apta_

And BLM rioters didn't also attack police? Give me a break. Both extreme sides need to be dealt with.

They have to do this by the fact that Google and Apple preceded them, they don't want to appear as the bad guys.

And far right groups don't have ideological roots in the US? It's not absurd, it's history.

That didn't work out so well with ISIS did it?

You don't think the radical left is a problem that the far right is feeding off of? Then the cycle goes on. They both feed off each other.

Arabic uses derivatives of words for specific connotations.

"nusi" means "has been forgotten", "instasa" means "made to have been forgotten", but in this case it might be used for what was described in the article.

They can ban individual accounts calling for violence (which happens on both the extreme left and extreme right). But it's only socially acceptable to ban one of those, the other gets a free ride.

To me it seems obvious the feedback works in the opposite direction. Deplatforming disrupts the feedback bubbles that radicalize these people.

I think it will push them off to even more obscure platforms, and the ones that do make it there will be much more extreme and dangerous. They'll be harder to monitor as well.

At some point, a show of force might be necessary.

It's due to extreme virtue signaling, basically cancel culture. These companies have to behave alongside the social pressure or else they're going to lose revenue.

The republicans have espoused a dangerous ideology that not just allows but welcomes factual untruths and a worrying disconnect from rational thought.

As if the dems didn't do the same? Let's be honest with ourselves, both extremes are very dangerous, and polarization is continuing. The far left will kill people if left to their accord: https://cdn.cnsnews.com/styles/article_big/s3/2021-01/Arthur...

Why don't they ban people like https://cdn.cnsnews.com/styles/article_big/s3/2021-01/Arthur...

Would you disagree that they're run by heavily liberal companies though?

Check out Islam's Zakat, which has been proven to work. It's not a wealth tax per se as proposed by some foolish and unrealistic policies, but cash sitting in the bank is taxed at 2.5% (if it is above a certain threshold), and its proceedings go to the needy and poor, among others.

How is that wealth tax even supposed to work?

The only successful model that is remotely close that has been historically proven is Islam's Zakat, a form of charity tax if you will. It doesn't force you to sell shares of your company, unlike some proposals I saw by dems.

I did not see a single politician refer to Zakat in any of their proposals. Note that they'd have to get rid of income tax as well to make things just.

How much do you need to retire? $500K? $1M? $10M?

Which, to be clear, has been tried and tested in the form of gold standard and deemed not satisfactory

Deemed unsatisfactory by who? The money printers? The banks? Yes, the people who make money off of lending money, something clearly prohibited in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.

Clearly people want no part of this anymore, that's why bitcoin and other crytpocurrencies have a significant value proposition for many.

Who would get fired though? It seems that it is more likely to affect those lower in the hierarchy.

and I would wager that this doctor's clinic already makes a lot of money (2-3x that 650K) every year if not more.

Forgiving 650K is nothing to scoff at, no matter how much money is being made. God bless him for his charitable actions.

And even for credit, I am not sure interest is needed. That leads to the world devouring growth that we have.

Exactly. It's not needed. It causes a growth at all cost situation we see today (and one cost is debt slavery for a large portion of the population, increasing the wealth gap).

I'd never heard that usury rules applied to financial contracts before.

Islam prohibits something called Riba. Interest and usury fall under it, but Riba encompasses more than just loans. The example about purchasing gold on credit falls under riba for instance.

With all due respect, this is a very fallacious argument. Just because it is widespread today does not make it acceptable or good in any way or form. It does not mean that it is the cause for our advancement (association fallacy, and correlation vs. causation fallacy).

As a matter of fact, I would wager that these practices are a main driving force of the wage gap we see today, causing instability and unrest, inflation, and tons of other problems. We have better solutions, it's just that no politician I've seen so far is going to dare admit that the modern foundations are corrupt. Very powerful people are not going to be happy (note that I'm not arguing for socialism or communism either, they are destructive in their own ways).

One important thing to note is that Islam also prohibits chaining together permitted contracts, with the intention being trying to circumvent or dance around the prohibition. For example, you and I can engage in the following set of transactions: I can sell you my phone for a certain price in installments (say $120 over 12 months, and $120 is the fair market value). Then, I go back and buy back my phone from you for $100 cash. The net result is that I paid you $100 and you owe me $120 over the course of the year. This is clearly usury, and placing an item in between is just kidding ourselves.

