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Meta is a corporation that is anti-democracy. In the US we have this thing called free speech. Requiring non-disclosure in order to get a severance (or to get a

Meta is a corporation that is anti-democracy. In the US we have this thing called free speech. Requiring non-disclosure in order to get a severance (or to get a settlement for abuse) is not an excuse for doing this. More and more corporations are resorting to the predatory practice of abusing the court system to protect their hide their actions. You may accept this kind of thing, I do not.

hliyan 1y ago
I recently heard a US journalist/author named Chris Hedges say something to the effect that the US has the symbols, the iconography and the language of a democracy, but internally, corporates and oligarchs have seized all the levers of power, and that it is reminiscent of the end of the Roman Empire. He also went onto distinguish between corporates and oligarchs, claiming that the two political camps in the US actually represent these two sides (rather than democracy vs. facism or socialism).
- imiric 1y ago
  Isn't that obvious? When corporations can lobby to influence legislation, pay to get a candidate elected, and CEOs hold positions of power, including the presidency itself, any semblance of democracy is an illusion.
- koakuma-chan 1y ago
  And why would "corporate" and "oligarchs" fight? Can the same person not be a "corporate" and an oligarch at the same time?
  - mapt 1y ago
    Another way of looking at this would be in terms of the millionaire managerial and professional class holding up the Democratic Party versus the interests of the billionaire aristocratic and executive class holding up the Republican Party. The billionaires are far less numerous, have far better ability to coordinate and summon resources, and have interests that diverge farther from the thousandaires who actually do most of the voting, compared to the millionaires.
    - jfengel 1y ago
      The term "holding up" is doing a lot of work here. The Republican party has an extremely enthusiastic voter base. Billionaire money might encourage the enthusiasm but in the end the voters turn out and pull levers. They are sincere in their voting. The Democrats are a bit less enthusiastic, at least at the moment, but in the end it's not the millionaires who pull the levers. It's the rank and file. It's hard to tell how different it would be if we could somehow get the money out of it. But I am wary of assuming that the voters would dramatically change their attitudes. The millionaires and billionaires tune the party's message to what the voters want. They get the spoils but they're also making their voters happy, assuming they win. If they didn't do that, they'd lose. It's possible that the Democrats are more conspicuously failing to give their voters what they want when they win. But it's not obvious to me how they could do that. Most of the suggestions I hear are naive and impractical, and come down to "do the thing I want and many millions of others will see how great that is."
      - econ 1y ago
        For election to work you would have to read [all of] the [not legally binding] election programs, ponder the offerings and make up your own mind. You won't find a single person who does this. Apparently everyone votes by a different mechanism. One that involves a lot of money. Even if everyone was well informed and able to objectively make their own choices that are truly their own. You don't actually have to do anything you wrote in your election program.
        threatofrain 1y ago
        We don't become legal experts to run a business, we hire lawyers. We don’t become doctors to aid in our own health either. So too should people find ways to delegate and evaluate economic and policy analysis.
        econ 1y ago
        The terrifying reality is that there is no one to delegate to. If we would magically spawn the theoretically ideal candidate who plans to do everything exactly the way you want it done then there is zero chance you will vote for them. This goes for all voters. Exactly 100% of them without rounding anything. https://www.fec.gov/data/candidates/president/?election_year=2024&cycle=2024&election_full=true https://www.fec.gov/data/candidates/president/?election_year... You can't argue you don't need to know any of them because they aren't popular enough. Democracy badly needs a better formula for discovery or some other means to add signal to the noise like a license to drive the country or some financial reward to get a diploma. Maybe we could train an LLM to interview the voter.
  - markus_zhang 1y ago
    I wouldn't say corporations and oligarchs are going to fight. I'd say elites infight all the time, but they all agree that the other humans are simply "human resources" and they have the common interests to extract as much value from those fellow humans as possible. Exactly the same model for pretty much all large countries, each with a bit of different "flavour" that the elites learned throughout the centuries, and conveniently serves as one of the topics to divide the human resources.
    - koakuma-chan 1y ago
      I prefer “workforce” over “human resources,” and I believe lots of people voluntarily choose to remain a member of the workforce, as they would rather have a family and live a “simple” life than spend effort to become some kind of entrepreneur or politician.
      - markus_zhang 1y ago
        Our preference is irrelevant. We are resources to them. I’d rather honestly acknowledge that.
        koakuma-chan 1y ago
        What I said doesn’t conflict with this, just highlighting that’s what people themselves want.
  - danaris 1y ago
