While obviously you’re correct, this is not necessarily a good thing. The jealousy-envy collapse is clearly an impoverishment of language. These are two different concepts and it’s useful to have words for concepts.

FWIW: the doctrine that “whatever people say is by definition correct and wise” is actually a pretty Anglocentric and modern thing. Linguists didn’t always think this, and you won’t get people saying this for French, for example.

The hypocrisy and entitlement is infuriating.

The internet has destroyed journalism’s business model. A respected profession has been pauperized. Salaries in freefall, hardly any job security left.

And people who pay nothing (let’s be real, OP is paying nothing) add insult to injury by demanding a higher quality product.

ITT: the justification for civics education.

Yes it would. As would the almost certain fact that you personally choose not to actually pay for journalism, despite criticizing it liberally.

Text communication is always going to be a challenge for human beings. We are just not evolved for conversation where you can’t see a face or at least hear a voice. It’s a constant minefield, the potential for misunderstanding is almost insurmountable. To pull off a fruitful discussion by text, especially with multiple participants and group dynamics in play, and have people learn things and feel that they’ve had a decent hearing - that really counts as a triumph, in my view. It is absolutely the exception, not the rule.

The best way to do it? In my view: to take an almost autistic approach. Stick as rigidly as possible to facts and to the topic. Assume good faith, even when it’s hard. Steer clear of humor and second degree. Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that the most civil, productive virtual communities (Hacker News, for example) are filled with IT types for whom these qualities come a bit more naturally.

Another rule I have: no swearing. At best it looks infantile, at worst it it just raises the temperature pointlessly. (Personally I often stop reading a comment when I see the word “fucking” - this is not a serious contribution that I need bother with.)

And I’ve also learned to try to avoid the word “you”. This BTW is a standard trick used to encourage civil in-person debate, for example in parliaments where people will address each other using the third person or via the speaker. It’s also why so many languages have formal words for “you”, intended to increase distance. It turns out the word “you” functions as a sort of low-level trigger for humans, a bit like eye contact for so many other animals. Best avoided.

As I was saying: text communication is just hard. I think we all need to make more allowances for this fact.

This seems like a fair synopsis of the debate, well done for taking the time. You summarized my position accurately enough.

To be clear, I was making a very narrow point which should not really be controversial. Punishment, when understood as retribution, is an affront to human dignity and also just ineffective. It irritates me that so many people (the vast majority of us, let’s be honest) seem stuck in this medieval mindset of “let’s hurt the perpetrator”.

But punishment does have other more positive aims, such as restoration (making amends to victims) or rehabilitation (of the perpetrator). Well: the evidence is pretty clear. Places with liberal (progressive) criminal-justice systems, countries like Norway with its ultra-light-touch sentencing and “holiday camp prisons”, these places have far less crime than places like the USA where most people are still stuck in their conviction that things must be made miserable for the perpetrator. Ultimately, we have to decide what we want: do we want to feel good about ourselves for having got revenge on someone who did harm, or do we actually want a fairer society with less crime, including financial crime? If it’s the latter, retribution is a dead end.

Back in the land of hard choices, of course wage thieves and tax evaders need to pay some kind of price for their misdeeds. Not least for the symbolic value, and for the shame (rather than suffering) that it inflicts on them. This is roughly what happened in Iceland after the financial crisis, BTW. A bunch of bankers did actually go to prison there. But the sentences were short and, IIRC, it was basically some form of house arrest. That seems to me like a decent solution.

If the profits were ill-begotten then they should be paid back. Usually that’s what happens, and it’s a constructive form of justice.

But sending people to jail for years is just retribution. It’s not a deterrent. If it were, then countries that jail people a lot would have less crime, when in fact the opposite is true. If people advocating JAIL! JAIL! JAIL! were honest with themselves, they would admit that their real purpose is just to make the culprits suffer. Okay, although personally I like to think we can be better than that. In any case, it’s not gonna solve anything.

Unsure if this is sarcasm or not. But in any case it’s not a counter-argument.

Punishing people harder has never in human history actually solved a problem.

Suburbs of single family homes are deserts where you don’t even know your neighbors’ names

I’ve lived in super dense urban housing my whole life (Europe) and hardly ever known my neighbors’ names. Ask a New Yorker if they know their neighbor’s name! But sure, your general point stands.

I find it so frustrating. The hate journalism gets is such a misdirection. This is a vital profession whose business model has been all but destroyed by the internet. The numbers of journalists have been in freefall for decades now. Their pay has never been lower, their jobs never less secure. Their desperate managers are pushing them to stop the bleeding by going for clicks and views. Predictably, they then get abused for being attention whores. Or, worse, part of some institutional conspiracy. And yet without professional journalists, bound by an ethics code, we’re absolutely gonna be lost in a sea of junk and fakery and manipulation. It’s going to be so much worse even than what it is already. And yet this could all be avoided if people were prepared to pay even a fraction of what they fork out to Netflix or Amazon. To be clear, I am not a journalist.

Right now The Atlantic, plus a national online newspaper here in Europe. Nothing else.

PSA: if you value your personal freedoms, then you need to at least consider paying for journalism. Democracy cannot survive without an independent media.