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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 27th, 2023

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  • I agree with you, but in absence of a perfect policy I prefer this outcome to nothing. There isn’t just one party being affected here: the effects of air pollution on life expectancy and early chronic illnesses is well known, in fact I am personally affected by a chronic illness that’s known to be associated with air pollution. I’d rather we keep going forward and push for giving poorer drivers the things they need to adjust, e.g. grants for electric vehicles, public transportation links, or bike networks, depending on needs - rather than pushing for reverting this policy, because it’s not flawed in and of itself, it’s the lack of welfare that is flawed here.




  • Most people I see (in various forums) focus on the sexism part of this. It’s bad, but I think it’s worth highlighting the way Madison says they misled her and started controlling her digital side gigs outside of LTT, and just how bad working there was. Here are a few of the things she mentioned, but I recommend reading the full thread:

    I had asked and been told during my interviews that I would be allowed to monetize my YouTube channel and be allowed to join Floatplane in exchange for shutting down my Patreon. ONCE I moved [from Arizona to to Vancouver] I was presented with an entirely new contract/handbook that I was not told existed.

    Work from Home was a whole issue. If you took 3 minutes to answer a personal email, you could get in trouble. (happened to me) There is a system of micro-managing and a level of distrust because the amount of content they have to push out daily is so insane, no one gets a break.

    I remember getting told off for taking my sick days, as in the days you’re entitled to. This no days off, “grindset” culminated in the real moment I realized I had to leave.

    They also forced me to have them as my representation if I wanted to take any sponsors for my Twitch or YouTube channels. Originally I had been told, just make sure you okay things by us for non-compete issues. Then that changed when I moved to take the job.

    I honestly think the only way Linus can redeem himself at this point (for me personally), is if he made the company into some sort of multi-stakeholder worker cooperative where the workers have an actual chunk of democratic say over the direction of the company. This is how it’s done across Europe already via works councils, e.g. in Norway 33% of the board (leadership) is represented by workers, while in other European countries it goes all the way up to 50%. It’s been made very clear that the current leadership are incompetent and need to actually listen to their workers.



  • This means that the role of commercial banks is not canceled with the launch of the single digital currency, but they will still be an important part of the ecosystem.

    […] a ceiling on the liquidity that citizens will be able to maintain in digital euro, in the order of 2,000 or 3,000 euros per user. The goal is for the digital euro to be used purely as a means of exchange and not as a means of accumulating wealth.

    The benefits of the digital euro include the immediacy and security of transactions – […] instant payments […] made in a few seconds

    A very important advantage of the digital euro is also the zero cost of its use, putting an end to the – harsh in some cases – commissions that banks currently impose on direct payments

    Maybe I’m talking from a privileged country, but none of this would benefit me at all in my country as the banking system already does all of this. It’s a bit disappointing that they seem to be intentionally kneecapping the digital euro so that they can placate private banks. Although I wouldn’t mind what they’re doing if they also provided a government run bank that didn’t shoo away customers if they didn’t have the right risk profile, that competed with private banks (e.g. Norway’s state-run consumer bank exists alongside private ones). For example, legal sex workers are often pushed out by private banks.



  • I get where you’re coming from, but I don’t think even more private property is the answer here. This is ultimately a question of economics - we don’t like that a) we’re being put out of jobs, and b) it’s being done without our consent / anything in return. These are problems that we can address without throwing even more monopolosation power into the equation, which is what IP is all about - giving artists a monopoly over their own content, which mostly benefits large media corporations, not independent artists.

    I’d much rather we tackled the problem of automation taking our jobs in a more heads on manner via something like UBI or negative income taxes, rather than a one-off solution like even more copyright that only really serves to slow this inevitability down. You can regulate AI in as many ways as you want, but that’s adding a ton of meaningless friction to getting stuff done (e.g. you’d have to prove your art wasn’t made by AI somehow) when the much easier and more effective solution is something like UBI.

    The consent question is something that needs a bit more of a radical solution - like democratising work, something that Finland has done to their grocery stores, the biggest grocery chains are democratically owned and run by the members (consumer coops). We’ll probably get to something like that on a large scale… eventually - but I think it’s probably a bigger hurdle than UBI. Then you’d be able to vote on what ways an organisation operates, including if or how it builds AI data sets.


  • I sympathize with artists who might lose their income if AI becomes big, as an artist it’s something that worries me too, but I don’t think applying copyright to data sets is a long term good thing. Think about it, if copyright applies to AI data sets all that does is one thing: kill open source AI image generation. It’ll just be a small thorn in the sides of corporations that want to use AI before eventually turning them into monopolies over the largest, most useful AI data sets in the world while no one else can afford to replicate that. They’ll just pay us artists peanuts if anything at all, and use large platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Artstation, and others who can change the terms of service to say any artist allows their uploaded art to be used for AI training - with an opt out hidden deep in the preferences if we’re lucky. And if you want access to those data sources and licenses, you’ll have to pay the platform something average people can’t afford.


  • the fact that the complete lack of any basic check made it available to anyone who just asked for it, does not make it an universal welfare

    it measurably does make it closer to universalism than the selectivism you seem to be championing here. They’re not replacing it with a better system, they’re removing something that was closer to universal welfare and leaving poor people to suffer even more. Austerity policies are not new and you can literally just google “austerity excess deaths” for various countries and see the impact of those policies

    it was just a failed attempt to let people vote for their party

    You have fallen for their rhetoric. This is exactly how they justify anti-welfare policies in many countries around the world - “it was just there to win votes”… yes, good things tend to win votes. Like welfare.


  • Universal welfare is objectively economically superior to bureaucratic means tested welfare. Calling it “abuse” is just how they get away with turning you into bigger wage slaves with less bargaining power

    The findings of the report include: moving from universalism to selectivity increases social and economic inequality and diminishes rather than enhances the status of the poor; selectivity requires processes and procedures that separate benefit recipients from the rest of society, increasing stigmatisation and reducing take-up; universalism is incredibly efficient – the selective element of pension entitlement is more than 50 times more inefficient than the universal element measured in terms of fraud and error alone and without even taking into account the cost of administration; universalism creates positive economic stability by mitigating the swings in the business cycle and creating much more economic independence among the population; on virtually every possible measure of social and economic success, all league tables are topped by societies with strong universal welfare states; universalism creates a higher and more progressive tax base which also improves economic stability, reduces price bubbles and creates more efficient flatter income distributions; and universal benefits promote gender equality and do not suffer from the inherent bias built into a system designed within a framework of assuming a male breadwinner model of welfare.