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posted by takyon on Thursday January 03 2019, @04:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the oppress-the-world,-make-it-a-better-place dept.

Netflix has pulled an episode of Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj from its Saudi Arabian service after a complaint from the Saudi government as the show covers the Saudi Crown Prince's alleged involvement in the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the kingdom's war with Yemen. The Saudi Government cited its anti-cyber law in its removal request, specifically Article 6, which appears to have nothing to do with the content of the show other than that the Saudis are embarrassed. Given the Streisand effect, it is likely that more people will now see the show than otherwise would have.


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 04 2019, @02:17PM (4 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 04 2019, @02:17PM (#782034) Journal

    a form that we can grasp near instantly.

    But can "we" really? You're talking about the same crowd who throw money at a lottery system with a 50% overall return on risk, typically much less than 25% return on risked capital if you don't win the big prize, and a big prize that requires multiple lifetimes of median income invested to have even odds of winning.

    That "we" wasn't going to grasp it no matter how you present it.

    Money also buys land.

    Money actually leases land from the government. Land ownership is a tax liability - sure, you can speculate on the buy and sell prices and often make (taxable) capital gain on the exchange over time, but the whole time you own land you are liable for property taxes, which become significant if you own significant quantities of productive or otherwise valuable land.

    Paid labor or labor that generates a capital gain also generates a tax liability. You're not saying anything relevant.

    The nice thing about abstractions like money

    is that you can easily obfuscate what's really going on. Why are those Nikes at WalMart so cheap? Who cares, $39.97 for Nikes man, can't beat that. First off, yes, yes you can get equally high quality footwear for much less than $40. Second, the reason they are "so cheap" is because the domestic arm of the supply chain has been amputated, all that's left is Nike corporate, the overseas supply chain, and your welfare supported WalMart employees bringing you these shoes. When those same Nikes sell for $117 in the mall, you're supporting the shoe salesman, the shoe store manager and owner, the owner of the mall, and all the local taxes that they all pay.

    Abstraction can look a lot like obfuscation to the ignorant. Can't it? The problem with your narrative above is that nobody cared in the first place. The second problem is that your narrative indicates that the people who do care are profoundly ignorant about the whole thing. The "overseas supply chain" is a vast number of people who really need your money for all those "basic stuffs" you said they needed.

    Which is the better system? With the obfuscation of money, clearly the lowest bidder wins. With a more transparent presentation of the whole picture, your children's community will be much more prosperous and healthy if the least expensive alternative isn't the only alternative that ever gets funded.

    I guess you've never heard of comparative advantage [wikipedia.org]. Why pay the locals to do such simple stuff when we can pay people who really need the wealth to survive(getting cheaper goods in the process) and then pay those locals to do higher value stuff that we can't do as easily overseas? My society isn't better when we contrive locals to make expensive, cheap shoes rather than the "overseas" people to make cheap, cheap shoes.

    And there's no more transparent presentation out there nor a reason to have such. It's just a bunch of woo.

  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 04 2019, @05:09PM (3 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday January 04 2019, @05:09PM (#782109)

    people who do care are profoundly ignorant about the whole thing.

    I'll just sign off with: people who might care are profoundly ignorant about what really goes on, and kept that way intentionally. Transparency would help far more (quantity) of people than it would ever hurt, but the people it would hurt have the power to keep their secrets, and so they do.

    Woo yourself.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 05 2019, @01:06AM (2 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 05 2019, @01:06AM (#782337) Journal

      Transparency would help far more (quantity) of people than it would ever hurt, but the people it would hurt have the power to keep their secrets, and so they do.

      What transparency? What does this have to do with money?

      One of the lessons of the information age is that when you're showered with information, the very first thing you do is ignore it. Here, bombarding us with irrelevant details of our trading is just more stuff to ignore. Information has to be extremely filtered before it is of any use. That's the point of abstraction.

      As to the people who have the power to "keep their secrets", whose fault is that? Getting rid of simplifying aspects of our lives, like money, isn't going to make this any better.

      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday January 05 2019, @04:33AM (1 child)

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday January 05 2019, @04:33AM (#782399)

        transparency? What does this have to do with money?

