Apparently Davis Aurini is capable of sometimes telling the truth.
As you may recall, the bald, semi-Nazi stain on humanity released his version of The Sarkeesian Effect (that was officially not his version of The Sarkeesian Effect) last week to something less than universal acclaim, with one critic describing the “film” as “worse than a dead squirrel in your wall.”
Ok, that was me.
Weirdly, it turns out that Aurini actually agrees with some of my criticisms. While still maintaining that his not-version of The Sarkeesian Effect is a “damn good film,” he admitted on a livestream last night that the section of his film critiquing Anita Sarkeesian’s alleged lies was “crap.”
He then suggested it would have been much better … if he’d actually watched Sarkeesian’s videos.
Yep. He spent a year — and tens of thousands of dollars of other people’s money — ostensibly making a film about Sarkeesian. But somehow he never got around to watching any of her videos.
ETHICS!
You can hear the whole segment on “Bechtloff’s Saturday Night Livestream: Secret Crisis of the Infinity Hour” on Youtube here. (The link should take you to the relevant portion of the livestrean, which starts just short of an hour and twenty minutes in.)
Here are the highlights.
In this first clip, Aurini responds to someone with a question about his attacks on Sarkeesian’s alleged dishonesty.
This clip ends a bit abruptly because Aurini was cut off by Bechtloff before finishing his sentence. Luckily, he went on to elaborate on his point. And threw in in a racial slur while he was at it, because why not?
And here he admits he didn’t bother to watch Sarkeesian’s videos.
It’s about ethics in making an entire film about someone without actually knowing anything about them.
EDITED TO ADD:
We Hunted the Mammoth has obtained this footage of Davis Aurini as a child.
H/T — Thanks to the alert reader who pointed me to the relevant section of the livestream.
#NotAllMaleBrains.
@Moocow
You’re forgetting that libertarians think discrimination is a good thing.
Paying taxes = murder
Discrimination = free speech
http://45.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m66rvpMUdA1rzapx4o1_500.gif
But, to answer your question: I use DuoLingo because I want to. End of story.
Why don’t you open up Google Maps and showed me where I asked for your opinion on anything?
@Moscow
“Logistically, how does this even work? Are there going to be toll booths at every road? Who decides where the roads stop and end? Is there some unit of measurement that a single proprietor is ‘allowed’ to own? Do these toll booths take credit cards? How do you deal with people who drive down a road and don’t realize they’ve traversed on a road built by someone else and subject to a different fine? Who handles those disputes when they (inevitably) arise and how the hell is that more ‘effective’ than a system where no such disputes could ever happen?”
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. Goddamnit, stop asking me, figure it out yourself.
“In an hour long drive, how many times will I have to stop my car and pay a toll? You claim your system is more effective, but all it really seems like is a drastic pain in the ass that’s also way more expensive.”
Supply and demand. Supply. And. Demand. Also, this is just the free-market at work; that’s life, goddamnit. People can only put so many tolls on one road (supply and demand makes it thus), and competition will help drive these prices down.
“Logically, we can assume that there will be many different types of roads available to people. How do you avoid discrimination? Because if this were to actually happen, you can bet your ass you’ll see racist signs such as ‘this road is not open for gays’ and other bigotries.”
And? The it’s their roads, they can do with them what they want. If someone else doesn’t want you driving on their road, then don’t do it. If I refuse to fuck someone, am I ‘discriminating’ against them? Do I have to fuck gay guys? Also, it’s not such abad thing for people to be given the power to discriminate; do you want pedophiles and terrorists to use roads? If roads were privately owned, we could also stop protestors and the like from making a mess of things, since we could just arrest them for using someone else’s private property.
“Also what about when they’re only one way to get to a specific place such as a bridge or other high-density chokepoint? Let’s say I own the golden gate bridge. What’s stopping me from pulling a martin shkreli and quadrupling the rates overnight? People who live on one side of the bay and work on the other are completely screwed, and have no other options because in the (paraphrased) words of Ayn Rand, ‘Fuck them, they should have just built their own damn bridge'”
People will find someway to undercut people who employ these kinds of unscrupulous business tactics. People will pull together their money and construct their own bridges, and nobody will mess with the price of it because they will enter into contracts with one another to have collective ownership of these bridges. Fixed.
I don’t feel like talking about this anymore.
@PI
Why don’t you open up google maps and try to find a comeback you haven’t used 300 times already? Sounds like you don’t even need a map for that one. Go ahead and waste your time, stupid. I won’t prevent you. It just pains me that people use such an obviously inferior service.
Is… is this a circumspect way of encouraging you to steal this product, PI? From a LIBERTARIAN?! Or am I misreading this? I admit it’s pretty circumspect but that’s totally what I thought on my first reading…
Oops, you’re right. I was looking at the cue ball part. My mistake.
