Facebook's product is not selling that data, it's selling ads using the data. You can only sell the data once, you can sell the ads forever.

Are you disputing the quotations attributed to Thiel in the reporting? No, you don't seem to be.

You asked for examples of toxic viewpoints held by Thiel, someone delivered, and you plugged your fingers in your ears and said "lol facts don't matter". Don't be that guy.

They're annoying.

On the other hand, that's the dominant mode for the entire right half of the spectrum so take their complaints with a grain of salt. And who gives the above-mentioned annoying liberals their biggest platform? Right wing media. Gotta feed the wurlitzer.

It's not a "differing and diverse political opinion" to think people of color and women are inherently less worthy, it's just racist/sexist.

Was chatting with the doc during our second birth, the admins had just pulled a bait and switch on the practitioners. Instead of better equipment and surgery rooms, they were getting a few hundred more beds. Beds are easy to bill for. Surgery and actual care are way less profitable.

But none of that shit fits on a bumper sticker saying 'taxation is theft' or whatever, and it'll never be a byline on Fox News. I couldn't even give a short, vaguely accurate description of the FDA trials process, let alone an expert description. I think there are 4 stages? That's where I cap out. It sounds like you couldn't, either. But the current system, whatever its flaws, doesn't allow people to ship poisonous babyfood like happened in China a few years ago. Successful reform preserves the whole "don't kill people" thing while increasing efficiency.

Platitudes about 'small government' and 'liberty' don't enable reform, they hamper it by banishing thought. Look at the tea party's legislative record.

Raise taxes on the rich (short of making globalization a net loss to them), fund infra projects that put lots of blue-collar people to work, and in a generation we've got a bunch of cool shit on top of increased mobility and a better consumer economy. Everyone wins.

"Am I being detained?!"

"You can't mug me, I have a right not to be mugged!"

It's not a law of nature. The laws of nature are things like "the strongest take what they want" and "cannibalism not only feeds you, it removes competitors from the food chain!". Inalienable rights must be enforced in order to exist.

Pardon my language, but that's crap. Every developed country has seen yuuuuge profits from globalism.

What, not all of it trickled down you say? That's a distribution problem. It's not a problem with globalization.

Shrinking the pie in order to pursue a more fair distribution is some ass-backwards, rube-goldberg-machine nonsense. Take the profits, fix the distribution. Invest in infrastructure while you're at it.

No, that's oversimplistic and silly.

I'm all for having leaner operations as far as that goes, but let's say there's a new law restricting people from bribing elected officials, complete with a funded enforcement arm.. is that 'less' or 'more' government? 'less' or 'more' liberty?

You will never, ever, ever have a government that's too small to be worth bribing.

Feudal society, maybe.

I'm in NYC and would never, ever fly to Boston or DC. For what that's worth.

Typically the condo board is in charge of contracting a management company who they give the fees to in order to keep up the place.

Said condo board is typically made up of retirees with the time to do it and they're less sophisticated than the management company.

Over time, the fees go up while the management company skates by doing a little less each year.

There aren't billions of politically involved Chinese but there ARE millions of party members, with their own agendas and political battles rolling all the way up. It's not 5 people in a smoky room, and it's definitely not the same 5 people as 30 years ago.

From my limited view, there's actually been a lot of movement on freedom in expression in China, and Xi has been pushing the pendulum back towards the less free side. Which is bad. It's silly to paint all of that as a single overarching 'china'.

Why's it worse in this case?

To your point, I'd say all 3 parties (D, R and CCP) have had slow and continuous ideological drift. All 3 are unrecognizable compared to 1989.

It's not nearly as cut and dried as you'd make it. How many Chinese deaths would be justified for such a transition, in your opinion?