    I would say that the distinction between the two groups is, roughly: "Corporates" are the leaders of the many large corporations in this country. They want broad protections for corporate power against labour, corporate profits, lowered regulations, etc. "Oligarchs" are the leaders of the few titanic corporations, like Bezos, Musk, and Zuckerberg. They want to become the zaibatsu of modern America, essentially being given total control over the economy divided up between them. There are many things they want that are in common (for instance, the removal of regulations), but that prime desire of the oligarchs is directly at odds with the continued existence and livelihoods of the corporates.
  - treyd 1y ago
    Corporates understand that a strong economy is important for the system to be viable long term and that some kind of middle class is a necessary part of it, which they can skim off the top of. Oligarchs don't care about that nearly as much, and are more acutely focused on accumulation of power and wealth and are happy to disassemble productive capacity and force the middle class down to an a working poor class in the process.
    - Barrin92 1y ago
      It's basically the difference between "every one of my workers needs to be able to buy one of my cars" industrial Fordism and what Varoufakis coined techno-feudalism, which does not utilize markets or independent workers but tries to extract value from what are effectively serfs directly. Zuckerberg et al. are obviously emblematic of the latter.
  - lupusreal 1y ago
    Why wouldn't they fight? Some level of conflict always occurs within all groups or affiliations. It would be completely unnatural for there to be no conflict.
  - rixed 1y ago
    Are they actually fighting?
- froh 1y ago
  yes. and: kleptocrats. "thieves govern" captures the into-my-pocket better than oligarchs "few govern".
- fny 1y ago
  It's dangerous to make sloppy comparisons like that. Augustus seized all the levers of power to create the Roman Empire and even developed a cult-like following. Similarly, claiming there aren't two political camps is sloppy in the current environment. Corporates and oligarchs are a completely different animal, and they deserve treatment as such. They are not some homogenous, totalitarian entity: they're more akin to what Rome was before the Empire--a melange of senators fighting about everything while trying to stay rich.
  - coliveira 1y ago
    Even Augustus took a few years to complete his project. In the US this is going quite fast.
    - speed_spread 1y ago
      I think we see it happening fast because right now it's just revealing of the power structures that were built over decades.
  - KaiserPro 1y ago
    > Augustus seized all the levers of power Octavian was given the levers of power by Julius Caesar. Pompey and Crassus teamed up with Caesar to breakdown the republic. They made huge amounts of cash doing it.
    - fny 1y ago
      My point was that what's happening now is akin to the Roman empires beginnings not its end.
  - dimal 1y ago
    Dangerous? What??? How on earth is that dangerous? Of all the insane rhetoric being spouted nowadays, making a historical comparison is dangerous? Can we all please stop calling ideas “harmful” or “dangerous” and just have plain, open debate? That’s what a republic depends on.
- constantcrying 1y ago
  >and that it is reminiscent of the end of the Roman Empire What a totally ridiculous comparison. The roman empire always was an explicit a dictatorial state. Its end took hundreds of years of internal and external forces tearing it apart as coherent entity. Characterizing it as two factions fighting for power is just bizarre.
  - greesil 1y ago
    Maybe he meant the of the Roman Republic, like with the optimates and so on.
  - coliveira 1y ago
    The end of the Roman Empire was due to a civil war, where the Church was one of the parties embraced by Constantin.
  - sevensor 1y ago
    That’s far from accurate. Augustus positioned himself as the restorer of the Republic after a horrific period of civil war, and cobbled together his authority from existing Republican magistracies, especially the Tribune of the Plebs. The Julio-Claudians at least attempted to maintain the fiction that the Republic was still functioning. Explicitly dictatorial it wasn’t, although actually dictatorial it certainly was.
- dimal 1y ago
  > reminiscent of the end of the Roman Empire Are you sure he didn’t mean the end of the Roman Republic, which was the beginning of the Principate? The Western Empire would last about another 400 years. We definitely are tracking the end of the Roman Republic. At that point, all constitutional norms had been violated so many times that they were mere suggestions, and political infighting by oligarchs was tearing the republic apart, to the point that people were relieved when Augustus took power. They still had a senate. They still had all the old offices and structures. But everyone knew who was in power. Much like today in the US. We don’t have one Princeps, but we all know that the oligarchs and corporations own the entire political and economic process. They write the rules to suit themselves. And they have common people fighting each other over cultural issues instead of fighting them for the stuff that matters — economic and political power. It’s a fantastic divide and conquer strategy. Unless common people start waking up to who their real enemies are, the American Republic is effectively over.
  - dingnuts 1y ago
    I've been hearing this for thirty years and I think that people just like to predict the end times and the Roman empire is what's taught most closely in school
    - dimal 1y ago
      Eh, since the founders were explicitly inspired by the Roman Republic, it’s always been fun to wonder “where are we on the Roman timeline”. But it was about 150 years from when the Gracchi brothers were murdered until Augustus seized power. These things happen over time, not all at once. I don’t see any way to view today’s politics as normal. There is nothing but naked greed and hunger for power at play now. It wasn’t like this even 15 years ago. We’ve been a frog in a pot of water and it’s just starting to boil.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