It’s not just the existence of roads and transit that are important, but also the reliability. As a Minnesotan, the question of who plows the roads and when is really crucial. What if some or none of the road owners decide to plow the road after a snow storm? What happens if the major street owner in the Twin Cities is going through a financial crisis and can’t or won’t pay for plows? The economy of the whole area would come to a stand still. It’s cold enough here most winters that a big snowfall in December will frequently not melt much until March. This would effect the whole country eventually because major corporations like Target, 3M, and General Mills are headquartered here.
Would there be surge pricing like Uber does in the even of a weather event or terror attack? That means that if a hurricane struck a major metropolitan area, anyone who can’t afford the surge pricing can’t evacuate. The death toll could potentially be several times greater than hurricane Katrina’s. If roads and bridges are destroyed in an earthquake, where does the money to rebuild come from? On holidays, will it cost as much to drive to the airport as it does to buy a plane ticket?
How about emergency vehicles? Do we count on corporations allowing them to travel for free out of the goodness of their hearts? Or do fires stay burning and people die in the ambulance on the way to the hospital?
What about roads in rural areas? Reliable roads between cities are vital to the economy. Privatization of the roads would be especially difficult and dangerous in places like the western US and Canada. If you want to drive efficiently between Salt Lake City and Las Vegas, you need to go through a stretch of a couple of hundred miles that are so remote there are no towns to pull over and get gas or lodging on. Who would maintain that? It might not be profitable without charging huge tolls.
The more I think about ending public ownership of roads, the less I like it.
It’s not privatizing infrastructure has never been tried.
It failed in Bolivia when water was privatized
http://www.thenation.com/article/politics-water-bolivia/
Chicago couldn’t even do it with parking meters without it ending in failure
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/04/city-state-governments-privatization-contracting-backlash/361016/
I can’t imagine, especially in large spread out countries like the US or Canada that privatizing all roads would be anything but a gigantic disaster.
How will they construct the bridge attached to a road that someone else owns? Especially if the same person or persons own the bridge.
Because your entire philosophy is falling to pieces before your eyes and doesn’t stand up to even a cursory brush with logic and reason?
Thank God that there’s an infinite amount of shore length on every island where bridges can be built, and that every small island community has $10 million of disposable income plus the lawyer’s fees needed to draw up those contracts. Plus, of course, the private army costs to enforce them.
Libertarians sure love lawyers. That’s their solution to everything. Of course, as we’ve mentioned many times, there’s no point in getting a lawyer unless you also have a private army; otherwise the contract is just a piece of paper.
@Galt
http://kameshvedula.com/bruh.jpg
Axecalibur says:
Of course, if you only allow ideal conditions, you can say the same of pretty much any system. But one of the problems with capitalism is that this raising people out of poverty thing tends to only happen locally at the expense of a great many others, and we’ve spent a long time failing to factor those other people in when calculating capitalism’s effectiveness.
Great example, but not in your favor. You have to think of the real cost of that growth. Capitalism relies so much on systems like slavery, imperialist control of resources, and unequal trade, and it has environmental costs to be paid by the people down the river or future generations. If we remember to add all those detriments to the minus column, we find capitalism is actually really terrible at raising people out of poverty, but awesome at creating it.
Ooooh, you sure showed me by trying to turn my snappiness back at me! [/sarcasm]
Seriously, I can only recall using that once, and that was just now, against you.
And if DuoLingo’s so “obviously inferior”, then I have a simple solution: Don’t fucking use it. Problem solved.
If it bothers you that much that I’m using a service that you don’t personally approve of to where it pains you, to where you have to come in here and condescendingly suggest to me alternatives, well, that just seems to me like encouragement to keep using the thing you don’t like. :3
Lookit meeeee, doing things that you don’t personally approve of! I’m existing in a way you don’t like and not asking you for permission to do things in a way I want to do them! I’m learning a language in a way that Galt doesn’t like! Lookit me, daring to defy him by not immediately jumping and doing things the way he wants me to and thanking him for telling me how to do it properly!
I think so. How very libertarian of him to ask me to steal things. It’s like he’s trying to encourage the makers of the product to declare war on my poor widdle sovereign self! I can’t afford an army, how will I defend myself?!
Actually the private army is all you need; it’s a necessity because the bridge owner has a private army to enforce the tolls (otherwise you just wouldn’t pay them), and naturally they’d send the army to destroy or capture your new bridge to eliminate the competition.
But once you have it you might as well just use it to capture the original bridge for yourself rather than bothering to build a second bridge.
It’s inconsequential to Libertarians whether their proposals would actually function, as long as it’s a privatized clusterfuck.
@ galt
I must confess I’m quite intrigued about the practicalities of your proposed utopia.
