antipropaganda

Consulting is a flaw in free market capitalism. The key idea behind free market capitalism is that if you make poor decisions, there are negative consequences for those poor decisions, regardless of your size. Now there is a way to avoid accountability in big companies: hire consultants. If they screw up, the decision-makers at big companies can always point the finger at the highly paid and highly credentialed consultants and say 'Guys, we did our best and hired the best. Who could have seen all this coming?'. The consultants are also free from accountability because technically, they only 'provide advice'. It's a win-win for both management and consultants.

The losers are only

(a) Investors, but they are often passive investors with no power to change management power structures.

(b) Customers, but they often are captive to monopolies because of network effects, moats, etc.

(c) Employees, but they usually are captive due to asset-specificity, etc.

We should all get MBAs and enjoy the gravy train.

Correlation can be because of causation

No, you don't because while there is widespread acceptance that law enforcement abused power, there is no such acceptance that the rioters have

> Whataboutism

The argument here is that USA cannot claim moral high ground when USA is actively committing the same act. Blindly claiming whataboutism without even attempting to refute this argument and is, therefore, a form of intellectual dishonesty.

> This is not a court of law, so that's kind of irrelevant.

It is important to make reasonable arguments in defense of your claims even outside courts of law.

> On the other hand, Russian nationalists and apologists of Russian politics are sometimes criticised for using allegations of "Russophobia" as a form of propaganda to counter criticism of Russia.

This is neither here nor there. This whole argument is inconclusive.

The US has annexed parts of Mexico before : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Cession. Also, accusations about Putin ordering the 'assassination of journalists or opposition party members' are not proven beyond reasonable doubt. Read about the long history of western anti-Russian sentiment and propaganda here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Russian_sentiment

US can't just invade any country. US would find it very difficult to invade a country with second strike nuclear capability. Even if nuclear war is out of the question, US would find it very difficult to invade, say China: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/07/china-u...

Why are you solely blaming the companies? Are the government officials doing their jobs? If the government officials are being corrupt by accepting lobbying money and helping the corporations; they are as much (if not more) to blame for the situation as "for-profit companies". At least, for-profit companies exist to make a profit. The government, on the other hand, exists to defend the citizens.

What also makes moderation hard is that it can be abused. For example, anyone who is influential and persuasive enough can be labelled a Nazi by political opponents and targeted campaigns can be run to get them deplatformed

The larger problem here is that many technology companies have become virtual monopolies. If you can be deplatformed from Youtube + Facebook + Twitter then you will not be heard at all. Afterward, your political opponents can go online on these platforms and call you a 'Nazi' a million times. At this point, what Joseph Goebbels said applies: 'If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it'[1]. This causes even more platforms to deplatform you and eventually, it becomes a cycle.

The core of the problem is that these companies are too big, too influential. They must be broken up

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie

I love how people are trying to justify the West's practices in asinine ways. The west needs to be criticized, ostracised and banned in the strongest way possible.

West lost its credibility long time ago. They have mismanaged their brand to reap short term benefits. Blah blah blah....

It is telling that you chose only right leaning outlets in your example. Even left leaning outlets like New York Times has admitted that liberals sometimes peddle fake news : https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/business/economy/income-t...

> I'm not sure what is meant by this? I would assume that the more resources the government or the community has, the more they can support people's talents. You can invest more in education and arts.

Just investing in arts and education is not enough to bring about people's talents : https://www.heritage.org/education/report/does-spending-more...

> True, that's a good point, it's state level capitalism.

> If instead the oil money went into tax cuts, what would one call that policy then? Antisocialism?

You have missed the point here : even by Marxist standards, Norway's success is due to capitalism. It is better to think about economies in terms of the amount of economic freedom each permits. Capitalism-Socialism dichotomy is largely just fiction.

Most people also use the word capitalism incorrectly. The capitalism-socialism dichotomy is largely an invention of Marxists. Many who oppose socialism do so because they prefer a society where individual justice is not overshadowed by "collective justice".

The idea is that people are expected to work for their benefits, save up money to form capital and then invest that capital to create a safety net for themselves. Most people on the conservative side are not opposed to helping people who can't help themselves or giving people who did their best but fell on hard times, a break, through bankruptcy.

If a country has a large amount of natural resources like Norway, it can be somewhat successful in dispensing with individual excellence. For example, Qatar has the highest per capita income in the world. However, this may not be sustainable since natural resource eventually run out. For example : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Nauru#Modern-day_Na...

Norway used its oil profits to create a sovereign wealth fund and invested it in stocks. What is the system called when dispensable income is used to form capital which is then invested in other ventures to create additional revenue streams ? I would call it capitalism.

If all countries where Norwegian money is invested decided to become socialist and seized their property, Norway will not be upheld as a socialist success, would it ?

So are the lies of the remain campaign ?

> Creating a trebuchet doesn't give you the privilege to sling projectiles at the neighboring town, right?

The difference here is that you did not create the town. It is publically created and publicly owned. Your rights and privileges ends where someone else's begins

> A government creates laws to promote the wellbeing of the populace

Yes, but it does so by creating an environment where individuals can choose for themselves what wellbeing means to them

> I am not sure how to explain this POV. I think it's good for society as a whole and good for people, and that's what I'm looking for in laws and government. What do you look for in laws?

In laws and in government I look for measures to maximize my liberty. I think the purpose of government is to defend me from you and you from me.

I am ultimately responsible for my happiness. I don't think governments can make people happy and I don't think they should try

> I believe, similarly, that landlords should be obligated to rent out properties that they thought they wanted to rent out and then changed their minds on, just because it'd be inconvenient for the renter, for some generous period in which the renter can look for new housing. I don't believe that a landlord should be legally able to say "Good morning, I'm tired of renting, move out."

If landlords are in the business of doing things like this, I would like to start a company that doesn't treat it's customers like garbage and take money out of the pockets of such landlords