Didn't a number of companies led by Facebook already attempt to do this with Libra (Diem) and basically got nuked from orbit by US regulators? I have to assume this is primarily happening now because there is a more favorable (nonexistent) regulatory environment.
the reality is that most new projects started by Meta are going to be nuked from orbit when democrats are in control (even if started during republican control). Stripe has less reputational risk so is less likely to experience the same.
I really dislike this kind of rhetoric. This has nothing to do with socialism. Corporations profiting from externalities and pushing costs onto regular workers is just capitalism. If you have a problem with it, maybe you have a problem with the inevitable concentrations of wealth and power which result from capitalism.
Well, what if the corporations would pay the bills - then they would increase the price of the product so the people would pay for it again. Now you can say that you do not use Metas or Googles products, but their business models is ads - and you DO pay the products advertised for.
In scenario 1, a corporation externalizes some of its costs. Those costs are then paid by people who may or may not actually use the corporation's product — people who never chose to be part of any transaction. This is coercive because the people paying for the corporation's externalities are forced to: they may not use the product, or do so to different degrees not proportional to the price they pay for the externality.
In scenario 2, the corporation does not externalize costs and raises their prices, offsetting costs by passing them on to their customers. The people paying the additional cost are those who know the price of what they are buying and willingly engage in the transaction for the good or service.
Do you understand why scenario 2 is bad and scenario 1 is less bad?
That is just a very simplified and incomplete model. I never owned a car, so should I advocate to stop all fundings for streets? Well I consume products build by other people that use cars to go to work. Now, if I don't consume drinks of the Coca Cola Company, what if my cleaning lady enjoys those in her break? Direct vs. Indirect is not a good measure of value, PRICE is.
> I never owned a car, so should I advocate to stop all fundings for streets?
Streets are generally paid for by taxes, which are categorically different than corporate profits. In theory taxes are under democratic control. If you don't want to pay for streets you don't use, you can vote for a politician who passes that law. You have no control over the governance of a private corporation, but it can still pass its costs on to you via externalities (in the absence of regulations preventing it from doing so).
> Now, if I don't consume drinks of the Coca Cola Company, what if my cleaning lady enjoys those in her break?
What are you even talking about? What is the externality here? The wages you presumably pay your cleaning lady are hers to do with as she wishes.
> don't want to pay for streets you don't use, you can vote for a politician who passes that law
Just as you can build your own power plant (solar, wind) if you don't like the electricity prices of your provider... That works in theory, in practice you will have to pay...
That's a strange definition of capitalism you're using.
Most people use capitalism to describe a system where people trade goods and services with as little interference from government as possible.
In this case, the government has written laws in a way that indirectly transfers wealth from consumers to large corporations.
Saying that such laws are "inevitable" in any conceivable capitalist system is unfalsifiable and adds little to the discussion.
I think calling it "crony capitalism" to make it clear that it's the undue influence of capital on government specifically causing the problem here lends more clarity to the discussion.
> Most people use capitalism to describe a system where people trade goods and services with as little interference from government as possible.
This is not a real definition. Saying "most people" use the term to mean what you want it to mean in this argument is ridiculous.
Capitalism is a system of private ownership of capital. We live under that system. Anything you see that happens now is the result of that system because it's the one that exists.
There is no such thing as "crony capitalism". What came before crony capitalism? Was it regular capitalism? Did regular capitalism turn into crony capitalism? Or — more likely — is it all one continuous process and system of accumulation?
> Most people use capitalism to describe a system where people trade goods and services with as little interference from government as possible.
“Capitalism” is a term coined for the dominant system of the industrialized West in the mid-19th Century and is defined by the specific orientation of property rights in that system around the private and marketable ownership of the non-financial means of production (the “capital” in “capitalism”), and the way in which the system was fundamentally structured around—and institutions within it, including government, invariably served the interests of—the owners of that capital, who formed its ruling class, displacing the landed hereditary aristocracy of the preceding systems.
While the dominant politico-economic systems of the developed world have evolved somewhat since then, with modern mixed economies having structures in place mitigate some of the adverse impacts the original system for which thr label “capitalism” was created for has on the vast majority of the population that is not major capital owners, it retains the basic property structure and resulting class heirarchy of the original “capitalism”, and neither it nor the original tended tof eatite annabsence of regulation of commerce.
> I think calling it "crony capitalism" to make it clear that it's the undue influence of capital on government specifically causing the problem here lends more clarity to the discussion.