- sva_ 1y ago
  I find this comment a bit strange considering > she is being pushed to financial ruin through the arbitration system in the UK, Not the US.
  - pseudalopex 1y ago
    Meta are a US company. They took legal action against the author in the US also. And hliyan may have trusted readers to consider if UK politics had the same property.
- brandall10 1y ago
  There is a great documentary called “The Century of the Self”, which is about the rise of consumerism in lockstep with politics in the United States. The initial primary focus is Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, who is known as the father of public relations. He was incredibly influential during his time, having been a key advisor on most federal administrations from the 20s to the 70s. On the corporate side, early big wins were getting women to smoke at the dawn of the Great Depression, and changing the 'American breakfast' to bacon and eggs. A core thesis of his is freedom in a large democratic state is a bit of an illusion… it needs to be controlled by consumerist impulses, or in other words, indirectly by corporations. Otherwise the all-encompassing hand of totalitarianism is needed. Without one of these mediating factors, the masses become unruly and descend into anarchy and chaos. His late 20s book "Propaganda" is an interesting insight into his early, free from public scorn, view on the matter. It seems overwhelmingly cynical and puppet-masterish, if you will, and he somewhat stepped back from it after finding out how much it had influenced Goebbels. Still, I think it holds strongly as a guidebook for how the US evolved to present day.
  - swed420 1y ago
    In addition to Century of the Self, Adam Curtis has tons of other good stuff, too, and it's freely available: https://thoughtmaybe.com/by/adam-curtis/ https://thoughtmaybe.com/by/adam-curtis/
  - hliyan 1y ago
    What would his thoughts on India be? It is neither totalitarian nor controlled by corporoates to a level that we seen in the US. It is an extremely large "democracy" with only limited signs of central orchestration. That said, petty corruption and chaos is rampant.
- mc32 1y ago
  This case is from the UK. Is there some quote you can pull about someone critiquing the governmental system over there and how that’s reflected in this case?
kordlessagain 1y ago
Never sign anything going out the door that isn’t tied to a financial gain.
- 77pt77 1y ago
  But it was tied to that!
- SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
  "If you don't sign you won't get severance" is exactly that.
  - Kranar 1y ago
    Severance is a financial gain. You don't have to accept it.
    - pseudalopex 1y ago
      Their point was kordlessagain's advice would not have changed this situation I think.
    - SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
      Yeah, so in this case the advice "Never sign anything going out the door that isn’t tied to a financial gain." means you should probably sign the NDA.
constantcrying 1y ago
Free speech has always been about the government. Do you not think it is acceptable for companies to fire people for their speech? Should employers just have to keep silent and do nothing when their employees e.g. glorify violence, promote fascism or attack human rights? >Requiring non-disclosure in order to get a severance (or to get a settlement for abuse) is not an excuse for doing this. This seems very reasonable? If you want to attack your employer you are free to do so, why should they pay you for that? >More and more corporations are resorting to the predatory practice of abusing the court system to protect their hide their actions. What are you on about? Companies have always tried to get what they can, it is not some recent trend that companies go after their own (former) employees in court.
- moregrist 1y ago
  > This seems very reasonable? If you want to attack your employer you are free to do so, why should they pay you for that? The two issues I see here are: NDAs without a public-good exception and forced confidential arbitration. I think there should always be an exception to NDAs when the information is in the public good. I think it’s reasonable to disagree on where that line should be; that’s what legislation and court cases are for. Also, forcing the resolution of this to go through confidential arbitration hides the issues from the public, and doesn’t let us make good decisions on where that line should be.
  - gruez 1y ago
    >I think there should always be an exception to NDAs when the information is in the public good. AFAIK that already sort of exists because NDAs doesn't cover you if you're subpoenaed, like if there was a congressional hearing.
    - pseudalopex 1y ago
      A congressional hearing had the author's testimony because of this book.
      - 1y ago
tenuousemphasis 1y ago
[flagged]
netfortius 1y ago
Replace "have" with "had"
user3939382 1y ago
I would say using the court system rather than abusing, simple because IMHO the courts primarily exist to defend corporate rights contrary to the marketing.
gruez 1y ago
>In the US we have this thing called free speech. Requiring non-disclosure in order to get a severance (or to get a settlement for abuse) is not an excuse for doing this. As discussed umpteenth times in every free speech debate ever, "free speech" as enshrined in the legal system only offers protection from the government. There's a broader principle of free speech in general, but it's unclear whether that should be applicable in this case, where two private entities entered into an agreement where one side agreed to cease speech in exchange for money.
- 93po 1y ago
