Politics 2025

[Buster's Uncle]

I had this argument once w/ a boy wonder at WPC - he was coming from theoretically it -a monopoly- ought to be more efficient.  He was a lot easier to slap down.

I dunno why I care about being in this, it being one of those things like arguing about Reagan sucked that anyone who doesn't see it is speaking in tongues in my book, living a dream.  I shouldn't engage.

Minimum wage, like the standup comedian said, is the bossmen's way of saying "If we could pay you less, we would."  It's all of a piece, and you're siding with the bad guys this time.

[Elok]

EDIT: Also, if you could knock it off with the Bulverism, that would be nice.  I don't try to psychoanalyze your arguments, I just address them.  Or try to, anyway.

Your arguments about Microsoft's monopolistic behavior shift each time you learn what the actual facts of the matter are, but your position doesn't. What point is there in addressing each new argument? You'll surely come up with another.

I stopped discussing or even consuming politics online six months ago because it was making me too angry. I thought maybe I had calmed down a bit in the interim. Apparently not. Sure, I'll knock it off.

You're not obligated to continue the discussion or anything, but I wanted to think it over before replying.  I think I earned this reply with my little weasel-dodge after you brought up the outcome of the case.  I should have acknowledged it more directly: yes, this would be an example of the state forcing a corporation to discontinue obnoxious behavior, and if nothing else it certainly would have accelerated and streamlined the road to the desirable outcome of getting us all functional browsers.  But all this was in the context of Warren's fight to regulate large companies, so I wanted to ask, A, was the behavior in question monopolistic in intention (was he actually securing a present or future revenue stream for MS, as opposed to being a Frank Lloyd Wright style megalomaniac who wanted control for control's sake, even though it was stupid?) and B. did all this actually cause Microsoft to be a less dominant player overall?  The way I see it, Microsoft made itself such a pill that it poisoned its brand by the late nineties, making it very hard for it to expand into new opportunities when they arose.  With the result that now it's a pathetic appendage to the industry.  The lawsuit itself may have done them a small favor by forcing them to stop doing something self-destructive (and MS absolutely did self-destructive things in the name of its vision for how things ought to be).

But I hate admitting I'm wrong even about trivial things so I came off looking like a little weasel [complaint or disagreeable woman].  So yeah, fair.  For the record, I think of myself as a practical, rather than principled, libertarian; I would be perfectly open to the government regulating the hell out of everything if it got better results.  It's just that our government, if not every government, seems to be really good at messing everything up.  It picks dumb goals and pursues them in dodgy ways for half-baked reasons, and unlike Microsoft it doesn't shrink into a joke when it screws up.

[Elok]

I had this argument once w/ a boy wonder at WPC - he was coming from theoretically it -a monopoly- ought to be more efficient.  He was a lot easier to slap down.

I dunno why I care about being in this, it being one of those things like arguing about Reagan sucked that anyone who doesn't see it is speaking in tongues in my book, living a dream.  I shouldn't engage.

Minimum wage, like the standup comedian said, is the bossmen's way of saying "If we could pay you less, we would."  It's all of a piece, and you're siding with the bad guys this time.

A real monopoly could in theory be terrifyingly inefficient.  The government is a monopoly.  Where I disagree is this idea that a monopoly is actually all that easy to acquire, without doing things I think we both agree should be illegal (which basically means street-criminal behavior against rivals, or getting favors from the government).

The bossman would pay everyone but themselves less, if they could.  There's no point taking that personally.  They'd pay me less for sure, and they did.  Then they noticed that all their RTs kept jumping ship for the hospital across town, so they told HR to look into it, and hey, turns out you can't get away with paying RTs crap wages post-covid!  So I got a big raise last year, with everyone else.  The hemorrhaging of labor promptly stopped and we are now fully staffed, at least for day shift.

With minimum wage, this kind of calculation doesn't apply, because literally anyone can do the job so you are always, always replaceable.  Those jobs are good for high schoolers and kids working their way through college, bad for anybody else.  There are always more kids saving up for a first car.  Ideally, all those people should be moving up to more skilled labor as they age.  If they are not, that is the problem that needs solving.  Making the employer pay more, well, you can get away with that up to a point, but ... crikey, it's late.  We can get into Elok's General Argument Against Protectionism some other time.  Or not.  Gotta get up early for work tomorrow.

[Buster's Uncle]

I had a PM political argument on Facebook a few years ago -that's a quadruple yuck by my lights- the topic "You say you're not a republiKKKan, but you take their side every single time and have little to say that isn't their talking points, and mostly nasty conservatroll slams at that.  -He's a cousin's son I used to play with a lot when he was little, so I didn't need to be super-polite.  I didn't bring it up, but he's big into th' Jesus these days, I suspect in an actual KKK church.

In the course of things, I posted a .gif of AOC shaking her head in a reproving NO.  I was trolling, yes; I did it aware of how rationally those people react to her.  I got flooded with about 20 memes and .gifs in very short order, which would have won the argument for me had there been an impartial judge, and I did declare victory - but you know, no real victory w/ conservatrolls, ever.

So, the point of the story is, the meme that stuck with me was a defacement of Rachel Maddow, no joke that's lingered in memory.  Like her or not, that woman is gracious to an actual fault and ought to be left out of such monkeyshines.  She ended her show one night wishing corrupt war criminal and ground-breaking fascist Dick Cheney the best when he was going in for surgery.  She used to have Pat Buchanan on regularly -he's far-righter than right, but one of the people who GENERATES rightwing talking points, and reliable about having new ones- for a goodly part of a year until he said something too racist and horrible.  Gracious. to. a. fault., she is, and ought to be left out of the dumbest, ugliest poo-slinging stuff, by any standard of decency.

And that relates to how I feel about disrespecting Dr. Warren.  -Absolutely NOT gracious to a fault, but a rare example of a democrat at the national level with adequate fight in her in these loathsome times we find ourselves trapped in.  She's SO much better than the cheap-shots and koolaide that goes around about her, as is Ms. Occasional-Cortez and Dr. Maddow.

-Note that I haven't even mentioned Mrs. Pelosi and Mrs. Clinton, and that all are women and, coincidentally, prime targets of the cheap shots and koolaide - Elok, YOU'RE better than that, too, or at least should be.  The koolaide has poo in it.