rational_lib

joined 2 months ago
[–] rational_lib 0 points 7 hours ago

He was a first mover on podcasts, and already being a reality TV celebrity he got a lot of big guests early on.

[–] rational_lib 10 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

"I have lung cancer? How bad is it?"
"Well let's just say it's...non-small lung cancer."

[–] rational_lib 3 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (3 children)

This article goes into some details that I'll just recklessly post a big section of here:

Then, after he won the election, Biden committed to the cause like no other president had in modern times. He appointed one of the movement’s brightest and most aggressive reformers, Lina Khan, to run the FTC, as well as other fierce critics of corporate concentration in key posts, including Jonathan Kanter, who took over the antitrust division of the DOJ, and Tim Wu, who became a key economic adviser inside the White House. Six months after taking office, Biden issued a whole-of-government executive order that called on 17 different government agencies to take 72 actions to foster competition and protect consumers against monopolies. As a result, agencies like the FTC, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Food and Drug Administration have cracked down on public scourges like price gouging, noncompete contracts, and banking-related junk fees, and created new rules to make consolidated industries like the hearing aid market more competitive.

Under Kanter and Khan, the DOJ and FTC have also filed far more ambitious antitrust investigations than any administration in decades. Last summer, an investigation into several food production conglomerates over wage suppression and collusion resulted in an $85 million settlement, one of several successful DOJ investigations into no-poach and wage-fixing schemes across the economy. In December, the FTC successfully blocked the medical data firm IQVIA’s attempt to monopolize the business of advertising to doctors through the purchase of an ad tech company called DeepIntent. And in January, a judge sided with the DOJ in its suit against a JetBlue-Spirit merger, the first successful prosecution of an airline merger in 40 years.

The effect of a more aggressive posture from regulators goes beyond favorable court rulings: Under the threat of litigation, Amazon, Lockheed Martin, Berkshire Hathaway, and the chipmaker Nvidia were some of the companies to back off multibillion-dollar acquisitions of smaller firms. Biden’s regulators filed a record 50 antitrust enforcement actions last year, and mergers dropped to a 10-year low.

These actions don't get media attention because the media treats the government like some reality TV bullshit

[–] rational_lib 31 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If you're not a normie, don't match with hardcore normies. Usually it's pretty easy to tell.

[–] rational_lib 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Really it's the celebrities more than others keeping it afloat. What's really inexcusable is that so many Democratic politicians still have accounts - AOC, Bernie, the whole gang is still there helping Elon and Saudi billionaires get ~~richer~~ poor more slowly.

[–] rational_lib 17 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (7 children)

The best solution to the two parties excluding the left isn't a third party, it's for the left to register as Republicans and conduct a hostile takeover of the GOP in the primaries.

This can easily succeed in blue states/cities to start out.

[–] rational_lib 4 points 3 days ago

It's not necessarily political, wall street can be very clueless about technology. They all seem to believe they can judge the potential of just about any company, no matter how complex the industry, by merely watching a video of the CEO speaking and judging how smart they sound. Perceived potential can also be self-reinforcing because the more prominent a business figure gets, the more wall street reporters and influencers want to be associated with them - so they're careful to only praise them and not piss them off. So they can easily be duped by an Elizabeth Holmes/Adam Neumann type who has a strong voice and even stronger connections and promises the moon for a small investment.

Musk's key innovation was taking that a step further and promising them Mars.

[–] rational_lib 0 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

At first, the internet was for nerds only and not "for the masses". Then corporations realized there was a lot of money to be made, and they forced user-friendliness on it. And then the masses came.

Don't worry, in two decades we'll have Fediverse 3.0 which will just be a balkanized assortment of sites that don't communicate with each other and are worth trillions, all owned by people who bafflingly support President Kid Rock.

[–] rational_lib 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

I’m sorry, but fuck free speech as so many people are raving about. Its the worst thing that has happened to the world since the Internet came on.

I think the mistake isn't free speech but not having enough exceptions for fraudulent statements. For example, if you say anything false and damaging about a specific person, everyone agrees that's libel and not "free speech". But if you say something false and damaging about a group of people, like trans people or immigrants, that's "free speech" and perfectly legal. Or if you say something false and damaging about fake cures, etc.

It's actually a tough problem because we can't expect everyone to just be perfectly right all the time. But I think that for people like Rogan who have a wide platform, there should be some liability for lying about things that actually harm others. The fact that this is effectively legal is why psychopaths are dominating media narratives right now.

[–] rational_lib 12 points 5 days ago

The best way to fight the oligarchy is to stop paying them.

 

Yes I know, your least-favorite idea goes here. But seriously, someone must have come up with the concept before. Like a bad get-rich-quick scheme could fall into this category, where joining the scheme makes people lose money and become more desperate, so they become more likely to do desperate things like invest more in the scheme. But it can apply to a number of other bad ideas.

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