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The entire country seems built on taking advantage of people, from my vantage point right now. Whether it’s attention, drugs, or business/legal leverage, everyo
by taurath 7mo ago
The entire country seems built on taking advantage of people, from my vantage point right now. Whether it’s attention, drugs, or business/legal leverage, everyone is out for advantage and they’re not even pretending to care about people they affect.
- throwaway27448 7mo agoYes. The "freedom" people refer to is "the freedom to be an asshole and exploit people without repercussion".
- alphawhisky 7mo agoDon't forget about the freedom in your pants! And by that, I mean a Glock (not reproductive self determination or gender self determination, obviously).
- Jerrrrrrrry 7mo agoHmmm...Defending yourself is literally the same as abortion and gender dysphoria. No.
- throwway120385 7mo agoInsofar as there's some nuance to what individuals choose to do but we like to eschew that in debate and make blanket statements about what you should or should not be allowed to do?
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- erikerikson 7mo agoNo. Those are the abusers of freedom who like to pretend their freedom doesn't stop at the tip of our collective noses. They are also a minority regardless of how vocal that small minority and the psyop saboteurs are that egg them on and keep them company.
- throwaway27448 7mo agoMaybe we should just abandon the concept of "freedom" and embrace material values. Or is that too 19th-century progressive? Must we always ignore all discourse that happened after the bill of rights was scribbled?
- 1234letshaveatw 7mo agoThe UK? or Ireland? or USA?
- taurath 7mo agoIsn't it interesting that you can't tell!
- MengerSponge 7mo agoProfessor Cottom's a certified (McArthur) Genius, and she clocked this "scam culture" back in 2021: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/10/opinion/scams-trust-institutions.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/10/opinion/scams-trust-insti... Things have gotten dramatically worse since then.
- hunterpayne 7mo agoI knew a couple of McArthur Genius grant recipients (they were students like me) when I was in college. I wouldn't put any of them among the top most intelligent students I went to school with. The way they are chosen isn't exactly bad but it doesn't end up with giving the grants to "geniuses". If you aren't in one of the top most competitive fields, its more about applying and getting the right recommendations. If you get one in math or CS, then yes...that's very impressive. Professor Cotton (sp?) isn't in one of those fields.
- MengerSponge 7mo agoBro. You don't apply for the McArthur. And why would you go out of your way to misspell her name? What do you gain by that aside from just looking petulant?
- RyanOD 7mo agoCompletely agree with this. I watch many commercials on television targeting elderly folks and I just cringe. They seem to be doing everything they can to separate the viewer from their money for a dubious product or service.
- abbadadda 7mo ago“There’s a sucker born every minute, and we’re gonna take ‘em for all they got” - Harry Wormwood in Matilda At least in the book/movie(s) Harry Wormwood faces consequences. The enablement top down is the problem. The system is rotten and no one faces any real consequence only a slap on the wrist at a fraction of revenue many years later.
- macNchz 7mo agoWatching over shoulders as elderly people watch YouTube with ads and engage with clips of deepfake celebrities selling fraudulent nonsense is both enlightening and painful.
- katzgrau 7mo agoI’ve seen this too. And with AI, it’s empowered even more people to spam, imitate, steal and remix others’ work, research and artistic expression. The big grift is on - and sadly, our fearless leader is the epitome of it.
- goosejuice 7mo agoIf this is referring to the US, yes indeed. We're great at the whole free market, fiduciary duty to shareholder bit. We're terrible at using law to manage the negative externalities.
- dfedbeef 7mo agoI have bad news, I don't think we're that great at the free market either.
- lenerdenator 7mo agoWell, really, that's all countries. Some dude was willing to resort to more depraved measures than his rivals, and made enough people do what he wanted in order to become the leader.
- boelboel 7mo agoVery ahistorical view
- lenerdenator 7mo agoReally? Show me one society that wasn't ruled by a class of people that didn't, at some point, operate a monopoly on violence, often with basically nothing that would count as "due process" today. One.
- taurath 7mo agoAll of the greatest societies champion their defeat of and superiority from people exactly like that.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- Lalabadie 7mo agoI read "scambling" recently and the word has stayed with me since.
- flir 7mo agoWhen resources and opportunities get concentrated at the top of the pyramid, people get more desperate to take any advantage that comes their (or their children's) way. In really bad situations, it stops being about improvement and starts being about avoidance of decline. The late Roman Republic is an example - wealth, land and influence concentrated in fewer hands, society just gets more vicious and corrupt as people look for any edge they can get. The reign of Æthelred Unread is another example. I think you're seeing the impact of our modern Gilded Age - it's turning society into a Red Queen's Race.
- WalterBright 7mo ago> When resources and opportunities get concentrated at the top of the pyramid In a free market system, wealth is created, not concentrated.
- marssaxman 7mo agoIt does both! There is no natural law which prevents the formation of a monopoly.
- WalterBright 7mo ago> It does both! No, it does not concentrate wealth. Wealth is not a fixed pie. In a free market, you get wealthy by creating wealth, not concentrating it. As for monopolies, competition is what prevents them.
- krastanov 7mo agoThis sounds incredibly naive. Competition does not magically prevent monopolies -- once you have a dominant player they just buy or undercut the occasional competing startup.
