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Thread: The Trump Presidency

  1. Quote Originally Posted by Drewbacca View Post
    This is true. I’m not sure how libertarianism taken to an extreme would even work. It’s social nihilism I guess?

    The most diligent among us would prosper but everyone else not might be problematic. I think capitalism has largely “solved” this from a macro standpoint. I don’t know why we have to pick. Capitalism with social assistance for those hitting 0 in the game.
    I would argue that capitalism doesn't exist without government interference limiting abuses, promoting competition, and drawing resources to create infrastructure and address macro level social problems. It also doesn't exist without allowing some people to be much richer than others. The idea is just to make sure that people on the bottom are able to move up and that people on the top have to work to stay there. THAT is what capitalism is, and that can't exist in a libertarian or communist system.

    Even the notion that "diligence" or talent, or whatever would be enough to get by is naive. The end game of a totally unchecked libertarian economy is an elite oligopoly with total power over all commerce by virtue of who they are, not what they've done. I'm not really sure how that differs from a hereditary monarchy, or North Korea for that matter. The idea that the free market will just always do what's fair without anyone forcing them to is not only naive, it's blatantly contradicted by even our present reality.

    And, like I said, the only reason it exists is because people think about these issues in a binary way that doesn't reflect reality. If you point out that wealth inequality is spiralling out of control -- a real problem for capitalism that shows declining marketplace competition and declining social mobility, some people will hear that and go "Oh, you think all wealth should be equal? That's communist." And of course those aren't the two options. There's a healthy level of wealth inequality, and there's every reason to believe we are moving in the wrong direction away from that healthy middle.

    So then you get Andrew saying this is a "pushback" but it's a pushback against centrism, not an extreme, so that's sort of a bullshit stance to take. There's no consideration for where the healthy middle is, it's just a death march in the wrong direction.
    Last edited by Frogacuda; 14 Dec 2017 at 10:55 AM.

  2. Quote Originally Posted by A Robot Bit Me View Post
    It's really weird how disproportionately angry Andrew is about the gender thing. I think this has come up before, but how many times has someone actually corrected you about pronoun usage? How many times in a way other than politely?

    For me, once, and zero times. And my job is calling 19-year-olds by their names all day.
    I won't devolve this in to a gender pronoun thing, but this is a real thing up here now with the full force of the law behind it.

    Quote Originally Posted by Frogacuda View Post
    I would argue that capitalism doesn't exist without government interference limiting abuses, promoting competition, and drawing resources to create infrastructure and address macro level social problems. It also doesn't exist without allowing some people to be much richer than others. The idea is just to make sure that people on the bottom are able to move up and that people on the top have to work to stay there. THAT is what capitalism is, and that can't exist in a libertarian or communist system.

    Even the notion that "diligence" or talent, or whatever would be enough to get by is naive. The end game of a totally unchecked libertarian economy is an elite oligopoly with total power over all commerce by virtue of who they are, not what they've done. I'm not really sure how that differs from a hereditary monarchy, or North Korea for that matter. The idea that the free market will just always do what's fair without anyone forcing them to is not only naive, it's blatantly contradicted by even our present reality.
    I guess the assumption is that people are more fair than the government. But that's not the case. Power does play a factor in hierarchies (though not the primary driver, actually) and money is at least somewhat a form of power because it helps people take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves. I would reckon that regulation and watch dog's are necessary to prevent cronyism, which is the basis for families and companies locking out others.

    Net neutrality is a good example of this. The entrepreneurs who created the thing are fighting against the corporations that want to tip the market unfairly in their favour. So regulation here is needed very clearly. Though since the issue keeps coming up, I guess people against government would use that to showcase how ineffective government is.

    Quote Originally Posted by Frogacuda View Post
    So then you get Andrew saying this is a "pushback" but it's a pushback against centrism, not an extreme, so that's sort of a bullshit stance to take. There's no consideration for where the healthy middle is, it's just a death march in the wrong direction.
    Well he's talking about social push back from those sabre rattling against freedom-of-speech or due-process in law. But those people aren't the majority. They're just loud. What most people care about is the day to day and having money enough to not live with financial anxiety. That's why Trump got in. It's always the same story in politics.
    Last edited by Drewbacca; 14 Dec 2017 at 11:59 AM.
    Quote Originally Posted by rezo
    Once, a gang of fat girls threatened to beat me up for not cottoning to their advances. As they explained it to me: "guys can usually beat up girls, but we are all fat, and there are a lot of us."

