I don't know the details here, hopefully these laws are extremely tightly scoped. Being able to be put in jail for speech doesn't sound like something that is "working pretty well" to me.
The FN (yeah yeah they changed names, who cares) still spews its hatred behind closed doors, our police forces are amongst the worst offenders of any developed countries when it comes to racism and systemic issues (and consistently proving that even the police unions are a bunch of thugs), we have people like Zemmour on TV spewing hateful nonsense that even Fox News would probably frown at by now, and our own current government has been trying to get a law in place to prevent freedom of press so significantly that the UN and most of the world looking at those pieces of news have actually been ringing the alarms in every possible way.
While on a personal and biased level I certainly don't mind that daddy Le Pen was fined multiple times throughout the years for calling the Holocaust "a detail of history", we don't really have any proof that it does anything more than make people who dislike him (like me) happy to see him fined, and unfortunately give reasons for supporters of his bullshit to feel vindicated (i.e. rise of the extreme right everywhere with a very salient point regarding being "silenced", which crystallizes to the extreme in stuff coming from the US like Qanon).
Youtube is having a tough time because they're almost always pointed at first and foremost for being THE rabbit hole of misinformation/radicalization and other things, but they're stepping into a minefield by touching on one such hot subject without having a broader policy (extending beyond whatever the current US issue is at any moment), backed by an army of lawyers.
(I've stopped following the battles of up and downvotes on this message instead of any actual reply.. I'm only left to wonder how many of either are emotional responses over valuing the argument itself, and on this subject even HN isn't proving to be very different from reddit today)
What is "fascist" stuff? Earlier this year, people protesting coronavirus lockdowns were called "fascists." People protesting against government authority were called fascists.
Berkeley had to spend $600k in security to allow Ben Shapiro to speak, because "anti fascists" were accusing him of white supremacy, and being a fascist, and violently attempting to prevent him from speaking. And this was after they had successfully prevented him from speaking earlier in the year. Similar "anti fascists" pulled the fire alarm on Janice Fiamengo for speaking about men's issues. Warren Farrel had a similar experience, with people absolutely berating the attendants of one of his lectures for their support of fascism.
Many universities will NOT spend the money. Several guest academic lectures were straight up cancelled at Univerisity of Waterloo because the forecast security costs were too high. Seems like the protest movements have learned Denial of Sevice is effective in pushing their own agendas. What a world.
In France fascism is not illegal. There is only one thing that is really taboo, and it's badmouthing jews. Herve Ryssen, a French writer and film maker, is sleeping in jail right now because the contents of his books and documentaries was considered to be hateful.
Similarly, the only few websites that are censored by the French government are far-right websites that typically have antisemitic content (a prominent case is Democratie Participative, the French equivalent of the Daily Stormer).
That's for institutional censorship. In practice, there is an even stronger form of de-facto censorship in France (assassination) for people who draw or show caricatures of the prophet of Islam (Charlie Hebdo, and more recently a history teacher who has been beheaded; quite a few more people live under 24/7 police protection for similar reasons).
Most people have absolutely zero idea what Fascism is/was; they have a Hollywood confabulation in their head, perhaps mixed images of Star Wars and Harry Potter bad guys, anyone in a uniform, etc. Zero historical understanding of what Italy was all about in the early 20th century, no understanding of the modernizations and cleanups Mussolini brought to his country. I would hardly defend his every act, but the idea of nationalism combined with an aesthetic informed by history and myth has proven to be a very powerful one for galvanizing a society into action.
Evola's "Critique of Fascism from the Right" is one very good place to get an understanding of what the underlying ideology of "real fascism" is, separate from the inevitably-flawed implementation. (We don't need to pretend that perfect implementations of anything are possible, of course, and we similarly forgive communists their lack of a proper implementation of their own idea, which at its heart still has the same impetus of improving the state of mankind by changing the structure of civilization.)
