sleepless-in-pnw.bsky.social
Because "sleepless in the greater Seattle area" was too long a username.
67 posts
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We need a softer exit ramp. Getting people to admit they're totally wrong is nearly impossible. But we need some alternative. A way for people to agree this is all awful w/o having to say they were wrong.
No idea what that looks like & it's less satisfying for sure, but it's the only chance I see?
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The difference is that kind of woowoo stuff is still pretty fringe; big in influencer marketing but no left politicians that I know of talk about it? While the major rightwing conspiracies and lies are vocally promoted by the highest figures in the party.
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Progressives want this as much as anyone.
But one of our values is the scientific method, tangible evidence. So a blatant lie, however desired, doesn't get far without debunking, by our own side.
& meanwhile the right now sees the scientific method & evidence as leftist principles to reject.
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The problem as it see it isn't just that there are a lot of liars.
It's that people, right now especially, really want to be lied to. They want to hear that whatever's wrong is someone else's fault. They want to be told that it's all going to be okay.
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@hankgreen.bsky.social Science propaganda is the hardest to counter, becuase a one sentence lying tweet, takes paragraphs to enlighten which cannot fit inside the 240 characters of a single tweet
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That was the big problem with convincing people to mask! It's easy to count the people who got sick even when masking, while counting all the people who didn't but would have otherwise takes statistical calculations of imperfect data.
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Maybe the "advantage" with Y2K was that some of the people who best understood the problem were also the people in the best position to fix it? If more government leaders were climate scientists, we'd likely be a lot better off now.
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Oh yeah, this is true. (While the insurance industry has known it's coming for 20+ years.) But I think it was easier to convince people it wasn't real when the environmental catastrophes of the '80s didn't materialize.
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Yeah the problem with climate change is that it needs to be handled on a global regulatory level. And we don't have a global regulatory body.
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Yeah it's a matter of how we process statistics.
If you get an infection with a 1 in 5 chance of really hurting you & then antibiotics stop it, you feel like you dodged a bullet, that you were saved.
If it's a 1 in 5000 chance, you're not as grateful. But if you were that 1, you'd be just as dead.
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I am convinced one of the reasons younger Gen X don't take climate change as seriously as we should is because in the '80s we heard all about the dangers of losing the ozone layer, & then it was OK! ...because of regulations on aerosols & AC, but it *feels* like it just was fine, no reason to worry
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So many Americans died of covid who wouldn't have under a different president but no one blamed Trump for it. Because it wasn't individual direct causation and people don't believe or understand statistics.
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Okay, if we're now arguing sliding down the slippery slope, this discussion has run its course. Thanks for the dialogue, I appreciate the insight.
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I don't think the state should be taking companies; I'm talking personal wealth. The company is still yours.
But yeah, it's accurate that "not too successful" is my belief. Because "success" at the billionaire level is 99.9% luck. And luck shouldn't be the most valued trait in a society.
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Agrees, communism runs counter to basic human nature! It's not at all possible.
I am genuinely confused how you interpret "it should be nearly impossible to make $1 B" as "there is no value in entrepreneurship." The vast, vast majority of entrepreneurs don't make $100 M but are still working hard.
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In my world, if you take advantage of existing systems to make money, then you owe those systems.
Tesla wouldn't have made $0 without preexisting roads, without an electrical infrastructure. It was in effect massively subsidized by our tax $. So yes, Tesla owes us a share of those profits.
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I didn't say that a company couldn't be worth more than $1 billion! I'm talking personal wealth. A company can be valued at far more. But the majority of wealth from such a company shouldn't belong to one individual.
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We can argue where that point is. $100 M is arbitrary.
I personally don't see how society owes any one individual more than that? No one person has done so much for humanity that they deserve a billion $.
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Being a billionaire shouldn't be criminalized. It just shouldn't be feasible. Past a point there should be diminishing personal returns to incentivize keeping capital moving and dispersed rather than all concentrated as individual wealth.
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Interesting. Show me where I state it should be illegal to have more than $100 M.
Making it illegal would be all but impossible to enforce, and anyway you don't fix a broken system by punishing individuals for taking advantage of it. You have to fix the system.
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And frankly, suggesting that capping personal wealth would somehow stifle entrepreneurship is wild. People only start businesses because they want to be billionaires? For most people, the dream of being a millionaire is more than motivation! (Tho most business founders are after more than $)
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The idea that capitalism should be unlimited is insane. Capitalism is great for human progress, but it's not the point. It's a tool. And just letting some humans wield that tool unchecked to break other humans is completely irrational.
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Guaranteed jobs is ideal vs reality, yeah that's hard.
But I absolutely agree that billionaires should not exist. Really I believe the $100M mark is (currently) around where no single individual should get more capital; if you can amass more, your society is broken. Your capitalism is broken.
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Taking care of your poorest is GOOD for capitalism. Give poor people money and they buy things. There's a reason why even the GOP does stimulus checks. And then they have to tie themselves in ideological knots to justify why it's so bad to do more of that.
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Genuinely curious, what of her policies are you so opposed to? I'm no economist (though I do have a very difficult time trusting Republican economic policy when for decades they've been touting "trickle down" that flat out does not work and they know it.)
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The difference is that the USA has swung so far to the right now that the "extremist" left politicians are basically the center-left of many other countries. There isn't anything radical about, say, universal health care unless you're in America.
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Putting aside the horrific gaslighting...how does this logic even work? If you're knowingly committing fraud, wouldn't you hesitate to bring attention to yourself?
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I know you're probably just trolling, but in case not: Because taxes aren't your only expense. If you save $100 in cut taxes and then have to pay $200 (or $2,000, or $20,000) more in other expenses, that's a net loss to you.
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Democrats are responsible for the words of every Oberlin College sophomore.
Republicans aren't responsible for the actions of the President of the United States.
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Also
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From Jan. 20, 2025
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They need him to be a genius because they cannot handle what it means for them to be tricked by a fool.
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Why did the most accurate critique of our political leadership come from THE SIMPSONS in NINETEEN NINETY FOUR