Want to wade into the snowy surf of the abyss? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid.
Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned so many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this. Also, hope you had a wonderful Valentine's Day!)
In economic terms it's less rent seeking and more rent creation. Like, taking advantage of public sidewalk space may not be a rent in the strictest sense given that the revenue model is still people paying for the service, but the ability to provide that service is absolutely predicated on taking over and monopolizing this public resource to the maximal degree possible.
By historical allegory, harkening back to the original destruction of the Commons, we're looking at Enclosure 2: Frisco Drift.
Let's also not lose sight of the fact that those sidewalks aren't a natural formation, and that it's the city government who ultimately takes on the burden of their construction and maintenance. This kind of neo-enclosure of public resources is then another kind of invisible subsidy.