Adam Smith, who is considered to be quite the capitalist, said that it is impossible to have a free market if the participants cannot choose not to participate.
Letting Doctors use the “free market” set medical prices is not only sinful, it is not justifiable by the most originalist economic theory.
Blaming doctors for insurance, pharmaceutical, and healthcare companies prices is a bit rich.
Letting capitalists into healthcare is the issue, not the fucking doctors. Shit the doctors are probably just as indebted to their student loans as their patients are to the hospitals, while getting reamed with fucked 24/36 hour shifts and overworked to the bone.
People don’t seem to understand that the entire medical profession is structured around exploitation — where they still expect you to work 80+ hour weeks back to back, often with shifts that last 18+ hours, and a few hours sleep in between.
Lumping the medical scientists/professionals with medical capitalists is class warfare.
My primary care doctor of 20+ years just quit the practice. He confided in me that it just wasn’t worth it for him to keep dealing with the crazy demands and dwindling rewards. He is one of about 150k doctors who left the profession in the last couple years.
The ACA was supposed to have a public option that would put a control on the insurance prices. Ideally the public option would be so good that the insurance industry would just wither and die.
But the health insurance industry, mainly via Joe Lieberman, made sure that was never going to happen.
Accepting a bone here and there stops many from being hungry enough to demand more. It’s the whole reason Bismarck invented State Socialism to stop the growing threat of leftist ideas.
It was meant to be the first step in a progression that would have led to universal healthcare. Unfortunately, America figured out how to maim it and halt progress. In fact, America figured out how to regress in so many ways, not just in the arena of healthcare.
Only America can fail as hard and fast as America once succeeded.
Jmho. As a political party you need a platform, as far as I can tell No Labels platform is “can’t we all just get along?”
Also their members make up a who’s who of keeping actual legislation from happening, starting with Joe Lieberman for removing a single pair option from the ACA. Rumor has it they have courted Kristen Simena and Joe’s manchin.
Also Harland Crowe is rumored to be a big funder, as far as I’m concerned these people represent money and nothing else.
Unfortunately Capitalism by its very nature abhors a free market. Free markets mean more competition, which means less profits. Which is counter to the ideology of capitalism, that being higher profits mean success.
How can a power company realistically be compelled to provide power, in an emergency? They cannot guarantee that any more than a police officer can guarantee their ability to protect you.
Such a law could only be there to create scapegoats for politicians to hang after they botch the response to a natural disaster or some minor event that significantly disrupts power distribution.
IMO it should be less about compelling them during an emergency as ensuring adequate disaster preparation and grid stability well before an emergency. Not much to do once the damage is already done other than figure out how to ensure it won’t happen again.
Friendly reminder about the event in question: the temperature wasn’t even THAT cold (minimum 0F IIRC). Much of the world deals with ice storms and freezing temperatures without the entire grid failing. I understand a state that deals with heat more than cold being less prepared for ice, but the lesson should need to be learned only once.
Of course, the problem as well as the solution was already recognized - distributed systems to provide redundancy. That would require being regulated nationally, which is far worse for them than some people dying.
SLOs and SLAs are a thing. And yes, they do and can guarantee power to enterprises that pay for it. So it’s not a matter of “if” but, like all things Texans, “how much”.
Power companies don’t make grids its the independent operator, in Texas’ case ERCOT, who reported on this potentiality many times but did not receive direction to require facilities to cold proof their gas infrastructure or mediate the risk through gas storage etc. The power companies can’t be held liable for what wasn’t required of them and the regulator can’t because they publicized the risk and recommended it. Ultimately it’s the government at fault.
This is the same for other jurisdictions as well, it’s just that emergency situations will be investigated. The northeast blackout is another use case in North America and it happened in August so things were much different. We’ve had ice storms that took out transmission infrastructure too. Ultimately the regulator in Texas case actually reported on these risks and recommended changes to regulations.
As one of those people who is stuck in the system I can’t correct: I agree.
I had to shit in grocery bags for a week because my toilet was frozen solid. But the blame only partly lies on the power companies. The vast majority of the blame lies on the regulatory agency who had the opportunity to require winterized gear for power plants… And repeatedly refused to do so.
Companies will always choose the cheapest option for whatever market they’re in. And winterizing all your gear is expensive when compared to… Well… Not. Could they have taken the initiative and winterized anyways? Absolutely. But if there’s one thing humans are generally really really bad at, it’s emergency preparedness. Because nobody wants to spend a ton of money building an earthquake-resistant home until after they experience their first earthquake. But that’s why building codes exist, to ensure everyone is forced to build to a minimum safe standard. To use this same metaphor, the building codes didn’t require winterized gear, so the companies didn’t build winterized gear. The fault primarily lies with the people who wrote the building codes, while knowing full well that the area could and would experience winter weather.
