Comparing size without considering population will only lead to bad conclusions. Could you imagine someone claiming cancer deaths in Germany aren’t a problem because it doesn’t have near as many deaths as the US, it’s not even close? Sounds silly, right?
The US is reportedly 62nd in the world in libraries per capita. [1] Given the US has more wealth per capita than most of the world as well, I think claiming we underfund our public library system is fairly obvious.
> Given the US has more wealth per capita than most of the world as well, I think claiming we underfund our public library system is fairly obvious.
This is only the case if you think the proper level of funding is a function of population size or wealth instead of whatever is required to obtain sufficient results. If you're looking for results, it seems the proper level of funding would actually scale with population density (sparser areas require higher funding per capita to provide the same access).
I think you can make a case for that sort of model, but I don't think it's "fairly obvious".
Mentioned elsewhere, but books in circulation (overall and per capita). Also, in the US you can get almost any book from elsewhere sent to your local library at no charge.
> The FBI should not be asking Twitter to take down accounts. Period.
Have you considered the real consequences of this? If the FBI for example finds accounts linked to child exploitation, drug trafficking, or terrorism; should they not ask Twitter to take down those accounts? If they find accounts linked to Russian, Chinese, or Iranian farms who are using it to amplify certain messages in order to try to destabilize the US, should they just say hey that’s fine?
Further, from what I read of the tweets, it appears what those accounts wrote may have been illegal after all.
Here’s a quote from an FBI website:
> Report potential election crimes—such as disinformation about the manner, time, or place of voting—to the FBI.
I’m not sure exactly what laws those are referring to, but it appears deceiving people about voting may be illegal. So although you and I and other smart people might read their tweets and think “haha!”, not everyone may read it as a joke.
It is the government’s job to protect the rights of its citizens. Freedom of speech is not absolute (slander, libel, threats, yelling fire in a crowded theatre, etc.), and in this case I think it’s reasonable that one’s right to freedom of speech shouldn’t supersede another’s right to vote.
A Twitter ban is certainly less damaging than criminal charges over whatever statute it violates.
Oh, please. These issues were not about child exploitation. It was the heavy hand of governent coming down on citizens over jokes. Parody and satire have always been given wide interpretations in the courts.
The fact that you point to the FBI website as proof they were acting in good faith shows a remarkable faith in the government you have. It is not the governments job to protect people's rights. The gov't violates rights all the time. It's the job of the third party institutions like the media to expose and for the courts to render judgment.
So really, your complaints go up further than you think. This is something that has been happening for decades based on judicial decisions, you just weren’t aware of it.
> Oh, please. These issues were not about child exploitation.
Your original statement conveys the FBI should never ask Twitter to take down accounts. My response was such that there _are_ good reasons for the FBI to ask Twitter to take down accounts.
If we now agree on that, the issue is no longer requesting to ban accounts vs not requesting to ban accounts, but instead where the line on account bans exist. This is a much more gray debate, wouldn’t you agree?
> It was the heavy hand of governent coming down on citizens over jokes. Parody and satire have always been given wide interpretations in the courts.
I agree these were intended as jokes, and parody and satire are given wide interpretations in court. But they do have limits. Presumably you wouldn’t want someone to lose their right to vote because someone else intentionally misinformed them, even if its intention was satire. I do think instead of an account ban it could be resolved with a misinformation notice, but we might be presuming the FBI official has more knowledge of online platforms than they do. It did seem from the emails Twitter was ultimately the one to decide the correct handling, so I don’t blame the FBI for just alerting Twitter of potential violations.
> The fact that you point to the FBI website as proof they were acting in good faith shows a remarkable faith in the government you have.
Having worked for the federal government, I can inform you it is a huge hassle to get anything published. If they publish it, every line would be analyzed for compliance and in this case probably put in front of lawyers. They can still make mistakes, but it’s overly paranoid to believe a government website would advertise unconstitutional violations of rights for years.
> It is not the governments job to protect people's rights.
Objectively false.
> The gov't violates rights all the time.
