There is a major free speech fight happening right now. I have been following it since the beginning of it last month. I will try to sum up the events of the past month:
A YouTube pundit named Sargon of Akkad was banned from Patreon without warning. Ten months prior on another person's channel, he was harassed by white supremacists during a live cast. He used their own racists terms against them, i.e. he called them white *******. They wrote in many complaints to Patreon with the clip of Sargon and got him banned off of Patreon for using a racist word even though it was not a violation of the Patreon TOS since it was not on Patreon and it was not even on his channel. Sargon then went to one of Patreon's competitors, Subscribestar. It started to turn into a mass exodus of content creators from Patreon to Subscribestar when all of a sudden PayPal cut Subscribestar off from using PayPal's services. Without PayPal, Subscribestar could not facilitate the payments between the donors and the content creators. Subscribestar was a little known service prior to this controversy. Their only sin was being a competitor to Patreon that everyone moved to. Behind it all is Mastercard pushing for more and more censorship.
If the financial institutions get away with policing speech like this, there will be no limit to their power.
Dave Rubin and Jordan Peterson are working on an alternative to Patreon. If PayPal, Mastercard and other financial institutions block them, things will escalate.
A FTC complaint against PayPal and Patreon is in the works.
A couple SJW fund raising sites for their deplatforming activities. This is a very real and active campaign to silence anyone that the Left don't like.
I first ran into this at the corporate level 10 years ago...
A new manager (US-trained lawyer) decided only "positive" speech would be accepted....which in a nutshell means they can screw over anybody they want, any way they want, but don't you dare criticize or try to defend yourself from them.
Since then there has been thousands of times I've run head-first into the same sh*t, but that was the first for me.
I've been following the Patreaon thing for a little bit, but I am thinking it'll turn into another big nothing burger as the majority of the people using it want money more than they want to be free.
This seems to be the way the powers that be will squash freedom, not just through politics, fake news, and the media indoctrinating the youth, but through financial strangle tactics.
What Jordan said at 7 minutes. Makes me think its interesting that I used an Amazon card to buy many rounds of ammo from a retailer...and Amazon gave me 1% back.
And at 22:54 he has an excellent point how the left can't see past their own nose. Apparently they can't fathom any of this coming back to bite them?
[This message has been edited by 2.5 (edited 01-08-2019).]
Imagine a future where cash is no longer legal tender, its not hard to do, and probably not that far off. (Or even just that banks wont move your cash, or places wont take it.)
Then imagine the only monetary system available says you don't agree with their politics so you get none.
Like sponsors that pull out due to some perceived conflict / issue, true or not.... they drop you.
[This message has been edited by 2.5 (edited 01-08-2019).]
I really dislike the idea of someone having the power to "de-platform" anyone from human civilization. That's basically what it means when someone loses the ability to use money. IMO, money should be treated like a public good, to prevent those kinds of shenanigans.
Imagine a future where cash is no longer legal tender, its not hard to do, and probably not that far off. (Or even just that banks wont move your cash, or places wont take it.)
Then imagine the only monetary system available says you don't agree with their politics so you get none.
Like sponsors that pull out due to some perceived conflict / issue, true or not.... they drop you.
Just a short 3 years ago I never used plastic "money" everything was cash or I didn't get it. Brick and mortar shops or I looked somewhere else and did without. Now I hardly ever have real money on me, and when I do I never use it. I am careful and never keep a balance on the card but I do use it. I see how easy it is to get to that point and not use cash at all. Then every once in a while we stumble into a place and they only take cash. We didn't get our cake that night. But so far I have not had anyone turn us away for only having cash.
Originally posted by Jake_Dragon: Then every once in a while we stumble into a place and they only take cash. .
Even though recreational marijuana is 100% legal here, the shops that sell it can only accept cash, as the feds still consider marijuana “illegal”. The credit card companies don’t want to get sideways of the federal government.
People that use plastic, rather than greenbacks, are trading convenience for privacy, playing right into the hands of those that seek to destroy freedom.
People that use plastic, rather than greenbacks, are trading convenience for privacy, playing right into the hands of those that seek to destroy freedom.
Said like that, you almost make credit card users sound like criminals, or at least traitors. Does your line of thinking apply to using banks, too?
Because really, a credit card is just a bank you carry around in your pocket, except your good name (credit score) is the promissory note, instead of a government promissory note (dollar).
Couldn’t taking a loan from a bank for a car or a mortgage fall in the some category as a credit card, with real property taking the place of your good name (credit score) as collateral?
Loan + interest = capitalism. That’s still a good thing, right?
[This message has been edited by Boondawg (edited 01-12-2019).]
There is a very highly regarded bike shop around the corner from me that deals only in cash. They did the heads on my shovel. They are one of the best in the country and if that is what you want, you play by their rules.
There is a very highly regarded bike shop around the corner from me that deals only in cash. They did the heads on my shovel. They are one of the best in the country and if that is what you want, you play by their rules.
We are seeing more and more of that up here too, especially with facebook marketplace/kijiji/craigslist.
For a few years there everybody and their brother were taking pay-pal, e-transfer, square..name it. Now its mostly cash only, price is firm, no delivery unless you want to pay $10-20 extra. Seems vedors got tired of the corporate crap. I approve.