Trump Just Pardoned ... a Corporation?

Yes, the TLD. Wasn't really sure if most people would know what a top-level domain is.

Suffix? You mean the TLD?

>It does require you provide an email.

Yeah, fuck that. Extra unnecessary steps.

I did some testing. The form accepts anything in the format \*@\*.\* so long as each * segment only contains appropriate characters. The domain itself doesn't need to be real, but the suffix needs to be real.

"a@b.cd" works.

I've had much better luck with archive sites, but they can be slow.

I feel like that site only works 10% of the time

Never ever worked for me.

Same here.

i don't give them money but i'm on their email list. i just saw a request to donate that i dismissed and it went right to the article.

Add `12ft.io/` in front of the URL. It's a proxy that bypasses paywalls.

I didn't either. But that was maybe because I was a long time subscriber...

Next time I will paywall remove it first.

Don't post subscription shit

I didn't realize it was paywalled. I didn't see it because I was a subscriber.

Thanks! But I could easily read the full article without seeing a paywall in this case

i have never known the intercept to paywall stuff?

Thank you! I immediately wondered if OP was a shill since s/he also didn't name the company in the title or summary.

There is no paywall. It does require you provide an email. Doesn't have to be a real email, just email format.

I understand what you say, and yeah I get it. I'm sorry shit's so rough for you guys right now too.

The way I see it, decadence is always about the ruling classes. There are times where they are more about honor and the good of the nation, and there are times when they are just about luxury, pleasure, themselves and nothing more. That is what I consider decadence.

Not the person you're responding to, but it's hard as an American to see our country as decadent. The majority of us poors are barely making it paycheck to paycheck and don't experience anything you might call decadent. For the record I agree with you that on the world stage decadence is a valid adjective for the state of the US, but I don't know that I'd have that perspective if I never lived outside of the US and never got to see it from the outside looking in

I don't see why decadence is not an accurate conceptualization for everything you're describing.

European and Chinese infrastructure is the problem.

Our infrastructure has lasted over 60 years but it is time to renew it. We also don’t approach infrastructure the same way Europe or China does.

China has traditionally approached infrastructure by overbuilding well beyond any future need for the sake of chasing GDP figures and keeping the population employed (though this has changed in recent years). What they build can be dubious at times. They build apartment buildings, condos and houses much denser than in the US but they are built cheaply.

Europe tends to over build. Roads are usually much thicker, smoother, public transportation is top notch. Buildings are built to a much higher standard. But the population pays for that quality and it can’t be spread out as much. As a result your population density is much higher.

We build enough infrastructure to satisfy the need. If something is older we repair it and keep it in service well past its lifetime. Our houses are built cheaply and we tend to have less dense populations. That is the key to our demographics. No one wants to raise children in a small apartment in a city, let alone four or five of them. In the US large houses with a yard and 3 or four bedrooms is the norm. As a result it isn’t as hard raising kids so we have more than the equivalent couple in China and Europe.

As a result of 40 years of low birth rates most of Europe and China are aging rapidly. They have no large Millennial population like the US does. This means their consumer base is dwindling and if they want to maintain their industrial base they need export markets to sell their goods.

You mean WOT, the Great Recession and Covid were just a dream?

Welcome to cold war. Now the bad news: you have been asleep for at least 25 years.

our demographics are better than Europes or Chinas, we make our own energy and grow enough food to feed our population.

Except your infrastructure falls apart, because maintaining it all would be too expensive. Eisenhower didn't think of maintenance cost.

I hope you're right.

Isn't it crazy that we learned the way to bypass nature's ambivalence and wildly exceeded its ability to control us through incredible feats of cooperation, yet we fall back into the same old atavistic selfishness and greed and laud it as "survival of the fittest"?

Dolphins and killer whales are capable of all the things you describe. So are all great apes.

Chimpanzees are capable of genocide. It's not even human nature. It's just nature.

Are you familiar with Dunbar's number? The problem isn't how people organize, it's how many people organize. You get groups too big, the human empathy module short circuits and starts ignoring other humans as such...

You know what other animals can organize in large collaborative groups and not fight each other? Ants, bees and mole rats. Eusocial animals.

