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@Theweakeredge
- Increasing Age-of-Majority
Please talk more about this one. I don't really know how I feel about it. I'm in my mid-20s now, and while I feel like I was a complete baby at 18, I also feel I was a complete baby at age 21 lol. I think there's really no good answer and it's all arbitrary, but clearly you have more coherent thoughts than I do. I definitely think the "Age of majority" should encompass all rights. The weird time between 18 and 21 when you have some but not all rights has to go away. I remember at age 18 I bought a rifle and thought it was ridiculous that I could buy this weapon, and that I could buy tobacco (at the time) but couldn't buy alcohol. At the time this friend of mine was serving in the armed forces but couldn't buy a drink lol. He said that if you showed your military ID nobody checked, but still, they could've shipped him to Afghanistan before he could go to a bar lmao, America is a weird country
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Biden sucks, but is this really his fault? It seems like a panic-driven run on gas stations stemming from a private pipeline being hacked could happen under any president
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@Greyparrot
Yeah, people have it all wrong. The idea that the majority of whites families are benefiting from houses bought in the 1950s just isn’t accurate, to say nothing of slavery. I think that mobility in America has really been hurt by deinustrialization and pushing everyone into college but it’s definitely still alive....for now
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Again, we live in a capitalistic society where wealth begets wealth, and where for hundreds of years the wealth in our society was gained by one race who enslaved the other and then did nothing to make up for their exploitation. How is this complicated?
You’re talking about inherited wealth here. If I recall correctly Ta Nehisi Coates made the same argument in his famous case for reparations essay. Unfortunately it doesn’t really hold up well. If you just look at a compound interest calculator, every family should be rich, even those whose ancestors had meager savings. The reality is that people of all races are extremely good at squandering money, especially when they themselves didn’t earn it. If you don’t believe me, look at studies of what happens to inheritances, at the fates of most lottery winners, or what happened to the descendants of families who were given large and productive farms stolen from the Cherokees in the 1830s. Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations, as they say.
We have robust data about inheritance from the Federal Reserve, and it does indeed reveal that there is a large disparity between white and black families about who receives an inheritance. 30% of white families do, and 10% of black families do. For those who receive an inheritance the median amount is the same, a little under $90,000. So 20% more white families receive an inheritance than black families do. I’m happy to concede that at least some of that wealth wasn’t allowed of black people due to policies like redlining. I don’t think you can chalk it all up to that but for the sake of argument I will grant it. So if there were no racist policies and blacks and whites were totally equal, an additional 20% of black families would get a median of ~$90k. The black-white wealth gap is $164k between families so this accounts for around 10% of the wealth gap (90k x 0.2)/164k. This suggests very strongly that the black-white wealth gap is mostly NOT due to the distant past.
The vast majority of the wealth currently being inherited or transferred between generations was created in the post-war period so anything that happened before then is not really relevant. Take it from someone who has studied these things extensively, the amount of wealth that still exists within families from the antebellum south is vanishingly small. When I really did a lot of digging I was surprised to find that some actually does still exist (I honestly assumed that none did) but you have to go out of your way to find wealthy families who have been rich since the antebellum era. Some have even been wealthy since colonial times. But again this is incredibly rare. I would estimate maybe 10,000 people nationwide have family money this old
The meat of my question is really what structures about America are specifically racist? It seems to me that the country wasn’t built on racism, instead it was built in conjunction with racism. The 3/5ths compromising is obviously racist and the textbook definition of dehumanizing but that doesn’t mean that the Supreme Court is also racist because it’s in the same document. Seriously I am asking you this in good faith. We are told that America is systemically racist, well which systems, and how?
Do you think black people only experience racism via media spectacles? Do you think there are statistics to capture every time a black person is called a n*gger or told to go back to Africa? Media spectacles are your validation, not theirs.
I have no idea how often individual incidents of racism happen. I do know how often unjustified police killings of unarmed black men happen, and they are vanishingly rare. What happened to George Floyd was bad but that doesn’t mean it’s any more likely to happen to someone else as Flight 93 means we shouldn’t fly on airplanes. Far, far more black people were killed in the lawlessness unleashed by this summers unrest than are unarmed and killed by the police. I mean, isn’t it a little weird to you that when the overwhelming violent threat to black life is criminality, and the overwhelming threat to black economic security is the decline of well paying blue collar jobs and the de industrialization of the country, organizations (fully supported by big capital) that claim to be for black people overly focus on police violence and never talk about economics at all unless it’s to advocate blatantly divisive policies like reparations? I mean do you ever wonder why Apple or whoever is so gung ho on BLM
You have a right to say whatever you want and I have a right to say whatever I want in response to it.
I mean it’s superfluous to this thread but I just thought it was funny. But why don’t you care? Don’t you want to know what the other half of the country thinks? If I said the stuff I’ve been saying in this thread on YouTube or Facebook I would be looking at a permanent ban, even though it is well sourced and reasoned (even if you disagree.) The point is that actually I don’t have the right to say what I want because monopolistic providers will shut me down, and mobs of leftists will try to make me lose my job.
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@Double_R
Again, it has nothing to do with whether there is any current intent to hold down people of color. We’re talking about a system that was built on racism and even though those rules have since changed, the effects of those rules still remain prevalent today. That is systemic racism
Intent does matter, actually. I’ve never understood this argument. The entire system was not built on racism, that’s a ridiculous statement to make. Give me some specific facets of “the system” that are inherently racist regardless of the intentions of the people running them and we can talk about it. Is the right to a trial by jury racist? Is the right to bear arms racist? Is the corporate tax structure racist?
We live in a society where wealth begets wealth, and where the wealth in our country was largely built during a time period where the rules for all were not the same. Plus Kids born into poor families are far more likely to be poor when raising their own kids, this cycle is basic human nature. So while I’m sure you might claim it’s all about the individual, I have a hard time believing you would see it that way if your family’s lower class standing could be traced all the way back to a period where your ancestors were regarded as property.
Hmmm
We probably agree here more than you think. While I don’t quite believe that poverty of any specific can be traced back to the antebellum south, that’s pretty ridiculous considering the manifest examples of people and groups coming out of poverty, I do agree that at least some of it can be traced to the 1950s-1970s. But probably less than you think. Ultimately however you need to focus on how newly created wealth is captured in the future as opposed to re litigating existing wealth. That road has been traveled before and it doesn’t typically work out. I’ve brought up ideas that could help the working class in this thread, and suggest it’s a better path forward than endless race baiting
This isn’t just about numbers, in fact that has almost nothing to do with it. If a 747 falls out of the sky killing 200 people and the cause is never found, that affects more than just the 200 people who were killed, it impacts every single person who steps on a plane afterward
All youre doing here is making an argument against media spectacles. A jet falling from the sky actually shouldn’t impact someone’s willingness to fly because the risk is still so ridiculously low to the point that the most dangerous part of your journey is the drive to the airport. You can drive any narrative simply by what you choose to report. If I were given full control of the media I could convince people of things that are objectively false like that the vaccine is dangerous by reporting constantly on the small number of people who had complications and refusing to discuss the statistics.
You say later black people are reluctant to call the police because they’re afraid of what might happen. We just went through the statistics. To be shot while unarmed and not attacking a police officer is vanishingly rare, the risk of dying in a plane crash is actually a pretty good comparison. If black people have truly been made more reluctant to call the police this could account for some of the gigantic increase in murder rates in major cities, the victims of which are mostly other black people. Remind me again about why police brutality is what we need to focus on above all else?
You say “listen to people’s experiences” which is kind of funny because in a different thread I told you that conservatives have been getting consistently deplatformed from social media for the last four years and you didn’t believe me. You “listen to the experiences” you want to listen to, as everyone does
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@Double_R
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of this issue.This has nothing to do with dehumanizing whites, or blaming white people for the sins of their ancestors. That is a complete straw man. No one is keeping this X vs Y tally because it is irrelevant to the argument. No one is saying white people have done more bad things to black people therefore they should pay, we’re not talking about punishment. The argument is quite simple, and here it is;
That is NOT the case. It is ABSOLUTELY the case that white people are demonized pretty much constantly...just go search "white people" or "white men" on any social media platform and you'll see how ubiquitous it is. But I haven't seen you make these arguments so credit where it is due
The fact that black people as a community are in the bottom of nearly every societal health indicator, from wealth, to family units, to even physical health... is not an accident or result of mere chance. It is the result of systemic issues built and perpetuated over centuries, its effects still linger on black communities to this day, and it doesn’t matter whether anyone upholding them today has any racist intent. If a bullet pierces your skull, it doesn’t matter whether the person who pulled the trigger meant to kill you, either way you’re still dead.
That likely isn't due to racism, though. I reject the notion that America is a systemically racist country and have never seen any good evidence to prove that it is. This is because black people started at the bottom and the rug was pulled out from under families trying to make it to the middle class in the 1960s. The exact same trends that impacted poor black people have impacted poor white people, because the economic and social changes of the past half century have done a number on lower class Americans. It's a class issue, and it really doesn't seem like a coincidence to me that big capital is completely on board with the "woke" narrative. Part of the reason I find the race baiting stuff so repulsive is not only because I view it as a direct threat to me and my family, but because it deliberately obscures the real issue where there could be unity instead of division.
