You’re spot on… I might argue that that moral fiber has pretty much never existed. But do you have any insight on how one even begins to restore that moral fiber?

I mean, let’s assume that we somehow regulate AI so that people have to pay to use copyrighted works for training (as absurd as that is).

ISBNDB approximates there to be 158,464,880 published books in existence.

Meta’s annual income was ~156 billion last year.

Assuming a one time purchase scenario and a $20 average cost that’s ~3.2 billion dollars. ~2% of their annual revenue.

Or you could assume assuming a $0.2 annual license (similar to a lot of technology licenses), or a 0.002 per “stream” (which I. This instance would be ‘use of data to train model’)

I agree with most of what you said, but if you buy into a lot of the economic paradigms your arguments are based on you must also realize that those require the copyrighted works must be paid for and it’s not unreasonable to do so.

Hell, nowadays most major corporations do this. Just nobody uses the scare word “propaganda” to describe it.

Ironically my response was fueled by my frustration with that same mantra, lol.

The “solid Democrats” of the last 4+ years have been putting people into camps ~migrant detention centers, prisons, enhanced interregation facilities, any other euphemism for camp that doesn’t come with the same baggage~, stripping legal protections and significantly reducing access to medications.

The “existential horror shit” does not stop with this election, regardless of outcome.

that allowing Trump into power is a legitimate threat to the entire system.

If only… That’s literally what he is campaigning on and honestly I can not believe people are still unironically and uncritically repeating this after his administration in 2016.

Look at the time spans that nations in Asia or Europe have existed by comparison and the length of time it took to change their ways, often through drastic social upheaval. In comparison the gains in social equalities here have come at a rapid pace in the past century.

I would caution against such sweeping generalizations about world history. Yes, some nations have existed for looooong periods of time relatively coherently, but that isn’t typical and “progress” isn’t a one way street. Within the lifetime of the US, hell within the last century, there are countless examples of those “social equalities” moving significantly faster, and in both directions.

Also I can’t quite tell what you are trying to get at with the historical side tangent. Could you clarify?

I think you are spot on with explaining the perspective of the Democratic party campaign strategists, but I would push back on some of those points.

Remember that the stock market is important to these voters (and his donors), and Trump had everything set up in his favor and still squandered it.

I don’t think they see it that way and honestly using the same “objective” metrics, removing 2020-2021 due to COVID being a major outlier, there isn’t much difference between the Trump and Biden presidencies from an “economic perspective”. If you include 2020-2021 it looks like Trump “squandered it” and Biden had “unprecedented growth” but it’s really a story of outliers and how they can be manipulated to tell whatever story you want.

It’s also needs to be said that those “objective” metrics have/are becoming increasingly divorced from “objective” reality but that’s a conversation for a different thread…

Corporate America does not want a repeat of this

Trump was great for Corporate America, Biden has been even better. The MAGA propaganda is that ‘Trump really stuck it to corporate America and was actively working against their interests’ or ‘he might suck but at least he’s hitting the corporations where it hurts them most’ but I really haven’t seen any good evidence for any of that (see the point above). If you’ve got some counter evidence to share I’d be interested.

convince some Republican voters who would have voted red “because that’s what you do”, to instead vote for Kamala.

But they won’t any more than you’ll convince many Democrats to vote for Trump. Those voters that the Harris campaign is targeting will be voting Libertarian, Green or (mostly) “holding their nose” and voting Trump.

Honestly, one of my biggest annoyances surrounding the Nader spoiler controversy is the assumption that all votes would’ve gone to Gore where the evidence does not support that conclusion and it’s subsequent use as a cudgel to support duopoly instead of the more accurate warning of what happens when you sacrifice your voting block to pander to the other half of the duopoly.

it’s easy to forget that just because they’re Republican’s does not mean they are MAGA

You’re right, and within that context it may be useful to use the self identify method the house tepublicans use (“the House Freedom Caucus, the Republican Study Committee, the Main Street Caucus, the Republican Governance Group”) to discuss who “is MAGA”, who Harris is pandering to and play the fun game of ‘which of those 5 groups is the lesser evil?’ and look at the ven diagram between those…

How is Bush the counterexample reason to vote for Harris while she is actively campaigning with Dick Cheney?

We can eventually have that conversation as a nation

That’s a good way to describe the last 50 years of American politics…

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And there’s only one species of wild cabbage, Brassica oleracea. Get out of here with that “broccoli”, “kale”, “cabbage” or “brussel sprouts” nonsense!

Low voltage, high frequency: I thought I was safe 😭

Except that’s not even how most bus systems work because most of them are majority funded by taxes with fares originally meant to serve as a stopgap but then slowly converted into a profit engine (usually after privitization). Fares are a way to gatekeep a service which your taxes already pay for, which I would argue, is by itself a form of theft.

As an example check out the latest MTA report only 26% of funding comes from fares, and that ones a bit in the higher end from what I’ve seen (NYC public transit, picked as the example a it’s recently been in the news for issues with fare evasion)

All that aside, it’s also worth noting that fare increases are extremely unpopular and it’s not that easy to increase them without potential serious backlash (ie the mass protests in Chile a few years back that were in part set off by the fare hikes.)

in aware A# w# > Tw# I

Exactly, hence the root of the problem the original meme is getting at…

For healthy working relationships and solid infrastructure you under-promise and over-deliver.

For maximal profit and sustainable business models you over-promise and under-deliver.

If you build a base on/near a bunch of ore nodes and dedicate it entirely to mining your pals will mine it for you and it respawns daily (passive ore generation ftw!!!)

Great, my work is done. I’ve done a lobby and convinced you that Lobbying doesn’t actually change anything and that you’ll have to actually do something. And now I can sleep easy knowing that you’ll fix it all for me!

Right, which is why I’m saying that your ‘solution’ is nothing. It boils down to: “Lobby!(1) Then go home(2), sit and wait(3)”

1. With your loads of cash and free time.
2. Which of course everyone has.
3. Which is a luxury we can certainly all afford.

So to summarize your suggestions are:

lobbying the government

not negotiating alone against big pharma (lobbying again)

Calmly and nicely agrue your case.

we have a capitalist system and that is a good way of stopping the bleeding.

Again, none of those answer the question. Those are all “do nothing and trust those with power and authority to do the right thing.” It’s the definition of useless liberalism and displays quite the level of privilege and disconnect from reality.

You can easily look up how completely ineffective those solutions are, if you care. Did you even read the article this comment thread is posted under?

You didn’t answer the question.

ban bad technoligies.

How? The niches for those technologies are created and maintained by those same people you want to do a complete 180 and ban-hammer them instead.

set up non-capitalist structures

How? Using your example you have to either manufacture and distribute said cancer medicine yourself. Which is a crime… And at they point it’s probably more effective to just straight up rob a pharmacy and redistribute, robin hood style. I hope I don’t need to go into detail how that’s not a real answer/solution…

(Sidenote: https://fourthievesvinegar.org/ is very cool and doing some work in this sort of direction, but it should stand as an example of how complicated and largely inefective at scale that approach is.)

change planing priorities.

So go to approval hearings and throw a fit until you are arrested and they build the car based infrastructure anyways?

add hidden costs as real costs.

Oooh neoclassical economics!!! So how should I bill you for my time writing this comment?