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As a Hawaii resident, and someone who saw this headline and the many others from this same news source, this rubs me the wrong way a bit.

This tweet isn’t necessary wrong, but it’s worded in a way to prioritize outrage, which as I understand it is how Twitter works.

The point is that yes, Hawaii has a problem with the prioritization of tourism, which takes resources away from residents.

But with this particular headline, it’s framing the issue kind of misleadingly.

These tourists are being kicked out so residents have the room and resources to recoup. They’re being moved to Oahu because that’s where the main international airport is, so it’ll be easier for them to leave when there are flights available.

They’re not being given luxury accommodations and allowed to live out their original vacation plans while residents have to just sit in the charred wreckage of their homes. They’re getting kicked the fuck out, as they should be in this situation.

There are resources available for Maui residents right now, including shelters and organizations collecting money specifically for community needs. (Source, source 2, both from the same news outlet that this headline is from)

So, again, it’s like kicking out house guests from your party when you need to deal with a sudden house fire.

Now, what you CAN be outraged about is the need to spend this amount of time and money kicking out house guests from a party during an emergency in addition to saving yourself and loved ones at all, BECAUSE THOSE AREN’T INVITED GUESTS

-they just showed up and started hanging out in your house and eating your food. Sometimes they leave money but usually they just leave trash

-your local HOA has seen this and looooves it because actually they’re getting lots of money out of it, so they start catering towards your uninvited guests and handing out invitations to your awesome house party. Which you didn’t plan or want and would like to stop

-your house is a permanent party house and you can’t even get to work or a quiet minute to yourself

-and now it’s on fire

The point is that, even though these resources need to be used to get tourists out for legitimate reasons right now, a disaster like this in most other states would likely not include a headline about how moving visitors out of the area is a needed priority. (Bc there wouldn’t be as many proportional to the population, except for other obvious tourist-y cities.)

And while there are shelters and other resources for residents right now, by necessity some of those resources are going to tourists, because that’s how things are here.

I’ve seen some people who seem to think that the news agency who wrote the headline is biased or that it’s a wording/framing issue, which I don’t think is the main point here.

I just felt this tweet was more focused on making people angry than actually providing information, although I’m not on Twitter so who knows, maybe there’s a whole thread diving deeper into the issue. But for tumblr, here’s a little more of the story.

Tl;dr: This is a tweet with limited context if you haven’t been following the story; this isn’t a case of tourists taking 100% of the resources leaving none for residents, they are being kicked out so residents can recover. But this extra step would be unnecessary if Hawaii wasn’t so commercialized.

First, you need to understand that the rule that jurors can’t just google things is coming from a good place. Like imagine that you are on a jury that’s considering, say, a medical malpractice lawsuit and one of your fellow jurors comes into the jury room and says to you, “I think the victim’s expert was lying because WebMD totally contradicts everything they said.”

And you might be like, “But WebMD is notoriously unreliable website and the expert you’re talking about is a researcher from Mayo Clinic.” But this person cannot be swayed.

Like, we can all agree that would be bad.

So even though these rules can contribute to unjust outcomes as in the case above (and seriously, the fact that the defense attorney didn’t fact check that is probably grounds for legal malpractice), they also prevent jurors from just looking up bullshit online and taking it more seriously than the actual experts the court has put on. And I think in the era of anti-vaxxers/QAnon/COVID denial/etc., we can all understand why it’s a bad idea to trust that people can tell fact from bullshit online.

So in light of this, how do you as a juror fact check something?

The key here is that you have to ask the court for information. Jurors can ask questions of the court during deliberations, so if something you said sounds off to you, you can ask for more information.

The key term you want to use here is “credibility.”

The job of a jury is to decide what are called “questions of fact.” Long before the trial even starts, lawyers will have hashed out all the “questions of law” --- like, what the statute of limitations is; what laws, exactly, were allegedly broken; whether the court you’re in even has jurisdiction; stuff like that. Jurors are responsible for deciding which side’s version of the facts has more credibility.

For instance, if the prosecution’s witness says X and the defense’s witness says Y, the jury is responsible for deciding which is true, X or Y. And you do this by weighing which one is more credible.

So in this case, if the juror had known to, he could have told the judge, “In order to properly assess the ICE agent’s credibility, I need more information about his tattoo. I have doubts about whether he was telling the truth about it, which would impact how credible I would find his testimony. Can the agent please provide evidence that it really is what he says it is?”

this is capitalism in it’s final form

First, it’s not that new.

Did you know that there was a time in U.S. history—which is by definition recent history—when a corporation was generally intended to have some sort of public interest that they served? I mean, that’s the whole point of allowing corporations to form. Corporations are recognized by the commonwealth or state, and this recognition is not a right but a privilege, in exchange for which the state (representing the people) is allowed to ask, “So what does this do for everyone else?”

The way the economy is now is a direct result of a shift away from this thinking and to one where a corporation is an entity unto itself whose first, last, and only concern is an ever-increasing stream of profits. What you’re calling “benevolent capitalism” isn’t benevolent at all. It’s a pure profit/loss calculation designed to distract from—not even paper over or stick a band-aid on—the problems capitalism creates. And the fact that you’re here championing it as “benevolent capitalism” is a sign of how ell it’s working.

Let’s take Toms, as one example. The shoe that’s a cause. Buy a pair of trendy shoes, and a pair of trendy shoes will be given away to someone somewhere in the world who can’t afford them.

That’s not genuine benevolence. That’s selling you, the consumer, on the idea that you can be benevolent by buying shoes, that the act of purchasing these shoes is an act of charity. The reality is that their model is an inefficient means of addressing the problems on the ground that shoelessness represents, and severely disrupts the local economies of the locations selected for benevolence.

(Imagine what it does to the local shoemakers, for instance.)

The supposed act of charity is just a value add to convince you to spend your money on these shoes instead of some other shoes. It’s no different than putting a prize in a box of cereal.

Heck, you want to see how malevolent this is?

Go ask a multinational corporation that makes shoes or other garments to double the wages of their workers. They’ll tell you they can’t afford it, that it’s not possible, that consumers won’t stand for it, that you’ll drive them out of business and then no one will have wages.

But the fact that a company can give away one item for every item sold shows you what a lie this is. A one-for-one giving model represents double the cost of labor and materials for each unit that is sold for revenue. Doubling wages would only double the labor.

So why are companies willing to give their products away (and throw them away, destroy unused industry with bleach and razors to render them unsalvageable, et cetera) but they’re not willing to pay their workers more?

Because capitalism is the opposite of benevolence.

“Charity” is by definition exemplary, above and beyond, extraordinary, extra. “Charity” is not something that people are entitled to. You give people a shirt or shoes or some food and call it charity, and you’re setting up an expectation that you can and will control the stream of largesse in the future, and anything and everything you give should be considered a boon from on high.

On the other hand, once you start paying your workers a higher wage, you’re creating an expectation. You’re admitting that their labor is more valuable to you than you were previously willing to admit, and it’s hard to walk that back.

Plus, when people have enough money for their basic needs, they’re smarter and stronger and warier and more comfortable with pushing back instead of being steamrolled over. They have time and money to pursue education. They can save money up and maybe move away. They can escape from the system that depends on a steady flow of forced or near-forced labor.

So companies will do charitable “buy one, give one” and marketing “buy one, get one” even though these things by definition double the overhead per unit, but they won’t do anything that makes a lasting difference in the standard of living for the people.

Capitalism has redefined the world so that the baseline of ethics is “How much money can we make?” and every little good deed over and above that is saintly.