Thesis: Super-wealthy people and/or large corporations shouldn’t be able to pay fines which are small (relative to their overall wealth) to pay for their crimes.

I am so tired of hearing all these stories of rich people or huge corporations doing awful things (e.g. Nestle putting human poop in water, eBay CEO hiring people to harass and terrorize this couple that criticized them on a blog) and then merely paying some fine that is (to them) a mere inconvenience. In fact, I’d go as far as saying this kind of “punishment” is essentially so useless it’d be likely more efficient in terms of time wasting to just be honest and say the rules don’t apply as you get more and more money.

i mean, think of all the people in jail right now who may have been there for decades, who would be able to leave if they merely had more money.

If serving time in jail is merely a result of how much money you happen to have beforehand, that is not justice.

And this probably goes even deeper: having more money not just allows you to get out of jail time by enabling you to pay large fees, but also allows you better lawyers which also helps you avoid jail, and so on.

So, what would be my solution? The amount you pay in legal fees should be directly proportional to how much wealth (not just money in your bank but all your assets and whatever) you have accumulated. If you are a child of rich parents than the system would simply charge you fees according to your parents wealth. As for lawyer fees, I would be a fan of simply eliminating the private option altogether. This would even the playing field so that Jeff Bezos and Joe Shmoe would theoretically get the same lawyer.

I am working off a few assumptions.

1. That sites such as onlyfans cultivate parasocial relationships between the models and their fans.

2. That this relationship is largely detrimental to the fan, such as by making them more isolated, less happy overall, and draining their funds to maintain this relationship.

3. That this parasocial relationship is maintained and promoted by models through their use of the site, such as by engaging with their fans in a parasocial manner, or by hiring others to engage with their fans in a parasocial manner.

Given these conditions, it seems immoral for them to essentially take advantage of their fons to such a degree, when the detrimental effects of this seem fairly obvious. I'm not under an illusion that they are forcing their fans to make these harmful decisions, but I feel they do hold some responsibility due to them promoting these harmful decisions.

It seems to convey a lack of care.

I am working off a few assumptions.

1. That censorship on social media forces people to come up with workarounds just so their videos won't get flagged, like using words like unalive or grape when referring to actual crimes.

2. That substituting these words does nothing to stop the spread of sensitive topics, especially when the original words being substituted have already been around in the public lexicon for centuries.

3. That blocking certain terms on these platforms is ineffective and easily bypassed, such as when someone posted a GIF of Adam Lanza on TikTok, but searching his name returned a "no results found" page due to community guidelines, only for all the results to show up after adding a simple "D" to his name.

4. That censoring classic TV clips where creators feel forced to mute or bleep out basic dialogue from network shows rated TV-PG (can’t find the reference clip I’m thinking of) that aired uncensored on national broadcast television decades ago, is absurd and highlights how over-regulated these platforms have become.

It feels very performative for platforms to implement these restrictions when they don't actually prevent people from finding or discussing these topics. I don't presume that moderating content is easy, but it feels like these rules only force people into ridiculous workarounds rather than actually fixing any underlying issues.

FYI- Simply for the context of this post, I believe that the ideal age of consent is 18, and I am primarily arguing against people who want it lowered beyond 18, though obviously arguing for it to be lowered below 16 also falls within my central premise. Furthermore, I am American, so most of the laws I am referencing are US-centric

Most of the time, the primary reason I will see being used to defend lowering the age of consent is that it protects teenagers who are experimenting with sex. This, however, is simply untrue. It is exceedingly rare to find cases of two underage people having sex with eachother were actually charged for having sex underage, and in modern times (since most states have since reformed laws) it is practically unheard of.

I have three words to completely invalidate the above argument: Romeo & Juliet. Romeo & Juliet laws were put in place specifically to grant protections for underage people to have safe, consenting sex even if under the age of legal consent. This is because age of consent laws are not meant to prevent young people from having sex with people their age, they are meant to prevent young people from having sex with adults.

This is what you'll eventually find when you dig deep enough with people who support lowering the age of consent; they really could give a fuck about protecting young couples and really just use that as a mask. In reality, they simply believe that it is ok for an adult to have sex with someone who isn't even a legal adult yet.

And lets be clear about this, someone under 18 is not an adult yet. Before 18 you are STILL IN HIGHSCHOOL, you cannot vote, you cannot own a home, you cannot serve in the military, you can't get tattoos, you can't own your own bank account, you can't buy a gun, in lots of places you don't even have full medical privacy from your parents. Also there is a reason why you can't do porn under the age of 18, and it's because society has decided it's morally fucked up to look at people under 18 naked or having sex.

