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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • There are many progressives who are calling for the release of the hostages and calling the October 7th attack a war crime, but the problem is that it is a perfectly acceptable in progressive circles to pretend that the attack wasn’t that bad, or that it was terrible but was necessary for the liberation of Palestine

    As I said, I consider myself a progressive, and I know that a lot of progressives think like me. But there is a strand of the left that is very vocal online that I fear has lost its way


  • I’m not a fan of hers, but I do think she has a point here.

    There was a significantly different response by progressives to the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram and the hostages taken by Hamas. When posters were put up of the kidnapped Israelis they were ripped down by the same kinds of people who tweeted #BringBackOurGirls.

    I know there will be many downvotes to this comment, but I consider myself a progressive and am worried that progressives are losing sight of their values in favour of what is the prevailing groupthink online





  • Since taking office Dec. 10, Milei devalued the peso 54% and eliminated price controls on hundreds of everyday consumer products, reversing the policies imposed by former Economy Minister Sergio Massa, who ran against him for president. The libertarian leader also halted runaway money-printing that had flared up during the presidential campaign.

    It seems like this guy is making the right decisions here. Seems like he’s ripping off the bandaid for a problem that previous administrations had created. We’ll see if he can right the ship.


  • developers have figured out it’s more profitable to build fewer expensive properties than a large number of affordable ones

    You’re right about this part, but you need to ask why is this the case. It’s due to (among other things) over regulation and a stifling of home building.

    Most cities in North America make it very expensive and difficult to build. Zoning laws means there are only a few places they can build densely, and red tape increases the cost of building. This has caused a huge mismatch of supply and demand for housing in cities. So of course in that environment, what is most profitable is to cater to the wealthy.

    If developers could build faster than demand was growing, they would satisfy the wealthy demands and then move on to less profitable middle and lower income housing.

    This is how all markets work in this context. Electric cars were initially only made for the wealthy, because those sales were the only ones that could be profitable for the emerging technology. Now that the tech has improved and the wealthy demand is satisfied, it has come down to middle class prices


  • I think his rationale is to take away monetary control from future administrations, which I think is a laudable goal. Argentina should be the richest country in South America, but its people keep getting robbed by the printing press. I wonder if going to a gold standard (or if they feel like rolling the dice, a Bitcoin standard) would be a better option.

    (Cue the anti-crypto arguments because I mentioned Bitcoin)







  • Obviously if the state doesn’t enforce the titles they’re useless. Sure if the president of a corrupt country decided he wants your house he’s gonna get it. But a DLT would prevent lower level corruption that relies on the benefit of the doubt.

    If a corrupt official uses their access to change the PDF title of your house to be in his name, he could take that to court to take your house from you. A ledger would prevent that change from happening, or at least leave a permanent record of the change



  • AFAIK if you don’t trust the server and want to know exactly what code was run by it, there are only two options: a smart contract blockchain, or ZK Proofs (which came out of blockchain research)

    It’s a social technology. It allows outsiders to validate that the election tally code was run correctly. Elections are run every day on the Ethereum blockchain often that has financial implications for the voters. It doesn’t mean they never get hacked, but it certainly gives the users more visibility and trust in their vote than a centralized black box