Enjoy! 🙂
Live Version: NPR presents ANOHNI
Enjoy! 🙂
Live Version: NPR presents ANOHNI
Monday, August 13, 2018 by: Isabelle Z.
(Natural News) Not content to stop at banning videos, YouTube has decided to add “fact checks” and quotes to videos on topics that it feels are controversial, and the MMR vaccine is one of them.
Last month, the video sharing platform started placing a blurb of text beneath certain videos offering viewers a “scientific” explanation. For example, the text placed underneath some videos about climate change is taken from a Wikipedia entry on global warming and reads: ”Multiple lines of scientific evidence shows that the climate system is warming.” They’re also questioning sources, with a series of climate videos posted by the RT news site containing a description from Wikipedia about the publisher that says: ”RT is funded in whole or in part by the Russian government.”
The move comes after YouTube announced this spring that it will place descriptions taken from Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia alongside videos about topics that tend to attract conspiracy theories, such as the Oklahoma City bombing and the moon landing. Although YouTube has not shared a full list of topics that will be given this treatment, some of the topics identified in a post to its administrators include global warming, Dulce Base, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Kecksburg UFO incident, the 1980 Camarate air accident, and the MMR vaccine.
The company has not notified the users who originally uploaded the videos in question that they will bear these propaganda messages. It is not clear why YouTube is lumping the MMR vaccine’s proven link to autism in the same category as conspiracy theories, but given their track record, politics almost certainly played a big role.
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The Chief Marketing Officer of PragerU, Craig Strazzeri, said YouTube’s new policy, which has affected some PragerU videos, shows its political bias.
He said: “Despite claiming to be a public forum and a platform open to all, YouTube is clearly a left-wing organization. This is just another mistake in a long line of giant missteps that erodes America’s trust in Big Tech, much like what has already happened with the mainstream news media.”
Others have expressed surprise that these blurbs are showing up on videos that are about science rather than conspiracies. YouTube says that even more videos will receive the labels in the months to come and that it is using an algorithm rather than people to determine which videos will be given the blurbs.
Right now, they are only visible to viewers in the U.S., and they are expected to be rolled out gradually. YouTube will be keeping track of how often viewers click on the blurb, which will link back to the original source.
https://www.real.video/embed/5817873555001
People are growing increasingly fed up with YouTube’s attempts to control the narrative and influence what people believe by silencing views that oppose their own. This month, they came under fire for banning right-wing host Alex Jones’s channel, which was just the latest in a long string of moves against videos on topics like vaccines, climate change, natural health and guns.
If you’re looking for a place to post or watch videos without YouTube insulting your intelligence or controlling what you read and share, the free-speech alternative REAL.video is the place to go. With more than 300 new channels joining the platform each day and 1.5 million minutes of video served each week, it provides a destination for people who value freedom to discuss all manner of topics that are unwelcome elsewhere. Best of all, there is no user tracking, shadow banning, or long ads to sit through. As great and fair alternatives like this gain in popularity, one can only hope that YouTube’s reach will shorten dramatically.
Sources for this article include:
As someone on the left of politics, I find myself cordially agreeing with you – at least in the abstract.
However, the notion of a free contact of employment relies on an absence of coercion, including an absence of necessity. If I am dying of thirst, and the price you set on allowing me to have some of your ample water supply is that I enter your service as an indentured labourer, that contract is not free.
In some hypothetical primitive state I might be able to find my own water, hunt or grow my own food, clear a patch of forest to live in, and so on. In a capitalist state, where all land is owned and the raw materials and tools needed to pursue my trade have been concentrated in a small number of hands, we may legitimately decide that we should either compensate people for the lack of freedom in the work contracts they find themselves having to agree to, or remove the spur of necessity so that their contracts really are free. The former might include a legal floor under wages, or a legal ceiling on hours worked, or other limits on the freedom of employers. The latter might include food stamps or (my preferred left-libertarian option) a universal basic income.
The idea that, under capitalism, there could be such a thing as a free market in anything seems to me so idealistic, so divorced from current conditions, that I’m baffled that anyone could embrace it. I’m pretty much convinced, though, that with a well-designed UBI we could find a system that both Libertarians and left-libertarians could be comfortable with.
Ok. As I said, my answer is from my specific perspective that relates to what you accurately characterize as capitalistic libertarianism. If you can find flaws in its principles and application of those principles then you negate its coherence and consistency.
