Boomers basically need to be liquidated, their property confiscated and redistributed, then they can be put onto giant carnival cruise ships which will be scuttled off the coast of Sentinel Island. The Boomers will either conquer the island and form a boomertopia with that can-do attitude and work ethic that they're always touting, or they can further cement the idea in the minds of the Sentinelese that the rest of the world has nothing to offer and fertilize the reefs.
SkepticalOne wrote:
Drug companies do not advertise cheap, effective generic medications; they advertise highly expensive, newly patented, brand-name drugs. By artificially inflating consumer demand for these premium products, ads successfully steer patients away from generics that cost a fraction of the price. Furthermore, the billions of dollars spent annually on these flashy ad campaigns are not absorbed by Big Pharma—they are passed directly to the consumer. This inflates insurance premiums, strains public healthcare budgets, and drives out-of-pocket drug costs to astronomical heights. When marketing drives up the price of medicine, low-income patients are forced to ration their doses or skip prescriptions entirely. This is a structural failure of public health caused directly by advertising.\
I'd push back on generics being the answer. Generics are another facet of the same issue. A lot of the production has been outsourced to India, with the idea that they are subject to the same FDA inspections as on-shore manufacturing facilities, but this isn't true because the inspections are never random - producers are given prior warning. India has an absolutely laughable domestic regulatory structure, and due to this policy problems are 'cleaned up' sufficiently before the inspectors ever arrive at the plant. Investigative journalist Katherine Eban wrote a really interesting (and horrifying) book detailing these issues that was a NYT bestseller - Bottle of Lies. These drugs aren't the same quality for less money, even with the crippled regulatory oversight we can exercise we have found things like crushed glass inside the pills, almost none of the active ingredients which are supposed to be there, etc. Indian companies have literally wiretapped investigators from American regulatory agencies to learn which areas of the plant need to be cleaned up before their visit. It's another example of corporations pursuing the bottom line at all costs, putting Americans in danger by skirting domestic regulations and undercutting the competition who are engaging in responsible production and not availing themselves of sweatshop conditions in corrupt, third-world shitholes.
As for the advertisements themselves, I don't think they have much of a consumer impact and I don't think that's the primary reason why pharmaceutical companies air them. In the past, drug manufacturers were often hit very hard by investigations by the media into drug-related scandals. Drug advertising makes up almost a quarter of ad minutes if I recall correctly. This creates an absolutely huge perverse incentive for media organizations themselves to not offend them and to quietly squash negative coverage, as it could put the profitability of their entire business model into question were those ad runs pulled. This dampening effect has left a vacuum that's been filled by a mix of cranks, snakeoil salesmen, and legitimate investigative journalists trying to cover pharmaceutical malfeasance. This makes it easy for the pharmaceutical companies to tar all three with the same brush and discredit any legitimate interrogation of whatever evil shenanigans they've gotten up to. It's had a profound effect on the main consumers of those media products as well - I've never seen the so-called liberals in this country more slavishly devoted to outright defending big pharma than they are today.
When it comes to pushing drugs on people, I think the lobbying/advertising/kickbacks directed at doctors is way more effective and way more egregious, as it severely undermines the respect for medical professionals. Corporate consolidation in the healthcare industry is also a big problem that is seldom addressed - a lot of private practices are being gobbled up, and that's another avenue of influence when you have doctors who are employees of a larger corporation instead of owners of an independent practice. There's one particularly egregious example I can think of during the opioid crisis where Insys was prosecuted under RICO for aggressively promoting an oral fentanyl spray to doctors, who then widely prescribed it, boosting their profits. The case kind of peaked when the company hired a new regional sales director with zero experience in either pharmaceuticals or sales. Nevertheless, this new hire posted incredible sales numbers in her region. This young lady, Sunrise Lee, was a former stripper who was offering doctors with the highest subscription numbers free lap dances and possibly other benefits. The drug was strictly approved by the FDA for terminal cancer patients who had developed a tolerance for other opioids, being a so-called 'drug-of-last-resort'. The stripper saleswomen and an aggressive campaign of paid 'speaking engagements' were meant to pressure the doctors to prescribe it off-label for basic back and neck pain.
We need to balance the budget, adjust, live within our means for a few years and adapt to not floating everything on credit, then default.
