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>It's that many people just don't care enough to take the time and verify what they read
I think you are overestimating abilities. I think most people that are swayed by fake news are incapable of gathering conflicting opinions, reading between the lines, drawing comparisons and differences, and then deciding what is fact or fiction.
I think most people believe what they believe and that's it.
When you have someone that can question/change their own beliefs based on critical thinking and evidence is when it gets noteworthy.
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That’s a really good idea. I don’t want to be told how to feel, I want the facts. Tell me what happened. If I’m not sure what it means, or I’m not sure of all the context surrounding the issue, I can look into that. But a consistent source/arbiter of “yes everything said here is factually true” would be a good thing, I think. But only insofar as people value such a resource and push for it to remain as such.
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I pose a simple question: What critical thinking?
Our education system by and large, teaches us that thinking is the act of recalling memorized information and repeating it. We are rarely given proper opportunity to challenge the status quo way of thinking and often have teachers that will punish those that do via lowered marks, extra work, or by kicking them out of class for "being disruptive" and yes, I have experienced this.
On top of this we have English and other language classes where someone disagreeing with your well constructed argument will nit pick the details to lower the mark or otherwise be blatantly biased without easy recourse. And of course, many parents will not help their kid stand up and will point to the kid as being the problem instead of considering having another person check it over and mark it. And to contrast this, we have Math and Science which typically can derive a correct answer - math in a very black and white way and science in a "this is our current understanding" way.
In the end, the courses that are least easy to breeze your way through are the ones that require the most active problem solving, and long consideration to the how.
Unfortunately this doesn't even touch on having not-math people try to flounder their way through teaching math.
So when are people supposed to learn critical thinking? Post-secondary? Well, more and more post secondary is a mandated extension to primary school so, um... good luck I suppose? When people get a job? From the parents who went through the same education system with likely similar parenting?
Critical thinking is a skill. And it is one, that few people have opportunity to develop when young and fewer yet are encouraged to actively use it. And if we say even 50% of people were never really taught how, and 50% of the remaining were never encouraged that leaves 25% of the society who would. And of those people, easily half of them are perusing something other then social media. So What, 1 in 8 people on social media will put deep thought into their messages?
And yes: The above is a very loose estimation - however, the message is loud and clear (or should be): Our education system needs to be fixed.
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There's much more to it than simply fact checking. It's a very complex issue psychologically, where it's always easier to find facts and articles that support your own views and reject or look for the "holes" in articles that challenge them. What this potentially means is that by convincing the viewer of news that is **actually** fake, it is harder for them to change their mind even when there's a pile of information showing them otherwise. This is why the big ass comments with a bunch of sources and tens of thousands of upvotes are essentially useless and back patting from people who already believe them.
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The other part of the problem you forgot to mention is that many people today don't research facts or opinions that differ from their own beliefs, they only research information that reaffirms their beliefs. This has happened since the beginning of time but it just feels a lot worse now. I encounter it on a daily basis from random people to close friends. I'm at the point now where its just easier for me to agree with them because the conversation will end sooner without personal attacks. I feel better letting them think were on the same page when in reality were not even in the same galaxy.
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How can you even be sure the book you are reading from the library doesn't have misinformation?
I've had plenty of history books in school that had biased political views or wrong facts. Here's a fact that's wrong but gets tossed around in history books. "Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb". Thomas Edison didn't invent much. His company did. Tesla invented the lightbulb before him and someone in Europe did it before that.
There's always misinformation, the way to combat it, is to read more information about the subject from other sources. What easier way of getting more sources do we have then the internet? Don't like standard Google searches? Use free scholarly databases.
Your lack of skill of sifting through information and sniffing out the bullshit is your problem. It does not constitute that everyone has problems with misinformation and believing it. I can sniff a bullshit news article from a mile away.
Misinformation has always been prevalent, it might be easier to spread it. But that's only if you're looking on bad websites. Use Google scholar if you want super fact checked sources.
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You can determine what the bare facts are by reading multiple accounts of the same event. Usually the one that makes the most sense to you, initially, is flawed.
This is due to the fact that the human mind is naturally prone to bias. It's skeptical toward information that hurts the ego, and un-skeptical towards info that confirms our existing fears and biases. This is in addition to seeking the simplest explanations of complex problems. Take a look at my links. There's a metric ton of medical studies done every year, but the press tends to surface the 5% of info that contains things people *want to be true*. People want it to be true that stock brokers and wealthy people are more likely to be sociopaths, because it plays into the comforting belief that the reason *we* aren't successful is because we aren't heartless, like *those people*
For instance, there's a natural inclination for people to see humanity and diversity among the people they identify with, but to see "enemies" as homogeneous reactive robots. This is called "outgroup homogenity bias", and you can see this play out on highly partisian websites. Left-wing blogs and political sites will only surface info that confirms stereotypes about republicans (a bunch of bigoted white men fighting for corporate interests), whereas right-wing clickbait sites will only surface info that confirms stereotypes about the left (a bunch of violent, emotional communists and marxists). These sites will actively suppress any info that shows their enemies acting outside of the biases of their readers
tldr; make sure your media diet includes hearing and reading things that will make you mad. Mad at the speaker. Even if they have nothing of value to say about the world, even if they're wrong about *everything*, they will give you insight into the minds of a cross-section of the population.
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Google gives you the option to set a date range on a search, so for any older information you could try setting the end date right before the news articles started flooding other sources. Alternatively, subtract key terms from an unrelated statement that shows up often in those articles but is unlikely to be found in what you're looking for more information on. As long as google continues to support search operators, you can experiment to try to get better results.
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We have cranked the machine up 1000x through technology.
There's no more or no less of people wanting to validate their sources. That's a fallacy that can't possibly be substantiated other than "I think its changed". There's simply exponential growth in the number of requests for info because now everything is done electronically. It's a giant game of telephone and messages are continually being miscommunicated. It's not lack of validation, it's a lack of transparency when mostly everyone has access to the internet and their intentions can never be known.
Not everything used to be sponsored or propaganda. Our consumer driven market and demand for material things has led to marketing absolutely proliferating every facet of our lives and spiraling out of control. We are living these fake consumer based lives because of societal pressure to look good and not fall behind. We are living a commercial that we don't even realize that we are in.
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Yeah it's never been easier to verify or indeed learn any information, but we've never had faster stupidity either. No matter how easy learning is, stupid is always easier. This is self-evident from countless first comments on news articles, and a decent chunk of Youtube.
What's important is to make critical thinking a value that society actually cares about. People need to replace "this is outrageous, don't you agree?" with "this is outrageous, is it true?". It's badly needed because we've already reached the point where people do the next dumbest thing to believing fake news, and that is where they decide that the difference between true and false is whether it fits their predetermined world view.
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\> There's a long history of questionable news practices, so "fake news" isn't that modern of an invention.
You're right to a point, but to suggest that the current media landscape is in any way comparable to what it was even 5 or 10 years ago is dangerously reductive. Social media and the ability to set up a real-looking news website overnight has changed the world more than television ever did. Combine that with the fact that there are foreign (and domestic) powers actively spreading that information and trying to make it seem legitimate and to make the actual news sources seem illegitimate. I've studied propaganda and worked in or around media relations most of my career, and it's always happened, sure, but never close to this scale.
