Given the global response to the situation, I would bet they probably realize that you don’t think they’re significant.

Then again, there’s a chance they’re just focusing on food and water and shelter and medicine and not-getting-blown-up… rather than worrying about the opinions of people who couldn’t even pretend to be significant.

Just dropping in to say that I, as an American, also look at Europe as though it’s one country with individual states. I don’t think that’s a universal rule, but I think a lot of Americans do that, in part, because we mostly hear about politics in terms of the “European Union”.

Occasionally the news is at the country level… France’s nuclear reactors… Spain suggesting development in the military… Denmark starting conscription… but the regulations we hear about, such as regarding carbon emissions or GDPR are in terms of the EU as a whole.

It makes her response idiotic because it has nothing to do with the article

It’s not a rebuttal of the article, no… but it IS definitely in the same topic as the article.

Twitter is a microblogging platform… not a debate platform. If you assume that she is trying to provide a counterargument in 140 characters or less, then yes, it would seem idiotic.

Are we making that assumption?

EDIT: Just to acknowledge that I read your response, and I don’t wish to respond to it.

The person who commented is a fucking idiot who clearly didn’t read the article

Let’s assume that everything you just said about the article is true, without any flaws. Why would that make her response idiotic?

If we mentioned the impact that cutting defense spending would have on Raytheon, Lockheed, and Boeing… “Oh no, not my military industrial complex…”

If we mentioned the impact that a new public housing program would have on the housing market… “Oh no, not the sector of the financial market profiting from the endlessly increasing price of a basic human need…”

I understand that these things would have major financial impacts. I also understand the value of NYT writing an article about the nuances of where it would have upsides and downsides. But also, the original commenter isn’t criticizing that analysis. She’s criticizing the business model of private insurance. Your response just leads me to ask,

Wtf is wrong with you guys where you just assume every statement is some kind of personal dig?

I struggle to rationalize this for countries not already in armed conflict.

Legally, practically, or morally?

Practically, armed conflict is way more expensive, and it’s riskier. If you had two strategies for changing someone’s behavior: 1) Punch them until they agree to change, 2) Tell them they can’t borrow any more money from you until they agree to change… you would probably prefer number two because it’s less risky.

Legally… we only have 80 years of precedent for the USD being the world’s reserve currency, amd 50 years of weaponizing that power with the IEEPA. Rules for armed conflicts, on the other hand, are ancient. We have a lot of examples for acts of war in armed conflicts, and we can quickly define them and recognize them. For defining and regulating financial “attacks”… we have basically nothing.

Morally… you and I have different moral systems from the people in charge. People can rationalize some truly heinous shit.

Not absolutely sure… but I’ll take “Probably wouldn’t” over “Definitely already does.”

We would need a LOT of new international guidelines for this.

It’s not clear to me where we would draw the line, since there’s not really an enforceable difference between, “Allowing you to use our financial system is causing us harm, so you can’t do that anymore,” and “You can’t use our financial system until you <insert demands here>.”

While a blockade is recognized as an act of war, an embargo is not. The US sanctions usually operate like a specific, services-based embargo, so there’s no interpretation of CURRENT international law rendering it an act of war. Again, we would need new guidelines to meet your goal.

I think shared ownership goes against human nature

I think the vast majority of things are shared. Air, water, soil… roads, schools… your education… the bathrooms at the supermarket… the murals/sculptures that make your town look less like a shithole…

It’s perfectly in line with human nature, actually, to share things. People who amass hoards of wealth and fight for power and control… those are the weirdos.

People, generally, are paranoid morons. Calmly processing the facts and assessing risk are the rare exception. Even people who are good at that kind of thing are first making an irrational decision, and then justifying it after the fact.

The solution isn’t to fact-check them about Flock having no impact on their safety. The solution is to fear-monger even harder about cameras seeing into their houses, and a private company selling their data to telemarketers.

Sure, boomers had puns. So did the silent generation, gen X, and Millennials.

Gen Z also has puns. They’re not the dominant feature… but they’re there.

But China isn’t going to sell my data to Uncle Sam to help deport my family (who are legal citizens). So there’s that.

Yeah, I straight up don’t respond until they’ve asked/said the thing that they’re contacting me for.

Usually they finish their thought without me ever needing to respond. I did have one coworker who just… never said anything else. That’s also a win.

9th amendment.

It’s the best amendment, despite being, legally, the most useless.

I would argue that it was meant to cover the kind of situation where a private company is given government permission to gather surveillance data from the citizenry, in exchange for access to said data.

Show me the counterfactual proving those people would have survived under a non-capitalist system.

Are you going to apply the same standard to your original claim? How many of the alleged 200 million would have survived under a non-communist system?

Data’s messy… I get it. The actual mechanics of tallying all of this don’t matter quite as much as applying those rules consistently. It would be a bit unreasonable for you to ask for a counterfactual tally of deaths under capitalism if you’re unable to provide one for deaths under communism.

Is there one centrist dem a majority of people even like?

Obama.

The people voting in the primary are the people who would vote for a Democrat in the general… and this is who they chose.

Who we trust more: the people who vote, or the establishment Democratic Party leaders?

Yet 😎

A progressive wealth tax has benefits as well. I just think there’s value in pointing out the impact that such a small percentage has. Implementing even a fraction of a percentage would make a serious impact; we don’t need to go whole hog right here, right now.

My ideal starting point for a progressive wealth tax would max out at 2%, because that’s within a standard deviation of annual S&P growth.

I understand the perspective that the extreme wealth taxes wouldn’t change the quality of life of the ultra-rich… but do you know what the long term impact on the economy would be?

I don’t. And I study this kind of thing. This is not the kind of system that responds well to massive, overnight changes. Most Americans get their food by buying it… if we fuck up, and the economy irretrievably crumbles without a backup, people will starve.

As desperate as people may be for radical change, it is worth it to make these proposals in a responsible way, and ensure that we’re not doing more harm than good.

Yeah, their budget is now 90% secret police activities, and only 10% the kinds of things that are actually important… like interfacing with INTERPOL, and acting as a barrier to arms dealing and human trafficking.

Since we can’t abolish something 90%, we need to assign those duties to another organization, until ICE is left with nothing except evil/redundant duties, and THEN abolish it.

Why did you write this?