RIP Paul Allen

RobinLFC said:
Well, agreed on the second paragraph. As for the first, I don't believe that one bad act makes the person himself bad, and ultimately he did something out of self-interest which billions of people do every day, just not on that scale.
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a life of luxury built on exploitation of an industry that he and his friends had no right to monopolise and suppress followed by attempts to maintain said monopoly and political system that made it possible is not one bad act, it is a lifetime of fecking over the rest of humanity
 
oneniltothearsenal said:
Hmm, I think he has a few valid points, for instance the dominance of identity politics from left activism and some of the consequences of that. But his brief comments on free speech make me suspicious of him being a radical free speech absolutist that doesn't quite understand the nuances. I don't buy this argument about "free speech" being silenced by the left at all.

Makes me think of this recent article on Tucker Carlson that exposes some of the dishonesty of these "censorship" claims on the right:


“Is this censorship,” I manage to ask, “or just consequences? Doesn’t speech have consequences?” But Carlson dodges.

“You agreed there are some things we are not allowed to say because of diversity,” he says.

“No, I don’t agree with that.”

“You did.”

“No. No. No. No.”

“Because consequences. Yeah you did.”

So apparently, by asking, I’m censoring.

I think about the power imbalance. This man. Who has money. Status. 2.7 million viewers. He holds the attention of the president. And me? I might be “the liberal elite,” but I buy groceries at Wal-Mart, live in Iowa, and after 12 years of working as a writer, I still can’t get many outlets to even respond to my pitches.

Carlson’s PR person was concerned about silencing, too. She demanded that Carlson be able to respond to every criticism in this piece. And then, if the people who made those criticisms had a response, that Carlson be able to respond to that.

“You want him to have the last word?” I asked.

“Yes!” she shouted. She was shouting at me, too.

I told her he has a show. He has a large audience. He has a website. He has a Twitter following. I was sure he’d be able to find a way to respond without an endless feedback loop. She insisted. She didn’t want him to be silenced.

But Carlson isn’t being silenced. He’s plenty loud enough. And anyway I don’t want to silence him. I don’t want to end free speech, I just want to tell him speech has consequences.

What happened to make a rich white man the vox populi? How did I, a mom in the Midwest who can’t afford health care, become the humorless, censoring, liberal elite? How are the winners still insisting they are losers? What happened to this whole mess of a world? So I listen and listen. But I get no answers."

https://www.cjr.org/the_profile/tucker-carlson.php
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This is a good point. Tucker Carlson is the son of a United States Ambassador. His stepmother is an heiress. He went to a boarding school that costs $59,000 per year. That same boarding school was home to multiple members of the Astor family, multiple members of the Bush family, and a member of the Vanderbilt family. By any definition of elites in this country, Tucker Carlson is it.


These people have no shame and no argument they make is in good faith. They don't deserve the time of day, let alone a debate. I graduated from a second tier state school with tens of thousands in student loan debt. I delivered pizza, I caddied, I was a cashier, I went a year without health insurance and I live in a red state. But to people like the one in the video Raoul posted, I have the power to shut down speech. Not the elite who send generation after generation to Yale. Not the people like Richard Cohen and Bari Weiss and Bill O'Reilly. It's me and my friends, most of whom have even less than me, who are the real threat to speech.
 
Eboue said:
This is a good point. Tucker Carlson is the son of a United States Ambassador. His stepmother is an heiress. He went to a boarding school that costs $59,000 per year. That same boarding school was home to multiple members of the Astor family, multiple members of the Bush family, and a member of the Vanderbilt family. By any definition of elites in this country, Tucker Carlson is it.


These people have no shame and no argument they make is in good faith. They don't deserve the time of day, let alone a debate. I graduated from a second tier state school with tens of thousands in student loan debt. I delivered pizza, I caddied, I was a cashier, I went a year without health insurance and I live in a red state. But to people like the one in the video Raoul posted, I have the power to shut down speech. Not the elite who send generation after generation to Yale. Not the people like Richard Cohen and Bari Weiss and Bill O'Reilly. It's me and my friends, most of whom have even less than me, who are the real threat to speech.
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I don't think the video was aimed at you or your friends. It was more of a critique that there are elements at both political extremes who do unproductive things.
 
