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One nit to pick on your otherwise fine point: Profit means playing ball with entities that can very seriously impact the enterprise. The money is great, but t
by ddingus 5y ago
One nit to pick on your otherwise fine point:
Profit means playing ball with entities that can very seriously impact the enterprise. The money is great, but the cost to everyone is YT and friends doing some bidding they would otherwise want to avoid.
Essentially, it's similar to the military industrial complex. Private extension of government, and big business always does this. Has to, or the real threat might be accumulating soft power, the hearts and minds of the people,
Just saying it's not all money here. Power, and I mean established power, is a factor here as well. Corruption is legal here, and in many parts of the world. What we are seeing now is a part of that playing out.
If we were to have some real conversations, perhaps over beers, in a trust type scenario, I'll bet a whole lot of people in tech get this, have no answers, and would prefer it go much differently. We all know how this stuff can empower people, really improve the world.
That's not changed. But there are things in the way.
- voakbasda 5y agoCorruption is not legal. It is simply the apparent norm that we have come to expect from our elected officials, bureaucrats, journalists, courts, police, and many other occupational classes. And when in Rome….
- endominus 5y agoCorruption is absolutely legal. For example, the revolving door between regulatory agencies and large businesses, insider trading by Congress members, large government contracts (especially in the military) being awarded not to the best companies bidding but the ones that will employ people in a given politicians district, and so on. All corruption, all legal and normalized. Many are just trained not to see it as corruption.
- voakbasda 5y agoCorruption may be the de facto standard operating procedure for the majority of government, but that does not make it legal. However, being illegal does not mean that we the people stand a snowball’s chance in hell of draining that swamp.