3 ms·

Kudos for answering, I think the person I was replying to is worried about making a similar response, although it is consistent with their other statements. I d

by daenz 5y ago

Kudos for answering, I think the person I was replying to is worried about making a similar response, although it is consistent with their other statements. I disagree that it is harm. >Put another way, would you really claim that someone put in prison for assaulting someone was not harmed? How is that the same? In my example, I was removing an exclusive and special benefit. I don't see how putting someone in prison is removing an exclusive and special benefit, unless your view is that the default state is everyone should be imprisoned.

Volundr 5y ago
> I disagree that it is harm. Well, let's actually try to apply your scenario and actually make it analogous to the Disney scenario for a moment. Imagine said law exists. Now imagine "Joe" speaks vocally against a law proposed by the "FiFi" party, which currently happens to hold the majority in the legislature and executive branch office. Now the "FiFi" party is suddenly pushing to remove the discount from "Joe" and no one else. THAT is what's happening here. Disney is hardly the only business which has negotiated preferential treatment. Stadiums and factories are the two most common examples, but there are plenty of examples of States including Florida providing tax breaks and other special treatments to a variety of businesses. But now it seems you can only negotiate with them if you tow the party line. Disagree and any special treatment you've negotiated will be revoked, while everyone who stayed silent gets to keep theirs. Now, is "Joe" harmed by losing his discount while everyone else gets to keep theirs? Can you really argue that the above isn't the government suppressing free speech?
- daenz 5y ago
  >Disney is hardly the only business which has negotiated preferential treatment. Are you making the case that it's very common, and so it's not special nor unfair? I am very skeptical that more than %0.001 of businesses (1 in 100,000) benefit from these special government privileges. Especially if you consider all people, since corporations are legally people. It smells like crony capitalist corruption to me...far from normal, and very unfair to everyone else. Shouldn't be happening. Take it all away, I don't care what the motivation is, because to me, it's not harm to remove corruption.
  - Volundr 5y ago
    Define common. It's common enough that every single one of the 50 states and the Federal government has a variety of special arrangements at some level or another with multiple private entities. But uncommon in that most business aren't large enough, publicly popular enough, or have sufficient lobbying power to negotiate them. I wouldn't even contest your ratio. Usually these will be around tax breaks but also special water rights, rights to self govern certain things, rights to use public land, exemptions from certain laws, etc. Usually the justification is that it benefits the local economy exactly the same as the justification for Disney's. Yet somehow here Disney is the only one being targeted. Apparently you are allowed to negotiate these things, but the government will renege on it's agreements if you later dare to speak against them. If Florida was pushing to kill ALL of these arrangements it would be a non-issue (or rather a very different issue). Instead they are targeting only Disney, for daring to speak against their party line, in a clear attempt to silence their speech. No amount of trying to re-frame the issue changes that.
    - daenz 5y ago
      Every one of the 50 states and the fed having provisions for special arrangements doesn't, to me, say that the arrangements themselves are common, only that corruption is common. I agree, if Florida attempted to kill all of the special arrangements, it would definitely appear less biased to people (although impractical, it could still be purely political cover). If you're making the case that targeting Disney's special privileges vs the other company's special privileges is what makes it unfair, I could get behind that more than other arguments that I've seen. But my response to that would be to expand the removal of these privileges. Since that is far less likely to happen, I'm comfortable with using politically motivated reasons (of any side, I don't care who does it and why) to accomplish it.
      - Volundr 5y ago
        > Since that is far less likely to happen, I'm comfortable with using politically motivated reasons (of any side, I don't care who does it and why) to accomplish it. I cannot begin to fathom this position. Your describing "you can negotiate special privileges if you have enough influence, but only if you never speak against me" as less corrupt than "you can negotiate special privileges if you have enough influence".

by daenz 5y ago

Volundr 5y ago

> I disagree that it is harm. Well, let's actually try to apply your scenario and actually make it analogous to the Disney scenario for a moment. Imagine said law exists. Now imagine "Joe" speaks vocally against a law proposed by the "FiFi" party, which currently happens to hold the majority in the legislature and executive branch office. Now the "FiFi" party is suddenly pushing to remove the discount from "Joe" and no one else. THAT is what's happening here. Disney is hardly the only business which has negotiated preferential treatment. Stadiums and factories are the two most common examples, but there are plenty of examples of States including Florida providing tax breaks and other special treatments to a variety of businesses. But now it seems you can only negotiate with them if you tow the party line. Disagree and any special treatment you've negotiated will be revoked, while everyone who stayed silent gets to keep theirs. Now, is "Joe" harmed by losing his discount while everyone else gets to keep theirs? Can you really argue that the above isn't the government suppressing free speech?

daenz 5y ago
>Disney is hardly the only business which has negotiated preferential treatment. Are you making the case that it's very common, and so it's not special nor unfair? I am very skeptical that more than %0.001 of businesses (1 in 100,000) benefit from these special government privileges. Especially if you consider all people, since corporations are legally people. It smells like crony capitalist corruption to me...far from normal, and very unfair to everyone else. Shouldn't be happening. Take it all away, I don't care what the motivation is, because to me, it's not harm to remove corruption.
- Volundr 5y ago
  Define common. It's common enough that every single one of the 50 states and the Federal government has a variety of special arrangements at some level or another with multiple private entities. But uncommon in that most business aren't large enough, publicly popular enough, or have sufficient lobbying power to negotiate them. I wouldn't even contest your ratio. Usually these will be around tax breaks but also special water rights, rights to self govern certain things, rights to use public land, exemptions from certain laws, etc. Usually the justification is that it benefits the local economy exactly the same as the justification for Disney's. Yet somehow here Disney is the only one being targeted. Apparently you are allowed to negotiate these things, but the government will renege on it's agreements if you later dare to speak against them. If Florida was pushing to kill ALL of these arrangements it would be a non-issue (or rather a very different issue). Instead they are targeting only Disney, for daring to speak against their party line, in a clear attempt to silence their speech. No amount of trying to re-frame the issue changes that.
  - daenz 5y ago
    Every one of the 50 states and the fed having provisions for special arrangements doesn't, to me, say that the arrangements themselves are common, only that corruption is common. I agree, if Florida attempted to kill all of the special arrangements, it would definitely appear less biased to people (although impractical, it could still be purely political cover). If you're making the case that targeting Disney's special privileges vs the other company's special privileges is what makes it unfair, I could get behind that more than other arguments that I've seen. But my response to that would be to expand the removal of these privileges. Since that is far less likely to happen, I'm comfortable with using politically motivated reasons (of any side, I don't care who does it and why) to accomplish it.
    - Volundr 5y ago
      > Since that is far less likely to happen, I'm comfortable with using politically motivated reasons (of any side, I don't care who does it and why) to accomplish it. I cannot begin to fathom this position. Your describing "you can negotiate special privileges if you have enough influence, but only if you never speak against me" as less corrupt than "you can negotiate special privileges if you have enough influence".