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The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

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Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#351

Post by macNchz »

prometheus76 wrote: post #321
palata wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they mean "taxation of the too rich" in that case. > moves power from the people to the government In a functioning democracy, the government is the people. If the government is against the people, it's not a functioning democracy. And needless to say, a non-functioning democracy is not a proof that the concept of democracy doesn't work.

The government is the majority of people. So the government very well can be against 49% of the people and it would still fit your definition. If 100 people were about to embark on a journey on a ship, what makes you think 51 of them know who should run the ship if none of them have ever even been on a ship?

There are a variety of ways that democratic governments are structure that make this an inaccurate characterization of how things work.

The US, for example, apportions representatives and votes for President in a way that overweights less populated states, and there are various aspects of parliamentary systems that help avoid landing in a two-party system where a simple majority gets the say in everything—they force compromise and coalition building among disparate groups. Additionally, Constitutional systems will enumerate the rights of its citizens such that they cannot simply be taken away by a simple majority of any body.

Democratic countries are also basically never "pure" democracies where everyone votes on every decision as in your Plato's ship analogy—we elect people who audition for the role of running the ship, ostensibly those among the people who are best suited to the task.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#352

Post by zozbot234 »

breuleux wrote: post #348
Jensson wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The source of most of the corruption I see in the world today is wealth, and specifically wealthy people paying people off to get their own way This is so wrong, its not expensive to bribe politicians so higher taxes wouldn't stop this at all. The problem is that its possible to bribe politicians, meaning government has too much power, taxes would make that worse not better. And even more important most bribes does…

If the government doesn't have enough power, the wealthy won't need to bribe politicians to do their bidding. They will do their own bidding directly, and there will be nobody to stop them. It's like, if you want to sell your cyanide penis pills under big government, you need to bribe someone. If you want to sell them under small government, you just... you just sell them, that's what. There may be ways to design a g…

Even a small government still has courts, in fact they would be a far more sizeable fraction of the government and thus a lot more effective. So if people like Epstein engage in criminal behavior, or even just unlawful behavior that they would be liable for, they can definitely be held accountable.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#353

Post by triceratops »

colechristensen wrote: post #87
dakiol wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be both good and bad. Like, it's not an impossibility.

Earning a tremendous amount of money and then amusing yourself by spending it on "charity" for the rest of your life doesn't make you a good person. It's just one more method of buying good feelings and trying to buy good will while being in control of large numbers of people. He wants to feel like he's doing good and using money to give him that feeling.

"A good act does not wash out the bad, nor the bad the good, each should have its own reward"

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#354

Post by breuleux »

alphazard wrote: post #318
felixgallo wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having difficulty parsing what you're saying in your first paragraph. What is it to 'meet the wealthy half way'? Did the ultra wealthy meet the middle class or the poor half way when they essentially ended their tax obligations and legalized mass influence buying in Citizens United? What's the 'half measure' that is going to rein all that back in?

No they did not. It's easier for a small number of people to coordinate, than a large number. The wealthy have about as much power as the entire middle class, but can wield it better because they are more nimble. That doesn't change the state of the negotiation, which is that cutting taxes for the middle class will also require cutting them for the wealthy. If you optimize for your own personal notion of fairness, or…

> It's easier for a small number of people to coordinate, than a large number.

That's basically my main argument for replacing election-based democracy by lottery-based democracy. Electing the right representatives is a coordination problem in and of itself, a process which the wealthy are already quite adept at manipulating, so we might as well cut the middle man and pick a random representative sample of the population instead, who can then coordinate properly.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#355

Post by mapt »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #345
mapt wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really want to cut taxes for the working/middle class though. I want to tax the everliving fuck out of the hyper-wealthy, to the point that they cease to exist. The money should go into providing goods and services for the working/middle class, but collecting that money and lighting it on fire (or parking assets in a sovereign wealth fund) is a superior option to doing nothing. Neither our democracy nor our p…

This is just silly. Not many animals will stand completely still while you attack them. It sure sounds tough though! Literal war with people for being successful, how much time have you spent on this line of thought?

