put under resource stresses, which is what eventually happens when cost of living increases and wages stay flat. When you're scrounging for roots and berries as a neolithic tribesman this response makes sense, but when you're up against a faceless collective of sociopathic bankers it just makes you easy to manipulate.
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