Nobody is bringing that back. In a young and multi-cultural country like the USA, the founding mythos is neither powerful enough, aesthetic enough, or common enough to be a driving force for change any longer. There may be small pockets of adherents, but numerically they are insignificant, non-violent, and not worth worrying about in comparison to other drivers of change.
Instead of that specific and mostly-dead political ideology, the word "fascism" has become a standing for "authoritarianism" of any kind - whether it's left-wing, right-wing, or even what I think is more properly labelled as Totalitarian Liberalism, which is the era we are heading into now.
Remember that term: Totalitarian Liberalism. It is only under this system that you're ostensibly free, except everything is controlled by corporations, and people who pretend to be left-wing and "of the people" will defend the rights of billion-dollar corporations to restrict freedoms that were enshrined in law hundreds of years ago.
This action by Youtube is a perfect example of this. Each precedent they set is met by a legion of comments on sites like HN and Reddit that defend their actions, because of course it's only Fake News badthinking idiots that are kicked off. Nobody seems to notice that the scope of control increases each time, slowly but continually restricting free speech on the platform, in concert with efforts to make it more difficult to host things elsewhere, more difficult for locked-down walled-garden devices to be able to access unapproved content, etc.
It takes a real fool to think that this will never be used to suppress something legitimate.
I agree with you here, but I don't even think fascism is used interchangeably with authoritarianism. That would be a good start. Fascism has basically begun to mean "anything outside of the far left orthodoxy." People were calling Trump a fascist for his entire presidency, when the main thing that characterized his presidency was irresponsible ANTI-authoritarianism. His administration deregulated and defunded public institutions. Lowering taxes, pulling back business regulations, pulling out of climate agreements and pulling back restrictions on energy production. I'm not saying these things are good or bad, they're just explicitly anti-authoritarian, and the precise opposite of fascism. Questioning the election results were the first fascist-adjacent action taken that weren't policies shared by the left, such as trade regulations.
> People were calling Trump a fascist for his entire presidency, when the main thing that characterized his presidency was irresponsible ANTI-authoritarianism.
Yes! This is amazing. There is absolutely nothing fascist about Trump - from his complete lack of anything aesthetic, his terrible diction, his lackluster speeches (despite the big rallies, which show people are hungry for something better in this direction.)
> Lowering taxes, pulling back business regulations, pulling out of climate agreements and pulling back restrictions on energy production.
Whereas under fascism the exact opposite was in effect: new regulations, new control, and an early effort toward environmentalism was evident.
Wikipedia’s list of countries by homelessness[0] suggests the US has a much lower rate of homelessness that most of the major European countries (Germany, France, Netherlands, United Kingdom, etc.).
That result is shocking to me, as I see homeless people everywhere I go in the US, but that much in comparison in Europe. So I'm wondering what it could be?
- Are the results false? Would a country lie on the numbers? It looks like the US estimation was misleading halved in two[1], the real numbers paint a much different picture placing the US much higher than any European countries.
- Are the results misleading? For example, I see that different years are listed for different countries (2012 for France, 2019 for the US), or that Germany's numbers include "around 375,000 asylum seekers and refugees in temporary accommodation".
- Is reality misleading? For example, it could be that homeless in Europe are taken care of and thus you don't see them much, whereas in the US they are all over the streets because there are no aids. Or it could be that most homeless people in Europe don't live in the cities and are thus out of sight.
I personally I'm getting richer. Working for a big corp as a software engineer, I've done nothing but saving more money since the lock down started. I've also done much more shopping on Amazon, so I guess I'm giving back some of that money to other big corps. Doing groceries at Costo so money is not leaving the circle of big corps.
I've tried to eat out more often, even leaving less or no tips in order to feel more incentivized to not eat at home.
Would the restaurants prefer I just cook at home or order pick up with no tip? It's an unworkable business model if the direct exchange for the menu price is not enough. There used to be the service of walking your food to you and refilling your drinks a couple times that restaurants claimed the charity was for but it makes no sense when you're picking up directly.
