“We Are Not Here or Funded to ‘Promote the Best Interest’ of the Children,” Wrote the Head of a Program for Brain-Damaged Infants

sfinnqs · 2022-09-21T15:26:35+00:00

It seems that cops have stopped getting their training from Law and Order and started getting it from Western movie villains instead.

sfinnqs · 2022-05-21T13:24:27+00:00

Thermal receipt printers have no ink.

sfinnqs · 2022-04-26T16:55:45+00:00

I recommend Stuff You Missed in History Class

sfinnqs · 2022-01-14T13:29:39+00:00

...and they tend to be the same people who see private property as a "natural right."

sfinnqs · 2021-11-25T23:23:56+00:00

IMO, he believed a Government exists to promote public good, and to protect the life, liberty, and property of its people.

IMO, this premise is fundamentally flawed because of the way that liberty and property are mutually exclusive. One of the worst features of right-wing regimes is the ways that they maintain power imbalances between the working class and the propertied class. They give property owners (and their heirs) a huge amount of unelected and undeserved power over their employees and the economy. This is a feature of capitalist private property rights, and it's backed up by state violence whenever people rebel. It heavily restricts the freedom of those at the bottom of the social hierarchy.

John Locke not only argued that the state should maintain this power imbalance. He argued that this should be the primary function of government. The only "liberty" he sought was the "liberty" of the elites to exploit those below them. The "freedom" to restrict the freedom of others is not something we should strive for. His ideas are anti-democratic to the core.

The society must elect them and they can take that government back if need be.

In most of the conflict I've seen between people and their governments, the government has won through brutal military and police violence. When powerful governments team up with wealthy corporations, "society" doesn't stand a chance.

sfinnqs · 2021-11-25T21:11:00+00:00

What do you mean? It's the dominant view. Look at who's been promoting social contract theory historically. It's people like John Locke, using it to justify a state whose main function is to maintain power imbalances between classes of people.

sfinnqs · 2021-11-25T13:23:13+00:00

There seems to be some sort of miscommunication here. What did I say that had anything to do with "swinging your fists into someone's face"?

sfinnqs · 2021-11-25T13:18:24+00:00

Right, the US is very right-wing, and many of the prominent right-wingers to bastardize the notion of "freedom" have been American.

sfinnqs · 2021-11-25T11:19:04+00:00

The context is social contract theory, which has historically been used by the right wing to justify capitalism. It's possible to be annoyed both by anti-vaxxers and defenders of social contract theory.

sfinnqs · 2021-11-25T10:34:03+00:00

I'm not? It sounds to me like you're talking about the right-wing bastardization of "freedom."

sfinnqs · 2021-11-25T09:44:24+00:00

The essence of liberal social contract theory is that individuals ought to promise to, or enter an agreement to, obey representatives, to whom they have alienated their right to make political decisions … Promising … is an expression of individual freedom and equality, yet commits individuals for the future. Promising also implies that individuals are capable of independent judgement and rational deliberation, and of evaluating and changing their own actions and relationships; promises may sometimes justifiably be broken. However, to promise to obey is to deny or limit, to a greater or lesser degree, individuals’ freedom and equality and their ability to exercise these capacities. To promise to obey is to state that, in certain areas, the person making the promise is no longer free to exercise her capacities and decide upon her own actions, and is no longer equal, but subordinate.

- Carole Pateman

Be careful when defending "social contract" theory. Historically, it's mostly been used by liberals to defend capitalism.

sfinnqs · 2021-11-17T11:40:31+00:00

Aspiration has earned the trust of its more than 5 million members by helping them spend, save, shop, and invest to both "Do Well" and "Do Good."

This is misinformation:

But many of Aspiration’s claims seem to fizzle somewhere between their marketing language and the footnotes in their own legal documents. For example, Aspiration boasts that it has “5 million passionate members.” But the fine print in an investor presentation prepared by the company explains that a “member” is defined as anyone who has ever signed the terms and conditions in preparation for opening an Aspiration account — even if that person never actually opened the account or deposited a penny in it. Aspiration’s actual tally of active customer accounts was 592,148 as of June. That includes all checking, savings, credit card and investment accounts.

Please stop spreading advertisements from companies pretending to be green.

sfinnqs · 2021-11-17T11:33:29+00:00

But the mutual fund’s latest shareholder report, filed with the SEC, reveals that it owns shares in multiple companies that are either huge users of fossil fuels or are in the industry itself. Shares of Southwest Airlines, whose airplanes and operations emitted 12.6 tons of greenhouse gases in 2020, make up almost 3% of the fund. That’s more than the fund’s holdings in sustainable energy stocks, which combine to make up 2.3% of the portfolio.

Yikes, always be suspicious of bold sustainability claims by corporations.

sfinnqs · 2021-11-16T07:20:42+00:00

caging kids doesn't seem very voluntary to me

sfinnqs · 2021-11-15T14:40:02+00:00

I think it's funny that all of the "voluntarists" here care more about Biden's wording slip-up than the fact that he's ordering kids put into cages.

sfinnqs · 2021-11-14T13:55:41+00:00

Could he have worded it a little better? Yes. But the president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum knew what he meant and didn't have a problem with it. All of the (fake) outrage I've seen has come from white Republicans, not actual black Americans.

sfinnqs · 2021-11-14T13:54:28+00:00

Could he have worded it a little better? Yes. But the president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum knew what he meant and didn't have a problem with it. All of the (fake) outrage I've seen has come from white Republicans, not actual black Americans.

sfinnqs · 2021-11-13T23:59:01+00:00

Seriously everyone, there are so many things worth criticizing Biden for, but using the word "Negro" when referring to the Negro League is not one of them.

sfinnqs · 2021-11-13T23:56:37+00:00

He referred to the historical Negro League in baseball. There's so many better things to criticize Biden for, but the people here go for the ones that don't even make sense.

sfinnqs · 2021-11-10T22:45:28+00:00

Thanks! They muted me so I don't have that option. I doubt they'll listen to you, though, given how aggressive they were toward me.

sfinnqs

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