  We have a legal system that allows for private agreements of restricted speech, which can be and is frequently abused by the party in a position of power (in this case, a 2 trillion dollar company). And these agreements are enforced by the government. So it is in a round-about way the government infringing on rights, both by allowing it to happen and also enforcing it.
  - gruez 1y ago
    >which can be and is frequently abused by the party in a position of power (in this case, a 2 trillion dollar company). Define "abuse"? Is it just because Meta is a trillion dollar company? Or that they offered a huge amount? Does that mean the courts should refuse to enforce any sort of agreement between Meta and any individual? If meta decides to offer me (no prior relationship to them) 50k to stop talking shit about them, and I accepted, am I being "abused"? What if I'm a vocal critic? Would that be abuse?
    - riku_iki 1y ago
      > Does that mean the courts should refuse to enforce any sort of agreement between Meta and any individual? not any, but those which cover potential crimes.
      - gruez 1y ago
        Even with a NDA, you can still go to the authorities to report illegal acts. You just can't monetize your past employment in the form of a 500k book deal. Between the public's interest of crimes being prosecuted and the freedom of individuals being able to enter into agreements, I think that's already a pretty fair trade-off.
asveikau 1y ago
Is it that meta is anti-democracy or is it just that Mark Zuckerberg is kind of an idiot? The feeling I get from the book is more towards the latter. Speaking personally, the moment I knew that Zuckerberg knew nothing about politics was circa 2010, when he announced his plan to join forces with Chris Christie to "fix Newark schools". I don't care if you support team red or team blue, but it was obvious to anyone who knew politics at that time that Christie was a con artist. Why waste any amount of time and money on this project destined to fail? If Zuck had any insight and had a goal to do an actual thing and see it work, he would not have. He spent $100 million on that.
- ozozozd 1y ago
  Not trying to defend him but this isn’t a fair characterization of his intellect since he was 15 years younger and tech industry was very interested in doing good back then.
  - asveikau 1y ago
    I am of similar age to him and was in the tech industry at the time. It struck me at the time as a collosally dumb move and proof that he wasn't a smart guy. That is literally the point of my comment. There are a number of possible interpretations. One is that he was incapable of researching how stupid he was being in that moment. Another is that he didn't care about that and he did it only to improve his image. Few of the interpretations I can think of have him looking great.
- jen20 1y ago
  > Is it that meta is anti-democracy or is it just that Mark Zuckerberg is kind of an idiot? Porque no los dos?
- EasyMark 1y ago
  He's not an idiot, he just doesn't think the law applies to him because he's one of the richest people in the world.
BadCookie 1y ago
What about requiring new employees to sign non-disparagement agreements? Maybe companies are getting “smarter” and requiring employees to agree to not say anything negative about their employer from day 1 … not sure about the legality here.
vrighter 1y ago
by saying "we have free speech" in this context, you are inadvertently admitting that you actually don't know what the right to free speech actually is. Rule of thumb: if neither party is the government, free speech is not relevant in any way shape or form.
evilfred 1y ago
[flagged]
- lmz 1y ago
  [flagged]
- EasyMark 1y ago
  Disney can fire people anytime they like if that person isn't meeting company/contractual obligations. What is illegal and that doesn't seem to matter to the current regime is that the FCC chair is saying that major media outlets better watch their step if he (read Trump) doesn't like what they're saying, or they will lose their licenses (implied). Similar things are going on with Pam Bondi going after critics of Trump rather than doing her sworn duty of following the law and upholding the Constitution.
EasyMark 1y ago
>In the US we have this thing called free speech that expression is carrying a lot of water these days. Although libel laws in England are pretty tyrannical in a different way than the current rise of fascism and attempts to use government to hush dissent against the Trump regime . The current FCC chairman and Pam Bondi are trying to silence critics of Trump, VP is saying that trans people speaking out should be committed to insane asylums
btbuildem 1y ago
> is a corporation that is anti-democracy Aren't a vast majority of large corporations inherently undemocratic? They all seem to be organized much more like authoritarian dystopias, with power held by a shadowy cabal (the board), then a king-like figure (CEO), with a court (all the C-levels), then trickling down to a coterie of lesser magnates, viceroys and dukes of all sorts (middle management), all the way down to vassals and peons who do what they are told. There is no democratic process in a corporation, everything is dictated top down. There's the Stasi / secret police / CIA (HR) who spy on everyone and root out then shut down dissent. Every decision is subservient to the Mission, the Vision, etc. They unironically have Five Year Plans. If you take some distance and look at it, corporations are awfully undemocratic. I think it follows they would be anti-democratic when it comes to things outside of their immediate boundaries; to have that power and want it extended beyond, for your advantage, that's inevitable.
- riku_iki 1y ago
  there is no democratic process in a corporation besides board voting, but they could be supportive for outer democratic environment, instead of attacking it.

