Elon Musk’s X allows China-based propaganda banned on other platforms
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A market economy is an extremely broad term, you'd be better saying a mixed economy. Anyway, the countries the original commenter referred to are still capitalist, not socialist. They have some nationalised services which are technically communally owned, but it's not like the average citizen has very much democratic control over them so I find it a stretch to use those nationalised services as evidence of socialism.
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Over several articles recently - mainly the ones detailing Big Pharma's blatant lies about why drug prices are so high, but it's here too - I've seen more than a few posters (QQQ, unshavenyak, etc) defending the vampire squid position of acquiring money/wealth to the detriment of literally everything and everyone else, and, uh...well, that's certainly a take.
I mean, they decry the problems because there's no rational way they can deny them...but it seems like they have invested directly or indirectly, and so anything that threatens their investments must be denounced as "not the perfect way to solve the problem" or just "it's too hard, so let's leave things as they are" type of perspectives.
It brings to my mind the French nobles who cared not a whit about the problems of their lessers, and the fact that it got so bad that the lessers let them know about it in no uncertain terms.
So...will no one rid us of these turbulent, money-grubbing vampire squids? Asking for friends.
I mean, they decry the problems because there's no rational way they can deny them...but it seems like they have invested directly or indirectly, and so anything that threatens their investments must be denounced as "not the perfect way to solve the problem" or just "it's too hard, so let's leave things as they are" type of perspectives.
It brings to my mind the French nobles who cared not a whit about the problems of their lessers, and the fact that it got so bad that the lessers let them know about it in no uncertain terms.
So...will no one rid us of these turbulent, money-grubbing vampire squids? Asking for friends.
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Ah, please allow me to explain something that eludes you.
You argue that zoning laws and supply increases can fix the housing crisis. And you're right! I live in Madison, WI, which has extremely free zoning and so much construction that my house has gone down in price (relative to inflation) in the last 10 years.
When there is an excess of supply to demand, it also drops the bottom out of the investment market because my home is literally losing money versus investing in even the safest asset classes like CDs or bonds. So changing zoning laws and encouraging new construction in high demand areas IS a single, simple, absolute solution, because it automatically undermines all the other problems. This also happened notoriously in Tokyo where housing prices plummeted when demand was met and housing was no longer a good investment.
But here's the problem with that: it also utterly negates all the arguments you make in favor of home ownership. Owning a home is still a good choice if you need all the space and is more economical than renting a similar sized apartment, but it isn't an asset class in itself that builds value. It becomes a roughly flat asset at that point, like gold.
That is to say, you can EITHER solve the housing availability crisis OR have cheap homes available to everyone. One or the other. You cannot do both because the crisis itself is what was making houses a good investment.
So you can either be pro capitalism or pretend you want to solve housing. You can't do both. So which is it gonna be?
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Musk may think any publicity is good publicity. The people around him stroking his ego may say that. But the advertisers who used to provide most of Twitter's revenue have been very clear that they disagree.
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I avoid business with any company that still advertises on Twitter. (Yes I dead named you Elon, just like you dead named your own daughter)
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We will, thanks! Cry harder about it, Musk simp tears are delicious.
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Snarky Robot
Ars Legatus Legionis
Yes, that's called "choice". It's kinda the entire principle at work here. Folks who were banned for bigotry were free to whine and complain to their heart's content that it wasn't fair or that Twitter should change their policy. In current Twitter, the same applies to those banned for reporting on the bigotry. They have no right to be there, at the end of the day, their entire access is done according to the terms of Twitter's agreements with them.
Acts can be moral or immoral on their face, but most require context. Banning someone has a neutral morality until you find out who they are, what they did, and why they were banned. Folks moaning about being banned for racism aren't the same as those being banned for calling Elon Musk a poopie head.
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Celery Man
Ars Legatus Legionis
We need more AFFORDABLE housing, not just housing. That word makes all the difference in the world. Because to developers, housing also means “$4k a month luxury apartments”.