I do as well, but I think we find ourselves on opposite ends because I recognize something... when someone is expressing their grievances to you, don’t expect them to stop and especially don’t expect them to listen to you until you acknowledge what they have to say. The Trump like reaction to BLM is exactly why we can’t get past this and start talking about policy, because policy discussions must begin with a shared sense of reality, and that can only happen if we start talking to each other and not past each other.
What makes you so confident that the left has the right side of reality, though? Earlier in this thread I've asked for statistics and was told I should instead listen to peoples experiences. I refuse to base my opinion on just listening to what I'm told, and will seek out facts for myself. Survey data has shown that on issues relating to race and policing, conservatives hold views objectively more in line with reality: https://twitter.com/ZachG932/status/1364024711592738817
Like I said to unpopular, I agree that American police are too trigger happy but I don't see evidence that they are particularly racially motivated. I have certainly never seen any reason that this is THE issue we need to focus on above all else. I mean, BLM protests have had a serious impact on American policing. Namely, they have drawn back and the resulting breakdown in law and order from a lighter police presence and the riots has emboldened hardened criminals. This is why murder rates are absolutely skyrocketing, and returning to their 1990s peaks, or all time highs in some cities: https://mtracey.substack.com/p/media-activists-do-not-care-about
I mean, the same amount people died in the 2020 protests/riots alone than unarmed black people killed by the police in 2019 (and keep in mind that some of those were probably justified): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests How is the side that enables and justifies this chaos, on the basis of views that are completely out of touch with reality, the side of objective reality
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I'm trying to come up with an answer that doesn't sound flippant, and I also don't want to just ignore you but the truth is I DONT KNOW! I have a...sense I guess you could call it. And I know which policies I identify as left wing. But what causes an individual to be left wing or right wing seems a lot more complicated. I think of myself as extremely right wing and present that way even though my policies are mostly in the middle, because I simply care about the stuff I am conservative about way, way more. I couldn't tell you why, because I don't know
But the most fundamental disagreement I've been able to reach when talking with social leftists is that they ultimately reject all non-voluntary identities and the obligations that come with. Ultimately the ideology is about maximizing choice, which is why it works to unravel social institutions that constrain behavior. I see social leftism as a force that chips away at weaker elements of a society. In a robust civilization this is fine, it only destroys the chaff, because there are what I guess you could call social antibodies that protect the important things that still matter. In an unhealthy society like ours it chips away at the very foundation (see how the United States is undergoing a mass conversion to a new self-loathing religion)
When I was a child, my peers were universally Christian. Every single one, except for one Muslim I knew. But their parents often did not take them to church, and they certainly did not prioritize religion. They barely saw themselves as Christians at all, it was just the received identity. So it's easy to see why so many of them didn't stay that way. That was my upbringing, and I only ever realized it when I compared it to my wife, who was raised as an ultra-traditionalist Catholic. For them, being Catholic was more than just a lukewarm identity, it was carved into almost everything else they did. Which is why, of her many family members, vanishingly few have left the church. This is the difference between a real identity and a facade, and it's the difference between a sturdy and ancient tree that requires hours of toil to cut down and a rotten one that can simply be pushed over. Part of the reason social liberalism is so ascendant, in my view, is that the rapid technological changes of the past hundred years or so has forced so much necessary change that it's incredibly difficult to discern what traditions are good and necessary and which ones can be rightfully left behind. If any of that makes sense
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@Double_R
What other direction is it supposed to go in? I understand perfectly well pushing back against going too far, like when someone suggests that white people are not allowed to have their own opinions on racial issues (thinking about White Fragility) or when someone labels a white person’s argument as “whitesplaining”. I find stuff like this to be equally repulsive. But pushing back against that is not reversing the direction of the conversation.
let's focus on this because I think it's the most important point I have to make. I absolutely hate the racial grievance. I think it's immoral, dehumanizing, and racist...but it is CLEARLY where we are at as a society. You ask me "what other direction is a conversation about race supposed to go in?"
Well...let's take all the bad things white people have done to black people, what we "owe" for stuff like slavery and Jim Crow, and we will call it X. X is what everyone has been obsessed with the past five years. But if we are determined to decide who owes who what, we need to consider the entire picture. We can call everything bad that has happened in reverse as Y. As I mentioned earlier, black-on-white violent crimes are about 500,000 more a year than the reverse, and this pattern has held true for decades. Probably since the 1960's crime waves began, so we are talking about a half century of excess victimization in violent crimes, ultimately resulting in millions more robberies, muggings, assaults, rapes, and murders. And unlike any victims of slavery and most victims of jim crow, the victims are still alive or would be if they weren't murdered. Throw in on top of that a half century of fairly large wealth transfers through LBJ's great society programs that yes helped poor people of all races, but on net represent a large wealth transfer from white people to black (although it's kind of our fault that they were in that situation in the first place so that is certainly mitigated) and then smaller things like Affirmative Action policies, etc. It doesn't seem like Y is...insignificant.
How much greater is X than Y? Is it at all? How can we tell? Is it even possible to quantify this? Should we TRY? I say no. There is no way to quantify this sort of thing, and to try to do so is sheer folly and just exposes peoples biases (which is why Y is never even considered in the first place.) If there is anything I want to get through peoples head it's that there are only three options in a racially diverse society. We are all treated as individuals and the differences start to wash away, as it seems that they were during the late 90s-2015ish timeframe. We have formalized segregation, like an Austro-Hungary type situation. Or we fight. I would prefer either of the first two to the latter...it's clear which one the modern rhetoric will lead to, particularly once self-loathing whites are removed from the gene pool a generation or two from now.
If you feel a sense of disgust from what I have to say about Y, I don't blame you because assigning people to groups and then bad mouthing the group IS disgusting and dehumanizing. You should consider why everyone is okay with dehumanizing whites in this fashion but you feel (rightfully) a sense of disgust when someone treats black people like a monolith who are all responsible for the sins of a minority, or for people who are long dead.
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I don't think a specific individuals belief really matters in an objective sense other than to the persons involved, so you should do what is best in context. If you're friends or family with the alleged victim you should support them unless there is very strong and immediately obvious evidence to the contrary. If you are friends or family with the alleged perpetrator, same deal. It's what we would be doing anyway since we are all super biased. If you don't know either party that well you should try to stay neutral and inoffensive. The law should be objective, as it is, with the presumption of innocence. In terms of cases with lots of publicity (like Kavanaugh's) people have the right to speculate even though it must be an incredibly horrible experience to be called a liar if you actually are a victim. Can't imagine. But at the end of the day, we can't simply just believe any accusation without looking for evidence
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Here is mine. I would say it is mostly accurate, except for the statism part where I consider myself more in the center than this indicates, for example I am pretty much a free speech absolutist and a strong supporter of most civil liberties, which didn't get too much attention on the quiz
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@Double_R
That’s because white people have always been the majority in this country, so they have no need to see the world through a racial lens.
Confusing discourse....
You "Black people are not just asking for policy concessions, they’re asking for people to care"
Me "Do you really think white people don't care about black people? They seem obsessed in a pretty gross way"
You "They care, but not about the things that actually matter, like black issues"
Me "That's weird, since studies show that whites have the least in-group bias of any racial group"
You "That's right, and here's why!"
I mean okay, but if white people, who you agree have the least in-group bias and explained for why you think that is, don't care about black people then we can be all but certain that black people don't care about white people to an even greater extent, no?
IDK it's just kinda weird that you're having a go at the group that you think is the least racist. Do you think we should just return to complete segregation? Give black people their own country so they don't have to be a minority anymore?
No, because that’s not what this conversation about. You can cite statistics all day from behind your phone or computer screen, black people and BLM supporters are reacting to what they are seeing with their own eyes, both on social media and in real life in their own neighborhoods.
It's 100% the only thing that the conversation is about. You stated that black people only want to be treated like human beings, like having their murderers convicted. I asked if you have evidence that whites routinely get away with murdering black people, and you said it doesn't matter. What am I supposed to say, then? I'm not allowed to ask for evidence? I just have to shut up and listen to what I'm told? Why? How is this not a religion?
Will Smith put it best when he said “racism isn’t getting worse, it’s getting filmed”. These are peoples experiences, and while that doesn’t mean a whole lot when it comes to proving that there is an actual tangible difference in things like the number of black people killed per violent crime vs white people or whatever specific category you want to carve out, the point is that these people aren’t just making things up nor is this some plot to fake reality for political power or whatever stupid conspiracy the right loves to allege.
I would never argue that racism doesn't exist, or that it isn't a bad thing. Racism is the unfortunate but inevitable consequence of living in a multicultural society. I WOULD argue that racism is not a one-way street and that being victimized in violent crimes is a lot worse than most incidents of racism. I hate our societies obsession with race, but if we're supposed to have a "conversation about race" I don't understand why it only ever goes in one direction. Real life isn't a movie, and in any real conflict both "sides" have legitimate grievances
I also don't really think it's a conspiracy to believe that the perception of being a victim gives people power in this society. That seems overwhelmingly obvious to me. Look at the constant hate crime hoaxes on college campuses, or how "trauma" is discussed non-stop, etc. Like I said earlier in this thread there is absolutely zero attempt to build a positive identity for anyone. Victimhood does give people a lot of social status in 21st century America, which creates a powerful incentive to play up the severity of your victimization. That doesn't mean there aren't actual victims, of course.