hliyan 1y ago

I recently heard a US journalist/author named Chris Hedges say something to the effect that the US has the symbols, the iconography and the language of a democracy, but internally, corporates and oligarchs have seized all the levers of power, and that it is reminiscent of the end of the Roman Empire. He also went onto distinguish between corporates and oligarchs, claiming that the two political camps in the US actually represent these two sides (rather than democracy vs. facism or socialism).

imiric 1y ago
Isn't that obvious? When corporations can lobby to influence legislation, pay to get a candidate elected, and CEOs hold positions of power, including the presidency itself, any semblance of democracy is an illusion.
koakuma-chan 1y ago
And why would "corporate" and "oligarchs" fight? Can the same person not be a "corporate" and an oligarch at the same time?
- mapt 1y ago
  Another way of looking at this would be in terms of the millionaire managerial and professional class holding up the Democratic Party versus the interests of the billionaire aristocratic and executive class holding up the Republican Party. The billionaires are far less numerous, have far better ability to coordinate and summon resources, and have interests that diverge farther from the thousandaires who actually do most of the voting, compared to the millionaires.
  - jfengel 1y ago
    The term "holding up" is doing a lot of work here. The Republican party has an extremely enthusiastic voter base. Billionaire money might encourage the enthusiasm but in the end the voters turn out and pull levers. They are sincere in their voting. The Democrats are a bit less enthusiastic, at least at the moment, but in the end it's not the millionaires who pull the levers. It's the rank and file. It's hard to tell how different it would be if we could somehow get the money out of it. But I am wary of assuming that the voters would dramatically change their attitudes. The millionaires and billionaires tune the party's message to what the voters want. They get the spoils but they're also making their voters happy, assuming they win. If they didn't do that, they'd lose. It's possible that the Democrats are more conspicuously failing to give their voters what they want when they win. But it's not obvious to me how they could do that. Most of the suggestions I hear are naive and impractical, and come down to "do the thing I want and many millions of others will see how great that is."
    - econ 1y ago
      For election to work you would have to read [all of] the [not legally binding] election programs, ponder the offerings and make up your own mind. You won't find a single person who does this. Apparently everyone votes by a different mechanism. One that involves a lot of money. Even if everyone was well informed and able to objectively make their own choices that are truly their own. You don't actually have to do anything you wrote in your election program.
      - threatofrain 1y ago
        We don't become legal experts to run a business, we hire lawyers. We don’t become doctors to aid in our own health either. So too should people find ways to delegate and evaluate economic and policy analysis.
        econ 1y ago
        The terrifying reality is that there is no one to delegate to. If we would magically spawn the theoretically ideal candidate who plans to do everything exactly the way you want it done then there is zero chance you will vote for them. This goes for all voters. Exactly 100% of them without rounding anything. https://www.fec.gov/data/candidates/president/?election_year=2024&cycle=2024&election_full=true https://www.fec.gov/data/candidates/president/?election_year... You can't argue you don't need to know any of them because they aren't popular enough. Democracy badly needs a better formula for discovery or some other means to add signal to the noise like a license to drive the country or some financial reward to get a diploma. Maybe we could train an LLM to interview the voter.
- markus_zhang 1y ago
  I wouldn't say corporations and oligarchs are going to fight. I'd say elites infight all the time, but they all agree that the other humans are simply "human resources" and they have the common interests to extract as much value from those fellow humans as possible. Exactly the same model for pretty much all large countries, each with a bit of different "flavour" that the elites learned throughout the centuries, and conveniently serves as one of the topics to divide the human resources.
  - koakuma-chan 1y ago
    I prefer “workforce” over “human resources,” and I believe lots of people voluntarily choose to remain a member of the workforce, as they would rather have a family and live a “simple” life than spend effort to become some kind of entrepreneur or politician.
    - markus_zhang 1y ago
      Our preference is irrelevant. We are resources to them. I’d rather honestly acknowledge that.
      - koakuma-chan 1y ago
        What I said doesn’t conflict with this, just highlighting that’s what people themselves want.
- danaris 1y ago
  I would say that the distinction between the two groups is, roughly: "Corporates" are the leaders of the many large corporations in this country. They want broad protections for corporate power against labour, corporate profits, lowered regulations, etc. "Oligarchs" are the leaders of the few titanic corporations, like Bezos, Musk, and Zuckerberg. They want to become the zaibatsu of modern America, essentially being given total control over the economy divided up between them. There are many things they want that are in common (for instance, the removal of regulations), but that prime desire of the oligarchs is directly at odds with the continued existence and livelihoods of the corporates.
- treyd 1y ago
  Corporates understand that a strong economy is important for the system to be viable long term and that some kind of middle class is a necessary part of it, which they can skim off the top of. Oligarchs don't care about that nearly as much, and are more acutely focused on accumulation of power and wealth and are happy to disassemble productive capacity and force the middle class down to an a working poor class in the process.
  - Barrin92 1y ago
    It's basically the difference between "every one of my workers needs to be able to buy one of my cars" industrial Fordism and what Varoufakis coined techno-feudalism, which does not utilize markets or independent workers but tries to extract value from what are effectively serfs directly. Zuckerberg et al. are obviously emblematic of the latter.
- lupusreal 1y ago
  Why wouldn't they fight? Some level of conflict always occurs within all groups or affiliations. It would be completely unnatural for there to be no conflict.
- rixed 1y ago
