Atlas667

"Freedom" is defined by who holds the microphone, but don't ignore who set up the stage.

The liberty he believes in is the one the one-way ratcheting mechanism of individual liberty, for the most powerful individuals that is.

And he'd be right in a liberal democracy because part of liberalism is a belief in an abstract equality among men where a billionaire is supposedly equal in rights to a minimum wage worker.

"When and where is this true?" you may ask. In theory is the answer.

But an analysis of the lived social conditions of the majority of the people in this country would require further categorization of its elements into class and the relationship to the means of production.

Again freedom for what class of people do you think he's talking about: the owners of our worlds infrastructue or the majority of us?

This is why ideology is so important.

Is the end user viewed as an ISPs client? a consumer of tech companies?

The idealistic language is fine but isnt based on any scientific approach to society. Its neutral at best.

The internet is for end users, but how if its not "by end users"?

If most protocols and standard implementations depend on adoption by ISPs and tech companies what does it mean to be "for the end user"?

Is prison architecture "for the prisoners"?

So how do we solve the "by end users" dilemma?

Damn, so pretentious.

I agree with many things, in particular his sentiment about styles and "rules", but his demeanor is uninspiring.

He doesnt provide much clarity around good writing and just comes off as rationalizing his own taste.

You cant scorn popularity and accesibility, you gotta understand it and work with it to the extent that its important for what you want to achieve.

Art, history and social contexts fold in on themselves, if you're using a baroque style of writing then understand where it belongs and do something cool with it. Be conscious of it.

Took the south Florida brightline 3 times, recently, to get to the airport (+2 times for leisure travel) and it was pretty good.

Get there by rideshare in 20 mins, trains on time, 1hr to city, 10 min shuttle to airport. On time every time.

I moved my luggage by hand more WITHIN the airport than getting to the airport.

Would do it again

Monopoly capitalism and finance capitalism took reigns of markets more than a century ago. The state serves these huge interests.

Everybody knows AI firms pirated to train, nothing will come of it. A plain example of classist application of law.

The reason for the willy nilly application of their own laws will always be 'national security', of course, since they own infrastructure their interests are a national security.

So tech may shake things up whenever it makes great leaps, but finance capitalism quickly adapts and absorbs the waves.

Faking sincerity is hard and being sincere gets you fired.

There's a few topics I see here:

- Human Value

- Sincerity

- Evolution of technology and social systems with them

Do all humans have value? Yes, but not all humans can realize their own value. Your society is the gymnasium that helps you realize your value.

Think of how technology interfaces with humans and their employment. The more efficient technology gets the less people you need to produce the same amount of goods. And with each technological breakthrough production needs less people to operate. Sure, they may redistribute later, but immediately it manifests as layoffs.

Unemployment means less people can self-realize since work IS part of the realization of individuals. If work were not part of your realization, then how else do you buy a house, experience the world, raise kids, etc, if not through your benefits of your work?

Here we see how human value is tied directly to the ability to provide to society and to provide for themselves and we also see how that is tied to the ability of society to employ.

Now I ask you, will the AI crisis (and how it relates to human value) be solved with a CEO at a board meeting showing that humans have intrinsic value?

Or will it be solved with the one sided truth that us workers possess and only we can espouse? This truth being that our value as humans can only come from our self-realization within and as-part of society.

Can that CEO be sincere about how society works or must he adopt a convenient POV?

Capitalist ideology cannot conceive of society as an interconnected whole. A capitalist frame of thinking cannot be sincere, since its actions are in opposition to the interests of the majority. And I am not saying that the production of goods is in opposition, I am referring to HOW the goods are produced is in opposition.

People will only use AI for the things they must already be insincere for, such as work-related communication, because truth is already relinquished in those environments. Work is just money making (usually for someone else) with some niceties sprinkled around and individualism to seal it all up. Faking sincerity is hard and being sincere gets you fired.

Is the problem our recognition of human value or for-profit production as a whole?

Is the problem AI or how hard we have to bullshit each other to get by?

The reason cleaning toilets in america is not that bad is because of socialist and communist labor organizing.

Go to Ecuador to clean toilets and you'll see what capitalism does to workers.

Comment OP here. The third way is just capitalism with extra "were different" rhetoric.

Remember capitalism isnt a vibe its the private control of production for profit.

