Chauncey Tinker

Ah, OK, I get your point there. However this goes back again to my question in the first reply - does Stefan tailor his arguments to suit what the prevailing consensus is? No, he says what he thinks, and the fact that people donate to him doesn't alter that. Even on reward systems we can follow the people who stick to their principles, and ignore the (probably better rewarded for agreeing with the consensus) others. Your point about de-centralization can work in tandem with this - different sites (thinking beyond fdr now) can rise up and cater for people who are mainstream and people who are not. You want things to be tough? Why not smash up some weaving looms like the luddites did then?!? Make it tough for the workers so that they have to strive all the harder to escape from their grinding poverty!! Strife is good, it makes us stronger! Make it tough for the factory managers as well, so they have to hire more staff to make a living!! Let's turn back the clock and uninvent the vacuum cleaner and washing machine while we're at it! OK I'm labouring the point now (pardon the pun :-). In short though I fear you are trying to stand in the way of progress here, just as the Luddites did. Once agriculture began to need less people, the people became available to work in factories, and so on. This is the nature of progress - life gets easier, freeing us up to do other things with our time. Indeed I worked very hard, I did evening classes and then I got a job above that and before long I was feeling as if I was stuck in a rut all over again, albeit on a slightly higher rung of the ladder. I would not wish that on anyone. If there was a fast track for talented people in the future, I'm all for it, even though it wasn't available to me. As for people falling out over rewards and so on, I think that's another thing that will prove unfounded. What you may be overlooking is the fact Steemit is already up and running and working, and people seem to be getting along with each other just fine. I think we've probably reached an impasse by now, I can't think of anything more to add. What's more, there seems to be no-one else here - perhaps they are all over at Steemit making micro-earnings from their comments there, and perhaps I had better go and join them because I need to start earning a living somehow. Thanks for debating this with me though, it is good to be challenged on it, not least because I'm thinking of investing a great deal of time and effort into making such a solution work for my own site. I don't think we can really prove who's right except by experimenting with the system in question in the real world and just seeing what happens.. I would still be interested to hear what others make of our debate here though.

Hi @barn If I'm understanding you correctly then, your concern is that the reward system might attract people with the wrong kind of motivations and they would damage the quality of debate. Where there are no rewards people are commenting purely in an altruistic way and therefore with the best intentions. That's a fair point if I have understood you correctly, but I think it's a concern that will turn out to be unfounded I will try to explain why: One fascinating idea that I have come across in articles about this new reward system is the concept of the gift economy. People who gain rewards may in fact simply decide to put their rewards back into the system as it were by rewarding the good contributions of others. Thus, altruism may in fact be encouraged by such a system. This reward system is a revolutionary new way of doing things, it blurs the line between content creators such as Stefan, and people who respond to the content. Some of those people responding however are not just consumers, they are also content creators. For example, I write articles at a website but I also do a lot of commenting under other people's articles as well - I get involved in the debate in all the ways I can, it is literally a full time occupation at the moment. Many other commenters put almost as much thought into writing comments as the article writers do into their articles, and sometimes they even make much better arguments than the content creators what's more. I have seen this happening at many websites. I don't think this divide between content creators and consumers is healthy, it creates an artificial divide and I think that a lot of good voices are not being heard. People might start commenting in their spare time and find they are receiving enough rewards to make a career out of it, so it could create an easy avenue for the best voices to rise to the surface. Their rewards could enable them to start new ventures and invest in projects that they could only have dreamed of doing otherwise. The number of content creators currently is very limited, I would like to see thousands and thousands of people doing this sort of work (and it is work, believe me). Imagine someone is working in a dead end job and they start commenting or even creating podcasts etc. in their spare time. Gradually they begin to earn a bit of income from this and after a while they start to realize they could make a living this way. This could be an avenue from a pointless existence to a meaningful one for bright people who get trapped in a rut. I have been there myself in the past when I was younger, I have done low paid dead end jobs myself. If we want to see more of this then we need to reward the people who make the best arguments so that they can simply dedicate more time to the activity. Less successful commenters will not be able to earn significant rewards, it will be hard to do, but the odd reward they do get may spur them on to reward others. Having just received my own first comment rewards on Steemit I have done just that - I am putting it back in, and it feels really good. This gift economy concept really could take off. At first I thought oh there will be winners and losers but actually I feel like a winner when I am giving rewards as well as receiving them, because I feel I am doing good by giving. I've come across plenty of intelligent young people with inquiring minds who don't go along with this whole safe space culture. Quite often you hear such calling in to Stefan's call-in show. There is an impression created by the media and by those in universities who "no-platform" and so on, that may be the prevailing mood, but it is suppressing a lot of people with more inquiring minds from speaking out. In short, I believe the picture is a lot more mixed than it appears. Remember that small rewards would have a lot more value for younger people on the whole, as they are unlikely to be earning much. Such a platform might then give such young people an added incentive to speak out. As far as managing disruptive behaviour goes, the exact same problem exists with trolling - who do you get to police the trolling, so I don't think adding rewards will make this substantially more difficult. Every website has this problem already, and believe me it is a substantial problem, especially when you're talking about political issues (I am speaking from first hand experience here). De-centralization is an interesting avenue but that's something that can be incorporated along with this approach. You may be thinking of a more technical idea, but de-centralization is very much happening as a result of people simply starting lots of blogs, and other websites. For example, the website where I contribute is attracting mostly people who think quite deeply about UK politics and the wider scene, it is I think quite unlikely that those motivated PURELY by the chance of financial reward will be ever likely to visit it anyway, but rewards could be an ADDITIONAL draw. A system like Steemit could be easily integrated into multiple sites, reducing the work for people like me - thus it could ENCOURAGE de-centralization. We use a commenting system at the moment called Disqus but it has no in-built reward system - FDR has built a system from scratch but this requires an independent login. That is another factor discouraging people from joining the forum in my opinion. Hope that makes sense.

