61–70 of 135 posts
It's certainly an interesting attitude. But what if he had decided to change the banner, and give the money away to a charity instead? Money is a tool you can use for good. If you are blessed with the kind of extra money he was suddenly given, you can use it to do good with. Obviously it's all his choice, but making a big show of "freedom of speech" feels a little disingenuous. No government is trying to censor him;…
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On small screens, sometimes long urls wrap and break? I was first introed to url shorteners to get around breakage, long before I ever heard of twitter.
HN shortens display of long URLs automatically and shorteners are bad long term so please don't use them here.
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Credit cards are amazing. I pay my balance in full every month and American Express pays me money. It's bloody fantastic. Edit: Oh, and I forgot to mention that the law is on my side with charge backs and I'm not liable for fraud.
Yes, and AMEX is just creating money out of thin air in order to pay it to you? No, they just charge the merchant 5% of the transaction, one of the highest in the industry. Guess who raises their prices by 5% everywhere, before you pay by AMEX? The real problem is that everyone pays this price, and it leads to price inflation even if you pay cash (yes, dealing with cash transactions has a price for the merchant as we…
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Until you need to borrow money for a car or a house...
You don't need a credit score if you can pay 50% down, which you may be able to do if you didn't pay all your money to the credit card companies.
It's certainly an interesting attitude. But what if he had decided to change the banner, and give the money away to a charity instead? Money is a tool you can use for good. If you are blessed with the kind of extra money he was suddenly given, you can use it to do good with. Obviously it's all his choice, but making a big show of "freedom of speech" feels a little disingenuous. No government is trying to censor him;…
Freedom of speech has many facets. I don't see this as being disingenuous at all as it literally did impinge on his choice of speech if he wanted to remain in the business relationship. This situation would be similar in nature to Microsoft forcing businesses to disavow Linux to remain in partnership with them. Censorship can be legal and doesn't have to come from a government for it to still be censorship. The chari…
Of course it's a free trade. He would be trading his banner for the money Chase would pay him. He's free to do that, or free to not change his banner and not take any more money, which he did. That's the whole definition of "free" in "free trade" -- he gets to choose. And that's why there's no censorship here, because there's no coercion.
It's no different from advertisers pulling ads (rightly) from Rush Limbaugh's show after he says something offensive. I never heard anybody calling that censorship. It wouldn't be even if they warned him in advance (which is what Chase did).
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Credit cards are amazing. I pay my balance in full every month and American Express pays me money. It's bloody fantastic. Edit: Oh, and I forgot to mention that the law is on my side with charge backs and I'm not liable for fraud.
Yes, and AMEX is just creating money out of thin air in order to pay it to you? No, they just charge the merchant 5% of the transaction, one of the highest in the industry. Guess who raises their prices by 5% everywhere, before you pay by AMEX? The real problem is that everyone pays this price, and it leads to price inflation even if you pay cash (yes, dealing with cash transactions has a price for the merchant as we…
What's that, we all should just use debit cards instead? Hmm, I thought debit cards used the VISA or MasterCard networks?
MMM is semi-retired. Reaching and keeping that situation takes commitment, diligent work and cooperation. His site exists to share his methods for succeeding. That includes using existing financial tools to meet individual financial goals.
Credit cards are a great utility for many people, a life-saver for some during brief periods of need, and an enabler of long-term bad decision making habits for many others. MMM is squarely in the first cohort. Furthermore he advocates for and educates people in the prudent selection and use of credit cards. His list of offers was ranked by his review of the credit cards, not their referral deals. There is nothing untoward about that.
Integrity > money
Is this where I point out that this happens all the time, even on HN? And you very rarely hear about it? One of my submissions got flagged by the mods last night, I'm assuming purely because my project is called "Shithead". (Am I going to change the name? Hell no :) )
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"Also, is this really an issue of freedom of speech? Seems a little melodramatic to me." I had the same thought. It seemed to me like the author was trying to make his position far more noble than what it really is. The whole thing boils down to "Look at me, I just turned down $50K so that I could still say 'fuck'".
I swear like a sailor. I try to keep it down to a dull roar online. If I could make $4k/month by removing a single swear word from my site, I would be a total sellout in a heart beat. Fuck "integrity" of that sort. Mz bookmarks article to try to figure out if she can sell her soul for $4k/month at some future date.
That's certainly a valid choice; some people prioritize "integrity of that sort" over money.
It's a very specific concept from the United States Constitution that relates to the government forcing you to refrain from saying things that you want to say. Freedom of speech is the kind of thing that comes up when a government agency puts warning labels on record albums, news media are prevented from reporting on government activities, or butthurt lawyers (cough cough Charles Carreon) try to use the courts to prevent people from criticizing their clients.
The blogger in question felt that the word "badassity" was an essential element of his brand, and that to change his header would dilute his brand in some way. He made a calculated decision that appeasing Chase would negatively affect his brand, perhaps even resulting in a reduction to his overall income in the long run, either directly or indirectly. A post like this one reinforces his brand as a blog with "integrity," and an attitude, and is sure to help offset whatever immediate loss he sees from Chase withdrawing their support.
While he's clearly a skilled and savvy blogger, I really don't see this as a free speech issue. A more accurate title would be "I Just Gave Up $4000 Per Month to Preserve My Brand Integrity."