Erik Haugen @ech@qoto.org

@JMMaok @briankrebs As the article says: "Another option: fining Cruise ... thousands of dollars for each robotaxi road blockage." <-- Then they can get back to maximizing profits.

@12thRITS @GottaLaff This might be why op included the word "proverbial". (This sentence is like the one sentence in the entire OP that I don't have a problem with. 😂 )

This is great. I don't really have a problem with Musk and Twitter/X/whatever-it's-called per se, but if they're driving people to consider open standards for basic things like this then A+.

@duviobaz @arstechnica I feel like conservatives are usually arguing about surgery and other medical treatment for *minors*, and not about adults as much. Do you think this isn't true? (It's entirely possible I'm not reading broadly enough or something.)

@evana @jhon_don @flexghost That just sounds like "going on vacation with family" (assuming they're like-minded). I'm not seeing your point.

@jhon_don @flexghost I'm all for tighter standards in this area, but I'm curious: is there any reason to think any of Thomas' decisions were different as a result of these vacations with his rich friends?

I mean, it's not like he would have voted for Dobbs or something if nobody had taken him on a luxury vacation, right?

@alienskyler @feinzer @sorrowl @7666 @apophis @freemo @meadow @winter "chance to explain himself"?

People want a little echo chamber where everyone does performative lament, they don't want to deal with explanations.

Much better reputational boost to be seen as smacking down the fascists ASAP.

Let them have their thing.

@alienskyler @feinzer @sorrowl @7666 @apophis @freemo @meadow @winter The software is named after the character in Pulp Fiction, so it sort of has to do with the clothing sense of the word, and as far as I know, and nothing whatsoever to do with the slur for disabled people. They're etymologically completely different.

It reminds me of the kerfuffle about the word "whitelist". (There's a slightly different thing going on there, granted, but still.)

@RD4Anarchy @HeavenlyPossum @mmclark @pixelpusher220 @SallyStrange

"It can be difficult for us to imagine what things might look like outside the pervasive influence of capitalism." Yeah, that's basically my questions :)

A lot of things seem better in straightforward ways with socialism, a few things like this one I'm having trouble wrapping my head around. thanks!

@RD4Anarchy @HeavenlyPossum @mmclark @pixelpusher220 @SallyStrange Oh interesting; it sounds like you are unasking my question, essentially – there would be no factories or complex industry/etc, yes?

@davidzipper US automakers make plenty of small cars? I don't quite understand you.

@HeavenlyPossum @SallyStrange @neonsnake @mmclark @pixelpusher220 @RD4Anarchy Although, it does seem like risk management is much nicer in the kind of non-capitalist systems that we're discussing here – it seems unlikely that anyone would feel compelled to e.g. mortgage their house out of desperation to save their business, which in and of itself is nice.

@HeavenlyPossum @SallyStrange @neonsnake @mmclark @pixelpusher220 @RD4Anarchy "not something at all intrinsic to production" – I feel like risk is pretty fundamental, at least in that any decision regarding allocation of resources might be suboptimal, and execution might be flawed.

To tie it back to OP: suppose I spend a month adding some awesome features to my fork of Mastodon, then launch my new instance, and nobody joins or upstreams my changes. Oops.

@dangillmor It also matters (or should matter) what Eastman *did* exactly. People like this like to talk about the Declaration and consent of the governed and all that. Which is possibly problematic exactly for the reasons the article describes. But, at the end of the day, if all he did was "hey consent of the govern mumble mumble so I filed a lawsuit (or 100 lawsuits) about counting dimpled chads" then of course that isn't a reason for criminal prosecution. IOW: if you go through the "front door", then whatever weird rhetoric you use probably doesn't matter much.

The question is, instead: are the Eastman Memos the "front door"?

@freemo @JonKramer @trinsec Yeah, I hope it's clear I see this point. I articulated it myself several messages ago, even. I think my other observation remains, though.

@freemo @JonKramer @trinsec

> How does that solve the problem?

IIUC, "the problem" is monopolies charge unnaturally high prices because of lack of competition. If, instead, a monopoly is charging unnaturally low prices and losing money, then that particular problem is gone. yes? (At least temporarily – you saw my next paragraph...)

> Why go into business if it is mathematically garunteed to fail?

That's what I meant by scared away.

@HeavenlyPossum Curious – did Bird-David talk about people who were seen as stingy – are they "punished" in any way, like people don't give to them or want to work with them? Or was it more of a social thing, like you just don't want to be seen as stingy, just for its own sake?

@freemo @JonKramer @trinsec My first reaction to "just undercut costs within 50 miles of the new station to rates so low it would operate at a loss" is: sounds good to me, problem solved!

I guess there's an implicit argument here though that people will be scared away from entering a market dominated by someone with those kinds of economies of scale or whatever. But... do we see that much in practice? Megacorps don't have an infinite capacity for scaring off newbies; a loss is a loss.

Maybe what I need to do is a bunch of case studies – how often are problematic monopolies able to do this without government help?

@JonKramer @freemo @trinsec I'd say the same thing about Unions, too, of course: I think workers negotiating as a bloc (price fixing, essentially) would be totally fine if nothing prevented people from undercutting the bloc. I realize this takes the wind out of the sails of Unions, though. I think this is probably what Freemo means by "You wont have strikes".

@JonKramer @freemo @trinsec Yeah – when we see problematic monopolies, I always wonder: why can't someone else sneak in and undercut? It seems like more often than not the answer is something like "regulatory capture".

Do we really need antitrust legislation? Or maybe what we need is just less statism?