I was in behavioral therapy for over a decade a lot of it was about how to handle finances and the way of economics now and how they impact mental health. It was a common subject and group as well.

Don’t make it out to be like there’s some kind of conspiracy that mental health professionals on a lot talk about finances.

Well sir… This is definitely a much more succinct way of saying everything that I said. ☹️

Let me ask you this: you’re a 10- to 18-year-old kid, maybe younger. You live with your parents, you have some kind of game console, or perhaps a computer your parents bought for you or use themselves. One day, you tell your parents, “I want to play Grand Theft Auto.”

Your parents essentially have to purchase the game for you, because a retailer isn’t going to sell a mature-rated game directly to a child. If you’re buying it digitally through Steam or another online store, you generally need a payment method, which again means your parents are involved in the transaction.

So what exactly is age verification at the game or operating-system level supposed to accomplish?

The purchasing process is already, by its nature, an age-gated process. If a parent is willing to purchase a mature-rated game for their child and allow that child to play it, then the parent has already made that decision. If the parent is irresponsible enough to allow their child to play violent or otherwise age-restricted games without supervision, that is a separate parenting issue. I don’t see how forcing developers, publishers, distributors, or operating-system manufacturers to verify the child’s age meaningfully addresses that problem.

That’s what I don’t understand about these laws: what is the actual benefit?

From a political perspective, I don’t see an obvious constituency demanding this. I don’t see how it provides a significant benefit to corporations, either. It doesn’t seem particularly popular or politically consequential because the issue is so niche. So what is actually driving this?

I’m not saying there has to be some grand conspiracy behind it. But if there is a rational explanation for why governments keep pursuing increasingly complicated age-verification requirements, I’d genuinely like to understand what it is. Is this primarily about liability? Political signaling? Pressure from advocacy groups? Regulatory precedent? Or is the government simply trying to establish a broader principle that online services should be responsible for determining the age of their users?

Then there’s the technological problem.

The infrastructure simply isn’t designed around reliable age verification. Take operating systems as an example. A law can require an operating system to verify the age of its users, but that doesn’t mean the operating system actually has reliable access to that information. Windows and macOS may be able to integrate age verification through accounts or other identity systems, but what happens on Linux? What mechanism is the operating system supposed to use to determine whether the person sitting at the keyboard is 12, 22, or 52?

And even if you solve that problem, you haven’t necessarily solved the underlying problem. A child can use a parent’s account, a shared computer, a friend’s device, or any number of other arrangements. You can build increasingly elaborate verification systems, but ultimately you still run into the fact that parents control the devices, accounts, and purchases in the home.

So I keep coming back to the same question: what problem is this actually solving that existing parental control systems and the purchasing process don’t already address?

I’m not opposed to reasonable protections for children online. I’m questioning whether mandatory age verification actually provides enough additional protection to justify the enormous technological and regulatory infrastructure required to implement it.

Because if the practical result is simply that the government requires companies to verify something that parents are already responsible for controlling, then I’m having a difficult time seeing what meaningful benefit we’re getting in exchange for all of this additional regulation.

By crypto he meant doge.

deleted by creator

EXACTLY!

All those things that the meme mentions are something that the government should be looking into regardless of what economy they institute!

I’m paying $2,000 a month for a three bedroom that shouldn’t cost anywhere above $1100 a month!

I went to home Depot last night bought some cockroach traps, Teflon tape a plunger and a short length of stainless steel tubing for $30. What’s up on tables 98 cents the plunger was $4 the box of cockroach traps was eight bucks and the length of tubing was $15! And none of the prices make any sense!

Of course because this is the pressing issue of the new millennium. Everyone sitting around going man Nixon really got the short end of the stick.

And Meta can pay billions, continue doing business as usual, recoup the cost relatively quickly, and eventually become immensely profitable again.

At a certain scale, what you and I consider to be an enormous amount of money can become almost meaningless to a company like that. A multibillion-dollar fine may sound devastating to the average person, but if it represents only a small fraction of the company’s revenue or profits, it is little more than a cost of doing business.

If you actually want to hurt these companies and create a meaningful deterrent, the penalty has to be tied to their economic scale. Take a percentage of their profits or, in sufficiently serious cases, their revenue. Make the penalty large enough that the company genuinely feels the financial consequences of its behavior.

Otherwise, you aren’t really punishing them. You’re just irritating them.

Says the guy making unsubstantiated declarative statements whilst drawing erroneous conclusions from actual facts.

Oh shoot here let me quote that for you.

erroneous conclusions from actual facts.

Lol, pathetic.