The problem with eusocial animals is they divide into genetically determined castes... So nature has shown us it's either small packs or become a drone for the hive, and the problem with small pack is that larger packs destroy them.

On social media?...

Technically, you'd be right though.

But yes, I ignored nuance. Would you like to talk about nuance?

This is an oversimplification that ignores nuance.

It’s like saying “everyone dies one day, so whatever symptoms you are experiencing automatically mean you are dying now”.

America’s evil is unique to it alone.

More American exceptionalism.

I don't disagree. But I have a unique take on the fall of empires and the evil inherent in humans.

Imo, evil is a byproduct of human selfishness. Taking without empathy towards where it's coming from. Money, power, property, and even life itself.

There are people that do this because of their isolated environment. (Raised to think anyone that doesn't look like them isn't human, and therefore it's alright to exploited them for gain.)

And there are those that do it because they are sociopaths.

While Sociopathic diagnoses isn't an easy thing we can pin down. In a world where our social behaviors can be dramatically affected by our genetics (autism) it's not hard to assume sociopathy is just another manifestation of something like autism. Just a more extreme one - where a person literally is incapable of understanding others as human with emotions like them.

These people are born incapable of understanding that other people have feelings at all. So they don't contribute to communities, they don't help others, they just lie and pretend to be like others to exploit for their own gain. They lie to appear social and kind (towards some), as that attracts others in that group they can easily take from.

You know the uncanny valley? The unsettling feeling we get when we see CG that looks human, but doesn't quite move or act like a real human?

imo that's an evolutionary response to our habit of breeding sociopaths. They pretend VERY hard to be human, but lack the natural primate communal instinct everyone else is born with. They look human, but don't act like it compared to the rest of the community.

In smaller groups, like towns or families, these people can be kicked out and otherwise ostracized to protect the smaller community from being exploited.

But in larger communities, it's an all you can exploit buffet. In larger communities, sociopaths thrive because there is an endless amount of trusting people they can exploit. If they fail, they just move on to the next group of suckers.

If they manage to extract enough power, then all they have to do is keep lying to maintain it. But always, and eventually, at the cost of the larger community itself. There is a finite limit of exploitation that once reached, no longer serves to preserve the larger community, just the power of the sociopaths in it. The community collapses, as it's support mechanisms have been diverted to the sociopaths, and the sociopaths are then unable to lie any longer and usually blamed / killed / ostracized for their bullshit now that it's obvious.

So while sociopaths are thankfully not the norm when it comes to humans, just a few in a group can take down our largest efforts to civilize.

This is why smaller human cultural groups tend to have much longer histories than massive empires. (Bushido and martial arts still exist, but the Shogunate does not). We are always going to breed sociopaths, and in turn they will make sure we never get too big for our own good.

Problems arise when the world itself is now fairly united, and sociopaths have no where left to run and hide.

If we want our biggest countries and empires to persist longer than 250 years, then we needs laws that prevent sociopaths from doing their thing.

I'm a big fan of wealth caps. Because it's non intrusive on a person's genetics, and the only people that complain about having 800 mil to spend instead of 1 billion, are sociopaths.

Anyway. That's my way of saying:

• We are not all evil, mostly it's sociopaths (and the wealthy brought up inhumane bubbles.)

• Sociopaths are the reason every human empire has fallen.

• There's a lot of powerful sociopaths running the world because we spent decades collecting all our best resources together in large shiny empires that called the worst of us like a moth to flame for their exploitation.

I don’t think evil is part of the human condition.

Humans have complex language, and are capable of learning, adjusting behaviour, and building culture over time.

Capitalism is a system that teaches and enforces greed and exploitation. It’s natural for endpoint is the destruction of our environment and the enslavement of humanity.

But if we lived under a different system that was not capitalism and instead fostered sustainable, egalitarianism, while also allowing us to cooperatively build technology to improve our lives, I believe this is something that we could build a culture around. It’s not that we’re pre-programmed a certain way and always destined to fall into the same trap…. Just when you create and enforce a system that expects infinite growth within a finite system, that forces people to compete over and hoard resources then of course you’re going to get greed, exploitation, and eventually collapse.

Another world and another way of being is possible if we build it over time.