ERCOT is the regulatory agency that set those standards, and ERCOT is the agency that refused to require winterized gear. It wouldn’t be fair to penalize the power companies for failing to provide power, when ERCOT should have ensured their facilities were adequately prepared. It would also set a weird precedent to require companies to provide something in a disaster. Yes, they’re utility companies, and are subject to more regulation than most. But does this also mean they could be penalized for downed power lines during a tornado, or for blown transformers during a hurricane flood in Houston?
Right, but also power delivery shouldn’t be privatized at all. Sure the energy providers might not technically be at fault, but having a corporate middle man providing an essential service is ridiculous. We shouldn’t be talking about electricity providers as corporate entities at all. But you are still technically correct
God is the dickhead that puts a dangerous tree in the garden despite knowing exactly what’s going to happen. God is the asshole that wipes out everyone (even the animals) except one drunkard and his family because God apparently fucked up again. God is the one who creates a place of infinite punishment for finite crimes.
Wrong. It’s not satan but the serpent. BUT even so the serpent is the one that tells the truth in the story.
God lies, saying Adam will die if he eats from the tree. The serpent says he’ll gain knowledge of right and wrong. Again, God is always the asshole in the stories.
Nevermind the fact that he punishes his children for eating a fruit from the fucking tree he put in the middle of the garden and said DON’T TOUCH!
Wealth disparity is not relevant to this discussion. It doesn’t say anything about where the bottom tier is.
If we had full UBI, free homes, free food, free healthcare, etc and some small portion of the country were quadrillionaires, we’d have massive wealth disparity and no loss of quality of life.
Wealth is not zero-sum, and the high and low do not necessarily have anything to do with one another.
Bruh, not to shit out an old conservative adage, but that money has to come from somewhere. You’re missing the entire nuances of how the monetary system works, and the whole argument of where the money should come from for these things. A country where wealth disparity is increased because the tax comes from the middle class looks very different from one where it comes from the upper classes and massive corporations.
A country where wealth disparity is increased because the tax comes from the middle class
This also has nothing to do with the money disparity.
Like, I agree with you regarding taxation in broad terms. But the objective reality is the wealth disparity does not have any impact, on its own, on anyone’s individual well-being, the same way me acknowledging that it doesn’t has no bearing on whether or not wealthy people should pay more taxes.
If we cannot discuss things in a real world framework, were basically just writing fan-fiction of reality. That is a MAGA way to create policy, not a real world methodology.
The way you’re trying to frame this is magical thinking where wealth disparity within our society doesn’t come with sets of nuanced issues that don’t directly effect the wellbeing of society as a whole. After a certain rate of wealth disparity, for instance, those with the most can directly control those with the least with any number of creative ways that mostly amount to “I have money so I can buy people.”
From controlling government officials, to controlling individual level situations like law enforcement and judiciary measures so that they can essentially do whatever they want, which is never used for the betterment of others and always to the detriment of the masses. To leave these things out of a conversation about wealth disparity and quality of life is just disingenuous man.
The way you’re trying to frame this is magical thinking where wealth disparity within our society doesn’t come with sets of nuanced issues that don’t directly effect the wellbeing of society as a whole.
This isn’t magical thinking, it’s simply understanding that wealth is not zero-sum.
From controlling government officials, to controlling individual level situations like law enforcement and judiciary measures so that they can essentially do whatever they want, which is never used for the betterment of others and always to the detriment of the masses.
This is indeed bad, but is a measure of the strength of institutions, not wealth disparity. Wealth doesnt win elections on its own - 2012, 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 all featured out-spent candidates who won. Trump famously won despite being outspent handily in 2016
I’m genuinely flabbergasted that some people perceive this as some sort of hot take and not just acknowledging the reality at play here.
The rich people who go on TV and say “people don’t want to work for me anymore, that’s why we need to cut benefits” certainly see wealth as zero-sum. They know if we had all those things you listed their business would stop working.
Also this is a question of incentives, not wealth. They believe people who get benefits are incentivized not to work. This has been proven soundly false in recent tests of UBI.
Politicians serve their constituents - they consistently vote in the way their constituents want, and in the last 6 years the Republican Party has been turned inside out by those constituents.
It’s impossible to argue otherwise in the face of the very real power people wield, from primarying their representatives to taking over local school boards.
