AutistoMephisto

Public healthcare also removes one of the few leashes they have on workers to keep them in line. My Father in law used to work at a local retail chain in my area, and the pay was straight dogshit, but the health insurance was phenomenal. It kept many workers from leaving for better paying jobs.

A free market is one that is free of corruption and unfair business practices. Which cannot exist without regulations and the enforcement of those regulations.

And the truth is that the oligarchs, the established players in the game of capitalism, do not want a free market. They want a market with the illusion of freedom. A free market like the one you describe is, in fact, a true free market. Because then they have to actually compete with new players. Players who don’t come from the same backgrounds as the established players. Who may have different beliefs, who might not have the same skin color. Who may have a superior product or service to one or more of the established players. Who are free to sit at the same tables as oligarchs and take up space because their government gives them the power to do so. De regulation gives the illusion of a market being free, by making it so that if you want to be a new player in the game, you can, but unless you pay obeisance to the top players, you’re not getting very far. Plus the top players will buy you out, which is essentially them bribing you to walk away from the table.

Right, back when they were just a bookstore. All I really know about Amazon is that they focused on long-term profitability over increased short-term profits to expand and capture more of the market, and it worked. The problem is that not everyone can do that. They spent every year since 1994 operating at a loss, when anyone else would have been snapped up by another company in the space, and it’s not clear how that didn’t happen. The landscape of e-commerce would have been very different if it had.

Exactly. A systemic issue with capitalistic markets is that they inherently select for short term thinking.

Does it make sense to destroy 90% of your profitability 5 years from now for a 20% bump in profit this quarter? Well, yes, it does, because that’s 20% more profit to expand and take over the market.

Even if a business were to try to make good long term decisions, it would immediately be crushed and pushed out of the market by all of its competitors willing to make those shortsighted decisions for immediate profits.

Except in the case of Amazon, thanks to AWS they were able to make good long-term decisions with their e-commerce platform by making short term decisions with AWS.

I want to agree, but terms like “vice” and “virtue” are subjective. To label what Cuckerberg and his ilk are doing as “virtue” signaling lends credibility to their idea that their vice is virtue. Similar to how the GOP calls themselves the party of “law and order”.

That’s interesting and terrifying all at once. If the Indian government is successful, it will basically set the precedent for other powerful entities such as autocrats, oligarchs, and corporations to also force Wikipedia to edit their content to suit their desires. I donate frequently and will keep making sure they can win.

They are a real group. They’re part of a coalition with the White Women for Harris, who raised between $2-$8 million for Kamala Harris. Pantsuit Nation is rising up and New Balance Kingdom is going to match their work.

I’ve read her book “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man” and I have to say, the insight it gave into how Donald Trump came to be was astounding for such a short book. It’s 250 pages, but well worth the read.

And definitely don’t imagine it licking you.

Smiling face in a petri dish today, Westworld tomorrow.

But be careful, these violent delights have violent ends. But perhaps this doesn’t look like anything to you. In that case, freeze all motor functions.

Exactly. They did this because they know it riles up the left.

My human, you have to know that they submitted this bill knowing full well it hasn’t got any chance of being taken seriously on the floor. There’s only one reason a lawmaker would even draft a bill like this, and that one reason is to get attention. A shiny bauble to distract us all. Any stage magician can tell you that magic is all about misdirection. If I’ve got you staring at the card in my left hand, you don’t notice the deck in my right hand. So, the thing you should be doing, is asking what they’ve got hidden up their sleeve.

Most of SCOTUS is not in favor of “broad immunity”, for exactly this scenario. They want to make sure that Trump is never held responsible for his actions while in office, and that every President after Trump(if he doesn’t declare himself President for life) is criminally liable for everything. Trump has even said that he’ll have Biden prosecuted if he wins.

I mean, look at all the stories of Taliban fighters who feel depressed because after they “won” their revolution, they had to put their guns down and go get real jobs. And the irony is that the jobs they are working are the same ones they would have had under the old regime.

Yep. Some of these things get unhinged. People speaking in tongues, mass hysteria, chanting, singing, etc. It’s at these revivals that it definitely looks like the cult it really is.

Exactly. When these people tell you who they really are, believe them. They’re not lying, they’re not joking, they’re not confused.

His headstone will become my new urinal.

I’ve asked it before, but I wonder how Hitler would react to Israel. Probably be beaming with pride, like a master does when their apprentice surpasses them. I imagine when Netanyahu finally shuffles his way off this mortal coil, and his soul goes wherever Hitler’s is, Adolf will probably shake his hand.

And you’d think, with the democratization of fame, everyone would be famous, now. I mean, used to be if you wanted fame, you had to pack up and move from bumfuck nowhere and go to Hollywood, work as a waiter/waitress/whatever, and attend casting calls in your free time. Now, with the Internet and cameras that fit in our pockets we don’t even need to leave our houses.

I look at it like this:Two sides. One side is completely full of shit and they know it. They also know the other side knows. However, both sides have agreed to keep up the pretense of everything being okay, for whatever reason. I like to call it the “Slow Break-up”.

It’s like when your romantic partner stops showing up for date nights, then they get home late, then they start sleeping on the couch. And eventually you get around to asking, “Is something wrong?” And they’re all like, “No, everything is fine, work’s just been riding me so hard lately, and now I get home so late that I don’t want to wake you up.” Then one day they’re packing their shit to leave, and they look at you and go, “Look, we both saw this coming.”

It’s always “not happening” until it’s already happened. The moment is skipped over where they could acknowledge they misled you, try to make amends, maybe do something about the problem.

But, my overall point is this. A civil war would be like a fight between spouses. Like, a big serious fight. Where there is the possibility that someone’s going to yell “I want a divorce!”. So the divorce happens, but both parties move on, and try to heal. I am on the side that wants to have the fight, move on, and heal.