Credit will tighten up quicker than a salted sphincter for a good while. Ride it out. It'll be way less painful than spending decades trying to institute auserity until we pay back 40 trillion. It'll also teach other countries to not be retarded enough to lend money to a government that's been paying defense contractors $200 for a screw for decades.
RemyBrown wrote:
And yet you accused me of being anti sematic.
General context: An animal that kills you vs a strange man that says, "Shalom". Women choose the bear and David (or whatever his new name is) doesn't care because leftist empathy and equality is a facade.
How is that antisemitic? It's much more antisemitic to claim that a wild animal would be better at contract negotiations than a Jew, you're basically calling all Jews sub-animal retards. Not that I'm surprised.
RemyBrown wrote:
-> If other people have wrong beliefs or unproductive habits, and you mirror your beliefs or habits in response, you're not punishing them, you're punishing yourself.
I mirror them to an extent. I would say the Jews need to do better, but I would ALWAYS choose the strange Jew in the woods over the polar bear. THAT is the ethical difference between me and women.
Depends what the context is. Fistfight? Wrassling? Romantic overtures? Definitely the Jew, much safer decision. Taking out a loan or signing a record deal? Bear is the safer option by far.
RemyBrown wrote:
Jews will move anywhere that's free from religious murder. They're from frigid Poland of all places.
The idea that Jews are 'from' Poland is an insidious abtisemitic trope. Jews are from the Levant, and enjoy a much more balmy climate. This is even baked into their DNA - decrepit Jews wander into Florida condiminuiums like elderly pachyderms trudging their way to an elephant graveyard.
Hoflation is real, especially among Gen Z women. You need to retvrn to tradition
ContextMatters wrote:
RexFavilla wrote:
RemyBrown wrote:
Are you doing satire right now?
No, I firmly believe that rape is worse than drunk driving. You of course have no counterargument. Typical rapist - persuasion isn't their strong suit. It's somewhat atrophied as a faculty.
The notion that anyone who has a different opinion from someone else is a rapist or nazi or whatever irritates me to no end. If you think that’s going to truly change someone’s viewpoint on things, you are sorely mistaken.
Has nothing to do with their opinions per se, sometimes people just seem rapey. Opinions can lean in to that too, though. There are things that a rapist are much more likely to do. If I found out someone I knew had loudly argued that Rohypnol should be cheap, lightly regulated, and widely available to the public I would start to look at them differently. Similarly, arguing that raping a woman isn't as bad as taking the Camaro for a quick spin around the cul-de-sac after half a bottle seems like something that a LOT of rapists would feel comfortable doing and very few normal people would.
It's a truncation of my DART username, which was an excerpt from the Lacrimosa, from the Dies Irae of the Catholic requiem mass. It describes the ressurection of the dead and the final judgement. I've always found it to be a poignant and very moving image, evoking both sincere repentance and hope for mercy.
Latin
Lacrimosa dies illa
Qua resurget ex favilla
Judicandus homo reus.
Huic ergo parce, Deus:
Pie Jesu Domine,
Dona eis requiem. Amen.
Translation:
Full of tears will be that day
When from the ashes shall arise
The guilty man to be judged;
Therefore spare him, O God,
Merciful Lord Jesus,
Grant them Eternal Rest. Amen.
Jews aren't going to move to Canada, it's too cold. Give them like a chunk of Arizona or maybe Florida - not the good real estate, they can have like Lake Okeechobee or something. Swamp Jews, that'd be an interesting evolution to observe. They can have Palm Beach too because they basically already own that anyway.
Pictured: the infamous Swamp Jews of Landes on the hunt for Gifelte Fish, which they spear with their long, sharpened stilts. A people naturally adapted to the Everglades.
fauxlaw wrote:
Platner is not a demonstrated thinker, a task one would think is required of a Senator.
Why would one think that? A whore is not required to be a dedicated thinker, and your run of the mill Senator is just an inordinately expensive whore when you get right down to it. A high-end escort. They need to be good at acting, not thinking. A statehouse politician is the bargain bin option, like the methhead with no teeth who gives a mean rest stop blowie for ten bucks.
Platner shouldn't have dropped out, he was the ideal candidate. This is why dems lose, they have a loser mentality and fold as soon as the media puts forth a fabricated rape allegation. Now the seat will go Republican.
