I know you were being rhetorical. Your rhetoric is pathetic. Please stop assuming people have misunderstood just because they don’t like what you say.

You are discussing strategy to avoid the most harm. Harm avoidance. That’s fear. You are literally describing fear without using the word fear and acting like I was the one misunderstanding. You need to understand that you are acting on fear. It’s ridiculous, and I was right to point it out.

You mentioned my other comment in passing like it meant nothing to you, then say that no one hear has given any real arguments? Maybe you just need to read in better faith. You clearly don’t have any respect for my concerns with Biden if your comment demonstrates a complete unwillingness to even entertain the thought.

Canadian btw, you don’t need to convince of anything to do with voting strategy anyway. Wasted energy. I just think you guys are being really silly and can’t see the forest from the trees. You could probably use third party observers to get your heads on straight.

The death of democracy also helps fascism, and it’s widely agreed upon that there is no democracy without freedom of expression.

It should follow then, that if someone were to suppress freedom of expression, then they are contributing to the end of democracy, no matter what ends they’re trying to meet. That is to say, the ends don’t justify the means. If someone contributes to the end of democracy while trying to fight someone that they see as the villain of democracy, then it’s still fair to say they contributed to the end of democracy, no matter how noble you think the goal.

So, at the moment, I would say the biggest threat to democracy would be if a federal administration began working with corporations and social media to enact censorship - to destroy freedom of expression.

• Two federal courts ruled that the Biden Administration unduly influenced social media moderation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• The Department of Justice identified at least 45 federal officials who communicated with social media companies about misinformation.
• The Post’s exposé on Hunter Biden’s laptop was suppressed by Facebook and Twitter after the FBI warned Facebook to watch out for a “dump” of Russian disinformation, which bore an uncanny resemblance to the stories.

Regardless of who Biden’s enemy is, whether you think what these people were saying was unpalatable, or even if it’s your opinion that they’re dangerous, they didn’t break the law with their speech and therefor the government had no right to censor.

If you claim to be for democracy and freedom of expression, then any claim of defence that these should be exceptions would simply be hypocritical, and a violation of your democratic principles. This is getting more and more common, and we can’t have democracy if it’s common for people to violate their democratic principles.

I repeat: we can’t have democracy if it’s common for people to violate their democratic principles.

Please stop being so dramatic, you shouldn’t be afraid to talk to other people about their political opinions.

I don’t completely buy your argument that if the government forgives a $180,000 loan that it’s money from the Federal Reserve that covers it and thus inflates the economy by $180k. Like if you wanted $100 for food and I gave it to you and I decided to forgive it. I don’t consider it paying myself $100 to account for it. I view it more “I gave up the opportunity to make $100”. Remind me of that joke about two economist in the forest.

That’s because you’re not the federal reserve, and no money was added in that transaction. Also, in this example, you are out 100 dollars. Whether you forgive it or not, the money came from you, and now that’s money you don’t have. Your example is actually 1-to-1 with my first example (where Sallie Mae gets screwed over), but scaled down. If America decides on your behalf that the debt is forgiven, then America is now $100 in debt to you that it has to immediately repay.

Maybe you missed this part of my comment, but that’s why i mentioned how important it is that it’s billions of dollars. Sallie Mae would never accept that billion of dollars just came out of their pocket without their consent. It has to be regenerated.

So, if you give a friend $100, and the government forgives it without committing an obvious crime against you. then you and your friend now have a total of $200 even tho you started with $100.

It’s also partly why I started talking about the historical component. If you study how these things played out in history, this shouldn’t surprise you or give any doubt. Generating more currency has been standard practice in so many corrupt governments, and it always leads to further economic trouble. It shouldn’t surprise you to find out that if the people who can generate money need to pay billions of dollars they’ll just generate it.

How is the government nefarious for forgiving loans? You claim it’s about gaining greater control over the populous. However your own argument is forgiving loans would basically cause inflation to go up. Causing people to buy and save less. Hurting businesses in the process. Possibly causing a recession or even worse a depression.

I’m sorry, I feel like you need to read my comment again. I think you’re missing a lot of what I’m saying. You mentioned you were tired, were you just skimming my comment? Genuinely, not throwing shade.