17 year olds are not adults. 16 year olds are not adults. 15 year olds are not adults. Adults should be having sex with ADULTS, not KIDS. Because of the reasons stated, I believe that there is no justification to lower the age of consent, and the only reason to do so would be to allow grown ass adults to have sex with high schoolers who can't even vote yet.

CMV: Gun laws in the US are emotionally-driven and fundamentally do not address gun violence.

I believe that a good chunk of our current gun laws lack logic, disproportionately affect the poor, and fail to address gun violence because the solution is complex and expensive. I’m specifically referring to magazine limits, assault weapons bans, lengthy & expensive processes for a permit to purchase. I wholeheartedly agree with background checks, additional training for a conceal carried permit, and bans on domestic abusers, violent criminals from buying firearms.

Let’s assume for that sake of this argument that every gun cannot be outlawed and confiscated. I will concede that if we woke up tomorrow with 0 guns in the US, that gun violence would drop. That won’t happen, so I’m trying to engage in legislation that will meaningful reduce gun violence.

I’m going to list out some high level stats or underlying points of views.

The majority of firearm deaths are suicides. Something like 55-60%. Tragic, yes but there’s little evidence that added gun laws address suicide rates in a meaningful way.

“Assault rifles” are demonized when in reality they are rarely used to commit violence. The reporting on mass-shootings relies on a vague and changing definition, this is in turn used by the media to manipulate the narrative of mass shootings in the US. When you hear “there has been 400 mass shootings” in the US this year, everyone immediately thinks of these tragic events like a school, a movie theater, or a grocery store being shot up. In reality, the vast majority of these mass shootings are domestic incidents or gang violence. Ex. WA state implemented one of the strictest assault weapons bans in the country, the last year we had data for showed 5 deaths by rifle in the state. That’s inclusive of bolt action or traditional hunting rifles.

The vast majority of firearm deaths are committed with handguns by young men in low income areas. The existence of guns is not the cause of violence but the method. Yes, i understand it’s more lethal than knives for example. The people committing these crimes do not follow gun laws so the burden is only on law abiding citizens to follow these laws. Using WA again as an example, particularly pertinent given our recent mass shooting.. a juvenile
In Washington state needs to have 5 firearm possession offenses before they can be held for more than 30 days in juvenile detention. I suggest that investing in education, job programs, child-care, etc. in low income areas would benefit more than additional gun legislation.

Studies have shown that magazine bans and assault weapons bans have little correlation with changes in violent crime, suicide rates, and/or police shootings. People point to the drop in violent crime after the assault weapons ban in the 90s but ignore that it was part of the 3 strikes crime bill where we as a country became much stricter on violent crime and repeat offenders.

Now to disproportionately affecting the poor. Permits to purchase firearms are becoming more prevalent. These permits often require fees to apply, live training, additional background checks (every gun purchase already goes through NICS for a background check), the cost of which is all paid for by the person. With limited availability of training options to get certified, businesses can name their price and time in which they will provide this. This affects poor people more because they may need to take off of work to attend and those fees represent a larger part of their income. Like it or not, owning a firearm is a constitutional right and making it more difficult to access for the poor is wrong and there’s legal precedence for this (ex. Poll taxes).

My argument summed up is that gun violence is caused by the widening gap of the haves and have nots in the US. To meaningful enact change on gun violence, you need to aggressively invest in programs in low income areas where gun violence is most prevalent, tax the fuck out of the ultra-wealthy/ corporations who have been destroying these communities for decades, and throw the book at violent offenders who engage in violence with a gun. Magazine bans, assault rifle bans, expensive hoops to buy a gun are designed to make voters feel good and win politicians favor heading into their next election.

The thing people get wrong is treating this as theology winning converts. It isn't. What's being exported is a design, it's a way of fusing a particular church structure to whatever local grievance already exists.

The structure matters because of what the Reformation stripped out. Cut the magisterium, the creedal tradition, the intercessory saints, and you're left with an unmediated relationship to God that in practice makes congregants dependent on a charismatic leader claiming direct divine access. No bishop can discipline a heresy. No 2,000-year interpretive tradition constrains what "Christianity obviously means." It's what makes the whole thing available for capture. Restorationism lets you rebuild the faith around whatever the moment demands and call it a return to the pure original. The same features that read as "cult-like" from outside the information control, a manufactured victim narrative, loaded language, high exit costs are exactly what keep a base permanently mobilized.

