boredpeter

I take issue with "the lack of large scale human rights abuses."

Are you ignorant or just deliberately ignoring the genocide of the Palestinian people with an estimated 680,000 dead (~30% of Gaza) that occurred with widespread support of almost every western democracy?

China may be an authoritarian state but I would argue their large scale human rights abuses are far tamer than what these so called western democracies have been doing for the past 2 years and the direction we're headed.

It’s not propaganda, Noam Chomsky wrote a book about how media is used to advance otherwise unpopular government policies decades ago and the NYT is mentioned in it. If anything this post is propaganda.

With the TikTok ban and now this idiotic bill we’re seeing the beginning of a censored US internet.

And is car dependency not a tax on the poor as well? If the government only builds car-based infrastructure that requires a car then that is a tax on everyone is it not?

Isn’t the whole point of the 30% apple tax to make sure their App Store isn’t full of garbage?

Why can a lower limit on age to participate in elections be constitutional but an upper limit not? You need to be 18 to vote and 35 to be president but we can’t legislate an upper age limit on running for office?

Not only that but also lobby the government to start more wars so there’s a need for their product.

https://x.com/snmrrw/status/1717906441925751223

False. The message is the US government doesn’t want Americans to freely speak out against American foreign policy such as the current genocide against the Palestinians.

They want US citizens to communicate on US platforms where they do have influence and control so they can censor speech and continue the capitalist forever wars.

Owning a home is a goal because the alternative is lifetime wage slavery to fund a landlord’s lavish lifestyle.

People don’t want to be exploited and see home ownership as a way to get out of that cycle of exploitation and building enough wealth to someday retire.

I'm in NJ so not sure if this applies but since I'm in another high tax state I thought this would be relevant. One thing that I find interesting that isn't really talked about is the difference in property tax rates between different towns. In NJ for example, my parent's home is worth $300k-400k and they pay almost $10k in property taxes per year. Meanwhile, an out of state investor could buy a $3 million property in NJ's Long Beach Island and pay just $30k in property taxes on it (1/3 the rate my parents pay).

I don't know how much this applies to California, I think they cap property tax increases there, not sure how the rates differ by town?

A single state-wide standardized marginal property tax rate would probably work best. Those with $5 million+ single family homes should be paying a higher percentage to discourage that type of housing. Additionally that tax money could be collected at a state level and distributed more equitably (to towns that aren't as wealthy).

Ultimately single family homes need to be phased out in these kinds of places and replaced with higher density along with mixed zoning. Mixed zoning should reduce the need for more car based infrastructure which is extremely expensive and allow more efficient public transit to be built. That would lower costs for regular people since they wouldn't need a car to get places.

Wow the world has nuances. Who would’ve thought?

I believe that in a free democratic society people should be allowed to read a letter written by an Islamic fundamentalist who orchestrated the largest terrorist attack against the United States.

I believe people should be allowed to form their own opinions about his motives beyond what US government propagandists want the US public to believe.

Contrary to public belief, I don’t think they did it because they hate our freedom. And I think if you do believe that and you also see no problem with platform after platform trying to scrub the document from public view then you’ve got your head on backwards.

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Yes the ultra wealthy shouldn’t be able to conceal wealth that gives them immense power to control a so called democratic and free society.

Regular people without that same wealth and power should have some amount of privacy from their government.

It’s not impossible to hold those two beliefs without being a hypocrite.

My criticism of there being a few corporate gatekeepers of communication that are bullied by the government to censor content it doesn’t like is valid. You’re free to believe whatever neocon libertarian nonsense you wish.

Noam Chomsky argues the United States is a leading terrorist state. Does that mean TikTok is going to take down anything related to US foreign policy?

Are regular people not allowed to read or share content created by anyone the US government doesn’t like? Are people not allowed to form their own opinions?

What a joke. The “free” democratic west where communication is limited by a handful of large corporate interests and a murderous government that pressures them to censor content they don’t like.

TikTok may be owned by a Chinese company but there is no doubt in my mind they are being pressured by US authorities to control what is disseminated on their platform. I don’t think congress just forgot about wanting to ban TikTok, I think it’s likely they were able to rein in control of the platform.

What Osama Bin Laden did in 2001 isn’t justifiable but neither is decades of US interventionist foreign policy that has left millions of innocent people dead or living in poverty and continues to the present day.

