if it's not perfect, it's useless or destructive is a pretty common perspective in left-wing groupthink. Some examples are how everyone to the right of a left winger is a republican/fascist/etc or that it's Medicare 4 All or nothing.
I get who you're talking about, and I've encountered those tiresome people. The flavor of the week is that No Kings is a Disneyfied faux protest. This of course ignores the fact that large scale protest in the US attracts police beatings and widespread use of pain compliance techniques if it isn't presented as family friendly.
Avoiding those outcomes while attracting is steadily growing number of protesters, with the most recent attracting 8 to 9 million is in itself a huge accomplishment. Way too big to ignore and within reach of overwhelming numbers.
Which is to say you could've picked a better example than M4A. Holding that up as a minimum expectation is hardly radical.
> Which is to say you could've picked a better example than M4A. Holding that up as a minimum expectation is hardly radical.
I'm not commenting on whether it's radical, just that if they had the choice between something like the ACA and nothing, many in these groups would rather have nothing. In fact, many would argue (as they would against other things they consider "incrementalism") that anything less than their demands would actually be detrimental somehow. Very much in opposition to "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good". This is exemplified in the whole M4A "force the vote" nonsense.
ACA is garbage. It was created by the Heritage Foundation and started off being called Romneycare. It has worked terribly, and required what is an unconstitutional (in many opinions) fine for people who fail to be able to afford insurance.
The only reason anyone has any pleasant feelings about ACA is because a Medicaid expansion was passed at the same time. Of course I would prefer nothing. ACA stopped the momentum for M4A, as it was designed to do. Forcing the vote was a litmus test that Democrats purporting to understand this failed.
The ACA is not good. But it's an awful lot better than what we had before.
The problem is in the old days we had a fake "insurance". This wasn't a problem with cheapskates, but with how the industry worked. Companies would offer a plan for a little while, only let healthy people in, premiums were reasonable. Then they would offer something a tiny bit different, give it a new name. As time went on the people on the old plan would develop health problems, premiums were calculated based on what THAT PLAN had to pay out, so premiums went up. Healthy, jump ship to the new one. Not healthy, you can't. The old plan would soon go into a death spiral and you would be uninsured.
Thus anyone with a chronic health problem was stuck.
And they're trying to bring back the old days. Allow other health insurance to be sold, the healthy people will jump to it and the ACA will death spiral.
We did get the unexpected result of exposing the large number of people with "insurance" that was basically a scam. A lot of people didn't know they had policies that had insanely low limits or the like. I'm thinking of a post from back then, a student health plan that had gone up like 10x, "where's the difference?" And a bunch of people who couldn't understand even when I pointed out how the cheap version was effectively worthless for anything that needed more than a doctor's visit.
I appreciate you stepping in to be the perfect example of the kind of thinking I'm talking about. People like you are the real enemy of progress and we are very thankful that you are so politically irrelevant.
And your style of thought processes is why the Overton Window is so extreme to conservative to the point of fascism.
I remember WHY the Heritage foundation put together their plan. It was cause Hillary Clinton dared, as first wife, put together a plan for single payer. Republicans howled at it nonstop with complaints of government death panels, and you guessed it, China.
That was also back when republican thinktanks actually put together plans. Terrible ones, sure, but actually had plans, rather than "concepts of a plan" (trumps own words).
Of course, Romney ran with it. It was, as you guessed it, terrible for Massachusetts. And surprise surprise, when the black guy speaks for it it turns into extreme hyper-communism... but it was really just garden variety racism by republicans. But now, we have for-profit insurance death panels.
And no, shlant, when your form of "compromise" entails in a one-way ratchet and your control is whether its slow or fast and not reverse, its not a compromise. Blow this shit up. Plenty of us are done with your idea of compromise oro 'reaching across the aisle' ala obama. It has never worked, since Reconstruction. Just gets worse and worse.
> This of course ignores the fact that large scale protest in the US attracts police beatings and widespread use of pain compliance techniques if it isn't presented as family friendly.
That's largely a consequence of police being badly trained though. See stuff like Gracie Breakdown for a small glimpse of how horribly badly trained. Now, the people who complain about the violence are also the people who scream defund the police and want to ban body weight restraint, leading to cops only having ultra violence left as a tool. It's a pretty bad downward spiral of stupid.
> The flavor of the week is that No Kings is a Disneyfied faux protest.
It's strange to ignore all of the actual criticisms, such as that they are protests with absolutely no demands, and that they're arranged by Democratic Party insiders using spam farms. The reason they're called "No Kings" is because nobody knows what that's supposed to mean. It was consciously concocted as an alternative to fighting the "oligarchs" as Sanders constantly said, because Democrats support oligarchs.