30 years ago, if you wanted to spread fake news, you had to trick or otherwise induce a reporter to write your story, who then had to convince their editor and a room full of reporters that it was a worthwhile story, and then it had to stand up to scrutiny, even assuming the laziest, dumbest news person. You might get the odd one off, or you might get a few papers that lean your political direction taking a quote or two out of context but still being technically true. The few that did just make stuff up were for crackpots and no serious person took them for anything more than entertainment.
Today we have entire papers dedicated to making up stories out of whole cloth and marketing the shit out of them. On top of that, all of the people who believed that a bat boy was born in a cave now have a giant megaphone and a deep-seated need to spread the truth, while the FSB cheers them on.
So yes, questionable news practices have always existed, but there was a time when you could generally rely on the veracity of information that entered the public sphere. We're bad at fact-checking today because our parents never had to. Today, media literacy is far more complex than it ever has been, and I don't believe it's a stretch to say that is the number one threat to democracy as we know it.
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It’s truly never been easier though. When I was young you had to go to the local library and use the card catalog to find books by subject and then sort through it. You may get lucky and find an almanac as a good reference, otherwise you have to go through newspaper archives to fact check on something.
Today you can use search engines and search through news archives by date, or pull up government statistics. It’s never been easier to fact check a politician’s claim or a pundit’s assertion.
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Is it worth pointing out the opinion, then? Say someone posted a serious theory that Ted Cruz is the zodiac killer, and they believe it. Instead of pointing out facts that dispel the theory, maybe say, "So you don't think much of Ted Cruz, do you? Me neither, but there's enough reasons to hate him without him having to be a serial killer. Personally, I'm not convinced he has anything to do with the murders. Vote Beto."
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People used to have their career on the line every time they published news. It was a person who slogged through years of school, paid their dues, and got their name in the paper next to the article they wrote. Fucking around with the truth on purpose would have serious consequences for them and others.
It would be nice if news writers had a reputation to keep up, but I don't think it works like that anymore.
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You’re right. When you think about the age of instant gratification, it isn’t really surprising people don’t fact check. If you’re fact checking, you’re “working” when you could be reading more “informational” content. Fact checking isn’t instant gratification. It’s at least a little time consuming, and it might result in your needing to think for yourself and have mental output. Tough to do when all people want is instant entertaining input.
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There's a difference between people not being able to differentiate and simply not caring. If you read some news about an issue that has no bearing on your life, and never will in any way, what does it matter if you believe it or not and move on... If you read some news about an issue you do care about, you will probably fact check it... Most news is either not news or irrelevant news. Media sources besides social media are also not much better; you can get your news from the internet, newspapers, tv or radio, you'll get misinformation everywhere you look.
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The point above was that blocked page is the not-easy part. Libraries pay for you to use non-free database sites all the time, high schools & colleges pay for it too. They may even pay for Google books or other paywall sources. So when you're at home with a cell phone and you have to pay up for information people will forgo looking into it unless it's something directly relevant to their life in the immediate sense. **that is what got harder**, the information of use is all charged for or behind incredible amounts of distracting ads. The ability to form an attention span has never been harder. The ability to afford quality information has never been harder. Before it was just "want to research a topic? Have to go to the library but there's no ads or limits on what can be accessed".
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well sir, recently published articles aren't really very important. pretty sure america is still committing genocide in the middle-east without ever explaining to even its own citizens why. pretty sure most people can tell that there is serious corruption in the us government causing this and constantly making deals to help corporate interests over its citizens.. hmm i wonder if giant media outlets could somehow be linked with this feeding the world propaganda plus a little bit of divisive and/or pointlessly distracting crap on top? But no all is well, there couldn't possibly be a need for some direct action because next election Americans can vote in someone better that will really change things because that has slowed down the war and corporate subsidies/tax breaks/bailouts basically every time someone new has been elected.
Everything is fine though, trusting what you've been told by the media and government never hurt anyone, and I'm sure all those brown people are terrorists anyways. I mean thats just a natural part of what it means to be human. Im sure overthrowing their governments, blowing up their cities, denouncing their people, murdering their children and funding some and influencing them to attack others for the last 65 years had no bearing on the previous 0.001% of their population who became them in the past.
I mean we gotta think of the gays right? There have no excuse for missing out on our recent cultural revolution and holding outdated beliefs. Its not our fault, they should've been discussing the real issues instead of being so focused on petty things like some perceived threat to their people and culture. Its not like it was credible anyways, cities crumbling around them and 'conflict' deaths in their region soaring into the millions are anecdotal. Silly people thats why the americans get involved in all these fights, they're helping stabilize the region so you little buggers don't keep hurting each other, and you go an reject new ideals their culture recently developed. I mean that's going to mean you'll need a lot more stabilising .. now go and tell your families living in our countries that you're fine and happy and that they need to get out there and expose themselves and their easily influenced children to the glory of western culture and trusted media outlets. Watching the kardashians will better for everyone than trying to gain influence in their politics.
So what article did you want clarification on? something some judge did decades ago? trumps latest twitter war? kanye west's true feelings about taylor swift? what cryptic clue that game of thrones star was talking about? i dunno, im not really up to date on the real issues.
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Yup. I actually have domain expertise here. When Musk tweeted that he had “funding secured” I remember thinking to myself, “damn, dude, you better really actually have funding secured.”
There was no way the SEC was *not* going to take action here once it turned out that Musk did not, in fact, have funding secured. The logical leap is that Musk appeared to simply mean to move the market—which is a big no no.
Whether or not you believe it (your opinion may be colored by right or left dogma), the SEC strives to maintain a level playing field for all investors, especially retail investors. Don’t fuck with mom and pop’s nest eggs, kids.
Musk is fucked. His board will need to take some sort of action now if they really intend on fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities to other investors.
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TBH this ludicrous aftermarket drop shows how many morons are bought into Tesla on nothing more than good wishes. If you didn't know this was coming then you have no business trading in shares. A 10%+ drop in share price on something that was inevitably going to happen suggests a lot of dreamers and few investors.
Interesting times ahead for Tesla given their revenues are lower than their debt servicing.
I actually think this might be the beginning rather than the end of the trouble for them as well. The company has produced a torrent of ludicrous guidance material the past few months which has helped their share price recover. When people see there is no legs to their sudden explosion in sales, that it is all accounting trickery, the question has to be asked at what point the company is liable for misleading investors.
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The board's in a tough spot. If he were any other CEO, he'd be *immediately* sidelined. But so much of Tesla's market value is tied up in the Elon Musk Cult of Personality that sidelining him would cause the stock price to tank.
But even if giving him the boot will cause the price to dive, it's still the right call to make. Do it now, do it fast, rip the band-aid off, deal with the sting, and then get past it. If they don't remove him, the ongoing news regarding his case is going to be a continuing drain on the stock price and make uncertainty that'll impact their ability to raise capital; and then it's going to take a dive *anyway* when he's eventually convicted or settles and has to take sanctions that'll probably end with him being removed anyway.
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lol, you have no idea what you're talking about.
Amazon was regularly operating at a loss for nearly 20 years, and it's the 2nd most valuable publicly traded company on Earth. Many, many companies that provide you with services operated at a loss for many years, or still do today.
