He's not, but if you're a gallon of gasoline, the remotest spark can seem like a huge threat to your very existence, which is what I took the overreaction to the memo to be. He spoke his mind, with citations, and he was torched for it, and the left wing outlets except for Joe Rogan and Dave Rubin had no interest in letting his real story come out, because the overreaction, the firing and the ongoing assault on his character is shameful if you ask me.
I've read the "journalists lean left, owners lean right" mantra many, many of times over the last 10 years on various boards, yet the overwhelming majority of network news and shows, cable news and entertainment shows dump on Republicans/Conservatism and fawn over Democrats/Liberalism. IMO, it's a very misleading idea meant to deceive people into thinking their sources of news or entertainment are somehow more honest than they actually are.
The error is in thinking Hillary is majorly opposed to the Republican agenda. A lot of Bernie supporters switched camps to Trump, as insane as that may sound. The rich would continue to accumulate more money either way, more war in the Middle East, etc. I viewed Trump as kind of a last ditch hail Mary, which seems to have been a bad guess in retrospect.
This kind of information-free comment is just trolling. You've been breaking the guidelines a lot, so we have to ask that you please go read them and stop.
As a european it's always funny hearing some americans call Bernie an extremist.
Here he's just an average left-leaning politician, we elect plenty of people like him all the time. US politics are so absurdly shifted right it's mind blowing.
Edit: Does anyone here actually disagree with this or am I just being downvoted because people are upset this is the case?
No, actually, in this case the wording applies. It's one of the only countries in the world with such conservative stances on health care, guns, drugs and religion and really the only country with the aggregate of it all.
Comparatively, Europe is shifted left for sure, but you can't start doing something differently and then claim others are the ones doing it differently.
You're mistaking "Republicans are right now a steaming heap of awful" with "News and shows are left-leaning".
I'm a huge fan of having a principled, Conservative, political group. They are there to help provide measured, sane, grounding and represent the status-quo in opposition to those who would change it.
That's actually a good thing for Progressives - it helps test the ideas, to forge them into concrete and reliable policy, as well as get rid of ideas that aren't fully formed or have terrible knock-on effects.
I'd love a Conservative group like that. But the Republicans are not it. Some channels are more left-leaning that others but - speaking as someone left wing - only barely.
It's like the show Newsroom - the lead character in that espoused traditional Republican ideals. He was very much a 60s-70s Republican. Yet he was often criticized for being "too liberal". Things that got Regan elected, but not proposed by Democrats, are "too liberal".
News will have bias, obviously. There is no such thing as news without bias, ever. However to someone from originally outside the US the US media is at best centrist. At worst it's absolutely maddeningly right-wing.
As far as I can understand, this is the wrong way to think about conservatism in the United States. Conservatives are not 'just interested in preserving the status quo'. They are interested in conserving liberty. This is because the nature of liberty is to yield, every time a law is passed it is a limitation on liberty. This is why Reagan said 'libertarianism is at the heart of conservatism' [1]
If conservatives can notice that the government has made massive incursions into liberty they have to challenge the status quo and try and roll back some of these restrictions
The “conservatives” are the main ones eroding that liberty.
Trumps Administration right now, obviously, but the PATRIOT Act, the NSA wiretap program, the entire Regan administration... etc.
So yet, it IS the right way to think about conservatives in the US because that is what they do.
I submit that what you are talking about has zero to do with conservative vs progressive and a lot to do with authoritarianism. Unfortunately the worst offenders for that are US “conservatives” (but not the only offenders).
Quite honestly, in the past 10 or so years, the Republican party has made itself extremely easy to dump on.
More so than the media leaning "left", I think they lean populist. Human interest stories, people falling on hard luck, natural disasters, terrorism. Some of these things 'feel' left-leaning, some 'feel' right-leaning.
>Quite honestly, in the past 10 or so years, the Republican party has made itself extremely easy to dump on.
Quite the opposite actually. As the contemporary left has taken over mainstream culture and turned into the de facto "establishment" that it originally railed against, it's grown intellectually soft and dishonest.
Both sides play to populist emotional appeals and sentiments, but the left-wing outrage industry and identity politics has left them intellectually vulnerable.
I mean, if you want a case study on this vulnerability just head on over to the major liberal think-piece sites and read some of the essays (Salon, Slate, The Atlantic).
Last night I read a piece in The Atlantic that bemoaned the fact that some people expect their neighborhoods to be orderly and not riddled with crime, drugs, and gangs, arguing that these attitudes unfairly discriminated against minorities. This, from a "respectable" magazine!
The left has not taken over anything. We have lived in a very conservative, anti public services regime since the early 1980s. Rollbacks and defunding public schools, health and infrastructure has been on the basis that media has systematically attacked taxation and public spending as wasteful while military spending never seems to be targeted like other social programmes.
We have stop perpetuating this narrative that the media is in anyway 'left' leaning because it is not. When was the last time you read an opinion piece that called for the nationalisation of some private industry?
