If you think of authoritarianism as more of a "spread" and not as a black-or-white thing, you can see where the problems with "Trumpism" are.
Using the terms of The Economist's "democracy index", I see the United States under Trump 2.0 as a denigrated "flawed democracy". There is even some danger of the United States backsliding towards a "hybrid regime". Hybrid regimes combine some aspects of electoral democracy with some aspects of authoritarianism. Prominent examples of hybrid regimes include Turkey and El Salvador.
Maybe we won't get that far -- strong federalism will help here. But while The Economist has ranked the United States as a borderline "flawed democracy" for the last several years, I suspect 2025's rankings will be considerably lower. My "gut feel" is that the United States could end up ranked close to present-day Hungary, or Poland under PiS. In both cases from what I remember, democracy still was present, but considerable damage was done via institutional attacks on the press and the universities. A US attorney general arresting judges for what seems like a minor dispute (but one involving migrants) seems like a pretty big flag that some degree of authoritarianism has taken hold. As is the erosion of due process involving immigrants.
Long run, I think this institutional damage being done by Trump is the most concerning aspect of Trump 2.0. Trump is actively damaging future engines of American growth (research science and universities). My guess, too, is that the anti-immigrant hostility might damage the previous paradigm where many of the brightest in the world came to America for both research and careers. There is a significant core of American voters that supports this stuff; the most vocal of this core in fact cheer on the arrest of judges and actively attack technologies where the conspiracies overwhelm the facts. (Witness the recent push of a few states to actually restrict mRNA vaccines for... reasons? Nothing solid that I can think of.) I do not think that this element will go away after Trump moves on.
I agree there is damage to US democracy but the root causes are more complex than just Trump. I also don't think anything Trump is doing is irreversible. This too shall pass. The more interesting question is what happens next. We seem to be more and more in a situation where we have two camps who are essentially saying democracy is only happening if/when my camp wins. That can't be democracy.
Due process re: US immigration has been eroding since 9/11. Public trust in government has been eroding in the US and other places. Social media and the pandemic are at least two factors I can identify.
With all the FUD there's probably still no better place in the world to start a new business. Where would you go? China? Really no comparison at all between the US and Poland or Hungary, the latter have barely gotten out of eastern europe/USSR. I'm not seeing any H1B or green card holders seeking other/better options or for that matter, US citizens seeking to immigrate somewhere better.
You may want to look up under whose presidency it was when the United States Justice Department sued Microsoft in 1998. :)
Musk was far, far less political (at least regarding his public persona) even 10 years ago; his persona was more heavily futurism oriented. Electric cars to help mitigate climate change, colonizing Mars, that kind of stuff. It wasn't really a "liberal" or "conservative" thing then. Would've been nice if he stuck on this path IMHO.
But this is exactly my point and you don't even realize it, you think a billionaire helping mitigate climate change or colonizing Mars is a good thing and not political. You don't realize that what you described is exactly what I mean by "liberal oligarchy".
You don't mind if a billionaire is "helping" humanity. What I'm saying is that a billionaire doing anything grand like that AT ALL, IS oligarchy, it is not the billionaires who should mitigate climate change or do space exploration, it is all of us, collectively, through public funding, steered by a representative democracy, that should do these things, not singular private individual billionaires like Musk or Gates.
Clarification: I am guessing you are using the liberal term from a "classic liberalism" sense (e.g. how it is used in Europe) and not the US version of the term, which generally refers to social liberalism and is often associated with Democrats? That changes some things.
Personally I would absolutely love it if humanity didn't have to rely on billionaire philanthropy for these sort of things. But you are talking about a significant paradigm shift in world politics, one of which unfortunately (from my perspective) much of the world is moving away from at the moment.
The Atlantic headline is IMHO bad though -- I would agree that applying the "Rap Legend" title is questionable when it doesn't even appear that Dr. Rapp cut a commercial release. Typically in music and art, individuals that get this term applied to them tends to be pioneers, very influential artists, or artists that have some other large notability. (IMHO KRS-One could qualify for the tag, for instance.)
The story is fine and interesting, the headline just detracts from it. The headline from earlier articles (such as the 2000 LA Times article http://articles.latimes.com/2000/apr/03/local/me-15542 -- "The self-prescribed therapy of Dr. Rapp") is much better IMHO.
Generally speaking these days, whenever I see a non-minor / specialist article in need of correction, I tend to rely on the talk section to make points that maybe an editor can apply better.
That's what I did for Wikipedia's article on software synthesizers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_synthesizer), which in 2014 was rather out of date, particularly on its "typical" examples and other elements.
