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On April 30 2020 04:51 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On April 29 2020 20:35 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:On April 29 2020 11:20 RenSC2 wrote:
The GH thing is just him spouting off about how the accumulation of wealth is an addiction. Like he almost doesn't understand how wealth generates wealth and you pretty much don't have to do anything to continue to generate wealth at a certain point. Generating wealth is the path of least resistance when you're that rich or found a company that ends up being wildly successful. Given that Microsoft's biggest success is not product quality but aggressively monopolizing their position and making life impossible for every competitor, I would not categorize Gates financial rise as 'doing almost nothing'. His company actively worked to make sure they could force every person on earth to pay 100$ for every computer the last 30 years because there was no other option. There are two competing views of what constitutes good or fair economic activity. There's the extremely bazaar-like version where countless of small competitors fight for scraps of market share and then innovate because they're forced to relentlessly compete. I think Schumpeter was quite right when he pointed out that this isn't really the right equilibrium. It's more accurate to describe dynamic economies as successions of monopolistic competitors with temporary monopolies seizing a large share of a market and then reinvesting surplus profit back into long term growth. That's because relentless competition erodes profits and you end up with something like the restaurant industry. Generating large consumer surplus but without much accumulation capital to plan long term. So rather than viewing the size of a company like Amazon or Microsoft as just negative, their size is actually what makes long term advances possible. This is also another thing where the left seems to have lost their tradition in their fear of 'bigness' because this tendency towards conglomeration used to be viewed quite positively, as it was seen as a step towards replacing the 'chaos of the market', with some degree of rational planning.
I increasingly find similarities between the economy and a religion. I started saying that in sort of an exaggerated way on twitter but more and more I'm starting to believe that if all these guys had been born four centuries earlier they'd be bible scholars.
"Advances" is doing a lot of work in your post of course.
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On April 30 2020 05:12 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2020 04:50 Logo wrote:On April 30 2020 00:52 JimmiC wrote:On April 30 2020 00:23 Logo wrote:I find it extra interesting how all the people who hate the Dem's are now interested in this, it would be sure nice if were interested for say Roy Moore, Trump or Kavanaugh. And with Kavanaugh his behavior during the hearing should have removed him from consideration Most people who are jumping on this were there for Trump, Roy Moore, and Kavanaugh. We also want a candidate who doesn't have a relation to sexual assaults so we can actually focus on that aspect of Trump during the Campaign. One of the worst parts of nomming Hillary is the way she defended her husband which made it hard to really hammer Trump on his sexual conduct. Biden is in an even worse position here. "Believe all women" is about taking their claim, believing it, and investigating it further. Basically the whole slogan is about taking the accusations seriously when they are made, not discarding them quickly and moving on. No one was doing that, all the Biden supports and establishment just called it bunk from the start and the people who are supposed to believe women were not. The only reason these further corroborating pieces of evidence are emerging is because of the "anti dem trolls" who have pushed the story along. Heck remember that time the NYT found corroborating evidence that Reade was removed from her intern supervision abruptly and instead of framing it like that they buried it in a story that claimed Biden had no other history of misconduct (except for all the inappropriate touching)? You are seeing what you want to because of your feelings about Biden, traditional media, and the Dems in general. They are investigating, they are reporting on it. With kavanuagh there was time pressure that there just is not here, it makes sense to do what they are doing, which is investigating, not crucifying instantaneously which some here seem to want. If they are investigating it so hard why are all the strong corroborations being found by the smaller/more independent organizations like The Intercept? Surely the NYT, CNN, and WaPo has more capacity for investigation and better connections than The Intercept? Nevermind this was basically sitting in plain sight since well before Biden was the presumptive nominee. It's also a big false narrative here. Yeah some people say he's already guilty, but likewise a lot of people are saying he's innocent (or even worse, he's guilty but it doesn't matter). Most of the pushback you see about how this is being handled are by people who are frustrated with those that are claiming innocence already. Are you speaking of people in general or on this thread? I have not seen anyone on this thread declare his innocence, but I could have missed it. I would be just as frustrated with people claiming he is innocent as I am with those claiming guilt. We simply just don't know yet. The CNN piece was pretty thorough, they reached out to everyone who worked there at the time, the brother and then reprinted when he texted them a change. And I also believe that places like Fox news and so on will put there full force into digging up more, I really don't see a chance of it not being fully investigated. To the sitting in plain sight, I wish she would have came forward before, but I'm sure she had her reasons, and I'm not going to accuse her of anything bad because I don't know her, so we are where we are. Too my knowledge we have no Biden supporter who posts, there likely could be some, but given how aggressively they would get attacked I get why they would not post it here. It would be interesting to here from their perspective, doubt it is going to happen.
