frostbiker

joined 2 years ago
[–] frostbiker@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 years ago (6 children)

I wish people didn't bring foreign conflicts into our borders.

[–] frostbiker@lemmy.ca 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

There’s a solution: legally mandating price ceilings

This populist idea has been done many times and it always leads to the same outcome: businesses stop stocking unprofitable items.

Learn from history, people.

[–] frostbiker@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Thank you for providing additional context. It sounds pretty reasonable.

[–] frostbiker@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

In Germany it’s also a criminal offence to endorse or approve criminal offenses

Oh, wow! I didn't know that. At first sight, it looks like a pretty terrible approach. Can it be used to silence people who oppose a particular law? Imagine at some point the government forbids petting puppies and somebody wants defend how petting puppies is a great way spend an afternoon.

[–] frostbiker@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Canada has implemented a carbon tax. Maybe I've been living under a rock, but I haven't heard of it being particularly difficult to implement. As I understand it, the tax is implemented at the source, and then made revenue neutral by redistributing the revenue equally to all taxpayers.

If you burn more carbon, you pay more. If you are efficient, you get more money back than you paid in taxes.

[–] frostbiker@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I skimmed through the page and the linked website, but I couldn't find any specific amounts. How much do they want to tax, and whom?

The proposal handwaves that the 1% are responsible for a large percentage of global warming emissions. But if that is the problem, why not tax those emissions directly?

[–] frostbiker@lemmy.ca -3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I’ve never heard the words “free speech” used in a context with no connection to their legal meaning. Do you have a counter example?

Yes. The very article in this post.

[–] frostbiker@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Way to ignore the argument

I did my best to understand your argument, but all I had to work with was a fragmented sentence. Thank you for elaborating further.

Your comparison should be calling/promoting burning gays is okay as long as they don’t actually do it

I'm not quite seeing the parallel here. Would you say that a book that describes a murder/rape is promoting murder/rape? Does that mean the book should be illegal?

The bible contains multiple calls to violence and even genocide, including calls to stone homosexuals and adulterers, yet it remains legal, because we do make a distinction between words and actions.

But you know people aren’t going to be sympathetic to that so you try to twist it to appear rational

It is difficult to maintain a friendly conversation when somebody repeatedly accuses you of being malevolent. It is possible for good people to have differing opinions about delicate subjects. I assume you have good intentions, please return the favor.

Anyway, I gotta run. Thanks for the thought provoking conversation.

[–] frostbiker@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

It does harm children because [...] people like yourself that defend it use it to normalize it for their victims/convince kids that what they are doing is okay

I'm trying to understand.

Just to be clear, defending the right of somebody to do something doesn't mean you like it. There is a big gap between "this is not for me" and "this should be illegal". I don't think anybody in this thread is normalizing it, I think we are distinguishing between what we dislike and what should be illegal. For me personally, actual physical harm is the deciding factor.

When somebody argues that X leads some people to perform an act of violence Y, the issue for me is still with Y, not with X. For example, I've heard people argue that we should ban burning the rainbow flag because they believe it leads to violent crimes against LGBT people. I am queer and defend the right of people to burn the flag, as much as I dislike it happening. Why? Because the flag itself is an inanimate object, and the threshold is crossed only when an actual person is the victim of violence.

In other words, I can't get behind policing people's minds. Want to murder somebody? I don't approve of it, but it's not even in the same ballpark as actually murdering somebody.

I will say that if I found out that one of my kids' teachers was involved in any of that stuff, I would promptly find a new school because it's not worth the risk. So, it's not like it would be free of consequences either. Same if the teacher was burning the rainbow flag.

[–] frostbiker@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

Okay, I'll take the bait.

I find the notion of written child pornography repulsive, but I can't see why it should be a crime, given that writing it doesn't harm any children, in the same way than writing a murder mystery doesn't involve killing somebody.

Can you elaborate on why writing a fictional account should be illegal? Something more fleshed out than "eww!". I'm not seeing it, but I have no trouble changing my mind if a good argument is presented.

And again, I would be very uncomfortable if it turned out that one of my kids' teachers were reading or writing stuff like that, but then again it's not very different from how I would feel if I found out they burned rainbow flags and that is perfectly legal as well -- as it should be in my opinion, I might add.

In summary, I defend the right of people to do things I disapprove of, as long as they are not hurting anybody.

[–] frostbiker@lemmy.ca -3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

And when governments ignore the economic needs of everyone except the rich for too long, the result tends to be violence

Only at extremes far beyond of what we are seeing today. Other places in the world have substantially larger Gini coefficients and that hasn't translated into violence.

The US is perilously close to that now, and we’re not doing much better

What basis do you have to assert that?

D’you really want a revolution, with all the blood-in-the-streets nastiness that entails?

A false dichotomy.

We need to change the game somehow, and UBI is one way of doing it. Not the only way, granted, but the political will doesn’t seem to be there for any of the others either

You are assuming that a UBI would be beneficial to the working class. I have presented multiple reasons why that is questionable, and you haven't addressed any one of them.

[–] frostbiker@lemmy.ca -3 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Okay, I'll put it in simpler terms: when governments implement unsustainable policies, it is the working class that ultimately pays the price. Just look at history.

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