none. my interlocutor wants to reserve the right to become a billionaire so that he could do so. i love bullet trains! i'd support the project. but i want a democratic state and collaborative social capital behind it.
if you can take the world we share and unilaterally cause great trenches to be dug and trains to be made and homes to be moved, yeah, you are a dictator. 1/
maybe we can have a system where deployment of great wealth is regulated by an active democratic state, so such deployments only occur with some version of approval of the public, in which case it's less accurately characterized as dictatorial. 2/
but to the degree great wealth itself controls or corrupts the form of a democratic state, expenditure becomes a means of dictatorial action, absolutely. /fin
it'd really suck if your family had planned a trip — maybe bought plane tickets, prepaid a hotel room — to one of America's national parks over the break.
[new draft post] Wreckresentative democracy drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/12/20/w...
that's why we have a state and a financial system, to deploy substantial portion's of society's capital behind socially worthwhile projects. you participate and collaborate to help get it done. you don't get to just be dictator, even if the outcomes you want to dictate are ones you think virtuous.
you can live quite nicely. when you want to deploy social resources at a serious scale, you need to collaborate with other people’s. that should not be a unilateral, individual choice.
$100M would be a more than sufficient wealth cap.
i wonder if Trump has so internalized the idea that money is the game of life’s ultimate scorecard that he just can’t defy Elon, a man two orders of magnitude greater than he is.
setting tips in envelopes outside seems to be asking for trouble. i’m paranoid when i leave a cash tip in a little billfold on an outdoor table.
it’s a slippery slope, though. if you come up to the bar to order your drink, get it handed to you, then walk off to rejoin your friends at some table, how is that different from ordering a sandwich at the counter?
do you (or, if you are like me, did you when you were younger) tip at bars?
sure. restaurants that forbid tipping and assure us they pay their servers adequately are great. like a civilized country. i just never know anymore, outside of full-service restaurants, whether to tip or not to tip. i find every point-of-sale a vexing, no win situation.
even if she didn’t rise in the face of adversity, i presume a server at a traditional full-service restaurant in the US would count among the deserving, no?
who deserves it?
it’s a bit pathetic that we watched RBG undo herself and the country because of career and ego and a misguided sense of unique capability. then we watched JRB do just the same. now we have to live in the country their failure, our failure, bequeathed to us. it’s not clear we’ve learned anything.
😢❤️🙏
the correct honorifics are God Emperor Musk and Assistant Principal Trump, right?
in cars we are traffic to one another—dangerous, frustrating—when if we were on foot, we would be liveliness, buzz.
a thing i find astonishing is the fate of the republic may have turned on a choice to indulge an office romance. perhaps the world’s most consequential kiss.
Loading quoted Bluesky post...
deceptive pricing as free speech: “The line of argument will be that mandating the display of all-in pricing information amounts to compelled speech by the government forced on private enterprise, violating the First Amendment.”
Loading quoted Bluesky post...