What you are describing is exactly what I was describing. We are in agreement here, the general populace all lose, private businesses lose, it’s bad for the economy, it’s bad for the people. So, everybody loses, at least, assuming people have good intentions, right? So, the only people who are potential winners, are those who see advantage in people’s misfortune. Does that make sense? I’m saying the only people who find this to be advantageous are those who are nefarious in nature, because to find advantage in people’s misfortune is nefarious.

As for control, consider this. If you make $100,000, you get to decide what to do with it. If someone loans you $100,000, you have to play by their rules. Furthermore, if you’re so in debt and the economy is weak, you would have to rely on what they’re willing to loan you money for to maintain liquidity and stay afloat. The more that the government and public corporations decide what to fund, the more they’re controlling you.

Historically, governments have their most control when populations are fat and happy. Most civil unrest are in uncertain times, such as recessions and depressions. If anything it’s more nefarious for the government to keep the loans and jack up the interest rates where people have no ability to pay it off and can’t bankrupt out of it.

This is an interesting way to look at it. The problem I see with it, is that the times that people are most fat and happy, are when they were most free (least controlled). I mean, you’re kinda not wrong, but also totally are? I’ll try to explain, you’re right that a happier population is generally more compliant and effective - but that’s not the same thing as control. I repeat: Stability of the nation, effectiveness of the people, and compliance to the state’s wishes, are not synonymous with controlling the population.

Let’s look at some historical examples again.

• I talked about Caesar and Diocletian before, so I’ll use their eras as an example again. Caesar lived in a period of time where the people were generally wealthy and well fed, and the senate was both still in power, and highly incentivized to veto legislation that restricts freedoms of the people. Free trade prospered, the people were happy (generally), and the population was growing. Caesar’s veterans were loyal followers, that believed in him, his abilities, and his promises almost as much as they feared him. Diocletian, however, ruled over a period of decline in population and economy, and yet the power of the state grew exponentially. His control over the people was massive, in fact, this is one of the first historical examples of wide scale price fixing by the state. People lost so much freedom under Diocletian that historians tend to call it the beginning of Feudalism - plebeian rights began to much more resemble those of medieval peasants.

• A more concise example from Rome that illustrates control, is when the early Republic forgave debts if you provided labor to the state. “We paid your debt, now you have to work for us to make it worth it”.

• Maybe consider what the word totalitarian means to you in more recent history. A state that controls everything within it. What states have been totalitarian in the past? We don’t typically correlate “totalitarianism” with a fat, happy, and compliant population, but it’s the epitome of “control”. Stalin’s Soviet State had total control over his population. The most control is total control, and total control is totalitarianism. I don’t know about you, but when I think totalitarianism, I think people like Mao, Pol Pot, Hitler, Kim Jung-Il… All of these people exert(ed) maximum control over their people, and it came at the cost of the people every time.

Plus I think it’s rich to give upset at people for making dumb choices before going to the place that makes them smart enough to realize how dumb they there.

I never suggested I was upset at students who made bad choices. I said we need a cultural shift that discourages young students from seeing it as a default choice. Where did you get that I was upset at them for that? I think it’s tragic that society guides them towards such as risky choice - I’m specifically not putting blame on them and suggesting something that has nothing to do with their personal choice. How could you think I was mad at them

This was the last sentence in my first comment, please read it again: “as long as you know that it comes from a place of genuine concern for everyone including students with debt”.

I really appreciate the conversation, I appreciate that you took the time to type your thoughts out when sleep was calling you, but I do take issue with unfavorable assumptions like this, especially when I can see it coming a mile away and try really hard to nip it in the bud but it just doesn’t seem to work. I appreciate you but please don’t ever do that to me anymore.

Anyways, sorry for the long comment again, let me just try and get back to a point of agreement. I’m okay with 0 interest loans for students, but that’s also a service that I think is worth paying for. The circumstance I laid out before, where some interest is paid so the loaner can profit, while the student still pays less in total for school, does seem like an ideal case, but I don’t see a need for the education department of the state to profit, so maybe state given loans could be 0 interest? For private loans, the best case is for the individual to establish an interest rate and cap that’s reasonable for them (this can and does already happen sometimes). But, if you want to treat student like a protected class (probably warranted these days), establishing an interest cap by law for student loans specifically might be a good idea.