SatanLucy wrote:
These government-run grocery stores aren't a bad idea on paper, but the fact that this is a libtard project means that they will probably be heavily burglarized and operate at a perpetual loss
the advantage of government owned business is in fact that it can operate long term with small loss but ultimately benefiting the community. Its only when these businesses become wide spread that actual unmanageable loss occurs. But few thousand dollars loss is nothing for US government. they already lose trillions on dumb shit.
But if they're being burglarized and the stolen goods are being sold on the secondary market they aren't helping the community. If the government ran an egg farm next to yours and let people steal all the eggs and then sell them to their friends for less than it actually costs to produce the eggs (since they stole it, they paid zero for it), then you will have trouble selling your eggs because theirs will be cheaper than yours and people only need a certain amount of eggs each weel. You are basically paying taxes to subsidize killing all the other local businesses. You see this happen in third world countries, where America ships free food to towns or free mosquito nets and then the people in the towns who had a business making mosquito nets or growing food can't sell their goods because people are getting it for free - they eventually go out of business. They go bankrupt and then the village becomes more dependent and more dysfunctional.
"Organizations in Haiti had previously questioned the wisdom of shipping U.S.-grown food there. They said the country had limited capacity to store imported grain, and feared the imports would actually discourage local food production. They'd proposed using locally grown food instead, but this isn't allowed under the rules that govern U.S. food aid for "non-emergency" situations, such as in Haiti.
In addition, Iannotti says, the U.S. often sends commodities that American farmers want to sell, not foods that Haitians need most. Cornmeal and sorghum, for instance, hardly constitute a healthy diet. The infested bags of grain sent a message, she says: "We don't really care if people are food secure in Haiti.""
Global food aid from the U.S. is sparking a heated debate : Goats and Soda : NPR
Magoroth wrote:
It seems physically impossible for such things to exist. If supermarkets are unable to stay profitable because people aren’t buying their food, how are these people not starving to death?
Maybe it’s because they buy food elsewhere? Like, say, Pizza Hut? It doesn’t sound like the supermarkets’ fault…
Food deserts exist because people steal or behave so antisocially that the supermarkets close up and leave. The only places that remain are small corner stores that sell heavily processed junk food and are manned by old Indian or Korean/Chinese curmudgeons who watch the place like a hawk to make sure the clientele don't steal and turn the place into a steel-girded fortress at night. It's a symptom of a broken society and inadequate policing. In NYC iirc there were whole shoplifting rings at one point where people would fill up trasbags with goods and just walk out of the store. As an example, let's say they stole a pack of pampers and sold at retail they would go for $0.50 each. Sold on the black market, the thief gets $0.30 per diaper. The thief can even sell the goods they steal at below wholesale price, as it's just free money to them. This hurts the store twice - they suffer inventory shrinkage and they lose sales for every stolen item sold to others by the thief - i.e. the demand curve becomes extremely depressed. This makes it entirely unprofitable to operate in the neighborhood. If you started shooting shoplifters on sight food deserts would disappear overnight.
These government-run grocery stores aren't a bad idea on paper, but the fact that this is a libtard project means that they will probably be heavily burglarized and operate at a perpetual loss, basically functioning as welfare in all but name. And the worst thing is that the depressed demand curve from the secondary market means that other private grocery stores may also suffer and close, leading to a death spiral effect. If you want this to work, you need a commissar standing outside each one with gun who's authorized to shoot shoplifters in the back.
Alyssa wrote:
Give me an example of one that isn't then.
You misunderstand. Say the US goes and invades north Korea and we wipe the floor with them. The result of the conquest is ruin. It takes an additional step to then say "Okay lets set up some system of government". Same is true for revolt.
It would happen regardless though; it's not like you could choose not to do that. Nature abhors a vacuum and that's what anarchy is. And who decides what the system of government is? The people with the guns. Did the Japanese 'choose' to change their government until we steamed a bunch of gunships into Edo Bay? After WWII ended, did we meet with them and say 'yeah guys, whatever you think is cool is cool with us'. No. We instituted structural demands that suited our interests at the barrel of a gun. Did Iraq choose to undergo de-Baathification and cut their entire institutional government? No, once again we demanded that of them.
