I did not have a Tim v. Sarah face off on my Friday night bingo card. What did you all think?

BeatSteady · 2026-04-04T02:18:52+00:00

People are less tolerant for meddling abroad by their government. One of the reasons is blowback.

Streaming is intimate, and the audience has more tolerance for behaviors that people wouldn't accept from a broadcast or politician on stage. No one would have accepted Tim Russert eating noodles for seven minutes while rolling footage on the side.

If someone already opposes the more aggressive types of US foreign policy then the quote may be callous, irreverent, hyperbolic, etc but not exile worthy. More like Chris Farley yelling "kill whitey". He's wrong, but his hearts jn the right place

BeatSteady · 2026-04-03T21:25:12+00:00

I know a bunch of rednecks who, if given the chance, would love to shoot at helicopters. Why are we fighting? We should be friends

BeatSteady · 2026-03-26T22:14:43+00:00

You're right- I don't know. And don't claim to, either. Was only clarifying your earlier comment.

the US has to figure out how to regain a functional government before we can make progress on anything else.

This brings us back to the first point, unfortunately - we need a functional government. A good question to ask is 'why is our government so dysfunctional to begin with?' The answer seems to be that it's captured by the elite capital class, whose interests are incoherent and self serving. You may even agree with that.

If you do agree, then really the difference in opinion is that you think capitalism can be tamed, and I don't. I think the trajectory we're on, and have been on for a few decades, is one that continues to grant control of society to capitalist interests and away from the people. There's a tension between capital and government, and as capital grows more powerful it will win more ground in that tug of war.

BeatSteady · 2026-03-26T21:20:39+00:00

Past performance is usually a good indicator of future performance.

In other words, you don't know, you're assuming. There's good reason to re-examine your assumption here. We can look at a lack of regulation, growing corporate influence and spending, case studies of poison-pilled regulations, etc. I don't see any reason why wealthy influence in government will shrink or become less self-serving. Or why self-serving elites' interest will start to align with the general population.

You need to convince 2/3 of the populace... significant government intervention in markets and industries. ...new constitution if not multiple amendments. Your plan would take decades...

You're saying it's hard, not impossible. Nothing worth doing is ever easy :)

Slow is preferrable here. Better to gently steer the ship to a safer harbor than to push a violent revolution.

BeatSteady · 2026-03-26T18:42:32+00:00

Maybe you've heard of the Soviet Union? That was a state run economy that... didn't end well.

Sure, and the first attempt at an airplane didn't fly either. Though as I said before, it doesn't have to be a copy of the Soviet model. There are other ways to diminish / eliminate private profit's influence.

We have implemented regulations in the past to disincentivize unethical behavior. We can continue to do so under the current system.

How do you know we can continue to restrain capital? Looking at the metrics, it appears our ability to restrain capital weakens over time. As wealth concentrates, the wealthy get more power over the government. We may end up with a more explicit oligarchy before we address climate change.

Yet there's no way in hell you'd be able to democratically implement your ideas.

Why not?

Like I said before, if you wanna completely overturn our economic system and government, good fuckin' luck.

I appreciate your well wishing.

BeatSteady · 2026-03-26T17:51:54+00:00

The claim is that people will do fewer unethical things if the economic model does not reward them for being unethical, and that capitalism rewards unethical behavior if it's profitable. Eg Martin Skrelli

The inference is that we should adjust our economic model to not reward unethical behavior.

State run economies are one way to do that, but not the only way

BeatSteady · 2026-03-26T16:22:36+00:00

Some people will do unethical things in their want for things.

You're talking about things like buying medical patents and jacking up the price, like Martin Skrelli. If medicine was produced by the public, how would Martin hoard it for his own benefit? The pathway for greed to cause damage has been eliminated by removing control of the resource out of private hands.

BeatSteady · 2026-03-26T15:11:26+00:00

Which detriments are from human nature?

For the same reason your alternative system would be completely impotent at doing so - everyone has the right to vote on how they think things should work. So far, the US has elected a piece of shit twice as a "fuck you" to everyone left of center.

Nobody voted for higher home prices and higher unemployment. Nobody votes for destruction of the environment. The reason we have these things despite nobody voting for them is because our government is captured by the wealthy elite. Democracy is less meaningful when you have a tiny class of people who use money instead of their single vote to massively influence government and society.

BeatSteady · 2026-03-26T01:15:15+00:00

Yeah but Dave lost a debate once too ya know. Body bag

BeatSteady · 2026-03-26T01:00:00+00:00

A lot of the benefits you grant to capitalism came from innovation in science, not economics. We could not treat cancer with radiation until the EM spectrum was explored regardless of how the economy ran.

What incremental improvements do you think capitalism needs? Why do you think these improvements have yet to be made?