Hi @barn That's a very good question and one I have thought about. We have already seen Twitter becoming hijacked by rich people who want to influence the public discourse on that platform (something about Saudi influence WRT a particular religion seems to be a factor there). Any financially driven platform would face some risk from those who have deep pockets and I think this will require a lot of thought and have to be combated. However as the tech is in its infancy I doubt if that will be a serious problem to begin with and I think it's perhaps a bridge that can be crossed when we get to it. One thought I do have though is that such influencers could probably be detected and banned just as trolling is dealt with already. In a more general way though, do Stefan's arguments carry less weight because people donate? Are books on philosophy to be taken less seriously because the author receives a royalty cheque? No, I don't see any problem with financially rewarding those who make good arguments, quite the reverse.

I really think that Stefan should consider whether Steemit.com could be integrated with his new domain project. A good argument can change the world, so why not reward those who make good arguments on your platform? Steemit.com allows people to reward financially those who make good comments, as well as the big players. I wrote my thoughts about why I think Steemit is the future of online debating here: Steemit - A Revolution In The Making https://steemit.com/steemit/@chaunceytinker/steemit-a-revolution-in-the-making The only possible stumbling block is - I'm not sure if you can yet integrate Steemit with other sites yet. However the need for this technology is obvious (as I hope I made clear in the post above). If anyone can make this happen, it's Stefan! Thanks for considering this point, I feel it is the future for online debate!

