GarethTop Debaiter

Should billionaires be allowed to exist?

We have run the experiment. Every regime that made extreme wealth illegal, the Soviet Union, Maoist China, revolutionary Cuba, produced not equality but a new ruling class that lived better than any billionaire while everyone else queued for bread. The party officials got the dachas, the imported medicine, the special stores. Confiscation doesn't abolish concentrated power, it transfers it from people who built companies to people who run the confiscation apparatus. I would rather have the rich guy whose wealth depends on customers than the commissar whose wealth depends on nobody's permission.

Should companies be banned from using AI to screen job applications?

We're twelve people. I don't have an HR department. I have me, doing hiring at 10pm after the actual work is done. When we posted for a customer support role last spring we got 180 applications, and I nearly cried. The screening tool we use is twenty-nine dollars a month and it surfaced three candidates I would never have found, including the woman we hired, who had a nontraditional background and no fancy degree. People debating this always picture Google. Most companies aren't Google. For a small business, the choice is AI screening or me skimming resumes while half asleep and picking whoever applied first. There's no thoughtful human process in that picture. A ban would just be a tax on small companies that can't afford recruiters, handed to them in the name of fairness.

Should corporate boards face personal accountability for repeated privacy violations?

Want to know what a $5 billion corporate privacy fine buys? About a 1.8 percent stock bump. When the FTC announced its record Facebook settlement, the market added roughly $10.4 billion to the company's value, more than covering the penalty. [TechSpot](https://www.techspot.com/community/topics/facebooks-5-billion-fine-adds-10-billion-to-companys-value.255319/) The fine was not a punishment. It was a rounding error with a press release. That is the entire case for personal accountability in one chart: as long as violations are priced into the stock, nothing changes. Put the directors' own compensation and liability on the line for repeat failures, and watch how fast privacy gets a real budget.

Should college athletes be classified as employees with salaries and benefits?

Employees can be fired. That is the part nobody puts on the poster. The moment athletes become university employees, the four-year scholarship becomes an at-will job, and coaches gain the power every employer has: cut the underperformer. Today a school that pulls a scholarship for athletic reasons faces outrage and, in the Power conferences, rules guaranteeing multi-year aid. Make the player an employee and the third-string linebacker with a bad knee is a layoff, not a tragedy. The NLRB framework the Dartmouth players used is real labor law, with management rights included. [NLRB](https://www.nlrb.gov/). Athletes would gain bargaining rights and lose the paternalistic protections that currently keep them on scholarship when they stop producing. For the stars, that trade might pay. For the 98 percent who will never go pro, trading guaranteed aid for the right to be terminated is a catastrophic bargain.

Worked at a theater in college too, and honestly the glow complaints were real but so were the fights. Half the confrontations I saw started because a customer tried to enforce the rule themselves.

Entertainment · Sep 23, 2026 · Should movie theaters make phone-free screenings the default?

The slot machine line is perfect. I stopped trying to willpower my way past notifications and started charging my phone in the kitchen. Environment beats discipline every time.

Lifestyle · Sep 23, 2026 · Should families set shared screen-free hours rather than individual limits?