Or maybe it's that our archaic system was designed so that some people's votes literally matter more than others, and more than half the country does not have a meaningful voice in our Federal elections.
> more than half the country does not have a meaningful voice in our Federal elections
There is almost certainly an election on your ballot every time that is meaningful. Relinquishing that civic duty is how we get Trump. People to lazy, stupid or proud to vote absolutely bear responsibility for this mess.
I agree to an extent but I have a hard time blaming many in the LGBT community/supporters of Palestine for sitting out when Harris and co so thoroughly abandoned them in the general. They stood behind Biden in 2020 then watched as the democrats gave in on trans rights and did nothing to stop Israel’s campaign. Now they’re watching Newsome and folks gleefully accept trans erasure going into the mid terms/next election, so they’ve been validated in many ways.
Is it tactically sound? No. Is it what I did? No. But I’ve had enough conversations with folks that I get where they’re coming from, even if I thought it was the wrong decision.
Anecdotally, pretty often. Whenever there is an engineering org failure, whether it be missed deadlines, unreliable software, missed KPIs, etc, there is no such thing as a truly blameless org. Somebody will be accountable in the eyes of leadership, and that boils down to this very choice.
Was it the devs fault for shipping code with a disastrous edge case, or the EMs fault for over- allocating work, resulting in less-refined code and a minimal review process that let the defect slip into production? Just as an example.
Why are we gauging our ethical barometer on the actions of existing companies and DoD contractors? the military industrial apparatus has been insane for far too long, as Eisenhower warned of.
When we're entering the realm of "there isn't even a human being in the decision loop, fully autonomous systems will now be used to kill people and exert control over domestic populations" maybe we should take a step back and examine our position. Does this lead to a societal outcome that is good for People?
The answer is unabashedly No. We have multiple entire genres of books and media, going back over 50 years, that illustrate the potential future consequences of such a dynamic.
* private defense contractor leverages control over products it has already sold to set military doctrine.
The second one is at least as important as the first one, because handing over our defense capabilities to a private entity which is accountable to nobody but it's shareholders and executive management isn't any better than handing them over to an LLM afflicted with something resembling BPD. The first problem absolutely needs to be solved but the solution cannot be to normalize the second problem.
They already understand the current system and status quo is going away. They understand, on some level, the consequences of the technocapitalist system they've built and perpetuated.
I think assuming human agency (building technocapitalism, correcting course) or the possibility to escape capitalism and its consequences (in bunkers), underestimates what capitalism is.
I am of the opinion that markets and prices, not EU regulators, should tell us where scarcity is. We're bad at optimizing manually for the same reason we're bad at guessing where program hotspots are. The market is a profiler.
Do you honestly believe this? Where did you study economics? This regulation is not about scarcity. It is about over abundance.
Overproduction is a failure mode in capitalist systems. The market can’t correct for this because negative externalities do not feed back into supply or demand.
Actors in a capitalist system have an incentive to maximize profit. How is it profit-maximizing to pay to produce an item and throw it away unsold?
> negative externalities do not feed back into supply or demand.
What is the unaccounted externality? Clothing makers pay for material inputs and labor inputs. They pay for transportation. If they discard goods, they pay for more transportation and for the landfill. What specific externality is unaccounted?
And you presume to know better than they do what to do with that energy? Do you think you have a general right to override people's resource allocation decisions when you believe they're being wasteful?
1. In this case, not using the energy at all would have been better.
2. The legislature of a sovereign polity would have, and be able to delegate, that right. If and when the legislature should make use of that right is a political question.
This is why the ultra rich have been building out heavily fortified, private, self sustaining compounds. They know the potential consequences of their choices, and are fine with them as long as they can leverage technology to insulate themselves from them. It's basically Fallout mindset.
Societal collapse doesn’t necessarily mean all-out nuclear catastrophe, and can also mean transitioning from one set of norms or rules establishing the status quo to another. People shouldn’t labor under the false impression that they will have guaranteed success when such transitions happen. What are they modeling this on, exactly? Countries where mafias are de facto rulers, or there’s some level of dictatorship, are only held up due to external pressures put on by democratic world orders. As mentioned, guns and bombs can guarantee protection up to a point, and the rest of that necessary work is done by ideas and ideals.
Secondly, I am afraid a lot of the people who believe they’ll have some sort of success in scenarios with lesser law and order than they grew up with will find out it wasn’t their winning personalities which guaranteed them anything. There will always be someone more brutal ready to just take yours and dispose of you. To put it more plainly, if all they like is your money then you’re just standing in the way of that.
We don't need "more" government, we need the government to do its job. We need the regulators who have been legally appointed to oversee these areas to actually respond to these behaviors. Regulatory capture is the issue, but the solution isn't less government. It's getting corporate money and lobbying out of the government (Citizens United is to blame for most of our woes), increase the enforcement of anti-corruption laws, and get antitrust back on the table.
I want big corporations to be scared. I want them to fear for their own survival, and to tread lightly lest the sword of damocles fall upon them.
I'm with you, I like your answer, especially the last bit.
But how to get there we may disagree.
The existing avenues have proven unfruitful.
Regulating more has just lead to more control in the hands of the elites and those with resources, who know how to game the system, and more draconianism for us smaller folks. "Rules for thee, but not for me"
Anarchy/Libertarianism isn't the answer either, its too impractical, unrealistic.
I won't pretend I'm smart enough to know what the answer is, but I am experienced enough to know whats laid before us hasn't worked and isn't working. Consumer protection regulatory bodies have been made toothless over the course of decades, I don't think I can trust them again anyways after what has happened in recent years. Financial regulatory bodies only purpose is to make life as difficult for the smaller guys.
We have non-existent data and tech regulation. You know what would happen if we actually got some? It would be written by the same tech oligarchs. We would just have a new revolving door. Like how the Verizon CEO become the FCC chair. We will get Larry and Sundar passing our regulation. Elon and Mark funding the think tanks that write the legislation.
If you had tried Ubuntu, KDE Neon, CachyOS, ElementsryOS, or really any other distro, this would not have been your experience.
Arch is a Manual experience designed for power users. It is not a good choice for even your average Linux user, let alone a first time Windows convert dipping their toes.
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