Saturday, November 23, 2024
Was The Election Hacked? Maybe
Saturday, November 16, 2024
The Generation Who Failed
Thursday, November 14, 2024
If There Was A Single Thing That Cost The Dems The Election, It Was This
Friday, November 8, 2024
It's Midnight In America
It's midnight in America, and the sun may never rise again.
Well, it's official. Trump won the 2024 presidential election. Again. And this time, we can't blame it on the Electoral College or Russian interference or anything other than We the People. Or rather, about half of us.
Only this time around, literally everyone knew what he was all about, and yet so many still voted for him. So literally NO ONE can credibly claim naivety or ignorance (unless truly willful) this time. They had an easy out, and yet they chose to go right back to Trump. They are NOT victims, they are volunteers, often very eager ones, which makes them complicit with the oppressors. In fact, in the two weeks leading up to Election Day, Trump deliberately darkened his already vile rhetoric even more to get more undecided or apathetic folks off of their couches to go to the polls.
I mean, they literally chose the rapist, racist, misogynistic, convicted felon, lunatic, and insurrectionist candidate over the admittedly imperfect but highly accomplished woman of color candidate, because reasons. Or they simply didn't vote at all, or they voted third party, because they chose to make the perfect the enemy of the good, and we all ultimately got neither as a result.
They had ONE job this time, and that was to simply get off the damn couch and cast a secret ballot for Kamala, the only person really standing in the way of Trump, and no one would ever have to know. And they couldn't even do that! And now that they have sown the wind, they shall reap the whirlwind!
Unfortunately, ALL of us will.
America is basically dead and done now, and it will truly take a miracle of miracles to be able to transcend this madness and come out the other side in one piece. Of course, once could argue that America was already slowly dying for quite some time now. The fact that anywhere near half of the country would even remotely consider voting for Trump in the first place, again, would have been unthinkable in a truly healthy country and society.
So as the darkness settles in once again, we need to keep all of this in mind. And once again, we all must #RESIST tyranny of any kind. If you give them an inch, they will take a mile.
Sunday, November 3, 2024
UBI Is The Only Way To End Modern Slavery (Updated Re-Post)
Most of the objections to Universal Basic Income (UBI), from both the left and the right (usually the right), are fundamentally patronizing, paternalistic, and/or sadistic in nature, whether subtly or not-so-subtly. Those are, of course, very easily debunked as void on their face in anything even remotely approaching a free and civilized society. But what about the very few supposedly ethical objections that don't quite fit this mold?
One such objection to UBI is that it is really just "crowdsourced slavery", both within nations as well as (especially) with the imperialistic Global North continuing to exploit the Global South. Or something.
Saturday, October 26, 2024
This November's Election Is For All The Marbles
Listen up, everyone. Make no mistake, this November's election is for ALL the marbles. And not just because the Donald has lost his marbles (he lost them long ago), but because the stakes are even higher still this time around. A vote for Trump (or a vote for any third party candidate, or not voting at all) is effectively a vote for Project 2025, the latest Republican agenda, which would lead America into Margaret Atwood's worst nightmare. What they are proposing is downright horrifying to say the least! And it is also a vote for the Trump-Putin-Xi-Kim Axis of Evil as well. Some may say that this election is essentially a choice between World War III and Civil War 2.0, but we think that Trump winning would make it that much more likely that we will get the two-for-one special, barring a miracle of miracles.
And to those who say that their vote doesn't count because it is rigged and the outcome is predetermined, keep in mind that such a thing really only happens when the election is close, and it becomes that much HARDER to cheat when the election is not close. We still haven't gone so far down the rabbit hole of kleptocracy that we have full banana republic sham elections--YET. (Though if Trump wins, he could very easily make that the case in the future.) And if everyone who was eligible to vote actually voted, Trump (and the Republicans in general) really wouldn't stand a chance.
The lesson that should have been learned in 2016: if you make the perfect the enemy of the good, we ultimately end up with neither. Seriously.
