Because the citizenry doesn't want that. Oh, sure, in abstract terms they do, but when it comes to any specific set of concrete cuts, they tend not to.
> The citizenry reliably supports any cuts that don't affect them personally.
That's not true, either; plenty of spending programs that directly effect < 50% of the population will face more than 50% opposition if cuts are proposed.
There is strong selection pressure applied to politicians to get re-elected.
There is essentially no selection pressure for them to do a good job (as long as who to blame for the bad job is ambiguous, which it almost always is).
And pensions.
Pensions funds have not been allowed to grow like expected, because of the artificially low interest rates.
So to avoid the funds being emptied the solution is more tax. It will get worse.
There are a lot of people right now who want to stifle free speech. "Have a different opinion, that's abuse - or a beating".
While not restricted to antifa, there seems lately a surge of "little Stalinists", who seem intent to crush or silence any dissenting opinion.
In short, history repeats itself, and "experience is recognising a mistake the second time you've made it."
I like that "antifa" just gets sliced in there, ignoring that the phrase and meaning is explicitly "anti-fascist", and it's only gained renewed visibility because there are actual fascists openly demonstrating and threatening people in the US.
You've always had a right to free speech, you sure as hell have never had a right not to be criticized for what you say.
I don't think someone is ignoring the meaning of antifa when pointing out they beat people up. Or by calling them little-stalinists, given that some of them are stalinists, and some even offer "critical support" to Bashar al-Assad or Kim Jong Un.
But it's pretty misplaced. Social media companies and the state have more power than ever to control the spread of ideas, and antifa has a street fight now and then.
> you sure as hell have never had a right not to be criticized for what you say.
I think that this is insufficiently emphasized.
Personally, I think what's even more importantly forgotten and has led to the rather ridiculous situation on college campuses[1] is that there is no right not to be offended. I would even go so far as to say that such a right would be the opposite of freedom of speech.
Trigger warnings are about not acting like a jackass to people. And the angry response to those who cavaliery show a disregard for the feelings of others are just as valid if you want to go down that path.
The irony of it all, that the Antifa is acting exactly like a fascist organization.
I am from Europe, and born/lived under communism, poor as hell, with food rations and all, people going to jail, etc and yes,
these dipshits (the Antifa) are nothing but a "my way of the highway" totalitarian movement, which resembles more to a loosely organized fascist gang, than anything else.
Silencing and beating up opponents was a favorite tool of both fascists and nazis.
The reason history repeats itself is that all the people who made mistakes in the past are now dead and gone. Most people alive are doing this all for the first time.
Yep, this is why we need to medically eliminate aging and achieve biological immortality. The conventional wisdom is that a society needs aging and death to eliminate old ideas and impediments to adopting new ideas and adapting to change, but this I believe is wrong. Young people fail to learn the lessons of the past because they never lived it, and so history goes in cycles; we keep making the same mistakes over and over. Eliminating this natural cycle should help society have a much longer memory, and medically fixing the problem where peoples' brains fail to be as good at learning and adapting with old age should fix the problems caused by older people being irrationally resistant to change and new ideas.
Seeing how badly a 'hegemony of the aged' cements in most places in the world in the form of wealth and political power, a lot of social problems and systems will have to be 'fixed' before that would be a net benefit.
Just go to you local city council planning meeting and see how gray haired and crazy the NIMBYs are, and they dictate local housing policy.
>Seeing how badly a 'hegemony of the aged' cements in most places in the world in the form of wealth and political power
I don't see the problem here with age. The problem you're describing seems to stem from other social issues, namely nepotism, classism, etc. People living longer isn't going to change that much I suspect; people have had these issues for thousands of years, and if anything, it's much better now than it was centuries ago. There's far more social mobility now than there was in Medieval times.
>Just go to you local city council planning meeting and see how gray haired and crazy the NIMBYs are
I think I already addressed that: age has an effect on the brain, so if we figure out biological immortality, we should also figure out along with that how to eliminate these aging-related problems/diseases.
The other problem you describe there is basically classism, and the ability of locals who gain power to shut others out of power. Again, this was much worse in the past when people didn't live nearly as long. The way to fix it isn't to have people die off early, it's to come up with laws and policies that counteract it.
The way to fix the NIMBYism problem is simple, and they've done something like this in Japan: you remove power from local government to set zoning policy. Obviously, local governments get people like this in power who don't look out for the overall good of society, and instead look to maximize their real estate value through manipulation of zoning, so you strip them of that power and move it to the state or national level. In the Bay Area, this means the state government needs to grow a pair and pass some strict laws about zoning, and severely curtail the ability of local governments to reject development.
Just because a party calls itself something nice doesn't mean they are. The NAZI, as far as I know, weren't really socialists. So too antifa. Antifa uses physical violence against peaceful assholes. Let neo-nazi parade themselves with their tiki torches. Make fun of them while and after they do it. Show them love if they want to repent. Don't punch them in the face with a padlock.
It is from Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (English: National-Socialist German Workers' Party) [1] which is another interpretation of socialism.