        Money has been a great mechanism of obfuscation - I want fish, there are fish in the market, but what can I tell about these fish? Precious little beyond the price. Where does the market get the fish? Well, that depends on a lot of things, but mostly where they can get them for the lowest price. Does the market tell the customers when they get a great deal on some "fish" that is virtually indistinguishable from the normal fish they carry? Almost never. Should the customers know that these "fish" came from a different fishery, different water quality, different ecosystem? Certainly they should, but our supply chain traditionally obfuscates all that behind the single dimension of price.

        bombarding us with irrelevant details of our trading is just more stuff to ignore

        Is it, though? Keep your one dimensional price, and certainly don't bore me with the details when I'm making the standard weekly grocery run, but when I'm selecting a new supplier for shrimp, or bread, or whatever... I do take the time to read the available labels, and they're usually sorely lacking on meaningful information - sometimes they're so vague that I get a sense that they're hiding something that I might reject the product for, and if there's a better described alternative I take it. I'd rather have more complete information to base the decisions on, but most of what we get is just marketing BS.

        Getting rid of simplifying aspects of our lives, like money, isn't going to make this any better.

        There you go, oversimplifying and hearing what you want, not what was said nor intended. Keep your money, it has its place, just don't attempt to put a price on everything.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 05 2019, @06:53AM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 05 2019, @06:53AM (#782430) Journal

          I want fish, there are fish in the market, but what can I tell about these fish?

          Quite a bit. Visual and smell inspection will tell you the quality and quantity of the fish as well as how fresh it is. If the fish is unskinned you can easily tell what family/genera it belongs to.

          Where does the market get the fish? Well, that depends on a lot of things, but mostly where they can get them for the lowest price. Does the market tell the customers when they get a great deal on some "fish" that is virtually indistinguishable from the normal fish they carry? Almost never. Should the customers know that these "fish" came from a different fishery, different water quality, different ecosystem? Certainly they should, but our supply chain traditionally obfuscates all that behind the single dimension of price.

          Why? This information is near useless to the buyer. And when you consider doing it for every little thing, it rapidly devolves to farce. People would be ignoring all that information outright because they just want to buy fish not get a damn lecture on the world's ecological systems while they starve to death.

          Getting rid of simplifying aspects of our lives, like money, isn't going to make this any better.

          There you go, oversimplifying and hearing what you want, not what was said nor intended. Keep your money, it has its place, just don't attempt to put a price on everything.

          I think it's telling that you can't articulate WHY your ideas are supposed to be good ideas. That never comes up. This is typical of the nonsense you repeated say. I'm not a mind reader, but I repeatedly see strong demonstrations of irrationality. For example, the first post you wrote on money made the observation that thinking of a product as the sum of labor was somehow a better perspective. That never was justified. It just got dropped on the internet and has lain inert every since. Then you conflated our argument with lottery players. All I can say is that if you're the sort of person who plays lotteries that return a quarter on the dollar, it goes a long way to explaining your reasoning process.

          Then followed this bizarre assertion about the cost of Nike's being somehow relevant to the thread. Don't care. Moving on to the last item of that post:

          With a more transparent presentation of the whole picture, your children's community will be much more prosperous and healthy if the least expensive alternative isn't the only alternative that ever gets funded.

          You already stated several most costly alternatives such as Lamborghinis and $117 pairs of shoes that get plenty of funding. So the premise is wrong by your own admission. Owned goal.

          And the idea of ridiculous complexification of routine day-to-day decisions would be utterly devastating if somehow we could force it upon mankind, especially of the lottery playing kind (the kind of person who willingly gets a quarter out for a dollar in will no doubt make great use of your ecology lecture on the fish they buy).

          Here's the problem. Your views aren't self-consistent, have no bearing on the overall topic, and you can't even show that there's a benefit, even if unrelated to the present thread or overall subject, to read your posts. It has nothing to do with money, trade, Saudi Arabia, or Netflix. It has nothing to do with some elite keeping us down via "obfuscation". It certainly isn't sane with crazy proposals to dump on people completely unequipped to handle those proposals. It's just sad performance art.

          I have no idea why you think money is somehow not working despite copious evidence to the contrary (such as economies that have worked for centuries), but the easy and obvious fix here is for you to perceive things differently. Maybe think a little too. It certainly beats inventing numerous ways to make our lives far more insane than they already are.