Sure! So for starters, I’m going to guess our working definitions of inflation are a little different. Inflation, in the general sense, refers to an expansion. When you inflate a balloon, it is expanding because the supply of air increases. This expansion can cause a rise (if it’s helium), but the rise and the inflation are separate things. Likewise, if the supply of money increases, that would refer to an inflation or expansion of the currency, and the prices would rise in response, because greater supply of something makes it less valuable. They’re linked, for sure, but not the same conceptual thing.

I understand if you don’t want to accept that into your nomenclature but I do find it’s the more workable - and historically consistent, for that matter - definition of the word. Just as long as you understand how I use the word is all :)

So, to the loans. There’s a few ways to get a loan, let’s say you sign a deal with Sallie Mae. To keep it simple, let’s say they have $100,000 to give, so that’s the loan you get. Under normal circumstances, you would get your education, and then sometime later pay it back by your own means, after interest has accumulated. So, let’s say you pay $180,000 back in total, so $80,000 in interest. Technically, you paid $80,000 for SLM to pay $100,000 on your behalf, and you got you education in the process. SLM makes a big profit, you get educated for cheaper, and the school still gets their tuition fees. This benefits the shareholders of SLM who then have more revenue to participate more in the economy.

These numbers may seem idealistic to you, depending on where you’re from, who you sign with, etc… I’ll address that in a sec, but they’re not real numbers anyway haha. The important part to point out about this process is that the additional $80,000 comes from a private individual - meaning it most likely came from the supply of money that already exists amongst the general public (you worked for it). Same goes for the loaned money in this case, and as it’s payed off all that revenue is recirculated in the process

Now let’s say, for whatever reason, you don’t or can’t pay it off at all. So, you’re given $100,000 and ten years later they’re expecting $180,000 back. If the government decides on SLM’s behalf to forgive your loan, then it has effectively taken $180,000 of revenue away from the organization. Not only do I find this wrong personally (I don’t think the government should interfere with business like that), and that I’m pretty sure it would be massively illegal, but it would also certainly put that organization out of business if it’s done at scale, which means that service disappears for everyone else. But, like I said, I’m certain this isn’t how they’d do it, and that’s probably why.

What has to happen is for the government to pay it off themselves. Given that America’s national debt is still trending up (last i checked anyway), I would say it does not have the spare funds to pay off student’s loans. The way America solves that problem these days is the federal reserve generates more money, which means that forgiving $180,000 in debt will directly inflate the currency by $180,000. That’s not a lot by itself, but I think Biden’s forgiving billions of dollars altogether, which means the supply of American dollars will inflate by billions, which will greatly decrease its value. This, of course, means that the students whose loans were just forgiven will have way less buying power.

This basically means that the entire working class, including those who had their loans forgiven, will have way less buying power, struggle to build savings, and have less means to move themselves up economically. Having such a large portion of the consumer market struggling to get by will hurt businesses, more loans given, more loans forgiven… The only potential winner is a nefarious government who just gained greater control over its population. The reason I say nefarious is because a non-nefarious government would see no advantage here.

TL;DR: forgiving billions of dollars inflates the currency by billions of dollars which totally fucks over the people it was trying to help.

As for what the government can do, is perhaps institute laws that reduce or cap interest on student loans, but I think that already exists (it does where I live anyway). That would help out those who’ve been exploited by high interest student loans (or prevent it).

But, the best way to solve the student loan crises is a massive cultural shift in how we approach education. I don’t think art school should be worth as much as it costs, but people are willing to pay for it so it’ll never change. I think a lot of people go to school out of a sort of obligation, or an assumption that it’ll lead somewhere good, without considering what a massive investment it is. People don’t really see it as an investment, but it is. If you’re thinking about going to school, you have to be able to judge whether or not it’ll be worth it, just like every other big risky investment. If you’re gonna pay that much to go to school, you better have the money and really want to go to school or expect to make returns on the investment.

The NEXT best way to solve it is to have a strong enough economy that those who do get fucked over (generally, not just by loans) or make mistakes can easily recover and make up for it if they try to. That’s the only factor the government is actually responsible for, and I would say forgiving loans actively works against it. So, as far as the government is concerned, it should be in its best interest to never forgive loans.

I’m sorry, I know this is a long comment, but there plenty of historical example of good and bad debt relief efforts. We have so much to learn from!