For example, how does law enforcement work? I’m thinking that it might be highly profitable to wait until you’ve collected all your tolls (although what do you use for currency?) and then kidnap you. You’ll be released when you hand over your accumulated wealth (or, if you’ve got the currency issue sorted I’ll be happy with ownership of your business)
How are those contracts enforced? I know how we do it now, but ultimately that boils down to government agents using force to compell you; and I know you don’t approve of that. You’ve already said that people are free to ignore the decisions of your privatised court service, so that doesn’t seem to be a solution. So, what gives?
ETA: ninja’d by Katz.
Or for the toll taker to just kidnap you instead of taking the toll.
Weaksauce! Why would you hand over a perfectly good slave for that??
You know me Katz; I’m all heart.
Also, pragmatically, if I demonstrate that compliance does lead to release whereas non compliance, well, has “consequences”, then that might encourage les autres as they say when it comes to future dealings.
(We actually do know how all this will pan out as we already have protection rackets, and that’s even with a police force)
Shorter Galt,
Thinking is hard!
http://www.thehopeforamerica.com/press/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/duh1.gif
I hope we’ve taught you some lessons, little boy. If you think you’ve got some easy solution that will fix all the problems, chances are it’s wrong.
There are all sorts of logistics you never have to consider it because big gub’mint does it for you. It makes your life easier in so many ways that you wouldn’t necessarily think of until it was gone. When you need water, you turn on the faucet and safe clean water comes pouring out. Do you know anyone who’s ever contracted cholera? Me neither! When you need to drive somewhere, there are decent roads there. Having an emergency, just call 911! Food poisoning still happens, but you can be reasonably sure that when you dinner, you won’t be deathly ill a few hours later. And isn’t nice to have the broadband infrastructure so you can easily and quickly troll?
In your Randian, Norquistey paradise, you would have to consider every day whether or not you have the money that day, that hour, that minute to continue all those day to day activities you take for granted. Is that really want you want? Is that freedom to you?
Scenario: Oprah Winfrey uses her vast fortune to gain a monopoly on the roads in your area. All is going swimmingly. Until Stedman dumps her. Then, Oprah decides she hates all men. Men are no longer allowed to drive on her roads unless they pay 100$ per mile. You can’t even really walk or bike anywhere because eventually, you would have to cross one of her streets. Because Oprah is so rich, she can hire mercenaries to enforce her misandric ban. So, a consumer rebellion would involve bloody guerilla warfare. In the meantime, you can’t get to work. You can’t get go get food. You can’t pay to have it delivered. You can’t pay your water bill, which has been recently increased to quintuple its normal amount because the ban on men using the roads has caused a severe shortage of workers able to maintain the supply.
You cool with this?
‘Accept my ideology!’
‘How does it work?’
‘Figure that out for yourselves!’
— The Instigator of No Social Change, Ever
If youre going to indulge in the sort of removed-from-reality ideology of libertarianism, at some poont you have to wonder how The idea of private ownership of land can be, ideally, a good thing rather than – kinda screwy at heart. You have to wonder how letting huge private companies become ruling masters makes any more sense than letting the police state happen w the govt. You have to reckon with the idea that people work for a low wage to disproportionately benefit someome at the top of the pyramid, that there arent enough resources to go around, that we basicly had a capitalist pig paradise in the early Industrial Revolution & it caused more harm than good, and so on..
All this talk of bridges reminds me of the story that the owner of the Ambassador Bridge between Windsor and Detroit has spent millions blocking a rival bridge.
Because capitalists are all about encouraging competition to make things better.
proudfootz, you KNOW monopoly is just a board game and not an illegal and immoral business practice built out of capitalist concepts! pfft
Perhaps I’m being simple, but… money is only useful because it is agreed on as being valuable as a medium of exchange, right?
Wouldn’t money fragment into poorly-exchangeable, variably-valuable units, like it was before the establishment of central banking? So the whole concept of “paying for stuff” would be set back a few hundred years, where everyone would either be a direct producer of goods or would have a patron of someone with enough wealth to afford to patronize them.
… right?
So, good-bye most jobs? Good-bye scientific research, good-bye large-scale collaboration projects. The only viable projects would be directly about wealth creation in some way? I am not an economist, but that’s just what’s come to mind!
Scildfreja, you guys, the mammoth-teers are the only reason I now engage online!You guys are so well thought out and just plain neato! and only here, b/c OMG the interwebs are filled with awful people.
IRL is easier for me, probably because I look completely harmless and people just want to tell me *everything* To talk to people about volatile subjects offline I use a combo of mirroring, asking questions and stuffing people full of baked goods and that usually keeps things pretty civil. I try to remember that we’re all just trying to deal with a set of imperfect circumstances, just working on getting through the day. When I come across someone completely heinous that’s when I switch to my stupid persona and talk at them until they either go away or join in on the inane chatter.