> with the most recent attracting 8 to 9 million is in itself a huge accomplishment.
It's not. They're just faithful movement Democrats walking together in the street trying to figure out different ways to yell "fuck Trump." They're a mockery of protests, they're just extremely ineffective marketing.
They wouldn't be tiresome if they were easy to answer for you. Accusing people of just complaining about people and things not being "perfect" is a sign of somebody who doesn't even have a dishonest argument to make, so they're resorting to making no argument at all, and instead calling you a snob.
> they're arranged by Democratic Party insiders using spam farms
Ah yes, the tried and true "they are paid protestors" shtick. Yawn.
> The reason they're called "No Kings" is because nobody knows what that's supposed to mean.
It's very simple - Trump acts like a king, wielding his power however he wants while ignoring any checks and balances. People are very much against that for obvious reasons.
> because Democrats support oligarchs.
curious what your thoughts are on Elon Musk and DOGE
> trying to figure out different ways to yell "fuck Trump."
Yea there's no reason why anyone would have legitimate issues with Trump as a president.. He certainly doesn't provide new ones on a daily basis
Every socialist I’ve ever met has conceded that capitalism is a great mechanism for wealth generation. Just not for much else humans might value in their societies.
Yet despite that many residents in the wealthiest nations report increasing levels of unhappiness with the state of things. While there are other factors that play into this, it doesn't seem that wealth generation itself is a direct vehicle to the things people value / make them happy
Yea people report that. And then you let them go to Ghana for a week and you'll see their perspective shift real fast. That people have no historical perspective isn't an argument against capitalism, it's an argument for education. And the thing with education is that it's done by the state. So really it's the state that is failing capitalism, not the other way around.
What are those other qualities? And how would we foster them?
We've tried communism. That ends up with millions starving, artists and scientists brutally murdered, and human flourishing basically being utterly destroyed PLUS all wealth being destroyed. That's what communists need to concede.
Adam smith was hostile towards monopolies (which your link refers to - nothing to do with price fixing although the conclusion is the same) and his critiques being very apparent throughout Wealth of Nations. This is a common opinion with proponents of free markets.
So what specifically about capitalism makes this a "natural consequence"?
The main feature of capitalism is not free markets, it's capital. And capital accumulates leading to inequality that only ever gets bigger unless we actively take steps against it as a society. Being against monopolies doesn't help if you're not willing to actually punish them.
Free markets are great but to really work they need to come with competition enforcement (including total M&A bans in high risk industries), strong unions, support for worker ownership and a tax structure that rewards productive investment instead of executive payouts. Market socialism instead of capitalism.
what immediately came to mind for me is something like gastown. If that is the case I think I'd agree with the auther and a parallel from pre-AI would be "using kubernetes for personal projects is a waste of time" - so much time and resources spent on something that is way overkill and in many ways just would get in the way of just shipping something, anything and then going from there.
I wonder how people (like yourself) would would feel about "un-watermarked AI-generated CSAM is illegal, but watermarked is not". Or is is your first argument irrelevant and the second one is what actually matters to you?
> Also, now that it's legal to own and consume content featuring realistic depictions of sexualized children, do you think that will lead to fewer or more children getting abused?
I'm not sure. Is the intuition that it will lead to more? because I think there are data-based arguments to the contrary.
I'm not convinced you can stop someone from taking real CSAM, and recreating it with AI to get a copy with a watermark.
Also, assuming your correct and someday we have some watermarked attested "victimless" child pornography. I'd love to hear your best "data-based" argument that shows that predators will be satiated by pictures they have no doubt about being fake. It's laughable.
Should we allow victims of child pornography to endorse the distribution of images of themselves as a child once they are an adult too since at that point, each additional viewer doesn't generate an additional victim?
people who complain about modern art almost always know essentially nothing about art. Usually heavy overlap with those that complain about anything that is different from what they like/grew up with
Because the public never gets the opportunity to be exposed to good art, whether classic or abstract or whatever style. Most what's called "modern art" in the style of early 20th century like Picasso or later Pollock is low quality sewage, but that's what's being fed to the public. That's what everybody grew up with and everybody hates.
The public is underexposed to beautiful and interesting art, but who is to blame?
> there should be a trail of intermediate hosts and adjacent infections that there is zero evidence of.
just because we are missing a link does not mean it doesn't exist. Christians use similar arguments to try and disprove evolution.
> thats not representative of sarscov2. People in the same household could fail to spread infection.
so you think a single person in the lab was infected (with no evidence), and then right as they were contagious, went straight to the wet market and on the way, infected not a single person related to the lab or degrees of separation from it? this is the case you are making?
