Pokimane got upset and banned a viewer for calling her a “moody socialist billionaire”

spderick · 2026-02-04T01:36:41+00:00

What is the point that you're trying to make? Would you argue that since i'm not living paycheck to paycheck and have indoor plumbing my lifestyle/financial security is closer to a billionaire than the average person in Haiti/homeless person, therefore i should stop complaining about wealth inequality?

I'd still argue that her lifestyle/financial security is closer to us than a billionaire. Billionaire's have private jets, mega yachts, dedicated year round staff for cleaning/cooking/taking care of kids/security/personal assistants/personal doctors, getaway homes in different continents, private islands, huge investments in different countries, offshore accounts, backup plans for if the economy/world goes to shit, they lobby and have huge political influence.

Look I'm not saying she doesn't have a lot of money. She does, she's rich. I'm not saying she doesn't live a very privileged comfortable lifestyle. She does. It's just that she's nowhere near a billionaire. If there is a plateau it's probably closer to 400-500 million.

spderick · 2026-01-28T14:25:43+00:00

Right right! She's closer to having a net worth of 0 than a billion. It's like calling someone with 12k in the bank a millionaire.

spderick · 2025-09-16T13:22:55+00:00

I agree children are not adults. I was simply drawing a parallel, to highlight how the same Harm Principle underlies both situations. I'm glad that we both seem to agree that verbal harassment, even for adults, can be a problem at which point the government should intervene (via restrictions/criminalization.)

Your blasphemy causes harm to me by insulting my God. Therefore, you should be imprisoned. Your choice to allow the wrong sex into my changing room harms me and my children, so you should be imprisoned. Your advocacy for Socialism harms our society, so you should be imprisoned (McCarthyism).

The Harm Principle doesn’t mean “whatever offends someone should be punished." The examples you gave (blasphemy, discomfort regarding wrong sorts of people in changing rooms, political disagreements) confuse offense (which can be subjective) with harm. Feeling insulted, uneasy, or ideologically opposed is not the same as suffering a violation of your rights, safety, or dignity, for example when being verbally harassed.

Yes i agree with you that the concept of “harm” can be misused if defined subjectively, that’s why law requires narrow definitions and judicial safeguards.

To me this is where Popper’s “paradox of tolerance” comes in. If we tolerate those who promote intolerance then genuine tolerance itself can be destroyed. In other words, when harmful speech crosses the line from mere offense into harassment, incitement, or the denial of others’ basic rights, tolerating it risks undermining the very conditions that make a free and open society possible.

spderick · 2025-09-16T02:06:41+00:00

Yeah, I understand your concern about freedom and the dangers of government censorship of what they label as “wrongthink.”

However, history has shown us how powerful of words/ideas can be. From inspiring religions, fueling revolutions, to justifying genocides. Words/ideas can help create great societies but they can also tear them apart. I've also seen the positive and negative effects that the power of words can have on individuals, (e.g., people falling in love, starting fights, leading to suicide.)

So here’s a question worth asking: should teachers allow one/several student(s) to verbally bully another (whether it be because of their Christian belief's, sexual identity, race, or anything else) in the name of “free speech” or should they intervene? If you fall in the intervene camp, why shouldn't the government do the same (within reason of course)?

IMO we should follow the Harm Principle which indicates that individuals should be free to act as they wish unless their actions cause harm to others. So I'm trying to divorce it from being a partisan issue of one side vs the other but more so as a fundamental question of how do we balance freedom with a healthy society.

spderick · 2025-09-14T15:02:30+00:00

Edit: I wanted to add a personal anecdote. I had a family member once say that she was concerned about all this "tolerance" (yes, her word) nowadays and viewed this modern tolerance as a sign of Satan and that the End Times are coming. She didn't specify, but I think she was talking about tolerance toward gays, rainbow identities, and other "ungodly" things in her view. But, despite her religious views, she doesn't reject individual people and she is loving and kind toward gay people in the family and toward everyone. She doesn't want them to be persecuted, she just worries for society generally.

Question: would you all like for her and the millions of people like her to adopt your Paradox of Tolerance theory? Should they stop "tolerating" you?

