Better option: Change the banner, give the dough to charity, if you don't need it so much.
There are greater and lesser evils, sometimes it's Ok to suck up a lesser evil to combat a greater one.
I Just Gave Up $4000 Per Month to Keep My Freedom of Speech
91–100 of 135 posts
Re: I Just Gave Up $4000 Per Month to Keep My Freedom of Speech
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 :) )
What is the project? Is it the card game Shithead, or something else?
Nope, it's a static site generator, but about an order of magnitude simpler than anything else that I can find online. See my other post for the link, or check my submission history.
Re: I Just Gave Up $4000 Per Month to Keep My Freedom of Speech
#93Instinctively I know I must have misread or misunderstood something, but... "$4000 a month is about twice the amount it takes to pay for my entire family’s living expenses. It’s also enough to pay the mortgage on a $900,000 house, " How does $48000pa pay for a $900,000 mortgage? Old skool was 3x your income. Pre-crash, 5x was possible. This is 20x (ish). What blindingly obvious point have I missed?
This: You are using the "what should my income be for banks to give me a mortgage" figure, not the "what does a mortgage cost" figure. At 5% interest, a mortgage on $900,000 costs $45,0000 a year on interest.
+ 36k to pay the actual loan?
Re: I Just Gave Up $4000 Per Month to Keep My Freedom of Speech
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's a very specific concept from the United States Constitution This is completely incorrect, and it's a little insulting to the users here who aren't American. Freedom of speech is a value with broad applicability. The United States Constitution enshrines a right to free speech as a limitation of government power, fine, but they don't have a monopoly on the idea. Relative freedom of speech is a characteristic of…
The blog post is from an American blog, so noting that specific concept of freedom of speech from an American point of view is perfectly fine in this case. And in the American concept, freedom of speech is a constitutional concept regulating what the government can do to individuals.
actually, he's Canadian, now living in America w/ Citizenship
Re: I Just Gave Up $4000 Per Month to Keep My Freedom of Speech
#95It'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;…
True. You should actually read through his full blog, though. He already gives away a lot.
The "Freedom of Speech" thing comes from several other posts. The remaining context gives you a lot of info. He's 'free' to say whatever he wants because he lives within what his investments are producing. It's a higher form of freedom to be able to turn down $4000/mo.
Re: I Just Gave Up $4000 Per Month to Keep My Freedom of Speech
#96Uhm, he kept the links on a "recommends" page. And when Chase pulled the referrals, he removed them from that page which "After stripping out all the Chase stuff, my credit cards page is looking a little bare these days". What does it tell us about his impenetrable integrity when his recommendations are predicated on the recommended product paying him? Surely Chase can't keep him from recommending the card - that wou…
You clearly haven't read much of his other writing!
Re: I Just Gave Up $4000 Per Month to Keep My Freedom of Speech
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's a very specific concept from the United States Constitution This is completely incorrect, and it's a little insulting to the users here who aren't American. Freedom of speech is a value with broad applicability. The United States Constitution enshrines a right to free speech as a limitation of government power, fine, but they don't have a monopoly on the idea. Relative freedom of speech is a characteristic of…
Those words were indeed ill-considered; the concept dates at least into the English Bill of Rights about a century before the US one -- and of course it was also a value in the French revolution. However , the point of the comment you're replying to still stands. If I merely say "We will only maintain a business relationship if you stop saying X, Y, and Z," then turning down that business relationship is not a free-s…
> If I merely say "We will only maintain a business relationship if you stop saying X, Y, and Z," then turning down that business relationship is not a free-speech issue.
I think if there's any problem here it was with the way it was put. I don't think anyone would have had a problem if Chase had said, "We're terminating our relationship with you because of your blog's content," but the idea of them suggesting he change to maintain the relationship seems to have struck a chord. Perhaps it would have been better to leave that possibility implicit, but... The more I think about it, the more I think this blogger is drumming the issue up to generate traffic to make up for his loss of revenue.
Re: I Just Gave Up $4000 Per Month to Keep My Freedom of Speech
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
This: You are using the "what should my income be for banks to give me a mortgage" figure, not the "what does a mortgage cost" figure. At 5% interest, a mortgage on $900,000 costs $45,0000 a year on interest.
+ 36k to pay the actual loan?
That depends on the type of mortgage. At least in some countries, you can/could get a mortgage where you do not pay anything back, the idea being that increasing house prices and inflation would, together, lead to a situation where total mortgage debt is much larger than the worth of one's house.
Re: I Just Gave Up $4000 Per Month to Keep My Freedom of Speech
#99What are peoples' experiences with flexoffers? I have a tech related blog with 500 uniques per day. I've been looking to improve on the pittance I'm getting from adsense.
Re: I Just Gave Up $4000 Per Month to Keep My Freedom of Speech
#100Freedom of speech doesn't mean no one can ask you to change what you say, or that you never change your words to please anyone. 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 p…
As others have mentioned, the idea that "freedom of speech" is a concept originating from and specific to the US Constitution is staggeringly ignorant, and the idea that freedom of speech can only be infringed by the government is too.
Freedom is about what the less powerful can do even when opposed by the more powerful. Money is one of the rawest forms of power in the modern world, and so if someone threatens to decrease your income significantly unless you change what you say, they are unambiguously flexing their power at you and impinging on your freedom of speech.