P.S. To all of the young(-ish) Trump supporting men out there who are still smug about Project 2025 because of your gender, race, etc., read the fine print. One of the things on the agenda is to bring back the military draft. Seriously. That means YOU too. So maybe you might want to reconsider which candidate, and party, you are willing to support. And to all of the Serena Joy-esque self-hating misogynists out there, who think they personally will be spared, well, remember what ultimately happens to Serena in Atwood's novel. Don't say you haven't been warned!
Like the song "Freewill" by Rush goes, "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."
Wednesday, September 4, 2024
Excellent Article About UBI
The ever-insightful Rodger Malcolm Mitchell has a great new article about the topic of UBI from a Monetary Sovereignty perspective. Read it and share it far and wide. It needs to go VIRAL!
The only arguments against UBI are either ignorant, obsolete, greedy, selfish, patronizing, paternalistic, and/or sadistic, which means that there are really NO good arguments against it in any free and decent society worthy of the name. Period.
(Mic drop)
Thursday, August 29, 2024
The Latest Universal Basic Income (UBI) Experiment Study Is A Political-Philosophical Rorschach Test
Much has been made of the latest Universal Basic Income (UBI) experiment run by tech CEO Sam Altman, lasting for three years beginning in 2020, and the study of the results by Eva Vivalt et al. In a nutshell, the abstract below, particularly the text in bold (emphasis ours), seems to be a sort of political and philosophical Rorschach (inkblot) test, in which we all see what we subconsciously want to see:
We study the causal impacts of income on a rich array of employment outcomes, leveraging an experiment in which 1,000 low-income individuals were randomized into receiving $1,000 per month unconditionally for three years, with a control group of 2,000 participants receiving $50/month. We gather detailed survey data, administrative records, and data from a custom mobile phone app. The transfer caused total individual income to fall by about $1,500/year relative to the control group, excluding the transfers. The program resulted in a 2.0 percentage point decrease in labor market participation for participants and a 1.3-1.4 hour per week reduction in labor hours, with participants’ partners reducing their hours worked by a comparable amount. The transfer generated the largest increases in time spent on leisure, as well as smaller increases in time spent in other activities such as transportation and finances. Despite asking detailed questions about amenities, we find no impact on quality of employment, and our confidence intervals can rule out even small improvements. We observe no significant effects on investments in human capital, though younger participants may pursue more formal education. Overall, our results suggest a moderate labor supply effect that does not appear offset by other productive activities.
And there you have it. Some commenters have reacted positively to it, seeing it as a good thing, and some negatively, seeing it as a bad thing, often quite predictably based on political leanings. That said, the following comment from a libertarian perspective on the Reason article clearly wins the internet:
check out reddit.com/r/antiwork
There are large groups of people who simply think it’s unfair that they are required to work in order to feed themselves. Why should they be required to do things that society deems “useful”?
I’m in favor of UBI as a replacement for welfare. I’m in favor of single payer basic healthcare as a way of decoupling healthcare from employers.
I’m ok with one of the consequences being that some people can stop pretending to work.
The commenter, Bubba Jones, makes an excellent point there. So what if UBI results in such a modest drop in work hours and the nominal size of the labor force? A drop of merely two percentage points and 1.4 hours per week is hardly a mass exodus from the workforce, and I would hazard a guess that the lion's share of the drop is concentrated among those who are at the lower end of the bell curve and the vitality curve, that is, marginally attached workers who tend to enervate more than they energize. (Note as well that this study was done largely during the outlier years of the pandemic, so that may have biased the numbers.) And in any case, more leisure is NOT inherently a bad thing. As Robert Reich famously said, the economy exists to make our lives better, we don't exist to make the economy. This of course echoes Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative that we should always treat humanity as ends in themselves, and never solely as a means to an end.
And it dovetails nicely with the famous quote by the late, great Buckminster Fuller, the Leonardo da Vinci of the 20th century:
We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.
(Mic drop)
UPDATE: The ever-insightful Rodger Malcolm Mitchell has a great new article about the topic of UBI from a Monetary Sovereignty perspective. Read it and share it far and wide. It needs to go VIRAL!