What happens if you don't pay the fine or the tax? Everything is ultimately backed by the barrel of the gun.
Not everything is a life and death issue. Last time I got a speeding ticket I just paid the fine and took a couple days of remedial classes to make sure it didn't end up on my record. I didn't need a threat of violence to get me to cooperate.
This is like saying that slavery isn't ultimately based on violence because it creates a system in which most slaves acquiesce to demands without a fight. It pretends that violence can't be woven into a system. 'Speak softly and carry a big stick' may result in acquiescence without bloodshed, but it implies that if someone doesn't listen you whack them over the head with your big stick - otherwise it doesn't work.
People are allowed to cooperate with the system of government and work towards mutually beneficial ends, believe it or not.
Who decides if it is mutually beneficial? And do people get to opt out if they disagree? Romanticizers of the Antebellum South often romanticized slavery as being 'for their own good' - a mutually beneficial arrangement. The slaves obviously disagreed for the most part, and if they could opt out slavery would quickly collapse. Government simply does not operate on a consent framework - it wouldn't function if it tried to.
one that isn't based on violence doesn't work because anyone can just say 'no'
This kinda implies that everyone's base instinct is to just instinctively reject any kind of authority. Certainly true for some people, but I'd hardly make it an absolute.
Of course it isn't absolute, but it doesn't have to be - if people can opt out the system will destabilize because of things like the free rider problem and the resentment which it causes. It also would accelerate any downward turn into a death spiral because that would cause mass defection.
But those avenues of nonviolence are established by introducing violent tension.
That doesn't really address my point, though. The more avenues of nonviolent reform are added, the less violent the system becomes. Hell, most democratic nations (barring Jan 6th) in the past few decades have regular exchanges of power without violence. You claim that any political system is inherently violent, but violence in recent history is abnormal, not normal.
You act as if this stabilization effect (which does exist) can go on forever. It never has; it always ends in a spectacular orgy of violence. The Peace of Westphalia ended in two World Wars, the Pax Romana ended in the Wandering of Nations, the fall of the Western Jin ended with the Five Barbarians and Sixteen Kingdoms. And each time this happened, the people living in the 'Golden Age' were absolutely shocked by it and thought that the good times would just keep getting better. In fact, we had Fukuyama declaring the 'End of History' using this sort of utopian thinking just a few decades ago only to be proven wildly incorrect by world events. Human lives are brief and these things can move at a glacial pace, so it skews our understanding.
It's a nice idea, but I don't see it bearing out in history very often.
That's odd, because if you compare modern day to a couple centuries ago things are radically different in exactly the way I'm describing. Historically slavery is the norm. Now, slavery is illegal.
There are more slaves alive today than there were back when it was the 'norm'. They largely exist in societies which are still developing, or which don't care about optics - technology eliminated a lot of slavery by reducing the human labor input of many fields of production. And in some places they have been replaced with arrangements which can be even more brutal - migrant agricultural workers, for example, often work in terrible conditions for pay which can't even adequately provide for their food and board, and are treated as more disposable than slaves ever were. That system is also rife with violence and human trafficking, sometimes to the point of literal slavery, as happens in the South East Asian fishing market in which slaves work to create the protein slurry ultimately used to make dogfood for Americans. I mean you can choose to only look at the 'nice' aspects of the present but that's not reality.
Whereas racism was expected historically, now it's frowned upon in most circles (and the circles where it's not are heavily criticized). We've seen similar trends with queer spaces as well.
I think you must live in a very specific middle class white bubble and are mistaking it for the rest of the world. Even in America this isn't true, it especially isn't true in the rest of the world outside 'the West'.
Was all of that trend peaceful? Of course not. But things have become more peaceful over time, as we come to better understand the world we live in and the people who are around us. Misunderstanding breeds fear, and fear breeds violence. We continually better understand the world around us with each passing year, and we continue to see this overall positive trend (despite Trump's best efforts).
I think here you are conflating becoming more liberal/'progressive' with peace. You are also being quite blinkered about it. As people have grown to 'understand the world around us' with each passing year we've had lockstep support from the American political class for a literal genocide playing out in 4K in Gaza in which women and children were routinely butchered in their thousands. There was widespread cultural support for an assassin who shot a corporate executive, himself a man who had made a career out of nonchalantly murdering innocent people via spreadsheet. I think people in America are numb to suffering and feel powerless more than anything else, they are not more morally upright or 'kinder'.
