6 ms·

When my sister and I would play monopoly as kids, we had lost the manual so whenever we didn’t like the outcome of whatever happened, we would make up rules abo

• cucumber3732842 6mo ago
  The big reason it's "obvious" when tech megacorps do it is because big tech is new to the game and doesn't have an existing regulatory capture system already up and running and legitimized like medical, civil engineering, energy, agriculture, chemical, etc, do. If this were 3M making nasty stuff for Northrop to put in bombs and drop on brown people or Exxon scheming up something bad in Alaska or bulldozing a national park for solar panels or some other legacy BigCo doing slimy things that are in the interests of them and the government but against the interest of the public they'd have 40yr of preexisting trade group publications, bought and paid for academic and media chatter, etc, etc, that they could point to and say "look, this is fine because the stuff we paid into in advance to legitimize these sorts of things as they come up says it is" though obviously they'd use very different words.
  • SecretDreams 6mo ago
    > If this were 3M making nasty stuff for Northrop to put in bombs and drop on brown people or Exxon scheming up something bad in Alaska or bulldozing a national park for solar panels or some other legacy BigCo doing slimy things that are in the interests of them and the government but against the interest of the public they'd have 40yr of preexisting trade group publications, bought and paid for academic and media chatter, etc, etc, they could point to and say "look, this is fine because the stuff we paid into in advance to legitimize these sorts of things as they come up says it is" though obviously they'd use very different words. My friend, this paragraph needed some periods. I could not follow what you were trying to say - but it seemed interesting enough to consider retyping.
    • Vachyas 6mo ago
      Good comment, and I agree lol I read it twice (admittedly quickly) but couldn't grasp the point even though I felt like it was there.
      • fwip 6mo ago
        It's not really hard to read. If this were a traditionally evil company, the work to legalize the evil things would have started forty years ago.
        • SecretDreams 6mo ago
          Ya I roughly understand that the OP wanted to convey this message, but it was absolutely a hard read the way they conveyed it.
  • GeekyBear 6mo ago
    > big tech is new to the game and doesn't have an existing regulatory capture system already up and running The career officials in the Obama FTC started proceedings for an antitrust lawsuit against Google over a decade ago. The political appointees (of both parties) shut it down. It seems to me that regulatory capture has been working for Google for some time now.
    • tombert 6mo ago
      I mean it's basically an extremely high-stakes version of the (possibly apocryphal) Upton Sinclair quote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." Most people (at least the people I've talked to, which admittedly is somewhat of a lefty bubble but I think even more generally) agree that companies getting to or close to "monopoly" status is a pretty bad thing, and that they should be broken up. Political candidates get a lot of social credit for claiming that they're going to do exactly that. The moment that they actually get into a position where they actually could do something about it, they suddenly remember who their campaign contributors are, and can then create reasons to avoid actually solving any of these problems. Very occasionally we have successes in this field, like the breakup of Standard Oil and AT&T), but of course both of these sort of became toothless since we basically allowed both of these companies to re-acquire each other and form the same problems again. There are similar reasons as to why politicians will occasionally push for regulations to not allow themselves to invest in companies that their policies affect, but somehow manages to never get through. Politicians are very rarely punished for breaking political promises, but often rewarded for making the promises. They are also rewarded by their corporate overlords for breaking these promises.
      • Aerroon 6mo ago
        >they suddenly remember who their campaign contributors are, and can then create reasons to avoid actually solving any of these problems. There are very real concerns when you break up a company though. Rockefeller's wealth shot up a lot when Standard Oil was broken up. That could easily make a politician that's "politician out to get the big companies" into "politician making billionaires richer."
• smallmancontrov 6mo ago
  The word "lawful" always seems to get dragged out when people in power are doing some especially heinous rulemaking, like throwing a hissy fit over a single company trying to voluntarily draw a line at domestic surveillance and fully automated killchains.
  • bko 6mo ago
    A private corporation can choose not to sell to the government. A lot of them do exactly this. A lot of hoops to jump through. However, if they do sell to the government, they shouldn't have some sneaky way to exert control over decision making using their products. We're a country of laws, and for better or for worse, these laws are made by elected officials and those appointed by elected officials. Why an American company wouldn't want American defense to have the most capable tools at their disposal is a different matter all together, but here we are.
    • joshuamorton 6mo ago
      > they shouldn't have some sneaky way to exert control over decision making using their products. why not, many companies have all sorts of rules you agree to when using their products, including many legal ("lawful") things. Are you saying that the government as a client should be unbound by contractual obligations that apply to other clients?
      • throwup238 6mo ago
        Governments negotiate their own contracts with their own terms of service. That’s one of the hoops government contractors jump through.
        • kube-system 6mo ago
          Not only that, but some of the contractual terms are defined by federal acquisition law, et al.
        • thayne 6mo ago
• bko 6mo ago
  I'd prefer our elected officials own the manual, accepting the fact that [person I don't like] could be in power and they can re-write the rules, then a private billion dollar corporation. Especially when it comes to defense.
  • mc32 6mo ago
    Ha! If the Congress did diddly squat about eavesdropping on them by organizations that aren’t supposed to spy on citizens back in the Obama days (we also spied on allies’s governments but that’s kinda what all of them do) there is no hope in them reining things back at all… for mere hoi polloi.
    • bko 6mo ago
      I guess we have to appoint Amodei and Altman as our benevolent dictators to keep Congress in check!
      • vintermann 6mo ago
        They're allowed to say no. The ability I have to say no to you doesn't mean I rule over you.
• caycep 6mo ago
  I was going to post about whether there were still "laws" in the US, but this post gets the point across much better
• TZubiri 6mo ago
  The pentagon is part of the executive, not the legislative, and as such they can not write the 'rules' (law)
  • citadel_melon 6mo ago
    The executive also can’t declare war, yet we are in Iran. Executive orders have stood in for legislation; even though it shouldn’t. What is considered lawful is up to the whims of the pentagon and the other two branches have shown little interest in providing sufficient checks and balances. Maybe 5 years after the pentagon makes an illegitimate legal justification will a judge strike it down: that is if we are lucky.
• avaer 6mo ago
  We need to encourage kids to play and make mistakes more so they can prepare themselves for the real world. Which is really just a bunch of big children with bank accounts, drugs, and weapons.