fear

The message of “this looting isn’t surprising given the increased divide between the rich and the poor,” to me, is already bridging the gap for opportunistic bad actors.

BREAKING NEWS: Bad Actors twist what research suggests! In a shocking turn of events, opportunistic Bad Actors claim "Poor people bad!" after an internet forum user points out what research has already said ages ago; that violent crimes are correlated to income inequality. The user went on to point out that this is the fault of billionaires, but the Bad Actors were unrelenting.

Holding me personally accountable for real life is you being unfair. Be well, too. Careful the bad actors don't get to your words, next!

It doesn't matter that they won't get anywhere near the 100k worth of the items. They still grabbed far more value with a single purse than they could ever clutch running out of a Whole Foods.

I forgot that already biased people could use this as just another reason to hate the poor. First they want to steal a loaf of bread, now they want luxury goods worth many loaves, right? Except this isn't an evil poor mentality, it's a human mentality. Bear spraying the guard that is standing in your way isn't a poor thing, it's a criminal thing. No one is spraying guards because they are rich.

The reality is that if these people were in the top 1%, there's no chance they'd have resorted to this, and would instead conduct their thieving unmasked in a cozy office chair. We can't know where exactly this mob falls in the bottom 99%, and my point is that with the increasing divide between rich and poor, it's becoming less relevant where they fall.

We can't allow our voices to be silenced for fear of someone else twisting them in hatred.

You pointed out how well China will be able to combat their declining birth rates and what they are doing to raise fertility rates. That's great. You disliked the format of the article and didn't feel it expressed their point adequately. Awesome. But you're coming at the comments section with an intensity that seems disproportionate to how banal the article is. Birth rates are plummeting across the world, and every other country has their turn to have attention drawn to it, complete with their own set of uninvited suggestions regarding potential impact and what to do about it. It's okay for people to disagree on the impact of stats like this. It's normal and healthy when done in good faith.

Regarding your other post: "Anti-CCP is anti-China" is a tactic to try to deflect away criticism entirely. It is dangerous for a population to be stripped of the right to criticize their government. I criticize my own government all the time, and others as well when I think they're making poor decisions. The CCP doesn't get to be above this on an international scale because racism. The old stigmatizing the critic into silence approach is not conducive to open dialogue, and it's ultimately a way of shooting yourself in the foot. 欲蓋彌彰

Again I don't condone this and don't necessarily believe this was the reasoning behind what happened, but no it's not wiser to steal food over luxury goods if your intent is to feed your starving family for the foreseeable future. With one handful you can leave with $10k from that store. This is why they were dragging the purses that were basically fused to the display racks. A single purse might be $3k. So a thousand times the price of a loaf of bread. If you already made the decision that you're stealing to support your family, are you going to want to do it every other day, or are you going to want to grab one purse that feeds your family for a month?

I didn't pass it off as anything else, not sure what your point is. The comment section is to discuss thoughts and ideas on the article. It's a theory regarding why an entire police force could have come after a newspaper with what appear to be illegal and extreme tactics that resulted in the traumatization and death of its co-owner. Good thing this is being investigated so we can find out if something so immoral was behind their actions.

I am honestly surprised it's not already an epidemic of mass robberies over mass shootings. As the divide between rich and poor widens, more and more people are bound to become outraged as they're backed into a corner. I don't condone this, I just see it as one of of the natural consequences of our predicament.

Is it time to retire again already?

“We thought we were being set up,” Meyer said about the confidential information.

Holy crap. If that theory is correct, the "anonymous tip" was to give the newspaper a reason to pull up everything they could find on Newell, and then make this digging look like identity theft. They may have even committed actual identity theft as part of this plan, hoping to pin the crime on the journalists at the paper. If Newell is not playing a role in this, they could have been trying to destroy two careers with one stone and winded up pitting these parties against each other.

Your assessment seems spot on to me. I'm connecting some projected dots to late stage capitalism. Perhaps the AIs will trickle down and such if we hold off on regulations.

Of course it's possible for the government to impose regulations without sticking their face in and motorboating the AI's contents. Google, Microsoft et al. would love to prevent this from happening because they actually do have their faces in there.

This is such an important distinction. Current AI is incapable of wanting to cause any of that harm, yet it's already happening. The danger won't be skynet, it will be and always has been human greed and ignorance.

A justice system criticised by Iran’s psychiatrists

Thank goodness. Hopefully they all fight against this blatant exploitation of psychiatry to persecute and control women.

Those people you're referring to already have cash they're sitting on. Once you have enough in the bank that your interest is generating income, you're set for life and can continue amassing all the things at the expense of the poor. It's like a game of Monopoly towards the very end. It's the top few players who own everything, and they're bankrupting the unlucky thimbles who land on Boardwalk.

If you didn't get into the housing market already, I'm sorry but it's not looking good for you if you're not rich. Something drastic needs to happen to put an end to this corrupt system.