Eboue said:
What part of the Republican agenda did he want to support then? Putting children in cages? Putting rapists on the court? Crushing unions?
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I don't know, I wasn't BFF with him, but my burst guess would be either something on lowering taxes, or just a small donation that puts him on the table. He is hardly Koch brothers.
 
Revan said:
I don't know, I wasn't BFF with him, but my burst guess would be either something on lowering taxes, or just a small donation that puts him on the table. He is hardly Koch brothers.
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it's going to be a really good day when they die, it'll be even better if it's all of them at the same time from an ironic gas explosion
 
Silva said:
a life of luxury built on exploitation of an industry that he and his friends had no right to monopolise and suppress followed by attempts to maintain said monopoly and political system that made it possible is not one bad act, it is a lifetime of fecking over the rest of humanity
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There are no people who wouldn't have done what he did should you put them in the position he was in when he started his business.
 
Silva said:
how many times do we have to write that the reason we refuse to build shrines to these people is because they are a symptom of a system that allows them to make enough money where giving 2 billions dollars is less money than the taxes they avoided, that the reason is because they help propagate the system by giving lots of money to politicians to maintain the status quo? i don't care how much money he gives to charity because he should never have had that much money to begin with
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At this stage it is time for you to provide some evidence that he didn't pay taxes, considering that you have been accusing him about it.

The money which he shouldn't have had is an another argument. I don't believe that the system should allow people to become as rich as he was, but it is not morally wrong (and definitely not illegal) to become a billionaire while this system exists and while you don't do anything illegal or morally wrong to do so.
 
Silva said:
it's going to be a really good day when they die, it'll be even better if it's all of them at the same time from an ironic gas explosion
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I'll just say that I don't have a single good word to say about them.
 
Revan said:
1) It is totally normal for a lot of people to not vote. This isn't some American-only thing. In almost every country (bar North Korea and co.) a large part of the population doesn't vote.
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Not sure why I'm even sticking my nose in here, but in many countries it is compulsory. You can enter a blank vote, usually interpreted as "fed up with all of you", but you can't just stay at home.

Pros and cons, of course. Personally I think it's a good thing.
 
Revan said:
At this stage it is time for you to provide some evidence that he didn't pay taxes, considering that you have been accusing him about it.
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https://www.icij.org/investigations...hore-gurus-help-rich-avoid-taxes-jets-yachts/

Revan said:
The money which he shouldn't have had is an another argument. I don't believe that the system should allow people to become as rich as he was, but it is not morally wrong (and definitely not illegal) to become a billionaire while this system exists and while you don't do anything illegal or morally wrong to do so.
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okay great, when the communists take over i expect you to tell bill gates it's actually moral and legal that we are going to cut his head off because this is the system he lives in
 
it's actually not immoral (and definitely not illegal) for sociopathic americans to hunt the bald eagle to extinction because their legal protection was removed and that's just the system they live in
 
Silva said:
making these people's lives difficult works
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It does especially if its the restaurant itself turning them away

Eboue said:
This is a good point. Tucker Carlson is the son of a United States Ambassador. His stepmother is an heiress. He went to a boarding school that costs $59,000 per year. That same boarding school was home to multiple members of the Astor family, multiple members of the Bush family, and a member of the Vanderbilt family. By any definition of elites in this country, Tucker Carlson is it.

These people have no shame and no argument they make is in good faith. They don't deserve the time of day, let alone a debate. I graduated from a second tier state school with tens of thousands in student loan debt. I delivered pizza, I caddied, I was a cashier, I went a year without health insurance and I live in a red state. But to people like the one in the video Raoul posted, I have the power to shut down speech. Not the elite who send generation after generation to Yale. Not the people like Richard Cohen and Bari Weiss and Bill O'Reilly. It's me and my friends, most of whom have even less than me, who are the real threat to speech.
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Yeah the entitled elite act like victims when privilege is removed.
 