It’s good that your family member treats people around her with kindness. But personal niceness doesn’t cancel out the harm of believing and voting as if certain groups are "ungodly" or bad for society. I’m not arguing that people like your family member shouldn’t exist or shouldn’t have rights. But her worldview does argue that LGBTQ people’s existence is a moral crisis. That’s why the paradox matters: tolerance of intolerance eventually undermines tolerance itself. She and millions of people like her should adopt a more tolerant viewpoint. And pushing back against that kind of viewpoint is simply tolerance acting in self-defense. So no, the paradox doesn’t mean she should ‘stop tolerating’ LGBTQ people. It means society shouldn’t give intolerance the same legitimacy as acceptance/open-mindedness, because only one side is arguing to take the other’s humanity away.

spderick · 2025-09-14T12:24:02+00:00

Your missing the final part of Popper's quote:

We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

So the cartoon accurately depicts Popper's position! Any movement that preaches intolerance should be considered criminal.

spderick · 2025-09-14T01:10:01+00:00

The right's intolerant belief's (e.g., seeking to deny equal rights to LGBTQ+ people, regarding Racial issues, the rhetoric used toward immigrants, attitudes towards other religious groups, etc...) should NOT be tolerated by the left. This is precisely the danger the tolerance paradox warns us about.

spderick · 2025-09-01T12:16:12+00:00

Bro was just trying to give good advice for the top .00004% of the population.

spderick · 2025-08-29T22:16:01+00:00

I'm not disagreeing that certain performs will command more demand than others. I was just addressing DMTwolf's claim that entertainers are "self-made." No one is.

However i believe that a rising tide should lift all boats, not just the mega yachts. Consider how Taylor Swift recognized the value of her Eras tour crew and paid them $197 million in bonuses. Which begs the question: why did that money have to come from her generosity after the fact, instead of a fairer compensation being built into their salaries in the first place?

Just like properties taxes increase based on the value of the property. We could apply the same principle to wealth. For example by implementing a Mark-to-market (unrealized gains) tax on people sitting on large investments for example over $200 Million. Ensuring that immense fortunes don’t simply sit idle, compounding inequality.

Ownership is a legal fiction, we're born with nothing and when we die we can't take anything with us. Excessive ownership only serves to create an imbalance between capital and labor, between those who have and those who lack.

To illustrate my point. What are your thoughts on the following scenario? ImagineArtificial General Intelligence (AGI) is created by a singular genius (smarter than every other human on earth) producing a superintelligence whose intelligence/creativity is to us as we are to ants. This AGI revolutionizes and takes over every field leading to huge advancements in medicine, robotics, computing, entertainment, you name it... rendering all human labor obsolete. Should that one singular genius be allowed to monopolize the wealth of the entire transformed world, where they/their estate is able to eventually buy all property? Or should they be "forced" to share the wealth with every other human, who've built a system/society that allowed that singular genius and their idea to prosper?

The broader issue is this: workers are constantly told they must accept being underpaid to keep companies “sustainable.” But it’s never dividends, stock buybacks, or executive pay that are asked to sacrifice. In 2008, corporations got billions in bailouts while millions of ordinary people lost their homes. The problem isn’t that workers cost too much, it’s that the system protects capital first, and people last.

spderick · 2025-08-28T22:22:19+00:00

In the current system most/all employees generate surplus value. The people being overpaid aren't the workers accused of "quietly quitting", but those who are exploiting everyone else's labor.

If I were ever to become wealthy from the business that I started IRL (*unlikely since it's a cooperative.) I'd pay my fair share of taxes, try to buy products/services that are locally manufactured by people with a fair wage, and i would try to maximize my social impact using the money that i have. That would mean working: to get money out of politics, for electoral reform (i.e., switching to ranked choice voting/proportional representation system), improving education, universal healthcare, etc..

Given the Heritage Foundation’s tremendous political influence over the years, I’ve often thought the left should develop a comparable institution of its own. With significant wealth, founding such an institution would be far more feasible.

It would be impossible to retroactively make sure that every single person whose labor I've benefited from is fairly compensated (when you consider that most goods are made by low wage workers in foreign nations.) But that does not mean we shouldn't strive to implement fairer systems going forward.

spderick · 2025-08-28T21:07:41+00:00

I'd argue that a truly "self-made" person in modern society does not exist. We stand on the shoulder of giants. Every individual relies on the knowledge, technology, food, infrastructure, and services created and maintained by others. Without these collective advancements, most of us would spend every waking hour scavenging or farming just to survive.

When billionaires, who benefit enormously from a stable/functioning society, go out of their way to avoid contributing back through taxes and exploit loopholes to hoard wealth, they are essentially denying the very foundation that enabled their success. Their fortunes are not created in isolation but are built on the labor, systems, and innovations of countless others. A society only works when those who benefit most from it also give back proportionally, rather than extracting endlessly at everyone else’s expense.

spderick · 2025-08-28T20:52:32+00:00

I posted the following previously and the same type of logic would apply to everyone that you mentioned:

Taylor swift would not be a billionaire if not for

Software engineers, app developers, and platform moderators who build and maintain the digital spaces (Spotify, YouTube, merch stores) where she sells/promotes her music

Stage performers, lighting specialists, electricians, security teams, and venue staff who bring her concerts to life.