Now I'm wondering - was Remy horribly disfigured in a tragic accident? Was an innebriated bear barreling down the highway in his 1970 Stingray convertible, hot babe on his arm, when a moment of distraction caused our upstanding ursine citizen to veer off onto the shoulder, colliding with Remy's bicycle? It's all making sense now.
Alyssa wrote:
A political system is forged in violence - revolt or conquest usually.
Not really? Conquest just gives you the territory to set up some kind of political system. Revolt is just conquest from the inside.
Give me an example of one that isn't then. America was a revolt and a civil war. Great Britain was multiple conquests and revolts. Qing to Republican to Communist China was a conquest, then multiple revolts and then a civil war. Rome was a revolt and then a civil war intersperse with conquests. Venice was a religious-based revolt. India was a revolt and then a violent partition. Japan was a revolt and then a conquest.
You could argue that some political systems are expressions of violence (dictatorships, absolute monarchies, etc.). Others distinctly less so (democracies, republics, etc).
Violence is inherent in its continued operation as thats what you're ultimately faced with if you attempt to resist its edicts.
I mean...kinda sorta not really? It's going to vary based on the political system and how much you view things like taxes or fines as 'violence', but I suppose if you slide down the slope far enough any system will defend itself against someone who seeks to oppose them at every theoretical turn in the worst way possible.
What happens if you don't pay the fine or the tax? Everything is ultimately backed by the barrel of the gun. Even throwing someone in jail, what happens if you refuse to go? You are forced. That's the nature of any political system, one that isn't based on violence doesn't work because anyone can just say 'no' and then you have another rival system every time someone does that.
Are there political systems that include release valves and nonviolent means of altering the legal framework? Sure, but thats to increase stability. It doesn't change the ultimate nature of the system
Does it not? If all political systems at base are violent, the more avenues of practicing nonviolence you introduce, the further away from base you get. At what point is the ship of theseus still the ship of theseus?
But those avenues of nonviolence are established by introducing violent tension. The King of England was forced to sign the Magna Carta by the barons, he didn't decide it would be a good idea. The Tribunes were created in ancient Rome by the patricians reaching an accord with the plebeians, but only after years of violent riots and strikes. This is why Frederick Douglass said that "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will". The demand has to have teeth, and the situation it creates, that nonviolent avenue to reform, is not a permanent thing - it depends on the tension of an underlying threat of violence. It can be eroded or weakened, and if the teeth behind the initial demand have been blunted over time it will vanish entirely once the powerless become too sedate to fight for it.
Its why the idea of nonviolent resistance is even a thing - that's an explicit recognition that you will be forcing that state to use violence eventually and that you're betting on the bad optics giving you leverage.
That is a wildly pessimistic take on multiple levels. Sure, there are examples where this has been historically accurate, but is =/= ought. Easy example:
Leader: *implements/proposes x policy*
People: *react by going on a hunger strike*
A reasonable person would see this and think "Wow, this seriously matters to them. They're willing to seriously harm themselves over it. Maybe I should re-evaluate." which can lead to change/compromise.
It's a nice idea, but I don't see it bearing out in history very often. If it did, extractive empires wouldn't have been the historical norm. Slavery wouldn't have been the historical norm. If is=/=ought, then the ought is a pipe dream that will shatter once it contacts reality imo. Hunger strikes usually work on an individual level. On a large-scale policy level, they usually result in a temporary rollback that is abandoned once public interest fades. The ones that have long-term success, like the Indian independence movement, have a good-cop/bad-cop arrangement, where the power under pressure choses to negotiate with the non-violent protests to avoid dealing with the more violent, extreme elements that could cause them more damage in the long run - in this case, violent insurgents and communist elements. That tension is a fundamental element of their ultimate success. Ironically of course Gandhi was shot and partition descended into a violent shitshow anyway.
RemyBrown wrote:
->Drunk driving helps you improve a skill.
No; it gets you in car accidents. The best way to learn to drive is to drive sober (the only way you should be driving).
Incorrect, this doesn't address my argument at all. It stands to reason that a driver who learns how to drive well under any sort of impairment would drive even better once that impairment is removed. Simply asserting the contrary position is not an argument.