We can invent billions of dollars to give away during the pandemic, and billions more to give Israel to continue its genocide against Palestinians, but solving student debt or homelessness or universal health care? We don’t have enough money for that!
Nothing. It has everything to do with your comment. This isn’t a “both sides” moment. It may have been in the past but Israel is commiting war crimes at a breathtaking pace now.
Oy. Arguing with nihilists is about as useful as pissing into a black hole. You’ll just get your dick turned into spaghetti for the effort, so why bother?
All I care about is that people can see what kind of mentality pairs with rhetoric like, “They control us!” It’s not a productive, insightful perspective that speaks helplessness into themselves and others.
Because the government has on multiple occasions during my lifetime refused to consider measures with over 90% popular support.
Because they do not serve us as it is written in the Constitution. They serve the wealthy, they bend and scrape and lick their boots, never hold them accountable to the law, and never. Ever. Act against their best interest in any scenario. And the wealthy benefit from the social safety net having a big hole above a pit trap their workers are afraid to fall into.
Our leaders serve the people making noise at the bargaining table. We the people have the most power. We just leave after the first victory. We don’t become educated voters and choose to instead focus on exciting narratives. Elite interests try to affect change and so focus on reality. We the people seem to be after catharsis and so focus on symbolic victories.
But what can you expect from people who constantly tell themselves they have no power? No agency? They don’t conceptualize themselves as being able to affect change and it colors everything they do.
You’re judging the majority of the population without questioning why we feel powerless. The vast majority of news, media, and education we encounter support our oppression.
Just because you’ve been lucky enough to hear the truth and been in the right place emotionally to hear it doesn’t mean you should write everyone who is ignorant as morally inferior.
I’m not judging, I’m curious about why people say this stuff. The way we talk is intimately tied with results. Changing rhetoric is a big step in getting girls to conceptualize themselves as capable of “boy” things. “Chess is for boys.” isn’t just a phrase, it’s like a spell that alters reality. If people can understand how words have power when it comes to women’s opportunites, or minorities taking interest in voting, then they’ll eventually understand that it affects our agency too.
Considering the military budget is now up to 1.2 trillion a year and we pay for other country’s wars, the government clearly exists to make warmongers wealthier.
Homeowners pulling the ladder up after them is the single largest driver of our housing crisis. You literally cannot build more housing in the areas we most need it, due to regulations pushed for, and at times written by, local homeowners.
Yes. They didn’t even start doing that until the investment became worth it.
NIMBYism is the cause of this problem. We need to build for density, change property tax laws where they’ve been rigged, and encourage building wherever possible.
I said it in another post but these are the actual Death Panels Sarah Palin ‘fabricated’ (since hers was a huge lie). The government is actually standing between a person who needs care and their doctor.
Yup, nobody in the office except the doctor, the patient, whomever the patient trusts enough to authorize their presence, and about 20 people working at an insurance company whom the patient has never met.
Because it’s about controlling women. If a women has a miscarriage or the baby is nonviable in any way the woman must have done something to cause it. So she must be punished, if not legally, than medically. Just look at what’s happening to women that have miscarriages in Ohio. (a state that just enshrined the right to an abortion by popular vote but it’s still controlled by the GOP.) If you live in a read state and are pregnant, leave the state asap. Your life and your babies life is in danger even if you have a pregnancy with no complications.
I agree, but please add the father in there. Not trying to derail the conversation, but he is losing his child too and the woman he loves’s life is on the line. We do need to start remembering to respect partners during these types of events.
The US implementation of University Education is prone to scams.
The actual concept of higher education to train people to have certain highly complex expertises necessary for high value added industries is not a scam, as the facts on the ground make clear: it’s not by chance that even in the ultra-Capitalist United States companies in advanced areas such as Tech hire lots of university graduates with degrees applicable for those areas, rather than go for the much more abundant and hence cheaper people with just high-school which would yield them bigger profits if the university degrees in those areas did not justify the higher cost of hiring those with such degrees (in fact you’ll notice them trying to contain manpower costs by hiring foreigners with such degrees, but not by hiring high-school graduates)
Ultimatelly your own educational choice was good or bad depending on which university degrees were available in the area for which you have a knack (and indeed in certain areas there really is no point in higher education) and how much would it would cost you: many degrees are effectivelly worthless, many more are not worth the cost in work-experience years lost whilst taking that degree and quite a lot are not worth the monetary cost charged by US universities for them, but some are still worth it even at the ridiculously high cost of getting a degree in the US.
In summary, if you meant that all higher education is a scam, that’s a ridiculous generaliszation that goes against observable reality, but if you meant that some (maybe even most) university education in the US is a scam, I agree with you.
