I remember taking a California statewide essay exam in middle school whose prompt was specifically to argue for or against banning Harry Potter from the school library. I wrote a stridently anti-censorship piece extolling the virtues of literary freedom and calling out the censorious right for attempting to use schools not to educate, but to transmit catechism.
The essays were graded by (obviously heavily left-leaning) teachers from all over the state, with two teachers independently assigning a score and if their scores differed by more than one grade, another teacher would be tiebreaker.
I got the top score from both teachers--one of only a handful in the (large) school district. I even got an award from the local newspaper.
Now I see the same demographic take the polar opposite view and it's disappointing to say the least. Especially after the "anti" racism struggle session era, it seems to me that their real issue with the book bans wasn't the censorship; they just wanted to transmit the "right" catechism.
Yeah! And for that matter, has Jon Stewart atoned for his sin of leaving The Daily Show in 2015? If he had stayed, no way Trump could have won! And why didn't Oprah run in 2024--she could have saved us! It's all their fault!
Get real.
I don't think South Park ever implied both parties are equally bad. Just that they are both bad. And I don't think irreverent satire is prep work or psy-op propaganda for an authoritarian government. If anything, it's the inoculation.
It's quite clear that you haven't watched the series in the past decade. I'm sure you wouldn't be crowing the same tune if you'd watched the Mr. Garrison storyline.
I watched the first 13 seasons of South Park as they aired and the post you're replying to feels like at least a sincere and reasonable interpretation of SP's politics.
What season is the Mr. Garrison storyline from?
Why is it insufficient to (assuming the poster isn't lying to us) watch SP for 20 years before drawing a conclusion about it and the creators? They owned up to not having watched recently before asking about whether things have changed. I don't understand the weird hostility in your post when they owned up to the limitations of their PoV.
It's not the voters, the party apparatchiks, (social) media barons, big-dollar donors--no, it's those pesky artists who are responsible for "normalizing and popularizing.. the current situation"!
Besides that, they indeed "owned up" that they hadn't watched it in over a decade. Not only would they plausibly have drawn a different conclusion if they had, but it's just a bit ridiculous to blame some TV series 10+ years ago for "the current situation".
Hence my comparison to Jon Stewart's contemporaneous departure from The Daily Show, which is a "media butterfly effect" I see more frequently blamed in Democrat-leaning circles.
Sorry, but that's not an answer to my question. To be honest, I'm starting to feel like you're not really talking to me, you're just responding to me.
If you're asking for evidence of people changing their minds, I've done that, though I will admit I haven't done it in the past page of comments on hackernews.
Normally it's not a wholesale change of opinion, but a shift in nuance or a changing of details.
But even if I found such a thing, that doesn't answer my question.
Most of my interactions in age gating discussions on HN have pushed me toward indignation, rather than nuance. It's arguing against someone's hypothetical dystopian nightmare. I'm tired of the game. If they want to affect change, they can do it financially as I am.
Looking forward to seeing this same treatment on the privacy folks and how they respond.
I'm not disputing the negative externalities from traffic, nor the laudable goal of reducing the number of vehicles entering cities. I'm not even disputing the effectiveness of congestion pricing at achieving that goal.
But the mechanism here is highly unfair. It's obvious why rich people support congestion charges--they're rich! They don't give a shit about the $20 or whatever, and it clears the roads of those dirty poors making traffic. Bring it on!
Meanwhile the poor--already struggling with affordability and cost of living--are the ones who bear the burden. They can't afford the congestion fee, so they're forced to find some alternative way to get into the city. But that comes at an obvious utility cost; if that alternative was the best way for them to get into the city, they'd already be using it! And poor people are the ones with no time to spare, so choosing between spending $20 they don't have or spending 30 more minutes that they don't have is a Hobson's choice.
Here's my proposal: Every vehicle gets 60 free days per year with no congestion charges at all. Days 61-100 have a $1,000,000 congestion charge. Days 101-365 have a $10,000,000 congestion charge. Congestion charges will be reduced, however, to 0.1% of the driver's AGI (for days 61-100) and 1% of the driver's AGI (for days 101-365) upon application. Now even hedge fund managers in Connecticut will be inconvenienced in just the same way as poor people.
Yet somehow I believe that if that were how congestion pricing was implemented, all these Econ professors would magically discover what a bad policy congestion pricing really is!
