Politics thread (USA Elections 2016) - Page 269

The DOJ started an antitrust lawsuit against Google. Let's see what happens, but breaking them apart would be huge.

Baal, I find it funny that you're so upset about what social media did... that's what happens when the free market sets the rules. There're plenty of alternatives to all of those services too and yet people are not switching because of moral reasons, what a surprise... I know you'll say that if there was no state, they wouldn't be in a position to buy the state and the people will only be making a decision only on their sole value but I somehow can't buy that shit

The problem is that these people debating regulation despise democracy so much that they can't conceive of the idea that making the big tech companies democratic could possibly be a good thing, so their solution is instead to break them up.

This doesn't really make sense; that several companies can use mass surveillience on us, through tacit collusion, instead of one big company, is the best idea these morons can come up with. Mass surveillience can have benefits by the way, you could use it to enforce the law, like spying on the companies that rob trillions every year from poor nations via tax evasion. Or it can be used to prevent virus outbreaks or monitor people's health. I'm sure in a democratic society people would agree to some level's of surveillience, but polls show they are vastly opposed to the type of surviellience purely for evil reasons (making profit off advertising), which is what google and facebook are about. If people want something other than that, those companies have to be run at a loss and democratically.

Free markets don't exist, and they never have. In the case of the tech sector, monopoly comes so easily from network effects. I personally don't find large companies to be such a bad thing if it's done under the right conditions. After all, a social network is far more valueable if all your friends use it. There's no need for a competitive market in the tech sector under conditions of capitalism, if the companies are broken up and it becomes more oligopolistic, the smaller companies will only thrive through adopting and reinforcing the culture of survieillence capitalism. That's the only way to make money. So breaking companies up only really makes sense as a strategy if your also democratizing them, and running them at a loss as well.

Trumps worst crime are clearly his environmental crimes, his environmental policies on this will influence the deaths of billions of people, and they will influence the outbreak of many wars. and more virus's to come. Here's one example: The himilaya's will melt and leave over a billion people without much water, and it will turn large parts of india into a desert. In one likely scenario, this will be blamed on muslims and increase the risk of civil wars, repression and all those bad things.

Biden has a 1.7trillion$ Green New Deal. The idea that these two people are the same is not true. The response that Biden will break his promises doesn't mean anything because trump has a long record of doing that since he got into power. A total assessment of all of this still makes biden a far better choice. the 1.7trillion is spread out over many years so its actually not nearly enough spending. Remember that Biden only has this policy because people forced him to have it, so people on the left ought to be voting for the person they are trying to shape.

You could compare musolini with adolf hitler and say it doesn't matter which one is in power, but it does matter a great deal.

End of the day all of these tech companies have improved our lives significantly

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "run democratically at a loss" - how would you incentivize a private company to be run at loss?

On October 23 2020 12:58 Spitfiree wrote: End of the day all of these tech companies have improved our lives significantly

citation needed

On October 23 2020 12:58 Spitfiree wrote: End of the day all of these tech companies have improved our lives significantly I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "run democratically at a loss" - how would you incentivize a private company to be run at loss?

It's hard to count up the benefits and losses and come to some net total, but isn't this an irrelevant question? We can shape the tech sector to stop the bad things it does and keep doing the good things it does, or can potentially do.

Large private companies make their decisions top down-so they are not democratic. And they make their decisions to make personal profit, and for power. This is what leads them to be focused on advertising and many other evils.

Take one example: Google originally started on a $25million loan from venture capitalists, it was not running a profit, but it did provide a useful function. Google's search engine was originally conceived as a phd project at stanford, and it's idea was to provide a 'roadmap' for the internet. Search engines are a great idea, the internet would suck without them. And the two guys that founded it did actually spend a few years resisting pressure from the venture capitalists that funded them, until they put advertising in their pagerank algorthim and saw how much money they could make. From then on the company was able to exist, but at a price. For it to grow, it had to keep finding ways of making money off things that people didn't want in their lives, most of their decisions were based on just collecting more and more information on people in order to advertise, and make them consume.

The point is google was a fine company up until about 2001 when they decided to make profit, it served a useful function, and it didn't spy on people.

There are other ways to fund the tech industry, I personally pay the government every year so they can provide roads, and footpaths, and so private footpath owners can't charge me a fee whenever i use them. I would be fine with chipping in a little money every year to the tech industry so they could make useful products for the public, that are not psychologically unhealthy.

