Private enterprise != boss/business owned by a capitalist. A socialist business, jointly owned and run by all of the workers, is still a private enterprise. And they should still be able to collectively decide the terms and/or process around deciding to continue association between an individual and the company and revoke that privilege for anyone that violates those terms. I was not defending any boss from firing people based on their personal feelings for their Facebook posts. That is not acceptable. It’s also an entirely different aspect than what I was speaking about. But neither should the enterprise itself be unallowed to hold people to account or decide that they do not wish to continue a business arrangement if the other party says some bigoted shit.

Read my edit. I was not defending the oligarchy. But room does need to be left for people to face non-legal consequences for hate speech, up and including unemployment, whether under the oligarchic system we have or under a more preferable socialist system.

People can and should have the choice to not associate themselves with others, particularly financially. If I hire an assistant and they call my client the n-word, even in a private context, I’m going to fire them and I should be able to, whatever the process required to do so. I don’t think that is wrong. The fact that one person can do that unilaterally on a whim is wrong, but that is a separate issue. Again, though, in either case, whether the enterprise is capitalist, socialist or anything else, misuse of this power will have consequences.

I mean, they are. Unless you work for yourself, a partnership (of which you are a partner), a co-op, have tenure, or have a good union, under our 🦄🌈capitalist utopia ™… your employment status is subject to termination on the whims of your employer, so long as they dont violate ADA or anti-discrimination laws in the process. Welcome to the oligarchy, friend.

Edit: For clarity, when I was saying that that “should” be the way, I meant under our system as it exists, not the that is the ideal.

Private enterprises do not have to honor the tenants of free speech in the employment practices, nor should they be required to. They should be able to, for example, fire someone who spouts racism, sexism, xenophobia… or any other form of hate speech, which has happened many times. But likewise, we do not have to support private enterprises that are more worried about PR blow back than basic decency and liberty to allow their employees to speak your mind, that use their position of authority to curb speech that might be distasteful to them or their customers but otherwise does nothing wrong. We can boycott and protest these enterprises, and we should. And for those enterprises that are public, that answer to us, we should make sure they know that the jobs of those responsible are on the line too.

Some of the things said in this article amount to celebrating violence, and I can see good reason to distance your company from that. But there is no reason to fire anyone that simply expresses reasonable dislike for one’s behavior and words, or for warning others that words can have consequences. Actually, the irony for firing someone for warning that words can have consequences is almost comedic, except the wrong people faced the consequences. Anyone firing anyone for simply speaking ill of the dead, for pointing out that they weren’t the hero or beacon of righteous truth people are pretending they are, should be fired as well.

And/or over 18

I did see a similar letter like this before. Seems to have been a recreation based off the description given though. This is the actual scan of the letter, the original.

If that was remotely true, Trump would have been claiming responsibility for Epstein’s arrest from day 1. It’s simply not true in the slightest. It’s a complete, wholecloth fabrication. A 100% lie.

Eisenhower tried to warn against the military industrial complex having massive influence over federal policy and enriching themselves off of war and the American tax dollar. He’d be called a hippie commie by MAGA today.

Bro lived in an Isreali commune in the 60s and therefore supports the Isreali genocide happening now despite all the things he says and does that is evidence to the contrary?

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Fuck all the way off

Vance do be jorkin it. To couches.

Eh, Ol’ Bone Spurs ain’t making it to Valhalla either

AI hasn’t really taken much, if any tech jobs so far. If anything demand for building and using AI has taken up a good share of the job market in tech.

The bigger issue, currently, is that experience is required even for “entry” level jobs because they simply won’t pay for people who are learning and gaining that experience. It’s also cheaper on the whole to pay someone overseas with experience to do the “grunt work”, for lack of a better word, that you would normally pay a newbie to do, and they’ll get it done faster and more reliably. You’ll have a domestic leadership team and a few senior engineers to steer projects and manage the communication and timezone issues, but very few, if any, fresh graduates.

It’s short term thinking that’s going to fuck the industry in a generation when all the old school guys die or retire, the senior engineers, tech leads, and engineering managers move up to fill their roles and you don’t have enough Jr engineers to become the seniors, leads and managers. They’ll be trying to manage entire teams from overseas, trying to replace people with AI, which will never be a true replacement, and they’ll suddenly see the value in hiring new graduates, but there won’t be enough by then because they made the major useless. The few that exist will probably make bank straight out of school, though, as companies become desperate for them.