Uber is another great example, they lost $4.5 billion last year. Try to convince me that Uber isn't going to survive.
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Oh man. You first tell someone they dont know what they're talking about, and then you go on to say THAT.
Amazon and Uber operate at a loss because they're reinvesting to grow rapidly. They dont have to operate at a loss. They're run well and could produce a profit if that was something they wanted to do, but they dont need to do that. Growth is more important to them. They arent having a major screw up every single week.
Tesla is constantly falling short, missing their goals, the CEO is saying/doing stupid shit, and the cherry on top is that they too operate at a loss.
Tesla loses money because its a shitty business. Amazon and Uber lose money because growth is expensive.
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After legal announcements and fines, companies valuations usually go up after the initial hit. This is due to the people in the know (not insiders, just people who follow) are assured, by the legal action, that the bullshit is behind them.
The SEC wants to correct action, not crash business. The SEC does take down ponzi schemes, but I don't think Tesla should be nuked for a mistake or overeager accounting. There are people in the company, shareholders, assets, business partners, and individuals all that rely on other businesses such as Tesla.
I wish there was a better solution with more teeth or something morally and ethically perfect, but honestly this is not too bad compared to other actions that people (humans) at the top might take.
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Tesla has a lot of problems but faulting them for an inability to meet demand is a stretch. They are very young for a car company. It’s not like you can just build a few more major factories real quickly to meet demand. Other automobile manufacturers have been in business for many decades or more and have the capacity already. I’m not saying they couldn’t have executed better, but they were never going to be able to meet such a huge demand at their size. I guess if nobody wanted their cars then sure, they’d have a much easier time of it.
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It's not about what we fault them for or what is realistic for "such a young company". It's about how the market operates. They're trying to be bullish in a market where every competitor is 100x bigger than them. They live or die by whether or not they can borrow money, and every major car company has them beat on profits. Why have they been able to borrow? Musk, who lit his reputation on fire in the last few months and now is defending a charge on securities fraud.
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First person said "They're doing poorly because they keep missing production goals and deadlines." Someone replied to that and said "So do many of the major car companies." I said "which companies?". You said "Hey, you can't fault them for missing goals, they're brand new!" That's not what I asked, you didn't respond to the question I asked the other guy. You complained that other people have been misinterpreting what you said and addressing different topics but you did it yourself too. So let me ask you this: which other major car company has had so many issues with production that it's not currently possible to go buy one from a lot right this minute? At this point, my question isn't even rhetorical; I'm seriously curious now because I'm sure it has to have happened with at least some company.
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> Im curious when people sue to recover losses
It will be interesting, generally you have to have loses to sue. His words were targeting shorts, but the stock run up was for less than a day. Then the stock went down. It would likely only be people that bought the stock on the pop from his words (or covered a short) but with the runup being for a few hours before the correction, the amount of $$ is likely to be pretty low.
The big suits are for lies that were left un-corrected for months or more not hours. Also I have not heard of lawsuits from non investors (options holders) they are the majority that were burned on this IMHO.
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> Don’t fuck with mom and pop’s nest eggs, kids.
lol nonsense. The SEC dragged their feet to incorporate fiduciary standards re: retirement account investing after promising to do as much post Frank-Dodd only to have the DoL forcibly initiate the standards the SEC completely failed to do. (Trump naturally reversed the fiduciary standards almost immediately upon entering office, but that's a different tangent.) The SEC doesn't give a flying fuck about Nana and Poppop's retirement. Elon fucked with other billionaires. They care about that.
Source; Worked as a compliance analyst in capital markets. Stop pretending that the SEC is anything more than a slightly less shitty version of FINRA -its completely staffed by WS ffs. Your points are good, but don't paint the SEC in a completely undeserved positive light.
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Here is the entirety of the comment I was responding to:
>What other fucking car company have you heard of that isn't able to meet production goals to satisfy demand? When was the last time someone was like "damn, I want to buy a brand new Toyota but there just aren't any available"?
My comment, and the comment I was responding to, was very specifically about meeting demand, which was never going to happen *right away* with a backlog of hundreds of thousands of orders and only one factory producing them.
Your response to my comment was about how markets operate, whether they can borrow money, how other companies have them beat on profits, and Musk’s reputation.
You’re looking at the big picture while I was addressing one very specific issue. Try to stay focused.
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So, just so,I understand, you think Tesla would have done better these past few,years,without Elon in the PR role? you think the market is punishing him for his actions in that role? That Tesla should be valued higher given their practical challenges?
I have to say I think exactly the opposite. I think the markets absolutely love Elon and have overvalued him for years. Better than 50/50 Tesla would be bankrupt without him out there as carnival barker. But to each their own I guess
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Blown away that people actually try to defend Musk on this issue. He is the CEO of a listed company, not a kid playing games. People have given him their money and nest eggs to run a business - not to mess with.
I like his visionary ability, but I think he is bad as a CEO right now. At the very least he should be forced to take a leave of absence and rest and the board needs to reconsider its role in accountability vs enabling him.
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You should do some reading from the investors who have been shorting the stock - they feel its overvalued, have major doubts about Tesla's (and often Musk himself's) ability to grow through the uptick in production - particularly since they are burning through massive amounts of money every month.
Since they only manufacture on order that fact that they still burn that money is a red flag. Also, they read some of the sales methods Tesla is using as signs that Tesla is actually holding stock - remember the idea is Tesla only makes to order so while its production costs might be higher, it should in theory not have stock sitting around. They seem to suspect that vehicles have been made that cannot be delivered as people dont want them anymore.
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I think its worth pointing out that Musk seems tired, stretched too far and still wants a flatter management system in place. His theatrics in the media are self created and indicates he is unraveling - not the characteristics of a guy who needs to be top of his game right now.
He has made a point of being in the spotlight and likes it there. That means he needs to mature as a CEO.
Musk seems to be the guy you want starting a business, not the guy you want running it.
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Tesla's EBIT (earnings before interest and tax for those who aren't financially inclined) has always been negative and has actually gotten more negative over time. Their interest expenses keep growing as well. There is little to differentiate them from a zombie company.
This isn't like Amazon where at any point for 15 years they could have said "I have enough money" and let the debt unroll. Tesla need vast investment to even have a positive EBIT. Once they have a positive EBIT they need to grow that until their EBIT/Interest ratio is greater than 1. At that point they will become a company that is financially treading water.
For comparison Amazon's EBIT is below. It is nearly always positive.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/ebit
This is Tesla's
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSLA/tesla/ebit
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The problem is they are a start-up. And they don't sell very many cars, because they don't make very many
They were supposed to start making a ton of cars this time last year. They still have yet to meet those production goals
So basically they are just having trouble making as many cars as they said they would. They are over a year behind, and are now running out of money.
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Yeah I honestly am quite confused at the valuation of this company. Sure, there's lots of potential, but there's also a big smokescreen going on with Musk and all these controversies. I support his idea and have been thinking of investing in the company for that reason for some time now, but I don't want to when there is problem after problem coming out like this. If it ever settles down, I think I might get in, but by then it might be too late. Another competitor might have stolen the show.
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The short answer is that it’s against the law to manipulate the financial markets. Even more so if you are an insider of a publicly traded company.