Silva said:
https://www.icij.org/investigations...hore-gurus-help-rich-avoid-taxes-jets-yachts/


okay great, when the communists take over i expect you to tell bill gates it's actually moral and legal that we are going to cut his head off because this is the system he lives in
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On my phone, so couldn't read all of it, but it looked to me that it was about Lewis Hamilton.

Communists won't come back in power, sorry to break it for you and Eboue. The time when non talented idiots were in charge and everyone was equally poor ain't coming back. A better capitalist system worldwide (like for example Norway or Switzerland), I hope so.
 
Revan said:
On my phone, so couldn't read all of it, but it looked to me that it was about Lewis Hamilton.

Communists won't come back in power, sorry to break it for you and Eboue. The time when non talented idiots were in charge and everyone was equally poor ain't coming back. A better capitalist system worldwide (like for example Norway or Switzerland), I hope so.
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namecalling is rude
 
Revan said:
On my phone, so couldn't read all of it, but it looked to me that it was about Lewis Hamilton.

Communists won't come back in power, sorry to break it for you and Eboue. The time when non talented idiots were in charge and everyone was equally poor ain't coming back. A better capitalist system worldwide (like for example Norway or Switzerland), I hope so.
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is it a long list of people including paul allen, he and his billionaire friends don't even pay their intended share of taxes let alone a fair share
 
antohan said:
Not sure why I'm even sticking my nose in here, but in many countries it is compulsory. You can enter a blank vote, usually interpreted as "fed up with all of you", but you can't just stay at home.

Pros and cons, of course. Personally I think it's a good thing.
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Yeah, I know that. If people are forced to vote, sure the turnout will be higher.

Regardless, many European countries have similar or just slightly higher turnout than US, so it ain't a big deal.
 
Raoul said:
I don't think the video was aimed at you or your friends. It was more of a critique that there are elements at both political extremes who do unproductive things.
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Well one of my problems is he specifically doesn't mention both extremes but only the regressive left. I think his point would be stronger if he didn't just target one side. Like post-factualism is clearly an aspect of this entire social media micro-era not just a characteristic of the left or liberals (Trump epitomizes post-factualism and it even spreads through plenty of non-political topics as well).

Its really just an extension of the trend begun in the post-was era when historian Richard Hofstadter wrote about it: Anti-intellectualism.
 
Revan said:
It was literally the case though. Smart and successful people were avoided and imprisoned, illiterates ruled.
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And they had to build walls and several miles of electric fences to stop people from escaping paradise. Don't forget that.

First time I went to Cuba the state-owned boat I was hiring to go fishing was broken. I asked the guy at the pier whether he knew any locals that could take me fishing. The guy looked at me as if I were the dumbest guy in the world: "Anyone who had a boat is already in Florida".

On paper it all sounds jolly good though.
 
antohan said:
And they had to build walls and several miles of electric fences to stop people from escaping paradise. Don't forget that.

First time I went to Cuba the state-owned boat I was hiring to go fishing was broken. I asked the guy at the pier whether he knew any locals that could take me fishing. The guy looked at me as if I were the dumbest guy in the world: "Anyone who had a boat is already in Florida".

On paper it all sounds jolly good though.
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tens of thousands of people die annually from lack of healthcare in the richest country in the world.
 
Eboue said:
tens of thousands of people die annually from lack of healthcare in the richest country in the world.
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Certainly an issue. You don't have to tear everything up and despise profit-seeking enterprise as a result. Many rich countries do find a balance.
 
antohan said:
Certainly an issue. You don't have to tear everything up and despise profit-seeking enterprise as a result. Many rich countries do find a balance.
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The problem is that in many countries neo-liberalism is concentrating wealth and power at the top end of town while dividing society and whistling while the world melts.
 
communism failed okay the only option is destroy the climate for profit, trying to get rid of capitalism is literally stalinism and tbh i'd rather choke to death if that's what the free market has decided
 
Silva said:
communism failed okay the only option is destroy the climate for profit, trying to get rid of capitalism is literally stalinism and tbh i'd rather choke to death if that's what the free market has decided
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Would you like to see the return of communism? Yes or no?
 
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