igogq425

> They promote those they believe have the highest potential to bring value.

Thank you for writing that! That would have been my first comment as well. Due to the organizational hierarchy, there is a standard assumption that the company or the decision-makers within the company are magically capable of making objective assessments and decisions. Of course, this is not the case. But in the style of corporate language, there is often a strategic concealment of the fact that in every functional role, even at the very top, individuals work and make subjective decisions (hopefully competently, hopefully to the best of their knowledge and belief, but nonetheless always subjectively).

To supplement the thermodynamic reference with a more benevolent interpretation:

What can certainly be done, and what has already been done quite productively, is to transfer the thermodynamic concept of entropy to other areas. The first thing that comes to mind is Shannon's information entropy. But there is also Georgescu-Roegen's bioeconomic entropy, social entropy in the social sciences, and some (rather speculative and perhaps primarily metaphorical) concepts of psychological and psychodynamic entropy.

However, I do not think that if one were to zoom in further in these areas, one would find hard evidence for the worldview that is seeking justification here.

> That of course depends on what you mean by "society".

Yes, that is the old discrepancy between society in the true sense and society as imagined by libertarians. A few strangers waiting together for the bus do not constitute a community. If the bus is canceled and they organize a carpool, then a community has formed. If you scale this up and replace personal relationships with institutions, you have a useful concept of society.

For libertarians, society is any large gathering of people who interact with each other in some way (or not), even if they rape and devour each other. If you understand society in this way, it cannot collapse (or is constantly collapsing).

Ultimately, an economy is all about the side effects you describe (goods and services for the population). The fact that, while producing these side effects, the machine also leads to massive wealth accumulation among a small number of people is another side effect that basically has nothing to do with the core tasks of the economy. The question now is how to evaluate this additional side effect. If it does not have any negative consequences, it can be ignored. If it does, it should be counteracted.

It's like in a combustion engine. Oil has to be added for the engine to work. But over time, dirt particles, metal abrasion, soot, and combustion residues accumulate in the oil, overwhelming the oil filter and reducing its lubricating ability. If you don't reset it to a “healthy” basic state at regular intervals, it gets so bad that it prevents the engine from operating and ultimately even destroys it.

Does the massive wealth inequality we see today cause problems that lead to the erosion of society itself? I would say yes, definitely. Of course, it is frustrating for these people when the money they have generated is taken away from them. But let's look at it realistically: if someone has $100 billion and $99 billion is taken away from them, they are still in a situation where they lack nothing financially.

At some point, you've played capitalism through to the final level. And then you should put down the controller and go outside to listen to the birds chirping instead of frantically chasing after the growth of a number that, due to its sheer size, no longer has any concrete meaning, apart from the fact that there may be two other people whose numbers are bigger or who are hot on your heels.

I have to smile a little at the graphic with the headline “LOW-CODE VALUE PROP.” Judging by the few low-code applications I've seen so far, the images should be arranged in exactly the opposite order.

I read appeals here asking developers to please pay for their tools. I would like to point out that collective behavior cannot be changed by appealing to individuals.

Furthermore, it is the employer's responsibility to provide tools for employees. I'm not going to get into a tug-of-war with my employer over this. I simply work with the tools I am provided.

For self-employed individuals and companies, this should be regulated by the market. If competitiveness correlates with the use of the right tools, the problem should resolve itself. If this correlation does not exist, then it is questionable whether these tools have any added value at all.

If this market mechanism does not work properly because Big Tech systematically undermines it, then it might be appropriate to consider whether this could (or could not) represent a more far-reaching social problem and what solutions there might be. If you go down that route (which I would advocate), it very quickly becomes very political. In any case, it should be clear that this problem cannot be solved by simply shouting at developers: “Pay for your tools!”

What complicates matters further is that our work requires more than just tools in the narrow sense. The entire stack, down to the compiler, web server, and ultimately the operating system and operating system kernel, is based on countless hours of unpaid human labor. On the one hand, it would render us incapable of acting if we were to economically quantify this entire value chain like Diocletian and then insist on slapping an appropriate price tag on it. On the other hand, there is no justification for why we should only do this with the tip of the iceberg that we call tools.

> For example trump voters having their partners deported.