Well, in that sense I was lucky to have been born in a Western nation where society values Education highly and were the State actually serves people not “business” (at least back then, it’s worse now) so all I had to do was have high enough grades in the relevant areas in high-school and in my Physics and Maths entrance exams to get 5 years of Science and Engineering higher education pretty much for free.
I suspect that, given my low income origins, had I been born in the US or even UK (were universities are also expensive and access is nowhere as meritocratic as my own country), given my natural propention the top range of my professional qualifications would’ve ended up as Car Mechanic or maybe Hacker, rather than Engineer.
I wish it was more like that everywhere: people should all have the opportunity to be all they can be.
I ended up involved in a leftwing political party when I lived in the UK because I concluded that local kids with the same kind of origin and skills like me over there had nowhere the same opportunities I was lucky to have, whilst the well-connected children of the upper classes had a veritable red-carpet all their lifes, no merit whatsoever required - and that shit really goes against all my principles when it comes to fairness.
Mind you, Hell would freeze over before a party following the principle of Equal Opportunity got power in the UK, so me putting some effort into helping a small leftwing party there was hopeless from the start, but I did it anyway.
Colleges don’t have external investors or are technically “owned” in the same way a business is. But they do functionally operate in the same way as profit based institutions. This is because the people who run them understand that industry connections can be immensely profitable. You help fudge some numbers or put out dubious research backing a particular industry and you might find yourself in a position in which you get paid to “consult” for those companies later on.
Harvard is where they got caught taking money from the sugar lobby and put out a paper pointing away from sugar as a leading cause of heart disease and towards saturated fat. This changed health policy in America, killing who knows how many.
Harvard has deserved no credibility for longer than we’ve been alive.
I thought this guy was supposed to be right wing? Doesn’t he like the free market? Because, I mean, the alternative is regulation. We could make antisemitism illegal, but in the west we have largely decided that we will instead rely on free market forces (read: public shaming) to root that shit out.
It’s almost as if… and this might sound crazy, but hear me out… it’s almost as if this guy wants the advantages of capitalism, but none of its disadvantages?
There’s only two ways to make money: suckle at the teet of government (because the government prints the money), or bilk customers. Musk started all of his companies using the first method and has now has moved onto the second in many of his companies.
When I mentioned communism and socialism I was pointing to the mischaracterization of capitalism. Capitalism is just the free and open market and when companies collude together to manipulate the market that’s not capitalism. Capitalism has built in rules against market manipulation and monopolies unfortunately that requires the government to do it’s job to enforce it, which it’s been doing a piss poor job of.
Unfortunately when you involve the government it’s always a matter of threat. But, the government involvement should stop at making sure everyone is playing a far equal and fair game.
Did I misunderstand, but you said you want the government to stop from intervening and making sure everyone plays and equal and fair game? This would mean you condone these companies from banding together.
What evidence is there that the companies are colluding? Are there communication logs where they all conversed and decided to pull ads? Is there any evidence at all that the companies had any interaction with each other about this and made a unifying decision to cancel their ads?
Collusion requires entities to work together to achieve a mutual goal. Otherwise, it’s just a coincidence of timing.
What past events with which companies?
And who is this “we” you’re referring to? Do you have a mouse in your pocket?
So far you’ve admitted to speculating on ethereal events and are using that as your basis for claiming foul play while providing no evidence for any of it.
There has been multiple government hearings with Facebook, Apple, Google involving collusion. Also, look at the targeted takedown of Parlor by Amazon, Google, and Apple when it was a threat to the old twitter.
Did any of those hearings end with a conclusion and solid evidence of collusion? How many of those companies or executives at those companies got convicted of market manipulation or conspiracy, or even charged?
Once again you are pointing to multiple independent companies, who are each other’s direct competitors, doing something at the same time and attributing that to collusion when there is no evidence for that at all. Is it that hard to imagine that multiple companies would decide at the same time to stop offering an app that harms their brand? Especially when those companies were getting heat because Parlor was used to organize the Insurrection and had many calls for violence? Also, are you now claiming that they previously colluded in support of Twitter but are now colluding against it?
You seem to have a tenuous grasp on…well, everything, but certainly reality. Companies do what they think will make them the most money. If all three thought that having Parlor on their app store, or ads on Twitter next to neonazis would make them less money than not doing those things, they would decide not to do them. It’s really really basic stuff.
Parlor and Facebook more so Facebook was use to organize the protest but Facebook didn’t receive the same action against them. Yes you’re right that I’m all over the place putting all those companies together. All that has happened in each of their hearings was finger wagging and back door talking to show further evidence, which didn’t amount to anything in the public eye.
