Quoting: scaine

"I find the moral indignation over what others do with their own hard earned money to be performative."

This is about indignation specifically targeted at how people (individuals or companies) spend their legitimately earned funds on choices that are legal, consensual, and don't directly victimize anyone.

Why would anyone be morally indignant about legal, consensual, no-victim spending??

It's entirely obvious to everyone but you that your statement implied otherwise. It's bizarre that you can't see that.

Time to move on here, I think.

No, deconstructing everyday phrases like “hard earned money” through critical theory lenses is not
"entirely obvious to everyone."
Most people hear “hard earned money” and just think: “I worked for this, so it’s mine to spend however I want.” Full stop. No secret Protestant work ethic dog whistle, no coded hierarchy, no sly bid to make the wealthy our moral “betters.” It’s ordinary language doing ordinary work-describing effort and ownership.
Only a very specific subset of people (mostly academics, online left-theory enthusiasts, cultural studies types, and people who’ve spent too much time marinating in Foucault/Weber/Bourdieu type reading lists) reflexively reach for the ideology critique toolkit the moment they see a merit-flavored phrase. To them, everything is “loaded,” everything is “doing work,” everything is quietly reproducing domination or naturalizing inequality. So they treat a standard expression as if it were a cryptic manifesto that needs to be unpacked layer by layer until the hidden class project is revealed.
To literally everyone else- left, right, center, working-class, business-owner, barista, retiree-that level of hermeneutic suspicion applied to a commonplace idiom looks like over reading at best, pretentious performative intellectualism at worst. It’s the rhetorical equivalent of seeing a stop sign and immediately launching into a 500 word thread about how traffic infrastructure enforces car-centric capitalist spatial discipline.
"Hard-earned money" - it’s just normal speech. The clever loading and the elaborate suspicion is entirely on the receiving end. Most of the world isn’t playing that game.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: wit_as_a_riddle

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: wit_as_a_riddle

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: wit_as_a_riddleI find the moral indignation over what others do with their own hard earned money to be performative.

That sounds like it makes sense, but it's ludicrous. So, Geoffrey Epstein spent his own hard earned money on sex with underage girls. I am morally indignant about that. Not you, though, that would be "performative".

That sounds like it makes sense, but it's ludicrous! The morally repugnant issue is sex with underage girls, spending money on it or not is irrelevant.

Uh, yeah. Go look at what you said.

Your point was that if people were spending "their own hard earned money" on something, that meant we shouldn't be morally indignant about it. This appeared to be an admonition completely independent of the content of what those people were doing with their "hard earned money". I pointed out the absurdity of this. You have just confirmed it--yes, whether someone spends "their own hard earned money" on something is in fact irrelevant to whether we should feel moral indignation about it. So, your initial statement was ludicrous.

You're still misrepresenting what I actually said, and that's the core issue here.

My original statement:

"I find the moral indignation over what others do with their own hard earned money to be performative."

Nowhere did I say - or even imply - that *spending one's own money makes any action morally acceptable* or immune to criticism. That would be an absurd, blanket claim, and I never made it.

Oh, please. Let's unpack a bit, shall we?

So, first, that implication is certainly there in the basic grammar. Clearly it is the fact that the things done are done by people with their own hard earned money, that makes the indignation performative. If it were not, there would be no point mentioning the money in the first place, but instead the money is the only thing mentioned that characterizes what the people are doing. No doubt the claim wasn't intended to have to handle a reductio ad absurdum, but rather the money was perhaps only intended to be sufficient to wash clean venial sins, but this was certainly on its face a claim that people shouldn't be getting on people's case if what they're doing is spending money.

But on what basis? The core of the statement is that the money is "hard earned". So this is not just any money--it is presumed to be money acquired by working hard, by adhering to the Protestant work ethic. It is virtuous money, and the possessor is virtuous through having acquired it. The current context relates to someone with enough money to own a company, so, considerable wealth. The invocation of the "hard earned" money suggests that the possessors of that much money are, by that fact, our betters. And so, anything they might decide to do with it can be assumed to be above our criticism.