Also, as the ever-insightful Marco Fioretti notes, the laws of physics ultimately demand some flavor of UBI from a limits-to-growth perspective. Thus whether you are pro-growth, anti-growth, degrowth, or agnostic about growth, all roads lead to UBI.
And finally, to clarify, the TSAP agrees with the Reddit comment IF the middle part is modified as follows:
"I’m in favor of UBI as a replacement for [cash] welfare. I’m in favor of single payer basic [comprehensive] healthcare as a way of decoupling healthcare from employers."
There, fixed it for you. And once again:
(Mic drop)
Monday, August 5, 2024
What Hath The FERAL Reserve Wrought?
Saturday, July 27, 2024
Liberty Is Not A "Luxury Belief". It Is A Birthright For All
The term "luxury beliefs" has gained quite a lot of traction since it was coined in 2019, and especially since 2022, by Rob Henderson. Per Wikipedia:
A luxury belief is an idea or opinion that confers status on members of the upper class at little cost, while inflicting costs on persons in lower classes. The term is often applied to privileged individuals who are seen as disconnected from the lived experiences of impoverished and marginalized people. Such individuals supposedly hold political and social beliefs that signal their elite status, yet which are alleged to have negative impacts on those with the least influence. Exactly what counts as a luxury belief is not always consistent and may vary from person to person, and the term in general is considered to be controversial.
Make no mistake, it is typically only (social) conservatives that have been using the term in recent years to describe their opponents' views on various hot-button issues (bail reform, criminal justice, policing, MMT, immigration, net zero, environmentalism, marriage and family, sexual freedom, reproductive rights, drug legalization and decriminalization, etc.). Occasionally the left and center-left have used the term (much more accurately, we would argue) to describe conservative beliefs like "supply-side economics", "trickle-down theory", austerity, artificial scarcity, weak or nonexistent social safety nets, and stuff like that, but the use of the term on the left in that context is relatively rare.
On the right, and even somewhat on the "third way" neoliberal left since President Clinton, there seems to be this specious idea that too much personal liberty is somehow apocalyptically worse than too little, particularly for the poor, downtrodden, and vulnerable members of society, and especially for racialized minorities (who says conservatives don't "play the race card" when it's convenient?). We argue that this is a patronizing and paternalistic attitude towards people that the talking heads (consciously or unconsciously) feel smugly superior to, and it essentially robs such people of agency. And to be blunt about it, as the saying goes, "crap always rolls downhill". That is, granted, ANY policy can have unintended consequences per Murphy's Law, and as a well-known corollary, those negative consequences tend to accrue disproportionately to those who lack the means to insulate themselves from such consequences, particularly those at the bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy. For example, in that regard, we can call the War on (people who use a few particular) Drugs just as much if not more of a "luxury belief" as full drug legalization would be in practice, as the adverse consequences (which are not entirely unintended!) fall disproportionately on poor people and/or racialized minorities.
As Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) famously said, "you can get over an addiction, but you will never get over a conviction". And that clearly applies tenfold to the poor as it does to the rich.
The real problem is systemic, as must any real solution be. But liberty per se is not the problem. While the utterly patronizing and paternalistic protectionism and "tyranny of the weaker brother" is the real luxury belief here, as are the economic ones like "trickle-down theory", austerity, and neoliberalism. ("Catch and release" and "defund the police" are the only ones that Henderson mentions that even come close in that regard.)
The TSAP supports liberty and justice for all, in contrast to liberty for "just us", NOT all. To quote Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniencies (sic) attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it". Truer words have never been spoken indeed.
(Mic drop)
To Refurbish Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), One Must Admit That Lockdowns Were Indeed Harmful On Balance
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has been taking quite a drubbing lately. Some say it has been thoroughly discredited since it was de facto practiced (to an extent) during the pandemic, and massive inflation resulted. But that glib commentary misses the real root cause of the inflation: the shortages of goods, services, and labor resulting from the massive global supply chain disruptions, which in turn resulted from the lockdowns and related restrictions.
(And it's not entirely due to ignorance, since those naysayers actually DO admit as much about the lockdowns, but yet they still speciously put most, if not all, of the blame on MMT, because reasons.)
