271–280 of 319 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't believe that when a company owns the venues and the tickets, mandates buying tickets from themselves then adds a huge markup to every ticket someone would actually blame the entertainers for having name recognition.
Surely Bruce Springsteen can simply build dozens of venues around the United States if he wants an alternative to Live Nation.
The FTC and DoJ have been hitting it out of the park recently, unfortunately, there are a lot of judges out there that think corps should be able to do anything they want.
Going after ticket master makes no sense and would accomplish nothing. Artist set the price of their tickets, ticketmaster is a middleman/scapegoat. Seems it whole scheme worked perfectly if most think they're to blame.
Additionally, if artists were to continue the high prices in a more transparent manner without them, then that’s fine - it’s a free country and a free market.
If they don’t my wife and I are just going to stop going to shows that use TicketMaster/Live Nation. Any more a third of the ticket price is fees. Not worth it.
Why haven’t you stopped already then?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why haven’t you stopped already then?
A step like this can change the course of history. So it need to be taken with lot of due diligence.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Giving up on your democratic representation is not going to make things better.
What democratic representation? > “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
If you have causes you are passionate about but you refuse to participate in the (hard won, bloodily won) civic right of voting, then your ability to affect those causes will evaporate. No matter how much you think your government doesn't care now, they will care even less when it is truly, wholly, dictatorially unaccountable to you. And then what? What was your anti-voting stance for?
A substantial chunk of the electorate seems to prefer losing and then whining about outcomes as long as it allows them to pat themselves on the back for 'staying above it all and seeing the futility all along'. I implore you instead to care, hold your officials accountable, and vote. A bad future is not inevitable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Inflation.
I think your perspective might be...tainted. I kid, I kid. But typically it's spelled "perineum" just fyi. I'd be interested in seeing a non-crank source for your assertion. Everything I've read suggests that it'll likely be inflation-neutral or slightly reduce inflation over the next 10 years. Even if spending on it gets up to a trillion dollars over a ten year span, you're still talking about one tenth of what gets…
It's a very old mispelling that I'm sticking with.
> I'd be interested in seeing a non-crank source for your assertion. Everything I've read suggests that it'll likely be inflation-neutral or slightly reduce inflation over the next 10 years.
Over the next 10 years, maybe. But circulating money that didn't exist before (that's what happens when the government increases the debt) devalues existing currency proportionally. It is, by definition, inflation. It's effectively a flat tax which disproportionately affects the poor (as all flat taxes do).
The result is an _immediate_ spike in inflation that _maybe_ cools if the projected revenue is real (it often isn't). That inflation had been staved off for the last... two decades or so by lowering interest rates, encouraging people to spend money they wouldn't otherwise (or borrow it themselves) thereby increasing their buying power and offsetting their devalued currency.
Unfortunately, you can't lower interest rates forever and so, when they reach rock bottom, all your inflation chickens come home to roost.
> Even if spending on it gets up to a trillion dollars over a ten year span, you're still talking about one tenth of what gets spent on defense contractors and the military every year.
Spending more money you don't have is worse than spending less money you don't have.
> I'd be interested in seeing a non-crank source for your assertion.
Back to that though... The reason why the government is spending the way it is recently is because of Modern Monetary Theory[1]. Politicians love it because it says they can spend as much money as they want and debt doesn't matter. They don't really believe it though because they only implement the part where they get to spend all the money you want and the debt doesn't matter. I don't think it's very controversial to consider the "mainstream" (in quotes because the reason they are mainstream is because politicians and political think tanks love them, they aren't actually mainstream among economists) MMT sources to be the cranks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What democratic representation? > “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
This defeatist attitude is unhelpful. Are you prepared to lose nearly everything come November? What will you do when the dictatorship looms over you, will you accept your dwindling freedoms? What would cause you to actually stand up for yourself and fight for a better future? I see this attitude espoused a lot and I wonder if any of the people who say so will just roll over and accept a creeping totalitarianism with…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What democratic representation? > “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
This defeatist attitude is unhelpful. Are you prepared to lose nearly everything come November? What will you do when the dictatorship looms over you, will you accept your dwindling freedoms? What would cause you to actually stand up for yourself and fight for a better future? I see this attitude espoused a lot and I wonder if any of the people who say so will just roll over and accept a creeping totalitarianism with…
"Francis's term "anarcho-tyranny" refers to armed dictatorship without rule of law, or a Hegelian synthesis when the state tyrannically or oppressively regulates citizens' lives yet is unable or unwilling to enforce fundamental protective law."