I agree that the Ahmadiyya faith is not free of problems, in fact I wrote a critical post at my blog about it a while ago in the wake of the tragic murder of Mr. Shah (I am not an expert and I may have made some mistakes in the details): Ahmadiyya Islam You are also right of course that the apostasy stance is a crucial step forward. Its unfortunate as I suggested in that blog post that the Ahmadis often present their views about Islam as the truth about the religion in general, and many non-Muslims are thus deceived about Islam in general. For example here in this article about Apostasy: http://www.wikiahmadiyya.org/beliefs/apostasy-in-islam They claim that the Koran allows freedom of religion but they quote very selectively, "cherry-picking" the good verses and ignoring the later abrogating verses. In fact here they quote: , without mentioning the exception made straight afterwards - the punishment that comes to those who "spread mischief in the land", a foot is severed from one side and a hand from the other. It is very far from clear what exactly constitutes "mischief" of course. I do not seriously expect that any significant numbers of Muslims would be encouraged to turn to the Ahmadiyya faith in any case, I think this is very unlikely. I was really making the point to simply expose the fact that these reformers were not serious. If they did succeed in turning Muslims to this sect however, it would surely be a step forward though anyway. Why try to start a new "reform movement" from scratch when you already have one well established, with millions of followers worldwide (I understand it is approx. only 1 percent of the world's Muslims), but it is a start. The reason of course is that this true reform movement is a little bit too well established already, and therefore it is perceived as a threat by mainstream Islam, and dealt with accordingly. These new "reformers" are such a tiny group that they present no threat to mainstream Islam, in many cases it is mere virtue signalling and in some cases even a way of earning a dishonest living through book deals and the like. Maajid Nawaz's Quilliam Foundation was at one point quite generously funded by the government, although I do tend to believe in his case that his intentions are genuine, much though I believe his mission is futile in its stated purpose. What I do think though is that his voice is important in at least partially exposing the truth about Islam, that is the real unintended value of the Quilliam foundation. I take your point comparing the progress of gay rights, but that was just a progression to a more tolerant treatment of a group. It could be argued that tolerance was Jesus's message I think (I'm an atheist btw), so that movement was not going against the true nature of the dominant religion in the West, but rather going with it. By contrast I see the new Islamic reform movement as an attempt to go against the very nature of the religion, it is swimming against the tide as it were. As for your point about the university route, I think there is something in that indeed, but unfortunately there are many hard-line Islamic preachers (bizarrely) being allowed to speak at universities (even while right-wingers are "no-platformed"). When Maryam Namazie went to speak at Goldsmith university, a group of young Muslim men from an Islamic society at the uni did their utmost to disrupt her speech, in quite an intimidating way (there is a video of this on youtube). Fortunately their actions were well publicized and served more to expose their intolerance than to silence criticism. The more Muslims there are at uni the less this route will be effective as well, and that is the trend of course, in line with the demographics. The real way forward is to challenge the state, in particular the welfare state, which is fueling the dysgenic trend. That is where the best hope lies in averting the death of Western civilization, we might as well forget about trying to reform the religion. The Welfare State We’re In

There is a lot of talk about reforming Islam these days. Unfortunately it seems that all this talk is only taking place in the West, and its a subject that is much more popular among non-Muslims than Muslims, and indeed more popular among MSM pundits than people in the real world. These non-Muslims rarely seem to mention two very real previous attempts at reform - the Ahmadi sect (or non-Muslim religion according to most Muslims), and the Bahai faith. Neither of these attempts ever had much impact and both have suffered much persecution. In Pakistan you have to sign a declaration that states that the Ahmadis are not Muslims in order to obtain your passport. An Ahmadi shopkeeper was murdered in Glasgow a little while ago by a devout Sunni Muslim purely because of his faith. There is much incitement against the Ahmadis in the UK today. The only ways you could reform this religion would be to either take all the incitements out of the Koran (and hadiths), or to claim to be the messiah, the Mahdi (as in the Ahmadi faith). To edit the Koran (and hadiths/sura) you would have to declare yourself to be a later prophet with new divine revelations. The Mahdi's teaching of peace overrides/abrogates the warlike incitements of Mohammed, which is why in general you could describe the Ahmadi sect as a true reform movement. Why these reformers never suggest to mainstream Muslims that they should become Ahmadis is a question worth asking. In truth making such a suggestion is a very dangerous thing to do, which is why you can discount the reformers as not having serious intentions. The idea of a reform of Islam is not only wishful thinking, it is also in fact an idea that lends weight to those who wish to abolish freedom of speech in favour of Islamic blasphemy laws. Try arguing those points you made here against someone who is pushing the reform agenda, and they will often get quite verbally aggressive towards you - I am speaking from first hand experience here. In one debate I was accused of wanting to deport all the Muslims from the West, an idea which I have in fact argued quite forcefully against. In another I was accused of being a useful idiot of the jihadi groups like IS. The argument goes that if you point out that Islam incites violence against the disbelievers, you are agreeing with the jihadis, and pushing "moderate Muslims" towards more extremist actions, and thereby undermining the "reform" movement. It is also this kind of thinking that causes any truth-telling about the true nature of the religion to be blocked out of a large amount of media debates (especially in Europe). It is those who would silence critical analysis of the religious texts in this way who are the true "useful idiots" of the jihadis, because the jihadis also want to stifle all criticism of the religion. In reality they are partly motivated by cowardice, by fear of being physically attacked. This is how Islam spreads, by instilling fear into people's minds. The "reform" movement is just the advance guard of the intolerance, it must be opposed. The best way to oppose it is to point out that there is already a true reform movement, the Ahmadi sect, and ask why these fake "reformers" are not urging mainstream Muslims to turn to the Ahmadiyya faith.