I was in another country, and still seeing the political bias (CNN+) in the reporting. Call me old school, but 'news' and 'journalism' is meant to be impartial. It wasn't. Opinion piece after propaganda opinion piece.
I think maybe, we have just woken up to what is going on.
This seems another vague anticapitalism story portraying the VCS as bad, whereas they bought a stake in the company and tried to turn it around. They also lost.
90% of new businesses fail - most often from not finding or matching/addressing the market. The market also changes so anyone who doesn't adapt end on the Darwinian company list.
Toxic and hate speech are recently invented terms to curtail free speech. If I said anyone who wanted communism were hateful (they hate capitalists) and supporting a historically violent ideology, I'd be as right/wrong as people on the left doing the same.
Anti free speech are a means to an end really, power.
I generally agree with you here actually, I wouldn't want any of this to be used to completely suppress speech, but I don't think it's unreasonable to hide by default communities which are higher friction to some degree.
I can definitely see a completely open alternative viewpoint, but reddit has already gone in a very different direction.
What does that mean though? People who post in one sub aren't allowed to be in any other sub?
People in TD can write in others subs too, as can people from late stage capitalism.
Wanting to forcibly segregate and silence people with different opinions is I think at the heart of the problem with silicon valley right now.
'remove those who disagree with me' has killed hundreds of millions over the years, and is a common and dangerous kind of groupthink.
We have this debate over and over again in r/berkeley, a community which I used to be an active part of. Essentially, every time Berkeley makes national news the sub gets brigaded by TD. Some of those trolls stick around and then post tired tirades anytime there is something remotely political on the sub. And some of them even try to pose as Berkeley students.
Almost everyone on the sub is tired of the constant brigading and would like more active moderation of the trolls. The main moderator refuses to do anything and has similar views to your own, thinking that we should welcome them with open arms. This has the effect where Berkeley students and residents can't even talk about things affecting their community as they get drowned out by the mass of right-wing trolls. And this usually comes at times when its most crucial for there to be an avenue for Berkeley students/residents to have a platform to speak with each other (e.g. protests, riots, local political issues).
I had similar issues running /r/ronpaul where there was a sustained, concerted effort by opponents to disrupt the conversation. One of said opponents went on to found /r/the_donald.
It's fairly hard to ban people on a site where account creation is as easy as it is on reddit. Moderator tools have improved a little since, but remain inadequate for dealing with sustained brigading.
It’s not about forcible removal but following the rules. People who came for a toxic subreddit tend to use the same style, memes, etc. everywhere and often go back to their home base to encourage fellow believers to back them up. Over time that spoils communities because reasonable people aren’t as driven to post as frequently as the ideologues.
Wrong. TD is made up from both genders and many races who are conservatives and support the president. Its style is glossy trolly. They are anti political correctness, against sjws and groups that oppose others free speech. Reddit has site wide rules against racism, and those subs that don't remove it are banned. TD mods remove anything racist quickly - almost exclusively posted by few day old accounts .
Also, have a nice day.
There is nothing, except a large paid hoax propaganda campaign. With the same team we could make mother Teresa seem like an imperialist religious nut. But anyway, let's agree to disagree. Because the world is nicer that way.
Your attitude of batching everything not matching the "side" you happened to pick and calling it a "large paid propaganda campaign" is dangerous and the world is certainy not "nicer that way".
This attitude is something you find everywhere because it's simpler for people who believe something strongly, to also believe that anyone who disagrees has been paid to do so. So it's attractive to dismiss anti-trump articles as "paid propaganda", and dismiss people like you as russian bots.
But you're going to have to wake up from that attitude at one point or another because it's going to catch up with you. As others have said, arrests and indictments aren't a "nothing burger". You won't get to the truth by dismissing sources you've been told not to like.
> As others have said, arrests and indictments aren't a "nothing burger"
Arrests and indictments for things unrelated to illegal dealings with Russia, except for maybe failing to renew registration as a foreign agent but that's a stretch.
How so? None of those seem to imply anything about a Trump/Russia connection so far.
If you start a fishing expedition for the Loch Ness monster, you're bound to find some fish but that doesn't prove the existence of the Loch Ness monster.
Why does Trump keep hiring people who are implicated with Russia? Why did his son meet with a Russian agent @ Trump Tower? What is the deal with Trump "special" relationship with Putin and why did he secretly meet with Putin for hours without a translator? Why do we often learn of US policy from Russian media before the White House? Canceled sanctions on Monday is the latest example.
Since you appear to be trying to defend HN, which is laudable, could you please not post comments that break its rules? That damages the site, arguably worse than propaganda does.
> “It’s not Swiss watch precision,” said Gerhardt Meurer, an astronomer from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), in a press release.
This is a weird case, like "20/20 vision", where the metaphor expresses the opposite of the reality. Swiss watches are so expensive because they're clunkier and less accurate than quartz crystal watches.
Surely there are expenditures deemed "being nice" which isn't a real neccessity for the local citizens?