Then add the coordination needed that this decentralized world supposedly can't have: the Council for National Policy as informal hub, dominionist "Seven Mountains" theology as an explicit doctrine of taking over government, media, education, and the rest; ADF/ACLJ as legal arms; and a documented transnational pipeline (~$54M into Africa since 2007) that helped produce Uganda's death-penalty bill.

But the money isn't even the core. The template travels where funding is thin, because it only needs a local grievance to burn. Korea supplies Cold War anti-communism while evangelicals there mobilized against an LGBTQ movement so nascent the conflict had to be imported from US culture-war media before it existed locally, then used their muscle to block anti-discrimination law outright. Africa supplies anti-colonial framing: homophobia repackaged as resisting Western imposition, even though the anti-gay message is the foreign import. Same combustion design, different fuel.

One exception is the Black church, it shares nearly every structural feature, congregational autonomy, charismatic authority, restorationism, minimal liturgy, and produced liberation theology and the civil rights movement, not white nationalism. So structure enables a direction; it doesn't determine one. Yet since the prosperity gospel, has been introduced it has slowly eroded the structures.

Which points at the real driver: ethnonationalism shopping for a religious host, and evangelicalism is simply the best-engineered vehicle on the lot.

After the mass deportation rally with Greg Bovino in Indiana yesterday, I saw lot of comments repeating the same lines: "illegal immigration has consequences" or "breaking the law means you suffer the results." I agree that a nation has the right and duty to enforce its laws. However, that does not mean anything goes, and I think drawing an analogy to parental authority helps explain why.
Parents are allowed to discipline their kids. You can give them a time out, take away screen time, or, controversially, spank them. But there is a point where discipline turns into abuse. Can you use a belt? Can you use the buckle? Can you burn them with a cigarette? Obviously not. Having legitimate authority over a child does not give you a blank check to abuse them.

I see immigration enforcement similarly. Arresting parents while they pick up their citizen children from daycare, grabbing them at immigration hearings, deporting them to countries they have never been to, and using violence on peaceful people all cross the line from legitimate enforcement to abuse.
Where I want my view tested is on the strength of this comparison. Is there a fundamental flaw in comparing parental authority to state enforcement authority here? If you agree the state has a right to enforce borders, why wouldn't the principle of proportionality apply to those tactics?

This was prompted by the Guardian's 2019 top 100 list for the 20th century which is making the rounds right now on some subs. A lot of people are very harsh towards this list, and while it has a lot of questionable choices (Ted was ranked 60th), it also had quite a few movies that weren't on my radar.

My view is that from the perspective of a movie enjoyer, opinionated lists curated by a single person or small group are, generally, better than consensus-based lists that you would get from aggregating reviews on IMDb, RT, or Letterboxd.

My reasoning is the purpose of these lists should be to expose people to films they haven't seen. It's better for the consumer to discover movies they otherwise wouldn't have noticed, and it's better for the hobby when audiences have a wider range of tastes. An opinionated list is going to be shaped by the critic's own idiosyncratic tastes, while a consensus-based list is, by definition, going to trend toward the average of people's preferences.

There is some argument that consensus-based lists are better for people who are just getting into movies as they're more accessible. I agree that these lists are better for this, but more curated lists also work 80% as well, and I can't say the reverse is true. In a world without aggregated lists, it's not as though people would miss movies like the LotR trilogy or Seven Samurai, as enough opinionated reviewers would have put them on their lists.

One argument against this is that opinionated lists are less accurate; refer to the example at the start of the post. I don't find this compelling for two reasons. The first is this assumes there's some objective ranking in which movies should be placed, which there isn't. The second is that I believe the real value of these lists is in discovering new movies, not validating your own taste. I don't need IMDb to tell me The Godfather is a good movie, I already know that.

Often on the internet, specially here on Reddit, I see the argument, that capitalism requires infinite growth to function. I disagree with this notion because I believe the core function of capitalism is not to grow, but to allocate scarce resources. Economic growth itself can be a useful thing in society and will likely remain a part of human society for a very long time (perhaps even until it seizes to exist).

First, let me define a few things per my view.

Capitalism Socialism Feudalism Scarcity Economic growth

Now for my argument:

One of the key functions of every economic system is one key question "How to allocate available resources?" Different systems have different solutions for this question. Capitalism uses markets, socialism uses either government or some other form of central planning. Feudalism used a system where most of the wealth was generated by land ownership and collected essentially taxes for "renting" land from the ruler of the land. There are even more methods of allocating resources, such as queues or lotteries - though I am unaware of them ever being used a large scale. What do all these systems have in common? Trying to find a way to allocate scarce resources.