Facebook faced a ton of backlash for it and only stayed around because they are big enough that companies thought they’d lose more money by not offering their app then they’d lose by offering it. Also, as bad as Facebook moderation is, they were actively removing posts and banning users for things they said about J6 (odd to call it a protest but ok), which Parlor was refusing to do until after they were removed from the app stores. Parlor wanted to be all about free speech (hmmm just like Twitter now says they want to be) and refused to moderate the calls for violence until they were forced to by the big three, which led a lot of users to be angry at them and leave for other free speech platforms even less moderate than FB or Parlor.
So, are you saying you don’t have any evidence they colluded in the past, and no evidence that they colluded now, but are still believing it?
The fact that it requires a free and open market are the rules and since it’s a component of the government the government has to make sure the system is free and open.
No, capitalism is a component of the government. The point is to get the government out of twitter which records have shown the government was in twitter prior to Elon’s takeover.
??? The spring mechanism is apart of how a gun functions but the spring isn’t the gun it’s just a part of it. That’s no different from the bullet. We’ve gotten completely sidetracked of the main point.
You’re just not following the my metaphor. Perhaps it was a bad metaphor on my part. Let me try without it. This will be a bit long.
The economic system does not affect the government. The government effects the economic system.
Capitalism is an economic system. The government can then choose many different ways to approach capitalism.
It can be state-run authoritarian capitalism as is the case with China in their designated trade zones.
It can be totally laissez-faire, as in Randian fiction (or my favorite take on it, the book Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits), allowing the market to dictate all growth
It generally is somewhere in between, with the state sometimes intervening in more or less extreme ways but generally just policing the system for health and safety reasons.
Capitalism, however, is not inherent to the government’s operations. A capitalist economy can change into a socialist economy, or a mercantile economy, and the government not change. The UK went from mercantilism to capitalism without a significant change in their governance, as a very notable example.
Okay i get what you’re saying but my point wasn’t to say that capitalism controls the government but to say that we need the government to enforce any functioning economic system. If we’re having an issue in a system that’s functioning well for the must part but has some rough edges we need the government to smooth out those edges instead of throwing out a mostly working system over ones that have been proven throughout history to lead to corruption and death.
I looked up and provided the wikipedia article purely for your benefit so you could know which (informal) fallacy your tired, trash argument falls under.
This is the same way that a (straw man) communist would argue: “it wasn’t true communism, we still haven’t tried true communism” based upon whatever ideal definition they have in their (fictitious, straw man) head.
I don’t even have to know the content of the argument when it’s couched in rhetoric like this to know that it’s a warmed over brick of dog shit.
No, capitalism is capitalism I’m not saying there’s a better version of it out there and that we haven’t tried it yet what I’m saying is that the government is in bed with a lot of these companies and because of that what we currently have is being poorly managed
what I’m saying is that the government is in bed with a lot of these companies
Which you’re trying to say is not capitalism…but that’s capitalism.
We didn’t switch to socialism or some other economic system because we’ve, in your words, “poorly managed” our economic system. It’s still capitalism we’re running even if it’s in your opinion “poorly managed”.
Venezuela wasn’t socialist until it became socialist. I’m simply pointing out the country is moving in a bad direction. Before there was a balanced government and capitalist system now it’s less so.
You’re trying to say that corporations all boycotting a POS social platform’s ad buys at the same time is some form of “corporate communism” but you’re too much of a weasel to say it outright because you know that it’s empty rhetoric akin to something that would dribble out of Boebert’s or MTG’s lips and will be straightforwardly recognized as such by the audience here.
lol, good one. But actions speak louder that words and from Disney to Apple, they all have board members and shareholders looking for a collective ownership of property and by the organization of labor for the common advantage of all members cough, cough, communism.
The last sentence came from the definition of communism all be it not the shareholders and board members part, but it sure fit in there like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle. 😁
It doesn’t fit at all actually. The post is nearly incoherent. You’ve just mixed the two concepts together in a way that demonstrates that you understand neither one.
If you weren’t the type of poster you are, I would feel bad about pointing out your ignorance…because I believe just about everyone can learn, and throwing out insults doesn’t really do anything to help people inform themselves. But with you I don’t feel particularly bad because in order to be capable of learning about something you have to first understand at some level that you’re ignorant about it.
Nah, I’m all good. You’re one of the new school of brainwormed weirdos…the Stephen Crowder “debate me” types who want to have bad faith discussions about everything to prove that they’re the alpha or something.
If you want to get enlightened, go read a book or even a magazine instead of another million social media posts or watching umpteen hours of brain dead YouTubers.