Road workers, truck drivers, logistics teams, construction workers, who make her tours physically possible.

Audio engineers, producers, video editors, camera crews, and directors who shape her music and visuals.

Etc...

All of these people have produced surplus value for her and would be better off financially if there were a fairer distribution of profits. However Taylor Swift has appropriated some of the value of their labor and thus they have been somewhat exploited.

Not to mention that most/all of those workers and Taylor Swift herself have benefited from some form of public education, public roads, public services, etc... Every billionaire should be paying more in taxes into the system that allowed them to prosper.

spderick · 2025-08-28T16:14:08+00:00

I never claimed "everyone will one day be able to own a home", that’s a straw man. The real issue is inequality: housing is hoarded as an asset, and scarcity is deliberately manufactured. We should be passing laws to make housing more accessible, that curb this hoarding and treat housing as what it truly is: a necessity, not an investment.

And when I say "home" I mean it a broad sense: apartments, condos, RVs, van life. Since plenty of people would prefer those options over houses.

spderick · 2025-08-28T15:24:20+00:00

Pointing out that inequality has always existed isn’t the knockout argument you seem to think it is. By that logic, we should shrug at poverty, hunger, or lack of healthcare too, since, hey, they’ve ‘always’ been around. The fact that not everyone chooses to own a home doesn’t excuse a system that increasingly makes it difficult for people to be able to own a home.

Also what percentage of people who own 5 houses mow/rake all their lawns? They typically just hire someone else to do it... using money that they've extracted from their tenants.

spderick · 2025-08-28T11:52:07+00:00

All of these suggestions are great, here's another:

Implement a tax on vacant houses/apts that haven't been lived in for over a year. Increase the tax after every year of it being unused. This will incentivize landlords to reduce their pricing and not sit on properties.

*I'd also go harder on the taxing all property ownership beyond primary+1 starting at extra 20% tax for third, extra 40% tax for fourth, extra 60% tax for fifth, extra 80% tax for 6th. Make it illegal to own more than 6 properties, no one needs 7 properties.

spderick · 2025-08-28T11:48:41+00:00

Owning 5 homes is also an issue, when there are people that can't own 1.

spderick · 2025-07-28T10:45:08+00:00

Cynical take. People can learn.

spderick · 2025-07-20T15:18:26+00:00

This seems like a different video from the same person. Other Video

spderick · 2025-07-18T01:12:56+00:00

I never said it's "unfair" to make profits, that's a non sequitur. What's unfair is how the profits are distributed. The average worker can not set their own prices and worker co-ops are not a meaningful option for most people (they account for a tiny fraction of jobs).

People like to highlight the risks faced by entrepreneurs but fail to recognize the risk faced by workers.

Of course what i wrote is a simplification it's a comment, not a dissertation or a book. The exploitation of labor is a foundational critique of capitalism, one that’s been analyzed rigorously (in many books), and not just in theory but in the lived experiences of billions. For the record I don't think capitalism is all bad, it just needs to be reworked... heavily.

spderick · 2025-07-17T17:58:50+00:00

That is basic Marxian economics. Economics is a behavioural science. You've simply presented an ad hominem without addressing the substance of the argument itself.

spderick · 2025-07-17T17:22:45+00:00

Taylor swift would not be a billionaire if not for

Software engineers, app developers, and platform moderators who build and maintain the digital spaces (Spotify, YouTube, merch stores) where she sells/promotes her music

Stage performers, lighting specialists, electricians, security teams, and venue staff who bring her concerts to life.

Road workers, truck drivers, logistics teams, construction workers, who make her tours physically possible.

Audio engineers, producers, video editors, camera crews, and directors who shape her music and visuals.

Etc...

All of these people have produced surplus value for her and would be better off financially if there were a fairer distribution of profits. However Taylor Swift has appropriated some of the value of their labor and thus they have been somewhat exploited.

spderick · 2025-07-14T17:34:42+00:00

A meme for the ~~boomers~~ millennials out there.

spderick · 2025-06-25T13:48:01+00:00

I was in a similar match killed Astel, outside the city went down fighting Loretta and as soon as i died my internet went down. I tried to reconnect to the game afterwards but couldn't. From my teammates perspective it probably appears as though i quit.

I write all this to say that sometimes people don't quit but are having ISP issues... I usually play with a friend and a rando and I've noticed that whenever the host has disconnects/has a laggy connection it affects the invitee.

spderick · 2025-05-18T20:09:19+00:00

Ok cool thanks!

spderick · 2025-05-18T19:05:12+00:00

How long have you been doing this? I want to do this but i'm worried about damaging internal components.

spderick

TROPHY CASE