jufnitz’s Comments

• Jun 10th, 2016 @ 11:28am

  Re: Re: Sigh

  on Gawker Files For Bankruptcy, Begins Process Of Auctioning Itself Off

  This isn't the government going after Gawker.

  
  
  Of course it is. If tomorrow at noon the government was abolished, and at 12:01 Hulk Hogan went up to Gawker and said "so about that $130 million..." Gawker would laugh at him. The problem is that a great enough socioeconomic disparity between two litigants allows the wealthier and more powerful litigant to assume effective control over the legal system, pushing verdicts that serve their interests and stalling those that don't, and any outcome is enforced by the government's monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. One could just as well blame the existence of a de facto police state in Ferguson, MO on citizens' not assuming responsibility for paying their parking tickets.
• Jun 8th, 2016 @ 9:54am

  Re: Re: Re:

  on Broadband CEOs Admit Usage Caps Are Nothing More Than A Toll On Uncompetitive Markets
  So-called "crony capitalism" is still capitalism.
  
  You're getting straight to the heart of what's both infuriating and hilarious about the predominant liberal capitalist approach to stories like this one. If for-profit companies can make more money by monopolizing the market and buying politicians and so on, what sacred principle of capitalism is supposed to grab them and tell them "no, you can't do that"? The supposedly real or true capitalism that people fetishize in contrast to "crony capitalism" is basically just capitalism at an earlier stage in its development, a stage that if left to its own devices will logically progress toward monopolistic "crony capitalism". And for the past 40-odd years in Western societies, the political trend has been toward revoking government's ability to put a check on this progression. So condemn broadband/cable CEOs if you must, but don't pretend they're doing anything the logic of capitalism isn't telling them to do.
• Jan 13th, 2016 @ 9:49am

  (untitled comment)

  on Hateful Eight Pirated Leak Harms Film All The Way To Box Office Records
  This is silly. Of course the studios have an interest in preventing people from downloading their movies instead of buying tickets; the question is simply, do we consider this interest legitimate? Forcing them to adopt a "freemium"-type business model, where movies themselves are freely available but customers are charged for "upgrades" like an IMAX-quality viewing experience, would be wonderful for people who don't care about picture quality, but the companies themselves if given a choice would rather extract money from those people than not extract said money. Why is that so hard to understand?