  3. Quote Originally Posted by Drewbacca View Post
    I won't devolve this in to a gender pronoun thing, but this is a real thing up here now with the full force of the law behind it.
    Yeah, but a transwoman saying "Stop passive-aggressively calling me sir, asshole," is a fair thing that sometimes happens.

    But no one is like "I'm an otherkin, please stop calling me genderfluid." There's really only three things you have to concern yourself with, "male," "female," and "something else." The particulars of the latter don't really matter much, it just means they prefer to be gender-neutral.

  4. #4794
    Quote Originally Posted by Space Pirate Roberts View Post
    I for one would be a lot less enthusiastic about supporting a Democratic party that caved on abortion, and it's not even one of my top issues (although it is closely related to church-state separation, which is). We learned 70 years ago appeasement doesn't work. Remove this wedge, they'll just manufacture another one the same way they did abortion (learning that mainstream Protestants were by and large fine with it until the 70s, when a massive, concerted effort was made by clergy in cooperation with politicians to recast it as a form of murder for the express purpose of political exploitation, was a real mind-blower) and then we'll have people saying we need to capitulate on whatever that ends up being. No. That'll always be a losing strategy; as usual, the real answer is something much harder - getting people to see through wedge issue exploitation.

    Guns I'm a little less firm on, mostly because what needs to happen realistically can't, at least without major cultural shifts happening first.
    Can you actually name a time that conceding two points caused a loss? People say this shit but I can't think of a time where anyone actually tried it.

  5. We're already conceding things. He's right, anyway.

    https://www.salon.com/2016/05/17/sam...istory_lesson/

    It's harder to run on racism these days. Gotta be religion.

  6. #4796
    "Things" how specific

  7. Yeah, the list is pretty damn long.

  8. #4798
    What list?

  9. Quote Originally Posted by Frogacuda View Post
    Yeah, but a transwoman saying "Stop passive-aggressively calling me sir, asshole," is a fair thing that sometimes happens.

    But no one is like "I'm an otherkin, please stop calling me genderfluid." There's really only three things you have to concern yourself with, "male," "female," and "something else." The particulars of the latter don't really matter much, it just means they prefer to be gender-neutral.
    This isn't actually the case though. It's not male, female and other. It's male, female and 30+ others. To misgender someone (up in Canada anyway) there's a possibility that a Human Rights violation could be filed including fines, community service and all sorts of weird things. Lukcily the US has way more lax speech laws. It's much better, despite being an obvious feather in the cap of racists. The pro-pronoun team says... none of these are jail-able offences so no big deal. But what if you don't pay the fine? Uh oh. Sneaky. There's no reason why the law or any enforcement would be necessary since that's not how language works. Language evolves. We can say... don't use the term "tranny" or write in exceptions. But it's insane to have the state dictate or enforce language outside of its natural social progression. It's the difference between saying DON'T LITTER versus PICK UP ALL THE TRASH ON THE STREET YOU SEE. Compelled action is totalitarian at its roots.

    The reason these pronouns aren't being adopted is because they have a user experience and heuristics problem. There's too many, and they go so far as to mix plural with singular (they). They're just poorly conceived and executed ideas and generally where the virtue of inclusion starts corrupting in to a sin.
    Quote Originally Posted by rezo
    Once, a gang of fat girls threatened to beat me up for not cottoning to their advances. As they explained it to me: "guys can usually beat up girls, but we are all fat, and there are a lot of us."

  10. Quote Originally Posted by Drewbacca View Post
    This isn't actually the case though. It's not male, female and other. It's male, female and 30+ others. To misgender someone (up in Canada anyway) there's a possibility that a Human Rights violation could be filed including fines, community service and all sorts of weird things.
    All the bill you're talking about does is revise a 1990s anti-discrimination law to add the words "gender identity and expression" to the list of stuff against which you can't discriminate someone right alongside "colour, race, religion, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, sexual orientation." To say it sends people to jail for calling a "they" a "she" is exactly the same as saying it sends people to jail for calling a Robert "Rob" when he prefers "Bob." Here's the bill.

    Stop with this Info Wars-ass shit. Unless you're intentionally misgendering someone to needle them like Frog said, you're fine. None of this has ever affected any non-trans person at all in any way outside of internet nonsense. Of all the things to worry about, y'all are sweating going to jail over gender pronouns. Jesus.
    Last edited by A Robot Bit Me; 14 Dec 2017 at 02:07 PM.

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