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What do you think motivates someone to be right wing? What even IS right wing by your definition? Not trying to trip you up, genuinely curious
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@Double_R
It means caring about black issues as much as you care about those of your own race, and I think many white people fall short of that.
Do you have evidence of that? Because numerous studies have found that whites have the lowest in-group bias of all American races, a fact which is born out by both of our observations about their stupid, suicidal behavior. What other group of people constantly engages in self flagellation to the same degree? You yourself admit that white people love black culture and want to be like the cool black kids. They’re obsessed
What black people and their sympathizers want is for black people to be treated like human beings. For starters, how about some convictions when their people are murdered? That’s why the Chauvin trial was so big. If a slow, conscious, on the spot execution caught on video would not have gotten a guilty verdict then nothing would.
Do you have empirical evidence that white-on-black murders, of which there are far fewer than the reverse, are less likely to result in a conviction? By how much?
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@Unpopular
When cops harass black neighborhoods, when they use excessive force with impunity, when they take black lives unjustly but it is presumed to be justified, these are all things BLM is about, not just the rates of death but the non punishment for death and force that is not warranted, and again it does not only apply to cops.
The police seem to get away with murder in general, though. The most egregious police shooting I have ever seen was Daniel Shaver, a white man who was shot to death for losing a high stakes game of Simon Says. If I had my way, those cops would hang. Instead they weren't even tried. Anecdotes are meaningless to me, do you have statistics showing that police are more likely to get off for shooting an unarmed black person than an unarmed white person? Again, maybe it's true! I have no investment in believing that it's not true! But you need to show me empirical evidence. If you're trying to convince me that American police are too trigger happy and get way too much leeway, you are wasting your time because I already agree with you.
If a white person is killed by another white person, and especially a black person, there is a presumption that there will be fairness in the justice system, that the killer will be investigated, charged, and likely convicted. When a black person is killed by someone, especially a cop, the presumption is the cop or white person was justified (does not apply to black on black crime). Even looking through these forums you can see the racism and disgusting analysis that cops are justified in killing "career criminals" which is ludicrous...... that is not how the justice system works. You aren't allowed to kill someone just because they have a violent criminal history, you aren't allowed to kill someone just because they are on drugs, yet this is a common mindset, and you see it being presented here but want to pretend this is just made up and not factual without "statistics."
No offense but this isn't evidence. I VERY strongly disagree with you that when a white person wrongs a black person the social presumption is that the white person is innocent. Very VERY strongly disagree...but whatever. Is there evidence of this bias in criminal convictions or sentencing?
I DO agree that juries are incredibly lenient with the police when they go on trial. I'm not 100% sure why this is. I guess it's easy for defense attorneys to convince them that the cops job is scary or something. I DO agree that a prior criminal record is not relevant to justifying a particular shooting. I DONT agree that any of this is evidence of systemic racism or what people who want to help black people (or just people in general) should focus on
Statistics say judging from exonerations, innocent black people are about seven times more likelyto be convicted of murder than innocent white people.Statistics say black prisoners who are convicted of murder are about 50% more likelyto be innocent than other convicted murderers. Part of that disparity is tied to the race of thevictim. African Americans imprisoned for murder are more likely to be innocent if they wereconvicted of killing white victims
Sorry, but this isn't it. Your own source states: "A major cause of the high number ofblack murder exonerations is the high homicide rate in the black community—a tragedy thatkills many African Americans and sends many others to prison." Your source states that innocent black people are around 50% of those wrongfully convicted. Since black people commit around 50% of homicides in the US (https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-6.xls) , the vast majority of which victimize other black people, this is not evidence of systemic racism but instead more evidence of how this violent crime crisis victimizes even more innocents.
There's always going to be a background rate of wrongfully convicted people (if you have suggestions for how to lower the rate I am all ears), black people being almost the exact same percentage of those wrongfully convicted as the percentage of crimes committed isn't evidence of systemic racism...its actually strong evidence of the opposite, especially considering how biased the justice system is in favor of the rich, where black people are underrepresented. If asian people, who commit less than 5% of homicides, were 50% of those wrongfully convicted that would be strong evidence of systemic racism against asian people.
Editing: I also saw where you said that black people are more likely to be wrongfully convicted if the victim is white. I think a more parsimonious explanation than racism is that because America remains so segregated, black on black and white on white murders are more likely to occur between people who know each other and live in the same communities, whereas black on white or white on black murders are more likely to be between people who don’t know each other. Thus there is less often an obvious suspect with a known motivation than in most cases between people who know each other, and the perpetrator is less likely to be seen by witnesses who know who they are. Easy to see how that would up the rate of wrongfully convicted. What do you think?
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@bmdrocks21
Right. There is a violent crime crisis that has been ongoing for decades now. And the overwhelming majority of the victims are innocent black people. Bringing this up is lambasted as whataboutism “what about black on black crime?!?!1!1” but this represents the overwhelming majority of violence against black people so if activists actually cared about black people (as opposed to using a few unjust killings to advance a separate and more sinister agenda) this is what would be focused on. The police shootings are the actual whataboutism
I think I actually have some good ideas about how to help the poor of all races. Bring back as many blue collar jobs as humanly possible, stop requiring expensive college degrees for almost every job, stop trying to force everyone into a handful of increasingly expensive and extremely unequal metro areas, HEAVILY encourage marriage and family formation, destroy “welfare cliffs”, stop mass low skilled immigration etc... you could solve the problem of police being too trigger happy (which I agree that they are) overnight and while that would be a good thing it wouldn’t change the trajectory in the slightest
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@Unpopular
Do you have empirical evidence that 1) police/vigilantes unjustly kill black people at a higher rate when you adjust for violent crime and 2) that these killings are more likely to go unpunished than killings of a white, hispanic, or asian person?
If you do, put it up and I will look at it. I don’t have an aversion to believing this, given the rate of police encounters with black people and their lack of economic power in a justice system that is clearly biased towards those with more money it wouldn’t surprise me if it WAS true.
But I’ve never seen actual evidence, just a lot of whining about anecdotes which frankly I have no patience for. I’ve also never seen any evidence that unjust police killings which of course are tragic and need to be stopped are anything more than a drop in the bucket. There are far more injustices against whites by blacks than vice versa (10x more violent crimes committed by blacks against whites a year than the reverse in fact) that get exactly zero non local press so spare me the histrionics about accountability
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@Double_R
Black people are not just asking for policy concessions, they’re asking for people to care, otherwise when the next issue comes along we’ll be doing this all over again
Do you actually think white people don’t care about black people? It seems to me like white people simultaneously worship and fear black people. Getting validation from a black person is something a lot of whites are clearly obsessed with
I mean what exactly do you want if not policy
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@Double_R
But yet you are defending it. All Lives Matter, by definition, includes black lives. So if someone says Black Lives Matter and you respond with All Lives Matter, the only correction you made was to say that other lives matter also, which means that what you heard was “other lives don’t matter”. That’s the exact reaction I just described.
The point is that the focus on the internal thought process of individuals, does a certain slogan offend them, are they supporting something for selfish reasons, etc. is a religious behavior. Much more important is trying to get people to support your position, even if you don't necessarily agree with their reasoning.
I don't really care what any particular movement is called, but some people might. I don't think that getting people to affirm specific rhetoric is nearly as important as getting them to support good policies. And yet, it is obvious which one people actually care about more when we look at revealed preferences.
I actually do agree that it’s stupid to get offended by “black lives matter” but some people who do feel like that statement excludes them may nonetheless be willing to support, say, getting rid of qualified immunity or something. Surely it’s more important to reach out to those people to help enact positive change than to excessively focus on how selfish they are being for disagreeing with specific rhetoric, no?
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@Double_R
This is an entirely separate conversation. I don’t deny that the statistics aren’t as bad as most woke activists would have us believe. But BLM isn’t just about police shooting statistics, it’s about the way black people have been treated throughout this country’s history. Whether the current reality regarding this one topic matches the collective trauma is one thing, but pretending that that trauma doesn’t exist and/or itself isn’t justified is where I take issue.
It isn't a separate conversation, it's the entire conversation. If black people are NOT being unjustly killed at a disproportionate rate, adjusted for rates of violent crime, then All Lives Matter is actually a more appropriate slogan when it comes to police brutality.
As for the question of history...yes, of course, things are not necessarily irrelevant just because they happened a long time ago. Most black families were not allowed to rise to the middle class during the golden post-war to 1970's years that cemented many white families in this status. Now that the US middle class is rapidly disintegrating they are even further behind, with little opportunity to skip right to the UPPER middle class. Many of the pathologies plaguing the black community, such as fatherlessness/the destruction of the family, economic destitution, declining life expectancies etc also impacted white families who missed the boat. Social and economic changes in the last fifty years or so have hit lower middle class Americans of all races extremely hard, and for black people being in a lower position to start with the hit was extra hard. I would never deny that.