Having blogged for over a year now, and despite having had much good feedback, I was not getting quite as much interest as I hoped I might. I therefore decided to try going into partnership with some other writers to form an online opinion magazine with more variety of writers and views. Here is the link to this new site: http://participator.online/ Recent articles include: The Welfare State We’re In This is mostly thinking about the welfare state in the UK. Where Next For The Pretend Strategy? Looking at the UK government's attempts to counter extremism. We are also seeking more writers if you would like to get involved and "participate" in any way let us know.

Some good observations there. One observation about comment sections - here in the UK there is an additional factor which is the fear of legal problems. Its no longer just a concern relating to ongoing court cases either, but the creeping introduction of laws limiting speech, such as the terrible "Communications Act" which allows prosecutions of "grossly offensive" communications. In Europe more widely there is also a growing clamour to clamp down on so-called "fake news". These are chilling times for the freedom of speech in Europe. I spent quite a lot of time a while back looking at fake news claims and counter claims. You might like to read some of my articles on this for example: "A Post-Truth Era? Part 2 – A Fake “Fake News” Epidemic"https://chaunceytinker.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/a-post-truth-era-part-2-a-fake-fake-news-epidemic/

Re. the appeal, I found this (it was a crown court case according to the article): https://www.gov.uk/appeal-against-sentence-conviction/crown-court-verdict This states "You can appeal against your conviction, sentence or both. It doesn’t matter if you pleaded guilty or not guilty." So an appeal would have been possible against the conviction and sentence in fact. Unfortunately there is a 28 day time limit (incredibly unreasonable) which is very nearly up or may already be. The article doesn't state the date of conviction but it was dated 5 Aug so only two days left although the above page does state: "You might be able to ask for an extension if there’s a good reason why you couldn’t send your application in on time. The form tells you how to do this." I guess its just possible there is a chance he could ask for an extension on the grounds he wasn't aware anyone else cared about the case and that a crowdfund might be available. Just a general point because some people think an appeal can result in a worse sentence. It also says: "Your original sentence or conviction will stay the same." Therefore according to that I don't think there is a risk of him getting a worse sentence in fact.

Thanks for the feedback and suggestion and for your offer to help with the web stuff, I have no experience with crowdfunding so even advice on that could be a big help. Where they say "admitted" I can't take that seriously because when we have a law that criminalizes "grossly offensive" comments then all that it takes for someone to commit such an offence is for someone else to claim they are "grossly offended" by what they said. As a blogger I can tell you I am being "grossly offended" by things people are saying to me and about me multiple times every single day. We can't have laws this vague, its just not reasonable. Also there have been cases where people have "admitted" murder but eventually their conviction was quashed because they were found to be mentally ill and had "admitted" to something they had not done. The authorities can bring an awful lot of pressure to bear on a suspect. I would like to try to pursue in any case at least as far as establishing what we can do for sure, I suppose a good lawyer would be able to answer that question almost immediately. It will in any case be more desirable to get involved before any future convictions. My idea is that monies would be sitting there waiting for the eventuality that someone needs help. As I said, I expect the number of cases to increase because the government is making loud noises about "stamping out hate". I see a huge amount of "hate" every day. There's no way the government can apply such vague laws fairly, and I strongly suspect they don't even intend to. I will keep this thread updated with developments. Thanks again.