This reminds me of the concept of predatory pricing which is when a business lowers their prices to below cost in order to drive out all its competitors and create a monopoly. https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...

I do wonder if it could be argued (maybe even in the current monopoly case against google) whether youtube engaged in predatory or below-cost pricing in order to drive out all of its competitors, establish a monopoly, and now use that monopoly in order to "raise prices" i.e. increase the amount of ads on its service in order to maximize its profit margins.

Although this does seem to be the business plan of basically every startup out there. Get VC funding, run at a loss and burn through money but gain a monopoly market share, and once you've done that you can raise your prices and have a profit margin that far exceeds what should be normal.

You can’t seriously be blaming consumers for this. It’s not consumers’ job to be scientists and understand whether some factory made ultra processed food is good for them or not. This is entirely because the government is bought and paid for by capitalists that lobby it to allow large corporations to sell garbage to people.

The solution is a simple number on food (1-100) that tells a consumer how healthy (or not) a product is and takes into account caloric content, additivies, sugar content, etc. This is something the government should be doing but since the US is governed by radical conservatives that are immensely corrupt it’s likely not going to happen. There is an app I’ve recently started using called Yuka that does this.

I’m also not opposed to banning certain categories of unhealthy products entirely.

Your point about overconsumption is valid but again, I don’t believe this is the fault of consumers, this is just a result of the capitalist system which encourages overconsumption in order to keep the system from falling apart.

You can’t open source it but the government could nationalize it and make it a benefit to small businesses everywhere without the anti competitive profit seeking motives of a private business controlling it.

I don’t see any issue with that if it only applies to corporations.

I’m faulting them because it’s nothing more than a get rich quick scheme. Another comment even noted they are slightly tweaking it so they can get another patent for it.

The government should be funding this and making it available to the general population at an affordable price instead of just having the free market “figure it out” and making something affordable only to the ultra rich. But the US is a country where the government isn’t allowed to do anything and everything has to be left to the free market which nowadays is nothing more than a bunch of hyper capitalistic rent seekers that are only interested in maximizing profit at the expense of everyone else.

$20k per dose Jesus H Christ. Rent seeking galore. Hopefully the patent has run out by now and others can get in on the action and make it affordable. There’s no way in hell this could possibly cost $20k. Is capitalism ever going to produce innovation that’s affordable to regular people again and not just benefiting the profiteering VC parasite class?

Not at all, one individual won’t do anything against a business that large. And what if 1000s more people fly the airline and it becomes so wealthy it buys up all the other airlines? Corporations are authoritarian, tyrannical institutions where only the wealthy have any ability to make change. The US government may be immensely corrupt, owned by the rich, etc but at least it’s a democracy.

Or we could give users the choice of default search engine instead of just rewarding the winners with the most money to spend..how do you ever expect a new upstart search engine to compete with google if google can just buy defaults? Or owns the most popular mobile OS and web browser?

This is why even white collar workers need to have a good look at unionization. Even highly compensated workers at tech companies ultimately have little to no power within a corporation. Corporations are tyrannical authoritarian institutions and the only way to prevent them from harming workers is government intervention (I.e. labor laws) or workers collectively bargaining.

The real scam is TurboTax charging over $100 for software that has a fixed yearly cost for development and a negligible cost for distribution and is used by millions.

Odd common ground is a weird way to say that most democrats are really just conservatives. Both parties bend to the will of big business. Both parties are happy to screw over workers (just look at what Biden did to rail workers). Democrats are happy to screw over real progressives like Bernie Sanders (look at 2016) while doing nothing about the conservatives within their ranks (Joe Manchin).

Conservatives are happy to take lobbyist money and give them whatever they want. Liberal progressive want no money in politics and typically get funding from labor unions.

We need to recognize that both parties support the interests of the ultra wealthy with the exception of a handful of democrats and 3rd party candidates.

Don’t expect the corporate owned media to ever do any actual investigative work on why workers in the US have been getting shafted for the past 50+ years. It’s just a mouthpiece for corporate interests and government propaganda.

Don’t forget what happens when they do fail. They get bailed out by the government thanks to all the lobbying they do. The 2008 bank bailouts, PPP loans to business owners. The government will bend over backwards for business owners but god forbid it helps regular people. Socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for everyone else. And they’ll still brag about how they’re “self made” and call themselves fiscally conservative.

Yes the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.