But the modern rhetoric doesn't exactly help with this. I don't see anyone on the left suggesting obvious solutions like bringing back the kinds of high paying, blue collar jobs that allowed poor Americans to rise to the middle class, jobs that politicians of both parties eagerly helped offshore. I don't see anyone talking about the future at all, other than blatantly discriminatory policies such as reparations that would further divide the population and would make no difference in the long term. I don't see any attempt to develop a POSITIVE black identity, the story of a people who went from slaves to supreme court justices, senators, and presidents. I see constant grievance mongering about events in the past that, increasingly, very few people even experienced and even fewer perpetrated. I see an obvious attempt to divide the population through a purposely toxic narrative. Kinda weird when big multinational corps are fully behind supposedly revolutionary rhetoric.....
The same can be said of every movement in America today. Look around, no one is trying to make any concessions on anything. Close to 90% of Americans support background checks yet we still can’t get legislation passed.
On the contrary. People who support gun control constantly make rhetorical concessions to gun owners, stating that they support the 2nd amendment but don't believe that, say, high capacity magazines should be legal. I imagine they would get a much frostier reception if they stated that yeah, we want to come for your guns and don't care about your rights. Yet when it comes to THIS issue, an individual who might agree with whatever policies might be suggested will nonetheless be attacked if they don't parrot the exact rhetoric which, lets be honest, is not the strongest rhetoric in the world. Why? It's religious behavior. It intentionally divides.
So what is the fact that ALM is a complete dismissal of everything BLM is saying. When a white person hears someone say “Black Lives Matter” and their instinctive reaction is to translate that into “my life doesn’t”, that right there demonstrates the entire problem.
I mean, I think that reaction is kind of silly, sure. But no, that isn't the entire problem. The problem is police being too trigger happy and perhaps having too much immunity. It has absolutely nothing to do with a specific individuals reaction to a certain slogan, and everything to do with policy...which gets talked about a LOT less than trying to force people to affirm scissor statements. This is religious behavior
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@Double_R
I didn’t say white people are killing black people, I said black people are asking to stop being killed by police officers, the ones who are being paid to protect and serve.
When you adjust for rates of violent crime, police are not disproportionately shooting black people. American police do tend to be overly trigger happy, but this is an issue that impacts everyone, not just black people. Overall, the police represent a negligible threat to black life, the biggest violent threat to the median black person, by far, is other black people. Given the rise in homicides in cities this year after the riots it’s pretty obvious that the police, despite their numerous flaws, save far more lives than they unjustly take. This is why opinion polls have found that only a small minority in any racial group wants less policing: https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-police-retain-local-presence.aspx
The point of pushing this stuff isn’t to enact sensible reform, or else advocates would take a more conciliatory approach that makes at least nominal concessions to white people or police supporters. Instead, it is clearly being used as a scissor statement to divide the population, or as a bludgeon to attack enemies. Think about the effort expended going after someone saying “all lives matter” instead of Black Lives Matter. So what? You could still probably come to common ground with a person who says that about reforming the law or changing the police rules of engagement.
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@RationalMadman
I think that the train that took American families to the middle class left the station decades ago, and most blacks at the time weren’t allowed to come on for the ride.
I definitely don’t think things are one sided. One thing that gives me hope is that I believe the policies that would most help poor black people are also the ones that would most help poor white people, which is basically just bring back as many blue collar jobs as you can.
I bring up the crime thing not to attack black people (believe it or not I truly don’t enjoy brining it up. It makes me feel bad.) but purely to poke holes in the liberal narrative which is toxic and just engenders more conflict. Yes, white people committed great crimes against black people in the past. Right now black people are committing more crimes against white people. It’s basically just a cycle of violence and the way to get past it is to move forward, but as long as we are trying to get people riled up over injustices that happened decades ago, committed by people long dead, we won’t move forward
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@bmdrocks21
And no, they weren't lynching people because of their melanin or sympathy towards people with more melanin. It was mainly vigilantes hanging rapists and murderers.
Yeah there’s a conflation between lynchings, which were the kind of extrajudicial mob justice common in societies without strong law and order, and murder. I read about the last “lynching” that occurred in the 1980s, and it was just a straight up murder. There was no mob involved and there was no crime alleged. There’s been an intentional effort to conflate the two, so as to make random murders seem a lot more common than they actually were. I’ve read about some lynchings and they were incredibly horrible events, and often inflicted the kind of suffering I wouldn’t sentence rapists and murders to, especially without due process. They were plenty bad without having to lie about it.
It really is disheartening how little the typical American knows and how deep the propaganda has sunk in. People really believe that it was an every day occurrence for mobs of whites to just pick up random black people and hang them. The Jim Crow south was bad enough without having to invent fairy tales about it. Just be honest about history, it doesn’t paint anyone in an entirely flattering light, I promise you!
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@Double_R
Plus “All lives matter” is a response to Black Lives Matter. It’s black people saying “stop killing us” and white people saying “hey, why should you being killed warrant any special attention?” It’s just plain stupid.
But whites are not killing black people. The vast majority of crime is intra-racial, but when it comes to who is killing who, whites have a much stronger claim to request that black people stop killing us than the other way around. Look at table 14 and do the math. It works out to about 550k black-on-white violent crimes a year vs around 56k white-on-black violent crimes a year.
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@bmdrocks21
Despite what superhero movies show you, a tiny woman can't just take down a 200lb man because she knows karate
Yeah, this death lies squarely at the feet of those that won't allow society to discuss things that might hurt some feelings. Although this victim did not appear to be a particularly large man from what I saw, no doubt he would've been able to kill the female officer with relative ease hand to hand if she was alone and he wanted to. From a purely animalistic, fight or flight reaction perspective, reaching for the gun instead of the tazer WAS the rational choice. A violent man, and certainly a LARGE violent man is a lethal threat to a woman, even if unarmed. It's why the idea of a female beat cop is so ridiculous. The physical disparity between them and any criminals they are likely to encounter is too great.
It's the same for people who want women to go into combat roles in the military--they simply aren't thinking. Even if we disregard the military studies that have demonstrated conclusively that units with women are less effective, nobody takes a serious look at what would actually happen to women in warfare. Female POWs would be raped continuously until they died. I'm not willing to condemn some girl in over her head and raised on a diet cheesy movies that obscure the true nature of violence to that for the sake of avoiding hurt feelings.
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First of all, nothing is free. That healthcare is funded through taxes. And that's fine, if it's a better system I'm happy to raise taxes to pay for it, but I hate when people pretend that their policies are just no-brainers. Nobody is against "free" healthcare, such a thing does not exist.
I don't know enough about healthcare to be for or against universal healthcare, but I don't think you are underselling how difficult it is to organize a healthcare system across 50 states and 350 million people. The ideal system is not a no-brainer, there are good arguments for how switching to socialized medicine would not be an improvement to the status quo. I found this with 30 seconds of googling, and I would say that most of the arguments selected for both sides seemed reasonable and I can see how a reasonable person could take either side on this: https://healthcare.procon.org/
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@Greyparrot
For sure. Torpedoing a real life friendship or family relationship over politics is the dumbest thing you can do...objectively none of our opinions matter
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@Theweakeredge
This is true but I don’t really know what it is I value that liberals don’t. I do have more old fashioned views around family, honor, etc and I can see how that translates to politics but where do THOSE come from. My sister is a progressive but I really don’t see THAT big of a difference in our values. I think we would come to the same conclusions on most moral questions.. my closest friends are conservative but all of my less close friends who I still hang out with are progressives. They’re good people, we get along (although I suspect some of them don’t even know I’m conservative. I don’t talk politics in real life.) We hardly seem different enough to justify hating each other and yet people do. It’s just weird
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@FLRW
Politics wouldn’t enter into that conversation at all. In fact politics makes people into monsters, if anything caring about politics is a strong mark against me. If God asked me to morally justify my politics I believe that I could, but that doesn’t make them objectively true because I could just be wrong
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This is a question I've been grappling with on and off for over a year. We all know the power of confirmation bias and groupthink. We're all inclined to seek out information that supports our biases, and succumb easily to pressure from our groups. But where do those biases come from in the first place?
I've been wondering lately why I'm right wing. I really don't have any answer. I've had a conservative political orientation ever since I was old enough to think about politics, as young as age 12, even as my position on the actual issues has changed and continues to change. Some may say it comes from how people are raised, and perhaps it does, but my family NEVER discussed politics (my parents weren't even registered to vote) so if your politics come from the way you are raised, it's a lot deeper than just indoctrination. Unless I'm the oddball. Everyone likes to think that their politics comes from mind and logic. We've thought about the issues, and the other side is just WRONG! But following politics is one of my hobbies. I read books about politics. I've wasted countless hours online debating politics. I like to think I'm pretty smart, but who knows. And it's pretty obvious to me that while my actual ideas on policies might come from a rational place, my gut level choice of a "side" was absolutely pre-rational. Both parties have issues I believe they are objectively wrong on, and in roughly equal proportion, but the things the left is wrong about offend my sensibilities WAY more. Why? I truly have no idea.
This isn't meant to be a diary entry. I just doubt I'm uniquely irrational, and if this is how I am it's probably how most people are. I've seen good evidence that "conservatives" and "liberals" have different brains, and while they say physiognomy is a pseudoscience, there's an obvious physical difference between groups....at least among the extremists. Go look up the mugshots of antifa vs. mugshots of people at the capitol riot. What I would suggest to people above all is that political orientation may as well be an immutable characteristic, so please extend as much grace as you can muster to the other side. It's fun to debate and important to understand where other people are coming from, but don't get carried away. While you might be diametrically opposed your brains are probably different enough that it's not that they are simply stupid or evil, but that they truly see the world differently in a way so fundamental that you that you're unlikely to ever change them.