- nickpp 7mo ago> once you have a dominant player they just buy or undercut the occasional competing startup If they buy startups, a thousand more will spring up hoping to be bought. Investors love this game. And if you think undercutting works, read up on the story of Dow and how they broke the German bromine monopoly [1]. There is no such thing as a natural monopoly. Only governments can create monopolies, usually through regulation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Henry_Dow#Breaking_a_monopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Henry_Dow#Breaking_a_m...
- kingleopold 7mo agoThis goes back to dying for your own country at scale for wars that had nothing to with risking your family, your land, your country. back then if you refused to fight for war that never risked anyting you care, they would literally killed you or made you slave labor.
- mr_00ff00 7mo agoAre you saying this is specific to the US? I think you would be hard pressed to find a country that didn’t get involved in some war that had nothing to do with defense.
- kingleopold 7mo agonope, it's as old as war itself
- jmyeet 7mo agoI saw someone say recently "hobbies are a luxury" and I tend to agree. Think back decades ago and you had a single person or a family supported by a single income who could afford the rent or to buy their house and put their kids through college. By the late 1970s and 1980s the balance had shifted to where more households than not had both parents working. Then people started having multiple jobs. This was in part because employers didn't want to employ people full-time as they'd have to offer benefits, most notably health insurance. And the last 10+ years has taken this further where we now have "side gigs" or "side hustles" or people who are desperate to be "influencers" or "Youtubers" or whatever. Any hobby you have needs to be monetized to get by. You have to sell something, even if it's advice on how to do the thing. That's what's meant by "hobbies are a luxury". It means you're earning enough not to need to monetize some portion of your life. And the number of people who can do that is continually decreasing. The problem is capitalism. If you have a hobby, the capital owners haven't loaded you with enough debt (student, medical, housing). You're too independent. You may do unacceptable things like demand raises and better working conditions or, worse yet, withhold your labor. You're spending at least some of your time not creating value for some capital owner to exploit. Every aspect of our lives is getting financialized so somebody else can get wealthier. Every second of your time and thing you do needs to be monetized and exploited. Gambling isn't a net negative for society. It's just a negative. There are no positive aspects to it. Gambling addicts are incredibly likely to commit suicide. It's incredibly destructive.
- WalterBright 7mo ago> The problem is capitalism Capitalist countries build walls to keep people out. Socialist countries build walls to keep people in.
- michaelchisari 7mo agoThis is a trite response that doesn't engage with what was originally stated. The double edged brilliance/danger of capitalism is that it constantly opens up and moves into new markets. This is good, it means once the market determines a need, capital investment can accelerate production of the good that meets that need. But the flip side is it is coming for everything. Everything will be marketized and monetized and accelerated and made efficient. And there are genuine problems with that. Regulation has been the historical response, but we've seen concentrated wealth chip away at regulations for decades or even rip them apart overnight. This is a contradiction that needs to be resolved. One can be pro-capitalism or anti-capitalism and come to the same conclusion.
- WickyNilliams 7mo agoI'm still reeling from the fact that the sitting president pumped some meme coin the day (iirc) he took office. And this largely passed by without any consequence, reckoning, or repercussions. It's just accepted now that even the highest office will scam their own supporters
- isubkhankulov 7mo agoThe US government and private interests are clearly incentivized to keep the crypto industry subdued to a chaotic casino. Participants engage willingly. If crypto is legitimized, it threatens the US dollar, sanctions regime and the US’s ability to project power as the world leading reserve currency. The president and any other shitcoin operator know this and are playing the game on the field. Every country has the same challenge. Some ban crypto, which pushes it to the grey market in those jurisdictions. Hopefully that helps explain why there weren’t and wont be any consequences.
- WickyNilliams 7mo agoThat's a fair point. But I'm not talking about the legitimacy (or not) of crypto. More that the president was (is?) running a pump and dump scheme. It should be profoundly embarrassing to supporters and it should be political suicide for the scammer. But it barely registered.
- goodmythical 7mo agoI feel like you missed the suggestions that the move (the shiiling and scamming) may have surved or been subborinate to an ulterior motive. By taking relatively low risk public position (from the guy making wildly innapropriate comments and taking wildly irresponsible actions seemingly daily) they are able to effectively spread FUD with regard to crypto. And that could have been motivated by a perceived threat by crypto against USD and/or fiat in general. Like...this dude took food from genuinely starving people because there was some abuse in the system and had no plans whatever to restore the food to the starving. Scamming people that are typically seen (by his constituency) as elitist tech-mongers and coin-bros? How's that supposed to negatively impact his ratings anyay? At worst it confirms pre-existing favor both for and against him. People who hate him for the coin shilling already hated him and were not likely to ever be convinced in his favor, people who fanaticize him will see it as stated above and will also not change their opinions in anything but degree.
- Yizahi 7mo agoThis sounds like everyone is not perfect therefore no one should be singled out as a bad guy, everyone is equally shady. Which is objectively not true. Even the shit IT practices like stealing private information or stealing copyrighted property can be "rationalized" to benefit better targeted advertisement or better LLM generators and so on. Gambling on the other hand is pure 100% social damage with zero redeeming qualities. Even drugs have some positive aspects to them, unlike gambling.
- dstroot 7mo ago> “not even pretending to care about people they affect.” “Not even pretending to care about the people they elect.” There, I fixed it for you.
- jorvi 7mo agoReminds me of what Frank Sobotka says in The Wire: "We used to make shit in this country, build shit here. Now all we do is put our hand in the next guy's pocket."
- dang 7mo agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47535377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47535377.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- noja 7mo agoAmericans: freedom to Europe: freedom from