As CEO of a publicly traded company, Musk made a significant, material misstatement regarding Tesla’s business. Moreso, a reasonable person can examine the evidence and at least walk away with the *appearance* that Musk made this statement to harm those who have taken a short interest in Tesla (i.e. people betting the stock will fall).
Investors—both retail and institutional—rely on accurate information to make decisions about their investments. In fact, there’s an entire body of law specifying how and when publicly-traded companies are allowed to disclose information. The SEC doesn’t fuck around here: they have a mandate to protect everyday investors from this sort of bullshit.
I can’t recall of a single occurrence during my professional career where the CEO of a publicly traded company was so blatant and reckless in making a material statement about his or her company that turned out to be not only untrue, but significantly untrue. I recognized this was a big deal when he tweeted it—and now the roosters are coming come to roost.
Elon is fucked. This isn’t going away.
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Steve Jobs was a unknown person at that time. Or at least unknown in that he had no cult following yet. You can't really compare the two situations is the point I was making.
Yes any company is at huge risk if the value of the company does not reside in the financial potential but predominately in a single person's character and charisma. Ya his removal would be a big problem. Much like his actions are causing big problems.
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Edit: I'm not calling him getting sued strange, it's obvious why, the strange part is how _fast_ they brought charges instead of negotiating a settlement. Look at how often they do that, they never do things this fast. That's not me saying I'm pro musk or hate musk; I like what he does as a technical manager but as a CEO he really has to stop blurting out things like that fateful tweet and picking fights with people. I'm sure people will cry conspiracy because of the unusual speed of SEC action, but maybe this court case is what it takes, hand out some kind of punishment to Tesla, and move on to regular business. I have faith in the brand and the other engineers at Tesla to continue on with or without Musk in the CEO position.
Unless he is actually charged with a specific crime, I have a feeling though that people are just going to keep him in charge since he is so invested in protecting the brand both with his advocacy of it and literally bankrolling it in crisis, also he hasn't actually personally gained (at the expense of anyone) from the tweet given he made no changes to his own stock holdings before or after.
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How is it very strange? He publicly stated he had finances secured at a 410 price point to go private and didn't. That's stock manipulation and a CEO making false statements about the potential finances of the company. Not even in an Enron, cook the books, way. It was a bold face lie that lost a lot of "speculative" investments... which in itself is a joke since a trade shouldn't be speculative based off of a CEOs definitive statement
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After some new information came to light, apparently Tesla _was_ negotiating a settlement as usual over the past few weeks and when they made unfavorable demands of the board, basically installing people above musk at his own company, he was not having that and basically forced them to sue him. it's a very risky decision... yea he didn't really do that much damage compared to usual fraud cases, but fighting the SEC is an almost reckless move. this all seems to explain away my confusion from yesterday at least.
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An example I offer up as far as selling *data* is this:
> Facebook: When a hurricane comes statistically people in Texas mention buying cinnamon sugar pop tarts while in Florida they mention buying strawberry.
This information is ridiculously valuable to WalMart if they want to stock things properly and make "extra" profit but *you, specially* mean fuck all to WalMart or Facebook. You are a drop in the information well -- but a drop that's part of an avalanche, if your habits are consistent with others. I don't recall how to actually purchase this data though -- I'm not sure it's something they advertise doing.
The stuff they sell generally works like that. "When X happens, people to tend talk over FBM about...." but a lot of problems come when someone is smart and decides to break down data across several places to triangulate people (celebrities) and so people get scared because someone threw their entire life's details online and someone smart enough was able to put two and two together.
At least, generally this is how it works.
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It’s valuable, sure, but you still aren’t buying user data directly in that case. It’s much more effective for WalMart to say “Show these pop tart ads to people who talk about pop tarts.” If they sold user data directly, the model would be “Alright WalMart, here’s all the pop tart people, erm.... go try to find a way to get them interested in your pop tarts.” That’s (1) Much shittier for users (2) Not really legal and (3) Overall more of a pain in the ass for the advertiser and less monetizable for the ad seller.
I can guarantee they don’t sell data in some secret back channel way. That doesn’t scale, it isn’t effective from a profitability perspective, and it just isn’t as useful/easy for businesses.
As a business, I want to make sure my products get in front of people of a specific background. I don’t really care who you are as a person, I just want to make sure if there’s a good chance you’ll buy my shit that you’ll see my ads. Why would I buy your data, try to figure out how to contact/engage with you, and do that at scale when I can say “Show ads to people like X” which accomplishes exactly what I want to do. There’s no reason for me to do it any other way. Even more, why would Facebook and Google even show ads if they could just sell your data directly and make big money? They probably wouldn’t if that were profitable, effective, and a scalable business model... but it just isn’t.
It makes a less sexy headline though and isn’t as good for drumming up resentment toward a company people don’t like. I’ve worked in a bunch of ad tech companies and the most frustrating thing for employees is this common misconception. It’s understandable since it’s hard to understand, but you can quite literally play around with ads functionality of Facebook and Google yourself (for free!).
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> It’s much more effective for WalMart to say “Show these pop tart ads to people who talk about pop tarts.”
Eh, I'm not sure it's "much more effective" because it's not a "this or that" situation. Those two things are not related except they are on the Facebook Platform.
> If they sold user data directly, the model would be “Alright WalMart, here’s all the pop tart people, erm.... go try to find a way to get them interested in your pop tarts.”
I never said they sold data directly? There's been rumors but I've never cared to investigate those rumors.
> I can guarantee they don’t sell data in some secret back channel way. That doesn’t scale, it isn’t effective from a profitability perspective, and it just isn’t as useful/easy for businesses.
Sure, it'd be difficult to hide when you try to get the money.
> As a business, I want to make sure my products get in front of people of a specific background. I don’t really care who you are as a person, I just want to make sure if there’s a good chance you’ll buy my shit that you’ll see my ads.
There's two schools of thought here. Go out of your way to find people who have a higher chance of buying something or throw so many eyeballs on it that the numbers are so high that it outweighs the former. You do you.
> Why would I buy your data, try to figure out how to contact/engage with you
You're inferring a lot of information that you really shouldn't. Everyone wants to be a data collector but not everyone knows *what to do with the data*. If you got a hold of the entire Facebook Database then odds are you wouldn't know what to do with it. I guarantee you WalMart would.
WalMart would love to know what people are talking about.
So I don't think you understand how to apply the data you're given. You think they want to communicate to you. That's not what they need. Their job is to sell stuff. To sell stuff it helps to know what you want, especially during a panic.
I've worked with data similar to this. It's *way* more useful than you can possibly imagine when given to the right hands. Humans are very impressionable and if you know their tone, interests, etc -- you can push them in directions without them ever knowing.
For example -- Target was able to tell someone they were pregnant just noticing their purchasing habits change. Yes, humans are *that* predictable.
> It makes a less sexy headline though and isn’t as good for drumming up resentment toward a company people don’t like.
The headline is fine as it is.
> It’s understandable since it’s hard to understand, but you can quite literally play around with ads functionality of Facebook and Google yourself (for free!).
Considering you, yourself, don't know it -- indeed, it is understantable.