I'd say it's okay not to tip, so long as you tell the person who would have received it your intentions, in advance. Only fair they adjust accordingly.
I get why someone wouldn't like it. But it's not a battle you can fight at that scale. The wait staff get paid $2.13 an hour. They feel the pain, not the business or the American fetish meisters.
You're right and it would need collective action to rectify, and even then you'd encounter some not insignificant amount of those in the service industry who'd loathe a fair minimum wage in lieu of relying on tips as they'd see it as crippling their income.
How it should be and how it is are immensely detached, I think we can all agree on.
How? Tipping is friction and makes you feel bad, by not doing it I'm incentivized to eat out more often. What matters to me are small businesses, if I help the workers but not the small businesses there'll be no job for them tomorrow.
It's worth noting that servers at restaurants are required by law to make minimum wage. If their actual wages (the minimum the employer can pay them, called the "basic cash wage") plus their tips do not bring them over minimum wage, then their employer is required to make up the difference. So if nobody tips, the business winds up having to pay more.
So you're likely hurting both the worker and employer, and making it more complicated for both of them.
Specifics (basic cash wage value, etc) vary by state.
Anecdotally, from my friends who work in the service industry, this is also a law that is often simply ignored -- so in lean shifts, workers can go home with less than federal minimum wage. Not a good scene.
I'd be willing to pay more taxes to help the economy, but most people are against this. In the mean time I do my part by eating out more often and visiting small businesses.
I can't figure out if your posts here in this thread are in jest or are serious. Please excuse me if they are in jest...
> I'd be willing to pay more taxes to help the economy, but most people are against this
They are against this because paying more taxes does nothing to "help" the economy. Where do you think tax money goes? It doesn't go to people's bank accounts to pay for rent, groceries, car payments, utility bills etc. or any of the places that would directly contribute to the economy.
> In the mean time I do my part by eating out more often and visiting small businesses.
And as already discussed below - you are also screwing over the employees at those businesses. Quite literally costing them money they could make by serving someone who will tip... so they can, you know, pay for rent and contribute to the economy.
>you are also screwing over the employees at those businesses
Not to open this argument but it's not the patron's job to ensure the staff are paid appropriately. If servers don't want to run the risk of not being paid at least minimum wage, they should ensure their conditions of employment guarantee it and the business should reflect it in their prices.
I have yet to see anyone suggest donating to food banks. Anyone can complain that the government should do something, but if you're not willing to volunteer your own disposable income, you shouldn't expect others to. The average software engineer can probably feed an additional family of four with no effort.
Y’all keep acting like we’re stupid but without collective action at scale or a large cultural change, all you’re doing by not tipping is making some poor persons night miserable.
> Doing groceries at Costo so money is not leaving the circle of big corps.
Costco's net margin is ~2.6%, so the other 97.4% is leaving Costco for labor (notably well-paid for grocery stores) and whoever their suppliers are. Are they substantially different from your normal grocery store's suppliers? For that matter, is your normal grocery store itself different from Costco in some structural way that is meaningful to you? Perhaps you were previously shopping at a coop like San Francisco's Rainbow Groceries or New York's Park Slope Food Coop?
So you’re getting more for less by eating out more often and not tipping? And you’re also saving more than ever? I mean, that’s cool, but I hope you don’t think you’re being altruistic.
> I've tried to eat out more often, even leaving less or no tips in order to feel more incentivized to not eat at home.
If you live in the US this is a real jerk move. You're talking about how you're getting richer, but then aren't willing to tip the service worker making less than minimum wage?
True. The wages laws that govern service staff is generally written as a conditional, where the employee earns the greater of:
1. Standard minimum wage
2. Some value less than minimum wage + tips
If the employee doesn't break minimum wage by adding their wage+tips, the employer has to make them whole. And then likely cut their hours and force them to look for other work.