No, American is capitalistic and within that system exists things like corporations. Corporations don’t always benefit a capitalist society for instance if a corporation tries to buy output isn’t competition, make it harder for competitors, and manipulate prices to undercut competitors.
Edit: also corporations being able to lobby against the American voters such how Disney threatened to do in Florida.
Edit: also corporations being able to lobby against the American voters such how Disney threatened to do in Florida.
Lol, is this really your example? Dinsney’s little spat with Ron DeMeatball? No mention Monsanto, or American Dairy, or Facebook, or Exxon, or any number of other companies *successfully * lobbying the government against regulation?
I’m not a doctor, but just based on your stance toward Musk and this example I’d diagnose you with neoliberal brain rot. You should get that looked at.
First my point was to prove Elon had a point that most, not all, corporations are bad and out to get him. We ended up on different economic systems and their associations to government and business. Finally you proved my point that some corporations are bad, so in my opinion these companies that have it out for Elon, Rumble, and other free speech platforms should be looked at for the real reason for them pulling ads in a colluding manner.
We ended up on different economic systems and their associations to government and business.
A subject which you appear to know absolutely nothing about but are insisting upon making the main topic of discussion despite it having precisely nothing to do with anything. In even socialist wannabe countries the state runs the businesses. Everything you’re whining about outside of the Elon talking points is the exact opposite way around (i.e. business is running the state). You know what that is much closer to? Fascism friendo.
Elon isn’t a government entity. He runs Xitter, a disgraced (by him) formerly relevant social media platform. The economic system and its governmental associations have fuck all to do with which company places ads on another company’s website. You’re just so horned up for a nice red scare debate that you’ve hurt yourself in your confusion like a fucking Pokemon.
I think you might be having difficulty grasping the idea that people have marketing budgets and if say the ceo of a company you advertise on very publicly endorses hate speech it does create a brand management problem.
You want your products to not be associated with things like, say, racism, which are kind of “yucky” to a lot of people.
As a result you might refocus spending. If a bunch of people do this at once this doesn’t mean there’s collusion. For example, during a thunderstorm you might see less people outside. This isn’t because they all colluding - people don’t like being struck by lightning. Similarly, companies don’t want their brands to be “yucky” to the average consumer and often its just a matter of moving the ad spending to another platform without the baggage.
You could ONLY limit this effect by banning advertising entirely.
Yes you’re right about public image and a company wanting to preserve it. And I might be a little hyperbolic about what I’m saying. But really if it was just public image along with their ads, they would delete/(stop using) all of their accounts to show that they didn’t want anything to do with Twitter as long as they had hateful content on there.
That doesn’t follow. Diverting ad spending is very different than closing feedback channels. For one, its likely to be handled by different departments in most companies and marketing budgets are likely to be far higher and more contentious than like micromanaging a social media handler.
Really? Because I’ve been repeatedly told by libertarian types (not socialists or communists) that any government regulation is not capitalism.
You’re free to disagree with them, but then I’m going to ask what your definition of capitalism is that assumes this regulation (not just allowing it, but mandating it).
No matter the system you need some level of regulation otherwise it’s just anarchy. What you want is a balanced regulation that not overbearing and keeps thing running smoothly.
. Because I’ve been repeatedly told by libertarian types (not socialists or communists) that any government regulation is not capitalism
Found your problem. That’s like asking flat earthers about gravity. They may think it exists but their concept of it is a fiction meant to align to their worldview.
In this context if they disagree so much they should just leave the platform and then it would fall under capitalism. What they want is to stay on the platform and dictate how it should be run and if they don’t get their way they make threats and ultimatums, which is a form of manipulation, I.e anti-capitalism.
It’s not manipulation to say “we’re leaving because you did this thing and won’t be back until you don’t do this thing.” This is simply the market forces articulating their preferences.
If I stop buying a company’s products because I disagree with the direction it’s going, I am voting with my wallet, not manipulating the company.
Yes vote with your wallet and leave, but don’t bring up false information to try and get others to leave, don’t use subsidiary companies, you own to lie and badmouth, when you leaving didn’t change the companies stance.
Media Matters stated that ads were showing up beside questionable content, which was proven to be them gaming the system to get that to happen. Disney, Amazon, Paramount owns a large amount of media companies that are smearing the website.
Yes, I don’t disagree my point is there are people that go farther then just voting with there wallet and try to smear other/companies to get what they want.
I just don’t see this happening based on your above claims.
More to the point, I don’t see a motive or purpose behind doing this. X is not a competitor for them. It makes no sense for them to try to manipulate the market against X.