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@HistoryBuff
this isn't the same source i was using for my last post (i don't remember precisely which one i was looking at). But here is a different one saying that 52% of americans "have some market investment mostly from owning retirement accounts such as 401(k)s." So according to the federal reserves most recent info (2016), about 48% of americans own no stocks whatsoever.
That data includes young households who haven't started saving yet, though. By age 60 roughly 90% of people have SOME kind of retirement savings tied to the stock market, even if that is through entitlement in a defined benefit pension whose fund invests in equities. That said, I'm perfectly happy to concede that for the most part the poor do not have any financial assets. My only objection is against the idea that the fortunes of the typical American aren't related to the stock market, that it only matters for rich people. The reality is the exact opposite, they are entangled to a degree I think is dangerous. I'm incredibly wary about messing with the stock market until we go through the decades long process of decoupling the middle class and the stock market (if indeed we should...it's arguable.)
I don't understand why you would think it would be a permanent downward pressure? Having the uber rich need to sell of stocks would shake up the market, that is true. It would create some uncertainty and result in downward stocks prices (because the market hates uncertainty). But then the market would get used to it and it would get priced in. Then the downward pressure is resolved. Having more stocks being traded doesn't mean the stocks are worth any less. And if it does cause the stocks to be worth less, it is because the market was over valuing them. Which, again, is not a flaw of a wealth tax. It is just exposing the flaws of the market that already exist.
There are a couple reasons I think that it would lead to ongoing downward pressure:
-The majority of the megabillionaires like Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos gained their wealth through an ownership stake in a company they created that became huge. If there's a wealth tax, Bezos isn't likely to dump all of his shares in Amazon at once but would presumably liquidate the amount required to pay the tax every year. This would create a constant stream of new shares entering the market every year at tax time. Obviously that would create downward pressure
-Executives now have an extremely powerful incentive to LOWER stock prices, as opposed to prop them up
-There is now an extremely powerful incentive to direct your wealth away from assets such as stocks, which have easily verifiable values, and towards assets with less obvious values that you could argue down, such as art and privately owned businesses. Less demand!
I also don't understand how a wealth tax would be calculated. There's a reason that the Forbes estimates of the wealth of billionaires are estimates, because these things fluctuate regularly. A lot of wealth of ultra high net worth individuals is also held in *private* businesses, which are notoriously difficult to value. This causes another economic distortion I just thought of, btw. All of the best companies in the future would have a gigantic incentive to remain private rather than going public, so the typical American wouldn't be able to invest in them. I highly suspect you would witness an extremely suspicious stock market crash every around tax time. I also don't really agree with taxing unrealized gains on principle because investments do change value frequently. Imagine if a wealth tax were assessed in February 2000. Poor Pets.com owners! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pets.com)
it would solve lots of problems. It would make lots of projects attainable. Things like universal health care, educational programs etc would be able to be funded. It would be hugely beneficial to the "common man" who routinely gets screwed over with massive debts trying to get an education or healthcare.
I think you are overselling how much revenue it would bring in. Elizabeth Warren herself estimated $2.75 trillion over ten years, independent estimates were a lot lower, like 40% of that number (https://www.factcheck.org/2019/06/facts-on-warrens-wealth-tax-plan/). The $1400 stimulus checks cost $400 billion, for reference. So even if we take Warrens best case scenario her tax, which we have absolutely zero reason to believe, its equivalent to an annual stimulus check of $962. This just doesn't seem like enough money to be worth the potential risks, and it certainly doesn't seem like enough to solve systemic problems like poverty and healthcare. By contrast, merely raising the top marginal tax rate to 45% (only an 8% increase) on ONLY the top 1% brings in $276 billion a year (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/17/business/putting-numbers-to-a-tax-increase-for-the-rich.html) which as as much as Warren says her plan will bring in. Personally, I feel that a marginal tax rate of 45% for income over $500k a year is more than fair, and not nearly high enough to damage the economy. I would prefer higher marginal income tax rates to a wealth tax any day
the beauty of a wealth tax is that it doesn't matter if he moves his assets overseas. US tax law already says that US citizens are subject to US taxes no matter where in the world they are. So if he is a US citizen and he has wealth, then it could be taxed no matter where in the world it is. European countries didn't really use this method, so millionaires could just move to another country and dodge the tax. But that wouldn't work for an american wealth tax. The only way to dodge it is to renounce your citizenship. But that has huge business and personal implications. Also, depending on which tax plan you take, you can implement an "exit tax" as part of the plan. IE if you are a billionaire and you renounce your US citizenship, you must pay a tax of X% (for example Elizabeth warren's plan was 40%). This would make doing this much less desirable.
I think you would be amazed at how easily it is dodged. Taxing wealth held overseas seems extremely problematic. If I'm a very rich US citizen and I own a company incorporated in Germany I don't think the German government would look too kindly on the US government demanding to take a bite out of that company every year. I imagine people would find a way around that exit tax (is it even legal to tax someone for renouncing their citizenship? By what authority, since they are no longer a citizen?) I see no reason to encourage the uber wealthy to leave...I understand the bitterness over inequality but you're so much better off creating a more equitable society through higher taxes on wealth created in the future and pro-worker reforms instead of blowing up the whole system.
Another flaw in European efforts was that they built in loopholes. They made exceptions for things that were harder to value (art, antiques etc). So rich people could pour their money into the exempted categories of stuff and dodge the tax too. If you create a wealth tax without those exemptions, it is harder to dodge.
I don't see this as a loophole so much as a necessity. How much is a particular Picasso painting worth at auction? You have no clue until its ACTUALLY auctioned!
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@gugigor
Also what do you think of Larz? I still think he deserves the title "beast slayer" as he was able to beat Raisor, Whiteflame, and a bunch of people who look like they're way above his weight class considering his casual conversational style (he devoted like 50,000 characters on one of his debates on Edeb8 just to introduce a ton of information)
IIRC (it’s been YEARS) sometimes he would swing and miss but when he hit he would knock it put of the park. He wasn’t afraid to take on challenging topics or positions. There was also one guy, I can’t remember who now, who only won like 60% of the time but pretty much only debated top tier debaters I was always impressed with him too
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@HistoryBuff
45% of americans own no stocks at all. who are they if not the "common man"?
Where are you getting that number? According to this, by 60 only 13% of Americans don’t have retirement savings. Some of those “savings” are in defined benefit pensions instead of privately held retirement accounts but pension funds invest in equities too. https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/06/03/report-a-quarter-of-americans-have-no-retirement-savings-infographic/amp/
I’m not happy about it, but the entire American system basically is predicated on the big line going up. A permanent or long term stock market crash would harm the average person more than the wealthy even if they don’t hold as much. Joe Six Packs $100k turning into $65k is a much bigger deal than Robert Bruce III’s $10 mil turning into $6.5 mil.
Before supporting a policy that would place permanent and extremely strong downward pressure on stock prices you’d need to find some way to decouple average Americans with the stock market. I’ve thought about it and I can’t really think of a good alternative. This is why I’m against social security privatization because the fortunes of average Americans are already too dependent on the stock market.
All this assumes that the tax would be successful at taking their wealth which I doubt it would. In the long run the state would probably get less revenue. I can see why it pisses people off that Bezos has two hundred billion when there are homeless people, people who can’t afford medical treatment, etc but that doesn’t mean trying to take his wealth would actually solve the problem, as opposed to creating even more. That impulse comes from a good place, but it’s wrong about the way the world works, doesn’t understand the consequences any more than your sweet tooth understands diabetes.
i'm not arguing that a market crash is a good thing. It obviously isn't. But if the wealthy being forced to sell of a small percentage of their shares causes those shares to fall, then the problem isn't the tax. it is the fact that market has over valued the stocks. Your argument does not actually argue that a wealth tax is bad. It argues that the fact that it might reveal structural problems in the economy is bad. But those problems would exist either way. Revealing such problems doesn't mean the tax would be a bad idea. especially if the profits of the tax are then used to help the "common man". The large majority of people would end up better off.
But what’s value other than what someone is willing to pay, right? Zuckerberg owns about a third of Facebook (a company he founded), so the price of Facebook is based on the two thirds the market actually has access to. That doesn’t make it inherently “over valued.” This is why stock buy backs (which I don’t think should be allowed) work—they create fewer existing on the market shares, but the underlying company is worth the same. So of course it goes up.
Would it be better if Zuckerberg gave most his wealth to the poor and kept only a measly billion dollars, yes. But would a wealth tax actually force him to liquidate his assets, or would they just be moved overseas? If the liquidation actually did occur, would it trigger a long term glut in stock prices? What would the money be spent on? There’s a cost benefit analysis needed here that won’t reflect too favorably on a wealth tax when you look at it with a skeptical eye. Remember, Sweden and France both gave up on theirs
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@HistoryBuff
the vast, vast majority of stocks are owned by the uber rich. The "common man" doesn't own that many stocks. A large percentage of the population owns no stocks at all. So saying you are "depriving the common man" doesn't make much sense.