MMT per se was never the problem. But to refurbish it, one must admit that lockdowns and related restrictions did very real harm, something that the pseudo-left is loath to do. Not that MMT is flawless, by any means. But Rodger Malcolm Mitchell's related theory, Monetary Sovereignty (MS), essentially fixes those flaws, especially when he (belatedly) jettisoned the specious idea of interest rate hikes (which only deepened the stagflationary quagmire) as an inflation-fighting tool. A good essay about the differences between the two can be found here.
In a nutshell, when you literally shut down the broader economy in most of the world for an extended period of time (which greatly disrupts and shrinks supply), AND then try to paper over it by printing unprecedented amounts of money (which stokes demand), that WILL be inflationary. But the money printing was NOT the root cause, and remember that if the powers that be didn't do that, there would have been a full-blown depression, if not a complete collapse of civilization as we knew it, and within a couple weeks the masses would have been furiously calling for their heads with torches and pitchforks. Or, they could have simply adopted the "flu strategy" and NOT imposed any restrictions, and perhaps implemented a more modest (but more brief and front-loaded) stimulus package, and this whole stagflationary quagmire could have been avoided. And as the experience of Sweden and other countries has famously shown, it would not have resulted in any more excess deaths than occurred with lockdowns. Hindsight is quite literally 2020.
It's not that lunch cannot ever be free. It actually can be, at least to a point. But truly lockdowns can never be a free lunch, no matter how much money gets printed to paper over the massive holes they make.
As for the specious notion that MMT (and by extension, MS) is a "luxury belief", well, we know that the real luxury beliefs are austerity and artificial scarcity. Not to mention lockdowns as well.
Sunday, July 21, 2024
This November's Election Is For All The Marbles
With President Biden officially dropping out of the 2024 presidential race, and VP Kamala Harris the most likely candidate in his place, the 2024 election just got that much more interesting. This is of course right on the heels of the recent (and mysterious) assassination attempt on Trump (which we condemn, of course), which has apparently elevated him to "martyr" status among his cult-like base.
Make no mistake, this election is for ALL the marbles. And not just because the Donald has lost his marbles (he lost them long ago), but because the stakes are even higher still this time around. A vote for Trump (or a vote for any third party candidate, or not voting at all) is effectively a vote for Project 2025, the latest Republican agenda, which would lead America into Margaret Atwood's worst nightmare. What they are proposing is downright horrifying to say the least! And it is also a vote for the Trump-Putin-Xi-Kim Axis of Evil as well. Some may say that this election is essentially a choice between World War III and Civil War 2.0, but we think that Trump winning would make it that much more likely that we will get the two-for-one special, barring a miracle of miracles.
And to those who say that their vote doesn't count because it is rigged and the outcome is predetermined, keep in mind that such a thing really only happens when the election is close, and it becomes that much HARDER to cheat when the election is not close. We still haven't gone so far down the rabbit hole of kleptocracy that we have full banana republic sham elections--YET. (Though if Trump wins, he could very easily make that the case in the future.) And if everyone who was eligible to vote actually voted, Trump (and the Republicans in general) really wouldn't stand a chance.
The lesson that should have been learned in 2016: if you make the perfect the enemy of the good, we ultimately end up with neither. Seriously.
P.S. To all of the young(-ish) Trump supporting men out there who are still smug about Project 2025 because of your gender, race, etc., read the fine print. One of the things on the agenda is to bring back the military draft. Seriously. That means YOU too. So maybe you might want to reconsider which candidate, and party, you are willing to support. And to all of the Serena Joy-esque self-hating misogynists out there, who think they personally will be spared, well, remember what ultimately happens to Serena in Atwood's novel. Don't say you haven't been warned!
Like the song "Freewill" by Rush goes, "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."
Thursday, July 4, 2024
Reclaim The 4th!
As John Pavlovitz notes, it is no secret that today, the Fourth of July, has become a high holy day for the MAGA movement and fascists in general. And that truly is a shame. They have, essentially, culturally appropriated and turned thoroughly inside-out such an otherwise wonderful holiday celebrating our nation's hard-won independence from the British Empire, and the ideals of liberty and justice for all.