True! But these violations are failures in the government for doing its job properly. Violations often lead to punishment or scandal. It wouldn’t be a scandal if people held the belief the government wasn’t supposed to protect your rights.
> It's the job of the third party institutions like the media to expose and for the courts to render judgment.
That's a good devil's advocate, but it's worth pointing out minor children consent (with parental consent, too) to surgeries all the time. Whether that's cancer treatments, surgeries to repair bone fractures, plastic surgeries, etc.
I believe bottom surgeries are all but unheard of for under 18, but there were 203 top surgeries performed on minors in 2021 (safe to assume vast majority of these were either 16 or 17). In comparison, more than 8,000 minors had breast augmentation in 2019. 4,700 girls had breast reduction surgery in 2010 (apologies, these were the newest numbers I could find, clearly after more than a decade it's reasonable to believe there are more reductions than implants). In 2015, there were 7,021 breast reductions for boys.
It seems to me like if the genuine concern was over minors making decisions about their body that aren't reversible, we would be seeing equal and proportional outrage for these other surgeries, right?
Edit for your edit :) Gender affirming care appears to be what's best for kids according to the majority of research and the major medical associations in the US. The experts certainly could be wrong, but generally speaking I prefer having doctors treating me in a hospital and pilots flying my planes.
>That's a good devil's advocate, but it's worth pointing out minor children consent (with parental consent, too) to surgeries all the time. Whether that's cancer treatments, surgeries to repair bone fractures, plastic surgeries, etc.
Minor children CANNOT CONSENT. Bottom Line. Minor children cannot consent because they are not given the faculty of consent in common law. A parent's consent is ALWAYS required, and the parent is culpable for that decision.
>Gender affirming care appears to be what's best for kids according to the majority of research and the major medical associations in the US. The experts certainly could be wrong, but generally speaking I prefer having doctors treating me in a hospital and pilots flying my planes.
Our society is not technocratic. "Right and wrong" are decided by the People. Medical experts are not the arbiters of social acceptability or law.
To be fair, this isn’t the sort of argument you’d want to make with any historical knowledge.
At some point in history, a lot of extremely bad opinions went from “almost everyone” to “vast majority” to an ever shrinking minority. Just to name a few:
- black people are inferior
- women are inferior
- gay people shouldn’t be allowed to marry
- Native Americans are savages
- Depression/anxiety should be stigmatized
Each of these opinions followed a predictable but long path where more exposure to better opinions eventually won out. I’m unaware of any progressive opinion on egalitarianism that has failed to become mainstream given a long enough time horizon.
I don’t see any reason why this current “debate” will turn out any differently.
Extrapolating from a trend that has held in the West for a double-digit number of years to the entirety of the future of humanity is probably an extreme form of availability bias.
A trend that has lasted decades? Try at least centuries.
Egalitarianism and tolerance is a cornerstone of Enlightenment thinking. Constitutions gave power to the people over kings. Capitalism gave individuals a chance to rival the power of vassals who were determined by a caste system.
I’d argue it’s a trend that’s gone on much longer, but progress was much slower when access to information and ideas was not the same as the last century.
It’s not to say there aren’t setbacks, but those setbacks have always been temporary or localized.
Now can something completely prevent this progress? Yeah, but it leads to very dystopian futures that everyone should hope to avoid.
Well, it’s sorta helpful to better understand your mindset. Of course you don’t see any connection between the Enlightenment and trans rights.
It would suck to realize one’s ideological underpinnings are the same as those that have been on the losing side for centuries and are almost universally recognized as the “bad guys” now.
It is really cute to believe your beliefs will win out in the next decades. Again another great attempt at humor, bravo!
I respect your choice and to each their own, but to characterize Elon as a wartime CEO when he’s caused 80% of the crisis is a very generous characterization. His “leadership” thus far has been sporadic, ill thought out, and reckless.
I dunno where you come up with that number. Twitter was in real straits with investors compared with other companies in its class well before Musk was even on its radar. Two activist shareholder coups later and ousting of Dorsey, lackluster profits in good times, plenty of its own culture war scandals despite people piling on FB... can't pin that on Musk.
The peer comment to mine by dragontamer sums it up better than I could.
