They have an agenda. To quote from a WSJ article earlier in the year:

—If our surmise of six million cases is accurate, that’s a mortality rate of 0.01%, assuming a two week lag between infection and death. This is one-tenth of the flu mortality rate of 0.1%. Such a low death rate would be cause for optimism.—

https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-the-coronavirus-as-deadly-as-they-say-11585088464

Of course the death rate was not 0.01%. Their assumptions were foolish.

Everyone who was not strongly biased in the scientific community knew their arguments then were specious. They keep in putting new lipstick on their old pig.

The idea of a âoedormâ for adults was in common in Soviet Russia and was one of the big reasons that people hated it. Being forced to live with strangers is extremely unpleasant. We have the income and wealth to let people live in ways that respect their privacy and need for personal space.

We have enough space to give every single person a 1000 sq ft apartment when they start up their life at 18-22 with the expectation that soon their significant other will move in with them and the two people will share the space. Sadly, many cities have âoeair rightsâ or building height restrictions which limit the number of stories a building may be. This is particularly egregious in NYC, Washington DC, Boston, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle.

Typo - I meant 20s, not 30s.

The reason people are living at home in their 30s is a shortage of housing. If people earned more money, then rents would be higher (and yes people are underpaid in average relative to productivity). Itâ(TM)s simple supply and demand.

There is a lack of housing because while are population is growing in large part due to immigration, we refuse to build more homes due to NIMBY anti development and anti green space building as well. If we stopped growing the population, then we could also stop building. Unfortunately environmentalists and the progressive left donâ(TM)t see the contradiction between a growing population and the environment.

Or we could pursue a policy of ever less housing units per capita. And then people when they earn the least in their lives have to live with their parents. And you are going to be miserable if you are 23, have a full time job, but your parents are assholes. And letâ(TM)s face it, a substantial minority donâ(TM)t know how to treat their adult children with dignity and respect.

Iâ(TM)m going to take an opposite position. From the article:

âoe All indications suggest that he was perpetrating his crimes not to get rich but rather, as he told police, merely to stay âoeafloat.â For example, in the fall of 2015, Priore wrote an email to the Ellis School asking for an extension on tuition payments. âoeI am trying to juggle tuition payments for 4 kids,â he wrote. A few weeks later, he asked Duquesne officials to lift a hold on accounts assigned to two of his children, since he had made overdue tuition payments. In February 2016, Priore asked his landlord for an extension, falsely claiming his wife had missed work because of a heart attack. The rent was four months past due.â

This guy had a who had an M.A. in European history. When hired he was he was also pursuing a library science degree at the University of Pittsburgh, with an emphasis on archives management.

He and his wife, who worked as a childrenâ(TM)s librarian, hardly had an opulent lifestyle; the couple lived in a modest apartment crowded with books. But they had four children, who attended private schools: St. Edmundâ(TM)s Academy, the Ellis School and Duquesne University.

He had a well to do family who was able to provide him with an education and he wanted to pass on that gift to his children.

But academic libraries pay about $32,000 to $55,000 for positions like his albeit with good benefits. He probably was making about $45,000 a year. He couldnâ(TM)t pay his rent.

Itâ(TM)s interesting that no one has wondered whether the abysmally low pay for people with a highly expensive education is in itself a form of theft. Had he been paid $90,000 to start and eventual got to $150,000 he could have made ends meet. He probably got about 10% to 15% of the market value of the books given the various middle men required in such an operation.

And to top it off, people commit violent crimes and get a less severe punishment. I hear sob stories about people who carry guns and shoot someone or who stab someone with a knife. They donâ(TM)t need to do that to support their families. And yet thereâ(TM)s all this newfound compassion for them.

Iâ(TM)m not saying that I condone his behavior but we need to consider the crime in a broader context. Iâ(TM)m imagining lots of people will get very upset. But consider that it isnâ(TM)t a crime to take advantage f someone and pay them crap because the labor market is distorted and education is expensive.

Most speech nowadays in in some way digital. If we believe in free speech, we have to allow offensive speech. If Facebook, Twitter, Tik Tok, Reddit etc ban offensive speech, we have lost the first amendment. It is not clear what "hate speech" really means. One person's hate speech is another persons "truth". There is plenty of genuine hate coming from people on the left anyway and they have their own special causes which from a POV of morality are repugnant.

That does not mean I personally disagree with people on the left most of the time - I don't. But right now it feesl like 1905 in pre revolutionary Russia and I'm realizing that although I think the Czar is evil, the Bolsheviks are just as evil. Heaven help us if the extremists on the left get political power.

If Facebook caves, then we keep on going down to the lowest common denominator of whatever is popular at the moment. Right now eating meat is considered ok and showing pictures of steak is similarly ok, but who is to say that will be true to 100 years? Will that be the new hate speech? Will saying things that can be shown to be scientifically true? Morality is deeply relative to the mores of the time.

I hope Facebook does not cave! There has to be a medium to disseminate views that are not popular.