Because people who are in a position to be earning those kinds of wages heavily correlate with other situational factors (social, educational, legal, etc.) which may prevent them from reporting the violations. And, the employers who tend to engage in wage theft are generally small businesses, which there are a ton of.
To everyone: please tip. It is in fact very likely that any given restaurant is not and would not make up the difference in pay for an under-tipped employee.
I followed some of the links and could not find a primary source for the data. (Links were either broken, redirected to the same page, or lead to other secondary sources.) So please link that if you've got it.
> "Over two-thirds" means you are more likely than not to eat at a restaurant that has cheated its employees.
No. It doesn't. It means that, in their entire lifetime as employees of any number of employers, two-thirds of employees, at least once, experienced wage theft in some form.
That's a much different statement and says nothing at all about whether those employees were robbed of overtime, asked to work for free, or their employers claimed tip credits for tips the employees didn't receive.
>That's a much different statement and says nothing at all about whether those employees were robbed of overtime, asked to work for free, or their employers claimed tip credits for tips the employees didn't receive.
These are all examples of "cheating employees", I'm glad we agree.
The only thing we agree on is that the items in the previous post are examples of wage theft.
You've convinced me that you are trolling. You haven't addressed any arguments or provided any meaningful support to your pretty extreme claims. Your proposed solution, even if it were effective, would exclude large numbers of non-tipped employees.
Even if, as you assert without evidence, the various labor boards around the country are ineffective, providing them with the funding that would otherwise go to tipped employees would be a much better solution than tipping. It would simultaneously remove resources from thieving employers, make them easier to identify, make it harder for them to find labor, and provide greater resources for those trying to stop them.
Your original claim (that every tipped employee is making at least minimum wage and employers don't break the law) is in fact more extreme and yet you've provided zero evidence. I've provided plenty of evidence, you just don't like it because it's uncomfortable to think about.
In fact, here, have some more evidence, I'm eager to find out what's wrong these these sources:
It’s also not my job to disprove your unsupported claim by scouring sources you’ve just googled. Even if I stipulated that your sources are credible and true, which they may be, you are making massive leaps in logic in order to support your claim and not even attempting to explain how you got there or addressing my very direct criticisms.
That I am “uncomfortable” talking about this is just a lazy and ironic ad hominem argument. I’ve been talking about it. You’ve been avoiding that conversation. I’m fine talking about it. I’m just not willing to talk to you anymore.
Taking care of their employees should be a business of their employer. They should not transfer their problems over to me: a customer. Sure I can tip if someone did an extraordinary job and impressed me but the last thing I should have on my mind is that If I do not tip then the person would go hungry.
I don't agree. I don't like tipping and so I do not eat out usually because of this.
Right now I understand that we need to do our part to help small businesses, so I'm making an effort and tricking my brain into eating out by not tipping. This is where I want to put my money: I think it's my responsibility if small businesses are going to survive, I don't think it's my responsibility if workers are not paid well.
One of the reasons some people visit restaurants is to feel powerful in relation to their server and a big part of that is making them "perform" for a good tip.
I don't like tipping and so I do not eat out usually because of this.
This doesn't really make sense. Without tipping (expected nationally), the cost of labor would just have to be priced directly into the food. Instead of a $15 burger, it would be $20.
If you don't like to spend money on dining out, fine, but it has little to do with tipping and more to do with being frugal.
> This doesn't really make sense. Without tipping (expected nationally), the cost of labor would just have to be priced directly into the food. Instead of a $15 burger, it would be $20.
So basically it does make sense because it is easier if the price is the total cost.
I disagree, tipping is stupid because it is based on percentages. Why should I give more tip because I bought a more expensive item? Sorry but we don't have to agree, forcing tipping on others is an asshole move.