I think there were similar surprises for some people back then. Social reality is complex, as can be seen, for example, in the case of J.D. Vance's wife. Every ICE officer would surely like to drag her out of her Porsche Cayenne by her hair and press their knee into her neck. Here in Germany, the shift to the right is being driven by Alice Weidel, among others, who is in a same-sex partnership with a dark-skinned woman who was born in Sri Lanka.

For anti-Semitism in Germany before the Holocaust, I can recommend Robert Musil's novel “The Man Without Qualities.” For me, it was the most insightful look into the social background and conditions that led to the mindset of the time, which later erupted into genocide.

Incidentally, I realize that we are not yet seeing full-scale genocide in the US. But it already has the character of ethnic cleansing, doesn't it? The beginnings were similar here in Germany back then: armed troops harassing people on the streets or taking them away and imprisoning them. Desensitizing and intimidating the general public in this way creates the basis for further escalation.

It is very stable. I have been using it for several years for exactly this purpose without any problems. It simply runs in the background and does its job so reliably that I simply forget about it for long periods of time.

As a German, I am generally cautious about drawing hasty parallels with the Holocaust, but I must admit: now that you mention it, the Sturmabteilung and the Schutzstaffel probably began their work in the streets of the country in a similar way to ICE today.

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Sturmabteilung (SA)

The SA was formed in 1921 as the paramilitary fighting organization of the NSDAP and protected party events. After 1933, under Ernst Röhm, it carried out street violence against Jews, communists, and trade unions, grew to millions of members, but was crushed in 1934 in the Röhm Putsch.

Schutzstaffel (SS)

The SS started in 1925 as Hitler's elite bodyguard under Heinrich Himmler and emancipated itself from the SA. From 1934, it took over police duties, concentration camp guarding, and from 1936, the Gestapo, directing deportations and the Holocaust.

"""

It sends a chill down my spine when I think about this comparison. I recently heard about an ICE agent who tried to drag an indigenous woman out of her car and said to her, “You're next!”

Due to the sanctions, Russia has shifted its economic focus away from the West. This has given BRICS a massive boost. BRICS+ now controls over 40% of global GDP and over half of global oil exports. I don't know how much the sanctions are affecting people's everyday lives in Russia itself. In 2023, there were newspaper articles here in Germany about how we are still importing Russian oil, just not directly from Russia, but indirectly via India.

You deny the obvious and argue with superficial platitudes. Show me a country anywhere in the world that is thriving despite being defenseless against the encroachments of a nearby superpower. I can't think of one. If you need more examples, the former Soviet countries near Russia have a similar problem.

Without the Marshall Plan, Germany would probably be an agricultural country with a below-average GDP, just like Ukraine. You would have to be completely clueless to believe that weaker countries can develop freely and independently of the influence of the major powers in whose sphere of influence they find themselves.

If you believe that the differences in economic performance and political stability in different countries have other causes, then say so openly instead of beating around the bush.

Of course it's not scientific. I don't wear a lab coat, and neither do you. You should take a look at yourself in that regard. You can't accuse me of lacking standards that you yourself don't live up to.

Ecuador 2010, Honduras 2009, Venezuela 2002, Haiti 1994, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador until 1990, Panama 1989, Grenada 1983, Bolivia 1980, Chile 1973, Dominican Republic 1965, Cuba 1961, Guatemala 1954, and so on until the territorial destruction of Mexico in 1848: all of them wars, coup attempts, occupations, protection of U.S. corporate interests, installation of military dictatorships, attempted assassinations of heads of government, etc.

These are recent events that naturally have a massive impact on the political and economic development of the nations concerned. And you want to equate that with the fact that the Turks were in Vienna at some point or that a nation of 1.41 billion Chinese has now recovered somewhat from European colonialism. Sorry, but that's ridiculous. The US bears significant responsibility for the poor political and economic situation in many Latin American countries. You don't have to agree with this assessment. But to pretend that there aren't a multitude of valid arguments for it is either ignorant or disingenuous.

I mentioned ICE because you mentioned something about child labor camps in Cuba. You have to keep things in context when you make non sequitur insinuations. I don't share the view that ICE is the first problematic development and that everything was fine in the US before that. We can end the exchange here. Nothing positive will come of it.

I will read the article and incorporate it into my view of things. I don't get the impression that you are prepared to evaluate information in a similarly open-minded way. You remain silent on all the points I have raised. This makes it clear to me that you are an ideologue.