• Julius Caesar instituted reforms that reduced interest owed on outstanding debts. He also personally provided relief in extreme cases. Yet, when debt cancellation came up in the senate, he strongly opposed the method. So much so, that he personally took out such a massive loan the he became the most indebted man in Rome, and thus the primary benefactor for such a bill that was meant to help the common folk. Suddenly it wasn’t such a popular idea anymore lol. Since he did so much to help Rome economically, I think I’ll trust his judgement on that one.

• Okay not exactly a debt forgiveness example but it’s worth mentioning that the emperor Aurelian literally SOLVED inflation by physically stopping all currency printing operations within reach of the political power base. One of the only times in history that’s been achieved.

• Diocletian’s reign began less than ten years later and was incredibly heavy handed in his economic reforms, including debt cancellation efforts, and also happened to rule over one of the greatest inflationary periods in history. Just ten years later. Granted, that was way more than just the debt cancellation.

• King Henry III was fiscally irresponsible and reigned over a time of economic hardship. Many of his Baron’s were indebted to Jewish money-lenders, so he just issue the Statute of Jewry and cancelled a ton of debt at the expensive at the cost of economic hardship for the Jewish community.

I could go on but I don’t feel like typing this comment anymore lol

Has anyone ever told you why they think it’s a bad idea to cancel debt that wasn’t just about unfairness that other people get stuff? Because honestly, I hear that argument straw manned on the left way more often than I hear it used on the right, and I feel that those who support this decision and condescend on those who don’t haven’t actually heard the more legitimate concerns with it.

Simply put, this - in my opinion and most economists - is a horribly irresponsible economic decision that will genuinely cause real problems. If you’re interested in hearing why, I’d love to explain my stance from it, as long as you know that it comes from a place of genuine concern for everyone including students with debt

The weird thing is I get cover art and hardware transcoding with Emby but I’ve never paid. I know it has it because 4k playback was lagging until I enabled it 🤷‍♂️ and it would be weird to imagine emby without cover art of any kind. Doesn’t every media app just scrape by title? Is this referring to something else?

I also use the native emby app on my phone, I think my smart TV has it too, unpaid. Man, I’m really confused about their paid features lol everything I think would be needed seems to be in native Emby as well. So weird.

Good to know though, I could see downloading for offline use being very useful for travel and stuff.

Emby or Jellyfin?

I feel like your interpretation of my comment is really off. I’ve never had issues with paywalls, and the reason I said the ad thing was my only gripe was because I thought I didn’t have to explicitly say it wasn’t a big deal. I haven’t had any problems that make me feel like I owe it to myself to find something better, because my Emby experience has been great.

The point of my comment is that I’m curious what I’m missing out on, since people’s problems with Emby don’t really line up with my experience.

I keep hearing this, but my emby server has been running strong for a few years now without issue. My only gripe with it is the emby premiere ads that take up a lot of home screen space, but I got rid of it with custom CSS that you can put in emby settings, doesn’t even show up on the phone app anymore.

I’ve heard Jellyfin implemented features that emby puts behind a paywall too, but I’m not sure what. Care to fill me in on what I’m missing?

What a weird question. No one specifically owns and dictates the feminist movement, and op didn’t imply that there was. The answer you’re demanding is at the core of cultural movements evolve, which is an incredibly complicated topic and I think it’s kind of shitty to ask this pose this question like some obvious truth they’re missing or something.

Modern feminist culture is incredibly poisonous, because its values were gradually eroded from bad actors. The people who dictate movements are simply the more passionate and convincing people that choose to try to. If a movement happens to have pretty vague ideas about its goals, it’s actually very easy to undermine its greater purpose to more nefarious specific goals. Or rather, it’s hard to keep from happening, because often the more selfish and destructive people are the ones who seem most passionate.

I took a look at your comments purely because his reply made me curious. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your comments. The only downvoted comment of yours I saw was that Trudeau has the worst approval rating ever, which is a matter of record, not opinion.

It’s not on you, you’re fine. I’ve had a similar experience here, people just don’t seem to be able to take disagreement as anything less than personal

That’s interesting, when I look online, most people seem to think all gun owners are totally careless. I say it because I’ve lived in that culture before, everyone where I’m from has their hunter’s safety training and I’ve never been out shooting with anybody did it carelessly.

Is this your impression of friends/acquaintances of yours that shoot or have you taken part as well and seen it first hand?