In general, Twitter especially and with notable people like Alyssa Milano (who famously went hard on Bret Kavanaugh).
Is this CNN article pre or post Larry King tape? The mainstream coverage of the allegations has been significantly better *after* The Intercept broke the Larry King tape. While it's still probably not covered to the extent that a lot of people would like to see it covered, but still. If you are looking at people criticizing the response it's pretty important to consider the change in coverage before and after the Larry King story broke and how that relates.
A lot of the criticism I have is that the main networks didn't seem to really take it seriously in the sense of uncovering new information until the Larry King tape made it a sort of inevitable talking point and when they did uncover something relevant they kinda buried it (see NYT article)
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I feel it should be said that Joe Biden's behavior around women has been generally unacceptable to me long before this election. Inappropriate touching, kissing, and comments that have gone too far multiple times on camera. Even without the credible rape allegation (or his bad policy) he should be unacceptable for decent people imo.
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On April 30 2020 05:22 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2020 04:51 Nyxisto wrote:On April 29 2020 20:35 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:On April 29 2020 11:20 RenSC2 wrote:
The GH thing is just him spouting off about how the accumulation of wealth is an addiction. Like he almost doesn't understand how wealth generates wealth and you pretty much don't have to do anything to continue to generate wealth at a certain point. Generating wealth is the path of least resistance when you're that rich or found a company that ends up being wildly successful. Given that Microsoft's biggest success is not product quality but aggressively monopolizing their position and making life impossible for every competitor, I would not categorize Gates financial rise as 'doing almost nothing'. His company actively worked to make sure they could force every person on earth to pay 100$ for every computer the last 30 years because there was no other option. There are two competing views of what constitutes good or fair economic activity. There's the extremely bazaar-like version where countless of small competitors fight for scraps of market share and then innovate because they're forced to relentlessly compete. I think Schumpeter was quite right when he pointed out that this isn't really the right equilibrium. It's more accurate to describe dynamic economies as successions of monopolistic competitors with temporary monopolies seizing a large share of a market and then reinvesting surplus profit back into long term growth. That's because relentless competition erodes profits and you end up with something like the restaurant industry. Generating large consumer surplus but without much accumulation capital to plan long term. So rather than viewing the size of a company like Amazon or Microsoft as just negative, their size is actually what makes long term advances possible. This is also another thing where the left seems to have lost their tradition in their fear of 'bigness' because this tendency towards conglomeration used to be viewed quite positively, as it was seen as a step towards replacing the 'chaos of the market', with some degree of rational planning. I increasingly find similarities between the economy and a religion. I started saying that in sort of an exaggerated way on twitter but more and more I'm starting to believe that if all these guys had been born four centuries earlier they'd be bible scholars. "Advances" is doing a lot of work in your post of course.
Economic advances in the sense of increasing productivity capacity or doing more with less and driving technological progress is as far away from religious thinking as you can get.
On the contrary, the anti-growth arguments are religious in nature. There is no progress, we must not disturb our environment, poverty is a sign of moral integrity and material progress is meaningless, you can't tell anymore if you're talking to a 20-year-old left-wing college student or a 70 year old Christian preacher.