Thus we must NEVER let them have exclusive use of this day, as that is dangerous. Instead, we must reclaim it from the fascists, lest we let them win.
So what are we waiting for? Happy Birthday America! And hopefully many, many more!
Thursday, June 20, 2024
Hey FERAL Reserve, Cut Interest Rates NOW!
The FERAL Reserve still has yet to cut interest rates, and despite the Dow Jones recently hitting 40,000, the risk of recession is apparently growing by the day. And after falling dramatically from its 2022 peak of 9% once the pandemic-induced (more like lockdown-induced) supply chain issues and shortages got resolved, inflation currently remains stubbornly stuck in the neighborhood of 3%. Because Jerome Powell is too stubborn to cut rates, thus keeping us trapped in a quagmire. Hello, stagflation!
Friday, June 14, 2024
Flag Day
Just pointing out that today is Flag Day. But this blog looks no different today because we display the Stars and Stripes every day.
To all the ignorant fools who burn it, remember what it is that you're really burning, and all those that fought and died for it. Those who consider themselves to be on the political left would be better served by "taking back the Flag" and waving it proudly, so it is NOT perverted into an ultra-right-wing symbol by the fascists. Make it clear that the government policies you oppose are NOT in the national interest. And let everyone know that you can just as strongly love this country as you dislike its government. In fact, plenty of true patriots often do feel that way.The Flag is not Republican, Democrat, liberal, conservative, or belonging to any other faction. It is the American Flag, and it belongs to all of us.
Friday, May 31, 2024
Trump Is Guilty As Charged
Saturday, May 25, 2024
A Better Than Nordic-Style Social Welfare State With Less Than ALASKA Taxes
A friendly reminder to all readers: contrary to popular opinion, it is entirely possible to have a better than Nordic-style social welfare state with less than Florida Alaska taxes. Why? (You really may want to sit down before reading any further.)
Because federal taxes do NOT fund federal spending, that's why! Not the individual income tax, not the corporate income tax, not FICA, not the various excises, duties, and tariffs, not estate or gift taxes, nor any other federal tax for that matter. It is all a Big Lie illusion to prop up the oligarchy, especially the big banks, via artificial scarcity of dollars. As Rodger Malcolm Mitchell famously notes, and echoed by Dr. Joseph M. Firestone, the federal government is Monetarily Sovereign, that is, being the issuer of it's own currency, it by definition has infinite money. Any money they receive, through taxes or otherwise, is effectively like bringing coals to Newcastle, in that it disappears into infinity (thus de facto destroyed). And whenever they spend money on anything, they create each dollar on an ad hoc basis to pay as they go.
Switching to what Dr. Firestone calls "Overt Congressional Financing (OCF)" is LONG overdue. On August 15, 1971, the gold standard effectively ended for good, but the method of Congressional financing remains more or less stuck in the past.
Meanwhile, the so-called "National Debt" (TM) is also an illusion, in that it consists of Treasury securities that are only spuriously linked to federal spending due to arcane and archaic rules left over from the now-defunct gold standard that ended over half a century ago. Each T-security is effectively equivalent to a CD savings account for those who choose to invest in them. Additionally, the idea that money can only be created with interest or other "strings" attached to it is yet another part of the Big Lie as well.
(It could literally be paid off in one fell swoop at zero cost to anyone, in fact. And it's technically not even "borrowing" at all. Infinite money, remember?)
Ditto for the Social Security, Medicare, and other federal "trust funds", which are literally nothing more than accounting gimmicks based on artificial scarcity. They could fund all of that and more by simply creating the money on an ad hoc basis.
As for inflation, that is generally caused by shortages of goods and services, NOT by printing too much money. It is ultimately a supply-side problem that requires supply-side solutions, including (counterintuitively) more federal spending targeted to incentivize more production of scarce goods and services. Thus, rationing dollars via austerity measures and/or raising interest rates to fight inflation and/or recession is like applying leeches to cure anemia. It is a fundamental category mistake that does far more harm than good on balance.