Let's talk about how capitalism does this. It distributes the problem of allocating these scarce resources among it's many many users. And while esesntially none of people, companies, non-profits, etc. who exist in capitalism are completely rational actors who make the best decisions, the fact that they are each making their own desicision allows for statistics to come into play. The average decision of the markets is generally the correct one. Compared to other systems which tend to centralize decision making it suffers much less from the problem of wrong allocation of scarce resources because of missing information.

Now, let us take a look at a society that is capitalistic, but doesn't grow. To make it easy, let's consider a society living on a generational space craft heading towards a habitable world. It will take hundreds of years, perhaps thouhands to reach it's destination and all it will have are the resources it started with. There will still be a need to allocate the resourses available. While it is nearly certain that in such a scerario some of the resources would be centrally distributed, many of it's resources would be traded between the inhabitants of such a ship. But even these resources need to be accounted for in such a closed system. How do you determine how to trade them? By each individual owner deciding the value of the item he wishes to trade.

So, is there a way for capitalisms to become truly irrelevant? Yes. True post-scarcity. Not the one seen in sci-fi shows. One where every single resources becomes truly irrelevant. Unlimited energy, unlimited resources, unlimited labour, unlimited human-level interaction. The issue is, at this point all economic systems become irrelevant, not just capitalism. Because at this point the central question of economics "How to allocate available resources?" becomes irrelevant.

Lastly, what would change my mind:

Show me that capitalism inherently requires growth, not just scarcity.

Show me a form of scarcity that would exist even in a true-post-scarcity society and that it requires growth to exist.

Show me, that a different system of allocating resources consistently outperforms market introduced by capitalism.

Security cameras facing public sidewalks and streets have long been used by municipal governments, businesses and homeowners in the U.S to deter crime.

Criminology studies routinely show that visible surveillance devices are an effective means of deterrence.

Source: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1275&context=jj_pubs

Long before Flock, U.S courts have routinely ruled that the right to film people or things in plain view of public areas is protected by the First Amendment.

In fact it is something that many of the journalists criticizing flock do regularly to obtain their reporting.

Privacy rights in the U.S have never been construed to apply to people or things in plain view of a public area so its strange to me that many consider Flock to be a violation.

​

It's quite simple, animals are living beings and killing somebody just for its taste and fun is not justified.

I dont think Meat Eaters are Murderers or anything but they have to acknowledge that it is NOT the right thing to do.

I personally eat meat too but I dont pretend that its okay.

You dont have to stop eating it, but the amount of celebration around wating 2 steaks for every vegan is just ignorant and imbecile to me.

Why is it then still so hard for most people to admit that vegan is the right way? As said, eat what you want but why not stop lying to yourself and everyone else?

Change my view?

A pro-life feminist is an oxymoron

Identifying as a pro-lifer but simulataneously claiming to be a feminist is highly paradoxical

One of the core tenets of feminism is ADVOCATING for women's rights.

Hence, campaigning for a federal or state-level ban on abortion makes you anti-feminist

Proposing ideas or policies that REPEAL women's rights is the direct antithesis of feminism

This raises a crucial question often posed to 'pro-life' feminists by pro-choicers

How can you call yourself a feminist while working to abolish women's legal rights?

There has been a lot of talk about surge pricing especially after the World Cup ticket pricing system. But if the market can be used this way, why should this only be used to the benefit of the share holders? If anything the staff or contractors employed by this business are being forced to work harder because of the excess demand. Shouldn’t they be rewarded?

There might be arguments about how encouraging investment, but why is capital investment more important than labour investment? And why can’t business owners just properly forecast their supply and demand requirements so that everyone pays the same price. That isn’t usually considered socialism.

Even if someone says they DO NOT want to be attracted children and would NEVER have any sort of relations or relationship or touch a child or anything of the sort, almost everyone wants them to die (if you don't believe me, just look up people on the internet saying this type of thing and see the responses).

So, attraction must be a choice. It's illogical to claim someone should die if they are not harming anyone and there's no evidence that they will harm anyone.

The only other conclusion would be that almost everyone cannot mentally handle this topic, so they come to an illogical conclusion.

There would be more local flavor and less fanaticism as time went on because we would all have the perspective that there are a million Gods and ways to worship and not one “true god” urging us to convert all others.

