From Stossel
Video Description
Pollution, homophobia, racism, hate; activists claim everything is getting worse. The opposite is true. But if they admit that how would they raise money?
“For activists, success is a threat,” journalist John Tierney explains. “It is going to put you out of business unless you find a new cause.”
Tierney has covered activists for years and watched them move from one cause to another.
“But it’s not a business,” I push back. “They're not making money doing this.”
“Oh, yes, they are,” replies Tierney.
Lots!
Our new video looks at how these activist groups raise billions of dollars, the consequences of their activism, and why we fall for their scares.
Democracy. The biggest panic business.
I heard (while watching the World Series) that Project 2025 is going to become law if Trump wins... I'm sure plenty of people believe that.
Its all so absurd.
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I saw one of those while watching football with my dad and we were like "If only Trump wanted to do any of this stuff."
The add we saw was all about cutting entitlements and taxes.
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Yeah.
The mirror of this is with Harris and unrealized cap gains. No way that actually happens. Many other things as well. There are people that want that but it isn't happening and Harris is a typical politician. She doesn't care about policy.
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The difference is that those are policies that she's actually advocated, whereas everything they're attributing to Trump from Project 2025 he's expressly disavowed.
You're right that neither of them have any intention of doing these things, but it's pure make-believe to scaremonger on Project 2025, wrt Trump.
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Totally. The Project 2025 stuff is what a group hopes they can convince him to do. But the ad made it sound like it is some entity that will just be put into place on day 1. Its absurd.
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14 sats \ 1 reply \ @kepford 29 Oct
btw
Thanks for the book recommendation of A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism. Finding it both interesting and helpful.
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I'm glad you're liking it. It's one of my favorites from the Austrian tradition.
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So what I'd like to know is how best to combat or disincentivize activist fearmongering...
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It's really tricky. I've spent a fair amount of mental energy on the broader problem of incentivizing honest media and I haven't made any progress.
Even this video and the guest's book are sort of meta activist fearmongering about the problem of activist fearmongering.
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I really wonder if the only thing that will wake people up is widespread violence. My concern there is that they will just double down. I'm not suggesting that violence should be started, but that it is the outcome of the path we are on and maybe that will make enough people realize this is all getting stupid.
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On that note, I am sensing that the rapid rise in urban crime rates is challenging some people's long standing loyalty to the Democrats.
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100%
You can see this even in democrat talking points shifting to actually acknowledge the problems.
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Selling the fear is a good way of making money.
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These NGOs and identity politics create more division than solution. Not forgetting the advertising that deceives the less attentive
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Causes become industries, because that's where the incentives lead.
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