The billionaire behind Ron Paul’s presidential campaign. Peter Thiel, the billionaire founder of PayPal, arrived at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C. His audience: hundreds of young libertarians, most of them dressed as if they expected to be ambushed by job interviewers.

madam1 · 3 months

He's planning for 2016? Unbelievable!

I can just see Sen. Rand Paul earmarking tax-payer's dollars towards this self-proclaimed libertarian's self-aggrandizement.

r3dd173r · 4 months

Thanks

rahul4real · 6 months

The only one I know of is the CNN-IBN 3 times a day audio versions of their news bulletins. Dreadful. As a rule, I've stopped listening to any podcast which isn't comedy based or story based. All the other stuff is not to my taste, politically speaking.

booksaid · 6 months

Thank you for a most sensible comment. It's rather rare in r/india.

r3dd173r · 6 months

We (most of us, at least) will lose our naivete when exposed to bullshit journalism. We have the capability to decide which source is to believed and which is not to be believed in.

Censorship is censorship, whatever the excuse may be.

r3dd173r · 6 months

Is this the placebo effect in another form?

r3dd173r · 6 months

This may appear to be the right thing to do, given the nature of the media now, but the consequences of curtailing media freedom will not be good in the long run. All people won't be fooled all of the time, however bad the media may be. The public can decide what to believe in, and what not to believe in.

probabilityzero · 11 months

What if the object of the debate isn't to change your opponents' belief but to expose their cynical/manipulative views and change the opinions of the listeners (voters) of the debate?

probabilityzero · 11 months

Maybe.

So there will be no change of public opinion, no change in election performance of political parties and no effect of events on beliefs, so no atheist conversions or vice versa too?

probabilityzero · 11 months

Maybe both the approaches are not productive.

Ridiculing and angry bellowing may end up energizing her base and also equate us with them in the eyes of neutral observers.

At the same time, detached fact-checking may end up creating an appearance of being drab, unappealing, and machine-like to the onlookers.

Maybe instead of detachment, some passionate take-down of untrue statements with substantiated facts will prove to be the most effective way of convincing voters.

probabilityzero · 11 months

The problem with labeling such people crazy is that a significant proportion of the population agrees with them. It's lazy to call them all crazy. It's better to persist in defeating their beliefs by exposing their silliness through ridicule, or by being more righteous and angry than they are.

TomAvian · 11 months

I started listening to the bugle after reading great things about it on reddit. Very much enjoying it now :)

dossier · 11 months

I'm just waiting for the time when people get fed up with these preliminary studies (studying only correlation, not causation) and demand better filtering of medical research findings.

r3dd173r · 11 months

The title is not obvious, but the article relates to the anti-piracy efforts of various European governments and R.M.S.'s response given in Spain.

r3dd173r · 11 months

The part I objected to in your original argument was that which I quoted in my first reply...

if their funding primarily comes from taxing their richest citizens then they will primarily care about their richest citizens and ignore the rest of the people.

If anything, that statement is drenched in libertarian orthodoxy.

It is a given that the richest citizens pay the most amount of tax revenues to the government. But that doesn't in any way lead to the notion that because of such hugely important source of revenue, the government ignores the rest of the people.

Political contributions, and not tax revenues, influence anti-poor and anti-middle-class policy decisions of the government.

All the semantics don't mean a thing if you don't agree that taxes (either a flat tax regime or a slightly progressive tax regime) don't corrupt a government. Taxes (subtle reallocation of wealth in favor of a more equal polity) is one of the primary reasons for the existence of a government.

r3dd173r · 11 months

Tacit consent occurs when someone does something that confers a tax liability. Tax liabilities are entirely transparent so when a person engages in an action knowing it confers a liability, they give tacit consent to meet that liability.

The government imposes the liability in the form of taxes which is what the phrase "taxes are mandated, not voluntary" means.

r3dd173r · 11 months

I agree that the tax rates are only part of that small group's decision-making process about where to live, but it is part and that is enough to suggest tacit consent.

Yeah, tacit consent, as in "I don't like paying so much taxes, but what to do? I'll end up in jail if I don't tacitly consent to pay those taxes."

That which involves the threat of incarceration doesn't imply voluntary consent. Refer to the Wesley Snipes tax evasion case.

NB: Everyone, including the rich, indulge in tax avoidance, which is legal, while tax evasion is illegal.

r3dd173r · 11 months

First, and most obviously, people choose to live under the US tax regime rather than live abroad (if you have disposable wealth it is fairly easy to get citizenship in a number of known tax havens as well as other nations).

Firstly, People choose to live in a country despite its tax regime, not because of it (most of the time). If they were asked, they (a majority of them) would probably want lesser taxes. Hence mandatory taxes, punishments for illegally evading taxes, etc.

Second, people choose to pursue different means of earning money at different tax rates (at the extreme people could simply not earn money to avoid paying any taxes). So, there is meaningful volition involved in the tax base.

I don't think most people use tax rates as the primary means of deciding their means of earning money. As far as economic decision making goes, they would probably calculate and compare the after-tax earnings of different professions/careers/businesses and choose that which promises the highest net earnings.

r3dd173r · 11 months

if their funding primarily comes from taxing their richest citizens then they will primarily care about their richest citizens and ignore the rest of the people.

It should be... if their funding primarily comes from voluntary corporate/private sponsorship (not taxes, which are mandatory, not voluntary), then they will primarily care about those corporate/private sponsors and ignore the rest of the people. FTFY. Speech != Money = Power

MaxOfS2D · 1 year

Thanks! ... been looking for something as detail-oriented as this for a long time without success. Now, I just hope that it does what it says and isn't too unstable.

jayerp · 1 year

There are some apps which can bind mouse gestures to hotkeys (including something like holding down the right mouse button and moving the scroll wheel up or down) in any application, not just Chrome. Strokeit is the most popular in Windows. Linux has some great mouse gesturing apps too.

r3dd173r · 1 year

For that to happen he needed more people like Rep. Weiner and Sen. Franken in the Congress. Otherwise anything bolder would have backfired pretty badly (ref: Clintons).

r3dd173r · 1 year

I think there will always be some quality journalism available for free on the net even if a majority in the industry decides to charge online. The Guardian for one appears to make public statements to that effect.

AFG991 · 1 year

Totally safe, non-addictive recreational drugs.

ms_zen · 1 year

Philip Kotler's books. They are college texts, but not boring.

r3dd173r

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