It's actually funny you bring up twitter because there seems to be a very particular demographic of middle-aged, often Catholic women who are visibly left-wing. Given that the left has largely lost any argument of how to organise the social economic order at a meaningfully large scale it seems like it's the socialists who have gone back to religion and localism.
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On April 30 2020 05:53 GreenHorizons wrote:
I feel it should be said that Joe Biden's behavior around women has been generally unacceptable to me long before this election. Inappropriate touching, kissing, and comments that have gone too far multiple times on camera. Even without the credible rape allegation (or his bad policy) he should be unacceptable for decent people imo.
When you say "decent people" do you mean to imply that only indecent people could justify a vote for Biden?
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On April 30 2020 07:03 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2020 05:53 GreenHorizons wrote:
I feel it should be said that Joe Biden's behavior around women has been generally unacceptable to me long before this election. Inappropriate touching, kissing, and comments that have gone too far multiple times on camera. Even without the credible rape allegation (or his bad policy) he should be unacceptable for decent people imo. When you say "decent people" do you mean to imply that only indecent people could justify a vote for Biden?
I think he means that people who don't share his beliefs aren't decent. He is holier than thou after all. But I could be mistaken...
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Yeah, that's why I ask, I'm always curious about when and where the rhetoric turns to "those people..." style barbs.
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On April 30 2020 07:03 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2020 05:53 GreenHorizons wrote:
I feel it should be said that Joe Biden's behavior around women has been generally unacceptable to me long before this election. Inappropriate touching, kissing, and comments that have gone too far multiple times on camera. Even without the credible rape allegation (or his bad policy) he should be unacceptable for decent people imo. When you say "decent people" do you mean to imply that only indecent people could justify a vote for Biden?
A lot of ways to articulate it but basically Biden and people that support him are as far from my politics/morality as Trump and his "basket of deplorables" are from theirs more or less.
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Decent and beloved people on the left like Bernie, Chomsky, AOC and Obama have thrown their support and votes behind Biden, reluctantly or not. There's people who are picking Biden because he proposes to preserve their healthcare, do something rather than nothing about climate change and not have the courts from top to bottom conservative-leaning for a generation.
I get that it really, really sucks that your choices are an elderly boomer who looks like he's teetering on dementia in edited bite-sized social media clips with a credible sexual assault/rape allegation who gets very handsy with women and girls, or Trump, but these decent people have no choice but to vote for something beyond the person they want in the Oval Office.
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On April 30 2020 05:22 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2020 04:51 Nyxisto wrote:On April 29 2020 20:35 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:On April 29 2020 11:20 RenSC2 wrote:
The GH thing is just him spouting off about how the accumulation of wealth is an addiction. Like he almost doesn't understand how wealth generates wealth and you pretty much don't have to do anything to continue to generate wealth at a certain point. Generating wealth is the path of least resistance when you're that rich or found a company that ends up being wildly successful. Given that Microsoft's biggest success is not product quality but aggressively monopolizing their position and making life impossible for every competitor, I would not categorize Gates financial rise as 'doing almost nothing'. His company actively worked to make sure they could force every person on earth to pay 100$ for every computer the last 30 years because there was no other option. There are two competing views of what constitutes good or fair economic activity. There's the extremely bazaar-like version where countless of small competitors fight for scraps of market share and then innovate because they're forced to relentlessly compete. I think Schumpeter was quite right when he pointed out that this isn't really the right equilibrium. It's more accurate to describe dynamic economies as successions of monopolistic competitors with temporary monopolies seizing a large share of a market and then reinvesting surplus profit back into long term growth. That's because relentless competition erodes profits and you end up with something like the restaurant industry. Generating large consumer surplus but without much accumulation capital to plan long term. So rather than viewing the size of a company like Amazon or Microsoft as just negative, their size is actually what makes long term advances possible. This is also another thing where the left seems to have lost their tradition in their fear of 'bigness' because this tendency towards conglomeration used to be viewed quite positively, as it was seen as a step towards replacing the 'chaos of the market', with some degree of rational planning. I increasingly find similarities between the economy and a religion. I started saying that in sort of an exaggerated way on twitter but more and more I'm starting to believe that if all these guys had been born four centuries earlier they'd be bible scholars. "Advances" is doing a lot of work in your post of course.