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I’m not inferring as much as you’d guess... I spent a lot of my career as an engineer working on ad tech. I’ve spent my entire day implementing the type of technology that you’re misrepresenting and I’ve worked with people who now work on the systems you’re purporting to be an expert on. What’s your background that makes you qualified to speak so authoritatively against reasonably established fact? Why is it that Reddit claims to care so much about the facts unless it’s inconvenient and doesn’t fit the popular narrative?
I realize it’s the cool thing to hate these companies. There are probably better, more accurate reasons to hate them. Latching onto things that aren’t true just ruins your credibility and is a big reason why meaningful reform isn’t happening. People are focused on a boogeyman that isn’t real instead of important stuff.
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> I’m not inferring as much as you’d guess...
You literally typed it. I don't have to guess.
> I spent a lot of my career as an engineer working on ad tech
Do you have a degree in psychology? How much professional experience do you have in psychology and economics? Or how about statistics? How many hours did you take in college? There's a great many classes you can take for stuff like this.
> What’s your background that makes you qualified to speak so authoritatively against reasonably established fact?
Programmer with a *really* large database. I've had access to this sort of data. I've seen the magic one can do without ads and only having this data... and with ads. You, on the other hand, think way too highly of your field.
So have you actually had access to data like this and seen what can be done with it? Or are you just making things up because it "feels correct" to you.
What I really find fascinating in this talk is how quickly you want to talk about experience and not actual data. I suspect you've already made up your mind on this topic and can't be bothered any further. You were *way* too quick to respond.
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Since you’re an expert, go ahead and describe what the high level architecture that these companies are probably using. Go ahead and describe to me how companies like Google and Facebook monetize. Feel free to give even a little bit of knowledge on the size of the data sets these companies are working with. I’ll wait.
I want you to back up your commentary with actual technical knowledge so Reddit can see the depth behind these sorts of comments. Give it your best shot and I’ll go through and help you understand your blind spots.
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What worries me is that one of the things I *really* liked about Musk was that generating profit was incidental to Musk's goals. He was more interested in helping bring humanity into the future then he was about making more zeros in his bank account.
I don't know how much damage the chairman can do, but I'll be fucking depressed if Tesla starts canning projects for more conservative means to make cash.
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I don't believe the SEC has the power to remove him as CEO, that would be up to the board.
This does substantially limit his authority however, as the new board chairman and other seats on the board could elect to resign him should he do anything to devalue the company further in the future. Basically the same thing that happened with Papa John's CEO John Schnatter-- he stepped down as chairman and the next chairman asked him to resign from CEO position and he had no authority to refuse.
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you mean the company that he didn't found, forced out one of the co-founders and became CEO, sued said co-founder to be recognised officially as a co-founder, and then the guy had to settle out of court. He then IPOs it (takes it public) in 2010, takes a lot of people's money, incinerates and asks for more while making ridiculous unfulfilled promises, and turns it into the biggest joke on wall street in living memory. This will all end in tears. Buy Jan 2020 100 strike price puts for literally free money.
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I'm aware of the claims, but the board is stacked with qualified individuals with careers of their own. To call them all yes-men is unfair and distorts the picture. Many of your articles reference the same event or present the claims about lack of independence as controversial, so as impressive as your wall of blue might look, it's a bit deceptive. I hope people choose to read the article rather than assume you're right.
To are right about me being overly aggressive though. There's a lot of (largely undeserved) animosity towards towards Musk and Tesla on this site, and I find it especially annoying when it bends the truth.
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What bugs me really is that for some inane reason there is just two camps when it comes to Musk. Either you despise the man as the spirit of satan or he's a God among men who can do no wrong.
Neither stance is accurate and both camps often have valid points on their side. Why can't we all just admit Elon Musk just as human as the rest of us and leave it at that? Why does it have to be all polarized and hostile?
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lol the internet is pretty damn funny, with people spouting opinions on subjects they have no knowledge about. Of course early stock holders of Tesla who didn't sell have made lots of money, so did people who bought pets.com in 1999. It doesn't make it a good business. My ego has not even been grazed actually, but talking of big egos, what do you think of Musk's? His hubris will be his downfall, and we are watching the beginning of the end for him. It will be pretty funny to watch over the coming months.
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He's grown the company, made it billions and is making new leaps in technology every day, making things previously astronomically expensive for the middle class, affordable.
You're full of yourself if you think him opening the company to the market and stock holders was a bad descion.
Obviously I dont know why you got a hard on for raging against Musk, but it's affecting your ability to rationally argue against him.
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Regardless, the moratorium is still in force, and Japan is a signatory to the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (which empowers the IWC to act as a regulatory body). Countries like Iceland, Brazil, and Egypt have withdrawn from the Convention, but Japan has not.
If Japan wanted to be free of the moratorium, they could denounce the Convention, but they could conceivably suffer substantial economic blow-back for doing so. Seems like they are trying to have their cake and eat it too to me.
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You are right they could just withdraw. Give there have been no substantial economic blow-back to the countries that have done so, I am unsure why you believe it would happen now.
However, it seems Japan wants sustainable whaling as that is what they are suggesting. Sustainable whaling requires an international governing body but one that actually governs. So it would be counter productive to leave if they can get IWC to start going the job it was designed for once more.
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No it's not, most populations are classified as "unknown" because they don't bother actually assessing the populations often enough since most ICW members have zero interest in whaling and are just there to keep a few wealthy anti-whaling nations happy.
Several populations are known to be healthy are safe to hunt within reason however, while others are definitively under threat and should not be hunted (and some are subject to poachers and that should definitively be cracked down on). You can't really make any blanket statements about all whales in general.
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Hearsay?
An investigation into the trump campaign has resulted in convictions of crimes, people confessing and people close to him getting immunity for future prosecution.. The investigation is ongoing and almost daily we get information about something that seems off..
I think many of his supporters are latching onto this diversion of blaming "fake news" Im not American and I do not watch american news. I do however see what he himself both says and writes.. I can not for the life of me understand how people are still buying into his bullshit
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It just doesn't make any sense.. I own a bar and I had a few Trump supporting Americans there the other day and I asked them.. "If I would ask you if Donald Trump was a truthful person, what would the answer be?" they just laughed and came up with reasons why that either did not matter or that because of other unrelated things it was ok.. So apparently they know he's a liar.. they just dont care
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Sure politicians sometimes switch positions but usually they better have a rational reason that they can explain or they're cast as a flip flopper. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/07/13/trump-denies-he-said-something-that-he-said-on-a-tape-that-everyone-has-heard/
I'm not talking policy changes. I'm talking about lies. Straight up saying "I didn't say that." Yeah, Donny you did and it's on tape usually from less than a year ago. That's on top of the things he says that can be disproven by a simple fact check.
You say he keeps his promises?
Like drain the swamp and Mexico paying for the wall? (did they even start construction yet?) Those promises? You've been had by a total con-man. He's been one even when he was calling himself a Democrat.
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These are the kind of fake news hit jobs that make my point for me. He said he didn't criticize May. The recording didn't reveal any, according to the article, this what he said:
“I actually told Theresa May how to do [Brexit], but she didn't agree. She didn't listen to me.”
“I would say she actually went the opposite way. . . . But it's too bad what's going on.”
“I think the [European Union trade] deal she is striking is not the one people voted on, exactly. It's a much different deal than people voted on. It was not the deal that was in the referendum.”
“But it will definitely affect trade with the United States, unfortunately in a negative way.”
