171–180 of 381 posts
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Sorry, but I don't get the reference. Is Santa Claus Romanian?
A previous Romanian protest led to a show-trial on December 25, 1989. The sentence was execution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Nicolae_and_Elena_Cea...
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> and they recently pissed off most of the geeks in the country with the new tax code. Interesting, would you like share some more information on that?
My guess is that something about this got changed (2016): https://www.romania-insider.com/romania-expands-tax-incentiv...
Micro-enterprise tax
It is no longer possible for any company to opt for a profit tax payer status (16% profit tax rate applied to its taxable profits) instead of a micro-enterprise tax payer (1% or 3% tax rate applied to its revenue), even if the company has share capital of more than RON 45,000.
Don't think they won't do this in America when necessary.
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Sure, hate the rich, it doesn't prove you have compassion for the poor. What you are stating as a threat is really the 'protection' of private property. Something that a poor person has access to as well, and in fact the utilization of such could allow them to come out of poverty. As far as your remarks on power, I hope you also understand it isn't a replacement for a hierarchy built on competence. Something that the…
> Something that a poor person has access to as well I doubt this. When the other side has orders of magnitude more money than you, you don't have access to protection by the legal system - this is the very reason why and how, for example, patent trolls stay in business. > and in fact the utilization of such could allow them to come out of poverty You're talking about trickle-down effect, I guess? That's been proven…
Again for the utilization of private property, a person is still able to use their own property without the interference of ANYONE else. I'm not speaking about rich vs poor, I'm speaking as an individual.
Essentially what my entire post has been is about the dynamic of power and victimization when it comes to the criticism of Capitalism. I'm sorry but I really can't subscribe to the idea that it's inherently violent because poor people are oppressed and then the police are used as the henchmen of the rich when the poor act out. Which is why I raised the concept of competency to begin with. A poor person has the right and if they have the ability, they can try to leverage their own way of acquiring value. It becomes violent when resources are scarce and the 'poor' are victimized into believing that the rich are the oppressors aka Maoist China & Stalinist Russia. As long as opportunities exist to move up and down the class/social ladder I don't again think its concise to say that more 'power' is needed and I'd again say that understanding that hierarchy can be achieved of competency is important to remove the idea of victimization.
Lastly to explain my point simply, you might be for those that throw bricks as a display of 'power', but those bricks can be used not only for the skyscrapers of the 'oppressors', but they can be used for the bricks of small businesses and other uses to enable poor people to make a living and in turn create value for others in a capitalist society. How is this related to President Trump and how he became president/what this means for America? I literally have no idea how American capitalism is to blame?
It seems like you just don't like Trump, that's fine me neither. But I'm not going to start raving about anti-capitalistic ideology while I type all of this on a MacBook am I...
I chose to believe that this is a side-effect of facebook trying to combat fake news with some lame algorithms and an understaffed department of reviewers, not facebook actively trying to please the Romanian authorities. But even so, this shows how utterly unprepared facebook is for its role as a de facto news business. A bunch of engineers thinking they are smarter than they actually are unwillingly facilitate the e…
As a Romanian what seems to happen is that a large group of supporters of the ruling party were coordinated in reporting the protests-related posts. I think facebook could easily implement an algorithm to detect reporting rings and actually suspending their member's accounts. Just like reddit is doing with the upvoting rings.
and what precisely is the difference between a 'reporting ring' and an 'activist group', algorithmically?
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When Bernie had his largest rally yet (larger by far than anything Hillary had by then), NPR spent 8 minutes of the Newshour talking about something Trump said, and the reactions people had on Twitter. They chose not to cover Bernie and while I could only speculate why, I agree with you that they helped elevate Trump’s candidacy.
I don't want to give facebook a pass, but I hate seeing the issue framed as "facebook sucks at news because young engineers" vs the implied adult in the room of traditional journalism. Facebook has failed at news, but traditional journalism is still in the dog house and is not the default credible alternative. I'll admit they don't do the whole "fake news" thing which is nice, but even without outright lying the bias…
I would go a step further. Mainstream media outright lies. You're willingly covering your eyes if you think otherwise.
We have our own false truths that we tell ourselves--you probably look at other counties or back in history and think we are somehow different from all of those people in this respect.
The problem they have is that Facebook did not control the narrative as well as mainstream media--as your examples of Bernie and Trump illustrate. However, the "Fake News" campaign will change that and get them in the club with other media outlets.
You can already see media's attitudes towards FB start to change. Today, this article in the NYT seems to tack on a high five to FB at the end--even though FB was not even really (primarily) what this activist was blogging with[1].
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/27/world/asia/vietnam-ngu...?
I'm a Romanian and I can confirm that posts and accounts have been blocked, probably because of being reported by the other side. On the other hand, folks, this is a little reminder that censorship is a doubly edged knife ;-) So next time you call for censoring "fake news", think again, because it's not you who will benefit from it. A couple of years back I was enthusiastic about the rise of social media for informin…
I'll add to that. The internet is a great tool for coordinating citizens, spreading information, and fighting injustice. Having facebook, or any similar monolithic capitalist behemoth, in charge of controlling the flow of that information, is a BIG regression.
The internet was going to be great. How did it come to this :(
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When Bernie had his largest rally yet (larger by far than anything Hillary had by then), NPR spent 8 minutes of the Newshour talking about something Trump said, and the reactions people had on Twitter. They chose not to cover Bernie and while I could only speculate why, I agree with you that they helped elevate Trump’s candidacy.
I don't want to give facebook a pass, but I hate seeing the issue framed as "facebook sucks at news because young engineers" vs the implied adult in the room of traditional journalism. Facebook has failed at news, but traditional journalism is still in the dog house and is not the default credible alternative. I'll admit they don't do the whole "fake news" thing which is nice, but even without outright lying the bias…
Yes, and they have a set of checks and balances to deal with that fact. I'm completely stumped why you would discount those checks and balances. Media outlets are all biased in different ways, and I share your disdain for some of those biases. That said, if they are a legitimate news outlet, those biases have little to do with their advertisers, so not sure what your point is.
Care to expand on your complaint?