This is half true. While it’s true that the vast majority of the stock market is owned by the wealthy, the common man actually does own stock these days through retirement accounts. The $150k in the 401k of 60 year old Joe working class may not represent a huge portion of the US market cap, but it’s a big deal to him. Outside of social security and maybe a house it’s probably all he has and a large stock market crash would actually hurt him more than the Uber wealthy who lose millions on paper but see no actual decline in lifestyle
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@TheUnderdog
Yes, there’s a reason that even countries like Sweden and France repealed their wealth taxes: capital flight. And while admittedly it would be harder to untangle your wealth from the US than either of those countries, people would find a way and I don’t really have an interest in encouraging wealth to leave the country.
And like you say, people imagine that Bezos has 100 billion in his checking account, when he of course doesn’t. Confiscating his wealth would be significantly more complicated than people think and there would be a lot of unintended consequences. That said it does bother me that there’s essentially a wealth tax on the middle class via property taxes! My property taxes are so high that I basically pay two mortgages, but the mega billionaires can see their wealth steadily grow and only realize taxes when they sell. Oh well
It’s better to focus on helping future wealth be captured more equitably through progressive taxes and pro worker reforms like ending outsourcing, bringing back blue collar jobs, not requiring incredibly expensive college degrees to do anything, etc.
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I’m flattered to see my name on the list but also a bit surprised since I reread a few of my DDO debates not too long ago and was not very impressed. I’m confident I could demolish my college aged self in a debate now so a lot of people on this site could certainly do the same. If I were debating today I would have a much more conversational and less technical style and would focus less on trying to trap my opponents with “gotcha” type stuff. Pretty lame. I would like to do a debate again but I don’t think I have the time between work, school, and lots of other hobbies. Plus I would probably only wanna debate stuff I actually care about and I was always way worse at those topics bc I’m not able to objectively assess what’s persuasive to a wide audience rather than what are the arguments that clicked for me in my pretty weird head
It’s cool that whiteflame is here, that guy is an actual top 10 from ddo for sure, and better than me. I beat him the only time we debated but I feel like the topic was super unbalanced in my favor and if the roles were reversed I would’ve done a lot worse than he did
But the two best DDO debaters of all time were bluesteel and raisor, who I always wanted to debate. I was always amazed at what they could do. With bluesteel in particular I was amazed at how much he could fit into so few words, he could’ve probably had a handicap where he had half as many characters as his opponent and still beat almost anyone
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@Danielle
@RationalMadman
You two are right. I guess what I mean is that if I had to assemble a pro/con list for one party rule I would put “quick decisions” as a pro but that doesn’t mean it’s ACTUALLY a good thing. I still think it’s a bad question
The astrology one is weird too. What political dimension does that factor into. I could see it being social conservatism because of the mysticism but most of the people I know who talk about astrology are young leftist women
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The worst question in this quiz imo is this one:
"A significant advantage of a one-party state is that it avoids all the arguments that delay progress in a democratic political system."
That's just a fact...you don't have to support a one-party state (I don't) but that's obviously an advantage of a one-party state
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I got in the red quadrant, same as last time I took this quiz. I was in the blue quadrant for a long time, but slowly moved over to barely being in the left and have mostly stayed there
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@Double_R
If by people who “agree with me” you are referring to people who believe that the way to sort through our differing viewpoints is via the use of reason... then yes that’s what I’m saying. If you’re in a group assigned to figure out an extremely complex math problem and one of your colleagues doesn’t accept that 2+2=4, I’m pretty sure you’re not going to give that person a seat at the table either.
But basic math has a clearly objective answer, right? Maybe I'm not being clear so let me replay our convo a bit
Your position is that yes, things that are offensive should be banned, and also that the left doesn't produce offensive works on par with that of the right. I said well, here's an example of a leftist book that offends me. You said, that's not offensive! I replied, who gets to decide? You reply: logical people. Well who gets to decide that, lol. I like to think I'm pretty logical. I'm sure I'm wrong about some stuff. But I'm not dumb enough to not know that 2 + 2 = 4. But according to you I'm not someone who believes in "reasoned deliberation." Well okay. But who is, and how can we tell?
believe I made myself clear in my last comment. I do like seeing people I strongly disagree with “silenced”... when it’s in the context of the free market. I have no doubt you do as well, because that’s not nearly the same thing as it happening via the government. There’s no central authority in the free market. There’s no referee making the decisions for everyone.
NO. I do NOT like it when people are silenced, whatever the mechanism. I believe that allowing people to speak their minds, and engage in reasoned debate, is a moral imperative and that shutting down on side pre-emptively is wrong no matter what you think of their ideas. I don't care about the mechanism that much, it makes little difference to me if speech is banned through government or through private actors coordinating to shut down a political agenda they personally disagree with.
BTW, people made these same kinds of arguments against civil rights. "Well it's private property, neighborhoods can have restricted covenant and restaurants can prohibit blacks, it's a free market." All those famous lunch-counter sit in's were people trespassing on private property, against the wishes of the owners.
And just so everyone is aware I'm not comparing some books being kicked off Amazon to Jim Crow laws, just showing that "its the free market!" isn't really a good argument because unless we're anarcho capitalists we have higher values.
There’s no referee making the decisions for everyone. If no one wants to hear what you have to say I’m pretty sure you’re the problem.
This seems disingenuous to me, so I'm probably missing something. The point is that people DO want to hear what these people have to say, but corporations are doing their best to make that not happen. It has absolutely nothing to do with these ideas not being of interest to people
With that said, can you explain to me who exactly is being silenced? The right lost his mind when Trump was banned by all the big tech companies but I could have sworn that was him on my TV screen at Cpac and then being talked about by all the news channels afterward, and I’m pretty sure that was him on Fox News talking to Maria Bartiromo the other night. Crazy how loud his platform is for a silenced person.
Yeah you say this because you aren't active in right wing spaces. And I don't blame you, if that isn't your thing...but trust me, it goes a lot deeper than Trump. To speak of social media companies in particular, almost all interesting right wing content creators were banned from YouTube over the 2016-2020 period, twitter regularly purges right wing accounts, lots and lots of right-leaning subreddits have been banned, and now companies are beginning the process of banning books that don't toe the line. Right before the election a negative story about Joe Biden came out in the New York Post and not only did the Post have its social media accounts locked for reporting on it, but users were not allowed to share links to the story. Keep in mind that these companies employ like 90%+ democrats and it's only human to show more leeway to your own "side."
When it comes to the day to day there really is a deep anxiety about cancel culture or being Brendan Eich'd. Recently you're even seeing leftists get fired from jobs for stupid tweets they made in 2009 or something. See this poll...Americans of all stripes are afraid to express their political views, but Republicans most of all. America really has become a toxic, shitty culture to live in https://www.cato.org/survey-reports/poll-62-americans-say-they-have-political-views-theyre-afraid-share
Intimidation tactics? I believe you mean people on the left have been using their freedom of speech.
No, I'm talking about them getting people fired from their jobs for expressing (or increasingly just privately holding) views that were mainstream like three or four years ago. You yourself said I shouldn't be allowed to be a teacher. Well, what if I am? Should I be fired for this conversation?
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@Double_R
Those of us who believe in reasoned deliberation. Being offended because someone called your wife a hoar is not the same thing as being offended because someone put ketchup on their steak. We are always going to have differing opinions on what is offensive. The solution is not to go nuclear and pretend there is no such thing as being legitimately offended.There is a reason we can nearly all agree that swasticas are offensive. All it takes is empathy and some level of concern for your neighbor. If you don’t care about the people you offend then no one else has any obligation to care about your objections to stopping it, and that’s exactly what is happening on a national level.
What you are saying in other words is that people who agree with you get to decide.
Who gets to decide what is offensive? Who believes in "reasoned deliberation", and thus gets a say and how is that decided? Why should something be banned simply because it is offensive? Why not just take the honest approach and admit that you do want your political opponents censored, so we can talk about that. I'm much more interested in that conversation because the left has won. They control, and have weaponized, every key institution in this country. Talking frankly with average leftists will give me an idea of what to expect in the future
If it were we would have been spent the past few days talking about monopolies and what should be done about them, not about whether Amazon should be making political decisions.
I would encourage you to pay more attention to what your political opponents are saying. Republicans have been talking about the tech monopolies for some time now, and the Trump administration filed anti-trust lawsuits against some of them.
Once again, these are private companies acting in their own best interests. This isn’t some nationwide conspiracy to silence conservatives.
Prove that it's in their best interests. I'm all ears. How much revenue did Amazon stand to lose if they didn't ban the sale of books that generated them revenue? The safer assumption is absolutely that it was a political decision. But tbh even if it was in their best interests (which I absolutely do not admit) that just circles back to my point that leftists have been using intimidation tactics and economic coercion to shut down their opposition. A thing you endorsed, stating that we should reflect on what it means if people refuse to work with us
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@Double_R
White fragility is a book explaining to white people that conversations about race are not about them personally. There is nothing remotely equal here.
That's the point though, right? I do find the book offensive and so do millions of others. Just because you don't have a problem with it doesn't mean that others don't--I have no problem with books describing gender dysphoria as a mental illness. And yet notice how books offensive to your sensibilities get banned, but ones offensive to my sensibilities don't. You are saying "no, there isn't a bias, show me something offensive from the left that is allowed" "Here's something from the left that offends me that is allowed." "That isn't offensive!!"