I specifically said that the dominant culture is left - and it most certainly is, not the economic order.
Virtually every major newspaper in every major city is left-leaning, almost every single cable news network, and all the major tech giants, who are a gateway to content, are undeniably liberal. And academia...well that goes without saying - half are card carrying communists, while the other half are in the ballpark.
In fact, it's heresy to even be conservative at most major tech companies.
Instead of being conservative or liberal why don't we just try being nice to people?
All these hot button issues that divide conservatives/liberals would evaporate if each side just tried, in each interaction to treat the other with dignity and according to their needs.
You know, the golden rule: Treat others like you would like to be treated? That's a good start, but we really need the platinum rule: to treat people how they would like to be treated.
Attempting to walk this path is a much harder task than relying on a dusty old book or on an enumeration of freedoms. It requires one to try to develop humility and wisdom.
I believe there are no moral absolutes, and that only by paying attention the entire situation in the moment can you tell what you should do.
When you adopt this point of view, you see that labels like liberal/conservative are just a set of received ideas that people use to avoid the difficult work described above.
They are just an interrelated set of heuristics allowing you to take shortcuts in our day to day interactions with others.
Then how do you explain the successive insanely excessive right wing governments in the US, Canada, Britain, and Australia over the last 30-40 years?
Have you even read Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky?
What do you even mean by conservative? Liberal?
You do realise that liberal and liberalism means keeping the government out of people's lives. The USA is a liberal nation by definition, for example 'The separation of church and state' and your 'right to bare arms, in a well regulated malitia'
>Then how do you explain the successive insanely excessive right wing governments
I'm not familiar with Australian politics, but as for the others, what do you mean? We have had both liberal and conservative governments the last 30-40 years. This, again, has little to do with the mainstream culture, which was my original point.
As for explaining to you why neoliberalism has triumphed, well I recommend that you start here:
>Have you even read Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky?
Yes, and it had quite an effect on me when I was in college, and utterly ignorant of history. A lot has changed now, and while much of the book is still good, Chomsky has lost his credibility as a cultural critic following the embarrassment of his analyses about a few corners of the world...:
I don't think you can really compare Australian Politics with US Politics the situation here is probably more similar to the UK than the US. Our parlimentry system is influenced by the UK 'Westminster system' we do not have a directly elected head of state. If you want to be technical the Govenor General appointed by the Queen is our Head of state. Sitting Prime ministers can be replaced by another member of their own party has happened several times in last 10 years.
To put my biases up front I am a left leaning voter who dislikes both major parties - voted for Greens most recently. Anyway here is my attempt to summarize it:
Our two major parties are the Labor party and the Liberal party.
"Liberal" in Australia has a different meaning to how the word is used in US. Calling someone a liberal or accusing them of holding liberal views has a very different meaning then in US. Here it refers to ecconomic Liberalism (support for private ownership and free trade). The Liberal party typically has a conservative stance on social issues.
Labor party has traditionally drawn it's support from Union movement it's policies mostly align with social democracy. In recent years labor has drifted more right-ward similar to Tony Blair led "New Labour" in UK. Labor party's stance on social issues has boggled my mind in recent years they tend to ping-pong all over the place. In general they take a more populist approach rather than standing on principles (i.e Kevin Rudd walking away from climate change action after declaring it the moral challenge of a generation during his election campaign) which in my opinion plays a big roll in growth of Greens (winning seats in state/federal parliament etc) as the 'inner city left' has somewhat abandoned Labor.
To call either party "insanely excessive" is inaccurate and I say that as someone who disagrees with both parties.
> insanely excessive right wing governments in Canada
Calling anyone who disagrees with your political philosophy "insane" is....I don't even know what word to use.
EDIT: Perhaps instead of a downvote, you could give a few examples of the insanely excessive things right wing governments in Canada have done recently (extraordinary claims and all that....).
The biggest thing that comes to mind (as a non-Canadian) was the Harper government banning scientists from making public statements. It's as if they knew all evidence contradicted the policy they were trying to enact, so rather than enact better policy they just decided to silence anyone who could provide evidence of their malfeasance.
No disagreement from me that that policy was absolutely shameful. But it falls a ways short of "successive insanely excessive right wing governments", at least for me.
The media is biased towards the left because they chose to promote the neoliberal who said she'd back a $12.50 minimum wage versus the one who said starve.
In no way, shape or form does that "bemoan" efforts to fight _serious_ crime in changing neighborhoods. It DOES take into account the impact of gentrification on the less affluent residents. Is actually discussing that impact considered "liberal"?
If you want to criticize liberalism honestly, then you probably shouldn't grossly mischaracterize your evidence.
This is a tangent about that article, as I hadn't read it before, but I live in that part of Brooklyn, have for a few years.
Last year on J'ouvert, 2 people were shot about two and a half blocks from my apartment building. This happened every J'ouvert until this most recent one. I'm fine with the extra police presence for that one. When I moved in, there were drug dealers on every corner, including mine. Going to work, I had to go past their pitbulls in the morning or walk in the street as they all crowded the sidewalk. That ended a few months ago.
