That isn't what I said at all. This is totally off topic, but I'll answer anyway. I do not believe that wealthy people made all their money by 'stealing from the poor', but I'll just let that go and more fully explain my reasoning on redistribution of income and taxation.

I believe that there should be a federal tax plan that is much simpler and much more difficult to abuse. Say a flat tax of around 20% for everyone with a $15,000 deduction per adult filing (so $30,000 jointly). There would either be no further deductions (my choice) or all deductions would apply equally, without phase-outs or exceptions, to everyone, regardless of income. There would be no difference between passive (capital gains) income and regular income. No more special 'capital gains rate' would apply to taxes. Corporations would have their federal tax rate reduced to 0%, since the earnings would be fully taxed on employee income and on investor returns. Thus, there would be no more 'double taxation' of corporate earnings.

As for redistribution of income, as I mentioned earlier, I think it is tantamount to government enforced theft. I am all for giving to charity, but I don't think it is the role government to force a 'fair' distribution of wealth. I tend to agree with the quote often attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy." The first portion of the quote is obviously occurring (at least to me), and I would like to avoid the last part, if possible.

Oh, and by the way, 100% of my income is from passive investments. The tax plan I proposed would detrimentally affect me, personally, more than most people. My net worth over the past 4 years has increased by a decent amount, but, through capital gains rates and various deductions, I haven't paid a cent in federal taxes since Obama took office (does that make me one of the 1%? :P). Under my plan, I most certainly would have owed some taxes. Like I said in my original post, my stance on these issues are philosophical in nature, regardless if they are good or bad for my personal bottom line.

Now, can we please drop this? I thought we were talking about a video that was lamenting the state of online gaming at the moment, not talking about government programs or taxation.

Yes we can definitely drop it. You confused me a bit by complaining about income redistribution via government taxation and then proposed something that people usually regard as income redistribution by government taxation.

I think the disconnect here is that you're using some terms in a way that I'm not accustomed to, I think fundamentally we're probably closer to agreement than it would appear.

But, I do think you're right that it should be dropped as it is quite OT.

One of the things I've learned in recent years is to keep a folder of citations and articles relevant to these issues as they pop up. People tend to be more receptive when you have citations, the ones that aren't are the ones that you can usually ignore.

Doesn't mean that I always bother, certain things are just obvious enough bigotry that there's no reason to dignify it with any research.

If you object so much to being paired with newbies in ranked games, try not sucking so bad and get higher up the ladder. Being "teh internetz" is no excuse for people committing felonious hate speech. And make no mistake, hate speech of that kind is a felony in many jurisdictions

Hmm, this is a good question, let me see if I can come up with some stuff to help as many people as possible to contribute. Give me a day or two to find some contact info, do some template/example messages, etc.

I like the idea of staring with MS because they're a North American company, which in my eyes makes them easier to influence. They also have money on the line in the form of Live subs. If we get them I think corporate competition may help us get the other big online platforms to follow along later on.
Yeah, this shit goes way beyond trash talking. And it's not just that they use sexualized swear words, either. A lot of this stuff is actually threatening (rape and other forms of sexual torture) or so misogynistic and/or bigoted that it's way beyond defensible or being ignored. Sadly, it's not even a rare occurrence.

Again, this stuff is way beyond telling the victims to "suck it up", it's not rare or the exception and it's way beyond reasonable in any context whatsoever.
This is what pisses me off about people defending this stuff at this stage. Okay, I'm usually on the "grow a spine" bandwagon too when people whine. But that's when you're not really exposed to it. It only takes about 20 minutes of exposure and research to realize this shit is out of control and isn't really who we are as geek culture.

When did we, as gamers, switch from being outcasts to bigots? At least being an outcast doesn't make you an abusive asshole. No, don't blame the "bro-gamers", this isn't limited or focused around them anymore than in any other group.

Make no mistake, I'm not using hate speech, as I don't talk in games, just chat by texting from time to time (and nothing offensive, as I've better things to do than waste my time telling someone how to play or what he did wrong). I also have audio chat disabled in games that can be disabled.

About the second part, I've yet to suck in a game (yes, I am totally awesome!), some games just tend to have crappy matchmaking code. In L4D, for example, you can never know just who you're playing with. I really hated the times when idiots were joining our Expert runs (back when I was playing it). :/

Random team matches in Starcraft 2 can also get troublesome sometimes... You can get paired with a guy who turtles and tries to build cities (especially in the beginning of every season when ladders are reset). :/

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Why am I acting like an idiot here now? Well, I was a new player in every game at some point (and was trash-talked in many of them), but tried hard and got better in nearly all of them, and can totally understand when someone rages because his random teammate fucking sucks.

EDIT: I don't support mindless trash-talking, of course.

We're not here to end trash talking. I'm not sure why you're so intent on conflating trash talking with the bigotry and hate speech we are talking about.

Will some of these controls mean a trash "talkee" doesn't have to hear you? Sure. But they can already probably avoid that.

I guess it is the same for me (even though I was more talking about the elitism part of the online chatting).

Since you're trying to separate these, I guess there's no point in discussing hate speech. That should be either punishable (it shouldn't be allowed to go on unpunished), or if devs don't want to bother much, an option added to disable speech.

I just want to echo about

I beg to differ. More often than not a geek's greatest enemy is another geek. For reference, see every flame war and trolling exercise ever. Also, Encyclopedia Dramatica and Oh Internet.

Though I think Snow Crash said it best about the difficulty geeks can have with women. This can probably be extrapolated to any other group that isn't middle class white male: Also, yeah, saying it's the Internet as an excuse is getting old.

I think ideally various gaming communities would think about that before theirs any trouble. I've bought in on Serpents Tongue and from the looks of it, we'll be in an excellent position to head those sorts of problems off before they become a problem. The game by its nature does require some degree of discipline and integrity to work, however having people making it clear that the sort of comments that have been linked aren't cool is always necessary.

Once you have a reputation for not taking that stuff seriously or you let it get out of hand it becomes very hard to undo the damage.

Glad to see other people watching Extra Credits, SPREAD THE WORD!

Great message, and this holds great opportunities for productive change! :)

It's not an internet phenomenon. In Aldi Süd (the biggest discount grocery store here) the same kind of perverted guys has filmed women without their permission.

The worst?
They are managers there.

http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/magazinbericht-aldi-filialleiter-sollen-kundinnen-heimlich-gefilmt-haben-11734738.html