I was in the same position until a few weeks ago; mainly used YT for podcasts, downloading videos to watch while travelling etc.

If you have an Android phone, get the NewPipe app from F-Droid. It has pretty much everything that YT Premium offers, but free. It’s been working really well for me.

Sure, real economists don’t explicitly hold those views. But the kinds of metrics and models liberal economists are fond of using basically lead to that flowchart.

I appreciate you trying to answer a question in good faith, but you’re conflating ‘liberal’ with ‘vaguely left-leaning’, and none of what you’ve said makes any sense outside of current US political ‘discourse’ where ‘Liberal’ means ‘slightly left-wing’.

What you describe as liberal economics is closer to Keynsianism or Social Democracy.

In economics, the ‘Liberal’ school of thought is generally against regulation and interference in the market, seeing it as being ‘self-regulating’. In economic terms, Reagan and Thatcher were Liberals - hence them being associated with ‘Neoliberalism’.

The whole thing you said about Capitalism tending towards monopoly is actually a very Marxist/Socialist idea - Liberal economic theory tends to argue that monopolies form because of government and that they wouldn’t occur in a truly free market (although its more nuanced than that, there’s major disagreements over ‘Natural Monopolies’ etc. within the Liberal school). Source: look up any Liberal economist/thinker and their view on monopolies. E.g Friedman, J.S Mill.

Capitalism being an economic system doesn’t make it apolitical. ‘In theory’ Liberalism and Capitalism are very very closely intertwined, it’s not implicit, it’s absolutely explicit if you read any Liberal political or economic theory.

Economics is inherently political.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neoliberalism/#Libe Sections 3 and 4 of this are a decent starting point.

Also the idea of slightly changing our voting systems as the way to drive change is quite hilarious. Sure, moving away from FPTP would probably help a bit, but it’s not like countries with other systems are doing fine. These issues are more fundamental. And historically, fundamental change has never occured through small technical adjustments to political systems.

Sharktopus, bad in a fun kind of way though

Love my USDDB cables, the built-in kettle function is a big plus 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧

I think the difference here is paying for a single newspaper vs having to get recurring subscriptions that are a pain to cancel. With print media, if I want to check multiple sources’ take on an issue, I could go out and buy 5 different newspapers, and that’s it. But with online news, I’d have to spend like an hour cancelling all the subscriptions after I’m done and if I forget to cancel any i’ll realise when I’m down like £50 6 months later.

Also don’t like having to enter personal details into so many websites.

Thank god for Archive.org.

I wonder why no news company has tried the ‘buy today’s digital newspaper for £1 and that’s that’ approach. I could be wrong and maybe someone has, haven’t seen it though.

Spin-offs in other cities would have been cool

Ah this show was wonderful! Ahead of its time with the AI and mass surveillance stuff (IIRC it called it before the Snowden leaks).

Haven’t read The Dispossessed yet, but love Le Guin’s work ever since I read The Lathe of Heaven and The Word for World is Forest, can’t recommend these enough. Am reading through a collection of her short stories now.

Anyone interested in a general Le Guin discussion thread, or a reading group type thing where we discuss a different book each month?

Like tears in rain