Tried and tested slippery slope argument? On slashdot?

It is psychologically engineered to engage a human's attention. Modern web marketing is shady as hell and there really is no reason to try and defend the practices.

So how about we prohibit shady business practices. There is limited time and space in this world, so let's shutdown the garbage businesses that do us no good and leave more time and space and capital for those offering a legitimate goods and services.

The first mistake the user did was open their wallet. They bought a PC with shitty unstable Windows drivers. Microsoft will still sign buggy drivers. And they don't hold vendors accountable for fixing and maintaining drivers, so if all your bugs aren't squashed in a couple of years you will have a computer that is never really going to be stable.

The story on Linux is different. You have to work really hard to hunt down a machine where the hardware is supported. Ideally because the vendor open sourced and upstreamed the support. But frequently because someone reverse engineered it and got the drivers into the official kernel image your chosen distro uses. This at least has some chance of being maintained and fixed for the more egregious crashes over the next several years. Not a 100% guarantee, but given that you paid $0 for Linux, that's still quite a bargain.

I was getting lots of crashes in Linux. I check the logs and it had some machine checks. so I ran memtest86+ (already in my GRUB config) and found a stick with uncorrectable ECC faults. replaced it, and it's running great now.

Mostly it's just an arbitrary game. Like one side wants to attack rich white people (capitalists, industrialists, old money, new money, etc) and the other side wants to scapegoat immigrants or LGBTQ+. Lots of populist appeal with both tactics. And it's all pretty standard practice for politicians to point fingers in any direction except at themselves. For some reason we trucked along like this for the 20th century, most of us openly pointing out that it's a big scam. And then at some point, people decided to start believing politicians. And that's when things really started turning to shit.

I'm pretty old school, regardless of my left/right politics. Hold your representative's feet to the fire. Remember every day that government's moral right comes exclusively through the consent of the governed. That the tax payers and voters can hold the power whenever they are prepared to agree to take it. Peacefully at the ballot box as long as there is a right to vote. Less desirable ways if thing go really astray (if history is any guide)

Shortly after this country realizes the We the People are barely more than government property is when history repeats itself and things really turn bad. Fascism cannot endure, but the human cost of its removal is tremendous. Best to plan ahead and side-step unstable political and social systems that tend to end in terrible violence.

MAGAts is a loser movement. The people on the very bottom of MAGA, the ones who consume the radio and TV and Internet propaganda, were losers before they got political. And I suppose their hope is if their side wins, that they will finally get the respect they feel they deserve. But the problem with conmen is they are not good to their word. MAGA is going to find themselves abandoned, like a rally attendee left behind by the campaign bus at the end of the evening.

Biden and other corporate-friendly Democrats are the center. Certainly right of Elizabeth Warren and Ro Khanna. Biden is equal to or possibly left of Kamala Harris.
Even Bernie is somewhat moderate depending on how you measure him. He's certainly not New Left, as he eschews multicultural identity politics. While mainstream democrats play nice with corporate donors while simultaneously carrying water for intersectional grievance groups.

A true left wing party doesn't really exist in the US. Certainly nothing strictly socialists or marxist is main stream. And even being pro-labor has become a liability when it comes to fund raising these days. Instead of left you get welfare capitalism, a moderate position, and now called Progressive. Even Democratic Socialists are few and far between despite being a "big tent" group that tends to focus equally on social issues as labor issues without. Members might espouse anti-capitalist slogans during protests, being at least true to DSA roots, in practice the party does not hold any significant anti-capitalist platform.

P.S. I'm fine if you're all pro-capitalist. I made a lot of money off capitalism. I'm just willing to admit that rationally speaking, there are problems with it as a system. Especially without putting some guard rails in place. People are not well-represented when money buys political influence. And when wealth concentrates under a few, future generations have even less of a chance to wrestle their government back into the hands of the people.

Why would the GOP willingly give up power? They've gone all-in on this man, much of the GOP's very survival depends on not letting Democrats back into power. 2026 is going to be a huge surprise to Democrats that thought we are still following "established norms".

Classic autocrat behavior is to get every industrial leader under you. Scratch each other's backs, and shut down any opposition to the arrangement. I know I'll take crap here for bringing up Mussolini, but what do you all think the odds are that we'll soon have a Department of Corporations not unlike Italy's old Minister of Corporations?

Our military-industrial complex would normally not bother. Which is why it helps to occasionally reverse engineer stuff instead of depending on the free market to determine the price.

It would have added Tom Bombadil, which is as sufficient as anything to add to something.

Good news everyone! The taxpayers don't have to pay that money. She will die penniless, cold, and hungry.

I agree. It should be forever. Just because some time passed, that doesn't mean I didn't work to create it. It is mine and I will only share it with you temporarily if you give me money. If I die, I should be able to have it written into my will that all of my creations die with me. Letting immortal corporations profit indefinitely off of my work is not something that I want.

(this is a thought exercise)

In other words, not really liable at all, but there is a chance they could be held liable. Whatever.

You speak as if objective reality is more important than subjective reality. Depending on the circumstances and who stands to benefit, the City will be found responsible some of the time and found not responsible at other times. It all depends... which is why humans and their social systems are so fucked up. "Who benefits" decides what reality will be for everyone else.

While there are bazillions of atoms smashing against the seawall at any one time, the seawall stands fast for decades and centuries.

And they shouldn't. That is not the issue. The issue is that people do not want to pay for what they ask for.

Several years ago, (4?) I was outside talking with some folks with the business out back. They were Verizon employees. One guy had 19 years, less than a year until retirement. Verizon sold that portion of their business to Frontier, who then vacated all of the pensions, and now, are in the process of selling that business unit back to Verizon, but without the requirements to pay for the promised pensions.

This kind of bullshit shellgame is happening all the time, not just where I can personally see. It is this theft which brings upon the call of "socialism" so that the other poors can pay the poors that were robbed by the over-privileged. Notice how the overprivileged NEVER want to pay their debts or obligations? Notice how they are continuously stealing? Fuck the "aristrocracy" They are sheltered cowards who bring up the bogeyman of "socialism" to distract us from taking back what was stolen from us: our labor (which costs us our lives).