So now disagreeing with policy is talking bad about her personally? Such a crock, just like the other fake news peddled on this site daily
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Tax *avoidance* is choosing to live in such a way so that under the law you don't owe as many taxes. For example, if I choose to buy something that is cheaper than something else so I can pay less sales tax, that's tax avoidance. If I refuse to pay sales tax by lying about what I bought, that's tax *evasion*.
You can't make tax avoidance a crime by definition, because it's literally by definition the act of choosing to lawfully follow the law so you don't get charged as much. I can't imagine what a decriminalization of tax avoidance would look like. Would it be illegal to willfully live in counties where there are lower property taxes? Would it be illegal to buy a crappy boat secondhand so you don't have to pay retail sales tax? What if you ride your bike so you don't have to pay gas tax? What if you live outside the country so you don't have to pay local sales taxes?
If you want to *change* the law so that whatever legal choices they are making are illegal, then fine. For example, you could make it so that british citizens pay an equal income tax regardless of their residence. You could make it so that all sales taxes and deductions are replaced with a no-deduction income tax. You can close loopholes.
You can't criminalize the act of trying minimize your tax burden under the law, you can only change the tax code itself.
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Evaision is simple, it's simply not paying tax when you should, and that is illegal.
Avoidance is considered to be less simple, but that's because there is a range. For now, let's just split it into 2 types.
The first is sanctioned avoidance. This is fine, for example putting money into an ISA so that you don't pay tax on the interest. This is the point of an ISA.
The other type is what causes controversy. Tax avoidance is LEGAL, but it usually brings about an outcome that is NOT what the law originally intended.
Tax avoidance is often concerned with creating losses which can be set off against a taxable source. Avoidance is characterised by taking lots of steps which are not needed, or which have no economic substance.
The other thing it does it try to alter the nature of a transaction , again to create a tax advantage
In short it's all 'clever' accounting and paper transactions.
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Not only that but the tax avoidance schemes are run from the City of London. Entire law firms and financial institutions only deal with these issues.
The other issue with tax avoidance is that it is a grey area, meaning that there are a bunch of things that you can do and it is not illegal, but it is not hard to cross the line. Because these are complex schemes by their very nature, the wrong move and you are on the opposite side of the law.
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Any government that made tax avoidance illegal as a concept wouldn't last a full term. It's literally any method of reducing the amount of tax you have to pay, and I seriously doubt that the majority of people would approve of getting rid of stuff like tax relief on charity donations or company pensions. There's far more nuance to this than a lot of the media like to make out, which is ironic since I bet a lot of the journalists involved do it a fair amount.
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Say that you are paid £100,000 and have to pay 20% tax and you don't. That's evasion and is illegal
Say that you've worked out how to make it so you have to pay less tax - say that you're given a loan with a negative interest rate that "pays itself" back for the same amount with no tax and you don't have to pay anything, that's avoidance and is legal - you're doing something perfectly legal to pay less tax
However, just because it's legal doesn't mean it's not an abuse of the system or considered by most to be wrong
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A good example of avoidance is Apple, because it's so high-profile: The company makes tens of billions of USD in profit each year, and they're expected to pay tax on that in the US, where they're headquartered. You also pay tax on profit for subsidiaries--- companies you own.
However, also under US law, if you own a foreign subsidiary and *it* makes a profit, then you don't have to pay its tax until you bring the profit back to the mother ship in the home country.
What Apple does is use accounting tricks to push much of its domestic profits onto its foreign subsidiaries, and never bringing it back (on paper!). Since the money is now on paper as being profit of the foreign subsidiary, they legally avoid paying tax on it. We're talking like $250 billion in parked profits.
Moreover, the subsidiaries are based in tax havens for businesses, like Ireland, so they don't pay tax on it there, either.
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Example:
I run an online store selling widgets. My development office is in the U.S., so I have to pay about 30% of my profits in taxes. However, most of my widget consumers are in Germany, which has a similar capital gains tax rate.
I set up two subsidiaries, one in Germany, and one in Switzerland, which has no capital gains tax. I assign all my my intellectual property to the Swiss subsidiary, and open up a Swiss bank account.
My German subsidiary is required to pay licensing fees to the Swiss subsidiary equal to its profit. Because it never takes a profit, it does not incur capital gains tax.
My Swiss subsidiary is required to pay fees to the American development group equal to their operating costs. Because the American development group never makes money, they don't pay tax either.
Meanwhile, the money piles up in a Swiss bank account tax-free.
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Expanding, Apple's money did go back the US. It wasn't sitting in a vault in Ireland. Because of Apple's shenanigans, they weren't free to use the money in the same way as money which had been taxed, eg, they couldn't use it to build a new campus, or pay dividends with it.
But what Apple could do, and did, was use it as collateral for tens of billions of dollars in loans, which they were then free to use for building a new campus or paying dividends. They had something like $300B locked up in "overseas" profits (sitting in US accounts) but they also had something like $100B in loans.
In the long term, such a strategy might not be wise ... unless you are able to wait it out long enough to get a tax holiday. Which they got once in shortly after Bush Jr took office, and then now with Trump.
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indeed - the rebuttal to this is for him and his colleges to do their fucking jobs and make a country people enjoy living in so that people don't view the far right as an alternative to what's currently being provided.
if something is growing in popularity at your expense, perhaps you should take a step back and look at the combination of what you're doing to push people away and in to the arms of an alternative.
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Yeah they should cave into the racist losers who whine nonstop. we should give in to the people who drive cars into crowds of people and let them abuse the minorities. Because we're not competing with that alternative otherwise. Dumb. The far-right in the United States is not hurting economically. They are hurting me cuz they have to be around minorities and because liberal people make them feel bad about how shity they are.
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i don't give a shit why racists are racist, i have no time for them.
i'm not showing sympathy for anyone.
i'm just pointing out that people going to the right isn't because they all of a sudden want to be racist. if racists want to be racist, they have been and will continue be - being racist isn't a new and recent thing.
people don't change, but what parties they're voting for is changing. so, what aren't the left/centre doing any more, and/or what is the right doing to cause this shift?
there are people who need to answer that question, and act upon the answer - and it's not the people at home sat on their sofas.
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The people driving cars into crowds of people in Europe are almost all Islamists (when they're not elderly people who should have had their licenses and cars confiscated).
As for the actual article - it's not a good look to whine about people not counterprotesting enough. It's almost like politicians and police were elected and hired to do a job. Why the fuck should someone who works full time and has stuff to take care of at home be responsible for combating Nazis?
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This a million times this! Rather than going hurr durr durr you racist politicians if they are so worry abouy the far right should investigate what's happening and find solutions for the problems that are pushing people to vote for the for far right parties, accusing people of being racist is just putting your head in the sand and with enough time is going to come back and bite these people in the ass.
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> i'm just pointing out that people going to the right isn't because they all of a sudden want to be racist. if racists want to be racist, they have been and will continue be - being racist isn't a new and recent thing.
Wow good observation. And it follows from that logic that when you stop treating racists like a fringe group and an actual legitimate political movement you're going to be bleeding their racist bullshit into ordinary politics. But you know what, I'm sure white nationalists wearing MAGA hats shouting ["JEWS WILL NOT REPLACE US!"](https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/10/10/when-white-nationalists-chant-their-weird-slogans-what-do-they-mean) doesn't say anything about right wing populism to racists.