Who gets to decide???
And I'm not calling for banning its sale. I'm a fallible human being who is wrong about a lot of stuff, I am not so confident that I'm right about everything that everything I oppose should be banned
But this right here is the problem... you seem to think this is all about you. No one is trying to decide what you can read or control what you think. If you want this anti-transgender book you can get it somewhere else, and if no one else will carry it that’s not Amazon’s problem. It’s still a free market. That means anyone can decide to sell it, not that someone must.
Amazon has a near monopoly on online book sales, so it banning sales of books advocating certain viewpoints has a huge chilling effect on books that are yet to be written, and ensures that lots of people will never stumble upon the book. This IS the point.
But yeah I don't see it as a "free market" if mega-corporations unite to excise the opinions of half the country. It's not okay if publishers don't sell books not because there isn't a demand, but because they fear retribution from activists, or because the people running the corporations are activists themselves. If we don't agree on this, we've reached our fundamental disagreement
If you were a teacher on the other hand, your views being put out in the open might be a problem. It all depends on what the institutions goals are and whether you or your ideas threaten them.
Would a teacher saying something like all white people are racist threaten the institution?
I agree teachers should be nonpolitical, fwiw. Because everyone has different worldview we should tread lightly...I just wish this was more respected in todays America. It seems like everyone has been radicalized
Most voters and especially Trump voters don’t even know what policies their candidate supports and in this case, Trump was notorious for being especially vapid in that area. Trump only came as close as he did because the electoral college is skewed towards republicans, as it was in 2016. He lost by 7 million votes.
Ehh, I mean true most people can't recite their favored parties entire platform but he definitely represented a big change in Republican orthodoxy on issues like trade and foreign policy...there's a reason he and Romney had pretty different coalitions. Trump flipped Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania at least partially because he ran against outsourcing and NAFTA, things Romney was in favor of. The huge economic boom pre-COVID helped him a lot with lower income voters too, as their incomes started to rise for the first time in decades. I think without the virus he would've won re election despite being an extremely terrible politician
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@Double_R
Tell you what, show me the equivalent left wing book that Amazon should be banning.
I don't think any books should be banned, but a leftist equivalent in terms of "offensiveness" would probably be something like White Fragility. Is your contention seriously that you can't imagine a leftist book that people would find offensive?
Getting back to the topic of this thread... what do you mean “allowing speech to be shut down”? What exactly is your solution here? Do you feel the free market should be free? Or rather to what extent?
You tell me. I'm not proposing laws preventing Amazon from removing books (although given its near monopoly status I would consider it--breaking it apart first would be the better option, though.) All I'm saying is that corporations shouldn't be trying their best to decide what I'm able to read. I'm advocating for what was the status quo up until 2020...just be a neutral platform.
You're the one saying that the left is fighting "misinformation" and the right just wants to complain about being their leaders being banned from social media, negative stories about their opponents being censored, and books advocating their ideas being prohibited...what should be done to combat "misinformation"? Speech codes? I noticed you didn't dispute that misinformation also comes from the left, which does you credit, because of course it comes from both sides. But I only see one side being punished for it. What should happen, in your view?
Amazon isn’t banning books on tax cuts and the second amendment.
Yet. Remember this conversation. We will see what happens over the next two to three years.
You seem to accept the narrative that conservatives are being censored everywhere. If that’s the case, if no one is willing to publish the work of or work with individuals who subscribe to certain ideas, perhaps you’d be better served thinking about what that says about your ideas rather than always playing the victim.
I'll take this as an admission that you do want conservatives to be censored and punished for their views. Some people just disagree, I don't know what to tell you. Do you think I deserve to be banned from this site or suffer some personal repercussion for arguing that gender dysphoria is a mental illness?
But this trend is not surprising. In 2012 the Republican Party performed an autopsy on their defeat and came away with the conclusion that they lost largely because of their stances on immigration. So what did they do with this information? They elected the most anti immigrant president we’ve ever seen. In 2020 after losing the election they didn’t even bother to ask themselves what went wrong, they just claimed it was stolen. Self reflection isn’t prevalent on the right.
That same President was almost re-elected thanks to increasing minority support, and only lost because he couldn't hold onto a lot of the boring NPR listening white voters in the suburbs who love tax cuts and Mitt Romney. Trump obviously had a lot of flaws as a man, and was certainly among the most flawed politicians in generations (he absolutely refused to pluck the most low hanging fruit.) The fact that he won once and almost won again is a testament to the popularity of the policies he supported and implemented, which contradicted the autopsy
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@Double_R
This is an argument from ignorance. You are the one charging Amazon with making strictly political decisions. The fact that the book you point to happens to be considered a right wing book is not evidence that they made a decision to go after right wing books, and I’ve already given you a perfectly reasonable explanation for why they would have singled this book out.
IDK what to tell you man. You haven't given me a single non-political reason for why they would be pulling conservative books, and only conservative books...we know that the leadership and employee base of the company is incredibly liberal, and we know that American politics have gotten ridiculously polarized in the past five years or so. It isn't hard to put two and two together
What? No one ever said voter fraud cannot be discussed. The left has been fighting back against misinformation being peddled by public figures who clearly know better (or at least should) and the damage it has caused. How do you suggest we do that?
The solution to bad speech is good speech. The implications of allowing speech to be shut down on the basis of "misinformation" are scary to me since one mans opinion is another mans disinformation. In particular, this shut down only goes one way. For example, I don't see the Washington Post getting deplatformed for straight up making up quotes from Trump (https://twitter.com/DavidShafer/status/1371531429427970055) nor do I see leftists deplatformed for wild and baseless claims about Trump being a Russian asset since 1987, misinterpreting or making up crime and policing statistics, baselessly claiming that the United States is a white supremacist country, completely misrepresenting historical events etc. Both sides have some issues they are objectively wrong about /:
When it comes to the left, they really do get away with a lot by threatening people who disagree and doing their best to preemptively prevent anyone from making strong arguments against them. Most of their identity politics narrative in particular quickly falls apart when close scrutiny is applied, but people know that if they publicly argue against it, leftists will try to get them fired from their jobs
Your assessment completely disregards the concept of branding. It’s not about people boycotting, the decisions we make as to where we spend our money are based on all kinds of factors. The company I work for turns down money all the time because it doesn’t fit our brand. I don’t get why you seem to think companies don’t take this into account.
Right, so Amazon is branding themselves as a company that takes a stand against conservatives/conservative thought
In the wake of the George Floyd protests Netflix added a black movies category. Do you think this was a purely political decision? Why or why not?
Of course it was. Why else would they do it?
It’s nothing, I don’t care. I’m not advocating a position on it, only against those who think they know better when it comes to the well being of the people who are actually going through this. I don’t know what it’s like to believe I was born into the wrong body, but I know it would take a hell of a lot for me to think that the best thing for me was to chop my own penis off, and I can’t imagine it would help the situation for books to be sold on Amazon telling people that my difficult choices are the result of a mental disorder.
That's the point--only a mentally ill person would do this. And yet, the rate of children identifying as "trans" has been skyrocketing and many of these children are getting untested drugs. It actually is really important that we dispute the concept that this is simply a lifestyle choice, that it's even possible to change your sex, that there aren't incredibly adverse side effects to all of these things, that it is ethical for doctors to remove organs and appendages from otherwise healthy human beings. We are leading people down a wrong and irreversible path full of nothing but suffering and Amazon is trying to prevent people from reading books on the subject because it might hurt some feelings /:
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@Double_R
You missed the part where I explained that my issue regarding corporate donations to political campaigns has nothing to do with the company, my issue is with the system that allows it. Do you believe, as a matter of law, that publicly traded companies should be allowed to make these donations?
Nope. It should 100% be banned. And I think that people and corporations should be held to a higher standard than just what's strictly legal (which is why I'm not infringing on their free speech rights by saying they SHOULDNT do something btw.)
Regarding the second part, I never said it was moral for a CEO to lose his company money over a political stand. I argued that (A) these decisions are not as political as you make them sound, and (B) to the extent that they cost the company money we already have a system of accountability (shareholder elections) to deal with that.
If the decisions aren't political, where are the leftist books that Amazon is refusing to sell? But I'm glad that we reached the point I was trying to make, that based on your previous statements it would be immoral for a CEO to lose a company money by taking a political stance.
Do you regard the rhetoric that lead to the attack on the US Capitol as “advocating a political position”?
Do you regard the rhetoric that led to nationwide riots, 19 dead, and billions in damage as "advocating a political position" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests) My answer is yes to both, FWIW.
I mean do you really think that nobody should ever be allowed to discuss voter fraud just because it likely didn't occur in this election? What if it DOES occur in a future election? Banning speech is an incredibly slippery slope because historically a lot of ideas that were originally universally lambasted turned out to be true.
That’s just your assessment. These issues are complicated, and reasonable minds can see it either way. So on what basis do you deem this decision entirely political? It’s one thing to disagree with the calculation Amazon is making, it’s an entirely different thing to claim it’s not a calculation at all but rather based on purely political motives. How do you distinguish between the two?
My assessment is that very few people were going to boycott Amazon if they didn't purge conservative books, so these books just represented marginal revenue, that Amazons leadership felt was less important than preventing wrongthink. do you have any reason to disagree?