The prospect of "Attack" and "Literal War" is limited by the fact that worst-case resistance involves a drone strike, and worst-case compliance involves retaining enough wealth for you and everyone you know to live on the beach sipping mojitos for the rest of your natural lives, while holding a nice trophy.

Just not, you know, a space program and a larger military than Krushchev's reporting to you personally.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#356

Post by fromMars »

vee-kay wrote: post #115
saalweachter wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listen, billionaires just have to do three things to be beloved: 1. Donate 5-10% of their fortune to random unobjectionable charities. 2. Don't abuse children. 3. Stay off Twitter. It's not a high bar, we don't need to give a silver medal to those that fall short.

[flagged]

There is a lot of hyperbolic vitriol in your post. Saying that Gates "has no qualms in killing children..." is quite a stretch.

Using words like "Big Pharma" to make working on vaccines look like something awful is also a poor rhetoric device.

It would be nice if you had a second source on the trials you referenced in India as it is not clear who the blame lies with.

Capital research isn't a serious source as they clearly have their own anti-vax agenda.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#357

Post by alphazard »

nicoburns wrote: post #327
alphazard wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxation is the mechanism that moves power from the people to the government, and increasingly politicians and their specific interests. Do you actually believe that if your taxes went up, power would be less concentrated, or that you or your countrymen would have more power? Every government goon doing authoritarian dirty work collects a paycheck and wouldn't do their job without it.

> Do you actually believe that if your taxes went up, power would be less concentrated, or that you or your countrymen would have more power? Absolutely. The source of most of the corruption I see in the world today is wealth, and specifically wealthy people paying people off to get their own way. If there was less wealth inequality there'd be much less scope for this. Note: I believe this would be the case even if t…

> Politics has it's fair share of corruption too. But at least in my country (the UK) it's the lesser evil.

Is this a widespread view where you live? As an outsider watching the fall of Britain in slow motion, this explains so much.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#358

Post by xorcist »

moralestapia wrote: post #5

Excerpt from one of the related emails (written by JE): "great proposal„ however, it needs to be more around deception alice -bob. communication. virus hacking, battle between defense and infiltration.. computation is already looked at in various fields. camoflauge , mimickry, signal processing, and its non random nature, misinformation. ( the anti- truth - but right answer for the moment ).. computation does not inv…

Word salads can be very intimidating if the words are extremely technical and the person behind them carries a lot of clout. It's a bit of a trick that some people are very good at.

Bill Gates was known for making PMs and tech lead type people scared, often literally so, by going deep into technical details.

Elon Musk sometimes also talks a lot of details, to the point of actual rocket engineers working for him being impressed. At the same time, it is sometimes painfully obvious that he hasn't got the basics even remotely correct.

I'm not saying that Epstein was like that, but the fact that these three people used to hang out isn't surprising, they're likely to be socially compatible.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#359

Post by derektank »

noosphr wrote: post #200
a-french-anon wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> end of story. Is it? Here's another version I like even more that unsettles democracy dogmatics: power attracts the corrupt.

Sortition is the only system that ensures high quality universal education. If anyone can become president for a year then everyone needs to be able to be president for a year.

I would like to see sortition implemented in one house of a bicameral legislature. Executive office is not where I would want to see it tested first (and I think it’s ill suited even in theory).

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#360

Post by throw9235837 »

jimbohn wrote: post #159
wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #80

It would fit perfectly if Epstein was a Russian agent. - Where did he get his money from? - Who's interests are served by this whole dodgy setup? - The Trump connection. - The Trump Russia connection. Maybe I imagine but it all seems aligned.

As a European, I find it very funny to see how nobody in the US is willing to address the elephant in the room called Mossad. This looks more likely an israeli operation which sourced girls from russia and likely had the FSB as a customer/scratch my back I scratch yours/collab thing. I mean, most US politicians and the president seem to be on an "israel first" agenda.

As a “European” you are happy to simply fabricate an unsubstantiated conspiracy involving the Jews.
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