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but that is what I actually think. Like, that's just what empires do imo. Sharks can be pretty brutal to smaller fish. Empires are brutal to smaller nations. It's just how it works. Nothing personal, the way I see it. vOv

Not a wild take at all. I'd bet money the guy you're replying to thinks America's evil is unique to it alone.

In reality, evil is just part of the human condition.

Yes, I am.

This is all part of the natural life cycle of empires. Best case scenario is they fizzle out with protection from another empire, like Great Britain did. Worst case scenario is really bad.

You’re saying Russia is invading Ukraine and China is getting ready to invade Taiwan because the US has less control because of decadence?

This is all part of the natural life cycle of empires. Best case scenario is they fizzle out with protection from another empire, like Great Britain did. Worst case scenario is really bad.

This isn’t even the first time in US history that they’ve become isolationist.

Decadence? No. Moreso vanity, moreso arrogance, moreso pride is our downfall. The American people feel the need to feel as if they are superior to everyone out there. We fucking placed tariffs on Taiwan. They basically already agreed to cuck themselves and build a chip fab on US soil, thus eventually removing our need to protect them for their chips. But no, we fucked their wife, and now we're going for their ass too. Vanity, arrogance, pride. We are going down the same path as the Qing. Autarkic, Insular, leading to falling behind and getting fucked.

Meh we put ourselves at the center of globalization and trade by offering the Europeans access to our markets in exchange for being our meat shields if the Ruskies ever decided to get uppity.

Now globalization is starting to break down because we have no interest in maintaining it. Every president since Clinton has been more and more isolationist than the last. Even Biden had no interest in maintaining the order. The aid he offered to Ukraine was primarily military support, there was very little economic support for after the war.

Trump has moved the needle on populism in the US. Breaking global trade was always going to happen, but Trump is accelerating it. Yes he is a corrupt skum bag, but we’ve had skum bag presidents in the past.

America in the long term will be fine, our demographics are better than Europes or Chinas, we make our own energy and grow enough food to feed our population. We just need to restore manufacturing to North America (I.E. Canada, Mexico and USA).

America can exist quite happily as a regional hegemony and let Europe, India, Russia and China fight over the rest of the world.

Businesses have been sued out of business before. Not QUITE what you mean, but the ends still the same.

I remember when capitalists first claimed this idea. It was seen as ridiculous, but then got pushed through. So maybe it’s something that you’ve been conditioned to or grown up with accepting as the way things are.

?? It’s the same in Canada, and the EU as far as I am aware. It’s a pretty normal thing?

Since I wasn't clear at all in my first comment: I'm referring to the fact that people can also get away with murder, as long as they're driving a car at the time. Very rarely is it much more than a slap on the wrist, but it's always significantly less than any other form of negligent homicide.

If a corporation used self driving cars that’s exactly how an accident would be dealt with….

“A fine is a price” - John Rogers

"Corporations are people driving cars"

Well, except criminal court where sentencing is a joke because no human is held accountable.

Kill a bunch of people? That'll be a fine you pass on to your customers.

I refuse to parrot the phrase "corporations are people" unless I'm being clearly sarcastic, or add, "the shitty US supreme court has incorrectly ruled that" beforehand.

If people have death penalty, corporations should also have one

Your democracy is falling apart because of it is an empire in late decadence. Its systems of checks and balances are collapsing.

The world is getting more war friendly because as dominant empires fall apart internally, nations want to do stuff they weren't allowed to when the big bad empire had more control.

This is all part of the natural life cycle of empires. Best case scenario is they fizzle out with protection from another empire, like Great Britain did. Worst case scenario is really bad.

Expect to see more of this kind of thing in the future. Might be a good time to consider going somewhere else, cause things could get really ugly. These problems are terminal and at this point it doesn't really matter who gets elected. It'll keep falling apart. I say this with sadness. My country also got screwed by the USA, but if it hadn't it would have been some other empire. Such is the life of the small poor nation.

I'm sorry, but I think it's important to see this for what it is and to adapt.

HDR Global Trading, parent company of BitMEX

You're welcome. Fuck paywalls, and fuck clickbait that buries the actual info behind the paywall.

just fascist tings

Let’s see if he’ll pardon Luigi Mangione or Edward Snowden. 😏

Kinda makes sense no? Corporations are people and are treated as such in courts.

Oh, I remember Citizens United