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Good analogy, I think.

So, by this analogy, the subprime mortgage industry was a frustum whose bottom face kept getting smaller and whose height and top face kept getting bigger.

Let's see... where was government in this?

It is certainly possible to find prime mortgages among borrowers below the median income, but when half or more of the mortgages the GSEs bought had to be made to people below that income level, it was inevitable that underwriting standards had to decline. And they did. By 2000, Fannie was offering no-downpayment loans. By 2002, Fannie and Freddie had bought well over $1 trillion of subprime and other low quality loans. Fannie and Freddie were by far the largest part of this effort, but the FHA, Federal Home Loan Banks, Veterans Administration and other agencies--all under congressional and HUD pressure--followed suit. This continued through the 1990s and 2000s until the housing bubble--created by all this government-backed spending--collapsed in 2007.

https://www.theatlantic.com/bu...

and

The housing bubble was inflated by federal policies created by President Bill Clinton, then expanded by President George W. Bush. The policies were supported by Senator and then President Barack Obama.

The policies were intended to help low-skilled Americans — especially African-Americans — and Hispanic immigrants gain housing wealth by pushing down mortgage requirements, such as down-payments.

But the government policy had the reverse effect, and the housing collapse after 2007 eliminated much of the wealth held by African-American and Hispanic families.

http://dailycaller.com/2013/07...

and

And he pushed to allow first-time buyers to qualify for government insured mortgages with no money down. Republican congressional leaders and some housing advocates balked, arguing that homeowners with no stake in their investments would be more prone to walk away, as West did. Many economic experts, including some in the White House, now share that view.

The president also leaned on mortgage brokers and lenders to devise their own innovations. "Corporate America," he said, "has a responsibility to work to make America a compassionate place."

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/1...

and

The seeds of the mortgage meltdown were planted during Bill Clinton's presidency.

Under Clinton's Housing and Urban Development (HUD) secretary, Andrew Cuomo, Community Reinvestment Act regulators gave banks higher ratings for home loans made in "credit-deprived" areas. Banks were effectively rewarded for throwing out sound underwriting standards and writing loans to those who were at high risk of defaulting. If banks didn't comply with these rules, regulators reined in their ability to expand lending and deposits.

These new HUD rules lowered down payments from the traditional 20 percent to 3 percent by 1995 and zero down-payments by 2000. What's more, in the Clinton push to issue home loans to lower income borrowers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made a common practice to virtually end credit documentation, low credit scores were disregarded, and income and job history was also thrown aside. The phrase "subprime" became commonplace. What an understatement.

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/2...

I covered this one here: http://www.amerika.org/politic...

Twitter and other social media are effectively public platforms.

Yes, at least in common sense. Are they legally public spaces? I argue that they are public spaces if we translate physical world law to virtual world law.

In that Trump Twitter case, the judge ruled that denying access to his posts was denying citizen's their right to speech. If responding to Tweets is speech, then surely broadcasting them is also protected (as well as YouTube videos, FaceBook posts, and so on).

No, because he was using Twitter as a mouthpiece for the government, and the government cannot censor speech. The same requirement is not made of private entities, possibly with the exceptions mentioned above.

I think that's the best argument for reinstating Net Neutrality, without actually mentioning it directly, that I've ever read.

Twitter and other social media are effectively public platforms.

Yes, at least in common sense. Are they legally public spaces? I argue that they are public spaces if we translate physical world law to virtual world law.

In that Trump Twitter case, the judge ruled that denying access to his posts was denying citizen's their right to speech. If responding to Tweets is speech, then surely broadcasting them is also protected (as well as YouTube videos, FaceBook posts, and so on).

No, because he was using Twitter as a mouthpiece for the government, and the government cannot censor speech. The same requirement is not made of private entities, possibly with the exceptions mentioned above.

They're saying free markets create equality based on ability and skill, and they're against using the state to force equality. I.e. gender quota's, race quota's, and so on.

America was founded on a natural rights ideal, i.e. "all men are created equal" means you are born as equal as you are going to get, and it is not the job of government to enforce equality or equity.

Starting in the 1870s, but really picking up after WW2, the American government dedicated itself to Civil Rights, a regime in which government enforces equality on all people as an ideological platform.

It helps for people to know the difference between Right and Left when interpreting this distinction. Left = egalitarianism; Right = realism + transcendentalism.