I've seen more police, and more police called for things like a drunk beating up and robbing another drunk where that used to just be let go - it's not all minor crimes, it's an attitude change as people move in that don't expect to have dangerous people and violence around them. Sure, they shouldn't necessarily call the cops on the guy barbecuing in the street at midnight, but honestly? I don't think it's a really bad thing.
* uppity liberals and fringe left-wing protestors
* "the rest of us"
Interesting. Lots of people on both sides of the aisle admit that there are uppity conservatives and fringe right-wing protestors, but you neglected to mention them.
Do you feel that you're "in the middle" and not a conservative?
I was painting broadly the social demographic of the people that push this sort of nonsense - it usually is uppity liberals and fringe radicals.
People who actually care about their neighborhoods call the police when there are homicides, drug dealing, and violence occurring.
> there are uppity conservatives and fringe right-wing protestors
Yes, and I'm one of those uppity conservatives. I hold the fringe right-wing guys in contempt, but I don't see the relevance? If you want me to rail on them, I will gladly.
>Do you feel that you're "in the middle" and not a conservative?
Libertarian I guess? Grew up in a poor neighborhood much like the one described in the article, so I feel quite strongly about this sort of stuff. A larger police presence would have been a gift from God.
Yes, that one. I stand by my criticism, and I accuse you of the very thing that you are accusing me of. If you want me to go in depth, I will. If anything, I restrained myself in addressing that asinine article.
It opens with:
>"But having been marred by gang violence in recent years, this J’ouvert was markedly different, as The New York Times described. The event, which derives its name from a Creole term for “daybreak,” was heavily staffed by the New York City Police Department.....an overwhelming show of force in response to a comparatively small number of bad actors."
The author conveniently omitted the specifics of that "gang violance" - an aide to Gov. Cuomo was murdered at the event a couple years ago, there have been multiple stabbings, there have been homicides the past two years, and just few days before the festival this year, multiple people were shot and killed:
I can go on if you want, but I don't see the point. The article is an absurd framing of the situation, and completely omits the perspective of all the minorities who APPRECIATE the police presence, and who work with the police on a day-to-day basis, serving in community watch groups, and coordinating with and calling the police whenever they see problems. But no, that doesn't fit the narrative, so it's not in there.
So your first complaint is that the phrase "having been marred by gang violence in recent years" doesn't fully express that the violence included "multiple stabbings" and "homicides." Uh, that's what gang violence usually entails: stabbings, shootings, and murder.
You chalk that up to the writer intentionally ("conveniently") omitting that. Then you cite the NY Post, widely acknowledged as a sensational tabloid, presumably as an example of the coverage you prefer?
Then, you take fault with the author expressing their opinion that the festival had "an overwhelming show of force."
Is that all the author complained about in this respect? They didn't say "damn fascists!" or anything else? They didn't attach any value judgment -- YOU did. The author just pointed out that it was an "overwhelming show of force" which you admit did make the event safer.
If this is the awful, biased "liberal" media you're worried about, you should probably stick to the Post. That way all of your existing biases can be reinforced.
A few things - the citation is quite irrelevant when the information is true, so it's not a point worth raising. In a way - and if the Post is the only place that reported on this, then your adding credence to my argument that the media is biased. Thanks.
>Then, you take fault with the author expressing their opinion that the festival had "an overwhelming show of force.
No, I take issue with the authors insinuation that it wasn't warranted, hence:
"overwhelming show of force in response to a comparatively small number of bad actors."
>Is that all the author complained about in this respect?
Have you actually read the article? It's probably one silliest pieces of journalism I've ever read. Just read something of quotes:
>“The gentrifiers are not wanting to share—they’re wanting to take over.” One of the tools they can use to take over public spaces, he argues, is law enforcement.
Yes, law enforcement is a tool of the "gentrifiers" to move poor people out. This is ridiculous.
It's not the crimes that are the problem (homicides, assaults, drug dealing, public intoxication), but rather the "criminalization" of the criminals.
I guess the solution is just stop calling the cops?
>If this is the awful, biased "liberal" media you're worried about, you should probably stick to the Post. That way all of your existing biases can be reinforced.
It seems like a simplistic explanation, but I wonder if some people simply forget or overlook how multidimensional and complicated life is when discussing such matters. It is extremely common when reading political discussions, even among intelligent people, to see opinions with absolute certainty on matters they know very little about. It's easy for "smart" people to see this in (let's be honest) dumb people, but very few can see it in themselves, or others sharing their political stripes.
EDIT: Wow, I didn't even criticize one side or the other, but simply pointed out a fact of human nature, and here we go with the downvotes as usual. Another excellent illustration of the "either you're with us or against us" philosophy. At least people can agree with ole George on one thing.
Disagree. The extent to which "the left" is the establishment in the media today, was also true 10 and 20 years ago. Again, the appeals to populism, human interest stories, and so on, have been staples of popular media for ages.
