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Should we be concerned about them using their media properties to push narratives designed to consolidate their influence, or ask whether some of the things we

Should we be concerned about them using their media properties to push narratives designed to consolidate their influence, or ask whether some of the things we believe might be artifacts of that influence, or maybe what the sources and motives of those narratives might be? Kidding. This isn't the 90's. The only people who worry about an axis of collaboration between corporations and government to create a surveillance distopia are conspiracy theorists pushing misinformation now. Plus, big tech is finally being responsible and working on the right side of history, so we can all get aligned on fighting climate change, and finally force the assholes to pay everyone back for their empty status symbols like all the air they polluted with their SUVs, unpaid emotional labor, meat, and tax breaks they took from us, and finally give it to people who deserve it. We can even replace small thinking regional governments with better international collaboration and cooperation so that everyone will be equal no matter where they live, and we can end the privileged western lifestyle once and for all. Kidding, not kidding. We should really look at what these companies are pushing.

starkd 5y ago
<< the right side of history << what does that even mean? There is a name for government-corporate collaboration. Even if you think it's going well "for now", it probably isn't.
- rubyist5eva 5y ago
  History is written by the winners. The right side is the one they write for themselves. So just always be on the side that is in the majority and has all of the power. Ezpz
  - forcry 5y ago
    >So just always be on the side that is in the majority and has all of the power Until you find yourselves on the other side, by definition..
    - bilbo0s 5y ago
      Horrible as this sounds, I think you really want to be on the side that has all the power. Which in many modern democracies, doesn't even require you to be a part of the majority. It hasn't been a good long-term strategy historically speaking. But you can definitely get your way for quite a while.
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
    Kinda hard not to be Jewish during 1930s Germany when you're a Jew...
    - exporectomy 5y ago
      Hard but not impossible. Einstein achieved that, as did the other Jewish emigrants from 1930's Germany.
    - rubyist5eva 5y ago
      Ask George Soros how he figured out how.
- javajosh 5y ago
  Perhaps the GP should have been more explicit with his sarcasm. People say (and apparently believe) the craziest things, it's almost impossible to do satire or sarcasm without a disclaimer.
- bilbo0s 5y ago
  Governments and corporations always cooperate. It's the nature of any nation's regulatory and legal order. It's more nuanced than that. What we want to look out for is not corporate cooperation with government, which is natural and proper. Rather we need to be on guard for corporate control of government, and I think America with it's energy, media and banking firms comes close to crossing the line. That line between corporates cooperating in a natural and necessary regulatory order on the one side, and corporates controlling the government's regulatory and legal order. You may even be able to argue that the line was crossed a while ago. There's a reason we have everything from private prisons, to corporates that are "too big to fail", to wars for oil, to regulatory bodies so corrupted that our word can no longer be safely relied upon to certify an airliner. My own opinion is we're holding the line in some places, and in others, clearly the dam has already broken.
amelius 5y ago
Or perhaps educate people about how to consume information.
- tasogare 5y ago
  That's not a real solution because education is mostly at the hand of governments, who are close to the said corporations. And the even if people were more critical about what they read, it is not that helpful since all the media outlets are controlled by the same people and thus pushing the same narrative. Without any alternative view it's hard to even think of something.
- eli_gottlieb 5y ago
  I don't think it matters how educated I am if everything available comes from one of six sources. I know I'm being propagandized; I've just learned I can't necessarily check society's "official" story on certain things. I still see that when the news media covers an issue regarding which I am personally a knowledgeable expert, they are often not just getting it wrong on the mere facts but throwing in ideological slants I would rarely agree with.
easterncalculus 5y ago
> The only people who worry about an axis of collaboration between corporations and government to create a surveillance distopia are conspiracy theorists pushing misinformation now. The president of the United States proudly admitted to alerting Facebook to "problematic" accounts just last week. Maybe that's justified, or isn't in service of a "surveillance dystopia", but the best light is "collaboration" between the largest corporations and the government. It's certainly going on, and that's not a conspiracy theory. Also, corporations are government - they quite literally are often the same people, having their hands in government agencies and institutions before cashing out in the private sector. Practically everyone at one point or another is thinking about their next job, so it's hard to argue the folks in the highest positions in society aren't. > Kidding, not kidding. We should really look at what these companies are pushing. Now you're confusing me a bit - but if this is your actual position, I agree.
- mynameishere 5y ago
  I like the image of Biden being given a "super downvote" button on reddit, that like...counts as ten normal downvotes.
  - ffffwe3rq352y3 5y ago
    Instead of giving gold he has a "veto" award that removes all current upvotes and pushes it to the bottom
  - h2odragon 5y ago
    "Some pigs are more equal than others"
- HWR_14 5y ago