Whether technological advances are good or bad is another topic, but Microsoft did push technological advances, and definitely no less than Apple did. Is Bill Gates a good person? I'd say most founder/CEOs of gigantic companies are inherently not good people. They may be visionaries. But they don't really seem motivated by things that we traditionally see as "good". They are very obviously very driven. Not necessarily by money, though. From documentaries and books I don't get the feeling Bill Gates was ever really interested in money. It was more a biproduct of his interest in pushing Microsoft to ever increasing heights. And in that pursuit, he did both dickish things and brilliant things. And since his retirement he has done a lot of very good things (and also still brilliant things).
I think you're very wrong about "advances" being hand-wavy mumbo jumbo on par with "Jesus saves" tho.
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On April 30 2020 07:55 PhoenixVoid wrote:
Decent and beloved people on the left like Bernie, Chomsky, AOC and Obama have thrown their support and votes behind Biden, reluctantly or not. There's people who are picking Biden because he proposes to preserve their healthcare, do something rather than nothing about climate change and not have the courts from top to bottom conservative-leaning for a generation.
I get that it really, really sucks that your choices are an elderly boomer who looks like he's teetering on dementia in edited bite-sized social media clips with a credible sexual assault/rape allegation who gets very handsy with women and girls, or Trump, but these decent people have no choice but to vote for something beyond the person they want in the Oval Office.
This is pretty close to my assessment, and one I'd couch in all sorts of casuistry and pragmatics that wrestle with the difficult question of weighing more Trump against pushing for more fundamental change. Acting as though that question cannot be a difficult one is where I have trouble.
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On April 30 2020 07:55 PhoenixVoid wrote:
Decent and beloved people on the left like Bernie, Chomsky, AOC and Obama have thrown their support and votes behind Biden, reluctantly or not. There's people who are picking Biden because he proposes to preserve their healthcare, do something rather than nothing about climate change and not have the courts from top to bottom conservative-leaning for a generation.
I get that it really, really sucks that your choices are an elderly boomer who looks like he's teetering on dementia in edited bite-sized social media clips with a credible sexual assault/rape allegation who gets very handsy with women and girls, or Trump, but these decent people have no choice but to vote for something beyond the person they want in the Oval Office.
I understand, it's just the political equivalent of wishcycling imo.
On April 30 2020 08:04 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2020 07:55 PhoenixVoid wrote:
Decent and beloved people on the left like Bernie, Chomsky, AOC and Obama have thrown their support and votes behind Biden, reluctantly or not. There's people who are picking Biden because he proposes to preserve their healthcare, do something rather than nothing about climate change and not have the courts from top to bottom conservative-leaning for a generation.
I get that it really, really sucks that your choices are an elderly boomer who looks like he's teetering on dementia in edited bite-sized social media clips with a credible sexual assault/rape allegation who gets very handsy with women and girls, or Trump, but these decent people have no choice but to vote for something beyond the person they want in the Oval Office. This is pretty close to my assessment, and one I'd couch in all sorts of casuistry and pragmatics that wrestle with the difficult question of weighing more Trump against pushing for more fundamental change. Acting as though that question cannot be a difficult one is where I have trouble.
This process started for me in earnest for Obama's second term. Seeing where Democrats have gone since the soaring rhetoric of Obama's 08 campaign is disappointing.
When I found out about Obama's bombings having 9 out of 10 people killed be innocent civilians I realized things had gone too far. Now looking back more soberly it was way worse than I knew much longer than I realized.
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On April 30 2020 08:04 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2020 07:55 PhoenixVoid wrote:
Decent and beloved people on the left like Bernie, Chomsky, AOC and Obama have thrown their support and votes behind Biden, reluctantly or not. There's people who are picking Biden because he proposes to preserve their healthcare, do something rather than nothing about climate change and not have the courts from top to bottom conservative-leaning for a generation.
