A feature that makes it easier for their users to migrate to a competitor? Blockchain Capital invests $15M in BlueSky. Insert that Anakin / Padme meme:
Anakin: Now that we’ve invested, let’s make that federation feature priority 0
Padme: As in highest priority, right?
Anakin:
Padme: As in highest priority, right?
Agreed. Also, “Your body, my choice” is possibly meant as a threat, possibly meant as a taunt. But, what it definitely is: a statement of power. Asshole men are saying this because they think the landscape has shifted so much that they can now get away with it – and they’re probably right.
American police are already some of the biggest right-wing assholes. Who do you think they’re going to side with in a confrontation where a man says this to a woman? Even if legally a woman were 100% justified in responding with violence, in the real world where men have the power, and men are feeling even more powerful since Trump’s victory, being legally right isn’t enough.
Almost everything in any religion is a “telephone game” retelling of things. These days they’re the same to most people which is what really matters.
Luce means light in Italian. Lucifer means “light bringer” and the mythos is about trying to steal the light (luce) of god. It doesn’t mean “luce” is bad.
I guess the Catholic church overestimated the education of its followers.
“Luz” is an incredibly common name in Spanish speaking countries. It means light. “Luce” means light in Italian, but seems to be less common as a name. Lucifer means “Light-bringer”, and the myth of the light-bringer is much, much older than Christianity.
Old religions thought things in the sky were gods. Venus orbits closer to the sun than the Earth, which means light reflecting from it is extremely bright, but that light is only visible near sunrise and sunset. During the rest of the day the brightness of the sun overwhelms the reflected light from Venus, and during the rest of the night it’s not visible because it’s near the sun, so it’s behind the earth. So, old religions talked about the brightest “god” in the sky, who disappeared when it got too bright or too dark. That led to the myth of the god who tried to be the brightest light and was cast down. That, of course, led to Satan, A.K.A. Lucifer.
I guess the Catholic church was giving its followers too much credit in their understanding of words.
It is. It’s that plus an important process for living organisms rather than just burning something.
What makes you think there’s a threshold?
I remember the days when BioWare wasn’t EA’s BioWare. Those were better days.
I don’t think there was anybody in the 1950s who was much worse off than they were in the 1930s. Yes, it took a while for women, non-whites, non-straights, etc. to get their full rights. But, even with fewer rights than a married white christian man, things were improving for them too. But, obviously, there’s a reason that the MAGA theme resonates much more with old straight white men than it does with anybody else.
Let me guess, you’re an American who has never lived outside the US?
But also, the free market would still allow others to fill the shoes of the companies that left.
The Free Market would also allow them to set up their business in Europe and go for that market instead. And, since they make a much bigger profit in Europe than in the US, that would be their focus. The only companies that would set up in the US are the ones that are not able to make the bigger profits available in Europe.
This is basically like the car market in the USSR after WWII. The major American, European and Japanese automakers didn’t operate there, but of course that didn’t mean there weren’t any cars. It just meant that there weren’t any good cars.
Right now, a lot of companies start in the US because the US is the best place to start. 330 million people, one language, good profits, etc. But, a punishing tax might mean that the profit margin is much less than 10%. 10% is a huge profit margin for most businesses, so it might drop from say 5% to 1%. At that point, Europe looks a lot more promising as a place to start. 450 million people, for the most part it’s one regulatory zone, you do have to have things in multiple languages, so that’s a bit difficult.
Then, after Europe there’s east Asia: Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan. Then slightly poorer countries like Indonesia and India. Maybe South America next.
The US would be near the bottom of the list if it was the only country with a punishing tax rate.
So, they don’t sell their shit in the US. Problem solved.
They’d still be profitable, but less profitable, so they’d be lowest priority.
If you’re American, you may not realize this, but there are a lot of products and services that are only available in the USA because that’s the most profitable place for them. The companies have plans to eventually expand to Canada, and then maybe Europe, but the focus is now on the US because that’s where the profit is.
If the US had extremely high taxes for those companies, they’d focus elsewhere. Sure, eventually they’d get around to the US once they saturated the European, Asian, Canadian, Mexican, South American and African markets, but it would never be a priority. And, for a lot of companies, “getting around to serving the US market” just wouldn’t happen.
Plenty of companies concentrate their efforts in places that are the most profitable and ignore areas that are less profitable.
Just look at how many companies are only available in the US and not available in Europe, Asia, even Canada. Sure, they might get around to the US eventually, but it would be lowest priority since it’s the least profitable territory.
Exactly. Post WWII the tax on the richest was 90%, it stayed there until the mid 60s when it was lowered to 70% and then in the early 80s Reagan and that congress lowered it to 50%, then briefly to even below 30%.
It probably wouldn’t have happened without the combined effect of the Great Depression rolling directly into WWII. With those two events, it was possible to raise taxes that high, and the rich actually (to a large extent) paid them.
Even though the “Again” part of MAGA is very ill-defined, I think a lot of MAGA supporters would point to the post WWII era as a time that America was great. A greater shared prosperity was probably a significant reason why things felt so great then. Unions were strong, rich people were heavily taxed, and everyone was better off.
But you could structure the law so that you can’t sell anything then.
So, why would they sell anything? What incentive does a corporation have to do business in a region where taxes are punishing? Why not just focus their efforts in Europe, South America and Asia?
It would be like Cuba. If you want a car, you can buy one… but it’s going to be a Franken-car built from the parts scrounged together from the last time there were car companies operating in the country.
Ok, so every American company becomes the subsidiary of a company registered in Bermuda or Ireland. They report no profits from their American subsidiaries, so they pay no taxes.
Corporations don’t have to “live” anywhere, so they don’t have anything to lose by ceasing to exist in high tax areas and “moving” to low tax ones. It’s why companies based in Kansas City switch back and forth from being Kansas-based or Missouri-based, whatever’s convenient for their taxes.
Yeah, but I assume the poster was Canadian, so it’s $132, not 90 USD.
It’s worse than that.
https://toad.social/@davetroy/113476797192400901
Dorsey’s already out, the people running the project are from the TESCREAL gang.