It was an extremely loaded statement, and loaded quite cleverly at that, meant to get people to digest it without quite realizing what they'd swallowed.

You're loading my original statement with layers of meaning and motive that simply aren't present, turning a straightforward observation into a supposed manifesto of class deference and work-ethic theology. You're creating some new meaning that was never present in my words and then arguing against your made up meaning - the essence of strawman argument.

Let's restate what I actually said, without your additions:

"I find the moral indignation over what others do with their own hard earned money to be performative."

This is about indignation specifically targeted at how people (individuals or companies) spend their legitimately earned funds on choices that are legal, consensual, and don't directly victimize anyone. The "hard earned" is just everyday language stressing ownership and effort—it's not code for "Protestant virtue," "moral superiority," or "they're our betters so shut up." People say "my hard-earned money" constantly without implying untouchability (e.g., "I spent my hard-earned money on junk food — don't judge"). You're inventing a hierarchy where none was asserted.

You claim the grammar forces the implication that the money itself is what makes indignation performative, and that without it the statement has no point. Wrong. The point is the scope: private spending decisions (personal or corporate) on non-harmful things. Mentioning "their own hard earned money" clarifies it's their resources, not public money, stolen funds, or something they're forcing on others. If I said "what others do" broadly, it'd include crimes, fraud, exploitation — areas where outrage is warranted. By specifying their own hard earned money, I'm narrowing to cases where the only "issue" is personal taste, envy, or ideological disagreement with the choice itself.

In this context (e.g., a company using generative AI for something like a web banner), the indignation often boils down to "they could/should have hired a human artist instead." That's not direct harm — it's speculative opportunity cost at best. Companies routinely choose cheaper/faster tools (stock assets, templates, outsourcing, automation) without moral panic. Treating AI as uniquely evil because it displaces potential gigs isn't ethics; it's protectionism dressed as concern. The money saved can fund other things (higher wages for current staff, better products, lower prices) — that's efficiency, not vice.

My logic remains rock-solid and consistent across all this:

- When the spending is on victimless, legal, internal choices (luxury goods, subscriptions, efficiency tools like AI for a banner), moral indignation is frequently performative — more about signaling ("I'm pro-artist," "anti-corporate," etc.) than real wrongdoing.
- When there's actual harm (exploitation, theft of IP in training data if illegal, fraud, direct victims), criticize freely — the "hard earned money" part becomes irrelevant; the harm is what counts.

You haven't shown any contradiction; you've just expanded my scoped claim into an absurd universal ("no criticism of anything bought with money ever") and then attacked that straw effigy while smuggling in assumptions about wealth worship. If you want to argue that companies have a moral duty to hire humans over tools regardless of cost or efficiency, make that case directly. But don't pretend my words secretly endorse elite immunity or Protestant superiority — they don't. That's all your invention.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: wit_as_a_riddle

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: wit_as_a_riddleI find the moral indignation over what others do with their own hard earned money to be performative.

That sounds like it makes sense, but it's ludicrous. So, Geoffrey Epstein spent his own hard earned money on sex with underage girls. I am morally indignant about that. Not you, though, that would be "performative".

That sounds like it makes sense, but it's ludicrous! The morally repugnant issue is sex with underage girls, spending money on it or not is irrelevant.

Uh, yeah. Go look at what you said.

Your point was that if people were spending "their own hard earned money" on something, that meant we shouldn't be morally indignant about it. This appeared to be an admonition completely independent of the content of what those people were doing with their "hard earned money". I pointed out the absurdity of this. You have just confirmed it--yes, whether someone spends "their own hard earned money" on something is in fact irrelevant to whether we should feel moral indignation about it. So, your initial statement was ludicrous.

You're still misrepresenting what I actually said, and that's the core issue here.

My original statement:

"I find the moral indignation over what others do with their own hard earned money to be performative."

