RFK speech, not what I expected. It’s worth 40 minutes

[Lhartley]

Ya ya. If you vote for one this one, they'll come in and fix everything caused by the previous administration. Even if the ARE the previous administration.Debt will be reduced, there be less inflation. Reduced deficits, and the environment will benefit. I'm the blind man

[Stephen]

Ya ya. If you vote for one this one, they'll come in and fix everything caused by the previous administration. Even if the ARE the previous administration.Debt will be reduced, there be less inflation. Reduced deficits, and the environment will benefit. I'm the blind man

Of course politicians on both sides say those things. Too many people actually believe political rhetoric, so if one side is promising a chicken in every pot, the other side has to promise something as good or better.
Some people can look past the political theater to the substance of the candidate, the party, and the platform, and there are differences.
Listen less to what’s said, and more to what’s done.
Sure, there’s a political state that wants to perpetuate itself and it’s easy to feel cynical about the whole thing. And, TBH, that’s where I end up a lot of the time. But I’ll vote in this election, even though I’m not in one of the very few f’ing states that will actually decide the election.

Popular vote sounds good to me. The Federal government governs the Nation, as a whole, not individual states, or region, or interests.

https://www.procon.org/headlines/electo ... rocon-org/
“The Electoral College is rooted in slavery and racism.
The “minority” interests the Founding Fathers intended the Electoral College to protect were those of slaveowners and states with legal slavery. James Madison stated, “There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.” [29]

As Wilfred Wilfred Codrington III, Assistant Professor at Brooklyn Law School and a fellow at the Brennan Center, explained, “Behind Madison’s statement were the stark facts: The populations in the North and South were approximately equal, but roughly one-third of those living in the South were held in bondage. Because of its considerable, nonvoting slave population, that region would have less clout under a popular-vote system. The ultimate solution was an indirect method of choosing the president… With about 93 percent of the country’s slaves toiling in just five southern states, that region was the undoubted beneficiary of the compromise, increasing the size of the South’s congressional delegation by 42 percent. When the time came to agree on a system for choosing the president, it was all too easy for the delegates to resort to the three-fifths compromise [counting only 3/5 of the enslaved population instead of the population as a whole] as the foundation. The peculiar system that emerged was the Electoral College.” [29]”

[Lhartley]

"Listen less to what’s said, and more to what’s done."

Right back to what I said. These "parties" perform the same besides the political theatre. You mentioned being "cynical". I think we could all stand to practice FAR more cynicism. They have us all subscribed to basic sets of ideology and we vote accordingly because the other option is what we consider far worse (inserctions, orange man bad, fUcK jOe bIdEn).

Don't get me wrong, I'll still vote, and I'll vote for the person that aligns with the basic set of values I've learned from my phone, laptop, friends, family, forums, and TV. Because the other option is far worse!

Apparently in Brazil they are currently fining people for using Twitter and banning VPNs. That'll come here eventually. And it won't be the liberal or conservative boogeyman. It'll be the State

[wooley12]

I spend too much time on X/Twitter too.

Who knew that 100+ hot looking young ladies who don't post anything want to follow me?

[Lhartley]

Not saying X is place of intellectual importance lol. Taking these things away though is a slippery slope. Ask any Canadian about this, our government somehow got the media banned on two of the most used social media platforms, Instagram and Facebook. That's a fucking "liberal" government(as is the Brazilian govt). Whatever liberal means anymore

[wooley12]

So do you think that Google and Meta should be allowed to take the work and cost of another company, and profit by it? In any other business, that would be corporate theft.

BBC 12/18/23

"A bill that mandates tech giants pay news outlets for their content has come into effect in Canada amid an ongoing dispute with Facebook and Instagram owner Meta over the law."

[Lhartley]

Idk, how does it work anywhere else? Are tech giants in America paying media outlets? Sorry, not into government mandates on companies, free market all the way

The issue in Canada is that the current government chose to subsidize most of the major media outlets in the country. In return, those media outlets show patronage to the party, resulting in a massive reduction in confidence in those outlets. Ie nobody was consuming that media for money. And advertisers were less inclined to pay to have partnerships with those outlets. So Justin Trudeau intervened and now we have a blanket ban.

[wooley12]

So where do youu get your news from? I'd like to bookmark it in my News folder.

Elon is asking for a Totally Free Market. From what I see, 90% of American media outlets (Radio, TV, digital and print) are owned by 2 or 3 politically right wing companies. I listen to a dozen of their rural AM talk radio shows and read the on line editions of their local news that the same companies own.

In a "totally" free market I could sell fentanyl if I had people willing to buy it, no? Of course not. Can I tape NFL games and show them on my X feed? Nope. "Totally free markets" is a red herring. There are none in world now as far as I know there never was one. Even the Iroquois Nation managed the fur trade from Canada with a tax on the imports.

Maybe I'm missing an example of a successful "totally" free market and you can help me here.

[Stephen]

It seems naïve to expect things to work in some utopian version of reality:

1. Everyone has their own version of that reality and those versions don’t all match;
2. As soon as money and power enter the equation, the sinful nature of man goes to work overtime (listen, I am really no religious fanatic, but it’s hard to ignore the more base impulses of human nature);
3. Our larger social structures (like governments) try to put up some guard rails (often with negative and unintended consequences), like for example subsidizing agriculture to insure a stable food supply, or industries, to protect national defense. Sending certain technology and manufacturing capabilities to foreign countries puts a country at risk during times of international conflict. Or, in the case of news media, letting the dominant source of information becoming “free” from the internet, at the expense of traditional sources of information, has all sorts of negative consequences. Is it smart to let a small number of people with HUGE financial resources shape the narrative (whether Musk with X or dark money funded super PACs).

Complain all you want, but expecting things to work “right” is folly, and only gets worse with “advancements” in technology. I love the positive benefits of technology, but the negatives have only gotten worse since we figured out how to hit each other with sticks.
.

/That’s my one rant for today.

[blitzskier]