The attitudes you speak of in some opinion pieces may be laughable in some ways but thought-provoking in others. Is it not true that some crime-fighting techniques disproportionately affect minority communities? Eg, not in proportion to the rate at which those communities commit crimes? You can't tell me that considering these factors is without merit, even if you disagree wholeheartedly with the conclusions.
It's difficult to honestly compare a perhaps laughable premise or conclusion from one end of the political spectrum, with outright disregard for basic facts, truths, and reason-based discourse on the other. I will not participate in calling these things equivalent, however many points it may score with folks who are too afraid to offend. (We won't go into the irony of the great offense felt by folks who are hostile to truth itself, who expect their hurt feelings to entitle them to being treated as if their (lack of) ideas have merit).
If you want a case study of how the Republican party has sunk to extreme dunk-on-ability, read the Twitter feeds of David Frum, Bill Kristol, and Rick Wilson: three stalwart Republicans.
Curious about the reasons for downvotes. In case I wasn't clear, those three are very critical of the current Republican party, especially the current administration
I disagree. I think the "natural" state of things is definitely more conservative, and it's reflected in people's attitudes, traditions, and behaviors as they age, and their general resistance to change.
Progressivism works as a sort of pushing against the order of things, for better or worse. Its development being the result of our ability to manipulate and change our environment to an extraordinary degree, much more so than any other animal.
Maybe that's human nature, but I wouldn't call that reality. Humans have to adapt or progress to survive. I think OP here was referring to things like global warming, it's a reality, but many (most?) conservatives in the United States believe it isn't happening. Another example is creationism. 60% of Republicans believe we were created by God 10,000 years ago, and evolution played no role. Yet, we know this isn't true, it's not reality.
I would consider myself centrist (which is conservative by Silicon Valley standards). Personally, I believe global warming to be real, but I find the alarmism to be an exercise in popular histrionics.
I remember being a kid in 1992 and being told that by this point in my life I would have to wear a special suit because the hole in the ozone layer would get so bad the suns rays would start frying us. The same is happening today. People are crying wolf about everything to the point where it's become impossible to take the alarmism seriously anymore.
Ivar Giaever and Freemason Dyson have done a great job illustrating the problems with the current dialogue around climate change.
There was a global effort to eliminate causes of ozone layer depletion. It took a significant amount of political will and resources to ensure that we'd get to the point we are at today[1].
The people crying wolf back then prevented us from depleting the ozone layer.
We addressed the ozone depletion problem by banning CFCs. It didn't magically go away. The issue of global warming has yet to be addressed.
You probably recall being told about endangered species when you were a kid too. The fact that they still exist does not indicate that you experienced alarmism but that people actively protected those species.
Interesting. Ok, maybe liberal is young peoples' philosophy, conservative is old peoples'. As reflected in the many sayings about how you should be the former before 30 or 40, the latter afterwards. It's not more natural to be young or old - both are natural. From Robert Louis Stevenson:
"...the opinions of old men about life have been accepted as final. All sorts of allowances are made for the illusions of youth; and none, or almost none, for the disenchantments of age. It is held to be a good taunt, and somehow or other to clinch the question logically, when an old gentleman waggles his head and says: “Ah, so I thought when I was your age.” It is not thought an answer at all, if the young man retorts: “My venerable sir, so I shall most probably think when I am yours.”
Because I have reached Paris, I am not ashamed of having passed through Newhaven and Dieppe. They were very good places to pass through, and I am none the less at my destination. All my old opinions were only stages on the way to the one I now hold, as itself is only a stage on the way to something else. I am no more abashed at having been a red-hot Socialist with a panacea of my own than at having been a sucking infant. Doubtless the world is quite right in a million ways; but you have to be kicked about a little to convince you of the fact. And in the meanwhile you must do something, be something, believe something. It is not possible to keep the mind in a state of accurate balance and blank; and even if you could do so, instead of coming ultimately to the right conclusion, you would be very apt to remain in a state of balance and blank to perpetuity. Even in quite intermediate stages, a dash of enthusiasm is not a thing to be ashamed of in the retrospect: if St. Paul had not been a very zealous Pharisee, he would have been a colder Christian. For my part, I look back to the time when I was a Socialist with something like regret. I have convinced myself (for the moment) that we had better leave these great changes to what we call great blind forces: their blindness being so much more perspicacious than the little, peering, partial eyesight of men. I seem to see that my own scheme would not answer; and all the other schemes I ever heard propounded would depress some elements of goodness just as much as they encouraged others. Now I know that in thus turning Conservative with years, I am going through the normal cycle of change and travelling in the common orbit of men’s opinions. I submit to this, as I would submit to gout or gray hair, as a concomitant of growing age or else of failing animal heat; but I do not acknowledge that it is necessarily a change for the better — I daresay it is deplorably for the worse. I have no choice in the business, and can no more resist this tendency of my mind than I could prevent my body from beginning to totter and decay. ...