Nowhere did I say - or even imply - that *spending one's own money makes any action morally acceptable* or immune to criticism. That would be an absurd, blanket claim, and I never made it.

What I did say is that moral outrage directed specifically at how people spend their own money (on legal, consensual, victimless things - the qualification you seem to require, despite its obviousness) often feels performative - i.e., it's frequently more about signaling virtue, enforcing conformity, or expressing envy/disapproval of lifestyle choices than about addressing actual harm.

Your Epstein example doesn't refute that at all; it just changes the subject to something completely different. The moral horror in the Epstein case is *the rape and exploitation of children* - a serious crime with direct victims. That's not "what he did with his money" in any meaningful sense; it's felony sexual abuse. The money was merely the means/tool, not the morally relevant part. Condemning child rape isn't "indignation over what others do with their hard earned money" - it's indignation over *child rape*. Conflating the two is a deliberate sleight of hand.

To make your rebuttal work, you had to rewrite my position as something like:
"No one should ever feel moral indignation about anything purchased with one's own money, no matter how evil."

But that's a *straw man*. I never universalized it that way. The scope was always about personal spending choices that don't directly victimize others (luxury goods, adult entertainment, donations to controversial causes, etc.). You stripped out that implicit qualifier, replaced it with an extreme version that includes heinous crimes, then declared the whole thing "ludicrous." That's not engaging with what I said - it's manufacturing an easier target.

My logic remains perfectly consistent:

When the action itself is harmless / consensual / victimless, moral indignation about how someone spends *their own money* on it is often performative (status-signaling, puritanism, etc.).

When the action is harmful (especially criminal and victim-involving), then outrage is justified - and the fact that money changed hands is irrelevant to the moral assessment.

The distinction isn't hard to see unless you're intentionally blurring it. Either you are misreading or you are knowingly misleading.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: wit_as_a_riddle

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: wit_as_a_riddleCopyright law is very outdated for current technology.

So is capitalism. But if we're going to insist on capitalism, then within that framework I'm not sure what's going to stop anyone who creates anything from starving without copyright. We can fix copyright if we fix the overall system it's in.

For me, the strongest case for sticking with markets is the historic drop in extreme poverty: from high 60s–80% globally in the 1970s down to under 9% today.

Oh, sure, the drop in extreme poverty. So first of all, I've heard plenty about the supposed drop in extreme poverty, but I've never heard anyone mention a figure that extreme, that's just in the ridiculous propaganda realm. Don't know where you got it, but I'm pretty sure it's nonsense even in terms of the official stats that are generally bandied about.

Second, "extreme poverty" is defined in these sorts of statistics as "making less than $2 per day". That's in purchasing power parity with the US dollar. So then, if you're an American, and you make more than $60/month, you're not in "extreme poverty". Homeless people can starve to death in the US on way more than that. It's ridiculous. And since it's purchasing power parity, it is equally ridiculous everywhere else. Masses of people are, in real life, extremely poor, but the statistics claim they are not. They are quite simply statistics built to generate reassuring lies.

Third, much of this drop in "extreme poverty" represents the destruction of the peasantry. People are driven off their subsistence farms by various modern "enclosure movement" equivalents, they move to the cities and live in shanty towns where they are half starved, scraping by on whatever informal ways to scratch out a living they can find. But! Before, when they had adequate food that they grew themselves, decent shelter and generally were poor, but more or less OK, they weren't really in the monetary economy, so they made less than $2/day. Now that their lives are precarious and they can barely eat and their homes are made of cardboard or some damn thing, they make more than $2/day so they're not in "extreme poverty". Lucky them!

Fourth, another massive proportion of the drop in poverty is China. There was a period where China represented more than 100% of the drop in extreme poverty . . . which is to say, in the rest of the world extreme poverty was increasing, but it was decreasing so much in China it more than made up for it. This is not exactly a triumph of free market capitalism.

