volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@avlcharlie please provide examples. @freemo @mapto

@freemo I wouldn't say it's a property of governments any more than having secretaries operate Windows PCs is.

If that's really what you consider a property of governments, then I don't see what the value of emphasizing that property is.

@rwg in the US we actually have two federally guaranteed consumer banking systems, one of just normal banks, but the other type is called a credit union, and that might have some relevance here.

Overstating for effect, CUs exploit loopholes in banking regulations by operating as exclusive clubs with membership requirements, that often seem pretty lax.

Well, given the excerpts I see in the post, Fediverse instances might be able to escape the regulation the same way, with administrators putting forward a minimal membership requirement so that the purpose isn't international communication but just a place for local members to talk among themselves.

@icedquinn you're misunderstanding how American antitrust functions, as you can see throughout court filings, legislative proceedings, legal behaviors, and on and on.

The problem with American antitrust is that, in part because it is so broad, it runs up against other legal principles of the US government. The history of US antitrust in one of trying to reconcile paradoxes in the law that make it really unwieldy.

We have a government that on one hand is fundamentally bound to respect private property, but on the other hand, is charged with imposing on that same property.

We don't need any conspiracies from rich contractors to explain the issues with US antitrust law. The problem is with the US law itself being quite screwy, in its own right.

@avlcharlie @freemo @mapto

@freemo capitalism isn't a property of a government.

It's not only entirely possible for it to exist outside of any government context, but it's bound to exist there, given human nature and interests.

@dashrandom @avlcharlie @mapto

@avlcharlie

> My question then is what's the one where greedy people hoard up all of the money and resources

I just want to point out how unrealistic this is in today's world, despite how frequently it's mythologized and theorized and used to promote political interests.

For someone to hoard up all of the money and resources is for that person to voluntarily accept a lower standard of living for themself, to act against their own interests, quite irrationally.

It's to say, Sure I could buy these things and contract for that service, which would make my life better, but nah, I'll just warehouse away my wealth instead of actually using it to make my own life better.

Modern society has built plenty of mechanisms to avoid getting stuck in such opportunity costs to the wealthy.

Scrooge McDuck and his swimming in his money vault was not a real option.

@freemo @mapto

@mapto but it is *because* utility is subjective that your complaints about costs not being included are on shaky ground.

It's likely enough that the thing you personally consider important is being left out of the equation because others don't consider it important.

So it is a disagreement with the calculation of costs.

@freemo @avlcharlie

@mapto I think what you're illustrating is NOT that the costs aren't included, but that you personally don't agree with the costs.

You want those people to place higher value on their resources than they do. Their valuation doesn't match your own, and you're insisting that you're right, wanting to impose your personal values on them.

Let's be clear about what you're doing here, including the way it has associations with colonialism.

The people in those poor countries need to be fixed in their valuation of their resources?

@freemo @avlcharlie

@m Well, the standard leaves you free to define your own object type.

Feel free to transmit whatever you'd like into the system!

@iuculano that's a really unrealistic position, though.

Not only does the American government have plenty of protection built up around democracy, so it's not even an option for there to be such a sensation, but to get there he has to build up these giant strawmen around supposedly decoding Trump's rhetoric.

It's really something how many reporters land on the idea that they are receiving secret messages from the president, which is insane, and how often we accept them on that level.

@momo the famous supposed lack of algorithm means people feel the need to reshare because otherwise it'll be lost to the mists of time.

In reality, chronological sort IS an algorithm, just a really crappy one, and that crappiness is illustrated by this.

@krans we've already seen that they aren't THAT well organized and certainly no match for the protections built to protect the system from people like them.

This clutching at pearls ends up being counterproductive, actually promoting Trump's reelection and playing into the rhetoric of the right.

@fkamiah17

@Free_Press this is the kind of thing that we should all have been highlighting for years, not that Trump was an evil despot about to swoop in and impose martial law but that he was a loser with a long record of failure and mismanagement.

@Free_Press what accident? She's long been crying that other Republicans aren't doing what she wants them to do.

@binaryhawk that's not what's going on.

Courts aren't talking about giving anyone immunity. They're talking about the boundaries of concepts of immunity that have been long recognized.

It's not giving. It's outlining.

@m well it's not that posts are called notes but that of the types defined by ActivityStreams some interfaces have chosen to mark content that way.

As per the standard a note "Represents a short written work typically less than a single paragraph in length."

Arguably this that I'm typing here is a document, not a note, regardless of what Mastodon thinks of it.

https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#object-types