@Mediagazer@mstdn.socialAn interview with WaPo's new Opinion Editor Adam O'Neal on its editorial pivot to "personal liberties and free markets", why people don't trust WaPo, and more (Fox News)
https://www.foxnews.com/media/editorial-ov
@pre@boing.worldPanel talking about dark markets on nostr.
Nostr can be quite anonymous and encrypted and connected to payment via bitcoin. Can it therefore do Silk Road? Allow anonymous markets?
Nobody wants to publicly advocate for selling illegal drugs, but yeah, sure, people could do that. There's even protocol types for market places.
Relay owners might get into legal issues if they are forwarding illegal market listings. But this is true in general, there are also illegal images and even illegal text.
Nostr relays and Devs might find themselves in legal trouble anyway, due to the general legal crackdowns on internet requiring age proof and id on websites obstensively to protect kids. These are freedoms we all need to fight for. Perhaps brains will drain to more free jurisdictions? Devs move to where open development is legal? Not the panel at least. They want to say at home.
#nostr #nostrshire #darkMarkets
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialThis is a subtweet...
People who are not anti-capitalist sometimes wonder: "Why is there a monopoly on X life-critical thing?" (E.g., epipens, insulin, web search).
This one is really simple actually: because monopolies are more profitable than competition, and the foundation of capitalism is that capital = power.
Various societies have recognized the necropolitical outcomes of monopolies and have tried to erect barriers to monopoly; we all know that monopolies are bad, death-and-suffering-causing things. But since these societies mostly remain capitalist, they allow these barriers to be eroded by the power of capital (to do otherwise would be to repudiate capitalism because it puts a limit on the power of money). The barriers are ineffective, and the capital = power equation holds, and monopolies result and get to do their killing & maiming thing (remember: even things like social media monopolies that you wouldn't expect to pay for political assassinations like a mining company still profit from inciting genocides). *Sometimes* there are oligopolies instead of monopolies, but instances of really competitive markets are pretty rare for things that are widely sought-after.
The "government will manage the markets to prevent bad outcomes like monopolies" strategy has failed repeatedly, spectacularly, and almost universally. To actually prevent monopolies you need a population that no longer believes that money should equal power, it's that simple. Sadly, it's actually not that simple, since all of the alternatives which equate something else to power, like "the king" or "party loyalty as judged by the supreme leader" have the same problems or worse. The attitude you need to cultivate is "nobody should have power," which is hard because *all* of the power-systems we have constantly propagandize against this attitude in myriad ways. Still, in the future once we've broken free of this age where hierarchy is accepted, people will look back and wonder whether the historical records are even credible given how much needless death and suffering were endured with little resistance.
#anarchy #capitalism
@whitequark@mastodon.sociali feel like my general feelings re: Rigol and people swearing by their Tek are best summarized with the old "rifle is fine" copypasta. as in: if you are skilled in the art you will get things done just as well with the rigol as you will with a tek in the same cateogry that's 10 times* the price. and if you aren't, goddess bless you either way also
* referring me to US secondary markets is classist and i will not be elaborating on this observation
@andres4ny@social.ridetrans.itOne of the reasons I support free transit is because relying on fare revenue is a trap. One economic downturn, one pandemic, and suddenly the transit system is on life support and needs to drastically reduce service. On the other hand, funding operations through general taxes allows voters to dictate how to handle funding operations, rather than markets.
[This is just one reason I like free transit; I have many. And yes, if your democracy is broken, so is your transit]
@cdarwin@c.imLet me give you some sense of how staggeringly large and complex the capital markets have become.
If we go back ten years ago, there were about 1700 mutual funds with about $700 billion in assets.
Today, we have about 7,000 mutual funds with $3 trillion worth of assets.
There are so many funds and so many stocks and so many bonds and so many warrants and so many options,
it's such a dizzying universe of choice for people that, inevitably,
they're attr…
