3 ms·

> a flat limit of $1000 per person per tax year Limit on what? On speaking about politics? On buying ads? On paying people to write about politics? On hiring c

by smsm42 8y ago

> a flat limit of $1000 per person per tax year Limit on what? On speaking about politics? On buying ads? On paying people to write about politics? On hiring consultants to develop advertising strategies? On speaking about anything government cares about? So if NYT spends $1000 per subscriber on politicial writer's salaries in March, it has to be shut down until the next January because it's over the political speech limit? This of course sounds insane, because you can't put limit on spending money on speech without putting limits on actual speech. Because it's one and the same - publishing speech costs money, and money is the way to get speech published. Fortunately, US still has freedom of speech, which is not measured in dollar limits.

wpietri 8y ago
Hi, let me introduce you to this new thing called the Internet, which lets everybody publish their speech for free. You should try it sometime. (And clearly they mean a limit on political contributions, which is something that many countries do successfully. Ours used to be one of them. I hope you're not as ignorant on the topic as your hysterical straw man suggests, but if you are I'd suggest a little reading. E.g. this Brookings working group has many perspectives: https://web.archive.org/web/20010406114712/https://www.brookings.edu/gs/cf/workgrp.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20010406114712/https://www.brook... .)
- smsm42 8y ago
  > which lets everybody publish their speech for free The fact that you can write stuff on internet forums for free doesn't mean it is free. It means somebody else is paying for it - for example, in exchange for showing you ads (which the advertiser - surprise! - pays for), selling your personal data or sometimes just out of charitable spirit. However, if you need to do a massive communication effort, it is not nearly free. And if you have ever built a campaign site (I have) you know it is nowhere near "free". Your resume shows you participated in multiple internet projects, so I am astonished how you can condescendingly claim it's "free" while knowing full well from your own experience it is nowhere near that. Unless, of course, you want to confine your campaign to /r/irrelevant.

by smsm42 8y ago

wpietri 8y ago

Hi, let me introduce you to this new thing called the Internet, which lets everybody publish their speech for free. You should try it sometime. (And clearly they mean a limit on political contributions, which is something that many countries do successfully. Ours used to be one of them. I hope you're not as ignorant on the topic as your hysterical straw man suggests, but if you are I'd suggest a little reading. E.g. this Brookings working group has many perspectives: https://web.archive.org/web/20010406114712/https://www.brookings.edu/gs/cf/workgrp.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20010406114712/https://www.brook... .)

smsm42 8y ago
> which lets everybody publish their speech for free The fact that you can write stuff on internet forums for free doesn't mean it is free. It means somebody else is paying for it - for example, in exchange for showing you ads (which the advertiser - surprise! - pays for), selling your personal data or sometimes just out of charitable spirit. However, if you need to do a massive communication effort, it is not nearly free. And if you have ever built a campaign site (I have) you know it is nowhere near "free". Your resume shows you participated in multiple internet projects, so I am astonished how you can condescendingly claim it's "free" while knowing full well from your own experience it is nowhere near that. Unless, of course, you want to confine your campaign to /r/irrelevant.