Tipping severs is the way our society works. By eating at table service restaurant you are implying that you are going to pay the server despite the fact that you have no intention to do so. It’s no different than your manager dicking you around by saying you’ll probably get a raise if you work overtime despite having no intention to do so.
Rationalize all you want, but you’re acting like a huge asshole.
If you are morally opposed to tipping, eat takeout or at a counter serve restaurant.
You say you don't eat out because you don't like tipping - and that businesses should just pay their employees more so you don't have to tip. OK fine - but doesn't that just result in a meal costing what it does now + tip? How is that any different?
Actually, it would cost more than just standard price + tip as you funnel the money into the business first before it hits the employee's bank account.
> Right now I understand that we need to do our part to help small businesses, so I'm making an effort and tricking my brain into eating out by not tipping
This logic is absurd. Both small businesses and employees of small businesses are being crushed right now. Support them both or don't use their services.
You deciding to eat out is consuming time from the wait staff (who often tips out bussers and kitchen staff too). That time could have been spent serving another table that decides to tip.
You are literally taking money away from small business employees by continuing this behavior. You are punishing them for serving you a meal. How is that appropriate?
> tips exist because small businesses grossly underpay their workers.
Tipping culture exists as an excuse for service workers to not only be grossly underpaid, but also to be compensated unequally in ways that would violate nondiscrimination laws if employers did it directly.
There's nothing special about small business, it's not like big chain corporate table-service restaurants (or, say, massive gig economy firms) don't underpay just as badly as any small business.
We all understand that, but it's still negligent to not give a tip to workers, who you know depend on it. Until that industry somehow makes the shift away from tipping, people still need to survive.
> Until that industry somehow makes the shift away from tipping
Which it won't do as long as people are tipping, in fact, entirely new industries are being created with deliberate, engineered pressure to expand tipping culture into them.
There's a very good argument that if you are opposed to tipping culture, as well as taking every opportunity to oppose public policy which supports and accommodated it, you ought not participate in it, which only reinforces and perpetuates it.
Americans sometimes seem unaware that tipping culture isn't universal.
Until I visited the US I'd never tipped in my life.
Tipping is a poor substitute for decent wages.
It's also very awkward. I remember going to a wedding with an open bar - drinks were free but then people were getting out cash anyway to tip the bartender even tho no payment was involved? It's very bizarre if you haven't grown up with it.
If the bar tender only handed you a beer bottle - sure, don't tip if you don't want to. Although you should, even if it's a single dollar (ie. proportional to what you are receiving).
But if you order some elaborate drink that takes time and skill to craft - you should tip as a way of saying "thanks for the effort". That was the original idea of tipping, after all - ensuring, measuring and providing direct feedback of service quality.
> I always wonder about non-customer-facing workers at small businesses.
In places that have mandated tip sharing, the same people tipping the customer-facing workers (and, again, this isn't "small-business" specific; chain restaurants are no different than independents here), in places that don't, no one does. Tipping culture is more industry-focussed than scale-of-business focussed.
Monero is cool, but it has fundamental flaws: its anonymity set. And ring signatures is not standard crypto at all. Less complexity than zk-SNARKs for sure, but there's a trade off in confidentiality.
As Vitalik said, most of GP's message is wrong. The trusted setup was participative, as in anyone could participate and as long as one person was honest the protocol was secure. I know people who participated, I think it's FUD to say that the trusted setup is not great if you're getting value from it (short-size proofs).
Furthermore zk-SNARKs are the best constructions out there for confidentiality, not ring signatures, as was demonstrated many times on research on Monero
tl;dr monero does not provide that much confidentiality because the anonymity set is too small. In other words, you are only hiding your transaction among multiple ones, whereas Zcash hides your transactions among all the set of accounts.
The probability of that happening is much much negligible though (the probability of it happening once is 1/N, the probability of it happening twice is 1/N^2)
That only applies if those particular numbers are somehow significant. The chance of picking last week's numbers are the same as picking any other combination.