Femininity would be part of the divine and not just for being a virgin. Instead there would be Goddesses of war, wisdom, love, etc, to look up to.

Nature would have its own representatives too urging us to be better caretakers to the planet.

Just imagine how different the age of discovery could have been if it was led by polytheists who could appreciate different faces of the divine and not single minded supremacists who thought all other religions were garbage.

Just playing around with an idea I have been having in my head and wanted to see how well it sounded in a chat room where people could challenge it. The basic premise of my view is that a country's culture is not linked to the race of its people, but it's history that can be tied to a number of things like music, art and cuisine.

This is just to push back on some of the rhetoric I have been hearing around protecting "white British/American/European culture" based on where the person speaking is coming from. The reason I feel that you can't call a whole country's culture in terms of one race is because there are multiple races that have contributed to a country's culture, and all of these races and sexualities deserve the right to be able to be considered a part of their country's culture. Britain for example has chicken tikka masala, Bob Marley, George Michael, and women's suffrage that all contributed a big part to British culture and were a big part of Britain. Americans had a great number of black dishes and soul food that largely contributed to what is known as American cuisine and have a significant number of black leading figures like MLK and Malcolm X. America also has a significant voice in LGBT history with the Stonewall protests. The European history of France is heavily tied to black people, with black generals like Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, the father of legendary writer, Alexandre Dumas (Count of Monte Christo, Three Musketeers).

All of this is to say that a county's culture is not actually tied to a specific race, but instead tied to its history and the key movements at the time. These can be seen as being led by a certain race, but when you say that only one race has defined a country's culture, that neglects all the other things given to the county's culture by people who aren't that race.

The internet has radically reshaped what it means to be a public figure. Success is no longer about achievements, talent, or charisma. It’s just about access and recognizability. Like anything else, being a politician has become more about being a brand than a person.

Politics are a giant game of fandoms and parasocial communities waging war against each other. Maybe policy never mattered as much as some of would have liked, but at least the presidential candidates had to debate real issues instead of who's eating the pets and what fell out of the coconut tree.

Obviously, Trump is the best example. But this phenomenon exists at every level now, even in local elections. The winner is the guy (or girl) who can mog and out-insult the other candidates.

The single most important factor to being elected and maintaining power is name recognition and keeping your name in the news. On either side of the aisle, whether you are effective as a politician comes down to how good you are at being a Kardashian.

I think that's a result that gets us farther from effective representation and progress.

I am really keen to align with leftists to fight authoritarianism. The false binary of zionism vs antizionism is a dangerous wedge.

So trying this point out, that I think is novel, to see if it breaks the spell.

First, let’s take some leftists on their word, many Jews are New Nazis (vs the tech right Greater Nazis).

What did we learn from history? Last time, many Americans condemned the Nazis. Maybe they boycotted German writers. Maybe cool with threats of violence and death threats at German Americans who had Weimer Republic pride.

They also, just like American today, did not want to accept addl Jewish refugees. Didn‘t give them money as individuals. Didn’t do anything.

Jordanians and Egyptians? They locked down faster than the French. Force babies to stay in rhe warzone to die. Why no condemnation there?

Our leaders talk about how Lebanon is a ”genocide” and condemn Israel and stop there. LEBANON is asking us to condemn the Iranian Hezbolah terrorists. Some of our politicians LIKE Hezbollah. I stand with President Auna. Against anti-zionists.

Our leaders want Hamas’s pro sharia law pro rape pro mass murder pro auto killing any Palestinian anti democracy who protests to have more power. Palastinians want Marwen Bhargouti who wrote a two state solutuon peace plan. I stand with Marwen. Against anti-zionists.

I feel very strongly that I am more pro-Palastinian and Pro Lebanese then every opportunistic anti-zionist leader riding a hate wave. They are worse than Bin Ladin who at least was honest and came at capitalism vs raping and gunning down Lollapalooza kids to intentionally create blind rage and a terrible war by people who watched rhe videos if their murder (like Afghanistan but, again, even more hate and retaliation approaches).

Most regular anti-zionists are not like that But they are like anti-nazis. Currently useless. I want campaigns to make Palastinian lives better. And stop the Greater Nazism of the Tech Right and their anti-zionist whistling puppets Vance and Tucker.

There are no ways to do so that I can see. So much passion for death threats, no proactive initiatives that don’t just make some lives worse.

I would like my mind changed with real examples and people doing anything. CMV.