On innovation: There are two large incentives for innovation in america at the moment.

1) Profit. This is why facebook invests in things like VR, and likes it so much. Or why google wants things like google glass. It is a literal gold mine for data. Probably both these things would have serious physchological effects on people. Again, i can cite polls but you all know this from personal experience, many people are very addicted to their technology, and to the point that it's seriously detrimental to their life. It doesn't have to be made in such an addictive way.

2) Military. This is why so many scientists work on making very expensive rockets, jets, ect.

I know a lot of these people who went to work in the tech sector. They were all very smart young people and a lot of them want to make good products, either for their own personal satisfaction or because they are useful. Why should their innovation be directed by militarstic incentives or profit motives? It is of course a little more complicated than this. Both industry and the military do give a bit of freedom into scientists and research, but it comes at a price.

One final comment: Facebook and Google recently said they are going carbon neutral. The amount of advertising they do is one of the biggest culprits in carbon emissions. Without it, there would be a lot less consumption. Planned obsolence from apple iphones is another big offender.

So yes, i advocate socialisation of production, and decision making. What that actually means is that people working in the tech sector still get to work on things they want to, but it's subject to public scrutiny. They are not being told what to do by the public unless what they are doing is harmful to the public. And it also means they are not being told what to do by corporate overlords.

As for mass survellience; my suggestion would be that decisions about what we can collect data on should be made by an independent commision, with reports that have public access. They should, be subject to laws that are made by the public. I already mentioned one example of justifiable data collection, and that was the government in south korea collecting data to prevent the virus from spreading.

So in a nutshell, you'd be funding the tech industry through taxes, which sounds good except we have things like corrupt governments e.g. my government has spent over a billion dollars over the past 10 years on digital government and the best service they've got is something that the company I work for could create in less than a month with a team of 5 and for around 50,000$.

Let's say we do that though and we've solved state corruption. Does this mean the tech industry would only be state-controlled without any private entities? Otherwise, how would you see an industry without private entities?

Let's say its state-owned, you mentioned that Google started by VC funding initially. The good part about VCs is they are extremely efficient in order to make money, while start-ups like Google would most likely die prematurely in their capital funding seed if it were up to the state since they were already late to the party in theory, there were huge corporations that already dominated the search engine market and the idea of someone overtaking them was unthinkable. Imagine trying to sell an idea to bureaucrats.


I also disagree that decisions in corporations like Google are top-down. Most of them are run via OKRs and with DevOps mentality in mind, especially the big ones.


I'm not trying to diminish the negative impacts which tech giants like Facebook have, but I don't see any realistic solution to them at the time being. The good thing is this topic is gaining traction in the public so more and more people start thinking about it. It's easy to say "citation needed" but quantifying such topic and gathering enough data and running proper analysis could be someone's lifework .... that type of a response would be as good as saying ' well just don't use addictive technology' to Stroggoz...


@Loco I have to give a citation of why for-profit tech giants have made your life easier? The fact that our society still functions during a pandemic after a complete lockdown should say enough.

I specifically said socialisation, not nationalization. Socialization is like syndacalism-its controlled by people working within the company and also the general public. Nationalization is state control. I said control by people-those working within the company, and by the public. Both need to have some degree of power. I don't want higher ups in a state with top down control over survellience.

yeah you need to pool money togethor to have many of the good things in industrial society. It does happen to be called taxes.

You disagree that google is top down? Well, your straight up wrong. The board of directors, large shareholders, and CEO have the final word, and they can just fire anyone who gets out of line. The public has no ability to see what's going on in the inside. They created a global survellience system and kept most of it secret over several years, software engineers there are not going to talk publicly about the bad things they do (as they'd clearly get fired), a lot of what we know about the tech industry comes from anonymous interviews with those people, essentially leaking info on the bad things the companies are doing.

Your view on VC and state funding is contrary to the research on this. Yes, VC's are good at making money, this is often not a good thing for people like us. For example many of the drug companies do get funded by VC once they promised to start making me too drugs. (copies of pre existing drugs that are made to be patented and sold at high prices). Do you think VC would invest in drug companies that didn't do this? State's generally do the risky development, and VC waits until it is commericialzed and take it from there. There is research on this by marriana mazzucato. (Loco has cited it a few times). I should say her study was comparying russia/japan/US. It did not look at Bulgaria. Yes, there are differing level's of corruption for different states, the differences are a chasm depending on what country you live in.

