volkris @volkris@qoto.org
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
Wow, where's the failure there?
Are the instance owners not setting something right, or is Google ignoring correctly set flags not to index?
volkris
boosted
People complaining about #search in the #fediverse and I'm LOLing here that Google indexes my posts in #mastodon replies to me from other people, even though I have `noindex`on my instance.
So maybe instead of shouting down people who do it with good intention, you should shout at the Mastodon Devs and instance owners who allow content to be indexed by the world's largest search engine 🤷♂️
#Mastodon doesn't go out and ask the remote instance for a list of replies.
It shows the replies that it's heard through the normal broadcast of content, but it doesn't have a way to go out and find others.
*(This is what I remembered, and my quick scanning of some github conversations confirm it)*
@GhostOnTheHalfShell @flexghost
We're not talking about a business, though.
We're talking about a political institution with politically defined rules and legally defined organization.
If we were talking about a business it would make a big difference.
"Congress sets the budget that the Executive can spend"
Yes, and this is the key.
Congress sets what the Executive **can** spend. Exactly. But it's still up to the Executive to do the actual spending, subject to availability of funding.
We have debt and deficits because through a different process, that Congress chooses to keep separate, Congress can authorize the Executive to borrow money.
So the budget is what Congress says the Executive *can* spend, and the debt ceiling is what Congress says the Executive *can* borrow.
Two separate things, but they're analogous.
Again, borrowing is done through the Treasury, an executive branch agency, not a legislative branch agency.
You could say that Republican presidents contributed to that and you'd be right, but the national debt is squarely a product of executive branch action.
We're letting an awful lot of people escape accountability by misunderstanding how the federal government actually operates, and which branch of government does what.
Because every day you take advantage of its specialist application :)
It's ubiquitous but specialized.
When Linux is running on a router you're not asking it to compute spreadsheets one second and play a first person shooter the next beyond its specialized role of getting data from one port through the other, which it does hour after hour, 23/7.
Anyway, the point is that Linux didn't live up to the hopes so many of us had of becoming the standard desktop OS, and there are lessons to be learned there for Mastodon.
GOP Congressional members (or anyone in that branch of government) didn't max out the debt ceiling, though.
That's a different branch of government, the executive branch.
Who... exactly do you want to impeach with the impeachment hashtag?
Great! Then Mastodon will have the exact same level of success, being used in niche communities!
Honestly, the take seems about right, with your response dovetailing nicely with it.
Linux was a failure *as a general purpose OS for the general public* and so Fediverse might follow the exact same path, for the same reasons.
You can both be right at the same time, one talking about the general public and the other talking about niche communities.
And sure, I'm aware that others say different things about what the Constitution says, but I would counter this particular "implicit permission to borrow" argument with the practical observation that Congress has a separate process for borrowing.
It would seem to me that the long history of congressional debate and action on explicit permission to borrow shows that it handles that question explicitly, not implicitly.
That Congress routinely expends effort to debate and answer the question shows that it doesn't intend the issue to be answered through assumption.
I'd say it would cause major disturbance should the president decide not to pay debts--and since the Treasury has enough income to pay debts that's his choice to make, Constitution aside--but the spending cap required by the debtceiling isn't nearly as catastrophic as politicians have been spinning.
It's merely the equivalent of Congress not having authorized quite as large an omnibus package in the last session.
It was a bad idea for Congress to have authorized spending of money that everyone knew didn't exist, but here we are.
The US can spend based on the previous baselines of spending, and the world will not end, and hopefully we'll hold accountable those congresspeople who voted for such foolishness.
Or, more likely, we'll reelect them.
@GhostOnTheHalfShell @flexghost
When the US Treasury (or any other debtor) retires debt it frees capital to be invested elsewhere.
But yes, having a positive balance sheet literally means ability to pay. Nothing shady there.
I owe $5 and I have $7, therefore I can pay $5.
@GhostOnTheHalfShell @flexghost
Keep in mind also that the US government was designed to have different interests vying for power against each other, which we politely call checks and balances.
The executive branch is supposed to be always trying to get more money to spend and Congress always trying to check that, scrutinizing and refusing to authorize spending that's not worth it.
So the Treasury is spinning the situation trying to get more money, trying to get more borrowing authorized, using this fearmongering, but we should all be skeptical of their claims knowing they're just pursing their interests, as is their job.
We can see in their legal reports that they have enough money, though. We do know enough about this topic to push back on their demands.
Since Congress can't spend money itself--the Treasury lives in the executive branch--its budgeting is effectively the ficticious thing here.
Congress only authorizes spending of money that may or may not exist.
It's up to the Treasury to come up with and implement the real budget based on what Congress has authorized it to spend out of what it actually has.
Congress's budgeting, such that it is, is largely aspirational. The executive branch has to actually deal with budgeting based on real world realities.
@kathrynlaskey @rmaloley That misunderstands how the US government is set up, though, confusing the roles of the separate branches of government.
Congress only authorizes spending; it doesn't agree to pay anything. The other branch, the executive branch, is the one that actually agrees to pay bills based on money available in the Treasury.
Congress tells the executive branch, "IF you can afford it, then you may buy a new missile."
Legally the executive branch MUST pay debts before anything buying anything new. That's up to the president, though, so it's he, not the GOP, that's threatening to violate the 14th Amendment.
@GhostOnTheHalfShell @flexghost
Sure, that's one way the Treasury can move money around, so long as it's acting within its authority, but it can also service debt by simply retiring it.
It has the resources, so legally it must.
It cannot legally just stop paying debts so long as it has tax receipts and other resources to pay debt coming due.
And it does have those resources, so it must.
@rmaloley You have it backwards, though: the Constitution *requires* the debt ceiling.
The Constitution grants to Congress authority "To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;" and that's for a very good reason: if the country is going to obligate itself to debt, that could involve generations of citizens having to work to pay it off. Therefore, the representatives need to affirm that we're really all into it.
What we refer to as the #debtceiling is simply the amount that our representatives have so far agreed to obligate the country to.
As for authorizing said spending, remember that authorizing something doesn't mean it's possible. It's only a permission. Huge difference.
The Treasury brings in enough to pay US debts. There is no legal risk of default.
There is only a case where past Congresses authorized the spending of money that doesn't actually exist.
I think you're missing that he seems to be framing this as a feature, not a bug.
Yes, it's a deliberate choice. As he indicates, that's what users want, so they choose to serve those users.
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
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