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This is why I'm not a critic of "cancel culture." It's crucial to impose social costs for the breech of key social norms. The lesson of overreaction is that we need to recalibrate judgment to get it right next time, not that we need a lot more bad judgment in the other direction.


Obviously, people will disagree about which norms are important, about how bad it is to violate them, and thus about how severe the social cost ought to be. That's just pluralism, man, and it's good.

It's important to openly talk through these substantive differences, which is why derailing these conversations with hand-waving moral panic about "cancel culture" is obnoxious and illiberal.

Screaming "cancel culture!" when somebody pays a social costs other people have been fighting hard to get others to see as necessary is often just a way to declare, with no argument, that the sanction in question was not only unnecessary but in breach of a more important norm.

It's impossible to uphold social norms without social sanctions, so obviously anti-cancelers are going to want to impose a social cost on people they see as imposing unjustly steep social costs on others.
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Criti-Hype; Right to Repair is back for 2021; The free market and rent-seeking; and more!

Archived at: https://t.co/pXnzoWKJn2

#Pluralistic

1/


Criti-Hype: Tech bros will settle for "evil genius."

https://t.co/OyiM1vUS8Y

2/


Right to Repair is back for 2021: Will Apple sabotage this one too?

https://t.co/3gcyEZQWfk

3/


The free market and rent-seeking: Unauthorized bread and poor doors.

https://t.co/7Ob6AdmkDz

4/


#10yrsago Diane Duane’s crowdfunded publishing experiment finally concludes https://t.co/qsRnZxiL8b

#10yrsago Inside Sukey, the anti-kettling mobile app https://t.co/puGNKw5XgF

5/
1/ Thread
@rak3re aptly identifies a sudden shift in global consensus in early March, which led to endless lockdowns. But it’s vital to realize this shift didn’t just happen; the CCP launched an entire campaign of propaganda and fraudulent science to bring it about. Let’s recap.


2/ In late Feb., WHO was dazzled by China: “China’s uncompromising and rigorous use of non-pharmaceutical measures to contain transmission of the COVID-19 virus in multiple settings provides vital lessons for the global

3/ In a press conference, Bruce Aylward, head of the WHO’s China mission, told the press: “What China has demonstrated is, you have to do this. If you do it, you can save lives and prevent thousands of cases of what is a very difficult disease.”
https://t.co/KpAqMTKnEM


4/ Two days later, in an interview for China Central Television (CCTV), Aylward (who later disconnected a live interview when asked about Taiwan) put it bluntly: “Copy China’s response to

5/ @NYTimes immediately lapped up the WHO’s February report: “China ‘took one of the most ancient strategies and rolled out one of the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease-containment efforts in
2017 https://t.co/kiqQoWR57e


https://t.co/W18nqFlLru


The GOP got rid of the SCOTUS filibuster so they could jam through three fringy right-wing Alito clones, including one right before the election, but sure thing, bud.

“Uh, actually, they got rid of the SCOTUS filibuster because Harry Reid did it first for something totally different! I am very smart!”

No. Knock it off.

Here’s the thing about the “But Harry Reid...” excuse:

1. McConnell was holding up Obama nominees, some *for literal years* without a vote.

2. Had he *not* done that, Trump would have inherited *even more* vacant seats.
Today in mezz threads:

Finding collateral where there isn’t any ... aka, my most innovative idea (and I’m giving it to you for free)!


Let’s revisit this thread from my early (active) Twitter days. A few questions you might ask:

1) What was my collateral (why did I make this loan)?
2) Why did I have any leverage with the company at all (short of a foreclosure)?
3) Why did the “deep pockets” buy me out?


Let me pick up the story with two assumptions I had going in:

1) I didn’t trust the owner/operator (at all)

2) I knew the PE group (that had offered $200 M) well, and I knew who they were proposing to bring in to run the company had they bought it

#2 (plan B) made sense to me


The senior ($ZION) had the collateral locked up and controlled any formal foreclosure/bankruptcy.

The idea of a convertible had some appeal but you can’t really do anything with 5-10% of a business


My solution: “default conversion” at an unfair valuation

I negotiated a deal that if the company defaulted (and only if they didn’t cure the defaults) I had the option to convert into preferred stock representing a fully diluted 40% of the business