It’s a tool that they could use and were using to manipulate the American people. Because of a lawsuit with HBO Max it has come to light that the CEO was forcing their interns to make fake Twitter post to shut up their dissenters.
Sorry, I am doing this to my phone. The point is they benefit from Twitter going back to before Elon Musk where they could police one side and not the other and control what was available
Example: if a Disney movie comes out that’s ^a^ hot mess Disney could call up one of their points of contact at old twitter to hide, shadow ban, or alternative the likes. Which did happen with the Marvel movie and rotten tomatoes. No that no longer possible at X.
There are less insiders working with these companies, X is trying to be neutral, and is trying not to be beholden to outside forces so I would have to disagree with you.
By following those questionable feeds, and just those feeds on a brand new account until they were able to get ads to show up along with those feeds and then state that it’s always showing up beside those feeds
Yes, so they were able to get them to show up then. That means there are not mechanisms in place at Twitter that would prevent those ads from showing up next to Nazi posts. Which means the companies absolutely had a reason to pull ad funding. If you owned a company and were spending millions on ads, would you be ok knowing that it’s possible your ad shows up next to Nazi posts or Holocaust denial? Would it matter that it doesn’t happen most of the time? If it’s possible then Twitter has massively dropped the ball.
Where in the article do they say those ads “always” show up beside Nazi posts? They outlined their methods, and showed screenshots for proof. Even the CEO confirmed that those ads did show up next to Nazi posts, she just claimed it didn’t happen often. Media matters never claimed they happened all the time with every ad. If you had above a 5th grade reading level or had read the original article you’d know better.
With or without people monitoring twitter you’re still get that type of content on any platform. You can only reduce the chance never completely stop. The point is you would have to be in those groups following those feeds to see that content.(allegedly) If it took Media Matters having to follow those groups for hours and then following Disney or any other company to show that, then twitter is working to make it harder for that to happen. If this is about a company’s image, even if a Nazi account would happen to see ads in their feed unless they were out her telling you, you would be none the wiser. I highly doubt if they did the same thing on any other left lining platform that towed the line, would there be the same reaction?
There would be the same reaction if FB or Instagram or any other big platform was found to be allowing ads next to objectionable content (content the company in the ads would not want associated with their brand) AND that platform said that it wasn’t an issue, they won’t change policies to prevent it, and told them to go fuck themselves.
Twitter could absolutely have filters in place to prevent ads from showing up next to literal Nazi posts with a simple word list. The posts Media Matters showed were not subtle or underhanded, they were saying the quiet parts out loud. It would be trivial to prevent ads entirely from those posts, but then they’d lose ad space. It would mean less if this had happened with borderline posts or posts using coded language.
That isn’t gaming the system. That means they if someone follows mostly far right accounts, they’ll see the ads show up next to far right content.
If they make no effort to deprioritize Nazi content or treat it differently, then ads will run with that content. They have to purposely sandbag that content so it doesn’t appear.
Honestly, the methodology here just confirms the argument. If someone is following mostly Nazis, they’ll be suggested content that is mostly Nazis, and ads are going to run alongside it. I suspect that’s not a negligible share of the accounts.
Collusion implies the advertising clientele of Twitter conferred with each other, implicitly or explicitly, and decided to stop paying to advertise there in concert. That, more than likely, didn’t happen.
I simply made a claim to why something is happening whether or not is true is yet to be proven but that doesn’t mean it’s not a possibility. These companies want a hand in how the company is run and if they’re not getting what they want them calling each other up to coordinate an ads pull is a tool in their toolbox.
Let’s see how the strategy of ignoring calls from your base a year before a contested election that your opponent polls higher in key states works out for them. It feels like the DNC is trying to lose in 2024 right now.
It feels like the DNC is trying to lose in 2024 right now.
And this is new, how? It feels like they’re trying to throw every election. They never even bother to call out Republicans on their shenanigans and they spend a lot of time being like “We know the fascists passed these very fascist laws, but everything falls apart if we don’t take the obviously fascist laws they passed with the seriousness they deserve by enforcing those fascist laws. We have to play by these rules they’ve set that benefit them and harm us, because if we did that, it would be unfair and undemocratic.” (Conveniently ignores Republicans being unfair and undemocratic.)
Ehh. It’s more like… what other choice do you have? Don’t gotta outrun the bear…just the GOP.
This is why we need ranked choice voting.
Anyone who’s even brushed the surface of game theory knows fptp is the easiest to manipulate and a race to the bottom.
Sweetie, we’ve already established the gridlock of ‘lesser evil.’ All democrats have to do to win is be slightly less worse than the republicans, which is incredibly easy.