  Are they actually fighting?
froh 1y ago
yes. and: kleptocrats. "thieves govern" captures the into-my-pocket better than oligarchs "few govern".
fny 1y ago
It's dangerous to make sloppy comparisons like that. Augustus seized all the levers of power to create the Roman Empire and even developed a cult-like following. Similarly, claiming there aren't two political camps is sloppy in the current environment. Corporates and oligarchs are a completely different animal, and they deserve treatment as such. They are not some homogenous, totalitarian entity: they're more akin to what Rome was before the Empire--a melange of senators fighting about everything while trying to stay rich.
- coliveira 1y ago
  Even Augustus took a few years to complete his project. In the US this is going quite fast.
  - speed_spread 1y ago
    I think we see it happening fast because right now it's just revealing of the power structures that were built over decades.
- KaiserPro 1y ago
  > Augustus seized all the levers of power Octavian was given the levers of power by Julius Caesar. Pompey and Crassus teamed up with Caesar to breakdown the republic. They made huge amounts of cash doing it.
  - fny 1y ago
    My point was that what's happening now is akin to the Roman empires beginnings not its end.
- dimal 1y ago
  Dangerous? What??? How on earth is that dangerous? Of all the insane rhetoric being spouted nowadays, making a historical comparison is dangerous? Can we all please stop calling ideas “harmful” or “dangerous” and just have plain, open debate? That’s what a republic depends on.
constantcrying 1y ago
>and that it is reminiscent of the end of the Roman Empire What a totally ridiculous comparison. The roman empire always was an explicit a dictatorial state. Its end took hundreds of years of internal and external forces tearing it apart as coherent entity. Characterizing it as two factions fighting for power is just bizarre.
- greesil 1y ago
  Maybe he meant the of the Roman Republic, like with the optimates and so on.
- coliveira 1y ago
  The end of the Roman Empire was due to a civil war, where the Church was one of the parties embraced by Constantin.
- sevensor 1y ago
  That’s far from accurate. Augustus positioned himself as the restorer of the Republic after a horrific period of civil war, and cobbled together his authority from existing Republican magistracies, especially the Tribune of the Plebs. The Julio-Claudians at least attempted to maintain the fiction that the Republic was still functioning. Explicitly dictatorial it wasn’t, although actually dictatorial it certainly was.
dimal 1y ago
> reminiscent of the end of the Roman Empire Are you sure he didn’t mean the end of the Roman Republic, which was the beginning of the Principate? The Western Empire would last about another 400 years. We definitely are tracking the end of the Roman Republic. At that point, all constitutional norms had been violated so many times that they were mere suggestions, and political infighting by oligarchs was tearing the republic apart, to the point that people were relieved when Augustus took power. They still had a senate. They still had all the old offices and structures. But everyone knew who was in power. Much like today in the US. We don’t have one Princeps, but we all know that the oligarchs and corporations own the entire political and economic process. They write the rules to suit themselves. And they have common people fighting each other over cultural issues instead of fighting them for the stuff that matters — economic and political power. It’s a fantastic divide and conquer strategy. Unless common people start waking up to who their real enemies are, the American Republic is effectively over.
- dingnuts 1y ago
  I've been hearing this for thirty years and I think that people just like to predict the end times and the Roman empire is what's taught most closely in school
  - dimal 1y ago
    Eh, since the founders were explicitly inspired by the Roman Republic, it’s always been fun to wonder “where are we on the Roman timeline”. But it was about 150 years from when the Gracchi brothers were murdered until Augustus seized power. These things happen over time, not all at once. I don’t see any way to view today’s politics as normal. There is nothing but naked greed and hunger for power at play now. It wasn’t like this even 15 years ago. We’ve been a frog in a pot of water and it’s just starting to boil.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
sva_ 1y ago
I find this comment a bit strange considering > she is being pushed to financial ruin through the arbitration system in the UK, Not the US.
- pseudalopex 1y ago
  Meta are a US company. They took legal action against the author in the US also. And hliyan may have trusted readers to consider if UK politics had the same property.
brandall10 1y ago
There is a great documentary called “The Century of the Self”, which is about the rise of consumerism in lockstep with politics in the United States. The initial primary focus is Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, who is known as the father of public relations. He was incredibly influential during his time, having been a key advisor on most federal administrations from the 20s to the 70s. On the corporate side, early big wins were getting women to smoke at the dawn of the Great Depression, and changing the 'American breakfast' to bacon and eggs. A core thesis of his is freedom in a large democratic state is a bit of an illusion… it needs to be controlled by consumerist impulses, or in other words, indirectly by corporations. Otherwise the all-encompassing hand of totalitarianism is needed. Without one of these mediating factors, the masses become unruly and descend into anarchy and chaos. His late 20s book "Propaganda" is an interesting insight into his early, free from public scorn, view on the matter. It seems overwhelmingly cynical and puppet-masterish, if you will, and he somewhat stepped back from it after finding out how much it had influenced Goebbels. Still, I think it holds strongly as a guidebook for how the US evolved to present day.
- swed420 1y ago
  In addition to Century of the Self, Adam Curtis has tons of other good stuff, too, and it's freely available: https://thoughtmaybe.com/by/adam-curtis/ https://thoughtmaybe.com/by/adam-curtis/
- hliyan 1y ago
  What would his thoughts on India be? It is neither totalitarian nor controlled by corporoates to a level that we seen in the US. It is an extremely large "democracy" with only limited signs of central orchestration. That said, petty corruption and chaos is rampant.
mc32 1y ago
This case is from the UK. Is there some quote you can pull about someone critiquing the governmental system over there and how that’s reflected in this case?

