Political Roundtable Part XXX

[Zonkerbl]

I think the problem is more that "inflation" is poorly defined to mean anytime average prices go up, whether it's a temporary surge in prices resulting from some shock to the world economy or a surge in prices due to the government "printing too much money." And so since we don't separate the things out in our public discussions about it, it leads to a lot of weird ideas. Although for the past ten years we've gotten away with extraordinarily inflationary public policy and experienced no inflation as a consequence - I'm curious to see what the consequences are. Where are the inevitable bad impacts going to manifest? My gut feeling is that it will have something to do with poor people getting hit on the chin somehow and the rich making out like bandits, since that's been the general trend since Reagan, and is certainly what happened during COVID. We'll see I guess.

[Pointgod]

I’d like our Republican friends in this thread to address this. Lol who am I kidding, they all ran away because they were only here to suck off Trump and don’t actually want to discuss politics. Democrats are easily better for the economy, this isn’t hard stuff to understand.

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[Pointgod]

These are the actions of a completely sane party and not a cult at all.

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[Pointgod]

Democrats need to get their act together. This is embarrassing.

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[Wizardspride]

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[Pointgod]

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Republicans are pretty much a terrorist party. They will turn the U.S. into a complete shithole.

[Zonkerbl]

I honestly thought I was the only one angry about the Rittenhouse case. Looks like he's going to get away with it - he's white, he has $2 million to spend on his defense, and apparently if you chase after a shooter and tackle them, us law says the shooter can kill the tackler in self defense. I don't understand it honestly but I've stopped following it for my mental health.

Good decision apparently- blue checks on twitter starting to lose their snap.

[Pointgod]

I honestly thought I was the only one angry about the Rittenhouse case. Looks like he's going to get away with it - he's white, he has $2 million to spend on his defense, and apparently if you chase after a shooter and tackle them, us law says the shooter can kill the tackler in self defense. I don't understand it honestly but I've stopped following it for my mental health.

Good decision apparently- blue checks on twitter starting to lose their snap.

Race plays a huge issue about this especially when it comes to the benefit of the doubt but the prosecutor has also **** up the case royally despite the judge showing bias in favor of Rittenhouse.

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[Ruzious]

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I'm pretty sure that blatantly encouraging violence is against the law and not covered by freedom of speech. So... how does this stuff keep going on without prosecuting people to the absolute fullest extent of the law?

[Ruzious]

I honestly thought I was the only one angry about the Rittenhouse case. Looks like he's going to get away with it - he's white, he has $2 million to spend on his defense, and apparently if you chase after a shooter and tackle them, us law says the shooter can kill the tackler in self defense. I don't understand it honestly but I've stopped following it for my mental health.

Good decision apparently- blue checks on twitter starting to lose their snap.

Holy bleep, Rittenhouse is such a good actor that I almost have a hard time believing he's real.

[Zonkerbl]

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I'm pretty sure that blatantly encouraging violence is against the law and not covered by freedom of speech. So... how does this stuff keep going on without prosecuting people to the absolute fullest extent of the law?

No it's protected speech. Follow @aricohn on twitter. He's a 1a lawyer and this question comes up a lot. Or @badlegaltakes, this question gets featured prominently there as well.

The confusion arises from the "shouting fire in a crowded theater" example, which was actually used to *argue that handing out pamphlets protesting the draft* was *not* protected by the 1st amendment. The bar for speech not to be protected is much, much higher. It must lead to imminent lawless behavior (walking up to a black person in a bar and shouting the n word in their face is *not protected*), and anonymous speech on the internet just can't do that. Again, as I've said a little earlier, I just realized that if the police were instructed to follow up on all unpopular speech in the hopes of preventing one violent act, they'd have to violate the rights of hundreds or thousands of people for every one person they actually catch. A lot of these people are just blowing off steam. It's like porn. No one who is not already a rapist is going to watch porn and be inspired to go out and rape people, and pretty much the same thing is true of the internet. Everybody talks big on the internet.

What the govt can do is track the public talk and see if it is leading to a specific threat and then increase security measures in response, and tbh that's all I want or need them to do. We can't rely on the govt to do everything for us - we need to fight back against hate speech ourselves. Let the marketplace of ideas shout down the nazis.

The problem is that facebook and twitter *amplify* incendiary speech. Even if it's unpopular, it drives clicks and cash. This is a new problem and I don't know what the answer is, but handing the government the power to decide what speech gets amplified and what doesn't is NOOOOOOOOOT it!

[Ruzious]

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I'm pretty sure that blatantly encouraging violence is against the law and not covered by freedom of speech. So... how does this stuff keep going on without prosecuting people to the absolute fullest extent of the law?

No it's protected speech. Follow @aricohn on twitter. He's a 1a lawyer and this question comes up a lot. Or @badlegaltakes, this question gets featured prominently there as well.

Even inciting violence? If so, I think we need an Amendment to the Constitution.

[Zonkerbl]

But what will happen is the GOP will use it to persecute antifa. So no. Articles like these get published, we all notice, we all take action, people get fired or otherwise punished by private actors. That's what has to happen.

Imagine handing the power to prosecute politically unpopular protest to Bill Barr. No!

[Wizardspride]

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[Ruzious]

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I'm so GDF tired of people not caring about this shyt. Do people really not understand how deeply wrong his words were? I'll stop, because I'm ready to cuss out over 40% of our population. We're living in the Twilight Zone.

[Pointgod]

About damn time.

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[Ruzious]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/rittenhouse-legal-expert-i-ve-never-seen-a-judge-act-like-this-in-a-criminal-trial/ar-AAQDzW7?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531
What an incompetent boob the judge was. How does a judge not know that he can't give the appearance of influencing a jury? Just so dumb - regardless of whether or not that guy did a great job for the defense.

[Zonkerbl]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/11/11/vaccine-hesitancy-psychology-regret/

What really fascinates me is the overlap of economics with other social sciences and scientific fields, like behavioral economics blends economics with psychology. This is a crazy a$$ example! So interesting. Basically people magnify anticipated regret in their minds when they're the ones making the decision. Mandate vaccines, take the responsibility of making the decision away from them, and the same person who refused the vaccine when it's their decision, faced with exactly the same choice, will go ahead and take the vaccine.

It means you can't *only* predict human behavior using utility maximization! You may roll your eyes but this is actually an amazing finding - soooooooooo much of human behavior can be explained by making simple inferences about rational behavior. This is an example where rationality can't explain everything! Like, not just amateurs blithely dissing economics because they don't understand it. This is the genuine article.

[Zonkerbl]

About damn time.

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If they drag their feet long enough, the Republicans will win back the House in 2022 and immediately disband the 1/6 commission and he'll get away with it anyway.

[verbal8]

About damn time.

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If they drag their feet long enough, the Republicans will win back the House in 2022 and immediately disband the 1/6 commission and he'll get away with it anyway.

I think this should accelerate the timelines enough to avoid that. I think Mark Meadows will be the key, if he testifies relatively soon either wanting to avoid indictment or after being indicted. I think the Committee sees little resistance from anyone else. Bannon may stick it out and even go to jail, but I think he is a one-off. His only political future is if Trump is relevant.