In any case, "markets" and capitalism are not the same thing. You can have markets without capitalism, it's easy, just replace all the firms owned by individual rich people and stock market investors with firms owned by governments and worker co-operatives, but leave the markets in place. Badabing, markets but no capitalism. And, you can have capitalism with no markets--we see this in US military contractors, who are often the sole source of a good which they sell only to their sole customer using cost-plus contracts which define the price paid as a function of how much it costs the firm to make the product, plus a percentage for profit. That isn't a market. And yet they are capitalist firms--private individuals own them, capital is invested in them for the purpose of generating a profit which can be reinvested.

Maybe you should talk about things you know something about. Nobody who, confronted with the term "capitalism", responds with the term "markets", knows much about either.

The ~80% in the 1970s/early 1980s down to under 10% today is based on World Bank data (via their Poverty and Inequality Platform). For example, in 1981, extreme poverty (at the then-$1.90 line, now updated to $2.15 in 2017 PPP) was around 44-50% globally in the 1980s/1990s, but longer run historical estimates (back to post-WWII or even 1800s) from sources like Our World in Data and economic historians put it much higher historically (often 80-90% pre-20th century in many reconstructions). Recent World Bank updates (as of 2025) put it around 8-10% (roughly 700-800 million people at $2.15-$3/day lines, depending on the exact revision). It's not propaganda; these are from household surveys compiled by the World Bank, UN, and others. But, you're right that no single number captures everything perfectly.

On the $2/day (now $2.15) threshold being too low: Totally fair point — it's intentionally a rock-bottom line to track the very worst deprivation (bare survival needs like food/calories). No one claims $2.15/day means a good life; it's extreme poverty by design. In the US, someone at that level (adjusted) would indeed struggle massively, and homelessness shows how even higher incomes can coincide with hardship due to costs, etc. The line uses PPP (purchasing power parity) to account for cheaper basics in poorer countries, but critics (including some economists) note it can understate urban/rich-country equivalents or non-monetary deprivations. Higher lines like $6.85/day (for upper-middle income relevance) show much slower progress — billions still below that. So I agree the "extreme" label can be misleading if it makes things sound rosier than they are.

Regarding the "destruction of the peasantry" and subsistence farms: This is a critique I've seen from folks like Jason Hickel and others— enclosure-like processes, urbanization, and market integration can push people into precarious informal work/shantytowns while monetizing previously non-monetary subsistence. In some cases it arguably worsened welfare temporarily by raising the relative cost of basics. But the data overall shows that, even in rural areas, on net the shift has coincided with huge gains in life expectancy, child survival, literacy, electricity access, etc. Many former subsistence farmers report preferring urban opportunities despite hardships (per surveys), and global hunger/calorie availability has improved dramatically. It's not that the transition is painless — far from it — but the absolute improvements (health, longevity, reduced starvation deaths) seem real and massive for billions.

China: Yes, a huge share of the drop is China (often >75-100% in certain periods, meaning other regions were flat or rising). But China's growth since the late 1970s/80s has been market-oriented reforms (Deng's opening, private enterprise, FDI, etc.), even if state-guided and not pure "free market." It's not socialism vs. capitalism in black-and-white; it's a mixed system that unleashed massive productive forces and lifted ~800 million out. Without crediting markets/incentives at all, it's hard to explain the scale/speed.

On markets vs. capitalism: Yes — markets (exchange, prices) can exist without full private-capital dominance (e.g., worker co-ops, public firms competing) and crony/contractor examples show "capitalism" without pure markets. I used "markets" because the historic poverty drop ties to global integration, trade, specialization, and incentives that reward production/efficiency—things that can happen under varied ownership, but in large majority, it's been capitalist markets that have reduced poverty.