You’ve openly stated that you will vote for them no matter what.

No, I said I will vote for them while they are the lesser of two evils and while no one else stands a chance. If they shoot to the right, a d become functionally indistinguishable from the GOP, or if a viable and better alternative presents itself, I’m gone.

Ehh, not exactly. You think there is a higher likelihood than I do that third-party gains power spontaneously without any indication that they are catching up to, much less overtaking either of the two major parties. When the winds of progress start making themselves apparent and a new legitimate challenger enters the stage, I will, of course, seriously consider them. Until such time though, my vote will go where is has a chance to matter in the current election.

I also acknowledge, though, that the Dems are doing very little for me and other progressive currently, nor even for your typical liberal. Short of not actively trying to dismantle the US government and our democracy, they are not exactly a shining light in the darkness that is our current situation. But while they are the only left-of-Fascism party with any chance in the running, I will continue to do what I can to correct their direction from a position that matter to them, as one of their voters. At the very least, if nothing else, they MIGHT be concerned about losing me if they go too far too fast to the right. But if I already dont vote for them and they arent moving in a way that is likely to reabsorb my vote, they can just forget about me. Can’t boycott something you already dont buy.

There are things on the internet that are free and fine to use. VPNs are not one of them. They have ongoing hosting and bandwidth costs. They are not eating those costs without recouping them somehow.

Yes, they are competing for GOP voters, rather than trying to pull in leftists. When leftists are on the ballot, they get a ton of votes, but the Democrats spend their time shooting down leftist candidates, because they don’t want to actually change.

Right, we dont disagree about that. And that is maddening as hell. But, again, the way to fix that is by voting out the incumbents, the same old lifetime career men that just want to maintain their positions rather than to seek change. Refusing to vote for the entire party at all because of them just removes your voice, one of the more critical reformist voices, from the conversation, from the vote that ultimately matters.

They have a choice: Pick up the voters that aren’t voting for one of the big-two parties, or pull in the right-wing voters. Which has been more productive in the past few elections?

Hint: It’s been the former.

Again, we agree. The old guard are morons who are trying hold onto their old school party tooth and nail and are dragging it down. I want to take the party back from the old codgers and give them the boot. I want new voices, young voices, pissed off voices, and I get that by voting for them. I get that by making sure that the party itself isn’t incentivized to move farther right. I get that by participating in the debate and through advocacy. Not by abandoning them wholecloth because the DNC is corrupt, so my voice doesnt matter anymore. We have to change it from within.

I do wish that other parties were viable on a national scale. I do. But they are nowhere near it. By all means, vote them into office when it is between them and a dem. By all means vote your conscience when the stakes are low or the choice is safer. But if a right wing nut job is the likely outcome of a split vote, especially on a national scale, please for the love of god, dont split the vote.

Yes, they can change, and the fastest way to get them to change, is to make them realize that they don’t have my support until they start fighting for what I want.

The message they are getting is that the majority of active voters are voting for the GOP. They are not competing for non-voters or people that uselessly vote for third parties without a chance, they are competing for voters. If you are incentivizing them to change in any way, you are incentivizing them to move right and court more moderate republican voters. Your strategy is inherently self-defeating.

Functionally, they are worse than doing nothing at all.

That’s simply not true. Neither about how they are universally supporting Republicans and fucking people over as a whole, nor that doing nothing is better. They are individuals, not a monolith, and the party is built from those individuals, not a static set of policies, principles and practices. It can be changed if you do something about it. And doing nothing does not acheive that. Best case scenario, doing nothing results in the same outcome, worst case it causes the worst outcome. Doing nothing is a cop out that makes you feel like you took some moral high ground while ultimately either not mattering at all or playing into the hands of the people who would do everything they can against your ideals. If you want to effect change, particularly for the democratic party, support and advocate for a new candidate with better ideals and resolve (or even run yourself), then primary out the useless incumbents. Far easier to do that then to suddenly see mass third party support giving them power to make change.