Of course, the oligarchs want to condition We the People to accept mere crumbs from the tables of the rich. That way they can keep widening the yawning gap between the haves and have-nots, givng the oligarchs more power to lord it over us all.
Bottom line: all of these gimmicks are completely artificial, contrived, and designed to deceive us all. The ONLY purposes of taxes in a Monetarily Sovereign government that issues it's own currency (like the federal government, but not (yet) state and local governments) are 1) to control and regulate the economy by encouraging or discouraging various behaviors and activities, 2) to (crudely) fight inflation, 3) to create demand for the currency, and 4) to prop up and give credence to the Big Lie. But the supposed need to raise revenue is NOT one of them at all.
Thus, with the stroke of a pen, Congress can very easily square the circle of a better than Nordic-style social welfare state with less than Alaska taxes, complete with a national version of the Alaska Permanent Fund. They gave the FERAL Reserve its power in 1913, and they can just as easily take it away today if they chose to. But of course, their oligarch masters would NOT want that at all! Most Congresscritters save for a tiny few, are of course bought and paid for by the big money interests. Thus, we need to throw the bums out, yesterday!
So what are we waiting for? PAGING DR. FIRESTONE! NEEDED IN WASHINGTON, DC, STAT!
Tuesday, May 21, 2024
Hey FERAL Reserve: Cut Interest Rates NOW!
Wednesday, May 8, 2024
We Re-Affirm Our Zero-Tolerance Policy Towards Antisemitism (And All Other Forms Of Racism And Bigotry)
In the wake of the still ongoing Israel-Gaza war following the brutal and barbaric terrorist attack by Hamas against Israel, and especially with all of the recent protests on college campuses and elsewhere, there has been an outpouring of antisemitism lately from both left and right (though largely from the regressive "left"). Some of it is ostensibly at least tangentially related to current events, while some of it is simply a "mask off" moment for longstanding hatred against Jews that has always been there but now has come to the surface now they have found a politically convenient excuse to hide behind. Either way, it is completely unacceptable. Regardless of how one may feel about current events, there is NO excuse for that sort of bigotry. Period. And the silence is truly deafening among those who should know better than to be silent in the face of it as well.
As we have said in the past, we the TSAP hereby vow to NEVER make that sort of mistake by either omission or commission, and hereby condemn antisemitism in the very strongest of terms, just as strongly as we do racism in general. And the reader is put on notice that we will NEVER tolerate any overt or covert antisemitism in our party, period, no matter how much one tries (in vain, by definition) to dress it up in any sort of leftist or social justice rhetoric. Bigotry by any other name still stinks.
Therefore, using any of the following red flag words, phrases, or references will get your comments promptly deleted, and severe and/or repeat offenders will be banned permanently:Obviously, any known slurs against Jews ("y*d", "k**e", "h**b", "Chr*st-ki**er", etc.), or any permutations thereof
Using the word "Jew" or "Jewish" itself as a pejorative or insult
Adding pejorative modifiers such as "dirty", "cheap", or "money-grubbing" to same
Blood libel or vilification of any kind
Stab-in-the-back legends vilifying Jews
Calling for violence of any kind against Jews or Israel
Inciting pogroms of any kind
Any Holocaust denial (including "soft" denial or minimization, or JAQ-ing off)
Any Holocaust jokes, or any jokes about gas chambers, ovens, or death squads in relation to anyone Jewish. NOT FUNNY!