I get that it really, really sucks that your choices are an elderly boomer who looks like he's teetering on dementia in edited bite-sized social media clips with a credible sexual assault/rape allegation who gets very handsy with women and girls, or Trump, but these decent people have no choice but to vote for something beyond the person they want in the Oval Office. This is pretty close to my assessment, and one I'd couch in all sorts of casuistry and pragmatics that wrestle with the difficult question of weighing more Trump against pushing for more fundamental change. Acting as though that question cannot be a difficult one is where I have trouble.
I the biggest thing, in GHs response to your earlier question, is that he is equating this to morality. The politics are a byproduct of his morality and there are probably very few people that meet his standard of a moral person. Being forced to pick the lesser of two evils has always been the american election for president. And in this one, you legit have the lesser of two evils in Biden. He isn't the best and probably shouldn't have been given this moment in history, but it is what it is. You can have the institutions that are supposed to make sure your food and water are safe to consume, your working conditions be nominal, and justice be as "apolitical" as possible be torn asunder under trump, or you can get those back to working for the populace at large. But if you're basing everything on a morality scale that no one will ever meet, you're doomed to failure before beginning.
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On April 30 2020 07:57 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2020 05:22 Nebuchad wrote:On April 30 2020 04:51 Nyxisto wrote:On April 29 2020 20:35 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:On April 29 2020 11:20 RenSC2 wrote:
The GH thing is just him spouting off about how the accumulation of wealth is an addiction. Like he almost doesn't understand how wealth generates wealth and you pretty much don't have to do anything to continue to generate wealth at a certain point. Generating wealth is the path of least resistance when you're that rich or found a company that ends up being wildly successful. Given that Microsoft's biggest success is not product quality but aggressively monopolizing their position and making life impossible for every competitor, I would not categorize Gates financial rise as 'doing almost nothing'. His company actively worked to make sure they could force every person on earth to pay 100$ for every computer the last 30 years because there was no other option. There are two competing views of what constitutes good or fair economic activity. There's the extremely bazaar-like version where countless of small competitors fight for scraps of market share and then innovate because they're forced to relentlessly compete. I think Schumpeter was quite right when he pointed out that this isn't really the right equilibrium. It's more accurate to describe dynamic economies as successions of monopolistic competitors with temporary monopolies seizing a large share of a market and then reinvesting surplus profit back into long term growth. That's because relentless competition erodes profits and you end up with something like the restaurant industry. Generating large consumer surplus but without much accumulation capital to plan long term. So rather than viewing the size of a company like Amazon or Microsoft as just negative, their size is actually what makes long term advances possible. This is also another thing where the left seems to have lost their tradition in their fear of 'bigness' because this tendency towards conglomeration used to be viewed quite positively, as it was seen as a step towards replacing the 'chaos of the market', with some degree of rational planning. I increasingly find similarities between the economy and a religion. I started saying that in sort of an exaggerated way on twitter but more and more I'm starting to believe that if all these guys had been born four centuries earlier they'd be bible scholars. "Advances" is doing a lot of work in your post of course. Whether technological advances are good or bad is another topic, but Microsoft did push technological advances, and definitely no less than Apple did. Is Bill Gates a good person? I'd say most founder/CEOs of gigantic companies are inherently not good people. They may be visionaries. But they don't really seem motivated by things that we traditionally see as "good". They are very obviously very driven. Not necessarily by money, though. From documentaries and books I don't get the feeling Bill Gates was ever really interested in money. It was more a biproduct of his interest in pushing Microsoft to ever increasing heights. And in that pursuit, he did both dickish things and brilliant things. And since his retirement he has done a lot of very good things (and also still brilliant things). I think you're very wrong about "advances" being hand-wavy mumbo jumbo on par with "Jesus saves" tho.
My comment was triggered by seeing that you can now find people of authority talking about how monopolies are good, because why not. Just drop some rhetoric into the marketplace of ideas and you'll get the invisible hand to point in just about any direction your boss wants. Ended up sounding like a mix between a prosperity gospel's dude talking about christianity's love of the wealthy and Al Yankovic's Mission Statement.