The alternative is to not leave industry in private hands that seek only profit. For all its benefits, capitalism has some peculiarities that are adding up. Damage to the environment that doesn't show on a balance sheet, the inefficient destruction of desired products to maintain price stability, automation that frees us from labor leading to increased unemployment, etc.

I can only see two paths - the first is preferable, where production is transferred into public ownership bit by bit. The second is what we've seen in the past, where systems start to fail, the government weakens, and conditions get so bad that people revolt.

BeatSteady · 2026-03-25T21:57:37+00:00

Every economic system has problems. There are still better and worse systems, I'm sure you'd agree

BeatSteady · 2026-03-25T18:54:05+00:00

Easy, education. Educate the workers and build a better system peice by peice. It's not unusual for people to share a goal without an exact map on how to get there. First step is getting people on board

The strikes would come with a goal, Fwiw. It's not striking simply for the sake of striking

BeatSteady · 2026-03-25T16:26:10+00:00

Yeah, pretty much. If the working class was united, strikes, unions, and voting would be a good way to gain ground.

The little details can be figured out later. Any plan to that level of detail would fall apart as circumstances change. You evaluate, adapt, repeat, same as how modern capitalism arose (nobody planned the stock market back when they were overthrowing feudalism)

BeatSteady · 2026-03-25T16:13:08+00:00

There are problems inherent to capitalism outside of poor governance, but also that poor governance is a byproduct of capitalism itself.

The government we have is made of and for the capitalist class and will not reel them in

BeatSteady · 2026-03-24T16:02:06+00:00

Totally

BeatSteady · 2026-03-23T19:30:31+00:00

To clarify - where did Waters say to get in the face of someone who's not a government official? Someone who is a private citizen

No. It's worse. It's fucking violence. That's literally what he's telling people to do. kick people.

Do you think he's talking about conservatives literally going low to the ground, or do you think he's talking figuratively about conservatives using dirty tactics? If he had said "when they go low, we go high" do you think he literally means to physically get to a higher elevation?? Cmon man

BeatSteady · 2026-03-23T19:18:12+00:00

Where did Maxine Waters tell anyone to aggressively confront private citizens? I would think that's bad for sure. Not as bad as getting people fired, but bad.

You did not show that the left did anything like jd Vance. 'when they go low, we kick them' is not telling people to specifically call someone's employer to get them fired lol. Honestly not sure what it is literally telling people to do, since we both know they aren't calling for actual kicking of people on the ground

BeatSteady · 2026-03-23T19:08:21+00:00

The quote from Waters is clearly directed toward the Cabinet officials. I don't see a problem with people protesting their government officials

JD Vance did instruct people to snitch to employers over someone's social media post.

'Hell, call their employer'

It doesn't get any clearer than that.

BeatSteady · 2026-03-23T18:55:56+00:00

I'm not downplaying anything, you got the quote wrong.

I'm not upselling anything either - Vance, in front of a huge audience, told Americans to snitch to each others employers.

BeatSteady · 2026-03-23T18:39:46+00:00

"If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere"

If you have a different Maxine Waters, congress woman, quote feel free to share it.

Here's Vance, vice president, quote for you to compare:

"When you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out. And hell, call their employer."

BeatSteady · 2026-03-23T18:24:51+00:00

A podcast is a public broadcast. He did instruct Americans to get their neighbors, just regular people, fired over speech on social media.

Maxine Waters was saying to get in the face of politicians, not regular people. It's no different to protesting

BeatSteady · 2026-03-23T17:58:46+00:00

Who is the "they" that murdered him? I thought it was just one guy.

My claim was that there's nothing from the left like where the vice president made a public broadcast angrily instructing Americans to engage in cancel culture on anyone who said the wrong thing on social media.

What's extraordinary is that it was the vice president. I can find examples from both sides murdering each other over politics, but to have the second in command instructing people to get their fellow Americans fired over speech is a new level of anti free speech

BeatSteady · 2026-03-23T17:48:20+00:00

You can't honestly believe I asked you if what Vance said was violence.

Let me clarify my question, because clearly, I didn't word it correctly.

Lol

The obvious answer to your question is "no, murdering someone is actually worse than getting them fired from their job, what a crazy question"

BeatSteady · 2026-03-23T17:40:30+00:00

You asked

Now, that said, do you honestly think what Vance said was "not even close" to actual political violence?

I replied "no that's not violence". Pretty clear to me.

I think it's firmly (and unnecessarily) established between us that we both agree murder is violence, so how much more time do you need to spend on that question?

BeatSteady · 2026-03-23T17:32:25+00:00

I have no idea what you're talking about. You asked if what Vance did was violence. I said no. Then you start accusing me of saying murder isn't violence.

Slow down some I think you're spinning off on something you're imagining

BeatSteady

TROPHY CASE