When the old man waggles his head and says, “Ah, so I thought when I was your age,” he has proved the youth’s case. Doubtless, whether from growth of experience or decline of animal heat, he thinks so no longer; but he thought so while he was young; and all men have thought so while they were young, since there was dew in the morning or hawthorn in May; and here is another young man adding his vote to those of previous generations and rivetting another link to the chain of testimony. It is as natural and as right for a young man to be imprudent and exaggerated, to live in swoops and circles, and beat about his cage like any other wild thing newly captured, as it is for old men to turn gray, or mothers to love their offspring, or heroes to die for something worthier than their lives."
Would anyone know why a small purchase from Coinbase would still be pending two full weeks or more after funds had left my checking account? Their support isn't too helpful. I've made other successful buys and sells, but one transaction is just stuck pending it seems and they're not being very helpful.
Turn on virtually any television station, cable channel, read a newspaper, search for political topics on Google and you're going to be absolutely flooded with left-wing messaging to the tune of 10 to 1 vs right-wing.
>An analyst who attended the meeting at the CDC in Atlanta told The Washington Post that instead of “evidence-based” or “science-based,” policy analysts are instructed to use the phrase, “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes.”
Sounds like a quibble over form, it's not like they're removing the science itself.
> "It's clear that we need regulation until there is sufficient competition..."
I don't think it's as "clear" as you seem to think it is. What does seem to be a matter of historical fact is that the FCC has never been an organization which has had an interest in, or been able by fiat to, increase competition in the telecommunications industry. The US basically went for the entire 20th century with a heavily-regulated, government-enabled, monopolistic telecom network (AT&T, Verizon landline systems & DSL). The parts of the internet which have seen investment, growth, and improvement over the last 30 years? Yup, the unregulated, non-common-carrier networks (cable and fiber).
> "why get rid of regulation before competition exists?"
Because lowering barriers-of-entry into a market is exactly the best way to encourage competition in any industry. Before anyone starts an ISP (or any other business), they consider the costs of doing so vs. the expected payoff if they succeed. Regulatory compliance (especially FCC common-carrier compliance) is an added cost of doing business which absolutely could be enough to keep a business from starting up.
You don't need NN to get telcos to behave. When did Comcast lower their prices and up their speeds? When Google Fiber came to town. When did Google Fiber come to town? When they got the municipality to remove as many barriers-to-entry as they could
> Regulatory compliance (especially FCC common-carrier compliance) is an added cost of doing business which absolutely could be enough to keep a business from starting up.
Have you calculated how much does that really cost? I'd say it's several orders of magnitude lower[0] than the consequence of other regulations that are the real cause there are no more ISPs.
what if its always more profitable to provide internet packages rather than equal access bits-are-bits service. even with several providers can you guarantee that at least one of them will charge flat rate or per bit rather than by content?
the cost of regulatory compliance in this case isn't an additional fixed cost like .. properly disposing of waste products, but avoiding business models that constrain and restrict access.
an internet where my usage - outside the question of compensating for last mile infrastructure and transit fees with a reasonable profit - is curated by some product management group solely interested in extracting the maximum profit from me and upstream services I might be using, isn't really an internet at all but cable television.
and if we're just talking about cable television, I can probably learn to live without the wealth of internet entertainment options I have today..but if you hack off the long tail and undermine the general free exchange of information because it isn't sufficiently interesting from a business perspective to my regional provider, you've lost something quite substantial just so someone else can make a buck.
maybe I'm in the minority, but as much as I enjoy having gigabit access, I would take an unrestricted 1Mb over a carefully controlled 1Gb in a heartbeat.
The barrier to entry for new ISPs is usually regional incumbent pre-existing monopolies. While NN is _technically_ a regulation, it adds no cost to ISPs, especially startups. NN essentially prevents ISPs from buying/building extraneous hardware+software for the purpose of indexing origins of megabytes per customer for the purpose of double billing or throttling based on the ISPs contract with the content service provider (who already paid their ISP).
Generally regulation and competition are in opposition to one another. Regulations inhibit innovation. See Airline regulation.
That's not say regulations are a bad thing - how much innovation do you want in the handling of your food? But at the same time it's worth being aware the regulations are written slowly, tend to be inflexible and get written by people who are informed about the subject matter which is to say are incumbents with a vested interest in the status quo.
That's exactly what's happening. But the FCC does not have the power to do that because that falls under the jurisdiction of the FTC.
They announced this a few days ago [0]. NN would have nationalized the internet which is the opposite of what we want. But everyone is spreading FUD online and calling for title II clasification. We don't want the government controlling the internet. We want them preventing bad business practices that hurt consumers (i.e. break up monopolies). The FCC can't do that, but they can work with the FTC who can.
I don't see how NN would slow down breaking monopolies. The cost of complying with NN for new ISPs is negligible. And what do you mean by government "controlling" the internet? What are they deciding, exactly? As far as I know, it's just making sure that NN (the default state of computer networks) is preserved, by having them disclosing some data to the public.
