Rephrasing a common quote - talk is cheap, that’s why I talk a lot.
Can be summed up us our time having solved some unpleasant things with computers and networks, and created some other unpleasant things with computers and networks, things that many didn’t expect because I don’t think in the 80s it was easy to imagine electronics so omnipresent and powerful.
I will never understand nostalgia.
Yes, I was born in 1996, so not quite 80s, but even my nostalgia being applied to life wouldn’t mean mimicking old days. It would mean making some comfortable change in what exists now. Like there’s an abandoned cinema building (belonged to USSR ministry of defense, then was a small auto dealership, then was rented to shops and cat owner events, and finally it turned out nobody can untangle who really owns it, and if it’s still Russian military of defense or private property) nearby, and the ownership issues with it have apparently been almost resolved.
So there are from time to time posts in our house chat about this or that plan involving something being built in place of that building.
That’s not needed. If they demolish it, they can just make sort of an antique amphitheater with low benches to seat on. Just a place with many benches and trees around, formed so that people in it can all see each other. And it’s weird, it seems someone doesn’t like benches in Moscow, there are fewer and fewer of them on the streets and in parks and everywhere.
I mean, yeah, realty costs are a bitch there, but apparently nobody needs that particular place if the building has an owner, but is in fact used as a toilet for homeless people.
In Russia there are some nostalgic memories from the older people, but it’s all about education and science, some kind of common dignity (with less personal dignity, probably, but common dignity is important too) and the nation not being openly ruled by thieves, that kind of thing. And total losses in Afghanistan were 15k people, that was a reason for mourning and being terrified, that was talked about everywhere in the news, apparently. While now - you know.
I mean, they remember that kids would just be let out to play, and that they’d go to school and other such places all by themselves. That kids would make knuckles from lead, or make explosive things, or (when in less destructive mood) some kind of perfume and such, radio, all kinds of DIY more often, more serious and more dangerous than now.
They also consider it absolutely basic to accompany your guests to the bus stop or metro station or train station, and only leave when the bus\train leaves, to call your friends regularly and raise panic when they don’t answer, to preferably not go out at night, and to never ever say things too open or offensive, because any weirdo at all could hear them, feel offended, follow you and fucking kill you, no cameras everywhere.
And their memories of relative security are not about lower crime anyway, they involve teenage and youth hooligan gangs being literally normal. They would be those who maintained that relative safety. If you were a man, you’d do well to not be outside your district after dark, you could get beaten and robbed just for that.
Judging by what I’ve read about 80s in the west, all this was kinda similar there. Less depressed probably.
where the constant threat of thermonuclear war was banging on the iron dome every single day.
That’s good. Memento mori, carpe diem.
Boomerfying
That’s a scary word.
Reminds me of Idiocracy moment with policemen and a plane falling.
Ye-es, we’ll see a good test of humanity’s ability to adapt. Either it delivers, or it ends right in the following decades, because its survival is based on a much subtler process than people controlling these technologies can conceive. It’s all the time of evolution and its volume of entropy spent on optimization versus like 40 years of computer programmers deciding they know how it all should be done, just have to pass through the resistance. The latter is a drop in the sea. It can’t realistically be anything but a threat.
I’m worse, I’m not ever voting at all in US elections. Being a Russian citizen and never having set foot in the US.
But they are one big criminal family. I mean, yes, in the 90s Clinton and the democratic party really had sort of a plan of battle, but they dropped the ball completely. It’s unfortunate, because had they not, maybe our world would really be similar to more utopian lines from sci-fi.
Yes, I’ve already fixed myself, it was sad
I wonder what things would look like today if the government had taken some portion of control over all the auto manufacturers, airlines, banks, etc it has bailed out over the years instead of just giving them unsecured loans
Would look like normal capitalism of the early XIX century, give or take. Bad, but not atrocious. Bailouts definitely wouldn’t be abused as much, because, eh, they wouldn’t be free.
And the old argument that public sector management is inefficient - well, it’s not always a bad thing. It would then make sense for the government to re-privatize some of those shares, and use others for a source of income and a lever. And the companies bailed out this way would sink in power (which is good for competition), but not completely (which is good for their employees and economical stability). And, of course, I’ll repeat about source of income. Perhaps there will be no more raising taxes with such a system in place. Perhaps even some taxes it’ll be possible to simplify - any complex tax system works in favor of those who can afford to apply expertise, so those richer, and not poorer.
Also partial or full nationalization may sometimes work to good outcomes, while nationalized companies are less efficient, they also tend to retain institutional knowledge better, have more people working long on the same positions, follow labor regulations. For the telephone company or the train company or the central heating company or the public bus company it makes sense to be nationalized.
That’s why free market is how we call a market where anti-monopoly laws exist, work and are enforced in full.
While what you are talking about isn’t called market, it’s called jungle.
Self-correction in a market is an illusion crafted people either desperate to salvage a broken system, or those who seek to exploit them.
Self-correction exists when anti-monopoly laws exist, work and are enforced in full. It doesn’t exist when they don’t, because self-correction relies upon competition providing a choice and the consumer using it.
Also trade unions and customer associations are part of what we call free market. Both are voluntary, in public interest, and work when they exist. No coercion involved, thus no violation of market laws.
Also on large enough scale of the market and small enough scale of all businesses it may sometimes seem, that anti-monopoly laws are not needed. Especially since when anti-monopoly laws work, the market appears such.
That part of his behavior his fans, I think, approve of.
It wouldn’t, they are one big criminal family after all.
Isn’t he mimicking the typography of oldish “wild west style” newspapers and other print? Both with different fonts, and varying capitalization, and sizes. Yelling at you from monochrome photos.
(Never been in the USA.)
China’s internal market is far more cutthroat and “capitalist” than that of the USA. And less regulated. And less monopolized, except for a few services which, ahem, are mandated (WeeChat, yes).
That was their “unique path”, to move all hierarchical stuff into political entities. It look interesting on a large scale, from more “peasant-oriented” communism, kinda changing the initial Marxist picture of worker-capital relations, to this.
B-b-but Starlink doesn’t build infrastructure for normal broadband, does it? So they basically got a load of free money for doing nothing on a state level, just their satellites flying someplace above? I mean, there are Starlink ground stations, so there is infrastructure, just how many people would use it instead of a normal service. You know, GPON to the door, no antenna suffering in bad weather, no exorbitant prices.
There’s literally Intel Management Engine or how is it called.
And they are literally an American corporation that has always benefited from American governments pressuring competitors from other countries, and that was important for MIC since 70s.
So that kind of trust was a clear no since long before I was born.
Yeah, this, ahem, is strengthened by this:
Because you have a dopamine farming machine that goes as good as it can, why do an activity where nobody’s even trying to compete with it?
And I hate to say it, but being autistic I’m more, not less, vulnerable to said machine. Willpower.
So - there are similar extremely optimized dopamine farming machines everywhere looking nicer than some truths around. Instead of continuing to write a program to do what I’m dreaming of, or at least find tooling, I can argue in a TG chat about whatever. Instead of going to a friend group meeting I can sit all day playing video games. Between going for a walk I can read things I don’t need. Or comment on Lemmy.
When everyone is used to picking a glossy advertised easy way over more real and dimmer one, it also reinforces “all or nothing” thinking.