The damaged reputation argument is, of course, laughable given money will, of course, soothe hurt feelings.
If you've got a better way to punish a corporation than by fining it, I'd like to hear it. As it stands, fining a company, and therefore making the bad activities less profitable is about the only thing we have for an entity that cannot be imprisoned nor be killed.
You're completely and utterly full of shit. There is absolutely no reason why cutting pollution has to cause quality of life to go down. The only profits that will go down are the profits of shitty companies that refuse to adapt. And I can't say I give a damn about them.
While it is true that Visa blocked donations to Wikileaks and I agree that it was likely done at the request of the U.S. government I do not think the answer is more government.
That's too bad, as there are no other viable alternatives.
If people are afraid that the blocking of Wikileaks is just the tip of the iceberg then it provides a market opportunity for another card processing company to form outside of the U.S.
You people keep saying that, and yet it NEVER FUCKING HAPPENS. Besides, I don't want to have to worry about which payment processor will accept which payments. They should not have the right to deny me the service.
I would prefer to see that happen than the Europeans decide that they can tell a private sector business that they must provide service
And I would far, far, far rather see it happen that a company can entrench itself in the global financial infrastructure and make it obscenely difficult to do business without them cannot arbitrarily decide what they will and will not allow on the channels that they themselves have taken over.
One reason for this is that it can create an impossible situation for companies.
No, it doesn't.
If the U.S. government says "you may not process Wikileaks donations or we'll shut you down" and the Europeans say "you must process Wikileaks donations or we'll shut you down", where does that leave a company?
Process Wikileaks transactions.
The better solution is more, diverse options in the payment processing marketplace.
Which have not fucking materialized, and would take far too long to do so. I have no interest in waiting for someone to try to start up a new payment processor.
Nope. Not what's happening at all. They're simply saying that a credit card company cannot deny your transaction just because they don't like who the money is going to.
I don't give a flying fuck how "private" the banks/CCs are. They have deeply entrenched themselves in our financial infrastructure. Doing so means they have obligated themselves certain responsibilities. There is absolutely no valid reason whatsoever that Visa should be able to tell me who I can and cannot transfer money to. Even if it is using their service.
Noone is stopping you from using your money to buy something from another person
This argument is complete and utter horseshit. If I cannot transfer money, they are in fact stopping me from doing it. No bank or credit card agency should be allowed to prevent me from making a lawful transfer without good reason. And "I don't like what that organization is doing" is NOT a good reason. Not when you have entrenched yourself so deeply in the global financial infrastructure.
So those people are free to use their "freedom of speech" to publicly wish for violence or death to befall the President, but you don't want to out them because it's possible that someone else might wish that on them? That's a pretty shitty justification.
While I agree with the aims of the tumblr, I would hope the author of the tweet in the GP's post would be outed as well, as they would also be a person I would not want to associate with.
Huge Difference: The author of the blog is not calling for the assassination of the President, nor is he spouting incredibly hateful and racist shit about him.
Perhaps you should check out the history and circumstances surrounding that whole thing. Assholes like you are always trying to paint things in black and white when it suits your agenda.
Slashdot Mirror
they are paid to work not to slack of tweeting and updating profiles.
Said the guy posting on Slashdot.
You could easily be an idiot to someone else. Why shouldn't they tax you?
That fails to defend why it would be OK for WB to make these slot machines.
The damaged reputation argument is, of course, laughable given money will, of course, soothe hurt feelings.
If you've got a better way to punish a corporation than by fining it, I'd like to hear it. As it stands, fining a company, and therefore making the bad activities less profitable is about the only thing we have for an entity that cannot be imprisoned nor be killed.
You're completely and utterly full of shit. There is absolutely no reason why cutting pollution has to cause quality of life to go down. The only profits that will go down are the profits of shitty companies that refuse to adapt. And I can't say I give a damn about them.
While it is true that Visa blocked donations to Wikileaks and I agree that it was likely done at the request of the U.S. government I do not think the answer is more government.
That's too bad, as there are no other viable alternatives.
If people are afraid that the blocking of Wikileaks is just the tip of the iceberg then it provides a market opportunity for another card processing company to form outside of the U.S.
You people keep saying that, and yet it NEVER FUCKING HAPPENS. Besides, I don't want to have to worry about which payment processor will accept which payments. They should not have the right to deny me the service.
I would prefer to see that happen than the Europeans decide that they can tell a private sector business that they must provide service
And I would far, far, far rather see it happen that a company can entrench itself in the global financial infrastructure and make it obscenely difficult to do business without them cannot arbitrarily decide what they will and will not allow on the channels that they themselves have taken over.
One reason for this is that it can create an impossible situation for companies.
No, it doesn't.
If the U.S. government says "you may not process Wikileaks donations or we'll shut you down" and the Europeans say "you must process Wikileaks donations or we'll shut you down", where does that leave a company?
Process Wikileaks transactions.
The better solution is more, diverse options in the payment processing marketplace.
Which have not fucking materialized, and would take far too long to do so. I have no interest in waiting for someone to try to start up a new payment processor.
Nope. Not what's happening at all. They're simply saying that a credit card company cannot deny your transaction just because they don't like who the money is going to.
I don't give a flying fuck how "private" the banks/CCs are. They have deeply entrenched themselves in our financial infrastructure. Doing so means they have obligated themselves certain responsibilities. There is absolutely no valid reason whatsoever that Visa should be able to tell me who I can and cannot transfer money to. Even if it is using their service.
It takes an absolute fuckload of money to start up a credit card company/bank.
Because they were also threatening to reveal secrets from the bankers.
I really don't care how bad the finance companies feel they've got it. They did this to themselves.
Noone is stopping you from using your money to buy something from another person
This argument is complete and utter horseshit. If I cannot transfer money, they are in fact stopping me from doing it. No bank or credit card agency should be allowed to prevent me from making a lawful transfer without good reason. And "I don't like what that organization is doing" is NOT a good reason. Not when you have entrenched yourself so deeply in the global financial infrastructure.
If relatively few companies control our banking or money flow, the solution may be to break up some large companies
Wouldn't that be even more regulation?
That is a completely absurd notion. If you can't trust your government, then you haven't done enough work in ensuring that it is a proper one.
No, that is horseshit.
Until someone decided to go through the DNA database looking for other markers of disease in an effort to prevent those markers from spreading.
So those people are free to use their "freedom of speech" to publicly wish for violence or death to befall the President, but you don't want to out them because it's possible that someone else might wish that on them? That's a pretty shitty justification.
They can be just jerks that pick their insults to have the most impact on their target
I can't really see why that's all that different from racism.
While I agree with the aims of the tumblr, I would hope the author of the tweet in the GP's post would be outed as well, as they would also be a person I would not want to associate with.
Huge Difference: The author of the blog is not calling for the assassination of the President, nor is he spouting incredibly hateful and racist shit about him.
So if they have that right, then don't we have the right to out them and call them shitheads?
Perhaps you should check out the history and circumstances surrounding that whole thing. Assholes like you are always trying to paint things in black and white when it suits your agenda.
And you're a fucking idiot if you think they would do that for some dumbass casual racist on Twitter.
Now if you actually did plan to assassinate the President, and had gotten far into plotting it, then perhaps some advanced tactics might be warranted.
There's a huge difference between homosexuality, which is something you're born with, and being a dumbfuck, which is something these people chose.
You never had the right to call for the assassination of the President, so yeah, nothing's changed.
This is not crippling free speech. It's not the best way to go about things, but he did nothing to silence the free speech of these people.