The article does look a fair bit better now. It does seem to still carry a little awkwardness (eg statements like "a software instrument is akin to a soundfont" which is not really correct) and a few out-of-date moments (eg why mention Csound and Nyquist as music programming language examples but not mention more common examples these days such as Max/MSP or PureData?) and some other quibbles I have. But it is better. Maybe I'll have to make a few more talk points someday. :)
Personally, I do think Wikipedia for the casual contributor is unfortunately broken. But given the amount of trolls and agenda-oriented people out there, I actually can understand why there is a high barrier to entry. It's just a bit unfortunate because it also restricts the diversity of the contribution ecosystem. I'm not sure how to reconcile the two personally...
B) The study was cross-checked with a list of sites from a peer reviewed paper (H. Allcott, M. Gentzkow, Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. J. Econ. Perspect. 31, 211–236 (2017)) and according to the paper was similar.
There is some additional methodology in the study link.
Thanks! Buzfeed believes in far-left progressive views and is not known for objective reporting, so using this as a primary source for classifications of fake news would predetermine this outcome.
With this in mind I think we can't trust the studys conclusion.
To show that the classification system used as a premise for the study has problems is addressing the methodology of the study, and exactly what I learned in my scientific training.
The fact that the classifications are likely to be politically biased due to them being made by buzzfeed does not make the statement of that fact necessarily political.
old misogynists sharing "wikileaks CONFIRMS hillary sold weapons to ISIS!!!!" being fake news is absolutely a far-left take on reality, hahaha. how are you so bad at this.
But Donald Trump fake news is not the only fake news out there.
Given that Donald Trump supporter demographics lean older, I am wondering if an exclusive focus on political fake news (most of which was indeed leaning in the Donald Trump direction) is skewing the results towards the conclusion that people older than 65 share the most fake news.
Would the study look differently if they included sites propagating non-political fake news -- such as celebrity oriented fake news or health woo?
In another case -- Russian disinformation campaigns -- it's well known that they targeted pretty much all sides with divisive Facebook ads on contentious issues or identity politics. Some of the ads certainly are in the "fake news" category (https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/business/russia...). The question I would have is whether the same demographics would apply to identity or issues related fake news. I'm not certain here.
It's possible that one can include the above data points and still draw the conclusion; in a tangentially related case, age is one of the factors in other forms of susceptibility to fraud (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3916958/), so it's possible that age is a factor in not recognizing fake news as easily.
But until then, while the article does make a good case that people older than 65 share the most fake pro-Donald Trump news, I'm not sure I can apply that conclusion to other forms of fake news yet.
i absolutely agree and was taking issue primarily with the lazy political framing of the parent than the broader conclusions of the article as a whole.
i also would like to see a more comprehensive study (esp. including scientific issues, which should actually be easier to measure and less contentious).
I would also like a comprehensive study, but this article is not it because it is using classifications of fake news made by tabloid media that does not satisfy any scientific requirement of rigor.
It is ok that buzzfeed is politically biased, but its conclusions and work should also be treated as such with the limitations that presents in the applicability of its conclusions.
The point I made was not that Buzzfeed is left-wing as a reason for doubting it as a source for objective classifications, Le Monde is left-wing as well as reputable and likewise is Heterodox academy, but that rigor is needed in your definition of fake news and that the classification should be statistically controlled for political bias. Buzzfeed seems like a rather odd source if you seek to achieve those goals.
I don't think we have any document released yet that describes any full picture.
We do have this statement (and a little more detail inside) in a report by a joint report by the US Intelligence Community (regarding Russian interference with elections):
"We assess with high confidence that Russian military intelligence (General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate or GRU) used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com to release US victim data obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets and relayed material to WikiLeaks."
But that doesn't explain whether Assange is either a "compromised front" for the GRU or someone else, or more a "useful idiot" to Russian intelligence for their goals.
Nonetheless, I will say, at minimum, Wikileaks and Julian Assange can no longer be seen as a neutral player, at minimum. And not a reliable narrator, either. For example, some of their tweets on the Panama Papers, which in theory I would think would be something they would in theory support, were rather strange, and actually stooped into ridiculous conspiracy theory involving USAID and George Soros (eg https://mobile.twitter.com/wikileaks/status/7176700566505308... and https://mobile.twitter.com/wikileaks/status/7174580643249643...). I generally don't treat sources that delve into conspiracy theory with a whole lot of respect...
It's a joint report by the US Intelligence Community. There is no “US National Intelligence Agency”; the position of Director of National Intelligence was created to specifically split the role of overall head of the intelligence community (the DNI) from the head of a particular agency (the overall head of the IC used to be the Director of the CIA.)
George Soros is a billionaire and very prolific political activist. Just mentioning his name does not make a dog whistle, since he legitimately does have a lot of influence. Of course, I do think that people acting as though he controls the world is a dog whistle, but we shouldn't act like he never has a finger in the pie.
I think the gist of that statement is that there is no "easy" money anymore, if there ever was. I'm pretty sure it would be quite difficult get rich by simply importing commodity Chinese products and marking them up in FBA -- this is something that a large retail organization like Amazon can do just as well for much cheaper than any individual can.