You apparently believe you have identified such flaws – namely that…. ‘all land is owned and the raw materials needed to pursue my trade have been concentrated in a small number of hands…’
that results in…
‘lack of freedom in the work contracts [people] find themselves having to agree to’….
which you conclude means the contracts are not really freely entered into.
This presumably negates the voluntary requirement of libertarianism that in turns violates the NAP.
You thus conclude that under capitalism even the hypothetical that a free market could exist in anything is untenable and that there is no evidence in current conditions that could even support the possibility of the hypothetical.
I hope I’ve accurately conveyed your argument.
However, I reject your premises and what appear to be your argument and conclusion flowing from them.
I suppose it is possible that in the instance of your specific trade – which you don’t name – that all land and raw materials are concentrated into a small number of hands. But relatively few trades today require possession of land and raw materials – in the traditional sense of the latter – meaning substances from the earth.
Therefore, even if true in your case, to extrapolate this condition and its consequences throughout a modern division of labor capitalist economy on that basis is simply absurd.
The fact is, in modern capitalism, possession of land and access to traditional raw material is increasingly rarely a requirement for participation.
What is a requirement is access to the means of production. The means of production increasingly revolves around and is dependent upon computing power – i.e. the microchip and the functions of software and hardware that it enables. The cost of computing power according to Moore’s law decreases by 50% every 18 months.
There has never been a time or place in human history that the means of production have been so readily available to vast masses of individuals that can therefore pursue their individual personal and financial goals in the context of capitalism – that is- trading value for value with other individuals or collectives of individuals as business enterprises.
If you’re looking to blame capitalism or concentration of land and raw material ownership for the impediments in what should be a massive explosion of entrepreneurial capitalism and dynamic economic growth – you’re looking in the wrong place.
Moreover, you then propose an UBI – which is remedy for the ostensible coercion (lack of freedom) imposed on participants in modern capitalism – which argument for coercion is as I’ve said is based on faulty premises and logic. But the UBI itself is almost without doubt a form of coercion – as it necessitates redistribution of the amount of the UBI from the person or entity that earned it to someone who did not.
In summary, you erroneously characterize modern capitalism as necessarily resulting in coercion and your remedy is to impose unabashed coercion in the form of an UBI.
“You thus conclude that under capitalism even the hypothetical that a free market could exist in anything is untenable and that there is no evidence in current conditions that could even support the possibility of the hypothetical.
I hope I’ve accurately conveyed your argument.”
Yeah, that’s pretty good. It’s a little more rigid than I would argue for – I’m not sure that I’d want to deny that a free market could exist in anything, but I’d certainly say that there are enough instances of the coercion of necessity to challenge the idea that free markets are always available.
“I suppose it is possible that in the instance of your specific trade – which you don’t name – that all land and raw materials are concentrated into a small number of hands.”
I wasn’t intending to reference my actual trade, but to make a general point. However, as you ask: I’m retired now, but I was previously a nurse. I specialised in mental health, and went on to work for the NHS as a cognitive-behaviour therapist.
“But relatively few trades today require possession of land and raw materials – in the traditional sense of the latter – meaning substances from the earth.”
Certainly my work required buildings, heating, lighting, furniture, telephones, computers, beds, bathrooms, uniforms, security personnel, secretaries – and on a scale that wouldn’t be practical for a self-employed person to attempt.
“Therefore, even if true in your case, to extrapolate this condition and its consequences throughout a modern division of labor capitalist economy on that basis is simply absurd.”
My argument doesn’t require me to generalise it throughout the economy – only to observe that those conditions are common enough to undermine the assumption that free markets could ever be universal.
“The fact is, in modern capitalism, possession of land and access to traditional raw material is increasingly rarely a requirement for participation.
What is a requirement is access to the means of production. The means of production increasingly revolves around and is dependent upon computing power – i.e. the microchip and the functions of software and hardware that it enables. The cost of computing power according to Moore’s law decreases by 50% every 18 months.”
When you can make me a silicon chip in your garage – and mine your back yard for the rare-earth elements needed to make a cellphone – I will accept that access to the means of production is completely open.