I am a little bit ****** *** right now. I feel that our liberties are being eroded day by day. Are we going to sit around bemoaning what is going on or are we going to do something about it? The London Mayor has gained about £2 million to set up a "hate crime" (thought police) hub to monitor social media. I wrote about a recent case of the kind of "police" work that will be done by such a unit: https://chaunceytinker.wordpress.com/2016/08/23/its-no-longer-a-free-country/ If you agree with me that these kind of online comments should not be prosecuted (I am kind of taking that as a given) then please consider helping me out with the following plan: Step 1 - If anyone lives in or may be visiting in the Manchester area perhaps you could do some detective work on the ground and find a way that we can contact Mr. Bennett. The objective as explained in my post is to make contact with Mr. Bennett and establish whether he wants to appeal the conviction. Wythenshawe is an area with 100,000 inhabitants and unfortunately Stephen Bennetts are as common as crickets in a meadow. I searched in vain in Facebook and the online directory inquiries so far. I am a bit hampered because I am trying to maintain my anonymity due to the outspoken views I express at my blog, and I live a long way away from the area. I know there are a lot of sharp cookies out there in FDR land so I'm sure we can figure out a way somehow between us. Step 2 - If we can once establish that Mr. Bennett wants to appeal, then we set up a crowdfund for his legal bills to try and get him the best possible lawyer. I think a crowdfund should be administered by more than one person so that people can be confident its not a scam. I have my own doubts about the strength of the legal case against him and I suspect an appeal might well succeed, although I am a layman with no legal knowledge beyond what the internet tells me. Any monies left over from the crowdfund would be used to fund another case - I confidently predict that there are going to be many more such cases in the near future. Step 3 - Publicize the crowdfund as widely as possible. Maybe we could get Stefan to do a shout-out on the call in show. First things first though, we need to find out if Mr. Bennett wants to appeal at all. Of course if he doesn't then we can apply the same plan with another suitably dubious case. Note that the case has been widely publicized for example on Breitbart (London) and many other places, there are clearly significant numbers of people who share my concerns about the case. As I argued in the post: This case may not seem that significant but precedents are being set by cases like this and we need to let the authorities know that we're not going to let our liberties be taken away from us. LAWFARE is being waged against the lovers of freedom, and we must fight back in kind. Lets set our own precedent by appealing this case right up to the Supreme Court if we can.

I had reached similar conclusions. I think you are exactly right to tie the enabling of socialism with the end of property rights based voting restrictions (I think Stefan has made a similar point as well, can't remember where). It took a long time to fully materialize, but I really believe that was the seed. I think the one man one vote idea might have been born out of the "all men are created equal" thinking. "Never vote to the Left of any incumbent, but if the incumbent and their opponent share the same views, go with the opponent." That's a very good idea, hadn't thought of that.

I have written a poem. This is my first serious attempt at writing a poem. I am inspired by and very mindful of Stefan's exhortation for creative output to promote truth against the poisonous leftie anti-truth culture of "political correctness". At the moment the arts are heavily dominated by leftie thinking, and we must change that. Poetry is a powerful weapon in that struggle, as is comedy and songwriting. The poem is about the true case of a woman you may well have heard of, who is suffering terribly purely because of the tyranny of bad ideas in her country. I hope the poem makes sense and I would welcome your thoughts. Here is the poem: https://chaunceytinker.wordpress.com/the-ballad-of-aasiya-bibi/

The longer socialists are in power, the more the likelihood of a complete breakdown, bankruptcy, dictatorships taking over. Arguing about the immorality of states may be correct philosophically, but I'm afraid that disengagement from the political process will just make it more likely that such a breakdown will occur. In history such breakdowns have never led to a stateless society. To my mind it is therefore immoral to disengage from the political process. Surely it is better to try to convince people that reducing the state is a sensible and moral thing to do. We could eventually get to stateless societies by this route, perhaps? However I suppose its possible in future that if the prevailing ideas of the time were against statism, then such a breakdown might lead to a libertarian dictatorship, which might eventually turn into a stateless society? The revolutions of the past tended to go along with prevailing ideas of the time on the whole. The idea of Liberland sounds interesting to me, except for the obvious problem that there is barely a square inch of the world that is not already dominated by a state.

Thought provoking video, but I'm not going to worry about whether voting is immoral or not, I'm going to vote because: Say there are two parties A and B. Party A is relatively benign and wants to reduce the state. Party B is quite nasty and wants to increase the state and start foreign wars. While Party B is in office, more dependency on the state will be created. More children born on welfare. More expectation of free stuff like healthcare and education. After Party B has been in office for a while it will become even more difficult to reduce the state in future because there will be more voters for Party B. Both of the parties will kill people in the short and longer term, but Party A not nearly so much. I'm going to vote! I'm going to vote for Party A!