10 ms·

> the powers that rule USA don't realize that soon the only tool left to common people is violence? Do you honestly believe this? Somehow we'll go from not bei

• the8472 6y ago
  straw, when the camel broke.
• psychlops 6y ago
  It's true that today's population is complacent. Many should take another look at how flimsy the reasons were why Americans fought a war of independence.
  • ceilingcorner 6y ago
    I’ve always thought that if the Revolution happened today, you’d have big media corporations like The NY Times writing hit pieces on George Washington everyday.
    • Macha 6y ago
      You say this like it wasn't the case that media outlets wrote anti-revolution articles then: https://allthingsliberty.com/2014/03/james-rivington-kings-printer-patriot-spy/ https://allthingsliberty.com/2014/03/james-rivington-kings-p...
    • dogma1138 6y ago
      The American Revolution used the social media of the time, what do you think the federalist papers were all about? A lot of the established press was against it and they did constantly published “hit pieces”. History is written by the victors if the American Revolution didn’t succeed the US would likely eventually gained independence but it would’ve been a commonwealth nation. The Revolution isn’t the reason why you have freedom today, Canada is free so is the UK. The world would look quite different than it is today but not as different as you might think.
      • ceilingcorner 6y ago
        Canada and the UK developed in the same post-American Revolution world as America itself did. The idea that the Commonwealth would have automatically become free is historical revisionism.
        • dogma1138 6y ago
          I didn’t said it automatically would be, but I would put my money on the west developing in a similar fashion as far as form of governments goes than not.
          • ceilingcorner 6y ago
            Considering that the West almost ended up being ruled by the Nazis, I’m not sure how this is remotely likely without the US existing as an independent powerhouse.
  • bko 6y ago
    Sadly it's more than today's population. Take for instance Wickard v. Filburn (1942), a law was upheld that prevented farmers from growing food in order to prop up food prices. An Ohio farmer was forbidden to grow wheat to feed his own livestock, not even sell it. > An Ohio farmer, Roscoe Filburn, was growing wheat to feed animals on his own farm. The US government had established limits on wheat production, based on the acreage owned by a farmer, to stabilize wheat prices and supplies. Filburn grew more than was permitted and so was ordered to pay a penalty. In response, he said that because his wheat was not sold, it could not be regulated as commerce, let alone "interstate" commerce (described in the Constitution as "Commerce... among the several states"). The Supreme Court disagreed: "Whether the subject of the regulation in question was 'production', 'consumption', or 'marketing' is, therefore, not material for purposes of deciding the question of federal power before us.... But even if appellee's activity be local and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce and this irrespective of whether such effect is what might at some earlier time have been defined as 'direct' or 'indirect.' [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
    • pas 6y ago
      If a new Constitution would be written would people want this in it or not? Is this consistent with self-determination or not?
      • MockObject 6y ago
        The commerce clause was intended to create a free trade zone between the states, which at that time were engaging in trade wars with each other. Then it was misinterpreted in Wickard to permit nearly limitless power to Congress. So yes, in a new Constitution we would want a commerce clause, and we would want it never to be interpreted in such a manner.
    • MockObject 6y ago
      And as awful as that logic was, the absurdity was surpassed in Gonzales v. Raich [1], when the SC leveraged Wickard to conclude that the commerce clause also allows the federal government to ban activities that could affect prices in illegal markets, too. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich
  • unityByFreedom 6y ago
    Lol you're reaching. This is not the issue that divides us. Rather, we enjoy seeing winners and losers in the market.
    • psychlops 6y ago
      No, I don't like seeing winners and losers in the market. I like to see winners, it's not a zero sum game. There are no divisions on this board, everyone is against the Power that is being exhibited right now. TD, Interactive Brokers and Robinhood have bent the knee to enrich the rich at the expense of many.
      • scruple 6y ago
        And all of it under the guise of "protecting the little guy."
        • unityByFreedom 6y ago
          Why do you think it's a guise to stop buys on a ridiculous valuation? You can still sell.
          • wizzwizz4 6y ago
            By that logic, nobody should be allowed to buy and sell Bitcoin, because there's no way a currency with such a low GDP can be worth that much.
          • cbozeman 6y ago
            I can't remember the movie. Can't even remember the actor, but... "What. the fuck. are you talking about?!" Tesla's price-to-earnings ratio is 1660. Why didn't TSLA buying get shut down? OH yeah, because a shitload of institutional investors have shares.
            • unityByFreedom 6y ago
              B/c TSLA shenanigans all occurred under a completely corrupted admin whose agencies will need time to rebuild. Can't believe I need to write that. It's no secret a con man was at the helm.
• op00to 6y ago
  The government letting 400,000+ people die didn’t piss people off.
• Super_Jambo 6y ago
  I would guess most count oppression and exploitation cumulatively not by maximum event size.