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Snarky Robot
Ars Legatus Legionis
No, it's probably about the most impactful thing. See, governments have the right to remove all your freedoms. They can strip you of property, they can physically imprison you, and they can even kill you to silence you. Corporations can kick you off their property. And...that's about it.
Saying shit like this is about as revelatory as standing beneath a sign saying "Ahoy, idiot below" with a flashing arrow pointing right at you.
Except they can't do that. They can tell you they don't wish to associate with certain things on THEIR property. You just...read it elsewhere.
Oh look, a sign next to the other one reading "easy mark ready to buy bullshit" flashing twice as quickly.
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Especially when you consider the words of mush himself and those who defend him.
They all criticized the old Twitter not for how bans, shadow bans ect were done but for doing them at all. Not only have they all proven themselves to be hypocrites but the reasons for the bans have become less defendable.
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Do you believe people should have the right to sell child porn at your house? Because if you don't then you are pro censorship by your logic.
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...hallucinated nobody mentally competent, ever.
In the real world, they revealed only that Matt Taibbi has reading comprehension issues, as his lies that the government was making orders to twitter are half hallucination, half misreading CSA, a private nonprofit group, as though it was CISA, a government agency.
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/04/07...r-files-as-matt-taibbi-stumbles-to-defend-it/
Last edited by a moderator:
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Anyone who opposes the government notifying a private company "hey, we think these posts violate your rules" opposes Constitutional free speech.
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Snarky Robot
Ars Legatus Legionis
Oh, far beyond that. They reveal he's so wildly dishonest that while reporting on five supposedly censored tweets as proof that the Biden campaign was unduly influencing things, it turns out that of the five tweets, the only four with archived versions showed that they were naked pictures of Hunter Biden that were shared without consent. They'd be removed regardless of who the person in the picture was. Matt Taibbi didn't think that part needed to be shared.
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And for all the "censoring Conservative truths about Biden stealing the election!" accusations, the posts being flagged were, at the most benign, campaigns to give false information about the elections themselves such as intentionally giving out the wrong day or ballot submission process, but primarily were accounts linking to scam sites made to look like they're associated with election officials, built solely to steal Social Security Numbers, Addresses, and other personal info of dupes.
From the report about the tweets targeted by CIS(notA):
So are the trolls claiming "Conservative" speech was "silenced" admitting that conservatives are identity-thieving criminals?
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Literally got off Twitter when I started seeing ads/promoted tweets from white supremacist accounts talking about “taking our country back”
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AmanoJyaku
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
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AmanoJyaku
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
You didn't write anything to argue against. Are you claiming the US government runs accounts while pretending to be, say, Chinese?
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Snarky Robot
Ars Legatus Legionis
for you to answer questions? Yes. Intellectual cowardice is never a good luck. So feel free to stop being a coward and answer the question:
do you believe that it's a GOOD thing that Twitter allows propaganda that nobody else does?
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Sure we can.
Your argument is dumb. Do you even grasp that you are stating that there are only two places propaganda comes from on Twitter? China or the USA. Or an even dumber take that there are only two sides Chinese or US government.
There definitely is more propaganda being posted to Twitter besides Chinese propaganda and US government propaganda.
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All of your arguments come from the flawed premise that one thing will fix any of these markets, and that attacking them from all angles is not the best approach. That is in itself the type of propaganda that is most insidious. It is exactly what large corporate entities want. A bad guy to blame rather than real solutions that are far more complicated.
For house we need a push from many angles to make it a slow build asset class that you benefit from ownership of the place you live rather than ownership of the place you rent to someone else....beyond a certain amount. We need a wider base, with less spikey markets by incentivizing home ownership for as many as possible and disinsentivizing mass or even large home ownership. A tax beyond a certain number of single family properties, so we could have hundreds of thousands of small land lords vs thousands of 100+ property owners. Better regulations, not lower regulations, so they are cleaner and easier to get through but stop people from building things that destroy neighborhoods like monster homes that are really just small apartment complexes. Changes to all taxation to change how selling a home that is not your primary so it makes more sense to invest elsewhere....remember investment never stops it is all comparison based so housing has to be a lower value proposition to slow it down. Meanwhile keeping building houses as low as possible to increase new home building. All of it has to be done to get there. The lowest hanging fruit with the least opposition is where we should start and that is hedge fund/corporate investment in single family home ownership.