  > Maybe that's justified, or isn't in service of a "surveillance dystopia" For crying out loud, I oppose a surveillance dystopia as much as anyone and far more than most. But it's not a surveillance dystopia for the things you publicly say and have your name attached to as you publish it to be brought to the attention of the publisher. If you wanna talk about censorship, we can talk. But that's a different concept often related.
taf2 5y ago
$$$
ryandrake 5y ago
> Kidding. This isn't the 90's. The only people who worry about an axis of collaboration between corporations and government to create a surveillance distopia are conspiracy theorists pushing misinformation now. It’s as if the X-Files never ended and is still relevant. So many people, when grappling with why things are the way they are, simply reach in the toolbox for the easy Cynicism and Conspiracy tools. It’s always “shadowy elite” in media, in tech companies, in government, conspiring to make us all buy SUVs because… uh…, well they are conspiring to make everyone wear masks so they can… uhh… do something. No, actually the elites are conspiring to bring on climate change and space travel so they can build their own Elysium space station and then… um… profit in some way we can’t figure out yet. That’s the great thing about conspiracy theories: you can just spout the first few steps and fail to explain the end game because there’s always another conspiracy theorist building on it and imagining what the next steps might be.
- briefcomment 5y ago
  I think you didn't read all of gp's post.
sethc2 5y ago
I love this post. Just the perfect amount of sarcasm to force readers to think for themselves.
- TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
  I often wonder about how much of other people’s words I need to read before I start thinking for myself.
briefcomment 5y ago
People hear the word "conspiracy" and are already on the opposite side before hearing any arguments. It's like they're terrified of having the wrong thoughts. Don't worry, we haven't reached the mind reading flavor of conspiratorial dystopia yet.
- fourtrees 5y ago
  I agree with your first sentence at least. Conspiracies -- from what led to Jan. 6th to Watergate to John Brown's Raid to the XYZ affair -- absolutely exist. But the word has been so completely conflated with absurd, even insane ideas, that to talk of conspiracy immediately puts the accuser at a serious rhetorical disadvantage.
  - IIAOPSW 5y ago
    I use the term "contrarian theory" to describe what is usually meant by "conspiracy theory".
- eli_gottlieb 5y ago
  I'm not terrified of having "wrong thoughts", but I do think conspiracy theorizing is dumb because no conspiracy theorist seems able to believe just one conspiracy. Oh, you think COVID was a lab leak, and that global warming is fake? What do you think about the moon landing? Is the government controlled by the Jews or the lizardmen? Why don't you (and this is a purely rhetorical "you") seem to have any limits to your credulity, whatsoever? Surely some things are too outrageous to be a priori likely and require specific evidence!
  - briefcomment 5y ago
    If you believe everyone who thinks the lab leak is viable also believes in lizard men, I'm not sure what to say.
    - eli_gottlieb 5y ago
      I don't believe everyone thinks anything, but I've met a hell of a lot of people for whom conspiracy theorizing is a kind of black hole: once they fall in from one direction, they start buying into a variety of theories more fundamentally wacky than the original thing that got them into it.
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
>working on the right side of history I'm certain China thinks suppressing the Uyghurs is the right side of history too. Your comment is literally the most dangerous thing you can ever say. Literally that someone else is a better arbiter of truth than yourself.
- ryeights 5y ago
  GP’s post is satire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    We can't expect someone who swallowed the whole Uighur story to detect irony.
bookofsand 5y ago
Under climate emission targets & global equity assumptions, western (#) lifestyle must end. In political terms, the western middle class lifestyle must end, the global elites will still ride their jets 'for the common good'. According to WRI calculator, in 2018 world GHC emissions totaled 47.6 Gt. Paris accord 1.5C target is 25 Gt. Population in 2050 projected at 10 billion people. Back of the envelope calculation gives per capita target of 2.5 CO2e t. As of 2020, even countries with green electrical energy production (nuclear & renewables) like Sweden, Switzerland or France are still at 4.5, 4.7 and respectively 6.3 CO2e t/capita emissions. As of 2021, there is no country with a western lifestyle and 2.5 CO2e t/capita emissions, closest being Sweden with 4.5 and Switzerland with 4.7. Perhaps a ray of hope, both these countries started at 8 CO2e t/capita 30 years ago in 1990. (#) 'western' roughly includes Western Europe, North America, East Asia, Australia and Arabian Peninsula. https://www.wri.org/insights/4-charts-explain-greenhouse-gas-emissions-countries-and-sectors https://www.wri.org/insights/4-charts-explain-greenhouse-gas... https://unepdtu.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/un-egr19-es-4e-extra.pdf https://unepdtu.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/un-egr19-es-4... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-electricity-fossil-nuclear-renewables https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-electricity-fo... https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-per-capita https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe...
- in_a_society 5y ago
  What would a lifestyle look like that meets these targets?
  - bookofsand 5y ago
    Subsistence agriculture? Slums? Manhattan hyper density? Cuba (2.68), Tunisia (2.60), Ecuador (2.43), Egypt (2.32), Brazil (2.25), Vietnam (2.20)?
    - in_a_society 5y ago
      None of that sounds particularly attractive. I would rather use nuclear, wind, or solar to capture the carbon until we figure out how to stop making so much of it.
eli_gottlieb 5y ago
>We should really look at what these companies are pushing. They're pushing their bottom line, same as ever, but now with a legitimating rhetoric appropriated from humanities academia, the nonprofit and advocacy/NGO sector, and various protest movements.

