vimacs2

That's a common piece of libertarian propaganda but what happens in reality is businesses are forced to offer decent wages to attract labor and the ones that don't, perish - as they should.

It certainly wasn't hollow when work weeks could go anywhere from 60 to 80 hours during the industrial revolution. The fact that the minimum wage has been rendered sub-optimal after several decades of inflation and a dramatically different economy from when it started isn't really a great argument against having a minimum wage. It is a great argument for updating it though.

Your point against child labor is however complete nonsense. The fact that most so called "modern economies" are propped up by overseas labor often performed by children in the developing world is not an unfortunate accident. It's the consequence of the obvious fact that there are many jobs where businesses will happily choose low cost and high volume of labor over individual "skill, stamina, or strength".

Meanwhile, the GOP in America are trying to overturn long standing child labor laws in an attempt to battle increasing demands for higher wages by service workers so don't try to sell me the idea that it was businesses that decided to end child labor instead of the reality that it was activists and strikers - often facing heavy violence from the state in response - that ended the practice.

I think if I even started to talk about the laughable notion that slavery ended because of (instead of being massively bolstered and spread by) capitalists, I would be here all day so I'll save that diatribe for another time.

Your perspective seems to be completely orthogonal to reality.

1. That is actually how "wages work". The state decides what is the minimal possible wage and then businesses will pay that amount to low status workers because businesses seek to maximize the surplus value out of their workers. Suggesting that businesses will opt into paying their workers a living wage without an external pressure is laughable and ahistoric.

2. Nobody serious is suggesting that $15 is some magical number but given political reality, it seems like an easier sell than proposing a minimum salary that dynamically adjusts based on local cost of living and inflation. It would also be a massive increase relative to the abysmal figure it is today.

"There is a very real chance that the more of those battles they win, the worse the outcome will be."

Such as the battle for minimum wage, the weekend, the 40 hour work week or the abolition of child labor?

I'm waiting for a credible example of a pro worker regulation having overall negative consequences for workers.

I think the point was that it is circular reasoning.

As opposed to the other crowd who callously disregarded the dangers of the virus because it was primarily dangerous to the elderly.

I wonder what represents a larger group of people: those at risk from side effects of the vaccination or every human being older than 65?

Sorry, did you expect everyone to be blown away by the litany of common (and widely debunked) talking points from fossil fuel apologists?

"Some of" meaning a tiny fraction of the total population vs those that suffered no ill effects from the vaccination at all.

I actually think you're all misunderstanding what you're discussing. No, I won't expand as to why, I just wanted to continue this alleged misunderstanding train.

Presumably all with stage 3 cancer from the radiation on our way to a mandatory shift to pay off our several million dollar fare over the next 300 years of multigenerational indentured servitude.

I thought this would be an interesting comment about the article but it came right out of the gate with The Message (Wokeism Bad!) and I lost interest.

In all seriousness though, do you not see how incredibly self absorbed and outright anti-empirical this comes across as? The article briefly mentions the directly relevant and real existence of sexism in computing in the first paragraph (40 years ago mind you!) and then goes on to be almost entirely about the woman and her game, and you couldn't manage to contain your faux outrage at being reminded of uncomfortable truths.

I think the fact that you thought being a minority gives you a free pass for not reading the article and giving this nonsense sermon about wokeism tells me you don't really understand the movement you're lecturing against.

I love how you claim there is no line and then almost immediately afterwards establish that you do in fact have a line - that line being if a person is a conspiracy theorist or dangerous person. Unfortunately for your argument, Andrew Tate is both of those things.

You might also have forgotten about the inconvenient fact that Tate is facing credible accusations of human trafficking which he has so far narrowly avoided facing due to being based in Romania.

You do realize that we are specifically discussing ideas that are so reprehensible as to warrant being kicked off platforms, right?

Also, I'd love to see examples of the things you're talking about that are simultaneously filled with nuance and context, but also elicited an internet death penalty.

How about when the idea itself is directly calling for the opposition of the freedom of others? Fascist and racist ideas are not difficult to parse and there is generally little to no ambiguity in their interpretation. If you're not even capable of understanding the surface level reading of a proposition, then I frankly don't really care about who you trust and neither should society at large.

Again, this is just more absurd hypothetical scenarios. The reality is never as ambiguous as you're painting it. What you're describing is how a fascist would conduct a confrontation, not anybody who believes in truth. Nobody here is saying "denials are evidence of guilt" and fascists are not Jedis.

Also, nobody is being silenced here either because there is no obligation built into the first amendment or even the very concept of Free speech to provide a platform for anybody.

Nope, not even close to the truth. You should probably stop spreading FUD when it's apparent you don't know one iota about history.

When an idea is transparently horrible, it's proponents are not interested in discussion except as a means to propogate their message to others. In a reasoned debate, fascists always have to work the least because it always takes more mental effort to debunk a terrible idea than stating said idea.

Meanwhile, adhering to the rules of respectability means the fascist gets to expose far more people to their message in a format where they get to express their message without interruption.

The only reason why you should ever talk to a fascist is to ridicule them. Jean Paul-Satre put it best when talking about anti-Semites (though it really applies to all strains of fascism):

"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past."