That 31% of rented homes is an issue as well as the 10%. If they are all owned by the rich then that is an asset class that needs distribution across the middle class to make wealth growth more probable. I think a simple cap on ownership is an easy way to make it happen. Short term would push down prices, long term it would smooth out the spikiness in the market and spread out wealth for a more stable spending and taxation base.
Building houses will not lower inner city costs, and has not worked so far to get the situation under control. In the usa we built 1% of total homes in 2022...prices skyrocketed. Th number of homes built per year since 2011 has gone up every year and prices have not changed so the evidence seems to say it just doesn't work. Your idea doesn't work on it's own and it never has without having pressure against new homes being bought up as investments.
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AmanoJyaku
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
FYI, quamquam quid loquor is currently banned because they asked to have their account deleted. They asked for this because they're tired of arguing. Instead, Aurich gave them a ban to give them the break they need from the forum, as well as a way back in case they change their mind. There's no point in responding any further as they're probably not reading responses. Instead, let's dunk on free-speech absolutists.
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This is called "editing" and it's a job that's been around for centuries. People don't want to drown in written garbage. They would like to be able to find the information they need without wading through an ocean of lies from assholes. That's the point you're missing.
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People with functioning brains don't call moderation "someone else tell you what you may and may not read" like kazo does, they call it "private companies deciding for themselves what speech they will and won't associate with."
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Snarky Robot
Ars Legatus Legionis
Because from the article it appears that Facebook was part of a consortium, with Twitter, identifying and addressing these threats, and Twitter was also a part of that. The fact that those accounts are still active is not Facebook's work, but the Washington Post's work, corroborated by another source also showing that these accounts were still active. No trust in Facebook is necessary.
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Which piece of the pie says "Physician salaries" ?Following up with insurance and executive costs.
From the AMA (the oligarchy who is to blame for the physician shortage).
- "cash burners like insurance" - Net cost of health insurance is 6% .
- "cash burners like ... executive costs" - For Commonspirit ~2% of hospitals (158 hospitals of total 6129 hospitals), the CEO got paid $35 million (an insane amount), but extrapolating to $1.4 billion for executive pay, that is not the driver of healthcare costs.
- "Net cost of health insurance: The difference between what insurers incur in premiums and the amount paid in benefits. This includes administrative costs, additions to reserves, rate credits and dividends, premium taxes and fees, and net underwriting gains or losses"
https://www.ama-assn.org/about/research/trends-health-care-spendinghttps://www.aha.org/statistics/fast-facts-us-hospitals
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ducatisymphony
Ars Scholae Palatinae
You keep arguing that Canada closed its real estate market to foreign investment and that it didn't work but you left out some important details like the fact that a move like this takes time for the market to react (it has only been 1 year) and was never intended to be a single solution. Nobody with any credibility would suggest that alone will magically fix the problem. It will require a multi-tiered approach (and yes, increasing supply is a part of that). "Proven not to work" is a statement by you with no data to support it and assumes we all thought that move alone was the sole answer.
This is a complex issue that involves managing foreign investment, taxing units not occupied by owners or renters, increasing capital gains taxes, increasing the housing supply and managing our immigration (note: I am fully supportive of immigration but it needs to be managed with our housing crisis in mind). I am sure others could toss in a few other factors I have missed as well. You have this habit of oversimplifying things and demonstrating that you don't truly understand the issues and then attempting to support your arguments with links that don't actually say what you think they say.
I would suggest that perhaps you take a minute to ask yourself if possibly all these people criticizing your posts might actually have a point and this might be a moment of enlightenment for you.
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If you’re talking about the US definition of “socialism”, most of those ideas aren’t actually anti-capitalist, they’re only about stronger regulations and stronger social safety nets. A lot of European nations have implemented those, yet they are still very much market economies.
Under the traditional definition, socialism would involve the workers owning the means of production and the abolition of private enterprise, and this is not really something I’ve seen advocated for here on Ars.
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