Not sure what op meant, but there’s a lot of angles that I can see it being true. Having a shooting range on personal property is very different in rural Arizona than places with higher population density. The risk is objectively not as large. The space makes it unlikely to hit anything you wouldn’t want to target, and it’s very ingrained in gun culture to be smart about what direction you fire.

They may have also been referring to accepted risk vs freedoms. Gun people understand that there’s a risk to owning guns, but it’s an acceptable risk because they value guns, much like how people understand the risk of traveling by vehicle yet still choose to.

Why aren’t you responding to the topic of the thread? What you responded to was not the heart of my comment nor was it the point I was trying to get across to you.

Do you think Nestle is acting in good faith?

You really insisted on steering the conversation toward this study, yet it’s largely flawed. I know I’m taking the bait, but as someone who grew up on a farm in a rural community, several red flags were very apparent. What they are talking about are gross emissions, that’s what’s measured by carbon capture. What these types of measurements don’t consider, is how much CO2 the immediate environment is going to recapture and make use of. Cattle and buffalo before them have been a part of the north American prairies for thousands of years, and the cycle has always been the bovine graze on the grass, which spurs regrowth, aided by the gasses emitted by the bovine after eating said grass.

I believe they’re being selective about where they’re measuring their data as well, because it does not make sense for land use change to be a factor in the vast majority of cases for grass fed cattle. Again, this is why location matters, cattle do well on grassland. It also makes no sense for the emissions of machinery to be coupled in the data with the emissions of cattle. It’s also virtually impossible for the machinery emissions to be that low for wheat and rye specifically, because I know first hand how many diesel tank refills it takes get the seeding done alone, let alone the constant maintenance it takes afterwards. It doesn’t take any machinery to raise grassland cattle there but it sure does take machinery to farm grains, farmers have heavy machinery in their fields constantly. You have to plow the field, disc, harrow, spray herbicide, spray pesticide, seed the crop, spray fertilizer, roll the peas, swath the canola, harvest all of it with a massive machine, all while a cow chills watching from the next field over lol.

My guess is that they’re referring to warehouse cattle, which don’t exist everywhere (outright illegal in Canada I think). This is why it matters where it comes from. Can’t really verify any of their data either since the source studies are behind a pay wall.

I’d also even say there’s far more to ecology than raw emissions. Almond production has been a massive hindrance on California’s water supply, They’re prone to drought already, and they’re still mass producing almonds while in a drought right now. Regardless of emissions, we would be actively contributing to an ongoing crisis if we increased plant milk demand. To do so out of ecological principle would be incredibly ironic. But, that seems to be what encouraging plant based milk over cattle has done.

Again, you’re dissenting on something that wasn’t asserted. If that’s your opinion, then that’s your opinion, and that’s fine. But, if there’s a conflict of interest in a study, then we have reason to doubt the results are legitimate. This is what the comment was saying, and that’s drastically far from a total conclusion one way or the other.

Your question also suggests there’s one correct answer, which just plane isn’t true. It makes more ecological sense for some people to consume milk products in favor of plant based just based on location alone.

No, they’re suggesting that Nestle is probably acting in bad faith by attempting to close a monopolistic gap rather than genuinely doing something for the betterment of the world

You’re right people are responsible for things, you’re right that that’s obvious. In fact, it’s so obvious, it’s wrong of you to imply that my point suggested otherwise, because it obviously doesn’t. Your sentiment supports my comment, people are responsible for things, so if you have a problem with something, and you feel the need to blame someone for it, you should actually blame the right person. “The rich” are not a group of people united out of a common goal, and include all sorts of political and cultural sentiments, many of which you would support. Moreover, the post makes no suggestion as to what problems they’re talking about anyway, so you kinda just have to already believe “rich people” in general are the people responsible for any general set of problems you choose to believe. If you don’t see the flaw in this thinking, you’ve got a serious problem with political vitriol, and you need to stop blindly circle jerking everything you see on lemmy.

The sad thing is, I know you’d agree with me if I said the exact same thing in a thread blaming socialists or Marxists or something. My opinion that you shouldn’t blame general problems on a general group of people for the sake of hating on them doesn’t change based on context.

Anytime you’re told that group A is responsible for your problems rather than group B, you’re being lied to. Including this post