I see no reason to associate the monopolistic or competitive nature of a company and their capacity to advance technologies. Neither did all the people who talked about capitalism and innovation on and on and on, here and elsewhere. I see other "advances" that a company can make once it has a monopoly, and I see why you would call those things "advances" in the middle of your argument for monopolies.
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On April 30 2020 08:06 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2020 07:55 PhoenixVoid wrote:
Decent and beloved people on the left like Bernie, Chomsky, AOC and Obama have thrown their support and votes behind Biden, reluctantly or not. There's people who are picking Biden because he proposes to preserve their healthcare, do something rather than nothing about climate change and not have the courts from top to bottom conservative-leaning for a generation.
I get that it really, really sucks that your choices are an elderly boomer who looks like he's teetering on dementia in edited bite-sized social media clips with a credible sexual assault/rape allegation who gets very handsy with women and girls, or Trump, but these decent people have no choice but to vote for something beyond the person they want in the Oval Office. I understand, it's just the political equivalent of wishcycling imo. Show nested quote +On April 30 2020 08:04 farvacola wrote:On April 30 2020 07:55 PhoenixVoid wrote:
Decent and beloved people on the left like Bernie, Chomsky, AOC and Obama have thrown their support and votes behind Biden, reluctantly or not. There's people who are picking Biden because he proposes to preserve their healthcare, do something rather than nothing about climate change and not have the courts from top to bottom conservative-leaning for a generation.
I get that it really, really sucks that your choices are an elderly boomer who looks like he's teetering on dementia in edited bite-sized social media clips with a credible sexual assault/rape allegation who gets very handsy with women and girls, or Trump, but these decent people have no choice but to vote for something beyond the person they want in the Oval Office. This is pretty close to my assessment, and one I'd couch in all sorts of casuistry and pragmatics that wrestle with the difficult question of weighing more Trump against pushing for more fundamental change. Acting as though that question cannot be a difficult one is where I have trouble. This process started for me in earnest for Obama's second term. Seeing where Democrats have gone since the soaring rhetoric of Obama's 08 campaign is disappointing. When I found out about Obama's bombings having 9 out of 10 people killed be innocent civilians I realized things had gone too far. Now looking back more soberly it was way worse than I knew much longer than I realized.
I'm totally with you, I bring up the problem that Dems have with admitting that tons of awful shit happened under Obama's deliberate watch all the time, but I still think getting Trump out is the right way to go, which is a lurking point to my inquiry in the first place.
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On April 30 2020 08:04 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2020 07:55 PhoenixVoid wrote:
Decent and beloved people on the left like Bernie, Chomsky, AOC and Obama have thrown their support and votes behind Biden, reluctantly or not. There's people who are picking Biden because he proposes to preserve their healthcare, do something rather than nothing about climate change and not have the courts from top to bottom conservative-leaning for a generation.
I get that it really, really sucks that your choices are an elderly boomer who looks like he's teetering on dementia in edited bite-sized social media clips with a credible sexual assault/rape allegation who gets very handsy with women and girls, or Trump, but these decent people have no choice but to vote for something beyond the person they want in the Oval Office. This is pretty close to my assessment, and one I'd couch in all sorts of casuistry and pragmatics that wrestle with the difficult question of weighing more Trump against pushing for more fundamental change. Acting as though that question cannot be a difficult one is where I have trouble.
I like this post.
Edit: lol sry I realize that this is low content somewhat^^
I do think it's a difficult question and I can't really blame people for being on either side, except if their arguments are bad. I will say that because it's so close, it wouldn't take too large an effort from Biden to get me on his side, and it's kind of fucked up that we have all internalized so much that the left has to surrender that the expectation of this effort is dismissed.
And yeah no one cares what I think but unless I'm following a bunch of russian bots there are a lot of Americans who would agree with this.
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EPT