Any other jokes demeaning to Jews
Any praising of the KKK or white supremacists or white nationalists, including the "alt-right" and neo-Confederates
Any praising of known Holocaust deniers
Any praising of Hamas or Hezbollah (or al-Qaeda or ISIL, for that matter)
Falsely accusing any Jew of being a Nazi collaborator or kapo, or repeating such unproven or debunked claims
Obsessing over (((George Soros))), for example
"311" (unless clearly referencing the band)
"88" (without clear explanation)
"America First" (depending on context)
"Anglo-Israelism" (when giving it any credence)
"The Bad War" (in reference to WWII)
"Cultural Marxism" (as a dog-whistle slur)
"Death to Israel" (or something similar)
"From the river to the sea" (without detailed explanation of what one really means)
"Globalist" (as a dog-whistle slur)
"Gotta pay the Jews if you wanna sing the blues"
"Hexagram" (instead of "Star of David")
"Heil Hitler", "Sieg Heil", or "Hail Victory"
"Hitler was the good guy"
"Hitler was a socialist"
"Hitler was a Rothschild"
"Hitler was Jewish"
"Hoaxocaust" or "HollowHoax" or any permutations thereof
"Hooknose" (or any caricatures thereof)
"Hymietown"
"ISIS = Israeli Secret Intelligence Service"
"Israel (or Jews) was behind 9/11"
"Jews caused the financial crisis"
"Jews have us hypnotized"
"Jews killed Jesus"
"Jews own Hollywood"
"Jewish Slave Trade"
"Jewish Cabal"
"Jewish Media (Elites)"
"Judeo-Bolshevism"
"The Jew York Times"
"Khazars"
"Kosher Tax"
"Loy-yahs"
"Money boys up in New York" (dog whistle)
"Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" (if claiming that this long-debunked canard is true)
"Red Diaper Doper Babies" (RDDB)
"Rootless cosmopolitans" (in reference to Jews)
"Rothschilds" (in reference to conspiracy theories)
"Unite the Right"
"War on Christmas" (when used without irony)
"White Genocide" (conspiracy theories)
"White Power" or "White Pride"
"Winston Churchill was the real bad guy"
"Wipe Israel off the map" (or any variations thereof)
"Zionazis"
"Zionist Conspiracy"
"ZOG" (Zionist Occupied Government)
Images of swastikas, Confederate flags, nooses, burning crosses, "Le Happy Merchant" or "Evil Jew" caricatures, or any other recognized hate symbols, period
Any other antisemitic canards or tropes
Please note that anti-Zionism per se, when honestly and seriously included as part of a broader anti-colonial framework, is not automatically prohibited here. The same goes with supporting some forms of Zionism but not others, and so on. Criticism of Israel (and/or support for Palestinians) is fine as along as it is nuanced and grounded in reality, but be sure to be specific about exactly which individuals, policies, and/or political parties you are criticizing, and why. Vaguely using "Zio(nist)" or any permutations thereof as a veiled slur against Jews in general will not be tolerated, and of course the same goes for any specious claims that Israel has no right to exist at all.
For the record, the TSAP supports the "two-state solution", which is shorthand for 1) revert back to the the pre-1967 borders of Israel and Palestine, 2) officially recognized Palestinian statehood for Gaza and the West Bank, 3) end any non-consensual Jewish settlements in Palestinian territories, and 4) both Israel and Palestine have a right to exist, period. And we have long vehemently opposed Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud Party (as well as parties even further to the right still), while also vehemently opposing Hamas and Hezbollah all the same. Yes, it's entirely possible to oppose both at the same time.
As for criticism or negative views of patriarchal religions, that is fine, but do NOT single out Judaism. Keep in mind that the most prominent and populous branches of Judaism are typically among the most progressive and least patriarchal of all the Big Five mainstream religions nowadays.
As for conspiracy theories in general, you may share them, but please don't drag the Jews into it, and don't use any dog-whistles either. Seriously, don't do it!
And while the TSAP loves to criticize the big banks, Wall Street, usury, and oligarchs in general, along with their nefarious system, we ask that you NOT appropriate such ideas for scapegoating Jews or dog-whistling your virulent hatred of same. Keep in mind that most banksters and oligarchs are WASPs, not Jews. So let's not pretend otherwise, OK? That old trope really didn't age very well at all.
After all, as a party that greatly supports Bernie Sanders and Marianne Williamson, both of whom are Jewish, we would really be suicidal to ignore antisemitism on the left, right, or anywhere else on the political spectrum. We also support Jon Stewart as well. In the USA, it has long seemed to be far more prevalent on the right wing, though very recently the "left" unfortunately seems to be stealing the show in that regard. And it has NO place in our party.
We ignore it at our own peril, and everyone else's.