To stand a chance at making some money as a small business (and I'm saying the more typical "some money", not the "strike the motherlode" type language many of the make.money.fast type scams promote), you have to have a good product idea, and do the full work of the low-margin retail business, with all that this entails.
In this regard I do imagine it's possible to make some money via Amazon with a traditional retail business. But even though it's the behemoth of American e-commerce, Amazon probably should not be a product's only Internet retail outlet. (You should probably have your own e-commerce site for a start... and other more focused outlets, especially if they fit a product's niche -- like, say, Newegg for a computing oriented product -- should also be pursued.)
From my perspective the "extra" came about when commercial interests started targetting the web, using base emotional tactics to get clicks and likes. Social media outside of the big networks (and thus less targeted by commercial interests) largely still feels social to me (eg small forums or groups),
The world of Usenet, BBSs, forums, blogs, etc. Had their dramas and trolls and whatnot. What they had much less of was the clickbait, post order manipulation, and spammy notifications. Whether major social media can become less "extra" probably depends on whether an alternate commercial model can be found, I guess.
It's more the "reaction to diversity" that's the issue, in my opinion. Some areas unfortunately are not terribly friendly to non-white or non-Christian people. This sometimes is reflected in certain laws and may reflect in other cultural ways. This probably is not something any international-oriented company would look positively on, since international companies will have employees from a wide variety of cultures.
I remember when one of the consequences of Alabama's 2011 immigration laws was them ticketing or arresting two automobile executives. (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/dec/02/alabama-car-bo...) I thought at the time that was a (sarcasm) great promotion to international corporations of the benefits of putting an office in Alabama.
That cnn article sure is interesting. Poland is supposedly one of more Christian countries in the world, but nothing even close to the stories from that article (losing job or customers after coming out as an atheist) ever happens here. I wonder how common such incidents are in the US.
I grew up in a rural part of Florida, and while I do remember atheism having a stigma about it in high school, it was more of a mild distaste people would share about it (mostly based on predispositions about it). That being said, religion is a Federally protected classification, so no one can fire someone over atheism and not risk a lawsuit in the U.S. Some of these articles are written by people who are as far removed from rural American life as they are from Poland...and I would take such articles with a grain of salt.
It's not a terribly useful study to me as a result. Granted, the parent piece from a libertarian think tank, so this type of report - an advocacy document - is what to expect. That's fine. But you can also find advocacy from the other side, too... for instance, an advocacy piece concerning the costs (via shoddy work) of using unlicensed contractors for construction, courtesy of Angie's List. (https://www.angieslist.com/articles/how-unlicensed-contracto...)
What we don't have is the proper detail to allow me to make up my mind which cases licensing makes sense, and in which cases licensing doesn't. Sure, licensing has costs. That doesn't tell me anything, because licensing may protect me from bad work quality, which also can cost money, or even possibly be a safety hazard (eg the shoddy electrician that didn't ground a light and nearly electrocuted another worker as a result in the Angie's List piece).
I am fine with the position that occupational licenses aren't necessary for careers where licensing doesn't add any value. But my hunch is that in many careers, licensing adds value overall. The posted piece did nothing to change my position on this.
I'm not sure I follow you. I think the situation you describe, where we have factual (but perhaps motivated) studies on both sides of the issue is exactly what we want. We have the costs and benefits laid out to us, and we can make up our own mind about whether it is 'worth it'. I don't think it is the job of a study like this to make that kind of subjective judgement.
Using the terms of The Economist's "democracy index", I see the United States under Trump 2.0 as a denigrated "flawed democracy". There is even some danger of the United States backsliding towards a "hybrid regime". Hybrid regimes combine some aspects of electoral democracy with some aspects of authoritarianism. Prominent examples of hybrid regimes include Turkey and El Salvador.
Maybe we won't get that far -- strong federalism will help here. But while The Economist has ranked the United States as a borderline "flawed democracy" for the last several years, I suspect 2025's rankings will be considerably lower. My "gut feel" is that the United States could end up ranked close to present-day Hungary, or Poland under PiS. In both cases from what I remember, democracy still was present, but considerable damage was done via institutional attacks on the press and the universities. A US attorney general arresting judges for what seems like a minor dispute (but one involving migrants) seems like a pretty big flag that some degree of authoritarianism has taken hold. As is the erosion of due process involving immigrants.
Long run, I think this institutional damage being done by Trump is the most concerning aspect of Trump 2.0. Trump is actively damaging future engines of American growth (research science and universities). My guess, too, is that the anti-immigrant hostility might damage the previous paradigm where many of the brightest in the world came to America for both research and careers. There is a significant core of American voters that supports this stuff; the most vocal of this core in fact cheer on the arrest of judges and actively attack technologies where the conspiracies overwhelm the facts. (Witness the recent push of a few states to actually restrict mRNA vaccines for... reasons? Nothing solid that I can think of.) I do not think that this element will go away after Trump moves on.