I think this is a damaging perspective. Sure, it's not a bad goal, but I strongly disagree with the implication that we should drop the fight for net neutrality in return for a faint sliver of hope of some small progress.
As far as I can tell, the only effective way to break up ISP monopolies would be to force allowing any/all companies to share the wires to your house. As long as one company owns the physical wires and a competing service would have to physically lay down new, redundant infrastructure, there's no chance due to the costs involved.
And it will be difficult, painstaking, and incremental to pass those kinds of laws (probably starts at the state and local level). It will take years and years.
NN was a simple, single federal law that protected all Americans everywhere and was already in place. So while improved competition is a good long-term goal to shoot for, it should be complementary to NN, definitely not a replacement.
Sharing wires is not where the problem is. These days last mile can be very very cheap as long as there is no rent seeking anywhere or regulations denying open access to the infrastructure for the last mile. So what is needed is a law that exempts ISPs somehow from the decades of anti-competitive regulations, guarantees open access to the infrastructure, prevents monopolies and local authorities from rent seeking, denying or overpricing such access.
Coinbase should solve it's coinbase trust issue. I bought a small amount of litecoin almost 2 weeks ago, i'm well past my "delivery by" date, my funds left my bank account over 10 days ago, yet I still don't have my coins in my account.
To counter anecdote with anecdote, I've had no issues with coinbase and have found them pleasant to use. That includes transferring to gdax/selling/withdrawing, etc.
You can’t counter a bad experience with a neutral one man.
Example:
Ann Rule was on a first name basis with Ted Bundy before he was caught. He didn’t murder her or any of her friends once. Its probably fine to take a car ride from him.
I've never had a single problem with Coinbase either. Most complaints seem to be from brand new signups getting delayed, people failing the AML/KYC checks.
My USD withdrawals always show up in my bank account 2 days later.
My account is 4 years old, was verified, 2FA setup, and bought/sold without issue 4 years ago.
Recently logged in to find that previously verified ID documents were somehow wiped out and my account became restricted. Reverified ID without issue, but account still restricted. Been 13 days and nada from their support save for an automated response.
My account is over 3 months old. They took my money and successfully gave me my tiny bit of ETH and BTC, but for some reason my litecoin transaction is stuck in the ether.
That's annoying then, maybe the run up in LTC triggered a new tier of verification or they really are that far behind. I'm sure you'll get it eventually but if you're looking to flip it now you can't yet.
If you're not buying with the intent to hold, I recommend depositing USD to their exchange GDAX. Fees are lower and you can sell/withdraw immediately.
So? Services that operate on money shouldn't just have an SLA where is works fine for some people. When you want a lot of nines, "it worked for me a few times" is not enough.
Probably should be completing AML/KYC checks before funding the account, but funny how there's never any issue with that not happening in a speedy amount of time...
There are hundreds of similar complaints about Coinbase on their sub-reddit just within the last week or so, many including support ticket numbers. People are getting pretty freaked.
https://www.reddit.com/r/coinbase
FYI this is identical to what happened on Mt Gox. It was easy to send money in, but getting more than 0.5 BTC out became quite difficult.
That said, it seems closer to the truth to say that they're simply under load. But it's hard not to wonder. There's no way to know there's a problem until it's too late.
It's a good reminder to keep your coins off Coinbase.
> It's a good reminder to keep your coins off Coinbase.
I'm finding that keeping coins off of Coinbase is easier to do than keeping cash off of Coinbase. It's fast and cheap to transfer cryptocoins to Coinbase, but takes me days to add cash.
Yep. I follow the ecosystem closely (not invested, just fascinated by it) and there are an incredible number of complaints about coinbase in general, and their atrocious support in particular.
Coinbase has said they've scaled their support team 2x in recent weeks. Surely that's not an easy feat and speaks to the sort of volumes they are handling at the moment.
I've used Coinbase since 2013 but I had a very important transaction simply disappear about a year and a half ago (despite being confirmed 10s of times) until I showed support that the transaction definitely went through. No explanation whatsoever. Just showed up a day after they replied to me.
Agreed. I sold some ETH and deposited the funds into a USD wallet, which Coinbase decided to close due to eligibility restrictions once the funds were already in it.
I've had a ticket open for about a month w/o access to those funds.
Silly question, but did you try reloading the page? I've noticed that if I place an order that isn't immediately filled, then tab to a different page and switch back to the gdax page an hour later, the account balance isn't updated even if it shows that my order was filled. Refreshing has always fixed it for me.
After I read on Hacker News by a number of commenters that Coinbase Customer Support had given up -- seemed fairly dodgy to give them money as you've no reason to think you'll get recourse should something go wrong.
I went with BitPanda. I should leave my referral link here but rather my own words carry the recommendation.
> This happened to me as well a few weeks back. Smells a lot like a Ponzi scheme.
Readers, please enshrine this comment as the canonical example of the Cryptocurrency Corollary of Godwin's Law: "As an online discussion about cryptocurrency grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Ponzi approaches 1."