Simpler idea that will get 90% of the benefit: amplify congestion pricing based on KBB value of the car. Zero enforcement complexity. Yes rich people could drive a shittier car to save their $5k per year or whatever, but most won't, and the few ultra-cost insensitive people will pay for vast numbers of the most cost sensitive.
Imperfect but much better than existing implementations. Really, though, the goal ought to be not only to reduce congestion, but to fairly distribute the net gain of utility among those affected.
A marginal $20 has very little utility to rich people, but 15 minutes saved in traffic has large utility. Congestion pricing results in large utility gains to the rich.
A marginal $20 has tangible utility to poor people, and 15 minutes spent finding alternative transport also has tangible utility. Congestion pricing results in large utility losses to the poor.
KBB values are an imperfect proxy for individual monetary utility but could definitely be used to more fairly distribute the utility gains from congestion pricing.
The main problem with that scheme is that its imprecision falls exactly where I think we need the highest precision: The ultra-rich. If they're just a passenger in their driver's black SUV (maybe $100k KBB tops), they're not paying anywhere close to a commensurate share of their income on congestion fees. The upper middle class BMW driver, on the other hand, gets screwed (relatively speaking).
The congestion charge should reach each person using that infrastructure in a way that fairly impacts their available individual utility. The impracticality of achieving this goal is why, in my opinion, congestion charges are bad policy.
Avoiding a policy that makes life better for nearly everyone because it doesn't make life bad enough for the top 0.0001% is so absurd that I honestly can't believe it's the source of your real opposition.
Given the extreme wealth disparity in this country, there will be virtually no policies at all that achieve your platonic policy-making ideal. Should we just have no laws at all?
If you really care to deal with the extreme high-end, there are other mechanisms that are easier to do at small n, such as having a superlinear vehicle registration tax.
Good, because it's not. The inevitably unfair distribution of utility gains and losses is why I think congestion charges are bad policy. The fact that your proposal leaves a giant loophole for those whose utility gains are the largest is, I think, quite a reasonable objection.
> If you really care to deal with the extreme high-end, there are other mechanisms that are easier to do at small n, such as having a superlinear vehicle registration tax.
The extreme high end don't register super fancy vehicles, and if they do, even superlinear registration taxes would be a much smaller marginal utility hit than would be fair--and once again, would be an unfairly large marginal utility hit to the upper middle class.
What ideal, exactly? A fair (re-)distribution of utility?
How about "free" school lunches?
Progressive income taxes come close, though ideally they'd have more brackets with higher rates and the brackets would be graduated by both wealth and income.
The "gas guzzler" tax in California seems pretty fair to me, as does the "polluter pays" principle in general.
Specifically traffic-related: I like how California does HOV/FasTrak lanes. There is a separate lane (or even a separate segregated roadway) with free access for "high occupancy vehicles" (2+ occupants, rarely 3+). However, individual commuters can pay (with FasTrak) for access to the lane. The cost is set dynamically depending on traffic conditions; it's a realtime market for spare capacity unused by actual HOVs. (It could still be improved, though, with an AGI coefficient, but I digress). Anyway, the most important part is there are always cost-free freeway lanes available; there's always an option just to sit and wait without additional payment.
Why can't you? These devices require accepting and agreeing to a EULA. Simply refuse the EULA and explain to the school administration that you will not enter into a contractual agreement with Apple or Google, nor will you allow them to defraud those companies by "accepting" the EULA for you.
Your child has a right to an education. School administrators cannot force parents to enter into contracts with companies as a condition for their child to receive an education.
For an extra solid case, insist that you have a sincere, deeply-held conviction against the use of these devices and any attempt to force their use or deny your child the right to an education due to your refusal is a violation of the First Amendment.
Why do parents just surrender and do whatever school admins want?
These are school devices. The school has the contract with Apple not me. The Eula applies to either the school or the life - in the latter case with all the normal kids can't enter into contracts that a lawyer would need to explain the details of.
Then refuse on First Amendment grounds. Your child has a right to an education and if you truly, sincerely believe those devices must not be used, the school must offer an accommodation.
It's really difficult to sympathize with your perspective here.
>>> Ban smartphones for kids.
>>> But the school gives my kids homework on them.
>> Then tell the school you and your kid won't use them; they still have to educate your kid.