starkd 5y ago

<< the right side of history << what does that even mean? There is a name for government-corporate collaboration. Even if you think it's going well "for now", it probably isn't.

rubyist5eva 5y ago
History is written by the winners. The right side is the one they write for themselves. So just always be on the side that is in the majority and has all of the power. Ezpz
- forcry 5y ago
  >So just always be on the side that is in the majority and has all of the power Until you find yourselves on the other side, by definition..
  - bilbo0s 5y ago
    Horrible as this sounds, I think you really want to be on the side that has all the power. Which in many modern democracies, doesn't even require you to be a part of the majority. It hasn't been a good long-term strategy historically speaking. But you can definitely get your way for quite a while.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  Kinda hard not to be Jewish during 1930s Germany when you're a Jew...
  - exporectomy 5y ago
    Hard but not impossible. Einstein achieved that, as did the other Jewish emigrants from 1930's Germany.
  - rubyist5eva 5y ago
    Ask George Soros how he figured out how.
javajosh 5y ago
Perhaps the GP should have been more explicit with his sarcasm. People say (and apparently believe) the craziest things, it's almost impossible to do satire or sarcasm without a disclaimer.
bilbo0s 5y ago
Governments and corporations always cooperate. It's the nature of any nation's regulatory and legal order. It's more nuanced than that. What we want to look out for is not corporate cooperation with government, which is natural and proper. Rather we need to be on guard for corporate control of government, and I think America with it's energy, media and banking firms comes close to crossing the line. That line between corporates cooperating in a natural and necessary regulatory order on the one side, and corporates controlling the government's regulatory and legal order. You may even be able to argue that the line was crossed a while ago. There's a reason we have everything from private prisons, to corporates that are "too big to fail", to wars for oil, to regulatory bodies so corrupted that our word can no longer be safely relied upon to certify an airliner. My own opinion is we're holding the line in some places, and in others, clearly the dam has already broken.

