@MariNemo So you propose we define as trafficking the exploitation of vulnerabilities that derive from a person's geographic displacement to coerce them to do what they did not and would not have consented to do. A coyote who strives to provide transportation as agreed is not a trafficker. One who shakes down his deeply vulnerable passengers is a trafficker. It's dishonesty and coercion that turns transportation into trafficking. Is that right?
@MariNemo The situation prospective migrants are in is often terrible, stripping them of real agency prior to hiring a coyote. Arguably, it's the hiring that's an expression of agency, a radical, expensive, step to find a better situation. Certainly once in the hands of a coyote, migrants lose agency. 1/
@MariNemo But is this so different from, say, hiring a sherpa at Everest? The situation you've signed up to is in fact dangerous, you agree to put yourself beneath someone's authority as a calculated choice. 2/
@MariNemo Of course, coyotes are an unregulated and relatedly often exploitative market. Obviously if you put yourself in the care of someone incompetent or with no interest in delivering you safely across the border, that's all kind of bad. But it's not the "trafficking" there that's the problem (from the perspective of the client), it's the failure to traffic as agreed. /fin
The word "trafficking" seems ill-defined to me. Between ordinary transportation (I travel to Italy to take a job I'm excited about) and coerced transportation into a condition of plain enslavement sits a very big spectrum. Are "coyotes" at the Mexican border "traffickers", if they are hired voluntarily (by people in great distress, for sure) and work to deliver the (illegal) service they have sold? What exactly renders transportation "trafficking"?
Will an end to the war in Ukraine, on whatever terms the active fighting will end, be disinflationary in the West as commodity markets are reintegrated, or inflationary due to the pressure on resources that reconstruction of the destroyed country will impose?
88.6%
disinflationary
(31 votes)
11.4%
inflationary
(4 votes)
it seems unfair that it’s the very wealthiest people who get to live rent-free in our heads. and quite extravagantly.
in my day, toy stores didn’t have separate kids’ sections.
If, perhaps, we return to a civilized age where one discovers and reads much of ones news by RSS feeds, a nice, gentle alternative to a paywall would be access to full-text feeds rather than feeds you have to annoyingly click a link from to reach still open content.
Every time I click, I'd be reminded that I'm asked for support I'm not giving, and think about whether I wish to give it.
people think anxious people are workaholics in order to relieve their anxiety and maybe that’s a part of it.
another part, though, is that the opportunity cost of lost leisure is very low if you know you’re going to ruin whatever you do with it by being anxious.
“social media sites are always trying to optimize their mistreatment of users, mistreating them (and thus profiting from them) right up to the point where they are ready to switch, but without actually pushing them over the edge.” @pluralistic https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/19/better-failure/ ht @SaintPeter @IraCogan
// with lots on the importance of low-cost exit to deter and to remedy this sort of “enshittification”
“Beyond the bromides of progress and technological liberation, what distinguished New Labour was its sanctionism: the belief that the market would provide carrots and government should provide the stick.” ~David Timoney (From Arse To Elbow) https://fromarsetoelbow.blogspot.com/2022/12/discipline-and-punish.html
// we often think of sanctions in international terms, but everything from a strike to the sack to benefits withheld or withdrawn can be understood in terms of groups directly or via the state sanctioning one another.
with money, the dose makes the poison.
i wonder if it is really constructive to ragetoot.
"It’s about the central importance of vaccines in any plan to protect the vulnerable and about how we should be bolder and braver the next time." ~Alex Tabarrok https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/12/the-birx-plan-for-early-vaccination-of-the-nursing-homes.html
// i love how half the world is mad because COVID vaccines were an experimental treatment that would never pass a cost benefit test pushed on us for profit by for rapacious pharma, and the other half is mad because we wouldn't risk deploying them earlier. (i think we did pretty good, domestically, with vaccines.)
@deshipu i would rather they just passed gas.
I dislike it when people die.
“I'd like to advance the notion that software does not have to scale, and in fact software can be better if it is not built to scale.” @darius https://runyourown.social/ ht @dreww
What if you have the power to turn fictional then back again?
not with a bang, or with a whimper, but with a giggle.
“I would like nothing better than to not have to know or care about these people.” ~Alexandra Petri https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/17/elon-musk-twitter-overkill/
// as always from Petri, cuttingly and hilariously written.
// i’ve lost the hat tip, my apologies to the unknown provider of the link.