SQueeeeeL

Unfortunately there are many popular ideological movements with little to no penetration in the structures that actually swing material conditions. That disconnect between the holders of an ideology and the existing power centers leads to intense cognitive dissonance. Generally organizing is helpful in achieving anything political (i.e. affecting distribution of resources). I feel like it'd be very hard to form a popular ideological movement without any form of collectiveness, as if a movement is one individual writing for themselves to read, it doesn't seem like it's popular.

The concept of lobbying itself has been basically shattered in our modern world with businesses having a near infinite amount of resources to exploit it. I don't think there's anything implicitly unreasonable about conveying your understanding of the importance, impact, and potential consequences of major choices onto key decision makers.

I think a senator being influenced by a grand child is a good mental case study in productive dissemination of an ideology. There are many people in leadership roles who may sometimes be on the lookout for strategies to tackle problems, but the only way those strategies become actionable is if someone nearby 1) has had the idea communicated to them and 2) is able to rhetorically sway those commanding the decision making process (the is an instant victory if sufficient decision making position has been captured by allies). Ultimately the ideas themselves only gain material action with a dissemination network with a connection to the people making decisions.

I've never really understood the sentiment that "articulation of a problem = solving that problem." Articulation seems to me to be Step 0 in solving a problem, there needs to be people on the ground advocating for why this new ideological framework is "better" than the status quo and actively convincing decision makers or acquiring decision making positions. Otherwise any amount of highly articulate complaints are just sophistry.

Yeah, I really feel like Brenden pretty much screwed over the entire browser scene by going all political and not doing his heavy lifting of reading the mid 00s political zeitgeist better. Feels like he doomed us all to live under Google's boot for his poorly timed performative activism.

Investing back into yourself is generally true, but only under healthy economic conditions. Boeing exists in a really weird place of being "too big to fail" (ie a monopoly) where investing money into personnel and improved processes is actually wasteful towards the shareholders because it isn't necessary to maintain the core business.

People use comments as a substitute for reading the article, that means whatever ideological thread is dominating the comments is also defacto going to be the mass interpretation of events. "Winning" a comment section can have relative major ideological concerns as it makes a whole community start framing events around them with certain sets of priors

The defacto assumption that internet discourse is a "discussion" is pretty implicitly wrong or at least very misguided. Most forums are much more in the mode of loud public arguments, which is why we have votes.

Even my own comment, by continuing this conversation serves in rhetorical, political, and philosophic capacities; many of which I don't intend but are implicit to how the medium is presented

Free markets are sometimes useful tools in making profits but are also sometimes hinderences towards being able to extract the highest amount of profit from consumers.

That's why we see so many mergers and intensive lobbying for government regulation in things like healthcare, telecoms, and air travel, it's way easier to make money if you can restrict competition in your market and it's something essential to consumers

The issue pointed out by these two comments come from a conflation of vocabulary (which is typically intentional at least at some point in the education). A truly "free market" would ensure that things like WeWork wouldn't happen because the ultimate material inputs and outputs of the company don't square. "Capitalism" is the seeking of profit at the expense of all others, where having a viable company no longer is an objective in itself but simply is a means to increase personal wealth. In such a system, WeWork makes a lot of sense because the long term solvency of the company does not impact how the market measures it's success.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk

See also, Whatsapp

South Park is written by a pretty atypical crew, most of the writers/actors I follow (from middle budget sci Fi shows I like) just seem like they're mostly politically unengaged folks just trying to get paid and make their specific product, but obviously ymmv

I'm not really sure what "the problem" with this is? Like we all do know that the point of pharma companies is to make money, and that things like 'helping people' are just incidental byproducts of that fact.

If pharmaceutical development was government run, I'd understand the outage at lowering the quality of life of US citizens; but faceless corporations literally cannot act in a way that is not financially optimal without committing a crime.

The US government has fallen so far from the days of Jimmy Carter selling his peanut farm to avoid any conflict of interest to people being okay with aids to supreme court justices being given envelopes full of money.

Decades of partisan politics really does have cool effects on a nation state

The 'rich white people' shorthand typical serves as an obvious stand in for 'those who have the political autonomy and systemic support to fight against harmful government and corporate actions'.

The vast majority of readers can quickly make the connection between 'politically powerful' and 'rich white people' assuming they live in America. It's not on random HN commenters to be egalitarian humanities writers who deconstruct every concept