All "third way" people are just capitalists with extra checks and balances for freedom.

What they dont say or realize is that these extra checks and balances can be done away with by the very incentives of the people they think wont.

Power isnt a vibe, its the control of production made policy.

Do you really understand class war? Your suggestion is having the state legislate this away as if the state isn't fully compromised by the capitalist class?

This is the main lesson of the 20th century that liberals refuse to accept; that the state is controlled by capitalist class interests. Capitalist democracy is a curated racket.

And even if we were to force legislation exactly as described above it can't and hasn't lasted long due to the incentives ($billions) to undo it. They will go as far as to kill people for this, and they have.

Legislation does NOT fundamentally change existing power relations. They have this shit in their pockets and you're just saying that we should have them take it out of their pockets.

The western allergy towards Marxism is one of the most detrimental cultural positions the working class has EVER faced.

Tangentially, this is also the reason why many forms of corruption can be done away with right now with modern technology.

Meaning that democratizing our existing political structures is a reality today and can be done effectively (think blockchain, think zero knowledge proofs).

On the other hand, the political struggle to actually enact this new democratic system will be THE defining struggle of our times.

People say that because they are not aware of what Marxism is.

Marxism isnt "lets try something different based on ideas of justice"

Marxism is "Society evolves through general stages: primitive, slave, feudal and capitalist, this is determined by the level production. Capitalism is holding back its current evolution into a society of plenty."

Good luck backing speculation and profit gatekept production.

The only way to curb something like that is more democratization. Fraud is a common problem in any system anywhere. A reputation score on top would help, only if it can be kept democratically controlled.

There is no single solution, but public fund usurping is basically a law of capitalism, which is why I critique it in this context. Public money laundering is a developed industry in capitalism.

It's the tax-payer funded business model, the NGO trap. Subsidies, grants, tax-breaks, credit, deductions, exemptions, etc. A whole class of profiteers live in this sector. Even though academia funding isn't strictly categorized as an NGO, it still fits/foots the bill. Public funding of private gains is the oldest trick in the book. Ask any capitalist, they know. And I'm not saying I'm against public funding, but this is often codified into a mafia of sorts when enough money flows through.

The real problem here is the fundamental lack of democratic control over our agencies. That our political organization is intensely lagging behind our productive organization. That our whole political will involves TRUSTING strangers to not be corrupt instead of directly democratizing these processes as much as possible.

But besides that, you cannot remove history from historical analysis. The reason socialism countries struggled in the beginning wasn't an inherent flaw in its organization, but the fact that they were under constant war war by capitalist countries through out their existence. Also keep in mind that most socialist countries did NOT have a whole section of the world where-from to extract riches through murder (S.America, Africa, Middle east, etc), like western capitalist countries had. This is convenient for you to ignore. Maybe because you don't know, or don't care about the super-exploitative history of these places and how they tie into western capitalism. But they are inherent to western wealth and these countries' whole history is struggle against this exploitation.

Not to mention that most of the countries on earth are capitalists and are very very very poor.

To add: Socialism has nothing to do with "clamping down" on X or Y industry, as you hypothetically claim would happen. Socialism is almost exclusively about removing the need to generate capital from production. It unleashes production from its historical ball and chain that is profiteering.

In a single sentence: Instead of production being held back by capitalists generating wealth we can produce for our own needs. It is self sustaining production.

Central planning is not fallacious. Your problem is with corruption, not democratic central planning. The US Govt is a pro-capitalist entity that pro-capitalists try to distance themselves from (ironically). So using them as an example isn't saying anything at all.

Central planning is not "allow a small group of people to decide things", as happens in the US Govt. Central planning is to take into account all sources of information on production to plan said production democratically.

This will always beat the highly highly inefficient speculation of capitalism. Where trillions vanish on a whim and cause of a tweet, where crisis occur every 8-10 years, and where its whole trade market is built to hide that it is mostly insider trading. Again, your problem is with corruption not democratic central planning.

And the way to deal with corruption is to create more democratic bodies where avg people hold real power. I don't see you asking for that either. We call that socialism.

Almost as if capitalism makes everything into a market, and the profits make it self sustaining.

How many will see the connections between this and our capitalist mode of production? Probably few since modern lit/news is allergic to systemic analysis.

The blatant flaws of capitalism can't be ignored for much longer.