• ppod 6y ago
  The Federal Government does not have any restrictions on rainwater harvesting. Some states have minor regulations in terms of the amount of rainwater collecting and the means by which it is collected, but most states allow their citizens to collect rainwater while others even encourage it. https://worldwaterreserve.com/rainwater-harvesting/is-it-illegal-to-collect-rainwater/ https://worldwaterreserve.com/rainwater-harvesting/is-it-ill...
  • yonaguska 6y ago
    They don't anymore bc Trump scrapped that. Obama instituted it by expanding the clean water act to cover "isolated wetlands, ponds, and ditches".
    • wavefunction 6y ago
      Taking water out of ditches or the other types of places mentioned is not "rain-water harvesting."
      • stretchcat 6y ago
        If you dig a ditch specifically to be filled with rain water, then in what sense is taking rainwater from that ditch not harvesting rainwater? Is it no longer rainwater if it touches a ditch? Maybe it's no longer rainwater if it touches a barrel. "Haha no States have laws against harvesting rainwater, only barrel water, you fools!"
• snakeboy 6y ago
  I think it's important to put this in the context of many other related issues/pressures: * Increasing wealth inequality for several decades now * older generations holding onto more wealth and power in society than ever before - with a large share of their wealth in the stock market * Wall Street is seen as entirely unaccountable due to 2008 bailout * Pandemic this year has basically been a huge wealth transfer from normal people and small businesses towards large conglomerates and the wall street hedge funds who back them * Institutional trust is at historic lows, while online spaces become more and more regulated by those same institutions So maybe GME stock is small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, but it seems like all of this has to reach a boiling point eventually. I'm not sure what that will look like, but violence wouldn't be surprising.
  • ordinaryradical 6y ago
    Nailed it. There is a context for all of what’s happening. GME may seem like a funny oddity but there is real resentment boiling underneath the surface of this event. I know it because I feel that way myself. Everything I’ve seen from how the media covers it to how our financial institutions are forming ranks to condemn retail investors sickens me. It’s making obvious the informal lines of control the investor class use to maintain their wealth and their anger to have the average person attempting to play their game. It’s like a giant metaphor for how screwed up our society has become.
    • duckfang 6y ago
      Indeed. This kind of "fuck you i got mine" attitude is how countries are lost in extreme corruption or "third world" - third world countries are that because the people are impoverished, and the elite have everything. We're pretty much there. Just try driving through the Midwest, or West in areas not subsumed by the mega-cities. It's sad.
    • ryandrake 6y ago
      Pretty much all media coverage of the GME thing boils down to “oh no! The wrong type of people are manipulating the stock market this time!” It’s pretty sickening and transparent. CNBC is like the propaganda arm of Wall Street.
• jb1991 6y ago
  > Banning collecting rain water on your own property What does that refer to?
  • NoOneNew 6y ago
    It's literal. There are a number of states that make it outright illegal to collect rain water even if you're doing it to water your own garden during droughts.
  • baybal2 6y ago
    Exactly that, a number of US states used to ban it so water utilities, and water rights buyers can make more money. As of now, I believe the last explicit ban on that was repealed decades ago.
    • macksd 6y ago
      There are still some restrictions, and a good summary here: https://worldwaterreserve.com/rainwater-harvesting/is-it-illegal-to-collect-rainwater/ https://worldwaterreserve.com/rainwater-harvesting/is-it-ill.... When buying property, you may have agreed that you were not acquiring mineral rights, water rights, etc. and you still might have problems even in the absence of a government rule against it. I don't know how legitimate such claims are or how often they're successful, but I know someone who got legal nasty-grams from a land developer for doing it, and the property owner backed off when they saw the papers they had signed again.
    • tzs 6y ago
      I believe they were usually enacted to protect the nearby properties that the runoff went to, not to help water utilities and water rights buyers make more money, and to protect sources for streams and creeks and rivers. Also, I don't think most of them were bans. I think they usually just limited the extent of it. Some barrels collecting from the downspouts from your roof--fine. Building a huge reservoir filled by rain--not fine. And they haven't been all repealed. A few states still have restrictions, such as freely allowing collecting anything that falls on the roofs of your buildings as long as the building weren't specifically to collect rainwater but requiring approval for anything else.
• NoOneNew 6y ago
  I do agree with you when it comes to the surface level idea of buying a particular stock. However, the fight here isnt about that. This is a fight between the public mixed with low level capitalist (sub 8 digit yearly earnings) and the billionaire well... oligarchy of hedge funds. The hedge funds are putting pressure on gov and media to stop allowing the general public from doing something. This was originally a fight to screw over a hedge fund that was picking on Gamestop to bankrupt them through predatory short selling. Its blown up to now the hedge funds trying to manipulate public discourse, media discourse and the public's ability to participate in the market. Originally, capitalism is about anyone has the ability to participate in business and the market equally, regardless of their family lineage or social class. Obviously reality is messier than theory, but you no longer need to have a royal family name to own land or start a business. Hedge funds, banks and others are trying to accomplish the same old, "kiss my ring", just with slightly different tactics. It's a fun show regardless.
