721–730 of 918 posts
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Governments actually do a lot of what people want, alas. See https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691138732/th...
haha that reminded of a quote Osho. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5AeO-dKGBLs
What the heck is going on? This is literally top post on HN and the comments look like a wasteland of nonsense and bots.
Democrats will dangle the possibility of marijuana legalization to entice voters to turn out for the election. But I doubt legalization will actually happen; I'd be delighted to be proven wrong. I'm just too jaded, I guess.
Why wouldn't it, though? It's a massive new market that big corps are itching to get into if only they could do so legally. And the fact that some top politicians on both sides of the aisle are already investing in weed (on state level, where it's legal) has already made some news. The only reason why it's not legalized yet is because 1) many politicians are old enough to be brainwashed to believe in "reefer madness"…
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Unfortunately according to many people in power we’re more like the “bewildered herd” of Walter Lippmann: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Opinion_(book)
While I've not read that book, the synopsis from Wiki would suggest that the arguments put forth in there are almost entirely obsolete owing to the internet. In particular: --- The buying public: the "bewildered herd" (a term here borrowed from The Phantom Public) must pay to understand the unseen environment by the mass communications media. The irony is that although the public's opinion is important, it must pay f…
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We all prioritize things differently and I believe this process was started on October 6th, 2022 [1]. This is just one of many things the current administration has done over the last 3 years, though. [1] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/07/biden-weed-executiv...
So one month before midterm elections.
But the point is: if there are open concerns you would be stupid to finalize a project earlier than you would have to. On top of that comes political calculus, but I work in an european University where elections don't matter that much and our senate would also have a tendency to finish most things towards the end of an administrative period.
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Cash has to leave the building at some point.
There's typically far more monetary value in product in any weed shop than there is cash, likely by an order of magnitude. Many of the purchases are done electronically, so there's not as much cash as you might think in most dispensaries.
I’d rather the regime let Assange go, and pardoned Snowden. Allowing something most states already allow is weak sauce as far as populism is concerned.
The greatest thing about tight, upcoming elections is that governments actually start to do a tiny bit of what people want. Great result.
It leaves a bad taste in the mouth, doesn't it? Why haven't they taken action until now? People aren't children to be appeased by such gestures.
The President can’t unilaterally do anything on this. Congress still doesn't have the votes - in either party. The courts couldn’t. Nor HHS, or AG/DOJ and the DEA. The latter two didn’t and dont harbor favorable views of rescheduling. The DEA process merely kickstarts another process, that is uncontested but slow.
That doesn't preclude the reality of political machinations for someones remaining in office. But its disingenuous to suggest its bread and circuses only.
The greatest thing about tight, upcoming elections is that governments actually start to do a tiny bit of what people want. Great result.
We call it democracy, proudly wear pins saying "I Voted!" and shame on you if you ever criticize it.
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While I've not read that book, the synopsis from Wiki would suggest that the arguments put forth in there are almost entirely obsolete owing to the internet. In particular: --- The buying public: the "bewildered herd" (a term here borrowed from The Phantom Public) must pay to understand the unseen environment by the mass communications media. The irony is that although the public's opinion is important, it must pay f…
Pretty sure the Internet has not only not made manufacture of consent obsolete, it has greatly aided it. The book already calls out the public wanting truth for a dollar. Now they can have a custom truth that caters to their biases for a fraction of a cent! However, that doesn't mean anything for the subtle message this "truth" carries: a TikTok video can still carry a call to action just as well as a newspaper artic…
Manufacturing consent in this context would require the gradual but systematic elimination of every major platform and medium that might publish narratives contrary to the desired one, and that's simply not possible. And even if it were, that clearly artificial homogeneity would itself drive distrust. See the USSR where the government not only directly controlled literally every single medium for communication, but also strictly ideologically filtered for admittance (or exit) from the country. Nonetheless this led to widespread jokes like, "Why do we have two newspapers, Pravda (meaning truth) and Novesti (meaning news)? Well that's because there's no news in the truth, and no truth in the news."
So we can even go one step further and say that to manufacture consent you need to not only eliminate all dissenting views, but you also need to somehow hide that from your public and make them believe that what they are reading is free to diverge from the official narrative. Chomsky, of course, hit on this exact nuance with his famous quote, "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum..." But now a days you can no longer limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, because with the internet you can find communities where basically any view, no matter how fringe, is the norm.