->Drunk driving is an American tradition. The Founding Fathers famously attended many wine-soaked gatherings and, after a night of revelry and heavy drinking, would ride their horses home.
The founding fathers didn't even have cars. And raping enslaved women was tradition. As a matter of principle; who CARES if it's tradition or not?
It doesn't matter whether they had cars or not, the principle is the same. A horse can also trample someone. Raping enslaved women was also not an American tradition. Enslaving them was, I'll grant you that. The fact that bastard children born of such unions were often covered up and the occasion of deep shame puts the lie to that idea. Drunk driving by horseback, on the other hand, was a proud and open tradition.
->How many of those 'drunk driving fatalities' were caused by innocent intoxicated motorists being waylaid and ambushed by malicious, sober ones - fat white women watching Lilo and Stitch on their phone while they carelessly mow down innocent pedestrians before colliding with a perfectly competent, if tipsy, driver and ruining his life?
If you drive drunk, then you are not innocent.
Incorrect. That's like saying that an escaped slave could never be innocent because it was against the law to escape. Unjust laws demand resistance.
->The venomous hatred of drunk drivers is a moral panic.
It's a moral imperative to hate drunk drivers; they are dangerous on the roads.
Not necessarily. I never said it was wrong or irrational to arrest and punish drunk drivers who drove unsafely - those are the ones who are by definition unsafe on the road. But there are also plenty who are safe. It is the unsafeness of the driving which deserves criticism, whether someone is texting, getting road head, sleep-deprived, or intoxicated. A drunk driver who drives safely is in my mind MORE admirable than a sober person who does so because they are expending more mental effort to ensure the safety of those around them.
->The modern world hates fun, so drunk drivers are maligned and pilloried by a hypocritical and nasty shrews because they have fun before they get behind the wheel.
You can have a beer, but don't get behind the wheel afterwards.
Don't tell me what to do, bucko.
->Driving while sleep impaired has been shown to cause just as many issues as driving with a BAC above the legal limit
You cannot control how tired you are; you can control how much beer you've had recently. Although tired people shouldn't drive either, it's not the same.
You absolutely can control how tired you are, what an asinine statement. It's called sleeping. And it is the same.
->This is because America's sick Protestant work ethic sees overworking yourself before getting behind the wheel of a car as 'virtuous' compared to downing a few brews with the homies.
America's "sick" protestant work ethnic attracts millions of Indians to leave their streets filled with cow shit where virtually nobody owns a car and your nation is so poor that your low IQ people from 3rd world shitholes argue that THIS is a hotel:
The American Protestant Work Ethic is उत्कृष्ट.
Wow, what a great argument against the Protestant work ethic! Thanks, I don't even have to type anything for this one.
GreatfulGoy wrote:
and then Gandhis as a whole took over anyway but that proves something about elite wealth and dynasty instead.
Lol, no they didn't. Indira Gandhi was the daughter of Nehru and married a Parsi man who happened to have the surname Gandhi. No relationship at all to Mohandas Gandhi, whose descendants never had much success in politics.
GreatfulGoy wrote:
Oh you poor thing, no wonder you have an issue with India.
Do Gandhi's ideas go over your head R/whoosh and you think it is all optics?
Poor Rex. Tell us more about nonviolence meaning the regime must be violent... 🤯
I mean Gandhi didn't create the new India. Because he got shot by a proto-Hindutva psycho. Sorta proves my point you know: violence won in the end.
linate wrote:
"I can't believe people think having to work for basic needs is synonymous with freedom. It's literally a bunch of rich people hoarding essential resources and telling us to serve them or die."
A rich person doesn't have to horde anything to make 'working for basic needs' necessary. In the state of nature you would need to build a shelter to keep moisture out, heat in, and the sun off. You would need to maintain that shelter. You would need to gather food or hunt, and you would need to create tools to do so. If there were other people you would need to protect your territory from incursions that would deplete your food supply and so would need to make weapons and fight.
Doing all of this necessary work on your own sucks - you can't focus on one set of core skills and it consumes every spare moment of time. This is why the tribe survives - the division of labor and the sharing of burdens. And then an economy is created. Settled agriculture creates a surplus of food. Nations and political systems arise, trade and war.
