• 0 Posts
  • 134 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 14th, 2023

help-circle



  • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlAlso "parasite".
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    4 days ago

    There are millions of people in the U.S. whose wealth comes from the increase in the property value of their family home. This is unearned wealth.

    Of course, you’ll have a hard time convincing most people of that last bit. Which is why billionaires are the more popular enemy rather than the middle class.






  • It would only be a temporary fix. Robert Nozick gives the example of the famous basketball player as a critique of John Rawls’ veil of ignorance argument.

    Suppose everyone had equal wealth but we remained different individuals with our own personalities, abilities, etc. For simplicity, assume everyone has $100 each and there are a million people in total. Now suppose one person is actually a legendary basketball player (Nozick uses Wilt Chamberlain as an example) and he decides to play basketball in the NBA to entertain everyone else. But he doesn’t do it for free, he charges each person $1 for a ticket to see him play.

    If everyone pays to see him play basketball, he becomes a millionaire while everyone else becomes $1 poorer. In effect, the balance of total equality has been broken.

    How do you solve this problem? You might say that he’s not allowed to charge $1 for people to see him play basketball but then what you’re really saying is that everyone is not allowed to spend their $1 to see a basketball game. So it’s actually not possible to preserve the state of total equality without taking away people’s economic freedom (that is, the freedom to decide how to spend their $100).

    Thus you either gradually revert to inequality or you make all money worthless by taking away people’s choices on what to spend (and so you might as well just have a ration system instead).



  • Yes. Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier. Former cop. Alleged to have perpetrated massacres against the public killing dozens of people and burning down hundreds of homes. As a leader of G9 he publicly threatened genocide unless the prime minister of Haiti stepped down.

    This is all information I got from Wikipedia. I don’t know the veracity of any of it. I don’t live in Haiti and don’t really follow the situation there. Whoever Jimmy is, he doesn’t have very good PR. That’s all I can say for sure about him!









  • It’s really simple: Microsoft is a business solutions company. Microsoft helps your boss spy on you at work. Your boss is their customer, not you.

    Apple is a consumer products company. You are their customer. They market their products on privacy and security. Betraying that marketing message by spying on users is shooting themselves in the foot, so they’re incentivized not to do that.

    Neither company is trustworthy. Economic incentives are the trustworthy concept here. Barring screwups, we can trust both companies to do what is profitable to them. Microsoft profits by spying on users, Apple does not (not right now anyway).


  • There’s a big issue with using weight classes in team sports: player weights vary dramatically. Take the NFL for example. Setting aside the enormous differences in weight between linemen (offensive and defensive) and all other position players, there are also huge weight differences within a given position. For example, quarterback Jared Lorenzen was 6’4” and weighed 275 lbs whereas Russell Wilson is 5’11” and weighs 211 lbs. That’s a huge weight difference!

    You can find similar weight differences across players in other leagues (NHL, NBA, and MLB). Weights don’t really correlate with overall skill level though they do somewhat correlate with position and skill set (and height of course).

    How would you classify by weight in team sports? You might think to do it by position but none of the leagues require a player to remain at a single position for their career. Players can and do switch positions, and many even do so multiple times during a game. Sports like NBA basketball don’t even have any particular rules about what a player at any given position is allowed/not allowed to do, so the positions on team rosters are more like a suggestion than a requirement.