They're saying free markets create equality based on ability and skill, and they're against using the state to force equality. I.e. gender quota's, race quota's, and so on.

America was founded on a natural rights ideal, i.e. "all men are created equal" means you are born as equal as you are going to get, and it is not the job of government to enforce equality or equity.

Starting in the 1870s, but really picking up after WW2, the American government dedicated itself to Civil Rights, a regime in which government enforces equality on all people as an ideological platform.

It helps for people to know the difference between Right and Left when interpreting this distinction. Left = egalitarianism; Right = realism + transcendentalism.

You can read all about it at Amerika.org.

Daily rants about the fall of Rome 2.0 and the denialists who empower it...

The government has done this before: if your private property acts like a public space, it can be regulated like a public space.

Really interesting stuff, whichever side you come down on in this issue.

In my view, most of this drama could have been avoided by retaining common carrier status to webhosts and making an antitrust case against Google. If we did it Microsoft, we should do it to this new company which is doing the same stuff that Microsoft did.

Handy Alt Right Definition:

http://www.amerika.org/politic...

You can also go to the source:

http://alternative-right.blogs...

the issue maybe what is considered "poisonous", terrorism today and free speech tomorrow.

This site was once an anti-government screed and then an Osama bin Ladin fan site before becoming its current incarnation, a New Right/Alt Right blog.

It is still listed as a hate site for one of those earlier incarnations, meaning that it is blocked in most workplaces, and no amount of petitioning these services leads to it being permanently unblocked.

That is what we face: either user-reported or bureaucrat-driven censorship.

http://www.wnd.com/2016/08/911...

People are fawning all over it. Of course, some cynics have struck back:

http://www.amerika.org/politic...

Great contribution. An alt right blogger expanded on this:

http://www.amerika.org/science...

Which is the more realistic image? ...beats me, but the one on the left, I'd like to get her phone number.

Napoleon was an internationalist, not a nationalist. I compiled some historical data into a FAQ: http://www.amerika.org/nature/...

I don't dog whistle: I say what I mean. That is rare in this day and age.

You can read what I think at Amerika and a nihilist website. You will notice nothing is hidden, even the tree hugger and Nietzschean stuff.

You might think you're fighting the grand Leftist fight against 14/88, but I am something far worse: I am 1788, and the return of common sense with a vengeance. You are obsolete. Deal with that however you find best :)

http://www.amerika.org/politic... They're also heading toward collapse as investors realize these firms are advertising "Male Tears" mugs to lost basement-dwelling 20-somethings.

Diversity doesn't work.

In any form -- ethnic, religious, racial, class, caste, even wide disparities in intelligence -- it promotes alienation, distrust, lack of unity and self-hatred among a population. It destroys that nation.

Wherever it has been tried, it has failed and left behind unstable third-world countries. Even in "white" nations like the Balkans, Northern Ireland and Russia, diversity has been nothing more than a destructive bother.

The reason we have diversity is the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which was designed to switch the USA from a majority-European-descended population to a majority third world population, because minorities vote against the perceived majority and thus will always vote for Democrats. Many even credit that change with getting Barack Obama elected.

I don't see the point in revisiting the black crime figures. They're there in the FBI's uniform crime reports, produced by a government that for 60 years has tried as hard as possible to be as non-racist as possible. I think the figures are accurate. They reveal that although blacks commit much more crime per capita, and Mexicans are halfway between whites and blacks on the crime per capita scale, most victims of a criminal of a certain race are also of that race (the defining statistic is white male rape of black women, which is virtually nonexistent). The race and IQ statistics are probably also good science, given that they are consistent with international estimates. There is no reason to suppose any of this is wrong, but I find it unnecessary.

Racism is what happens when diversity happens. We all want to live with people like ourselves. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam found that diversity destroys trust and makes paranoid communities. This does not affect liberals, who are concerned primarily with fairness by institutions to individuals. But conservatives, who value social order (per the research of Jonathan Haidt) find it disturbing.

In fact, many of the healthiest countries are almost entirely mono-racial -- Finland and Japan come to mind.

For background information, read the Race FAQ. Then check out the biological basis of race. This gives you a background in understanding race that isn't tainted by either racism or diversity, both of which are dead ends if you ask me.

The MBA's just can not conceive that people will pay for quality and innovation.

I think this is an artifact of being thinking beings. People cannot conceive of anybody smarter than they. Similarly, they cannot conceive of innovations that they have not seen or experienced.