This all creates leisure time. There are societies in which certain people have leisure time all the time and other people work as a matter of course. The Antebellum South was one of them. This sort of parasitism doesn't last for long because it encourages indolence, inefficiency, and corruption.
Now there could be a strong case made that people like Musk and Sam Altman are parasites who consume far more than they contribute and get by on graft rather than merit. Sure. Just remove the parasites then. It doesn't alter the necessity of working to live
Alyssa wrote:
All politics is a call for violence
Ehhhh...
Like, I can see where you're coming from, but it doesnt necessarily have to be? I would agree with "All politics is a call for change", with the understanding that the change in question potentially being violent. Ideally it isn't, but we dont live in an ideal world.
A political system is forged in violence - revolt or conquest usually. Violence is inherent in its continued operation as thats what you're ultimately faced with if you attempt to resist its edicts. Are there political systems that include release valves and nonviolent means of altering the legal framework? Sure, but thats to increase stability. It doesn't change the ultimate nature of the system. Its why the idea of nonviolent resistance is even a thing - that's an explicit recognition that you will be forcing that state to use violence eventually and that you're betting on the bad optics giving you leverage. And it usually doesn't work.
GreatfulGoy wrote:
Rex/Skep has call to violence stuff in like 3 of his answers I can see. You really need safeguards on this. I am not even just calling him personally out, I am doing it to show you it really does happen if you lack rules.
All politics is a call for violence. What do you think happens if the legal framework changes and people do not comply?
RemyBrown wrote:
Are you doing satire right now?
No, I firmly believe that rape is worse than drunk driving. You of course have no counterargument. Typical rapist - persuasion isn't their strong suit. It's somewhat atrophied as a faculty.
This classing me as a moderate is hilarious. Maybe I should run for Congress on my Big Issues platform.
Rape is worse for several reasons.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. Have fun out there on the roads!
Shoresy wrote:
....workers rights....
There should be one and only one enforceable worker's right. The right to walk away at any time without retaliation.
But as you said, and was echoed by César Chávez, importing a near limitless oversupply of labor makes that right near meaningless. So when you have an oversupply of labor, and an undersupply of goods produced. Only the blessed few really profit.
Good to know. Next time a recession hits and the job market contracts I'll start demanding blowjobs from all my subordinates.
The problem isn't making things cheaper - general inflation tends to make that very difficult. When you take the idiocy in Iran out of the picture, both sides do things to depress wages, which makes things progressively less affordable and sharpens wealth inequality.
Republicans erode any legal framework that gives workers leverage in a negotiation. Democrats undermine that leverage by supporting the import of workers from countries with much lower standards of living, who will eagerly accept a wage and the commensurate lifestyle that American workers would balk at as a step down.
And then there's the stuff that both parties support - the dismantling of protectionist measures worldwide and the dragging of the supply chain through countries with woefully insufficient regulations all around - both workers rights and quality control. Probably the most horrifying example of this is the offshoring of generic pharmaceutical manufacturing to India.
Even Trump's attempts to tackle the offshoring problem feel like they're just for show and quickly dialed back - its become a deep, structural problem without a quick fix.
Mikal, Airmax, and Savant for creating the site and putting a lot of work into keeping it going.
Magoroth for being a real mafia soldier and contributing a lot to the Discord
Helz for putting an insane amount of effort into his mafia games
Hyper for putting so much effort into his debates
Solo Leveling for the huge playercount that Mikal managed to wrangle, including the return of several old-school players, the long run-time, the interesting and novel setup, and the excellent scum performance by Mag1c and Banana
Rangers Apprentice - I just really, really like this game and had a lot of fun playing it lol. Was high stakes and imo well balanced with high engagement from a lot of good players, including Thoth's best scum game.
Frieren for a really cool setup utilizing multiple novel roles. Really wish this one had lasted a little longer, you can tell a lot of care went into the setup and it ended early through no fault of the host.
Mag1c melting down and posting his role PM in Zelda mafia.
Wylted yolo-voting WF out the gate at MYLO in that same game, which was wild, extremely ballsy, and won them the game in a second
Tbh Hillary would be a better candidate than Harris at this point. Could believably dial back stuff like the trans lunacy and Trumps insane foreign policy makes her look much better on that front.