Friday, April 19, 2024
How To Solve The Big Tech Problem Without Violating Anyone's Rights (Updated Re-Post)
"Big Tech is the new Big Tobacco" is often bandied about these days. And while that has a kernel of truth to it (a kernel the size of a cornfield, in fact), it is also used by authoritarian zealots with a very illiberal (and ageist) agenda. Mandatory age verification, censorship, repealing Section 230, and other related illiberal restrictions would open up the door to many unintended consequences to privacy, cybersecurity, and civil rights and liberties in general. Even those adults who don't support youth rights will eventually experience these consequences sooner or later. Kafka, meet trap. Pandora, meet box. Albatross, meet neck. And of course, baby, meet bathwater.
And none of these things will actually solve the collective action problem of Big Tech and the "Social Dilemma". But here are some things that will, in descending order of priority and effectiveness:
- First and foremost, take a "Privacy First" approach as recommended by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Pass comprehensive data privacy legislation for all ages that, at a minimum, would ban surveillance advertising, and ban data brokers too.
- Audit the algorithms and internal research of the Big Tech giants, and make the results publicly available for all to see. Sunlight is truly the best disinfectant.
- Require the strictest and safest privacy settings to be the default settings for all users of all ages, which can then be adjusted more liberally by the users themselves. For example, "friends only" sharing and "no DMs enabled from people whom one does not follow" by default. And allow the option to turn off all DMs completely as well.
- Require or incentivize the use of various "architectural" safety features on all social media, such as various nudges, #OneClickSafer ("stop at two hops") to reduce the pitfalls of frictionless sharing, and increase the use of CAPTCHAs to root out the pervasive toxic bots.
- If after doing that, We the People feel that we must still get stricter in terms of age, then don't make things any stricter than current California standards (i.e. CCPA and CAADCA). That is, a "Kids Code" would be fine as long as it is properly written and doesn't result in censorship or mandatory age verification.
The first two items on the list in particular would of course be vehemently opposed by Big Tech. That's because their whole business model depends on creepy surveillance advertising and creepy algorithms, and thus incentivizing addiction for profit. They would thus have to switch to the (gasp!) DuckDuckGo model if these items were done. (Plays world's smallest violin) That would of course be tantamount to throwing the One Ring into the fires of Mount Doom, in J.R.R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.
For another, related collective action problem, what about the emerging idea of phone-free schools? Fine, but to be fair, how about phone-free workplaces for all ages as well? In both cases, it should ONLY apply while "on the clock", which for school would be best defined as being from the opening bell to the final bell of the day, as well as during any after-school detention time. And of course, in both cases, there would have to be medical exemptions for students and employees who need such devices for real-time medical monitoring (glucose for diabetes, for example). Surely productivity would increase so much as a result that we could easily shorten the standard workweek to 30-32 hours per week (8 hours for 4 days, or 6 hours for 5 days) with no loss in profits? But that would make too much sense.
Other good ideas we would endorse are a voluntary smartphone buyback program (similar to gun buybacks), and perhaps even paying people to voluntarily delete or deactivate their social media accounts for a time. That would accomplish far more than any realistic mandatory measures would.
Another possible idea is simply to slow down by design the pace of these social media platforms. Much like #OneClickSafer mentioned above, adding a little bit of friction to an otherwise frictionless system can help tame the very real dark side of that system. I mean, would you willingly drive on a frictionless surface (such as ice)? Of course you wouldn't.
Note that internet connection speeds are more than ten times faster (!) today on average than in 2010. That leaves a LOT of room for adding back friction!
And finally, the idea of banning certain questionable design features (infinite scroll, autoplay, etc.) may be controversial in terms of whether such features are protected by the First Amendment, but we believe that those features per se are not automatically protected, unless the ban is deliberately abused to censor specific content. If such bans are truly content-neutal, we are fine with that.
We must remember that, at the end of the day, Big Tech is NOT our friend. But neither are the illiberal control freak zealots. These measures that we endorse will actually make both sides quite angry indeed. But truly that's a feature, not a bug.
Big Tech can go EFF off!