Coinbase's entire business is to irreversibly and permanently send you Bitcoin in exchange for you sending them funds that you have months to dispute and reverse. And this is with reasonable fees that put a check-cashing outfit to shame. Of course they're going to err on the side of caution. Based on zero information whatsoever, I'm going to assume you're telling the truth. But for every honest person like you, there are probably at least two who truly are trying to steal Bitcoin from Coinbase.
I don't like it any more than you do when businesses make mistakes. But jumping straight to "Ponzi scheme" is just silly.
If you have a statement on your site saying you will deposit x coins in y days, you should do that. If you don't for a lot of people, then something is wrong with your business and no, people should not trust you.
> in exchange for you sending them funds that you have months to dispute and reverse
and here we see the limits of crypto currency and the legitimate concerns people have with it.
>Readers, please enshrine this comment as the canonical example of the Cryptocurrency Corollary of Godwin's Law: "As an online discussion about cryptocurrency grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Ponzi approaches 1."
Because the Corollary is true. At this point to believe otherwise marks you as a credulous dupe.
You were probably defending Mt Gox up to the day of its collapse. The Bitcoin True Believers are the easiest marks for these scams and cons because their ideology blinds them to reality.
I don't think it's unreasonable to think that they might using the cash influx from newer users to cover cash outs for older users. Which I suppose is fine if they keep balanced books, but not if they're not delivering advertised service to the new users, which they aren't. They took my money, gave me nothing, then went absolutely silent.
Yes, it is unreasonable. You could say that any business "might [be] using the cash influx from newer users to cover cash outs for older users." Seriously, don't hide behind the word "might." It's a lazy defense of an accusation that's based more on emotion than reason or facts.
I once ordered a computer from Dell. The sealed box arrived empty. I went through few weeks of increasingly enraged emails and phone calls. Should I have assumed Dell was a Ponzi scheme?
The fact that HN is just discovering Coinbase (Normiebase) and not discussing the in's and out's of Etherdelta tells me this bubble still has a far way to go before it bursts.
How many fund-stealing XSS attacks has EtherDelta been hit with by now? It should be considered criminal that they still haven't put up a competent Content-Security-Policy header that would entirely block that class of exploits. Their current one is trivially-bypassable security theater that I tried reporting and got blown off. It's probably for the best that they don't have more attention.
Well now I'm worried. I also bought a tiny amount of ETH and BTC which is still in my account but I'm really worried about getting the funds out, even if it's just a refund of my original USD.
I didn't come here to spread doubt, just to +1 with my experience. I have had other transactions with them go okay, but when this one went wrong I realized how absolutely abysmal their support is.
They stole my money and I'm being downvoted for it, ha!
why did you give them so much money that you are "really worried" dont be irresponsible, its a new venture , dont put in your life savings ... just a couple of dollars , try it out if it doesnt work then at least its not something to be "really worried" about
I gave them money , they gave me coin , everything worked ... maybe you made them angry and tried to do something illegal on their site so they shut your user down.
I hear they prioritize "good" users in their system.
There is a section where there is the type of account you add, if you add a bank account you get special treatment
"maybe you made them angry and tried to do something illegal on their site so they shut your user down."
Ahh, crypto-punk-decentralized-liberatrians never seize to amaze with the level of double-think they can achieve.
How someone can hold both "the government is evil and might take your money" and "maybe you made this website angry so they didn't give you your money" at the same time is truly impressice.
> just a couple of dollars , try it out if it doesnt work then at least its not something to be "really worried" about
Could you imagine living in a world where you had to start every business relationship by only making extremely small "beta test" transactions, be it a trip to Target to opening an account at your local credit union. Like, on your first trip to Costco, you only bought a box of gum because you couldn't ever be sure they wouldn't somehow completely fuck you over and if they did fuck you over the societal response would always be "LOL too bad, so sad.... shouldn't have trusted them!!!"
I dunno about anybody else, but that really isn't the world I would want to live in.
There is value, substantial value, to trust others and when that trust fails, having a solid legal system to back you up. If you cannot trust anybody but yourself, every transaction you make becomes significantly more expensive.
Same. Coinbase are in over their heads. There is so much room for competition here.
At times I’ve been unable to access my accounts or have transactions complete in a reasonable amount of time. Coinbase closed my account without notice with no explanation other than a mention of their desire to comply with FinCEN. I never got an answer from them as-to what I did “wrong”. I sure as hell wasnt selling heroin or babies on Silk Road. Imagine if Wells Fargo closed an account without notice or explanation after a customer had a few normal deposits and withdrawals. deep rolls eyes
Yeh I think people flooding to coinbase to make overnight money expect instant gratification but coinbase has to register users with the Federal Trade commission at least for me as an American so let's not forget in addition to the other comments detailing how hard it is for any startup to scale, there is another bottleneck called FTC approval for first time coinbase users and that is on the Federal Trade Commissions timeline.