kordlessagain 1y ago

Never sign anything going out the door that isn’t tied to a financial gain.

77pt77 1y ago
But it was tied to that!
SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
"If you don't sign you won't get severance" is exactly that.
- Kranar 1y ago
  Severance is a financial gain. You don't have to accept it.
  - pseudalopex 1y ago
    Their point was kordlessagain's advice would not have changed this situation I think.
  - SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
    Yeah, so in this case the advice "Never sign anything going out the door that isn’t tied to a financial gain." means you should probably sign the NDA.

constantcrying 1y ago

Free speech has always been about the government. Do you not think it is acceptable for companies to fire people for their speech? Should employers just have to keep silent and do nothing when their employees e.g. glorify violence, promote fascism or attack human rights? >Requiring non-disclosure in order to get a severance (or to get a settlement for abuse) is not an excuse for doing this. This seems very reasonable? If you want to attack your employer you are free to do so, why should they pay you for that? >More and more corporations are resorting to the predatory practice of abusing the court system to protect their hide their actions. What are you on about? Companies have always tried to get what they can, it is not some recent trend that companies go after their own (former) employees in court.

moregrist 1y ago
> This seems very reasonable? If you want to attack your employer you are free to do so, why should they pay you for that? The two issues I see here are: NDAs without a public-good exception and forced confidential arbitration. I think there should always be an exception to NDAs when the information is in the public good. I think it’s reasonable to disagree on where that line should be; that’s what legislation and court cases are for. Also, forcing the resolution of this to go through confidential arbitration hides the issues from the public, and doesn’t let us make good decisions on where that line should be.
- gruez 1y ago
  >I think there should always be an exception to NDAs when the information is in the public good. AFAIK that already sort of exists because NDAs doesn't cover you if you're subpoenaed, like if there was a congressional hearing.
  - pseudalopex 1y ago
    A congressional hearing had the author's testimony because of this book.
    - 1y ago

tenuousemphasis 1y ago

[flagged]

netfortius 1y ago

Replace "have" with "had"

user3939382 1y ago

I would say using the court system rather than abusing, simple because IMHO the courts primarily exist to defend corporate rights contrary to the marketing.

gruez 1y ago

>In the US we have this thing called free speech. Requiring non-disclosure in order to get a severance (or to get a settlement for abuse) is not an excuse for doing this. As discussed umpteenth times in every free speech debate ever, "free speech" as enshrined in the legal system only offers protection from the government. There's a broader principle of free speech in general, but it's unclear whether that should be applicable in this case, where two private entities entered into an agreement where one side agreed to cease speech in exchange for money.