I'm not even sure what your talking about when you say state's are too slow to make things like google. At least in the US they are at the cutting edge of innovation, and basically laid down the groundwork for the tech industry: Satelites, lasers, the internet, touch screens, ect. There's a lot of cooperation between research at universities and the tech sector though.

I did mention the 25million from VC but google did earn early state funding, from the CIA and NSA for example. Have you heard of In-Q-Tel. It's the CIA's VC fund, it was seed funding a lot of startups in the 1990's, including google. Yes, a lot of these tech companies sold their idea's to the CIA. Furthermore the CIA didn't want google for what it became, they just wanted it to spy on people in the rest of the world and help satelite states repress their population, ect.

On October 23 2020 08:41 Spitfiree wrote: The DOJ started an antitrust lawsuit against Google. Let's see what happens, but breaking them apart would be huge. Baal, I find it funny that you're so upset about what social media did... that's what happens when the free market sets the rules. There're plenty of alternatives to all of those services too and yet people are not switching because of moral reasons, what a surprise... I know you'll say that if there was no state, they wouldn't be in a position to buy the state and the people will only be making a decision only on their sole value but I somehow can't buy that shit

The fact that I want a free market does not mean that I have to like when a company does a shitty thing, that is like saying that if I support free speech I have to like shitty ideas.

The thing is we have a state, one of its main duties is to stop this, yet they don't, we basically we get to carry all the deadweight of the state, but without its supposed benefits, if the state came fast and stomped these social media monooplies for doing this then you'd have an argument about the necessity of the state, but thats not the case, they allow them to spy and now stifle free speech, and as long as it benefits them they won't do shit about it, what is happening is a failure of the state.

Before this frankly was torn between Trump and Biden, Trump is galvanizing and divisive, he ironicallly strenghtens the hard left, Biden's policies are worse though and he is probably going to reignite the war machine but after this its clear that the democrats won't do shit since they are aligned with social media, and if Trump loses I assume (hope) he is going to be looking for some blood after this so I think he will be way more likely to hurt them than Biden.

I was half joking with the citation needed. Though maybe you could have linked me to some huckster like Pinker or whoever might have convinced you of this view. But I don't actually care to read about this analysis from the neoliberal camp. It's a ludicrous claim to me and I know enough to know that it is flat out wrong. I don't need more data. Even without data I'd know it from my lived experience. The tech industry cannot be divorced from capital and consumerism, which are a plague on the planet and the human mind.

As for the pandemic, may I remind you that this is the first worldwide pandemic of its kind, and it was made possible only through the creation of a global interconnected world, which was essentially forced onto people? It didn't develop organically. The tech industry are key players in the globalized hegemony of this world which creates the circumstances for these viruses to develop and infect the whole world. The idea that they are the solution, or that they do more good than harm, is ridiculous on its face when they created the problem in the first place. And the idea that "society is functioning"... It's not functioning for the majority of people. Yes the tech can be put to good use now that we're in this situation, but you can't just look at it in a vacuum like that. All of this was essentially engineered. It was predictable. The obsession with growth and "advancement" led us here. And it was not chosen freely by the average person who is unable to think for himself, or democratically by most societies.

The trajectory of the neoliberal philosophy of transparency, of dataism, is clear, and it is not a good one. It spells the end of anything resembling the "good life" that humanity's best wrote and taught about. It's about total control and exploitation. Disconnection from oneself, others and nature. Extreme narcissism and waste. Nothing can compensate for that. No invention of any kind. What solidarity there is left and which helps people get through this is not thanks to tech and capital, but in spite of it, and it will only become more dearth as time goes by.

Is it all due to top down power? Clearly not. Power is not only repressive. Convincing or constraining people to be productivity zealots, and constantly connected, is a much more efficient way to control people, and that's what dataism, or surveillance capitalism achieves. It seduces people into degrading themselves, from homo sapiens and homo ludens to homo laborans. "Yes we can!", "all is possible", “be productive and optimize your life" are the mottos of the ultimate slave. The slave who can't see his own self-exploitation, which is rooted in a need to belong to the sick culture one is a part of and a denial of death, of one's meaningless and finite animality.

If the slave is unhappy, he just blames himself, and tries to find solutions through the market, because what else is there left to life? Feeling down or anxious? It's because you're not working hard enough on yourself. Or because you're not on a carnivore diet! Or you're missing that thing that we have here for sale. Buy the next gadget, or get a new shrink or some new cocktail of medications, so that you can keep functioning as a slave in a sick society hellbent on destroying itself. Whatever you do, don't think too much! You wouldn't want to realize that your life has no value if you are not a useful slave to capital.