> There were early cases outside of the wet market.
> just because we are missing a link does not mean it doesn't exist.
yes and no. in every other zoonosis, we have lineages and source animals and collateral infections. we have none of that for covid. its not definitive, but it is strongly dispositive.
> no there aren't
the article you linked is contradicting you, but regardless the claim isnt falsifiable:
"If Huanan Market was the source, why were “only” one- to two-thirds of early cases linked [...] why would one expect all cases [...] to be confined to one market?"
the article's thesis is that there are multiple cases not linked to Huanan market, but thats expected because of asymptomatic transmission. That argument could be used in favor of either side, so its not particularly meaningful.
> infected not a single person related to the lab or degrees of separation from it
as I just mentioned, the article you linked makes this very claim. you cant have it both ways.
> in every other zoonosis, we have lineages and source animals and collateral infections. we have none of that for covid
I'm ignorant but thought that the evidentiary record for ebola was also really thin? Where we have lineages and source animals, sometimes that has taken many years, I think?
I mean you need to show that trail Covid was very infectious even before it mutated more. It's been estimated to have a R-naught above 2. It seems incredulus that their is a hypotehtical lab worker who is infected who takes the train 7 miles to the wet market (distance from lab) infects no one, but than infects 1 person at the wet market. Than goes home on the train, infects no one afterwards after proving they have virulent infection. It seems to go against how virus work. Because they need to not only infect anyone after the ride home but also no infect anyone ever again execpt at the wet market. You need to show evidence of or you are just engaging in conspricy thinking
Also we don't have the Zoonosis of the plauge, or the spanish bird flu but we are very confident they came from animals because we can tell that. So that claim we always now is just dumb we are mising many origin animals for many diseases because can back generate dieasese lineages from the DNA of the disease sometimes we can't and I am sure there are some back traces that just go to the wrong animal.
China didn't help with the fact they killed and bleached every animal at that wet market but that is documented to have happened but that is not proof of lab leak.
-- There's so much heated speculation in this thread as to make all arguments worthless. What isn't speculation however, is that the international treaties against bio-weapons are a joke that can result in a global tragedy at any moment.
Bio-weapons are untraceable, one side can seed an infection in a way to frame another player, and all that could be done about it, would be heated but fruitless speculations. There's no point in arguing about "who's done it", actually that line of argument is a huge distraction causing a lot more harm than good.
Learn and argue about the dysfunctional internal and international bio-regulations, they are the reason for the uncertainty and lack of accountability which enable and invite truly global and truly disastrous villainy.
Yeah, it would have killed a friend or relative of the lab worker, or someone living in the same building as the lab worker, and then you would have your smoking gun of a lab leak.
Going from infecting a lab worker to a high-precision spillover in a wet market, without leaving a trace anywhere else, is just not how a viral infection is likely to work.
SARS-CoV-2 has relatively low IFR, especially among younger people, and a mild case is easily dismissed as a flu or cold. Transmission is also heterogeneous, with most patients infecting no one while a few infect huge clusters; R = 2 absolutely does not mean one patient infects two, who infect four, who infect eight, etc.
> An important feature in this distribution, consistent with earlier findings (4), is that the majority (76%) of infected cases shows no evidence of onward transmission amongst any of their contacts.
So there's no reason to expect that the first cluster that generates enough sickness and death to attract official attention will occur near the point of introduction. If we look at North America, then it in fact did not--the introduction must have been at an airport or seaport, but the first large clusters were in nursing homes, church choir practices, etc. This is different from SARS-1 or MERS, which were deadly enough to make that cryptic spread much less likely.
Can you clarify your point? Crowded, poorly-ventilated wet markets like the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market are quite different from American (or Chinese) supermarkets, and uncommon in the USA. American-style nursing homes are likewise uncommon in China, where it's more common for elderly parents to live with their children.
The conditions for a super-spreader event can arise in many different ways--before the contact tracers gave up, they found clusters in that wet market, those nursing homes, cruise ships, meat processors, migrant worker dormitories, and many other types of venues. I don't see why we'd ever expect the first cluster in the same type of venue in both countries, except by chance.
> When the wuhan Lab leak happened in 2019 most of my direct and indirect mainland china contacts were more or less 100% sure that this was intentionally leaked by the regime
oh well then I guess if your personal contacts were 100% sure then case closed
Half the people downvote cause they know it’s from animals. Other people know it was a lab leak. Meanwhile I get downvoted by saying the evidence doesn’t prove anything or people would be shouting it from the hills note I have no dog in this race , just pointing out there’s uncertainty