93po 1y ago
We have a legal system that allows for private agreements of restricted speech, which can be and is frequently abused by the party in a position of power (in this case, a 2 trillion dollar company). And these agreements are enforced by the government. So it is in a round-about way the government infringing on rights, both by allowing it to happen and also enforcing it.
- gruez 1y ago
  >which can be and is frequently abused by the party in a position of power (in this case, a 2 trillion dollar company). Define "abuse"? Is it just because Meta is a trillion dollar company? Or that they offered a huge amount? Does that mean the courts should refuse to enforce any sort of agreement between Meta and any individual? If meta decides to offer me (no prior relationship to them) 50k to stop talking shit about them, and I accepted, am I being "abused"? What if I'm a vocal critic? Would that be abuse?
  - riku_iki 1y ago
    > Does that mean the courts should refuse to enforce any sort of agreement between Meta and any individual? not any, but those which cover potential crimes.
    - gruez 1y ago
      Even with a NDA, you can still go to the authorities to report illegal acts. You just can't monetize your past employment in the form of a 500k book deal. Between the public's interest of crimes being prosecuted and the freedom of individuals being able to enter into agreements, I think that's already a pretty fair trade-off.

asveikau 1y ago

Is it that meta is anti-democracy or is it just that Mark Zuckerberg is kind of an idiot? The feeling I get from the book is more towards the latter. Speaking personally, the moment I knew that Zuckerberg knew nothing about politics was circa 2010, when he announced his plan to join forces with Chris Christie to "fix Newark schools". I don't care if you support team red or team blue, but it was obvious to anyone who knew politics at that time that Christie was a con artist. Why waste any amount of time and money on this project destined to fail? If Zuck had any insight and had a goal to do an actual thing and see it work, he would not have. He spent $100 million on that.

ozozozd 1y ago
Not trying to defend him but this isn’t a fair characterization of his intellect since he was 15 years younger and tech industry was very interested in doing good back then.
- asveikau 1y ago
  I am of similar age to him and was in the tech industry at the time. It struck me at the time as a collosally dumb move and proof that he wasn't a smart guy. That is literally the point of my comment. There are a number of possible interpretations. One is that he was incapable of researching how stupid he was being in that moment. Another is that he didn't care about that and he did it only to improve his image. Few of the interpretations I can think of have him looking great.
jen20 1y ago
> Is it that meta is anti-democracy or is it just that Mark Zuckerberg is kind of an idiot? Porque no los dos?
EasyMark 1y ago
He's not an idiot, he just doesn't think the law applies to him because he's one of the richest people in the world.

BadCookie 1y ago

What about requiring new employees to sign non-disparagement agreements? Maybe companies are getting “smarter” and requiring employees to agree to not say anything negative about their employer from day 1 … not sure about the legality here.

vrighter 1y ago

by saying "we have free speech" in this context, you are inadvertently admitting that you actually don't know what the right to free speech actually is. Rule of thumb: if neither party is the government, free speech is not relevant in any way shape or form.

evilfred 1y ago

[flagged]

lmz 1y ago
[flagged]
EasyMark 1y ago
Disney can fire people anytime they like if that person isn't meeting company/contractual obligations. What is illegal and that doesn't seem to matter to the current regime is that the FCC chair is saying that major media outlets better watch their step if he (read Trump) doesn't like what they're saying, or they will lose their licenses (implied). Similar things are going on with Pam Bondi going after critics of Trump rather than doing her sworn duty of following the law and upholding the Constitution.

EasyMark 1y ago

>In the US we have this thing called free speech that expression is carrying a lot of water these days. Although libel laws in England are pretty tyrannical in a different way than the current rise of fascism and attempts to use government to hush dissent against the Trump regime . The current FCC chairman and Pam Bondi are trying to silence critics of Trump, VP is saying that trans people speaking out should be committed to insane asylums

btbuildem 1y ago

> is a corporation that is anti-democracy Aren't a vast majority of large corporations inherently undemocratic? They all seem to be organized much more like authoritarian dystopias, with power held by a shadowy cabal (the board), then a king-like figure (CEO), with a court (all the C-levels), then trickling down to a coterie of lesser magnates, viceroys and dukes of all sorts (middle management), all the way down to vassals and peons who do what they are told. There is no democratic process in a corporation, everything is dictated top down. There's the Stasi / secret police / CIA (HR) who spy on everyone and root out then shut down dissent. Every decision is subservient to the Mission, the Vision, etc. They unironically have Five Year Plans. If you take some distance and look at it, corporations are awfully undemocratic. I think it follows they would be anti-democratic when it comes to things outside of their immediate boundaries; to have that power and want it extended beyond, for your advantage, that's inevitable.

riku_iki 1y ago
there is no democratic process in a corporation besides board voting, but they could be supportive for outer democratic environment, instead of attacking it.