I mean… I wasn’t trying to mock you as a person, only your politics.

I wasn’t being very direct and constructive, but I was trying to address some of what you were saying, albeit in a sarcastic way. I’m sure you don’t love Mark Zuckerberg and worship the free market like my caricature though. I tried to make my tone clear, but I appreciate that it’s hard online, especially for autistic people.

This is just the same kind of libertarian talking points again. Good job that you don’t personally like or use Twitter or Facebook, but big tech is always gonna act in the interest of capitalists and try to create monopolies that control information (at least in The West©).

Not sure what sources of information you like, but I guarantee you they’re either very obscure, discredited by propaganda or have similar problems to the social media you hate so much. Social media itself also affects what ordinary people can share and what they can communicate with others around the world.

All you’re really doing is responding to the guy yankin’ your chain by repeating yourself and saying I misrepresent you when I troll you.

I’m not even saying that

proceeds to explain how to vote with your wallet, how monopolies wouldn’t exist if people were smarter and that nobody needs these things anyway

🗽

I love how tech CEOs contribute so much. I mean, they built the internet! Their platforms got so big fair and square, and the free market never creates harmful monopolies. Just vote with your wallet. These freeloaders who think corporations that I OWN (my property) should be controlled or even stolen from me by the general public (lazy ignorant people who do NOTHING for society) piss me off so much!

Anyway, these tankies don’t even understand “communism”. It’s supposed to be when only hard working people like Mark Zuckerberg and I have any say (I mean, I won in the free market, so that makes me the rightful authority). Don’t listen to these fools, my fellow entrepeneur. I love you.

That’s like saying “I’m racist”

Ok but this isn’t really the same thing. A home isn’t a tool you rent just to use when you need it. Everyone needs a shelter to live in.

You give two reasons it’s preferable to rent rather than own your home:

1. You have to store it.

That’s just ridiculous.

2. You have to maintain it.

You do realise that you’re still paying to maintain it, right? The landlord is just also taking extra. Even if the landlord were charging you only what was strictly necessary for maintenance (which they aren’t), they’d still have unnecessary leverage over you just for existing in a space.

Don’t try to make excuses for landlords. We all know they’re vermin. They’re not doing you any favours by forcing you to keep paying high prices to live.

(Edit: formatting)

Well obviously the most moral thing would be to live in it themselves or give it away to someone who actually wants to live in it. I accept that practically nobody is gonna be virtuous enough to just give away a free apartment to a homeless person, but selling it for a (at least somewhat) reasonable price is probably what I’d realistically do (assuming no close friend or family member wanted it).

Renting it out is still inherently exploiting the person living there.

Also consider that no “good person” simply owns a residential property that they don’t live in.

I know I’m not who you’re replying to and other people might disagree with parts of this, but can anyone seriously not agree that all landlords are scum?

testing whether the testee understands their nation, its values, and the democratic principles it is founded on

It seems like you only want people with certain “values” to be able to vote. What even are a nation’s “values” anyway? Most of the time I hear that it’s just vague nationalist propaganda about how our nation and our people are wonderful. I will admit that’s a bit of a specific nitpick though.

As for “the structure of government and the content of the constitution”, I honestly don’t think the details of how laws are passed or how many seats are in congress, etc, matter much when it comes to deciding which policies you support and which party you’ll vote for.

By their very nature, laws like this exclude people who are less educated and have less free time and/or motivation to study for your test. These are almost always going to be also the most disadvantaged and poorly treated people in society.

It’s always just

say anything even vaguely related to China without also saying how much you hate China and everything about it = tankie

Then inevitably one person will come along and say “haha tankie, opinion rejected” and another will try to change the topic entirely to why “China is bad” for some very loosely related reason.

(Edit: typo)

Basically everyone has little knowledge about the vast majority of things. People who have strong beliefs generally think they have good evidence for them (even if what they think is clearly untrue and their evidence is nonsensical).

I’ve heard of “appeal to authority” and such, but at the end of the day I think that it’s generally sensible to just believe the mainstream expert consensus on something until you’re given good evidence otherwise, especially if you’re dealing with hard science.

Of course it’s ideal to know more about a topic than basic things you were told and took as fact and this should be paired with some level of media literacy and critical thinking, though.

Sounds like what chuds think the world is already like

That’s a quite reasonable response, but I will say that no actual revolution is likely gonna not involve a lot of violence. And yeah… protests are almost always gonna come at the very least with the threat of violence (for a reason). Plus, figures who do something violent that many see as ultimately justified can create awareness that could lead to more pressure on elites.

I just don’t think it’s productive to condemn violence in general. I don’t think violence not done by the state is in itself bad. Obviously a lone wolf going after random people they think deserve it isn’t gonna directly enact real change, but going on about how peaceful you are seems counterproductive.

Mass mobilisation and vigilante justice aren’t mutually exclusive, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.

Pic unrelated

That sounds nice but I don’t think that’s exactly the case in practice. There are often people who the state defends at the expense of others, who will never realistically receive any kind of justice from the state. I think things are also generally much better when these people are scared.

I’m not trying to advocate for violence against anyone specific but sometimes I think it’s best when people stand up for themselves (and the people) to show that they’re willing to enact some kind of justice in a corrupt system. Thinking of vigilantes in general as immoral and barbaric while thinking “democracy” alone can help you just plays into the hands of those who wish to exploit you imo.

Pic unrelated

Provide security for whom?

I heckin’ love the state’s monopoly on violence!

Nobody cares bro. My farts smell better than yours

I don’t think many people are gonna have “hot takes” based on a vaguely titled article behind a paywall.

Also “scandals” to do with the Chinese military have little to do with someone saying that Taiwanese military badges don’t prove anything about the situation in China.

Agreed.

https://theonion.com/you-cant-even-watch-a-movie-anymore-without-seeing-some-theme-explored/

What do you even mean here?

Any decision about censorship is a compromise of some kind between open communication/access to information and the prevention of the spread of content that could be deemed harmful in some way or another.

Maybe I’m just being thick right now but I’m really not sure who are supposed to be the “children”. It seems it could just as easily be the CPC for being uncompromising in their censorship of the internet, fascist trolls who say they should have a right to use slurs and disinformation to incite violence, or liberals who are unwilling to accept that a hardline stance needs to be taken to censor the fascists.

I’m unsure if this is an enlightened centrist take, you saying the CPC (and similar) do what needs to be done or that we need our freedom and the commenter above is the child. Whatever you mean, your comment (at least to me) comes across a bit rude and unconstructive.

Ok your comment successfully ragebaited me so tbh I’m probably the child.

Edit: changed CCP to CPC because that is the technically correct term, even though for some reason most English language outlets use “CCP”