I agree that cronyism, regulatory capture, and violations of fair competition (like illegal collusion or government-granted privileges) create real problems and distort markets. But in a truly free and competitive system, these issues stem from law-breaking or improper state intervention, not from capitalism itself. Inequality, meanwhile, is a natural outcome — people differ in talents, effort, risk-taking, and choices, and rewarding those differences drives innovation and growth. I don't see it as a flaw to be "fixed"; it's the way the world works, and what matters far more are the absolute gains in living standards that capitalist markets have delivered for the poorest. Abandoning the growth/productivity engine that has correlated with these gains risks stalling or reversing them, especially for the most vulnerable. We can (and should) enforce laws against monopolistic abuses, price-fixing, and fraud without throwing out the incentives that lift everyone.

Your points on poverty measurement flaws, enclosure dynamics, and the China factor are worth wrestling with, and I've genuinely thought about them. I don't think we're as far apart as it might seem on recognizing that stats can hide real suffering or that change is needed.

That said, your tone shift raised my eyebrows. Lines like "Maybe you should talk about things you know something about. Nobody who, confronted with the term 'capitalism', responds with the term 'markets', knows much about either" came across as pretty dismissive and petty — assuming bad faith or ignorance rather than just disagreeing. Sure, these topics get heated, (especially when they touch on big ideological stuff), but I'd rather keep this as a discussion between two people trying to figure things out than let it slide into snark or into gatekeeping who knows enough to participate. I have faith in you wanting what's best for people - I'd ask you place similar faith in me.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: wit_as_a_riddleI find the moral indignation over what others do with their own hard earned money to be performative.

That sounds like it makes sense, but it's ludicrous. So, Geoffrey Epstein spent his own hard earned money on sex with underage girls. I am morally indignant about that. Not you, though, that would be "performative".

That sounds like it makes sense, but it's ludicrous! The morally repugnant issue is sex with underage girls, spending money on it or not is irrelevant.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: wit_as_a_riddleCopyright law is very outdated for current technology.

So is capitalism. But if we're going to insist on capitalism, then within that framework I'm not sure what's going to stop anyone who creates anything from starving without copyright. We can fix copyright if we fix the overall system it's in.

For me, the strongest case for sticking with markets is the historic drop in extreme poverty: from high 60s–80% globally in the 1970s down to under 9% today. That's real progress in human well-being that I'd hate to reverse. I find inequality to be irrelevant when compared to the absolute gains in living standards — health, longevity, basics — people have realized. That just matters a lot more than relative gaps or resentment toward the ultra-wealthy. We can tackle the flaws (like price fixing) without abandoning what’s lifted so many.

I don't worry about creative people, creators adapt, they'll find creative ways to sustain themselves. Direct fan support models like Patreon or similar patronage systems and the massive access to consumers that is the internet will continue paying more and more artists. Not saying that's the end-all and be-all, just an example of artist prosperity not reliant on copyright - and a reason I don't worry about what will become of artists amidst the rise of generative AI.

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I find the moral indignation over what others do with their own hard earned money to be performative. Good luck with that authoritarian desire to control the choices of others, maybe you can bring bureaucracy in to regulate, spend some of your taxes on that. I'm sure there were people complaining about the jobs of sled makers when the wheel was invented - ultimately fruitless.

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I'd prefer AI models be allowed to retain any and all information from any library book, or be able to reference full texts at will. Copyright law is very outdated for current technology.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyOn the copyright front, apparently researchers at Stanford tested the AIs from the main companies by prompting them with the first line of various books and asking them to continue the story verbatim. There were variants between engines on how sneaky they had to be with the query (Grok: not sneaky at all), but they pulled out 95% of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone", "The Hobbit" and so on. All those engines would just give you chapter after chapter. This matters because the AI companies had repeatedly claimed that they don't actually store the texts they train on in any way (originally they also claimed they didn't pirate actual copyrighted books, either, but that got found out so the fall back was that they sort of didn't keep them). There's copyright lawsuits going on, so it may matter that it turns out they totally do store those texts they stole.

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When artists use AI to create code: 👍🏻
When coders use AI to create art: 😡

I find this amusing.

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Great coverage, Liam - this is something I'll expect Valve will pick up and run with.

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