The commanding and undue influence of capital on all of society, government and otherwise, is literally the feature for which critics of the then-dominant system coined the term “capitalism” to refer to that system. It doesn’t need an extra qualifier for that.
It's always pretty suspect when you first hear about the opposition to something in its rebuttal. I've heard lots of critiques of the abundance movement and this is my first time hearing anything about housing cartels. Maybe someone had this critique but it isn't the dominant strain of criticism of the abundance people. It feels like Thompson picked the weakest argument to debunk rather than one of the many stronger ones.
I think if you're China the smart thing to do would be to immediately send Iran a couple nukes. Would put an end to the conflict pretty much immediately.
Honest curiosity — why did you choose a service like Redis over a more straightforward embedded solution like SQLite? In my head Redis seems better suited to distributed solutions but I've never actually built a desktop application so I'm probably speaking from ignorance.
PSCO stands for Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office. The dataset mentioned contains 47,784 mugshots of 18,007 recidivists spanning from the years 1994 to 2010.
Democrats haven't put anyone into a reeducation camp as far as I'm aware. Your enemies are imaginary while the parent comment's enemies are all too real.
Yes, but the Republicans literally want to kill some minority groups. /s
Do you know how crazy this all sounds once you're outside of a specific left echo chamber? How is the hyperbole I employed any more unbelievable than that of the poster I was replying to? Another sibling comment to yours says that Trump is rounding up political opponents for a gulag. Nevermind that he has only rounded up non-citizen (most of them in the US illegally) because that's all he can do.
If you look at my posting history, it's wildly left-wing as little as 2 years ago. I've become completely disillusioned with the left after noticing how self-contradictory some of those ideas are and how the language of crisis is deployed to constantly smear their political opponents. Everyone the left doesn't like is Hitler and every policy they don't like is fascism. Give me break.
Edit:
For a little more elaboration, look at the speech codes and compelled "DEI pledges" that American universities have employed in the last few years[1]. How is this not speech policing? You might argue that these are private institutions, and maybe that's fair enough, but when the government pulls funding for crap like this the hyperbole and outrage persist.
Or look at Canada's bill C-63[2]. This bill aims to allow the possibility of life sentences for "hate speech"[3]. To me this is authoritarian. To many left wing commentators, it's another day at the office, I guess - meanwhile the Canadian right wing party is regularly called fascist[4][5] despite being basically in line with US Democrats on many issues.
Oh good, "it's only non-citizens". Nevermind that they're still supposed to be protected by the constitution, then. Also, Trump said two days ago that he wishes to send citizens to El Salvador too [1]. Are we allowed to call them fascist or should we wait for that to be made illegal too?
Trump does not care about the law. SCOTUS, in a historic 9-0 ruling, commanded him to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador. He unsurprisingly did not comply. Yet you're still insisting he can't legally do X or Y so everything is fine. When has that stopped him, like ever?
If that's not fascism, then what is? What would it take for you to say "OK that's too much"?
If the Trump admin's goal were to reduce the national debt it would make way more sense to use fiscal policy (increase taxes) rather than some roundabout way to force the Fed's hand on monetary policy. The tariffs do basically function as a massive regressive tax increase in the form of a sales tax, but that comes with truly immense risks on the demand side of the economy. Guess what happens to tax revenue during a recession.
I'll believe it when I see a bill pass the House. But this adminstration loves to make bold claims about what it's going to accomplish without gathering the necessary votes in the House, where it could most certainly push a bill through. News articles don't count.
If I was a foreign adversary of the US I would be salivating at the idea of several unvetted 19-25 year olds with unlimited access to classified government computer systems. The security implications are apocalyptic.
> unlimited access to classified government computer systems.
What makes you think they have access to classified government computer systems, let alone unlimited access?
It's my understanding that classified data is on a completely separate network called SIPRNET[1] and that basic accounting data (e.g. USAID grant data) (a) isn't classified and (b) access to USAID data doesn't imply access to SIPRNET
Genuinely insane to the point that I don't believe he'll actually do it. I have no idea who this is for. It will certainly alienate the US tech sector that just spent the last month bending the knee to Trump. It will push Taiwan into the arms of China. I have no idea how this is remotely compatible with all the hawkish AI rhetoric. Baffling on all fronts.
As messed up as it is, he is bargaining for his enterprise. Under the table deals for him and his partners (there are many now, crypto, truth social, $djt, kushner family, these are the ones we know) where other countries negotiate the tariff down via these nasty secret exchanges.
The legacy of this administration may truly be so bad that people will be slapped by old ladies when this all over. Spit on.
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