Clement Tahershamsi @Clementulus@qoto.org

@freemo @rrb @pj An interesting discussion. As someone who works in policing in canada I have been exposed to a lot of information about gun use in crime and the pros/cons of gun ownership and use in general. One of the aspects I think that you overlook when arguing that people would be safer if everyone carried around guns is that the vast majority of altercations, whether physical or otherwise, come about when otherwise reasonable individuals become emotionally disturbed or incensed (drugs and alcohol often contribute to this), then they make decisions they otherwise would not. A huge percentage of assaults/suicides by guns occur in residences where they are not safely stored, because individuals in the midst of an emotional episode can grab them and use them without a chance for a second thought. Suicide is also a huge one, you are *far* more likely to successfully commit suicide if there is a gun in your home and seeing as how the rate of suicidality in most developed countries keeps on increasing, probably the best reason to not own a gun is to protect you from yourself! And I think the argument for America being a naturally more violent country than other developed nations is not adequately supported by evidence, people in canada get into altercations all the time, but so few of them involve firearms that they are less likely to turn deadly, in fact, the communities within Canada that have the most fatal altercations are the very ones with the highest prevalence of gun ownership! Not having easy access to guns is certainly helping to prevent a ton of needless gun deaths. While it is true that a dedicated individual can acquire the necessary firepower to commit an atrocity, like what happened a few years ago in Nova Scotia, that event took years of planning and preparation; what gun control helps to prevent are the deaths that occur from more temporary insanities.

@logically@mastodon.world ?? the word is used to describe a system of government where citizens (male landowners) were allowed to vote on certain decisions for their polis (city-state) as opposed to a tyranny where one man made all the decisions, usually a heriditary monarch. The word is a mix of demos and krateo meant to imply "rule of the citizenry".

@rbreich and here I thought they were just doing it for the lulz.

@Irreverent_B Again, I said that you cannot personify an idea. It's humans doing the exploiting and the ignoring of externalities within societies that are to various degrees, capitalist. And are you really of the mind that people in Western style democracies are being, on the whole, being exploited more nowadays than in say, Stalinist Russia, or serfs under the old feudal lords, or the slaves of the Roman empire? We can say that all exploitation is wrong, but we should acknowledge progress that has been made.

@Irreverent_B I didnt say that we dont currently ignore externalities in western societies, I said that humans have a long tradition of doing just that going back thousands of years and in all parts of the world, regardless of economic system.

@Irreverent_B You don't need to agree with my assertions; but do you really think that posting fiery condemnations of society on social media and dismissing any challenges to your opinions is helping society progress, or is this just a way to make yourself feel good? (No judgement, you are allowed to vent on here if you want to, just genuinely curious is all)

@Irreverent_B This sort of rhetoric is, in my opinion, unhelpful. First of all it personifies an economic system, then blames it for a whole lot of things that a) occurred in just about every society regardless of economic system and b) do not even follow from actual data.
Capitalism simply means that all individuals own the product of their labour (which is their capital). Slavery (and serfdom) is a quality of feudal and other older economic systems which was progressively abolished as societies became more capitalist (did it not occur to you that most of the colonization and trans-atlantic slave trade was done by nations that were absolutist monarchies at the time?). Also calling capitalism inefficent belies the fact that the most developed economies, where people enjoy the highest living standards are some of the most capitalist countries in the world and that all examples of centrally planned economies throughout history have led to devastating famines and a host of other problems. Finally, capitalism does not ignore externalities, humans do, and have done so, in every type of economic system that has ever existed.

@thomasfuchs you astrophotographers are going to push me to do something terrible to my wallet in the near future.

@scottsantens Kind of a rosy view of the past when gas was so cheap that everyone was literally burning diesel to heat their homes (which had almost no insulation) plus there was a huge influx of imported goods from countries that had child labour and sometimes outright slavery. Yeah, stuff was cheap back then for a lot of reasons, not all of them good. Lack of real wage growth is a problem, but we shouldnt pretend that the differences in buying power now vs previous decades is all due that one issue.

@freemo @Hyolobrika@berserker.town @Pat @farooqkz @BobKerns @tonic
That makes sense. I had been under the assumption that that was the case on this instance but was just curious to see how people think on the matter.

@Hyolobrika@berserker.town @Pat @farooqkz @freemo @BobKerns @tonic
But the sharing of beliefs is not necessarily the same as proselytization. It could be done in the spirit of open and frank discussion. And the question remains, is stating one's religious beliefs online grounds to be banned from those forums? Clearly, anyone who believes in the Sharia and tells me about it online will not have the power to impose it on me here in Canada, regardless of whether they would want to or not. Should I, therefore, be insulated from all possibility of discussions with those people?

@Hyolobrika@berserker.town @Pat @farooqkz @freemo @BobKerns @tonic

This conversation I think has strayed from the initial question of @farooqkz, which was whether him sharing his religious beliefs or verses from his faith's scripture on this platform could be construed as hate speech and lead to banning. Equally, would prohibiting farooq from sharing those beleifs on this instance itself be an injustice towards him? I am actually curious on this point rather than discussions on what is/isn't "proper" Islam.

@shuttersparks @freemo I always took ideas to be immaterial, like the air. They float around our heads (our thinking organ) like clouds. We stand under them. I don't step all over things I would like to know with my feet

@jpkmensah to be fair, if all those banks had gone down after 2008 a whole lot of middle income wage earners would have lost most of their retirement and other savings (many did anyway). Letting the powerfull off the hook for what was essentially a huge scam was the real crime in that whole situation.

@beaveinflow There is a Black Mirror episode about this.

@freemo
Prosidering would be form a thought by looking side-eye at a bunch of data points without "considering" what they mean when brought together.
And to quibble about latin: it should be exversing and suffix technically XD