MBAs are not trained to innovate. They are trained to deal with what is. MBAs do a great job at dealing with commodity businesses - those where innovation isn't nearly as important as streamlining and efficiency. Want to run a steel foundry? Want to run a trucking company? MBAs are exactly what's needed there.

But MBAs are incompetent to run a company that bases itself on innovation! They were pretty consistently kill them. Witness 1990s Apple. Witness DEC. Witness... Motorola. Further, even though they are, practically by definition, incapable of running an innovation company, they are completely unaware of their shortcomings thanks to the Dunning-Kruger effect!

So what you have is a whole class of highly educated, intelligent people with a gaping blind spot in their vision who, because of their education and intelligent, are like submarine missiles torpedoing high-performance tech companies - the very type of company the USA most needs to survive!

Now in a democracy, too, there are drones, but they are more numerous and more dangerous than in the oligarchy; there they are inert and unpractised, here they are full of life and animation; and the keener sort speak and act, while the others buzz about the bema and prevent their opponents from being heard.

And there is another class in democratic States, of respectable, thriving individuals, who can be squeezed when the drones have need of their possessions; there is moreover a third class, who are the labourers and the artisans, and they make up the mass of the people. When the people meet, they are omnipotent, but they cannot be brought together unless they are attracted by a little honey; and the rich are made to supply the honey, of which the demagogues keep the greater part themselves, giving a taste only to the mob.

Their victims attempt to resist; they are driven mad by the stings of the drones, and so become downright oligarchs in self-defence. Then follow informations and convictions for treason. The people have some protector whom they nurse into greatness, and from this root the tree of tyranny springs. The nature of the change is indicated in the old fable of the temple of Zeus Lycaeus, which tells how he who tastes human flesh mixed up with the flesh of other victims will turn into a wolf.

Even so the protector, who tastes human blood, and slays some and exiles others with or without law, who hints at abolition of debts and division of lands, must either perish or become a wolf--that is, a tyrant. Perhaps he is driven out, but he soon comes back from exile; and then if his enemies cannot get rid of him by lawful means, they plot his assassination.

Thereupon the friend of the people makes his well-known request to them for a body-guard, which they readily grant, thinking only of his danger and not of their
own. Now let the rich man make to himself wings, for he will never run away again if he does not do so then. And the Great Protector, having crushed all his rivals, stands proudly erect in the chariot of State, a full-blown tyrant.

Plato, The Republic

Full explanation: How we'll move into tyranny

Great empires like the USA are not conquered. They decay from within. We are corrupt because we have lost social consensus. To understand that, you will have to first realize that not all of the humanities are BS and that politics/philosophy is a discipline as structured as programming. Until you overcome that bias, it will all be Greek (heh heh) to you.

Since 1979, his country has been under constant attack.

Since 1948, his religion has been demonized.

Since September 11, 2001, he has kept the "most powerful nation on earth" frustrated.

Osama bin Ladin is more than the most controversial political figure of our time; he is also a man from whom we can learn inestimable wisdom about the political situation in the middle east. Come see why we've established a homepage at amerika.org for Osama bin Ladin and anyone else who wants to read between the lies of U.S./U.N. foreign policy.

http://www.amerika.org/
The Osama bin Ladin Homepage(tm)

Since 1979, his country has been under constant attack.

Since 1948, his religion has been demonized.

Since September 11, 2001, he has kept the "most powerful nation on earth" frustrated.

Osama bin Ladin is more than the most controversial political figure of our time; he is also a man from whom we can learn inestimable wisdom about the political situation in the middle east. Come see why we've established a homepage at amerika.org for Osama bin Ladin and anyone else who wants to read between the lies of U.S./U.N. foreign policy.

http://www.amerika.org/
The Osama bin Ladin Homepage(tm)

Since 1979, his country has been under constant attack.

Since 1948, his religion has been demonized.

Since September 11, 2001, he has kept the "most powerful nation on earth" frustrated.

Osama bin Ladin is more than the most controversial political figure of our time; he is also a man from whom we can learn inestimable wisdom about the political situation in the middle east. Come see why we've established a homepage at amerika.org for Osama bin Ladin and anyone else who wants to read between the lies of U.S./U.N. foreign policy.

http://www.amerika.org/
The Osama bin Ladin Homepage(tm)