> But I want my kid to use them. I just don't like what they allow my kid to do.
If they allow your kids to do things you don't want your kids doing, then don't let your kids use them! That's parenting 101.
It's very frustrating how many parents want to Nerf the world and destroy freedom and privacy, all so they can offload some of the essential duties of parenting to the state. Usually this is combined with a heaping helping of learned helplessness and lemming-like groupthink.
"But everyone is using smartphones; I couldn't deprive little Timmy! And it's modestly inconvenient to be a stick in the mud! Lawmakers, help! I demand that everyone has to do a face scan to authenticate every TCP packet--just think of my children!"
Y'all've enjoyed the benefits of the relationship with your ex for so long you've given into the illusion of living in a garden and forgotten that you actually live in the jungle.
When something needed killing--and sometimes when it didn't--your ex was always there to do the dirty work. You weren't always happy with what he got up to, but you were always happy to have a seat at the table and a free lunch.
Now that he's your ex you suddenly realize: Ain't nobody innocent in the jungle and your ex is a predator, too. If you aren't at the table you're on the menu.
I hope that you and epolanski are wrong and ericmay is right. The relationship was better for both of you; I hope it can be repaired. But if it can't, don't expect anything but self-interest maximization.
> When something needed killing--and sometimes when it didn't--your ex was always there to do the dirty work. You weren't always happy with what he got up to, but you were always happy to have a seat at the table and a free lunch.
"Dirty" is exactly the right adjective here. Former allies and their peoples now see exactly what the USA has been up to for all these decades, perpetually shit-stirring far away from home, securing access to resources, projecting military power and keeping regional powers from sorting themselves out. Looking back at the last century and the current state of the world, an awful lot of theaters and countries would very probably be more stable today if the USA had not spent decades financing factions, propping up regimes and otherwise meddling from the other side of the planet.
As for free lunches: the USA military industrial complex has profited heavily off allied countries. Also, the only country ever to invoke Article 5 of the NATO treaty was the USA. Many allied soldiers fought and died in ridiculous, extremely counterproductive US-led wars. I'm so very, very happy that we mostly decided to say fuck you to the USA when they tried that bullshit again with Iran.
You make it sound like the USA is the only actor with agency. USSR then RU, PRC, DPRK--just to name a few--have all been playing dirty. Hell, DPRK is propping up regimes and meddling in European affairs as we chat. Yet European vitriol is aimed at the USA, not DPRK. Funny.
Besides, plenty of theaters and countries are absolutely more stable today thanks to US efforts. I'm pretty sure Europeans are largely pleased with the results of a certain American meddling in European affairs a bit over 80 years ago. And I'm personally quite pleased with the results of French meddling in American affairs some 250 years ago. Welcome to the game.
> the only country ever to invoke Article 5 of the NATO treaty was the USA
Totally false. It was in fact certain European NATO members and staff who were pushing to invoke Article 5 while US military leaders were dismissive of the idea. The relevant Wikipedia article lays it out pretty well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_NATO_Article_5_contingenc...
"I don't have the time to become an expert on the Danish Air Force". -Gen. Tommy Franks
"I think it's safe to say that we won't be asking SACEUR to put together a battle plan for Afghanistan". -Anonymous 'Senior Official'
> Many allied soldiers fought and died in ridiculous, extremely counterproductive US-led wars.
Well, more than one soldier died, I suppose. But not really that many. Counterinsurgency in the sandbox isn't exactly high-intensity peer-on-peer combat. In any case the contribution was more symbolic than anything; allied forces were not determinative of any outcome.
> I'm so very, very happy that we mostly decided to say fuck you to the USA when they tried that bullshit again with Iran.
I'll be happy when USA rescinds export licenses this winter for LNG and refined fuels to countries that gave USA the finger but still expect USA to protect their supply lines and sell them the energy they need to survive the winter. Fuck you right back.
Well done proving how the USA is acting like an abusive asshole. Our previous deaths and support don't matter and you'll fuck over your own economy just to hurt us because we didn't want to help you in yet another retarded (unilaterally started!) war.
It also makes sense that you compare the USA with North Korea and Russia (whom your dear leader clearly loves). You're partially right: those are terrible regimes as well and they are widely and vocally hated in Europe. To think that Russia who is actively waging war on us isn't just shows your utter typically American self-centered myopic ignorance.