Iâ(TM)m talking about the regulation of nation states, and their agencies, not private individuals. And with regards to their militaries, itâ(TM)s foolish for one nation to give up a huge advantage if adversary will not.

Obeying such a ban would be like Ukraine giving up nuclear weapons in 1994, and then getting invaded by Russia 20 years later. Until the world is a place full of liberal democracies, banning this type of weapon or that type of weapon, merely gives a huge advantage to ruthless powers like Russia and China.

I am seriously afraid that the EU might one day be invaded because they will have so regulated their military to death, that Russia will be able to walk in and hardly fire a shot.

History is full of âoeniceâ powers like the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth or the Novgorod Republic that ceased to exist in part because of their unwillingness to play dirty.

Autonomous weapons and AI based systems have the potential to give a combatant a measurable advantage. If you are fighting an adversary with a much larger population to call upon in the case of war, then such systems enable you to more efficiently conduct warfare. And this is another reason why any vulnerable country would be mad to not use it. Even the USA would need it against China.

I doubt that homeless people are the ones using Ubers.

Well first the basis of believing that abortion be legal is the belief in person space. And someone could argue that the behavior that leads to abortion is "self destructive". Others would argue that it's none of our business that a woman does with her body.

There is no end to talking about how we can be harmed by other people's behavior in indirect ways. We are harmed when people are irresponsible with managing their money and take on too much debt. We are harmed when people go to bed too late. We are harmed when they don't get enough exercise. You could use your argument to build a true nanny state. Your argument is exactly what led to the war on drugs. Cannabis is still illegal in so many countries because of it.

From a cost/benefit perspective the fact that ridesharing is so popular implies that people really like it and benefit from it. So it's improving lives. It's easy to criticize something new. But what about measuring all the benefits as well?

I wish we could concentrate on the basis human needs like food, housing education, healthcare and employment. We need to make sure people get this stuff and so we need to interfere a lot around the provision of these goods. But beyond that, can't we just respect autonomy. I am bothered by if someone has bad body odor or is rude in the street. I don't propose to regulate them.

I would suggest that we would be net better off, if we tolerated other people more and regulated things only when absolutely necessary. Yes that means strong anti monopoly laws and making sure the water has almost no lead. Yes it means not tolerating companies forcing complex EULAs down people's necks. But lets just try to minimize it. Otherwise by trying to regulate too much, we fail at the most important things.

It also seems strange that the great harms like homelessness, inequality, and unemployment are in many respects ignored in favor of whatever is fashionable at the time. The damage from these harms is not properly addressed. And I would argue that it's because there is limited political oxygen and limited government resources. So let's concentrate on the big ills and ignore the rest.

Let's put aside whether this leads to less drinking and driving.

If people want to binge drink more because they know they can safely get home, why should that be a reason for the rest of us to stop them. This explicitly is talking about when people are not driving drunk. Can't we just let people live their lives. If they want to do things we disapprove with their bodies, why can't we respect their autonomy.

This is why the war on drugs is so awful. Why do we need to micromanage other people's lives. If they want to drink more alcohol, then let them. And why should the rest if us somehow have less access to ridesharing because other people binge drink more.

What about all the people who use the service to go out who otherwise could not? Maybe they are disabled or maybe they live in an unsafe area and don't have a car. Maybe they are running late to work and it will get them to work on time. Why should the rest of us have to have our freedom constricted because of the decisions by some to drink more alcohol.

If you must deal with alcohol, deal with it directly by raising taxes on it and then spending the money on the externalities like mental health. But don't hurt the rest of us and stop us getting around.

I don't agree with limiting targeted political ads. They are quintessential free speech and much cheaper than TV. If you're a small group trying to for example reform our draconian copyright laws that the mass media benefit from, these targeted ads are a bit if hope. Are we to treat adult voters like elementary school children and say they cannot see political advertising that is tailored for them. Do we think people are too stupid? It's an authoritarian viewpoint contradictory of liberal democracy. Voting is about making choices based on arguments. You only hear screened arguments through the media. Hearing directly from a group or candidate can be very useful. And that why debates are so useful in getting a sense of political candidates. But by limiting political ads we are going in the opposite direction. In this case by stopping targeting of ads Google has effectively just said that only people who have huge amounts of money that can afford a gigantic ad blitz have the right to influence public opinion but no one else. Want to run for Congress, better make sure you're connected, because cost effective advertising is no longer going to be allowed. I, like so many others complain when people violently demonstrate in the streets. This has been happening in Chile. I don't think setting subway stations on fire or stealing artifacts from churches before setting them on fire is legitimate. Throwing Molotov cocktails at the police is not that different than during a gun at them. But after seeing the creeping restrictions on freedom of speech, especially political speech, can you blame people? In order to have a stable society you have to allow people to peaceably argue their point of view. This nutty policy is basically saying if I want to advocate to deal with student debt I have to target the entire population, as opposed to people under 40 who are much more likely to have student debt and empathize, as opposed to a 75 year old who likely never had any. And Google is such a powerful monopoly, that its limits on political speech are practically akin to legislative limits on free speech. I really hope they change their mind.