Let's also not forget while many other otherwise good UI platforms dropped out of NY because well, it was too hard and the fees were too high coinbase continued to integrate and work with lawmakers because they know how important it would be not to disciminate against states and also to have legal integration with Wallstreet, so as much as you may be upset with Coinbase for not scaling fast enough for you and making the government go faster, you should ask why so many other platforms aren't there to offer you an equally good alternative.
That being said, throughout all this bustle lately, I have not experienced issues with Coinbase and have performed a variety of money moving actions to and from multiple bank accounts coinbase and gdax with no delays. This could be because I'm an established user, approved by the Federal Trade Commission and have an established credit history with Coinbase which has led to another increase in what I am allowed to do.
Furthermore, Coinbase has been open apologetic, taken complete responsibility for the lack of being able to instantly gratify as they stayed over 8x the exponentiation of new users trying to register relative to the last spurt in the sunmer and promised to be transparent even if they can't be perfect. They have a ten day backlog on customer support tickets even after hiring 400 new people just for customer support and plan to hire even more.
It sounds like you are a new user who feels entitled to instant gratification, instant approval by the FCC, instant trust from Coinbase who probably doesn't have an established credit history with you and you're mad because things didn't work for you immediately.
I saw the other day Coinbase had an update saying wire transfers we're delayed 2-3 business days but I did not have a delay with mine, which means they probably prioritize established traders.
I wouldn't be so hard on Coinbase, but if you think you can provide a better solution by all means go for it. We need more competition in this space.
I also recommend certifying yourself with a few other platforms and getting your accounts tested and registered and having some money there so if you experience delays with Coinbase you have other options to move money. I am established with multiple platforms in case I experience issues with Gdax, but as it turns out I never have.
Imagine building a startup that moves 10's of millions of new users' monies each month out of US bank accounts. While other startups are just scaling page views, Coinbase is scaling money. Keep in mind that it takes just one financial loss to break trust from the entire community. Has any other bank in history scaled this fast?
Yes. Remember that online banks were once new. 10s of millions flowed through lots of banks and new services like PayPal during the dot com boom of 99/00.
To the dozens/hundreds of complaints like this, there are tens of thousands of non-complaints that you don't ever hear about -- users who use the service to buy/sell/withdraw without issues.
People are particularly emotional about Coinbase because it touches on their bottom line -- money. But let's not forget the fact that ALL startups have major scaling woes. Bugs in the tech being ironed out, overwhelmed support and engineering teams recruiting and integrating talent to meet the demand -- in Coinbase's case exponentially growing demand. If you've worked in a software startup you know how easy it is to be met with exponential increase in demand, and how impossibly difficult it is to stay above water growing a team at the same rate.
I'm positive on Coinbase due to their backing. YC, Andreessen Horowitz, DFJ, among dozens of high-profile investors. These guys want a $20B valuation, they're not interested in backing a failing company or a scam.
If a new investment firm took this long to have securities show up in your account, they'd be shut down faster than you can say SEC. Coinbase isn't exactly a new t-shirt company working out issues with their silk screener, they're an allegedly $20B (alleged) currency exchange. They have a higher standard to meet.
I can see how Silicon Valley standards have to rise up to Wall Street standards and they're not there yet. Tech like Auto/Finance/Space are new to SV and they're all full of scaling woes. Traditionally "SV style" has been to be scrappy and accept a healthy amount of breakage, and never say no to incoming demand, even if it's crippling your platform.
You have a point that SV needs to get into the mindsets of the industries they are trying to disrupt and rise to those higher standards.
To add another point, Coinbase is in unchartered territory. I want to see a new cryptocurrency investment firm show up on the market and function without a hitch. Companies like Coinbase are the only datapoints so far in this space.
"Can't deliver the service as expected" is par for the course in innovative early stage startups. Veteran tech companies like Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, Oracle, etc., struggled hard and failed to deliver as expected for many years. And still do. Apple computers and OSes in the 90s were unusable garbage; you spent more time twiddling extensions than actual use. Remember Windows 3.1x? It was an utter failure of an OS but the only available solution to many businesses. Time will tell how Coinbase evolves but my take is they'll continue to improve and catch up to demand.
It can't provide the level of service expected for financial services of this sort. That doesn't imply they should give up and go home, but it does mean that one should temper one's expectations of being taken fully seriously.
I wish all our energy being spent on NN would go towards breaking ISP monopolies, it would achieve the same goals of NN including better services, cheaper prices.
I'd decouple the content creation from the network delivery. How soon before cable companies start zero-rating their own content? Also, local regulations granting monopolies have to start being rolled back, or municipalities buy the infrastructure from the ISPs and let them compete to use it.
That's precisely why I'm NOT in a frenzy over this decision. Immediately, it means nothing to anyone, and even though I don't like seeing protections removed, it's possible that consumers may just win at the end of the day. IMO the big tragedy here is that we even needed NN in the first place, violators of the original Internet openness philosophy should be campaigned at the corporate level to bring them in line.
