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I'm sorry but I think it is horrible to put Louis CK in the same sentence with Bill Cosby. Maybe I don't fully understand the situation, but there have been no

by mcny 8y ago

I'm sorry but I think it is horrible to put Louis CK in the same sentence with Bill Cosby. Maybe I don't fully understand the situation, but there have been no reports as far as I know that Louis CK drugged anyone or physically forced himself on anyone. The case against Louis CK is purely that of abuse of power which is seen as a "white" crime as opposed to physically restraining someone. The distinction is important because "white" crimes are generally seen as better crimes and indeed when I started writing this comment I too felt it was ridiculous to hold Louis CK to the same standard as Bill Cosby. I'll end like a broken record though. We in the software industry like to do "blameless postmortems" add they like to say in devops culture. However, as soon as we walk away from our jobs, we become the same primate as everyone else. Maybe we shouldn't blame the abuser. Maybe we should not blame individual district attorneys or prosecutors for failing to prosecute cases or for acting tough on cases that simply had no common sense not. Maybe we should not blame individual police officers for waking into someone's apartment and shooting to kill claiming they thought they were in their apartment and the person was an intruder. Maybe we ought to treat the root cause of the problem — huge inequalities of power. But how?

killjoywashere 8y ago
Making Election Day a federal holiday, or at least moving Veteran's Day to be concurrent, would be a good move. Removing the Electoral College would be a good move. Increasing and broadening the base of the estate tax would be a good move. Increasing the highest bracket of the income tax would be a good move. This isn't intended to be political, those are very specific policy actions clearly designed to reduce the inequalities of power by a) giving citizens more power, and b) taking power from the rich, and particularly from the rich who believe there is profit in supressing the people.
- maceurt 8y ago
  > Increasing and broadening the base of the estate tax would be a good move. > Increasing the highest bracket of the income tax would be a good move. How many times do we have to go over this? This would just make more companies and very wealthy individuals move their operations overseas or evade taxes. Income inequality is often a natural part of a large, growing economy like the United States. Furthermore, I don't even view income inequality as a problem. Poverty is a problem. People having more money than other people isn't. We should focus on eliminating poverty, not eliminating rich people.
  - throwawaymath 8y ago
    No one is talking about eliminating rich people or ending income inequality. Wealth redistribution is a legitimate form of reducing poverty (at least in theory, if not always in practice). There are coherent economic arguments for defending your second paragraph, but that's not what's being proposed here. Do you acknowledge that wealth redistribution through progressive taxation can increase the quality of life for those in poverty? If you reject that assertion, why?
  - zanny 8y ago
    Wealth concentration is a threat to democracy. Even if you start from perfect representation, no corruption, and wholly equal influence in government between all citizens, those who have wealth will use it to influence results of said elections in any way they can that they think is worth it. That could start by simply giving minor charity to your political contemporaries. It doesn't even need to be intentional - you just do more favorable business with like minded people. As they accumulate more wealth and success they do the same. Eventually you end up with a faction of the rich and anyone they can buy who may not align ideologically (in contemporary terms, I guarantee the modern rural republican voter does not care about import tariffs on specific goods in the way the shareholders of Nestle do) but don't contradict what the rich care about, which is making more money, by any means, and using the government as a means. This seems to happen in every country, but it is pronounced in the US because of its wealth inequality. Russia is in many ways are peer here in how grossly unequal wealth distribution is, and there is an observable curve of nations the world over between how unequal their wealth is and how much the capital owner class controls policy. This isn't speculation, its observable reality now and for the last several centuries of contemporary capitalistic republics. Even the US was founded in large part by aristocrats who weighed the risks and saw waging war as more practical than trying to buy influence in parliament. Its how human society has structured itself for millennia, since we invented the first currencies, its been the providence of the rich to buy the kings good graces. And buying influence is wholly antithetical to democracy. The capacity to accumulate wealth is a necessary danger and corruption of society to enable growth and innovation. That doesn't mean you ignore the consequences of having it, or at act like just because it has upside means it has no downside. The fact the conversation isn't even about mitigating them is more a sign of how futile attempts to save democracy in the US, maybe even the entire west, are in the face of globalist billionaires who already have way more influence over humanity than half the membership of the G20. As a species we cannot stop the corruption of money and power. The only way to mitigate the capacity for those who have to use it to corrupt institutions is to insure that all vested parties have similar ability to corrupt. That doesn't mean you don't let anyone have wealth - it does mean that if the rich have so much and the poor have so relatively little then we know who calls the shots. There might be many poor and few rich, but what matters is that the collective influence of the many isn't outweighed by the fortunes of the few. Right now, especially in the US, it most certainly is.
- malvosenior 8y ago
  How does removing the Electoral College help with inequity of power? Wouldn't it just concentrate decision making into the very powerful, densely populated areas. That's specifically what it's meant to combat.
  - killjoywashere 8y ago
    > Wouldn't it just concentrate decision making into the very powerful, densely populated areas The value of a vote in Idaho would be equal to the value of a vote in Miami. Yes, that's what I mean. The system has clearly been corrupted in the other direction, where oligarchs have purchased, for very small sums, leverage over politicians from these population-small electoral areas. Maybe we could at least make them pay real money.
    - malvosenior 8y ago
      These are politically diverse areas that need equal representation. No one had a problem with the electoral college until their candidate lost in 2016, but that election proved that the electoral college is still relevant and useful. New York and California should not dominate US politics.
      - killjoywashere 8y ago
        Barbara Boxer was formally taking action agains the electoral college at least as far back as 2004.
  - solveit 8y ago
    Because it's the people that matter, not the area of land. Or do you believe Siberia and the Australian outback should dominate a hypothetical democratic world-state? Anyway, the electoral college is a 200+ year-old compromise meant to get the individual states to sign up for the union. At some point we should realize that 18th century geopolitics is not really relevant any more.
    - malvosenior 8y ago