If it were top down power there would be a clear enemy out there to attack, slaves often revolt after all, but here they don't, because there is no clear enemy. So people express their built up frustration through small or big acts of aggression on others near them, or the internet, or themselves instead. And the world keeps turning.

As Carlin said, it's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it. All comes down to that. It's a shitty way of life that has been propped up by institutions and intellectuals that have had way too much power (if not clairvoyance) in the past. And the military might to defend it wherever people resisted it. It infected the planet. A mind virus that destroys play, imagination, community, ecosystems, all of which leads to circumstances where real viruses will continue decimating the species. It's almost like poetic justice.

On October 24 2020 01:37 Loco wrote: I was half joking with the citation needed. Though maybe you could have linked me to some huckster like Pinker or whoever might have convinced you of this view. But I don't actually care to read about this analysis from the neoliberal camp. It's a ludicrous claim to me and I know enough to know that it is flat out wrong. I don't need more data. Even without data I'd know it from my lived experience. The tech industry cannot be divorced from capital and consumerism, which are a plague on the planet and the human mind. As for the pandemic, may I remind you that this is the first worldwide pandemic of its kind, and it was made possible only through the creation of a global interconnected world, which was essentially forced onto people? It didn't develop organically. The tech industry are key players in the globalized hegemony of this world which creates the circumstances for these viruses to develop and infect the whole world. The idea that they are the solution, or that they do more good than harm, is ridiculous on its face when they created the problem in the first place. And the idea that "society is functioning"... It's not functioning for the majority of people. Yes the tech can be put to good use now that we're in this situation, but you can't just look at it in a vacuum like that. All of this was essentially engineered. It was predictable. The obsession with growth and "advancement" led us here. And it was not chosen freely by the average person who is unable to think for himself, or democratically by most societies. Is it all due to top down power? Clearly not. Power is not only repressive. Convincing or constraining people to be productivity zealots, and constantly connected, is a much more efficient way to control people, and that's what dataism, or surveillance capitalism achieves. It seduces people into degrading themselves, from homo sapiens and homo ludens to homo laborans. "Yes we can!", "all is possible", “be productive and optimize your life" are the mottos of the ultimate slave. The slave who can't see his own self-exploitation, which is rooted in a need to belong to the sick culture one is a part of and a denial of death, of one's meaningless and finite animality. If it were top down power there would be a clear enemy out there to attack, slaves often revolt after all, but here they don't, because there is no clear enemy. So people express their built up frustration through small or big acts of aggression on others near them, or the internet, or themselves instead. And the world keeps turning.

This post just seems a little vague to me. You say there are no clear enemies then blame the tech industry for creating these problems. I don't understand if your critiqueing the technology itself or the tech industry. In either case i have no problem with that, but you can't claim to know what this technology would be like if it had been developed in a democratic way, i don't think anyone can. Is an internet without things such as; like buttons, advertising, or secretive algorithms not desirable or are you saying we should just get rid of it? What is your stance exactly.

You seem to think that we have to either have the tech industry with all it's problems, or no high tech industry at all. (correct me if im wrong). I don't agree with this, there are many different policies which have shaped the system.

I don't agree that we are lead by 'growth' or advancement, those are just lies from the powerful. There's no evidence to suggest capitalism is motivated by economic growth, though everyone across the political spectrum seems to beleive this lie.

OMG Loco is back!.... in anarcho-primitivist pog form!

On October 24 2020 01:37 Loco wrote: The trajectory of the neoliberal philosophy of transparency, of dataism, is clear, and it is not a good one. It spells the end of anything resembling the "good life" that humanity's best wrote and taught about.

Ahhh yes, that good'ol life of shoveling mud 12h a day and dying of dysentery at 32.

If the slave is unhappy, he just blames himself, and tries to find solutions

Didn't you claim to be very happy when giving life advice to RikD? get out of the way Epictetus, here comes Loco the joyful slave trascending the cesspool that is modern society, imagine how insantely happy living the "good life" in roman times, you would be bursting in bliss.

all of which leads to circumstances where real viruses will continue decimating the species. It's almost like poetic justice.

You realize that this pandemic despise its globalized fast spread will probably kill around 5% of what the Spanish flu did right? thats what a century of that ugly technological progress does.