The same applies to more elaborate schemes that involve multiple parties or transactions. For example, it is possible to engage in a futures contract with the intention of gambling (buy oil or some commodity, and never take delivery of it and sell it immediately when the contract is due). This is gambling, your intention was never to actually possess the item, but only to immediately sell and either make a loss or profit.

Short selling has several issues. Brokers usually charge a fee for the borrowed asset (stock), this fee is clearly usury/interest. Also, it creates risk with the hope of gaining money, without any corresponding value being created. Shorting exposes three parties to the risk of a stock or asset (the shorter, the original owner, and the new owner), compared to a regular trade where risk is transferred from one party to another, and no new risk is created. I found this article[0] that goes into details about the dangers of short selling (see the sections on margins and overshooting specifically). Salam sales do not have those issues.

Furthermore, goods for which the quality and quantity cannot be specified cannot be sold by Salam contracts, as per the Hadith in my previous post (e.g. gems or precious stones since each is considered different), and I've seen at least one source that also exempts stocks from being tradable in Salam contracts due to high uncertainty (called Gharar sales in Islam, also prohibited).

As far as selling Salam contracts before they are fulfilled, I do not know. What sorts of issues or benefits can result from selling such a contract before it is fulfilled?

Edit: I think it is prohibited as well, as now the buyer is selling something that he does not yet possess. So you have the same item being sold multiple times before taking delivery. This narration should be the basis of prohibition:

The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) forbade selling goods in the place where they were bought until the merchants had moved them to their own location.

Apologies for all the questions this is fascinating

No problem! I'll do my best to answer what I know.

[0] https://practicalislamicfinance.com/2020/02/17/short-selling...

It's not bad news. Because interest is parasitic (it's prohibited in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity), there are other (fair) ways to become an entrepreneur. Pitch your idea to an investor (or group of investors), and have them put money into your company. If it succeeds, everyone profits, if it doesn't, you're not left with crippling usurious debt.

So it is still a usurious loan. Nothing to see here.

In Islam, there exists a notion of a Salam sale (بيع السلم), or (advance sale). These are sales contracts in which the price is paid for goods to be delivered at a later time.

The Prophet (ﷺ) came to Medina and the people used to pay in advance the price of dates to be delivered within two or three years. He said (to them), "Whoever pays in advance the price of a thing to be delivered later should pay it for a specified measure at specified weight for a specified period."

Does that sale describe future contracts (without any other stipulations or clauses, e.g. no shorting, no leverage, etc.)?

Note that Islam places restrictions on certain sales. Currencies are to be traded hand by hand, on the spot. For example, it's impermissible to purchase gold using a credit card because the settlement does not take place immediately. So things are a bit more nuanced there, as gold and currencies cannot be bought using Salam sales for example.

As a Muslim, almost every "Shariah compliant" financing contract I came across is not compatible with Islamic Law (Shariah). Unfortunately, we're just taking modern parasitic and usurious financial contracts, and wrapping them under "Islamic" terms, and selling them as such. Any actual investigation of such contracts reveals that they're nothing but interest and usury in disguise. Islam seriously warns about this sort of behavior.

Under Islam, loans are are strictly an act of charity. There can be absolutely no contractual obligation for the lender to receive any benefit of any kind (monetary or otherwise) from the borrower in return for the loan. The borrower is encouraged to return more than the amount he borrowed, purely as a show of gratitude, but it can in no way be part of the contract, and in no way implied one way or another (like "off the record" sort of thing).

True Islamic finance is pro risk sharing, with no exploitative and parasitic practices that we see today. Want to start a business? Pitch your idea to an investor willing to put money into it, you put in the effort and he (or multiple investors) puts in the money. If the business succeeds, all parties benefit, if it fails, investors lose their money, and you lose the time and effort you put into it. Fair across the board. Zero debt.

Applying actual Islamic finance rules, we would immediately rule out things like stock shorting, put and call options, margin and leverage trading, mortgages, interest bearing loans, selling debt for debt, and so on. Now you can bet that Wall Street won't be happy, but time and time again those practices have proven destructive to the economy, and further increase the wage divide.

They seriously think "master" is a bad word? That's crazy.

(My assumption when you said "inflation" was a drop in purchasing power of a given asset, not a rise.)

I was referring to the inflation of the US dollar. That's why property, stock, bitcoin, etc. went up.

Does it have anything to do with what's going on now? https://downdetector.com/