by mcny 8y ago

killjoywashere 8y ago

Making Election Day a federal holiday, or at least moving Veteran's Day to be concurrent, would be a good move. Removing the Electoral College would be a good move. Increasing and broadening the base of the estate tax would be a good move. Increasing the highest bracket of the income tax would be a good move. This isn't intended to be political, those are very specific policy actions clearly designed to reduce the inequalities of power by a) giving citizens more power, and b) taking power from the rich, and particularly from the rich who believe there is profit in supressing the people.

maceurt 8y ago
> Increasing and broadening the base of the estate tax would be a good move. > Increasing the highest bracket of the income tax would be a good move. How many times do we have to go over this? This would just make more companies and very wealthy individuals move their operations overseas or evade taxes. Income inequality is often a natural part of a large, growing economy like the United States. Furthermore, I don't even view income inequality as a problem. Poverty is a problem. People having more money than other people isn't. We should focus on eliminating poverty, not eliminating rich people.
- throwawaymath 8y ago
  No one is talking about eliminating rich people or ending income inequality. Wealth redistribution is a legitimate form of reducing poverty (at least in theory, if not always in practice). There are coherent economic arguments for defending your second paragraph, but that's not what's being proposed here. Do you acknowledge that wealth redistribution through progressive taxation can increase the quality of life for those in poverty? If you reject that assertion, why?
- zanny 8y ago
  Wealth concentration is a threat to democracy. Even if you start from perfect representation, no corruption, and wholly equal influence in government between all citizens, those who have wealth will use it to influence results of said elections in any way they can that they think is worth it. That could start by simply giving minor charity to your political contemporaries. It doesn't even need to be intentional - you just do more favorable business with like minded people. As they accumulate more wealth and success they do the same. Eventually you end up with a faction of the rich and anyone they can buy who may not align ideologically (in contemporary terms, I guarantee the modern rural republican voter does not care about import tariffs on specific goods in the way the shareholders of Nestle do) but don't contradict what the rich care about, which is making more money, by any means, and using the government as a means. This seems to happen in every country, but it is pronounced in the US because of its wealth inequality. Russia is in many ways are peer here in how grossly unequal wealth distribution is, and there is an observable curve of nations the world over between how unequal their wealth is and how much the capital owner class controls policy. This isn't speculation, its observable reality now and for the last several centuries of contemporary capitalistic republics. Even the US was founded in large part by aristocrats who weighed the risks and saw waging war as more practical than trying to buy influence in parliament. Its how human society has structured itself for millennia, since we invented the first currencies, its been the providence of the rich to buy the kings good graces. And buying influence is wholly antithetical to democracy. The capacity to accumulate wealth is a necessary danger and corruption of society to enable growth and innovation. That doesn't mean you ignore the consequences of having it, or at act like just because it has upside means it has no downside. The fact the conversation isn't even about mitigating them is more a sign of how futile attempts to save democracy in the US, maybe even the entire west, are in the face of globalist billionaires who already have way more influence over humanity than half the membership of the G20. As a species we cannot stop the corruption of money and power. The only way to mitigate the capacity for those who have to use it to corrupt institutions is to insure that all vested parties have similar ability to corrupt. That doesn't mean you don't let anyone have wealth - it does mean that if the rich have so much and the poor have so relatively little then we know who calls the shots. There might be many poor and few rich, but what matters is that the collective influence of the many isn't outweighed by the fortunes of the few. Right now, especially in the US, it most certainly is.
malvosenior 8y ago
How does removing the Electoral College help with inequity of power? Wouldn't it just concentrate decision making into the very powerful, densely populated areas. That's specifically what it's meant to combat.
- killjoywashere 8y ago
  > Wouldn't it just concentrate decision making into the very powerful, densely populated areas The value of a vote in Idaho would be equal to the value of a vote in Miami. Yes, that's what I mean. The system has clearly been corrupted in the other direction, where oligarchs have purchased, for very small sums, leverage over politicians from these population-small electoral areas. Maybe we could at least make them pay real money.
  - malvosenior 8y ago
    These are politically diverse areas that need equal representation. No one had a problem with the electoral college until their candidate lost in 2016, but that election proved that the electoral college is still relevant and useful. New York and California should not dominate US politics.
    - killjoywashere 8y ago
      Barbara Boxer was formally taking action agains the electoral college at least as far back as 2004.
- solveit 8y ago
  Because it's the people that matter, not the area of land. Or do you believe Siberia and the Australian outback should dominate a hypothetical democratic world-state? Anyway, the electoral college is a 200+ year-old compromise meant to get the individual states to sign up for the union. At some point we should realize that 18th century geopolitics is not really relevant any more.
  - malvosenior 8y ago