Corporate Linguist @Agrippa@hackers.town

I have a conservative friend that likes to complain about bias. "LIberal media bias", is the oft used complaint. And I think at one point this criticism was valid. For the latter half of the 20th century news organizations started homogenizing their hiring of journalists. It was typically college educated white people. And when you have homogenous hiring practices you get what I call "Perspective Bias". They aren't pushing an agenda. They aren't fighting against conservatives. They are just trying to make news surrounded with other people trying to make news who all have the same underlying assumptions which then never get questioned.

As we moved into the 21st century this starts to break down. Conservatives, tired of a bias against them, start their own news sources. But in doing so they have over corrected. They create organizations that have, what I call, "Agenda Bias". These organizations go out of their way to intentionally push a conservative agenda. The most prominent of which is Fox News.

Seeing the success of news with agenda bias left leaning news companies start doing the same, to imitate their success.

All of this is compounded by an ad-revenue based business model that encourages vitriol and division. (which I will writeup at another time)

What can be done about this? Really the answer hasn't shifted. Use your critical thinking skills to ask who wrote it, and why they wrote it. Get to know journalists and find out who you can trust. Find who is making good faith arguments and who is making noise. Demand a higher standard from your news. And once you find it pay for it.

I am back to haunt your time line!

I am starting to think more and more about what the optimal business structure should be given the failures of capitalism to reign in disproportionate executive pay and inferior benefit provided to the average worker. Is it weird that I am looking to nature?

I think every american believes in the seperation of powers.

The legislative body, is separate from the executive, is separate from the judicial.

But the original creators of the constitution did not anticipate party politics. They expected every office to be a free-for-all. Where only our best and brightest would win and serve.

But what you need to know is that the RNC, and the DNC are funding giants, and distribute funds as they see fit. Whenever a party holds the presidency they become the "Head of Party" for their respective party.

If you are a member of Congress and you want to be influential there are 2 ways to achieve it. One: be really good at raising money. Two: get on good committee seats.

In the Democratic party, committee seats are determined by seniority. Stay in congress for a long time and get good seats. The only way to stay in congress for a long time is to raise a lot of money early on.

In the Republican party seats are determined by your standing with the the party. And since the president is the head of the party and determines "standing" the president determines the committee seats you get. (there is a little more to it than that, but I am trying to spell this out)

So we had separation of powers. And now the presidency exerts incredible soft power of the legislature to be a broken system.

An ideology that says, "Government is never the answer", is as useful as one that says, "Government is always the answer".

This is something I wrote in a Reddit post regarding workers unionizing. I am quite proud of it for its conciseness

"
The problem with raw supply and demand dictating the labor market is that these are human beings not commodities. There is a reason labor standards, minimum wages, and unions exist: to ensure that the bottom of the labor market is not below a humane standard.
"

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I think a great rule I have seen on Mastodon is Boost someone looking for something (artists, type of people, groups).

Even if you have nothing to offer, you can at least get that user a little more exposure to find their thing.

I am thinking about make a facebook alternative. Except it is not for friends and family. It is for the only people you should keep closer than friends. It is for you to stay connected to your nemesis.

If they aren't in the network you can build them an effigy(placeholder account), if they don't like it they can claim it, like Yelp!