The UK economy is 80% service-sector, but that service sector sits on top of a foundation that can’t be produced on a computer – roads, buildings, vehicles, fuel, food, copper, steel, concrete, rubber, plastics, glass, electricity, tap-water, fibre-optics, textiles. Without the workforce to produce these things (both domestically and overseas) the computers and telephones simply won’t work, and you won’t have any value to trade. Many of these industries require a labour force of thousands. Our economy relies on there being a lot of people drilling for oil, trucking stuff around the country, rolling steel, mining copper. If they all decide to set up in business as commodity traders we are…well, let’s just say Everybody Dies.
“There has never been a time or place in human history that the means of production have been so readily available to vast masses of individuals that can therefore pursue their individual personal and financial goals in the context of capitalism – that is- trading value for value with other individuals or collectives of individuals as business enterprises.”
I very much like the notion of trading with collectives of individuals (I belong to the Cooperative Party here in the UK, which has a vision of an economy founded mainly on cooperatives). But that isn’t capitalism as it has existed up to now. Walmart is not a collective of individuals, it is based on people engaging themselves as servants to a small managerial group. That’s true of all minimum-wage jobs. No-one is going to indenture themselves to a company for minimum wage for any other reason than necessity, and that means that they are not genuinely free.
“If you’re looking to blame capitalism or concentration of land and raw material ownership for the impediments in what should be a massive explosion of entrepreneurial capitalism and dynamic economic growth – you’re looking in the wrong place.”
Um…I don’t think that’s what I’m looking to do. I’m looking to challenge the idea that there can be freedom for everyone in a functioning capitalist economy. What I want, as a left-libertarian, is to maximise freedom for everyone. That can’t mean absolute freedom for everyone (as RH Tawney said, “freedom for the pike is death for the minnows”), but if we act intelligently, by rationing liberty somewhat, we can optimise the system for everyone.
“Moreover, you then propose an UBI – which is remedy for the ostensible coercion (lack of freedom) imposed on participants in modern capitalism – which argument for coercion is as I’ve said is based on faulty premises and logic. But the UBI itself is almost without doubt a form of coercion – as it necessitates redistribution of the amount of the UBI from the person or entity that earned it to someone who did not.”
There are various ways of structuring a UBI, not all of which require it to be funded through taxation. And the notion of “earning” what you make is problematic. But, yes, this would be one of the instances of limiting liberty for some in order to maximise it overall.
“In summary, you erroneously characterize modern capitalism as necessarily resulting in coercion and your remedy is to impose unabashed coercion in the form of an UBI.”
I disagree only with the word “erroneously” there.
Well, I’m not sure how you get that “most”. Do you have a link to some data that can clarify that for me?
I don’t see it as contradictory to prefer protections for those who are close to destitution over those who are a long way from destitution. I don’t feel I have a duty to care about someone losing their job if they have a million in the bank – they’re not going to have a problem feeding their children. Someone who is one unlucky break away from disaster needs my concern far more.
When I talked about coercion I wasn’t thinking so much of payday loans, but of employment conditions. If the mine that you and your family have worked in for years closes down, you may find that the only jobs now available are low-paid with oppressive rules (e.g. limits on bathroom visits, no paid leave, body searches, no health insurance). You may not have the luxury of refusing that job, as you need to make your rent now, not six months from now when your (hopefully) brilliant entrepreneurial idea (for which you don’t have any seed capital) starts to bear fruit. This is the coercion of necessity, and it limits the freedom you have to choose what contracts you make.
Any theory that relies on the supposition of utter existential freedom to make or decline a contract is failing to engage with the reality of life for many working people.
Great counterpoint, Alec!
I don’t know how you put statistics on something like that – but then, I’m not the one who claimed that most people who have to accept bad terms are in a situation of their own making.
The coercion of necessity is not the same as being mugged, as that would be the coercion of violence. When Ayn Rand took social security payments, it was under the coercion of necessity, not because someone mugged her and forced money into her wallet.
You keep bringing up payday loans. I never mentioned payday loans, I have never claimed that anyone is forced to take out a payday loan. And yet you say that I have. Why is that?
And I haven’t said anything about fault either. Fault is entirely beside the point. Whether a person’s necessitous state is because of their own fault, or bad luck, or the malice of their enemies, or the folly of their spouse, or due to being shot in Las Vegas and having to find the money to pay their hospital bills – none of this changes the fact that some people are under the lash of necessity, and are therefore not free always to make the contracts they would choose.