matai_kolila's comments

Do you know what a Gish gallop is?

With a new account you lack the credibility for me to trust that's not what you're doing here with these very long comments.

Ironic, coming from me, but I make new accounts for privacy reasons, not each time I want to make a comment.

Yeah I guess my point is a theory of constraints argument; Taylor Swift herself is the constraint, nothing else will matter.

People seem to be ignoring or forgetting that basic idea.

The cooling effect on supply?? You mean Taylor Swift's inability to be in two places at once and unwillingness to drive her voice into the ground by continuing to add more concert dates?

No, this is not the right argument. She had to go with the biggest venues in the US to fit as many people as possible, and she's already added a ton of extra dates.

There is a fundamental limit to the number of people who can attend this tour, and that number is lower than the number of people who want to attend this tour, therefore prices will go up until the demand for tickets matches the supply of tickets.

Independent venues would not have made a lick of difference in this case, these ticket prices would be sky high no matter who was selling them.

Sure, but that's not why The Eras Tour tickets were so expensive, which is the real reason Taylor Swift fans are upset.

Yes, TM has a concerning amount of control over venues and therefore artists, but in this scenario, that's not very relevant, given the insane demand and the basic physics problem involved with trying to stuff 12 million people into spaces (at a time) that hold a total of maybe 2.

It's just weird to me how we can't separate the issues. TM's main insult to the Swifties were the technical issues, not their potential monopoly. Ticket prices would be insane regardless.

Maybe I'm the only one who doesn't really see a problem with ticket prices being as high as they are.

There is much more demand for these tickets than there are supply of tickets, so my econ 101 tells me the price should go up until the demand drops to match the supply.

Any other argument just feels like sour grapes from folks who don't have the means to buy this luxury item.

Separately, Ticketmaster's monopoly is concerning, but in this case I don't see that impacting prices. In fact it seems like Ticketmaster did try to do a handful of things to artificially lower ticket prices, those things just were not effective due to technical issues (so the article title may be wrong).

Music fans like to moralize about how they "deserve" to go to concerts, but the reality is nobody deserves to go anywhere; attending a concert is not something you must do in order to survive. It's not even a thing you must do in order to enjoy an artist's music or support that artist. There is absolutely no imperative or necessity to attend this tour, and in cases like that I have no problem with pricing matching demand and supply pretty directly.

I think the implication can more aptly be stated as, "We survived this sentiment then, we can survive this sentiment now."

What? No. That's the government acting in response to speech, not other people expressing themselves.

Your argument forgets that it's also free speech to react to something objectionable. If the government forced me to do business with you without my consent, that would be compelled association, which is more similar to how Mao's government behaved in the 50s.

My assumption here is that this is built to replace Patreon entirely.

"Sub to my Discord or sub to my Patreon to get exclusive content!" eventually becomes, "Sub to my Discord to get exclusive content!" and cuts out Patreon entirely.

Agreed. It's hard to create quality content, and even harder to do it without being able to monetize that content.

"The Internet should be free!" that's just not sustainable. I'm sorry but it isn't.

I wonder if it's because this is probably the only place they feel they can get away with bragging, but have been "proud" of their "accomplishment" for some time now.

I’ll be sure to tell all American history books that Alexander Hamilton and Lafayette (two off the top of my head because I listened to Hamilton recently, there absolutely were many many more) were actually from England and not the Caribbean and France respectively.

I feel like you ignored the part where I absolutely would house as many refugees as I can in my home, were it as bountiful and spacious as the US is.

But it’s not, and I did buy this home with money rather than inherit it through theft, so instead of my home I will continue to vote and donate in ways that return the US to a pre-eugenics immigration policy.

This would give those refugees a much fairer chance at their own American dream, the one I was given because my ancestors oppressed and stole from the people who didn’t look like them.

“Slavery was an improvement” ok, so honestly I find this insanely offensive and uncomfortably in line with some “white savior” arguments racists make, but I don’t want to be rude to you.

I guess all I can say is that I just don’t see how you can be so cruel to others like this.

So? Nearly all countries at one point allowed slavery, refused to let women vote, and a ton of countries were ruled by an authoritarian monarchy, that doesn't mean it was a good idea.

If you're not interested, why force yourself? It's okay to let things go that no longer give you the joy they once did. Maybe a break will rekindle that spark, but maybe it won't!

This is not the compelling argument you think it is; in this analogy I:

* didn't buy my house, I inherited it,

* the people I inherited it from stole it from other people who

* also still live in the house somehow but just in the not-as-nice parts, and

* the house is gigantic and can easily fit literally billions more people without even coming close to exhausting the resources of the house, in fact

* bringing more people into the house would in fact substantially increase the house's shared ability to operate and provide for the members of the house.

So yeah, if we want to use this analogy in a meaningful way, nothing at all entitles me to my house!

The key is which things you exclude people over. A society can have values, but if those values discriminate based on aspects of a person that are outside of the person's control, that society is not operating ethically.

Western societies all value liberty, and liberty is incompatible with exclusion based on geographic origin.

Of course you have a responsibility towards the society and the people who raised and support you.

That just doesn't involve excluding others from that society. They deserve, just as much as you, to participate (and improve!) in your society as you do.

My country only exists because people came from many other societies and brought the best parts of those societies together to create my country and its culture. I want that for everyone, if they want it for themselves.

Yea, if someone wants to, they can and should be able to freely swap which society they participate in.

We are successful as a species because we socialize, and there is no reason to limit that only to people who were born in specific geographic areas; that doesn’t make any sense.

It would make a lot more sense to group by shared goals and beliefs, with free movement as your goals and beliefs change.

Blind nationalistic loyalty is in no way a requirement for a successful human society.

Uh they didn’t work alone on it, and they left a ton of people out, ripping freedom and progress from their hands without a second thought.

Your ancestors were thieves and oppressors, and took things that didn’t belong to them, which means the resulting better society isn’t yours or theirs to give or take. It’s free for whoever comes and helps grow it.

Honestly I wish we had some mechanism to cast out the entitled and let in the hopeful. People who believe as you do don’t deserve the gift of a progressive society.