volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@simon_brooke

I generally agree that gifts come without overhead, but that's not what I was talking about.

People WILL trade, and that's what I was referring to.

Given that people will trade, because they will, the question becomes, do they do it in a more efficient way or a less efficient way?

Do they do it in a way that leaves them with more that they can later gift, or less, so they can't gift even when they want to?

Money makes trade more efficient. In a way, money helps enable generosity as people are left with more after they trade.

Because they WILL trade, whether money exists or not.

@Eceni

@OrionFed@mas.to at some point it becomes up to the voters to stop reelecting doofuses.

But on the other hand, keep in mind that constrained budgets also means less ability to hire that unqualified nephew.

Heck, it even gives excuses to the individuals involved: "Sorry, brother, I can't hire your son because the money just isn't in the budget for it."

But yeah, I'm happy to be realistic all day long. In the end, I'm quite frustrated with voters who vote for obviously corrupt officials who've already shown they can't do the job anyway.

@taylorlorenz calling it a witch hunt seems to misidentify the issue.

Generally, witch hunts wrap people up in searches for evils that are only imagined, not real. The problem is, in this case it sounds like they're intentionally going after people who say the wrong things.

In other words, the problem is that instead of this being tragic collateral damage, this is the stuff they're intentionally choosing to target.

It requires a different response.

@genoforprez honestly, everything I've been seeing for decades tells me that MAGA attitudes were a result of such disenfranchisement with the normal institutions of society.

Trump didn't create that. The distrust and bitterness was already there, and it created him.

This is a social trend that has gone unaddressed for too long, and we keep getting angry about the effect without addressing the cause.

... which all too often even feeds back into the cause, making the effects even worse, and repeat.

@taylorlorenz

@DrPen looks like it's been about six hours and I'm having the same not found error as @laurenshof

@sj_zero exactly.

And this points to a side topic, an ax I like to grind: the best way to keep Trump from being a viable candidate is to constantly point out what a failure he was in office. The guy really was a giant loser on count after count.

All of this acting as if Trump has the capacity to be such a monumental and powerful figure **helps to sell him to his potential voters** who are looking for just such a powerful figure.

No, we really need to be more realistic, point out what a loser he was and would be again, and stop feeding into the myth that he's using to try to get reelected.

@uspolitics @FuckElon

@ahriboy careful, though: while there is some ability to migrate like that, it can be incomplete at best and at worst, since it relies on compliance of both instances, the migration doesn't have to be respected on the platform.

@simon_brooke

Well that's not right. It mixes the cause and effect.

Money is just the tool that helps people conduct those un-generous exchanges more efficiently. People are free to trade without money, it's just that without money the trade is more wasteful, even taking away more room for people to be generous as the inefficient trade comes with more overhead.

Money doesn't create those transactions. Rather, people conducting those transactions (for mutual benefit, mind you) create money so they both parties in the transaction can come out better.

@Eceni

I just like that the question came from an account with the name mom :)

~(also, I didn't know either)~

@Timwi @Kalcifer @BlanK0 @mom

@TheGymNerd ha, I thought even when it came out we were all aware that the storytelling was crap.

People went to see it for the drama and social experience, not for the laughable story.

The real tragedy is that yes, teens were into it in the 2010s, but Twilight arguably helped magnify the popularity of the YA genre among other demographics ever since.

So now we get bad story telling throughout media industries, so low were standards lowered by the successes of franchises like that.

Ah well, it's what the people want.

@freemo yeah, that's pretty common in my experience.

It comes from a lot of people who only want to hear themselves talk, but who seem too lacking in self awareness to even realize that's what they're after.

There's a lot of that going on in society these days.

Such a person doesn't realize you aren't talking about what they want to talk about because they're too busy talking about what they want to talk about to actually listen and notice your different topic.

@Teri_Kanefield I'd say that doesn't get to quite the correct conclusion.

Vote for better Democrats.

But we can't kick out the really cruddy Democrats unless we recognize that the ones we elected failed.

It is also the fault off the Democrats **that we elected** which doesn't mean voting Republican, but it does mean we need to stop reelecting those utter failures.

@deanpreston that's not what's happening, though.

The Supreme Court isn't taking the opportunity to approve mass arrests of people simply for being homeless. That option isn't on the table.

As for the local governments, they might even say their policies, that they're taking to the Court, are *part of* their efforts to end homelessness.

After all, this is about the binding of their hands to enact their homelessness policies.

@lauren in my experience, people using that word generally have arguments just as poor as the word choice itself.

I'm sure there are people with valuable perspectives who use the word to engage with others, but just in my experience, so often there's a connection between that childish language and childlike arguments associated with it.

@FuckElon not via US Constitutional processes, that's for sure.

If Trump has some way of becoming dictator that's a problem, but presidency doesn't somehow confer such a way.

It's just not part of the office of president.

@uspolitics

@jupiter_rowland yeah, I was referring to ActivityPub since (as far as I can tell) for better or worse, that's what people around here are referring to with the term Fediverse.

@smach yeah, and well, a lot of it is informing the audience about WHY the important thing is important, WHY they should be interested in it.

But that's hard, it takes more work and more effort.

In the end, I guess we get the journalism that we demand. If we don't demand honesty and a focus on the really important things, well, we're currently getting the low quality reporting that comes from a population that doesn't demand higher quality.

Until we all start demanding better, I think we'll just keep getting this.

@nprpolitics

@linos well, I'd say part of the distributed nature of this platform is that there isn't a central decisionmaker to dictate what instances should do.

Each instance is free to set their policies as they think best for their users.

Some of them might have very good reasons to have different retention policies than simple caching.
@0x1C3B00DA

@lauren since there is SO MUCH incentive for the decisionmakers to make different decisions, I'd say there's plenty good reason to assume it's still an open question, even if that outcome might be likely.

All it would take would be for one national party organization--either one--to decide they'd like to hold the presidency next year.

If either party chooses a different candidate they bear a hugely increased chance of winning, and that's quite the reason they'd choose a different candidate.