We could alleviate a lot of angst in our society if people could understand that billionaires don’t *have* billions of dollars. They *manage* billions of dollars. Often they have liquid access to a minuscule fraction of their supposed “wealth” (which is still a tremendous amount) but they don’t actually have practical access to the vast majority of it. And if they ever stop mobilizing that wealth in productive ways (that benefit everyone in society immensely) it withers with incredible speed. They don’t have mountains of gold behind locked doors…they have contracts, businesses, R&D, employees, loans, etc. Their capital is at risk and must remain at risk to maintain 90% of its value. Anyone can do this. Many don’t have the drive, intelligence, and/or risk tolerance to accomplish it. Most prefer the stability of a paycheck and benefits to the high wire act with no net that entrepreneurship requires. Neither is right or wrong. Just different. And both are useful and necessary for a thriving society. You can’t attack one without choking the other.
Not quite the same. The coffee shop refused service based on who Goldman *is*. The bakery didn’t refuse service based on the clients, they just refused to create specifically what the clients wanted them to which violated their religious beliefs, but offered to accommodate them otherwise.
So, a bad analogy. However, I think that public accommodation laws create more issues than they resolve. If a business wants to refuse service to anyone for any reason, I believe they should be able to…and let the market and public pressure sort them out.
It’s funny. The definition of war in the last few decades has become completely inverted. Hot action can’t be called war for political and technical reasons, and once that is done and fighting has stopped, reconstruction and rebalancing is called war so that “forever war” narratives can be maintained. Both uses are cynical and not helpful for describing reality, and so everyone ends up talking right past each other.
@AuronMacintyre The things you choose to be sophisticated and nuanced about and the things you choose to play a simpleton over reveal a true darkness in your soul.
@DanielPriestley I’m largely a socialist behind my front door, and a capitalist pretty much everywhere else. People try to graft how they interact with family onto how policy should be constructed amongst strangers. It is a disastrous miscalculation.
@mehdirhasan Your rhetoric would be far more effective if you didn’t routinely weave in what everybody knows is total bullshit. You lie with every other breath out of omission, insinuation, and/or convenience. You are a con artist who could use his talent for good, but chooses otherwise.
@ScottMGreer@AuronMacintyre There are valid concerns about foreign interests interfering in our government and manipulating our policies…but when you guys make points that are obviously false and deceptive to anyone whose brain isn’t broken and takes 5 minutes to investigate, you don’t help your case.
@AuronMacintyre We have really gotten pretty soft on what "canceling" means. This is a disagreement. Neither is being particularly charitable or accurate about the others position...but this is the sort of thing that happens around dynamic and difficult issues.
I wasn’t chomping at the bit to start shooting back and forth with Iran. Likewise, I wasn’t particularly rushed to stop the confrontation. In both cases, I am deferring to the people I elected to exercise the judgement I deemed them to have which earned my vote. I just find it funny that the people who think Trump is owned by Israel aren’t really lining up to admit they were wrong, and likewise, people who until 5 minutes ago thought Trump was a singular titan of foreign policy - the first president with a spine in decades - suddenly think he is getting snowed over and bullied by Iran. Let’s see what happens.
@FischerKing64@AuronMacintyre Really? I have been super impressed with Rubio handling the press as well. I think he has been a spectacular SOS. Can’t we like them both?
@TheBabylonBee I heard one of the fighters accidentally dinged the table where Hunter Biden left his bag of coke. And this just down the hall from where Bill was reverently getting BJ’s from young subordinates. No respect!
@PeteNakos@BlairASanderson@On3 Probably not going to be a lot of teams wanting to deal with the smoke. And understandably so, since he was apparently willing to burn the sport down rather than be accountable for his actions.
@Hlas Ever been to DC? Relative to a million other things that go down on the mall all the time, not sure what made you decide to get worked up about this. I could probably guess though…
@QasimRashid So, now you want to tax unrealized gains (but probably not deduct unrealized losses) AND limit freedom of association and trade by limiting what lenders can consider as collateral. Just stop. You are either too stupid, too ignorant, or too dishonest to be taken seriously.
@derektranCA45 You are a lying liar who lies. People struggle under your policies and initiatives. They get respite and enjoy opportunities and benefits from the efforts of people like Musk in spite of you.