With that question aside... on what basis can anyone reasonably claim that removing a book many people see as offensive to be an aggressively liberal stance? Is this what conservatism is now? How dare you try to avoid offending people?
Removing things that are offensive, simply because they are offensive, is a bad idea. Lots of things are offensive but still need to be said, in certain contexts. For example, while it is offensive to go around parading the fact that black people have a higher crime rate, it's nonetheless a necessary fact to bring up in discussions of disproportionate incarceration rates. Lots of evangelical Christians back in the day thought that Harry Potter was offensive and should be banned and I would say that a company caving to these demands definitely would've been taking an aggressively conservative stance by bowing to the top 1% most extreme activists
Mental disorders are a human construct. It’s a condition where the brain doesn’t work as it’s supposed to. Who are you to tell someone else that their chosen lifestyle (which hurts no one else) is grounds for them to be considered in need of medical treatment?
If it's all a subjective human construct what's it to you what others think about it, anyway? Their chosen lifestyle hurts themselves. While technically it's no skin off my back, I'm not a sociopath and it hurts me to see clearly damaged people like Bruce Jenner or Ellen Page who need help instead mutilating themselves, and it disgusts me to see society enable this. Moreover this ideology is being pushed on children, to the point that prepubescent "trans" children are being placed on untested hormone blockers. I don't have any children right now, but I plan to very soon, and even if I don't I still have a vested interest in the health of the next generation. This video is a good starting point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUPHqTkL5Nw
I'm a free person capable of absorbing evidence and coming to my own conclusions. The people running Amazon don't want people to be able to come to their own conclusions, they only want to sell books that conform with the leftist narrative on transgenderism (and no doubt they will begin removing conservative books on other issues very soon.) I strongly dislike all forms of political censorship, but I especially hate it when the ideas being censored are likely true.
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@Unpopular
The math on these numbers and conclusions is as follows:48, 624 - NY total deaths23,905 - NY deaths as of June 1, 2020_______24,719/19.45 - Pop by million1,270.9032,448 - FL total deaths2,406 - FL deaths as of June 1, 2020_______29,988 /21.48 - Pop by million1,396
You are proving my point. Even if I grant you that we should only look at deaths that happened after spring (an INCREDIBLY generous assumption I would not give you if we weren't just having a friendly conversation) Florida's death rate was 9% higher. When you account for a higher senior population (https://www.prb.org/which-us-states-are-the-oldest/#) it's pretty clear that the difference is as I said: marginal. Not worth, in my view, utterly traumatizing a generation of children and potentially destroying several economic segments.
If you're so hung up on New York, the highest is actually New Jersey, then Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Then Mississippi of all places! Which I suspect has a ton to do with poverty and obesity rates. Then Arizona ( lots of retirees maybe?) Connecticut.....are you sensing a pattern? Because I'm not.
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@Unpopular
You didn’t cite a single source or give a single statistic. And New York is a lot more than just NYC. The population density of the state is 421 per sq mile, Florida’s is 397.
Sort by deaths per million. New York’s is 2698. Florida’s is 1512. Do the math, New York’s death rate is 78% higher
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@Double_R
Yes, but that’s not a political issue, it’s a performance issue which the shareholders have every right to hold them accountable for. I am in a position where I have decisions to make, if I ever took a stand on political grounds and the company lost money because of it I’d probably be fired. That’s how it works.
I’m confused. Here we have a case of Amazon turning down money to make a political stand. Of course it cost them money even if the amount relative to their overall revenue was quite small. If it’s immoral to spend money supporting political candidates when the shareholders aren’t unanimous why is it not immoral to lose money for a political cause when the shareholders aren’t unanimous?
Then you advocate against their right to free speech.Curious... what would your attitude be towards Bill Cosby or Harvey Weinstein writing an autobiography about how they assaulted all those women? If publishers refused to publish their work and stores refused to sell it, would you denounce cancel culture for silencing them?
No, I make a moral distinction between criminals profiting from tales of their crimes and people advocating a political position. I would denounce it if all publishers refused to print and all stores refused to sell the communist manifesto for example, even though I hate communism.
You’re making my point. Taking political principals completely out of the picture... Do you think a company as large as Amazon would want its brand associated with anti transgenderism for the measly few dollars it will make selling these books? You don’t think that would potentially have a massive impact on their bottom line?
Except I can just as easily turn this around and say doesn’t it hurt Amazon to be seen as taking aggressively liberal stances? Conservatives have money too. It’s always safer to just be a neutral platform and sell everything outside of a few incredibly egregious cases (like your Weinstein example), which is what was done in the past prior to this country being driven insane with political polarization. Amazon has a gigantic market share when it comes to books. Not only does their decision make existing books less likely to be read, it makes future books less likely to be written because they can’t be sold. There’s a massive chilling effect
And sorry if it’s offensive but transgenderism likely IS a mental disorder. Certainly the gigantic increase in “trans” kids is a mental health crisis that needs to be discussed. People need to be allowed to hear this information
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@Double_R
The former, but it’s not just about morality it’s about our political system. Money is power. It’s bad enough that someone worth a billion dollars gets to play an oversized role in influencing public policy, but it’s even worse when someone gets to influence policy with money that’s not even theirs.
So if corporations don't belong to the managers and the employees, but to the shareholders, and it's immoral that CEO's can use money that doesn't belong to them to push their political agenda by donating to their preferred candidates, would it not also be immoral for a corporation to turn down profit for a purely political purpose? What about all the conservative shareholders of Amazon?
But you’re talking about something else. Free speech ensures that you can’t be silenced by the government. When you advocate for private citizens within a society to be unable to collectively silence you then you are really advocating to stop their right to free speech, making your whole position incoherent.
I advocate for the mores of free speech as well. I don't actually think the majority of private citizens should use their economic and social power to silence those who disagree, or punish them for disagreeing, no.
I believe in human nature. Specifically, people will always act in their own personal interests. And while there will always be an individual who pushes against the grain, one who decides that their political principals are more important than their financial benefit, that is the exception not the norm.
You are wrong. How much revenue do you think Amazon made from books that disputed the progressive line on transgenderism? I really have no idea but I would guess that it was less than one-ten thousandth of their overall revenue. Yes, people will make their company <0.01% weaker to pwn their opponents. Do you think selling these books COST Amazon money?
The main point of this thread is that of you believe in the free market then you believe those decisions are entirely the company’s to be made
Wouldn't the decision to support a particular candidate also be entirely the companies to make?
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@Unpopular
I've found this source to be credible. Epidemiologists studied various lockdown measures in China, South Korea, Italy, Iran, France, and the US. They found the most effective measure was getting people not to travel to work, while school closures had relatively little effect. Many people with pulmonary issues and other comorbidities were allowed to work from home solely because of state mandates (and densely populated cities like New York likely have a lot of office jobs which made it possible to work from home). Now they are back to work after improved treatment discoveries and vaccination.
We don't disagree then, I definitely think having people WFH was a good idea. What I'm against is the kind of hard lockdowns (schools closed indefinitely, restaurants closed indefinitely, wear a mask while outside/don't let people go to parks or beaches) you are seeing in places like California or the UK. My point generally is that there is a certain level of social contact that is just necessary to keep society going. I think we would all agree with this, it's just a debate about the threshold. I think Texas and Florida have it more right than California. Masks are probably good if used properly, but widespread improper use (think about someone putting the same rag over their mouth and nose day after day without washing it as it accumulates filth) could potentially make the problem worse, or at least very seriously cut into the benefits.
Florida had a 30 day lockdown last Spring and major cities across FL have had mask mandates all along. I know DeSantis challenged them in the fall but I do not recall the legal outcome.Florida's population density is 327 people per square mile compared to NYC which is 27,000 people per square mile. There weren't any social distancing measures early in the pandemic in New York until March, and the virus had been in New York City since at least January. That probably had a lot to do with it.
Population density certainly has a huge effect.
To be clear, I'm not having a go at New York. It's just the reality of the thing that a disease is more likely to spread in such a dense environment. But again, the deaths per million was 70% higher than Florida's. Florida, which has a super high senior population, was well below the NATIONAL AVERAGE in deaths per million despite being arguably THE MOST lax state. Does this mean that all of the excess restrictions were useless, no. Is it evidence that their impact was mostly marginal: Yes.
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@Unpopular
It's common sense that more people would have died without lockdowns, and all the data seems to confirm that.
Can you share this data? There doesn't seem to be much of a correlation just glancing at the list of deaths per million. It seems to be a lot less related to policy and much more related to seasonality, population density, and obesity rates
And the comparison of FL and the northeast using numbers alone lacks context. NY had 237 deaths per 1 million ppl during its peak (April) vs. 223 deaths per 1 million during Florida's peak (July).
In that case New York must have had a much higher background rate before/after peaking since their overall deaths per million is around 70% higher than Florida's. Remember, I brought up Florida because it's notorious as a state that had few restrictions and no mask mandate, and yet it ended up well below the national mean.
I don't buy the argument that Democrat run places are intentionally trying to run their cities and states into the ground for no other reason than "exercising control." That is an incredibly stupid accusation people are making.
I never made that claim. But the motives don't have to be nefarious for the policy to be bad. I think it's a good thing that kids in red states are back in school, and restaurants are open. I hope that blue states join us very soon
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