• sampo 6y ago
  > This is small potatoes. Do you know how the Arab Spring started? A municipal official bullied a street vendor who was selling produce from a cart roadside. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring#Events_leading_up_to_the_Arab_Spring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring#Events_leading_up_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Bouazizi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Bouazizi
  • dhritzkiv 6y ago
    Was any of his produce small potatoes? (I only joke)
• chaostheory 6y ago
  We live in interesting times. This is surreal coming from Ray Dalio "I believe we are on the brink of a terrible civil war (as I described in The Changing World Order series), where we are at an inflection point between entering a type of hell of fighting or pulling back to work together for peace and prosperity..." https://twitter.com/RayDalio/status/1353408208082112512 https://twitter.com/RayDalio/status/1353408208082112512
• spamizbad 6y ago
  What nightmare of a HOA do you have that bans rain barrels?
  • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    It's not a HOA. Several states in the southwest have laws prohibiting/restricting rainwater collection.
    • spamizbad 6y ago
      Oh that's crazy! Here in Chicago you can actually get a rebate from the government for using one![1] [1]https://mwrd.org/rain-barrels https://mwrd.org/rain-barrels
      • imtringued 6y ago
        That sounds like a good idea. Just regulate the rain barrels so that they lose a certain amount of water if you don't use it yourself.
  • kingnothing 6y ago
    The entire states of Colorado and Utah ban rainwater collection.
  • 974373493200 6y ago
    I'm not aware of any HOA that bans rain water collection but many state and local governments do to protect their monopoly.
• dv_dt 6y ago
  Didn’t it already happen in the capitol insurrection? Will it happen again with some other collection of people? Historically high inequality societies see high instability and even revolution.
• bart_spoon 6y ago
  > Do you honestly believe this? Somehow we'll go from not being able to buy certain stocks to violence? It isn't simply that people can't buy certain stocks. Its an accumulation of events that increasingly lead people to believe that the system is rigged against them. This extends back decades. You have to have been living under a rock to have missed the rising tide of populist sentiment over the last decade, as seen in the pro-Trump anti-establishment contingent on the right, and the explosion of pro-socialist sentiment on the far left. This Gamestop business probably amounts to a large bucketful of water, but at a certain point, a single drop causes the dam to burst. Kicking the can down the road by saying "surely people won't resort to violence over this" all but ensures that eventually, people will.
• swalsh 6y ago
  > Somehow we'll go from not being able to buy certain stocks to violence? Please read this whole thread (https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l6omry/an_open_letter_to_melvin_capital_cnbc_boomers_and/ https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l6omry/an_o...) This isn't about buying stock any more. This has become a battleground. The people in this thread are normal people fighting back for the first time in their lives.
• johnsimer 6y ago
  Yes. We are near levels of inequality that caused the French Revolution to go violent.
• csomar 6y ago
  I mean it could be not "it" but the "it" that triggers this build-up of tension. People are fed up (and rightly so) of the elite gaming the system. KYC is fine if you are a multi-millionaire. You just delegate your lawyers and army of accountants to do it. But if you are a small man/company, it's a headache that can drive you out of business. This financial restrictions has to be stopped. Financial freedom is more important than Freedom of expression.
• nudpiedo 6y ago
  I think the point is the general cut on freedoms more than any of the individual steps. For some people the increasing power given to corporations and governments to cut people freedom and putting their rights in front of individual rights (the pilar of all mordern western democracies). The fenomenon is global by the way, but it still has been dominated by classic political tags on the media, like alt-right vs commie etc. A very few polititians broke that pattern the last 5 years or so, won'tt give any names, because all that labels I mentioned,
• georgeecollins 6y ago
  >> Let's be real. This is small potatoes. Agree. It is not like there aren't half a dozen apps that let you trade stocks commission free on your phone. Some may require you to have $500-$1k to invest, but seriously if you don't have that you should invest in a different way then treading individual stocks. That said, I have no idea why Robin Hood should ban the trading of GME and I wish they wouldn't.
• notahacker 6y ago
  And lets be honest, the overlap between retail investors trying to buy meme stocks and people who regarded Parler as their true voice isn't going to be that huge (and the relationship between AWS and Robinhood's compliance teams negligible). Anyone sufficiently motivated to see strong connections between the actions of AWS booting Parler and Robinhood restricting trades is going to be so accustomed to seeing everything through a fact-lite 'us vs the man' lens that it barely matters what corporations actually do. And those tempted by actual violence have had other causes to attach themselves to over the last 12 months anyway. Also this isn't people 'asserting themselves financially', this is people mug punting on a stock that wealthier and more financially savvy people who got in early are happy to unload their stock to. There will end up being people quite relieved they didn't get to execute their plan to put their life savings into peak-price Gamestop.
• stretchcat 6y ago
  It is no exaggeration to say wars have been fought for worse reasons than this.