Yeah, like how Hillary would have given massive tax cuts to the rich, ended Roe v. Wade with three extremist SCOTUS judges, and instigated a riot when she lost the election. Just as bad.
No she wasn’t. She would have been slightly less worse for the US only… for the rest of the planet, having a buffoon that was incompetent at neocolonialism was somewhat less worse.
Except that right now Trump polls higher than Biden nearly across the board in the battleground states. You’d like to think it should be an easy victory against someone with multiple ongoing criminal court cases, but Biden is just that bad of a candidate.
The New York Times/Siena College polls of 3,662 registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were conducted in English and Spanish on cellular and landline telephones from Oct. 22 to Nov. 3, 2023. When all states are joined together, the margin of sampling error is plus or minus 1.8 percentage points for all registered voters and plus or minus 2 percentage points for the likely electorate.
It wasn’t just landlines because they know that’s bad polling.
How many younger people answer unknown calls on their phone? I’m 46 and I don’t do that. And if I got a voicemail saying they wanted me to take a poll and to call them back, I would assume it was a scam.
Well, you don’t have to guess because that’s part of the statistics as well. 40% of the people polled were 44 and under. Also, they weighted the poll to help account for age. It’s not like professional pollsters and statisticians don’t know how to account for these sorts of things.
I know it’s scary that if the election were held today, Trump would have a very real chance at winning, but that’s the reality we live in. And right now, it is because Biden is such a weak candidate. A lot can change in 1 year. I hope that when it comes down to it, people will do the right thing and not vote for the insurrectionist. However, we have no reason to believe they will.
That doesn’t mean it represents what those people think, it means that they chose a group out of the 40% of people under that age who would answer their phones when an unknown caller calls them to poll them.
Maybe the poll is accurate, but I am very dubious of any telephone poll’s accuracy at this point because so many people simply will not respond to an unknown caller.
Focus group polling might be more accurate because you can pick the demographics ahead of time, but I don’t know.
Be skeptical, that’s okay. Polling is never exact. It is good at giving you trends, and right now, the trends are not good. As someone from Wisconsin, I’ve seen firsthand that running a weak candidate and assuming they will do well can cost you the election. Ron Johnson has literally spent a July 4th in Moscow, he had fake electorates in hands ready to over turn the election. Mandela Barnes initially polled well against him, but his numbers degraded because he ran such a weak campaign. Barnes lost that election, yet we voted for the democratic governor. Barnes was such a weak candidate that enough people voted a split ticket to re-elect Johnson.
The point of the story is don’t just stick your head in the sand and make up excuses about polls.
Edit: Also 40% is 1465, which is a good sample size.
Oh no, I wouldn’t do that regardless of the polls. I have no intention of listening to polls when it comes to stopping Trump from getting in whether they’re good news, bad news, believable or unbelievable.
I just find this particular poll and similar polls to be dubious for the reason I said. But I am also not a statistician.
Let’s see how the strategy of ignoring calls from your base a year before a contested election that your opponent polls higher in key states works out for them. It feels like the DNC is trying to lose in 2024 right now.
the "vote for the lesser evil" crowd are an overwhelming majority and, they not only don't care that dems don't deserve your vote; but will use that overwhelming majority voice to blame you for enabling trump.
I think the crowd of apathetic voters is much larger than the “lesser evil” crowd. But the lesser evil crowd sends their hate towards third party voters rather than the apathetic.
Okay, but the fact is there are only two viable choices and every vote that isn’t for Biden supports and enables Trump. That is true despite Biden being terrible. And he’s nowhere near as terrible as Trump. Read about Project 2025. People need to know about it. That is what Trump wants.
This election there actually could be 3 viable candidates. Both major parties have such awful candidates that RFK Jr is polling the highest a 3rd party candidate has in a very long time. They show Biden and Trump both in the 30s percentile wise and RFK Jr at 24%. The “protest vote” seems to get stronger and stronger.
Not the case here. This person was posting photos of local minors to pornographic websites and writing sex fantasy fiction about local residents (including one where he stalks and murders a local businesswoman, seduces her husband, and steals her life).
I agree with what you’re going for here. It just doesn’t apply here. There’s a whole rabbit hole to go down before coming to any conclusions about this one.
Could make the same comment about Islam and suicide bombers. As it’s easy to do with the two largest religions in the world to paint them with the same brush.
My grandpa had a pig heart valve, and that thing lasted way longer than its warranty suggested. Yeah, he was told up front it would last ten years, but he got more out of it.
news
Top
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.