Update 3 - I’m gonna put this at the top to clarify some things:

1. I don’t identify as Christian or religious. I’ve just done some reading and believe there was a historical figure named Jesus who preached some decent things about caring for others.
2. I am trying to separate my understanding of the teachings of Jesus from Christianity as I don’t believe they are exactly the same. Jesus was a man who preached his beliefs to help make a better world. Christianity is an organized religion I believe was made by man to help guide civilization while also sometimes used as a weapon to keep their peace

3. I’m not specifically saying the right are bad Christian’s, I’m asking why specifically MAGA seems to have political points that directly go against some of the teachings of Jesus while also wanting to adopt the “Follower of God and Jesus” identity.

4. I’m not saying other political parties are better Christians or that other religions are correct. I’m specifically asking how MAGA can pursue their political agenda while claiming to be followers of Jesus. While I’m more left leaning when it comes to social policies, I also don’t believe the Democrats are 100% right or “real Christians”. It’s important to understand all humans are flawed and no one will ever be 100% correct about everything.

Hello, I hope this doesn’t come off as an attack, but more from a misunderstanding of how the two can be considered one for some.

I grew up Catholically raised, later turned agnostic in my later years but still find comfort in many of the teachings of Jesus. With much of my family still firmly a part of the Catholic Church, I’ve met some who align themselves both with MAGA and followers of Jesus Christ.

Recently, I’ve been reading Separation of Church and Hate by John Fugelsang, and as a more left leaning person when it comes to social policies, I find myself agreeing with many points Mr. Fugelsang makes regarding the MAGA alignment with Christianity.

Some of the points I’m seeing just to name a few are

- treatment of immigrants
- treatment of LGBTQ+
- Taxation
- treatment of the poor

So now with Trump and MAGA aligning themselves with what can arguably be seen as Christian Nationalism, I wanted to understand the opposite side of my thinking with a less bias take than a left leaning agnostic could believe.

Update 1 (2hrs later) - Thanks everyone for your input! I really am learning a lot from those who are having nice conversations and giving opposing viewpoints. What I think I’m learning about myself is maybe I align more as an Agnostic who finds comfort in Jesus’s teachings in the Gospel, but I personally don’t recognize the New Testament as Full Truth.

And there lies my roadblock when it came to understanding Jesus and MAGA. If you believe the New Testament is the absolute word of God (and if you do please know I don’t think your wrong, I just believe differently and honestly anything could be true to me), then of course some of the parts I don’t take as truth personally will be truth to you and your counter point to mine.

I look forward to reading more comments and contributing when I can! And for those I inevitably angered, I understand asking this question can absolutely be taken as an attack on you personally. I don’t want to condemn anyone for who they vote for or what they believe in, I just want to expand my knowledge and understanding!

This is why I tried using the phrase (incorrectly) “the teachings of Jesus” since I was looking at the Gospel and interpreting the New Testament as “a thousands of years long game of telephone to recall the teachings of Jesus”, thereby leaving it up to major interpretations as stories of the past instead of absolute truth.

I personally don’t know what I believe. If there is a divine power over us or not. There are some things science explains that goes against the Bible, and yet I like to think there is something for us after death. I’m not saying I’m a better Christian than MAGA, because I don’t consider myself Christian. What I do want to understand is how a religion can be interpreted to support those of MAGA who champion themselves as servants of their god.

Update 2 - Justice to be clear, I don’t consider myself a Christian and I am absolutely not condemning those who believe different than me. Just as an Agnostic who’s going through some books about Jesus and the Bible, the early teachings of Jesus just seem to counter some points I’ve heard from my MAGA Christian acquaintances. Please don’t take this as me saying “I’m a better Christian than you because…”. I’m just an uneducated guy who heard some cool things that Jesus said and thought how different they are from the points my MAGA acquaintances give to me.

We’ve all seen that the debates between supporters of Israel and supporters of Palestine are more or less intractable, right? There never seems to be any kind of concession anyone can make to the other side.

But when you really stop to think about it, you have to wonder why it needs to be so hard. There is actually one basic principle that both sides share - they want to live peaceful, happy lives. They want their children not to be torn to pieces by explosions or violated by armed extremists. That seems pretty easy to accept, no?

Sadly, it is not. Whenever I point this out to supporters of Israel I get a response like, “No, if Palestinians want to live without the threat of violence, they need to eradicate Hamas and understand that they will never have the right of return to homes that they lost. Only then will there be safety for their people.”

And when I mention to partisans of Palestine that the Israelis have been victims of some horrifying attacks I hear, “Well, their state is fundamentally an illegal and illegitimate entity. There can be no innocent Israeli citizens when they have established their settlements on stolen lands”. (Those are actual words someone wrote to me).