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Horseshit. He said that because of the current drama in Chemnitz.
Some people were doing the Hitler salute in the open streetd, in Germany of all places, after all that happened. In some instances neo-nazis and other right wing fucks chased everyone through the streets who looked slightly foreign.
You can take your "let's give these people what they want to appease them" narrative and shove it up your ass. It's pants on head retarded.
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There was a nazi rally with 12 people not that long ago. Trump didn't win because of those 12 people, he won because he was better than Hillary, who was probably the worse candidate the democrats could send. And if you're trying to say that half the americans are racists for supporting trump, without any reason to say so, even the black/latino/asian people... then something is wrong with you and not him/them.
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TLDR: decies to make a law starting with good intentions (most of the time). Law has obvious massive problems and loopholes because it is was written in a hurry. Everybody points it out. He says the problems don't actually exists. Every NGO and the EU says that his law is terrible and bad and he should feel bad. He sees no problem. Law is passed. Obvsious flaws are immediately exploited. He promises to fix the problems. Doesn't fix them.
A few articles (in german):
https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/gesetzesverschaerfungen-der-minister-der-unnoetigen-paragrafen-1.3564394
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/netzwirtschaft/die-eu-hat-bedenken-gegen-heiko-maas-gesetz-15066569.html
http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/netzdg-heiko-maas-verteidigt-netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz-gegen-kritik-a-1186118.html
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/heiko-maas-ist-der-justizminister-in-wahrheit-ein-verfassungsfeind-a-1155044.html
http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/bundestrojaner-heiko-maas-in-der-kritik-nach-spaeh-software-plaenen-a-1150484.html
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> so, what aren't the left/centre doing any more, and/or what is the right doing to cause this shift?
Instead of offering solutions that are actually possible (retraining/education for those from collapsed industries for example), the left/centre should just lie and say they're going to magically fix issues without explaining how. Apparently that's all it takes.
They should also be more aggressive in their demonization of political opponents and spread rumours that their opponents are involved in child abuse, Satanism, etc.
They also need to start a news station that only presents the left/centre in a good light and the right as inept and sinisterly manipulative at the same time.
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That is not what I was talking about.
You can’t deny that we’re also looking at people voting for those kinds of parties as a reaction to use the “sudden uprise in popularity” they create for those parties as a wakeup call.
That’s not the way I cast my vote, personally, but I can see how people feel like it’s the last resort in trying to make their voice heard. It’s easier than going to a protest or whatever, I suppose?
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How can a wall be racist? It just stands there, it has no concept of recognising races? It is built to stop illegal crossings of the border regardless of the race, and I see nothing wrong with stopping crime. Thousands of people are going through precedures, filling out forms, waiting in line, to enter America, why should Americans let some other skip the line and crosd into the country illegally? No other country lets them do thatz why should america?
The country i was born in, that doesn't exist anymore, had army protecting the borders, and our neighbors (capitalist or communist) did the same on their borders. If you wanted to cross into the country, you had to go through a border crossing with appropriate documents. ...and you still do, except for a rather large group of people a few years ago that did stuff that sparked these protests now.
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I'm not going to apologise for calling a spade a spade.
And migration isn't going to be significant enough to cause significant unemployment, further more, if they're employed they're consumers who are paying taxes, so they'll also create jobs anyway. So you won't have a net loss of jobs.
Targeting minorities instead of focusing on the actual causes is pretty classic xenophobic rhetoric. And it's bullshit. As was famously said, "They Took Our Jobs".
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>If the left constantly calls normal citizens with a different opinion nazis or what have you, what do you think they will do? Vote democrats?
of course not. What is so terrifying about all of this is that they are actively sowing division. We are in the middle of a divide and conquer stage. Ever since Trumps campaign the mainstream media and the establishment at large has been "circling the wagons". If you find yourself within their camp, you will be an apostate if you leave. They aren't drawing anyone in at this point, they are radicalizing their herd.
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On the contrary, it seems that center and left leaning americans are finally starting to understand the incredible lunacy of the american conservative parties. The biggest load of cum ever spoonfed to the american people was the idea that rational argument and civil discourse is the way to beat the racists. Lmao no. When you actively give racists a platform to spew their hot garbage, that's when they start getting bold, that's when their racist ideas start getting picked up in ordinary politics.
Deplatforming fucking WORKS. I hope you know Richard Spencer [had to cancel is lecture tour because he was afraid of getting his fucking ass kicked by protesters](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/03/12/alt-right-leader-richard-spencer-says-his-rallies-arent-fun-anymore/416579002/). Milo Yiannapolus [crying on facebook because hes spent millions of dollars on events that got canceled by protesters.](https://i.imgur.com/VBveCud.jpg) THAT'S how you deal with racists. Not sitting there, taking their unintellectual dribble up the ass in "cause everybody deserves to be heard". You CAN NOT defeat racists with words. Only with actions.
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I agree. I have had this discussion before on here. The fact that people start voting far right and identify with neo-nazis does not mean you have to change your message in order to win these people back. You can only do that by becoming far right yourself.
You need to keep selling a message you believe in yourself, a message of tolerance and inclusiveness. If people are not buying it any longer doesn't mean you have to let your message go, but you need to work even harder.
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But why? If you have a house, and want to deter people from walking/driving over your property, you build a fence. Richer people (basically everyone screaming against Trump on tv) have even higher fences or actual concrete walls around their mansions. And armed guards. Some of them even buy houses next door, so other people have to stay even further away. And all those people, sitting behind high walls scream that a wall to protect a country from illegals (who become criminals as soon a they cross the border illegally) is somehow bad.
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> However, those dumb fucks come from towns where the foreigner quota is less than 1%, so they don’t even know what they’re talking about.
i think this is a very ignorant comment.
it's like saying "you have no idea what kind of damage fire does if you've never touched it" after watching some one burn themselves - you know full well the damage it can do, you've just seen it.
you don't have to experience something to see how it affects other things. rightly or wrongly they probably want to keep their foreigner quota below 1% as they've seen other places with a quota above that and don't like what they see.
whether you agree with their opinions or not doesn't matter - pretending they can't have an opinion on something or understand it is downright ignorant.
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> whether you agree with their opinions or not doesn't matter - pretending they can't have an opinion on something or understand it is downright ignorant.
The problem is that they **act** like they have those problems in their own towns. It's not that they say "Look at cities like Duisburg-Marxloh, we don't want those problems here!" - no, they say "Look at all those immigrants in our town and the problems they are causing", which is simply not true.
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In Canada, we created a high-readiness military special operations unit specifically to deal with problems like counterterrorism or hostage rescue. It was created specifically to **replace** the police Special Emergency Response Team.
The advantages are:
* A. You don't have the PR problem of training community police to kick down doors and throw flashbangs, and
* B. You are now picking from a pool of people who are already trained to kick down doors and throw flashbangs. So one imagines they'll do the job much more safely and professionally than police officers; being that police are be primarily trained in policework, not section-level tactics.
So imagine a US in which SWAT teams don't exist. You don't get meatheads who coasted through highschool with a C average now pretending to be professional soldiers; and when a situation arises where professional soldiers are called for, you **get** professional soldiers. You get the **best** professional soldiers; you get Seal Team 6, not the guys from the local precinct wearing black fatigues and tac vests.