Actually went to UNI for this. So I’m a little bit of an expert. But what you don’t know is that this is actually just propaganda. The rich elite of our society wants you to think this. But in reality they’re just trying to hide the fact that you’re stupid.

tangle fact

Nope, you’re wrong

Evidence of what I’m saying

Propaganda 🫪

Statement supported by fact and evidence

I studied this

More factually correct statements

Personal attack

Out of context quote from my comment

Irrelevant gibberish about genocide.

Yes thank you you are actually correct here I did in fact conflate the two.

I appreciate you pointing this out in a constructive and meaningful way.

Ultimately the point that I was trying to make is that a Preger is an idiot.

Him telling people that they need to do historical research on the American flag is the quintessential epitome of the pot calling the kettle black.

My God, you are insufferable.

You know what’s funny? I don’t think I’ve ever had an argument on this platform where the person I was arguing against didn’t suddenly have some sort of credentials in the very subject we’re discussing. It’s incredibly convenient.

It is quite obvious that whatever university you went to did not do a very good job teaching you what scientists, historians, and academics actually do in their respective fields.

You are claiming that the Revolutionary War was essentially a class conflict specifically intended to enrich America’s wealthy elite.

I have presented you with facts and evidence demonstrating that this characterization is not supported by the historical record. I even pointed out that roughly 20–30% of the colonial population remained loyal to the Crown, meaning that there was substantial support for the British side within the colonies themselves. There were also foreign powers, most notably France, that allied themselves with the American revolutionaries.

From everything you’ve shown me and told me so far, apparently I’m supposed to be lacking some supposedly “nuanced” understanding of the Revolutionary War that just happens to align with your very particular interpretation of it.

But please understand this, because apparently your university failed to teach you this distinction: you are presenting facts about the Revolution, but your conclusions do not follow from those facts.

Your argument essentially amounts to:

“There was propaganda during the Revolution + wealthy people participated in the revolutionary government + officers tended to be wealthy + poor people fought in the war = therefore the Revolution was an economic war in which wealthy Americans used poor Americans as cannon fodder.”

That’s not an argument. That’s a sequence of observations followed by a conclusion that hasn’t actually been demonstrated.

You even brought up something about genocide, which I genuinely don’t understand. What genocide are you talking about, and how exactly does that follow from the evidence you’re presenting about the Revolutionary War? Is that another conclusion you’re importing from some modern political framework and projecting backward onto the eighteenth century?

This is precisely the problem with your reasoning. I am not disputing that wealthy people had economic interests. I’m not disputing that propaganda existed. I’m not disputing that wealthy men held positions of political authority. None of those things are controversial.

What I am disputing is your leap from those facts to the claim that the Revolutionary War was fundamentally an economic class war waged by wealthy Americans for their own enrichment.

If that’s your conclusion, then demonstrate it. Show the evidence that establishes the causal connection rather than continuing to list unrelated facts and treating the conclusion as self-evident.

The most infuriating and dangerous person on the face of this planet is someone who is stupid but genuinely believes himself to be intelligent. And you are making a remarkably strong case for that particular category.

So, once again: the problem isn’t that the facts you’re presenting are necessarily false. The problem is that the conclusions you’re drawing from them are not supported by the facts you’ve presented.

So far, your entire argument has been:

Fact about the Revolutionary War → unsupported personal conclusion → repeat.

I’d say you’re a waste of time, but you are providing me with entertainment, so I suppose I should thank you for that.

Okay, you’re starting to irritate me.

You’ve done nothing but demonstrate that you know some minor details about the Revolution, state them confidently, and then draw sweeping conclusions from them with an arrogance that makes you sound like a flat-earther screaming about buoyancy and “8 inches per mile squared” as though that single fact explains everything.

You don’t know. You simply don’t. The Revolution was over 250 years ago, the historical record is necessarily subject to interpretation and dispute, and there is no reason I should automatically accept either the official record or your interpretation of it as gospel.

I’m not some early-American-history aficionado. I’ll freely admit that. But I know enough to recognize that the Revolution was not simply an economic class war orchestrated by wealthy elites while poor people were sent off to die for them.

And here’s the important distinction: many of the facts you’ve presented are largely correct. I’ve actually taken the time to fact-check some of them, and I’m perfectly willing to admit when you’re right. The problem is that your conclusions don’t necessarily follow from those facts.

You’re taking historical events, selecting an interpretation of them, and then presenting that interpretation as though it were an established fact. That’s precisely the kind of historical reasoning that should make someone skeptical, regardless of whether some of the underlying facts are correct.

Take the Boston Massacre. Paul Revere’s famous engraving was absolutely dramatized and was not an accurate representation of what actually happened. We know this today, and it is reasonable to conclude that the image functioned as revolutionary propaganda and helped shape public opinion against the British.

