lol, This is such a bizarre hill to die. There is no evidence in this article of them saying this for any reason other than the staff and business. Could you imagine arguing that restaurants should let patrons who spit on their staff continue to eat there? I dont see what the problem.
Hah! Everything is a ponzi scheme while in growth mode in the venture space if it's not profitable. There is most certainly a universe where the We brand isnt stained by greed, goes pubic, loses 15% early, but survives long enough to innovate survival.
The fault was that they killed the big story with Neumanns greed and it cratered confidence of the public markets and press.
Not really. It's a thesis that if you own the top dogs in the most important consumer growth verticals that you will get both economies of scale and own sector growth. He might end up being very wrong, but it's not really more than that.
Jefferson was staunch about the idea that the constitution should be rewritten every 19 years, so this idea of Originalism is conservatism draped in rhetorical clothing.
Founder intention is absolutely unknowable and it's a ridiculous argument.
> the constitution should be rewritten every 19 years
No, he did not. He thought that the government should work on cycles of 19 years, which could include re-evaluating the Constitution, but focused mainly on extension of debts, term limits, governmental ownership of land. The "Jefferson thought we should rewrite the Constitution every 19 years" trope is used to launder disliking a Constitutional provision but having no way around it but to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
If only there was a body of scholarship that we could look at to discern what their intent was.
I'm being glib, but your broader point is right - Jefferson was skeptical of permanency, but other Founders weren't. I also think Jefferson was just wrong. One of the things that needed to be balanced or accounted for was figuring out how to provide a sense of stability, which the Monarchy had done previously. I am super skeptical that the US would have survived as long (or survived the Civil War) if the Constitution went through a re-write every generation. There's no way to have any sort of long term vision in this scenario.
Jefferson was staunch that all laws including the constitution should have expiration dates and be forced to be reauthorized by each generation (which he put at every 19 years) as it would be unethical for one generation to impose thier laws on the next
Originalism says that the constitution must be interpreted as it was meant when the relevant clauses were authored. It doesn't say that it must be preserved exactly as is. In the originalist framework, you rewrite the constitution by amending it, according to the procedures outlined therein - rather than by creative reinterpretation by the courts over time.
> Founder intention is absolutely unknowable and it's a ridiculous argument.
Yeah, if only they left some kind of papers where they described in detail what they intended. For example, with respect to the Helvering v Davis case, which I mentioned, and which decided on what the constitution meant when it talked about General Welfare, wouldn’t it have been great if we had some authors of the constitution explain it like this:
> Some, who have not denied the necessity of the power of taxation, have grounded a very fierce attack against the Constitution, on the language in which it is defined. It has been urged and echoed, that the power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States," amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power, which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defence or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction.
> Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases. A power to destroy the freedom of the press, the trial by jury, or even to regulate the course of descents, or the forms of conveyances, must be very singularly expressed by the terms "to raise money for the general welfare."
> But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon? If the different parts of the same instrument ought to be so expounded, as to give meaning to every part which will bear it, shall one part of the same sentence be excluded altogether from a share in the meaning; and shall the more doubtful and indefinite terms be retained in their full extent, and the clear and precise expressions be denied any signification whatsoever? For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural or common, than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity, which, as we are reduced to the dilemma of charging either on the authors of the objection or on the authors of the Constitution, we must take the liberty of supposing, had not its origin with the latter.
Alas, founders just dropped by, left us with the constitution, and then disappeared in the puff of smoke. They didn’t write any Federalist Papers, no notes from the constitutional convention survived, and whether the General Welfare clause meant “federal government can do whatever it wants” or exactly the things they took effort to enumerate doesn’t matter, since the constitution would have passed either way, it’s not like the state delegates even cared one way or the other...
More seriously, while I can understand arguments that the constitution of the founders wouldn’t work for America in 20th century, the idea that we cannot know what the founders intended is completely and utterly absurd, because in most cases we know exactly what they intended.
I think for LA and NYC they start from a much bigger employment base and there are different trends in "tech", some going up, some going down. Like in LA a lot less manufacturing and aerospace (did you know LA county was #1 in both for a while?) and more VC style tech. NYC probably has similar trends I wouldn't know as well.
The lack of political will and the form of legislation are the questions.
If the rule is that telcos must eat the cost of a scam, they will drag it out in court and the consumer must still prove it.
If the rule is that each robocall that makes it through must be paid by the telcos (take the consumer out of this), then telcos will battle each other to try and insist that the other party is responsible.
At some point they may even come to a consensus and protocol that protects the customer.
I prefer this option.
There may be other options. Just don’t put the burden on the individual customer.
Edit: Even better, allow bounties so that lawyers can start hunting for robocalls that went through.
Set up a government department with a dozen people and a thousand phone lines distributed around the country and with different telcos. Record every call received. Fine telco $100k for every robocall. Increase fines steeply over time.
Way too complicated. Much easier would be to get a warrant for a trap and trace on the line known to be receiving these calls. Then disconnect the robocall lines.
> If the rule is that telcos must eat the cost of a scam, they will drag it out in court and the consumer must still prove it.
> If the rule is that each robocall that makes it through must be paid by the telcos (take the consumer out of this), then telcos will battle each other to try and insist that the other party is responsible.
I don't necessarily see these as guaranteed outcomes. You don't see this kind of behavior for banks, which are generally the ones liable for credit card fraud.
Your using logic to answer a question that is normally one of emotion.
A single non elected ruler is going to make decisions on whim not process. As long as there is one unchecked person, you can basically be assured that unpredictability will be the norm.
I think both the freedom of kings and the accountability of elected officials are being exaggerated. Both are constrained by the game they're playing and both have much freedom to make bad decisions. Government power, regardless of the type of government, only exists as a result of the consent of the people. Any kind of government uses much of that power to manipulate that consent into whatever their desires may be and they all have great but limited success.
The statement is self defeating. Absolute power is playing far less "a game" for the continuted hold of power than is elected. You're right that people generally do whatever it is they think they can get away with, but simply put a king doesnt asnwer to anyone so he is more likely to act in self interest than someone who needs to please others.
There is an accountability, both international as we saw here, and domestic which we likely won’t see unless it becomes overwhelming. A monarch who loses support of their people is not long for the role either. Just as one who loses support of their international benefactors. Yes they may get away with more of these “domestic” matters than might a democratically elected leader but that doesn’t mean much in the long run. Just look at Venezuela. Maduro won’t be around forever.
There’s no such thing as absolute power in the realm of governance.
Julius Caesar was accountable to quite a few knives, so many French were accountable to the guillotine, and generally there is always a threat to be accountable to a revolution or usurper which with absolute power are all too frequent. Those just being the most dramatic and memorable forms of accountability.
There is no such thing as absolute power even in an absolute monarch. Power is paid for in one currency or another.
KSA leaders have been more predictable than American presidents.
International rules are set up so that people have incentives to follow them.
Any leader, elected or not, may decide to nationalize and confiscate assets in his country. There are consequences to that and they are pretty serious.
If you own assets that get confiscated in KSA, depending on how your organization is set up, you can get judges to seize KSA assets in another country.
