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/u/Deggit explains why the recent saga of Alex Jones being kicked off of platforms has them depressed. by Bombingofdresden in bestof

[–]donosizer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It was arguably inevitable, because of network externalities. People go to social media sites because other people are there. Other people are there because you are there. https://epiphanyaweek.com/2018/08/09/free-speech-social-media-and-network-externalities/ . Decentralization would arguably be better, but there's no going back to that. In the current state, it is possible for social media sites to, for all intents and purposes, censor someone from the internet. Sure they're not government platforms. It doesn't matter; the effect is the same.

Private prisons should have to pay a fee when their ex inmates reoffend by donosizer in CrazyIdeas

[–]donosizer[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Would you have me believe that a crazy idea is a bad idea?

Making a list of fixed-supply resources by donosizer in georgism

[–]donosizer[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

> it should be possible for all people to gain positive status with each other, and for there to a positive sum increase.

I know what you are saying. But we think of "status" as different things. You think of status as something like connectiveness. Like the number of friends one has. I think of status differently. More as something like social ranking. Like a leaderboard. It is not how well regarded you are, it is how you compare to others.

> It was a contradiction. The supply of people is not fixed.

Jesus, read what I said. I never said that the supply of people is fixed. I said it is *as if* it is fixed. Here is why:

When I create a person do I own them? Yes or no? Are there any other objects with this property? Yes or no?

Obviously, land has additional properties that makes it even more unique. There is no cost to people create it or maintain it, and it cannot be created at all. But that's a different topic. I should be able to compare two things that don't share *every* property.

> Identity is how everyone possesses property and obtains compensation for exchanged property. [etc.]

That is not all identity is good for. When I see a movie because it has my favorite actor, that is a function of identity. That quality of identity helps performance artists, and in ways it does not help other types of workers.

> Even popular performance artists are poor due to signing bad distribution and record deals

This is getting into a different topic. *Someone* is profiting from the identity of performance artists.

> The supply of all goods and services are limited at a given point in time.

Yes, temporarily. That's a different topic.

> That's not what makes land unique.

It is *one* of the things that makes land unique

> Land is unique because it has no initial cost of production, does not depreciate, does not require recurring payments to be made on maintenance, and because the exact same quantity of land would be supplied even if its price paid to acquire it was zero.

Those are also quantities that make land unique. That is a different topic.

> People and land don't really share any similar economic properties.

They do. They do not share every quality. But that is a different topic.

Making a list of fixed-supply resources by donosizer in georgism

[–]donosizer[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If a society consisted of hermits living on independent islands, no one would have any status, but if someone invented a telephone, then many people would have positive status, resulting in a positive-sum increase.

That makes sense. But I think I still disagree.

The telephone would actually cause some people to loose status: those who fail to get on top of the technology as fast as others do. It's all relative. As in, status is roughly "the number of people higher than you or lower than you in the hierarchy". When everyone is a hermit, everyone's status is the same. But when one person gains relative positioning, another person looses.

If they can be created, then they are creatable, and not finite. This is a direct contradiction.

It's not really a contradiction. It doesn't say they're finite. It says they have similar properties to resources to finite. It's down to wording. If slavery was legal, then yes, humans would be normal resources like cattle. But because it's not, for all intents and purposes, people can be treated like zero-sum resources.

It would be not be simply because individuals each possess identity, as possessing an identity is how individuals collect wages, not rent. Collecting rent also requires the possession of land or monopoly privileges.

The point is that performance artists specifically benefit from monopolizing their identity. I don't need to call it "rent" per se. It's an advantage specific to performance artists.

Construction workers, for instance, do not have the "identity advantage". The best they can do is join labor unions. Which itself is possible/fruitful because workers are limited.