amelius 5y ago

Or perhaps educate people about how to consume information.

tasogare 5y ago
That's not a real solution because education is mostly at the hand of governments, who are close to the said corporations. And the even if people were more critical about what they read, it is not that helpful since all the media outlets are controlled by the same people and thus pushing the same narrative. Without any alternative view it's hard to even think of something.
eli_gottlieb 5y ago
I don't think it matters how educated I am if everything available comes from one of six sources. I know I'm being propagandized; I've just learned I can't necessarily check society's "official" story on certain things. I still see that when the news media covers an issue regarding which I am personally a knowledgeable expert, they are often not just getting it wrong on the mere facts but throwing in ideological slants I would rarely agree with.

easterncalculus 5y ago

> The only people who worry about an axis of collaboration between corporations and government to create a surveillance distopia are conspiracy theorists pushing misinformation now. The president of the United States proudly admitted to alerting Facebook to "problematic" accounts just last week. Maybe that's justified, or isn't in service of a "surveillance dystopia", but the best light is "collaboration" between the largest corporations and the government. It's certainly going on, and that's not a conspiracy theory. Also, corporations are government - they quite literally are often the same people, having their hands in government agencies and institutions before cashing out in the private sector. Practically everyone at one point or another is thinking about their next job, so it's hard to argue the folks in the highest positions in society aren't. > Kidding, not kidding. We should really look at what these companies are pushing. Now you're confusing me a bit - but if this is your actual position, I agree.

mynameishere 5y ago
I like the image of Biden being given a "super downvote" button on reddit, that like...counts as ten normal downvotes.
- ffffwe3rq352y3 5y ago
  Instead of giving gold he has a "veto" award that removes all current upvotes and pushes it to the bottom
- h2odragon 5y ago
  "Some pigs are more equal than others"
HWR_14 5y ago
> Maybe that's justified, or isn't in service of a "surveillance dystopia" For crying out loud, I oppose a surveillance dystopia as much as anyone and far more than most. But it's not a surveillance dystopia for the things you publicly say and have your name attached to as you publish it to be brought to the attention of the publisher. If you wanna talk about censorship, we can talk. But that's a different concept often related.

taf2 5y ago

$$$

ryandrake 5y ago

> Kidding. This isn't the 90's. The only people who worry about an axis of collaboration between corporations and government to create a surveillance distopia are conspiracy theorists pushing misinformation now. It’s as if the X-Files never ended and is still relevant. So many people, when grappling with why things are the way they are, simply reach in the toolbox for the easy Cynicism and Conspiracy tools. It’s always “shadowy elite” in media, in tech companies, in government, conspiring to make us all buy SUVs because… uh…, well they are conspiring to make everyone wear masks so they can… uhh… do something. No, actually the elites are conspiring to bring on climate change and space travel so they can build their own Elysium space station and then… um… profit in some way we can’t figure out yet. That’s the great thing about conspiracy theories: you can just spout the first few steps and fail to explain the end game because there’s always another conspiracy theorist building on it and imagining what the next steps might be.

briefcomment 5y ago
I think you didn't read all of gp's post.

sethc2 5y ago

I love this post. Just the perfect amount of sarcasm to force readers to think for themselves.

TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
I often wonder about how much of other people’s words I need to read before I start thinking for myself.

briefcomment 5y ago

People hear the word "conspiracy" and are already on the opposite side before hearing any arguments. It's like they're terrified of having the wrong thoughts. Don't worry, we haven't reached the mind reading flavor of conspiratorial dystopia yet.

fourtrees 5y ago
I agree with your first sentence at least. Conspiracies -- from what led to Jan. 6th to Watergate to John Brown's Raid to the XYZ affair -- absolutely exist. But the word has been so completely conflated with absurd, even insane ideas, that to talk of conspiracy immediately puts the accuser at a serious rhetorical disadvantage.
- IIAOPSW 5y ago
  I use the term "contrarian theory" to describe what is usually meant by "conspiracy theory".
eli_gottlieb 5y ago
I'm not terrified of having "wrong thoughts", but I do think conspiracy theorizing is dumb because no conspiracy theorist seems able to believe just one conspiracy. Oh, you think COVID was a lab leak, and that global warming is fake? What do you think about the moon landing? Is the government controlled by the Jews or the lizardmen? Why don't you (and this is a purely rhetorical "you") seem to have any limits to your credulity, whatsoever? Surely some things are too outrageous to be a priori likely and require specific evidence!
- briefcomment 5y ago
  If you believe everyone who thinks the lab leak is viable also believes in lizard men, I'm not sure what to say.
  - eli_gottlieb 5y ago
    I don't believe everyone thinks anything, but I've met a hell of a lot of people for whom conspiracy theorizing is a kind of black hole: once they fall in from one direction, they start buying into a variety of theories more fundamentally wacky than the original thing that got them into it.

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago

>working on the right side of history I'm certain China thinks suppressing the Uyghurs is the right side of history too. Your comment is literally the most dangerous thing you can ever say. Literally that someone else is a better arbiter of truth than yourself.

ryeights 5y ago
GP’s post is satire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
- jessaustin 5y ago
  We can't expect someone who swallowed the whole Uighur story to detect irony.

bookofsand 5y ago

Under climate emission targets & global equity assumptions, western (#) lifestyle must end. In political terms, the western middle class lifestyle must end, the global elites will still ride their jets 'for the common good'. According to WRI calculator, in 2018 world GHC emissions totaled 47.6 Gt. Paris accord 1.5C target is 25 Gt. Population in 2050 projected at 10 billion people. Back of the envelope calculation gives per capita target of 2.5 CO2e t. As of 2020, even countries with green electrical energy production (nuclear & renewables) like Sweden, Switzerland or France are still at 4.5, 4.7 and respectively 6.3 CO2e t/capita emissions. As of 2021, there is no country with a western lifestyle and 2.5 CO2e t/capita emissions, closest being Sweden with 4.5 and Switzerland with 4.7. Perhaps a ray of hope, both these countries started at 8 CO2e t/capita 30 years ago in 1990. (#) 'western' roughly includes Western Europe, North America, East Asia, Australia and Arabian Peninsula. https://www.wri.org/insights/4-charts-explain-greenhouse-gas-emissions-countries-and-sectors https://www.wri.org/insights/4-charts-explain-greenhouse-gas... https://unepdtu.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/un-egr19-es-4e-extra.pdf https://unepdtu.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/un-egr19-es-4... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-electricity-fossil-nuclear-renewables https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-electricity-fo... https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-per-capita https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe...

in_a_society 5y ago
What would a lifestyle look like that meets these targets?
- bookofsand 5y ago
  Subsistence agriculture? Slums? Manhattan hyper density? Cuba (2.68), Tunisia (2.60), Ecuador (2.43), Egypt (2.32), Brazil (2.25), Vietnam (2.20)?
  - in_a_society 5y ago
    None of that sounds particularly attractive. I would rather use nuclear, wind, or solar to capture the carbon until we figure out how to stop making so much of it.

eli_gottlieb 5y ago

>We should really look at what these companies are pushing. They're pushing their bottom line, same as ever, but now with a legitimating rhetoric appropriated from humanities academia, the nonprofit and advocacy/NGO sector, and various protest movements.