winston_smith

11 ms·

31.
by winston_smith 6y ago
1daysooner.org lists almost 40,000
32.
by winston_smith 6y ago
1daysooner.org lists almost 40,000 volunteers, and that's without anyone official even asking for them. And you need far fewer subjects in a challenge trial than a normal trial.
33.
by winston_smith 6y ago
It's great that you care about poor people, but it's also elitist to treat them like they're too poor to afford free will.
34.
by winston_smith 6y ago
Unless we decide to consciously work against that tendency, which it's nice to see people doing in this thread.
35.
by winston_smith 6y ago
You're using the passive voice, "people must be protected", which calls for action without considering whether the cure might be worse than the disease.
36.
by winston_smith 6y ago
If your assumption is that people are helpless to resist persuasion, then who is this incorruptible entity who will protect us from having to make our own choices?
37.
by winston_smith 6y ago
Feeding lies to vulnerable people sounds exactly like what our authority figures do. Who did you have in mind to enforce those limits?
38.
by winston_smith 6y ago
This Johns Hopkins doc claims they took off four days for Thanksgiving: https://thedispatch.com/p/fda-career-staff-are-delaying-the
39.
by winston_smith 6y ago
We are indeed far from the original argument that billionaires and creating value are bad. But I respect your right to petition the government to bring back housing projects and welfare cheese.
40.
by winston_smith 6y ago
OP's argument was that capturing value itself is bad. But I suspect you don't check to see if your apple sellers have plenty of other potential buyers before buying apples. If nobody else is buying, then the seller lowers the pr
41.
by winston_smith 6y ago
> you have to be able to capture the difference between the value of someone else’s work and what you pay them to do it This is the textbook definition for how wealth is created, and it's exactly what's supposed to happen in ev
42.
by winston_smith 6y ago
> If someone challenges a status quo that you like ("makes something political" in your parlance), then actually defend that status quo Incidentally, that right there is a good illustration of how being apolitical is different
43.
by winston_smith 6y ago
> can't build an organization without making decisions some people will call political. What's the issue? The issue is that when someone says "let's stay away from politics", it's pedantic and obtuse to star
44.
by winston_smith 6y ago
Nonsense, most things are apolitical. The people who deny that are trying to produce political action on their pet issues and think we can be coerced into supporting it if they claim, as George W. Bush did, that "you are either with u
45.
by winston_smith 6y ago
Fair enough, but beside the point, which is that "businesses ... are legally required to, let people do their jobs regardless of their faith". Hobby Lobby had to wage a very public lawsuit all the way to the supreme court over a
46.
by winston_smith 6y ago
Absolutely, because politics is what government is specifically for, unlike, say, toy stores and individual people doing their non-government jobs. (edit: not endorsing either the government's position, just saying that yes, government
47.
by winston_smith 6y ago
And yet we do because it's a real and useful concept, just like "apolitical".
48.
by winston_smith 6y ago
The smartass kid would agree with you. Is your claim that some things used to not be political but now literally everything is?
49.
by winston_smith 6y ago
> can legally affect politics via lobbies, so it is hard for large American companies to stay apolitical I think they could manage it by, stick with me here, not lobbying. Especially on issues unrelated to their core business.
50.
by winston_smith 6y ago
> Being apolitical is no longer an option. My purchasing power says otherwise. I'll take my business to the company that sticks to its job and doesn't preach at me.
51.
by winston_smith 6y ago
If everything is political and there's no such thing as neutral, then neither of those words would exist. It's like the smartass kid who acts like he doesn't know what "clean" means because there might be a molecule
52.
by winston_smith 6y ago
> having "no stance" means supporting the status quo Voting "remain" in Brexit was supporting the status quo. Voting "leave" was opposing it. Having no stance on Brexit means having no stance on it. We&#x2
53.
by winston_smith 6y ago
If everything's political, then nothing is
54.
by winston_smith 6y ago
> nothing is apolitical If nothing was apolitical then we wouldn't have a word for it.
55.
by winston_smith 6y ago
Nobody's claiming perfect political neutrality. The claim is that it's bad for companies to get political in unnecessary ways. Inasmuch as Hobby Lobby decided to push their politics and religion on their employees via their heal
56.
by winston_smith 6y ago
As much as political activists want to think the world revolves around them, it really doesn't. Saying "but this other thing is vaguely political" (or religious) is no excuse to insist that your company get involved in your p
57.
by winston_smith 6y ago
You heard of Hobby Lobby because they promptly got sued for it. Nobody's claiming that work is completely unrelated to religion or politics. That's just the inverse of the stupid claim that because work sometimes involves those t
58.
by winston_smith 6y ago
They just listed off a standard set of "europe good, USA bad" talking points. The "everything is political" argument lets you tie any political issue you want to any company you want, so that you can pressure them into
59.
by winston_smith 6y ago
This is the same level of cleverness as saying "everything is made of atoms so everything is about physics".
60.
by winston_smith 6y ago
This is a terrible argument. Replace politics with religion to see why. You can try to be clever by listing ways religion might relate to business, but that doesn't change the fact that businesses generally, and in many ways are legal

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