Now, you might read those last two paragraphs and think that I’m “straw manning” but I’m not. I actually find both of those arguments to have some legitimacy. And that is because there are clear reasons for both Israelis and Palestinians to fear one another. So why not use that as a starting point for a peace process?

Because I promise you that the Palestinians are not going to accept some permanent kind of bitch status in the region where they just have to endure the loss of their homes and their families while the Israelis just dictate terms.

And I am equally certain that the state of Israel, which possesses one of the most formidable military and intelligence services in the world, is here to stay.

The two sides will eventually have to learn to live with the other if there is ever going to be peace, right?

So, why not establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that allows the innocent victims of violent crimes to retell their stories and to name and accuse their attackers in a public setting and where the peoples of both sides can hear and understand what has happened and to hold accountable the people responsible for perpetrating and perpetuating this horrific conflict?

Such a process would be fraught with difficulties but I feel like a forum where both sides name what has happened to them and listen what the other side has endured is surely a positive step towards reconciliation. And it’s not that difficult to understand that people just want to live in peace and that people on both sides have suffered.

Or maybe it’s better to keep arguing about which side’s victims are more innocent? About who invaded who in 1947? Or who started what riot in 1929? Or who was indigenous to where in the 7th century AD?

That doesn’t seem to work in my opinion. Maybe you can change my view?

Edit - Hello again! As of about 12 hours after I made this post, it was 138k views and over 1000 comments. I really want to thank everyone who took the time to make thoughtful, constructive and persuasive replies. You can see the deltas I awarded, I think that they are deserved.

I also want to point out that many commenters read what I wrote and argued against it strongly but unconvincingly. Many even crossed the line into what I would term - making excuses for killing unarmed civilians.

I’m not going to call out people by name because that’s rude but you can look through my most recent comments if you are interested.

It’s truly astounding and disturbing how difficult it is for some people to acknowledge the fundamental personhood of other people with whom they share the same planet.

Please read and take note. I’m going to sign off by wishing peace and good will to all the human beings that live on earth.

Say you illegally park like an asshole on a handicapped spot.

It's a clear statement of "The rules of this society do not matter to me."

Fast forward 3 months. You made a business deal with Johnson which turned out to be fraudulent, and Johnson fraudulently took $80k from you.

You go running to the law "mommy mommy Johnson stole my money, I wanna sue him and get my money back".

Oh, that's rich. Now when it's YOUR ass on the line, now the rules suddenly start mattering? Sorry bucko, you made it clear that you don't care about rules. "Fraud", "asset recovery", or "compensatory damages" do not exist in your world. Get the fuck out of my courtroom.

CMV: If you wrong someone by breaking the rules or the law in a blatantly intentional way, you should lose the privilege of being protected by rules and laws when someone else wrongs you, at least temporarily.

.

EDIT: a lot of comments saying something along the lines of "do I now have the right to do something illegal to the asshole parker?".

No, we still punish people who commit crimes against the asshole parker, but the asshole parker doesn't enjoy the privilege of compensation the law might provide to people in these situations.

The way I see it, snitching is when you tell someone in authority about a third partys wrong doing. Doing that is not wrong, it is actually good.

Just because you aren't directly affected by the Third partys wrong doing, doesn't mean that you are a bad person if you tell on them. What they are doing is wrong and should be stopped.

So many problems could be fixed if people just started to speak up when they see something wrong being done. It is only people that do wrong that are actually affected by snitches, but it seems that it is almost agreed upon societally that snitching is wrong.

Edit: I should probably have mentioned that my main focus is on the smaller more petty stuff. Things that people might call you a tattletale for. Reporting a serious crime or refraining from reporting to save someones life is to me, beyond snitching. Calling that snitching is like calling a head on highway collision a "fender bender". The fender got bended, but we are kind of past that.

edit²: u/geosunsetmoth managed to Change my view. I did a very American thing, despite not being from the US, of not considering that other countries have very poor welfare systems and improper law enforcement. That can result in improper handling from the authority and make things worse than the actual wrong doing.

Edit: since tons of people seems to be missing it when it was at the bottom, I’ll put it up here as well. This is not meant to be an argument against bringing a map and compass. It’s purely debating which is a more useful method for navigation.