I’m not saying problems didn’t exist before Elon, but Musk has been a net negative for the company who thus far has only managed to make a bad situation worse.
I see this differently. Elon attacked the credibility of engineers at Twitter by publicly making up a lie about their incompetence and shouting it out with the biggest megaphone in the world.
Imagined another way, if your manager went to Twitter to announce to 1,000 followers how bad a snippet of your code was, he'd be a jerk.
When your boss is abusive towards you like this, it's a good thing to stand up for yourself and/or your peers. I imagine each Twitter engineer responding knew there was a good chance they'd be fired for it.
Now if they handled it the "professional" route you mentioned, that's fine, too. But when Elon started the mudslinging with a lie, I'm not going to begrudge someone telling the truth with some sass.
> Where have you been? I think you may be uninformed on this.
I think you are victim to reading headlines and not understanding what Twitter went to court over. Elon paying the $1B wouldn’t have gotten him out of having to complete the deal.
I was aware that Twitter went to court to complete the deal, but I admit to being misinformed as much of the analysis I read stated both avenues ($1B fee or force the acquisition) were viable.
As per your own link, the situations where that deal could be broken and the fee would be applicable were very limited (Musk not getting financing, Twitter finding a higher bidder). Musk changing his mind was not one of those situations, it was a binding deal.
Twitter did not sue for the $1b, but for specific perfomance, i.e. closing the deal.
Fair enough, I'm not versed on the legal in's and out's and it appears you're correct.
I knew Twitter sought to close the deal, but most of the analysis I read claimed they could have chosen the $1B instead, as if both were viable legal paths. It appears that is incorrect.
I agree, I was misinformed. Too many articles state both acquisition or $1B fine were viable routes for Twitter, but other sources with more solid analysis look to contradict that.
Violence is bad. Yes. I can’t believe that has to be argued.
The glorification of violence in your posts here is disturbing.
State sanctioned violence on innocent people is especially bad, but even guilty people should have their day in court. When an officer kills someone when it could be avoided, it’s a bad thing.
Struggling to believe that on an enlightened forum as HN this is debate worthy.
And finally, regardless of whether state sanctioned violence is required in civilization today, it should be one of civilization’s aims to eliminate violence.
I don’t think this is surprising. Police killings are more likely to happen when the officer feels threatened. Research regularly shows we’ve been conditioned to see Asian people as less threatening than white people.
Most murderers are not caught in a shoot out with police. And murderers account for such a small number of police interactions that it’s a little bizarre to extrapolate the murder rate would strongly correlate to victims of police violence by race.
What’s a better consideration? That more police interactions happen with black people. Some of this is due to racism. Black people are far more likely to have the police called on them for being “suspicious” and police are more likely to stop or question black people (as shown in NYC stop and frisk or traffic stops, etc.).
Statistically, white people and black people have about the same rate of drug use. There are 4x as many black people getting arrested for drug use.[1]
Now one way to interpret this is that police target black people more, and so they find more crimes, reinforcing the idea that black people are criminal, leading to even further over-policing.
This isn’t to say there isn’t a gang problem in black communities, but it’s a complicated problem and the solution isn’t improve policing OR support black communities… it’s we need to do both.
> This is all to say that many of the “defund the police” efforts, while understandable as a knee jerk reaction to police violence we sometimes see, is fundamentally misguided. It’s akin to campaigning against chemotherapy, because lots of chemotherapy recipients end up dying. Defunding the police won’t change the underlying systemic racism that is the source of the problem, and if anything will exacerbate it. This is reflected in polling of black Americans who live this reality, the majority of whom want more policing in their communities.
I think this shows a misunderstanding of what defund the police was, and comes off as patronizing in that ignorance. The intent of the movement was that the difference in funding would then be invested in those communities, which is something you seem to agree would help accomplish their goal of reducing crime.
The US is reportedly 62nd in the world in libraries per capita. [1] Given the US has more wealth per capita than most of the world as well, I think claiming we underfund our public library system is fairly obvious.
[1] https://onlinegrad.syracuse.edu/blog/best-countries-book-lov...