Where I disagree with you is the leap from that fact to the conclusion that this demonstrates some deliberate governmental psychological operation designed to manipulate the population into fighting a war for the benefit of wealthy elites.

That’s an interpretation. It may be argued. It may even contain elements of truth. But you haven’t established it simply by establishing that Paul Revere produced propaganda.

And yes, I’m getting some of this information from the National Archives and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. I can already anticipate your response: “That’s not what the evidence actually says,” followed by another confident explanation of why the sources I’ve consulted are somehow less authoritative than whatever historian you happen to have read.

I’m not interested in replacing one unquestioned narrative with another.

I’m perfectly willing to accept documented facts. I’m perfectly willing to acknowledge uncertainty. I’m perfectly willing to change my position when the evidence warrants it.

What I am not willing to do is accept your interpretation of those facts merely because you state it confidently.

The historical facts matter. Their interpretation matters too. But those are two different things, and you’ve repeatedly treated them as though they were the same.

That’s the problem with your argument.

But do go on about AI and whatever else helps you sleep at night dawg. Good day.

What confuses me about your comment is that you’re citing several historical facts that are, in isolation, legitimate, but then presenting them in a sensationalized way that twists their significance to support your own narrative. Ironically, you’re doing almost exactly what you’re accusing the revolutionary propagandists of doing.

Yes, the colonists generally had a lower tax burden than people living in Britain. Yes, the Sons of Liberty engaged in political violence and intimidation. Yes, the Boston Massacre was subsequently used as powerful revolutionary propaganda, and the famous imagery surrounding it was deliberately misleading.

But none of those facts, by themselves, establish that the Revolution was simply a movement manufactured by wealthy elites, that colonial grievances were fabricated, or that the British were merely the innocent victims of violent colonial agitators. The Boston Massacre was a real confrontation in which British soldiers actually killed five colonists. Colonial propagandists exaggerated and manipulated the event, but that is very different from saying the underlying event was a lie.

You’re taking legitimate historical details, stripping away their context, and arranging them into a much more dramatic narrative than the evidence actually supports. Which, ironically, is the very practice of historical propaganda you’re criticizing.

And that’s ultimately where I think your argument falls apart. Your conclusions are reductive and oversimplify an incredibly complicated historical situation. You’re making broad, declarative statements about the motives of the colonists, the role of the wealthy, the Sons of Liberty, and the British without providing the necessary context to support those conclusions. Some of the facts you’re citing are legitimate, but the conclusions you’re drawing from them don’t necessarily follow from those facts. Ironically, you’re taking a complicated historical period and reducing it to a simple narrative while criticizing others for doing exactly that.

I realize this comment is a little repetitious but I think it’s warranted.

The propaganda and persuasion…

If my above comment didn’t indicate that I studied the revolution to some degree throughout my lifetime I don’t know what will.

How about this I provide you with actual facts in my comment how about you provide me with some actual facts or something aside from just “trust me bro go to research”.

Why is there always one of you under every comment? There is always one of you trying to reduce everything to a class-war narrative.

Yes, of course there were economic and personal interests involved in the American Revolution. The top brass of the emerging American government included quite a few wealthy landowners, merchants, and speculators who had very real economic interests that could benefit from independence. We’re not going to bypass human nature here. People can sincerely believe in a political cause while simultaneously recognizing that the outcome may benefit them personally.

But it wasn’t simply wealthy people fighting each other while poor people were dragged onto the battlefield as cannon fodder. The Continental rank and file were overwhelmingly drawn from the lower and lower-middle socioeconomic classes: laborers, servants, apprentices, artisans, small farmers, and shopkeepers. Wealthier men were disproportionately represented among the officers, while the enlisted ranks were largely populated by people who owned relatively little.

And the population wasn’t even united behind the Patriot cause. Historians estimate that roughly 20–30% of the colonial population remained loyal to the Crown, with Loyalists actively fighting, providing intelligence, and opposing the Patriots. The Revolution therefore wasn’t simply “the rich manipulating the poor”; it was also a profoundly divided society in which Americans fought Americans for competing political, economic, and ideological reasons.

So yes, wealthy men absolutely had interests in the Revolution. Nobody needs to pretend otherwise. But reducing an eight-year war involving hundreds of thousands of people, multiple social classes, Loyalists, Patriots, enslaved and free Black people, Native Americans, women, foreign powers, and competing political and economic interests to “rich people used poor people as cannon fodder” isn’t historical analysis. It’s class warfare dressed up as historical analysis.

My God, stop pretending history was ever that black and white.