Whats with your fetichism with impending doom, last year you said global warming was going to end civilization now its viruses that will decimate our species, you are so desperate for catastrophe to have an "aha... this is what capitalism does"moment lol, sadly for you the most likely scenario is that we will overcome these challenges and keep progressing while you cling to your Nostradamic fantasies.

On October 24 2020 01:37 Loco wrote: As for the pandemic, may I remind you that this is the first worldwide pandemic of its kind, and it was made possible only through the creation of a global interconnected world, which was essentially forced onto people?

Don't have enough time to meaningfully read the entire post so only replying to this part here.... what do you mean that it was forced onto people? Yuval Harari clearly explains that we've been naturally getting into bigger groups as time goes by ever since we started exploring the planet. The interconnection is just a product of that and because its mostly beneficial to all parties. The less connected the world was the more wars there were.

On October 24 2020 09:18 Spitfiree wrote: Show nested quote + On October 24 2020 01:37 Loco wrote: As for the pandemic, may I remind you that this is the first worldwide pandemic of its kind, and it was made possible only through the creation of a global interconnected world, which was essentially forced onto people? Don't have enough time to meaningfully read the entire post so only replying to this part here.... what do you mean that it was forced onto people? Yuval Harari clearly explains that we've been naturally getting into bigger groups as time goes by ever since we started exploring the planet. The interconnection is just a product of that and because its mostly beneficial to all parties. The less connected the world was the more wars there were.

what does he mean more connected? Europe has been at a near constant state of warfare for thousands of years, the peace since 1945 is quite a rare outlier. It sounds like he's ignoring the whole history of colonialism and germ's making the way to the rest of the world. there were no 3rd world countries 500 years ago, the nations that took isolation policies, such as japan, did actually end up doing quite well. You might want to look into the history of India-it went from the 2nd richest and most advanced nation in the world to a nation with a life a life expectancy of 25 years in the early 1900's. To put that into perspective thats almost 3 times less than north korea today.

Im not saying connectedness is a bad thing i just don't get what it means, it could mean a number of things to me.

I don't really know what people mean by connected for neoliberalism either. If the world was becoming more connected the rich nations would be letting immigrants into their countries and they'd stop exploiting the poor nations for their resources.

Most national borders in the world right now were established by violence.

Did Loco just try to blame COVID-19 on the tech industry?

didn't nukes stop global wars?

It's an open question and will remain that way until there is a nuclear war. You could give each nation in the world nuclear weapons and that would ensure no one attacks each other... according to MAD logic. This however is not taken seriously by anyone because it's far more complex than a simple logical game.

I mean it's clear that it's a massive factor regardless - Nukes deterred shitloads of large scale conflicts and saved many lives up until this point
Doubt anyone would say it wasn't a big contributing factor and actually mean it

Weaker nations can deter a conventional war from greater powers with nuclear weapons. If Afghanistan had nuclear weapons they could have deterred Russia and America. Fine, but you have to also take into the account of the probabilities of a nuclear war happening. Which is much higher than most people think imo, and it increases with country gaining access to them. There is a solution it's called getting rid of all arms in the world. I suppose I'd get laughed at for suggesting this, but i don't think suggesting the logical but extremely optimistic solution is any more laughable than suggesting the irrational solution that states have come up with

On October 24 2020 12:13 blackjacki2 wrote: Did Loco just try to blame COVID-19 on the tech industry?

My exact words were that they were "key players" in creating the conditions for these novel diseases to arise, spread, and do the kind of damage they did. I look at things from a sociological perspective; I don't "blame" things on people, I study relationships and interactions. If my intent was really to be lazy and blame people, as a long-time vegan, I could make the shift to the moral domain and do like a lot of vegans do and blame it all on animal food consumption (and tell you to stop eating meat.)

My broader point was that you can't look at things in isolation. The problem is more broadly related to capital relations affecting all vectors of life in a way that increases the chances for the emergence of zoonotic diseases and how much damage they can do.

There is no debate around this claim whatsoever. It isn't the slightest bit controversial. If you look at a list of drivers of zoonotic diseases like this one, you can see that technology, the growth imperative, and the consumer culture that are interlinked and which I critiqued is intrinsically tied to nearly all of them. Usually, people say "it's the dark side of technological progress, it's a necessary evil", "can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs" or something like that, they don't imply or flat out deny that profit-driven technological advancement--and the concentration of power around it-- is unrelated to them....