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Illegal for the US military to operate on US soil here.
In my opinion, that's overall a good thing. The military is trained to neutralize the threat at all costs. The police are trained to protect and serve, which includes being able to analyze a situation and ideally de-escalate it, something which is already gravely lacking in the US. Plus, the SWAT teams are starting to roll out more and more it seems like, not just for armed hostage situations but for simple drug busts. Probably because the second amendment provides a good reason to assume they have a gun and are willing to use it. We would almost immediately end up with Humvees in the streets.
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Hostage rescue isn't law enforcement. Law enforcement is the job of the police. Making arrests is also the job of the police. Arresting suspected terrorists or drug dealers in basements doesn't require flashbangs or automatic weapons. The military term for situations that is "direct action" which is back outside the realm of law enforcement. Arresting suspected terrorists may be counterterrorism in the general sense, but it's not direct action. Direct action against terrorism may enforce the law by proxy, in that terrorism is illegal; however, is not law enforcement under the generally understood definition.
Dealing with a situation like, for example, the 1980 London Iranian Embassy Siege, goes a bit beyond the purview and capability of law enforcement. Which is why the Brits, instead of sending in cops, sent in the SAS. You'll note, the Brits **don't** send in the SAS to kick down the doors of twitch streamers every time a bored 15 year-old gets a fun idea on how to prank his favourite gamer. Canada is much the same; there are local police, and there are soldiers, and never the twain shall meet in their operational requirements.
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My point isn't that police in Canada are better, or different; it's that police in Canada are just police. We generally don't have policemen, specially trained or otherwise, trying to do things that are best left to professional soldiers. Better yet, we actually have professional soldiers to do those things if required.
So, my argument is that the **institutional structure** of Canadian police work is fundamentally better; by virtue of the fact that regular police aren't trained for combat roles. How you think that connects to whether or not any given beat cop might be an asshole is what baffles me.
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Fair enough; but since my comment was only concerning the latter, you're arguing against nobody on the former.
I don't care what your opinion is on the professional decorum of your average beat cop. I'm talking about why it's better not to try to make cops do a soldier's job. Unless you're actually trying to support my point by saying that most cops are dicks, the two discussions are completely separate.
If you don't care about what I'm talking about, then don't reply to my comment. Trying to drag me into a totally separate argument, because that's the one you want to have, is intellectually dishonest.
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Ad-Hominem may be a logical fallacy, but it's also a dreadfully efficient alternative to defending indefensible positions or actions. Especially if you have your people or close allies ready to repeat and relay the attacks for you nice and loud.
Say, for example, you eat babies. One way or another as much as YOU may feel the babies deserve what's coming to them, it makes a lot of people angry and is generally considered very rude. So if I suddenly put you on the spot with your recipe book leaked online along with pictures of the inside of your fridge, you may find yourself with a choice:
* 1) You argue for the righteousness and deliciousness of your position, how all of those babies were probably going to become terrorists, and even many of your allies are forced to pretend they didn't see anything while an angry coalition of parents razes your capital, lest they be accused of supporting the newborn-dining-experience in an election year.
* 2) Deny deny deny deny, but there's pictures... and video... Some'll believe you, but, most won't really no. Hope that your house isn't sitting over some oil-wells and expect lots of demands regarding any international travel you ever try to do being diverted to Des-Moines or The Hague.
* 3) Point out that I am an irrational inhumane hate-machine in the middle of assaulting you, who wants to see all <Insert general religion or culture here, like "Jews" for example> dead, denies and loves the holocaust at the same time and is an absolute monster actively attacking you, help, help, please help you I'm murdering your 65 year old grandmother who lived through that 73+ year old event by my very words and criminally inciting violence I must be stopped.
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It's a childish tit for tat law. I know some people will read way more into this than there actually is because nowdays it seems you can't post anything that is seen to remotely support Israel without being called an Islamophobe.
> Barko highlighted that the bill above would emphasise the principle of reciprocity. Therefore, anyone who would raise the flag of a country which is already banning the flag of Israel will be punished too.
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> What I cannot understand is why whenever Israel does something that can only be described as barbaric and xenophobic, those who criticise the state are immediately labelled as anti-semites.
They don't have a reasonable or logical response thus they resort to name-calling - as mentioned by u/torpedoguy this is a common logical fallacy under Ad Hominem.
Calling others anti-Semites also puts the accusers in a position of being the victim i.e. they have now turned the tables on you. It has become common and even water-down to the point where any criticism of anything you can be called anti-Semite. It has gotten to the unfortunate point where in some cases you can be called anti-Semite for discussing or engaging in the human rights situation of Palestinians.
> The Israeli state is perpetrating policies of apartheid yet the western world is terrified of doing anything.
This is especially worrying. I’m not sure if they are actually “terrified” or rather just siding with the state of Israel on this issue for several reasons. There has been growing support of Israel in recent years by the Western world and to some extent of the international community. Consider one of the reasons the Nikki Haley mentioned for US pulling out of the Human Rights Council was because Item 7: The Human Rights situation on Occupied Palestine since 1967 is a standing issue. Other member states to the Council have made similar intimidation remarks claiming that Item 7 is biased against Israel despite focusing on human rights of Palestinians.
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You are very quick to make assumptions about people.
Now, I made an argument. You countered with a non-argument. So to me it seems you are the one not interested in arguing in good faith.
People claim Israel is an apartheid state, and yet they simultaneously admit to not knowing what constitutes apartheid, or what Israeli laws and policies are. Basically, they are arguing what they don't know about, because they have an agenda against Israel.
What really makes Israel so unique, however, that despite having a modern progressive society and thriving democratic rule of law, is still by FAR the world's most condemned country (more than the entire world combined), and despite being maybe 0.1% of the world's population, receives more negative media attention than much larger, more influential, and more powerful states?
One thing is that it has once been in constant wars against the Arab League. Although that changed with the signing of the peace treaties and not really unique to Israel as practically the entire West were involved in some wars in the middle east.
And the 2nd is that Israel is the world's only Jewish state. Meanwhile everywhere you go in a thousand mile radius there are only muslim countries, and everywhere in Europe are Christian countries.
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A lot of people point to that it's often Arab nations with long lists of breaching human rights themselves which band together in the UN to condemn and draft resolutions against Israel. So it's not about what is done, but who does it. And in this case, there is prevalent anti-Semitism in most Arab nations which is seen as the reason for their engagement in the issue.
Also, a lot of people deny that anti-Semitism has ever been an issue, and that it's the Jews who are acting like monsters. It's been an excuse for centuries.
Israel does something bad, which many else also does but nobody cares about --> anti-Semitism
Israel does something bad, which other countries do too and get as much criticism for --> not anti-Semitism
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I had forgotten about that Item 7.
However isn’t it like many of the west’s policies in that it jut gets kicked down the road without practical enhancement by governments? A bit like the recognition of Jerusalem by the US.
Is there any strength to the idea that Israel could be the ‘bigger man’ and seek out policies that bring and end to the troubles. Forget the past and move on. Stop this tit-for-TAT response that is killing thousands on both sides?
What do the younger generations in Israel think?
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