netcan

78 ms·

811.
by netcan 6y ago
Assuming, as a starting point, that religious people believe what they say they believe is reasonable, and respectful. The blending of what you belive and beliefs that benefit you is always relevant. It doesn't mean that no one believe
812.
by netcan 6y ago
I'm not sure these questions can be answered philosophically. After thousands of years, philosophy can't even agree on the the morality of things that already do exist. Science fiction and moral philosophy depict "model organ
813.
by netcan 6y ago
Interesting. Are drones/uavs having any impact on crop dusting?
814.
by netcan 6y ago
It was early into social distancing that big techcos started announcing/enforcing their policies on remote worker salaries... I though: that's fast. This must be reactive. Maybe lots of employees have already moved, or they expect
815.
by netcan 6y ago
A lot of these issues, and similar ones, have been present all along. Pamphleteers basically started democracy. Media influence, gameability, loud minorities, media corruption, & infiltration by foreign provocateurs... Media is a "
816.
by netcan 6y ago
> Turkey is not a democracy? It's a democracy in terms of the electoral process, mostly... at least historically. Flawed, but the people select their leaders by election. It's not really a democracy in terms of political cultur
817.
by netcan 6y ago
Exactly. We have also seen (in eurioe and the US) the kind of political paradigms that accompany, and cover for, systematic ineptitude. Lockdown Vs Not has been (is) mostly centred around a specific dichotomy. Freedom, economic health, empl
818.
by netcan 6y ago
The "Bureaucracy vs Markets" or "Top-Down vs Bottom-Up" debates are stale. These ideas had purchase a generation ago, when these ideas were proxies for Soviet vs American ideological sparring. That ended 30 years ago. Me
819.
by netcan 6y ago
I don't really think it would have been a very different response. Racism is a form of our tribal xenophobia. The fact that racism came with a pseudoscientific logic is besides the point. European fascism managed to be fundamentally ra
820.
by netcan 6y ago
One of the most mind bending realizations (to me) from human history is how unremarkable sapiens were, relative to other humans, for most of our history as a distinct species. YNH proposes a fascinating theory about sapiens' ability to
821.
by netcan 6y ago
I agree with the OP that we need to be informed in order to have the conversation. But..... You have the main point here. The whole premise of monopolies is that monopolies dominate bottlenecks, and use them to generate outsize revenue and
822.
by netcan 6y ago
These things aren't absolute. But, at least in that country, you cannot use the postal service or major delivery services to deliver packages locally for a similar cost and delivery price as internationals... With amazon being the rece
823.
by netcan 6y ago
This is pretty abstract. Nation States do exist in the context of package delivery.
824.
by netcan 6y ago
I'm still not seeing your point. This is an article about postage. It's not about counterfeits or locally produced goods.
825.
by netcan 6y ago
No. I don't think this is about that though. This isn't about a policy that costs money, and creates benefits. It's not even really a policy. It's a side effect of quasi-diplomatic arrangements created decades ago... wit
826.
by netcan 6y ago
This whole saga shows us a lot about the institutional shitshow at the base, mechanical level of the economy. FYI, this is not an anomaly. In Israel, amazon did a deal with the national postal service that gives amazon packages priority. Be
827.
by netcan 6y ago
I think you're barking up the wrong tree. There may be ways to be greener by manufacturing near consumers... but that doesn't have much to do with amazon vs alibaba. These products are manufactured in the same places.
828.
by netcan 6y ago
> It's hilarious to me how people are worried about data Facebook has on them, or freaking out about address data being leaked in a hack. Several reasons... (1) Facebook/Alphabet have a lot more data. Leaking anything implie
829.
by netcan 6y ago
> I would like to see eminent domain used to restructure these companies with weird controlling shared structures in to being truly publicly traded companies as a first step. My first question is "why?" What is this trying to
830.
by netcan 6y ago
I would throw in a bunch of caveats... I'm OK with " because lenders make money on them " as a generality. ...As long as we are honest about what an LBO is . It is an arbitrage, of sorts. The deals are, by definition and in
831.
by netcan 6y ago
Banks, and in the last decade private lenders. The simple answer is "because they're generally good for it." No one would invest if these companies immediately went bankrupt. First.. lenders generally get a premium if it&#x27
832.
by netcan 6y ago
I'm not arguing that bankruptcy is part of the strategy. The strategy is about "how to buy a company for free, without downside liabilities." This, results in bankruptcy sometimes... significantly less than 15% of the time,
833.
by netcan 6y ago
Since we're down to argueing degrees... Of course it's not deterministic. If 100% (or even 15%) went bankrupt, no one would finance them. It's impossible to get to this point. Every deal is a snowflake, but the reductive cari
834.
by netcan 6y ago
The only remedy to this is a history lesson. Do you know that the British Empire, and many of your colonies started as chartered monopolies? Not just history either. Anyway, what do those things have to do with the nanny state? Treating &qu
835.
by netcan 6y ago
I think you're misunderstanding me. I don't mean that FB sucks. I don't care either way. I mean this: If toyota were to disappear tomorrow, $250bn worth of car-production capacity would disappear. Fewer cars could be made, at
836.
by netcan 6y ago
That's kind of a skepticism conundrum. If media can't be trusted about media... I mean, I agree with you. They're vested. Even if it wasn't financial, journalists must have an insider's set of opinions about good &a
837.
by netcan 6y ago
That's what I mean. Your distrust should extend to things that have the same qualities as "government." At the more monopolistic end of the spectrum, and in many real life examples, they're a type of government... in the
838.
by netcan 6y ago
None of these are easy to quit because of network effects. Rick has to use FB because his grandkids' photos are there. Morty uses whatsapp because his soccer club posts practice times there. Network effects are essentially like infrast
839.
by netcan 6y ago
Nanny-state/libertarian arguments against antitrust are misguided. I am against a nanny state. Deeply against it. It gets abused of power. is invariably useless and freedom is important for its own sake. Monopolies extend these problem
840.
by netcan 6y ago
Antitrust legislation & enforcement are inextricably linked, for all sorts of reasons. This isn't just a US problem. The entire conventional legal approach was (and still is) flawed. First, monopolies tend to form in The way it wo

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