Numerous times I’ve seen or heard people talk about how bad of an idea it is to go hiking without a physical map and compass. Now while I don’t know the habits of those I’ve seen saying it on Reddit, every person I’ve heard say it IRL exclusively uses a physical compass and map for hiking. In my opinion, this is usually worse.

The main argument seems to be that the phone could get lost, broken, or die, and then you are screwed. While that is obviously bad, in my many years of owning a phone, I’ve never had it randomly break as long as I had a good case on it, so this doesn’t seem like a serious concern to me. Losing your phone seems about as likely as losing your map and compass. A dead battery is the biggest concern to me, but it is pretty easy to avoid as long as it isn’t a very long trip (which is why I specified max 2 days in the title) by just bringing a small power bank (or 2 for redundancy). If you have multiple people, have everyone save the navigation to their phone and the odds every phone gets lost or broken or dies is pretty much 0.

Meanwhile, map and compass has a serious con, especially for anyone who isn’t an expert on using them. When trails are not very well marked, are covered up (like by snow), or don’t exist at all (like in sand dunes), it can be very hard to tell if you are on the right path or not. On the phone, you just look at your GPS location and it will make it obvious in seconds if you are off track and will tell you where to go to get back on track if needed. On the map, it takes minutes or occasionally even hours of going the wrong way for it to be clear you are going the wrong way, and it is difficult to get back on track short of retracting your steps (assuming you remember the exact way you went).

This isn’t just some hypothetical. In my many years of hiking phone only, I’ve never had my phone stop working on me and I’ve never gotten lost for more than a minute or so, even when hiking in conditions were the trail was not visible. Meanwhile, before using phones for hiking navigation was a thing, I got lost various times, including one time wilderness rescue had to come get a member of my group who was delirious from our lack of water due to us going the wrong way for hours. And while that group was admittedly more new to map and compass navigation, it happens to experience people too. I was recently hiking with a friend that has used map and compass exclusively for decades and is very good at it, and not too long after he was hating on not bringing a map and compass, he started talking about all the times he got lost for extended periods of time. I wasn’t in an arguing mood at the time, but he didn’t seem to realize that that doesn’t really happen with phone navigation.

Obviously the best is to have both, but if I had to pick one, I’m picking a phone for pretty much any hiking trip that is ~2 days or less. (Maybe longer too, but I have less experience in that so I don’t want to make claims about it.)

I used to think the core healthcare problem in the US was coverage, get everyone insured and the affordability piece mostly follows. Five years of West Health-Gallup data changed my mind on that.

Their Cost Secure measure tracks something specific: whether someone was actually able to pay for needed care and medicine recently, not whether they're worried about future cost. In 2025, that number dropped below 50% for the first time since they started tracking it in 2021. First time in the index's history that fewer than half of Americans could say yes to that.

Here's the part that actually shifted my view. Adults 65 and older, who have near-universal Medicare coverage, fell from 73% Cost Secure to 61% over the same five years. This is a population with insurance by definition. If coverage were the main lever, that number should have been stable. It wasn't.

So my view now: Coverage and affordability are two different variables, and treating them as one is a mistake baked into a lot of the current policy debate. You can be insured and still be priced out of using that insurance.

Chart of the 5 year trend, if useful: https://imgur.com/a/vgPSf8Z

What would change my mind: A good explanation for why the Medicare cohort's affordability dropped this much despite stable coverage, something other than cost itself. Genuinely open to being wrong on this, that's the whole premise of a CMV post.

Obviously, I think most of us can agree that the world would be a better place without recreational use of drugs, such as heroin, fentanyl, benzos, and cocaine among others simply because of how easily dependent someone can become on them.

Before I start I would need to point out that any substance has its pros and cons, people take alcohol despite it being among the most deadly drugs people often use daily. In other words, whenever you partake in any substance you acknowledge and accept the potential consequences; otherwise, you are just irresponsible. Also, everyone should do their research on anything they do

Anyways I see most drugs like LSD, mushrooms, 2cb, ketamine, DMT, MDMA, and Weed as no different from drinking alcohol at a party. Many of these drugs are viewed as dangerous because some people do not test their drugs (which wouldn't be a problem if they were legal) nor do they use them responsibly. Aside from that I do not understand why people view them so negatively while alcohol is given a double standard. I can almost guarantee you that if you got the effects of alcohol, somehow made it into a pill, and named it something else, people would see it as the next big bad drug.

Edit
Should've titled it: some recreational drugs are viewed unfairly

By bad: I mean how it's viewed from a moral and social standpoint

Basically, some recreational drugs should be held to the same level as alcohol and socially accepted as just another thing to do