> Well done proving how the USA is acting like an abusive asshole.
Refusing to sell its energy to rich allies who consistently refuse to secure their own energy supplies, and who got themselves in this predicament despite the US's admonitions--that's just reciprocity, not acting like an abusive asshole. You won't help the world with their energy problem; why should the US help you? Especially when you wouldn't have an energy problem at all if you'd listened to the US in the past?
But if you want to see an abusive asshole, keep up the good work alienating the US. The Russians love their "We can do it again" bumper stickers. Pray that mentality does not rise in the US. Or else with a Europe openly antagonistic to both the US and Russia, they just might do it again...
> Our previous deaths and support don't matter
Nor, apparently, do USA's matter to you.
USA WWI combat deaths: 53,402
USA All-cause WWII military deaths in European theater: 250,000
European NATO member (excluding Turkey) soldiers killed in Afghanistan: 897
European NATO member (excl. Turkey & UK) soldiers killed in Afghanistan: 440
Now tell me again who's ungrateful for blood shed in defense of whom.
> you'll fuck over your own economy just to hurt us
No, selling oil and refined fuels to Europe raises prices in the US. Stopping those sales would bring prices down and help the US economy. Shareholders in O&G companies might miss out on a windfall, but every molecule will still find a willing Asian buyer.
Considering that gas prices and affordability are probably the most salient topic for the upcoming US midterm elections, you're incredibly lucky that this administration is generous enough to allow you to buy their energy. That can change.
> because we didn't want to help you in yet another retarded (unilaterally started!) war.
No, because you didn't want to lift a finger to defend your own energy supplies. Instead you angrily demand that Uncle Sam ensure your energy security for you while heaping on the opprobrium.
Typical European self-centered entitlement.
> To think that Russia who is actively waging war on us isn't [...]
I never said Russia wasn't a target of European vitriol. Just that the US is but DPRK is barely even mentioned while their troops are fighting and ballistic missiles are raining down right next door.
Like all piracy, it didn't condition access on payment. And like all P2P, more users (because free) meant more content available to everybody.
The rules weren't perfect, but they imposed order and organization and prevented harmful (for P2P networks) duplication and fragmentation. Like any society, the rules helped to provide a framework to solve a coordination problem in a hopefully-global-utility-maximizing way.
The result was a vibrant community cooperatively maintaining a virtual Library of Alexandria of music where library cards were cost free.
This whole thread does have me questioning my understanding of cited sources behind paywalls.
A contrived example I have in my head "My friend has more definitive proof in HIS book that <claim>, it only costs $1 trillion. Go read it yourself." For this particular thread its a bit disingenuous, but in a general case how does one go about understanding / disproving arguments made like this?
You decide whether or not the benefits from you obtaining the information outweigh the cost of obtaining the information. Or you convince Elon Musk to buy the book and leak the EPUB on twitter
> "Well it came from a book. Check it out if you're interested."
> "What? It's not free? Hell no I won't pay!"
I am also sceptical that my burning questions will be answered in the book, thus I choose to not buy it. Also, the Goodreads reviews don't look too good
No, the argument is, "If y'all hadn't squeezed us so hard, it would have been more profitable to invest in expanding production, so we'd have built more fabs and the memory shortage wouldn't be as bad right now."
It's a pretty straightforward argument; I'm not sure why it seems so difficult for you to understand.
When supply and demand moves prices up, it's the invisible hand of the market. When it moves prices down, it's your individual fault and you should consider paying suppliers reparations.
I remember taking a California statewide essay exam in middle school whose prompt was specifically to argue for or against banning Harry Potter from the school library. I wrote a stridently anti-censorship piece extolling the virtues of literary freedom and calling out the censorious right for attempting to use schools not to educate, but to transmit catechism.
The essays were graded by (obviously heavily left-leaning) teachers from all over the state, with two teachers independently assigning a score and if their scores differed by more than one grade, another teacher would be tiebreaker.
I got the top score from both teachers--one of only a handful in the (large) school district. I even got an award from the local newspaper.
Now I see the same demographic take the polar opposite view and it's disappointing to say the least. Especially after the "anti" racism struggle session era, it seems to me that their real issue with the book bans wasn't the censorship; they just wanted to transmit the "right" catechism.
reply