alphonsegaston

8 ms·

31.
by alphonsegaston 9y ago
I always suspected that the end goal of the wealthy was to push America into the Authoritarian Capitalist model of China or Russia. I never expected them to be so explicit about it.
32.
by alphonsegaston 9y ago
Because the modern American economy with its tenuousness and inequality is already pretty close to feudalism? Without structurally changing anything, you’re just compounding this problem. You can get yourself thrown in prison and have guara
33.
by alphonsegaston 9y ago
I think the idea behind contemporary UBI discussions is to prevent exactly that kind of populism from congealing. The plan has to be something like introduce UBI as a short term panacea while the wealthy further consolidate their power. Onc
34.
by alphonsegaston 9y ago
I agree that worker ownership of the economy in which they labor would lead to better outcomes for all.
35.
by alphonsegaston 9y ago
How is this different from advocating for feudalism? The wealthy get to continue with unchecked power and advantage, while the poor are now serfs?
36.
by alphonsegaston 9y ago
The idea that you can make high-level strategy choices about security without intimate knowledge of that domain is what needs to go away. That kind of thinking is the product of a business culture designed to keeping rich people with MBAs e
37.
by alphonsegaston 9y ago
I’m pretty sure that’s what Ripple is trying to position themselves as. Whether they pull it off, who knows.
38.
by alphonsegaston 9y ago
Well, I read somewhere the other day that this form of error/attack was conceived of in the academic literature back in 1992. I won’t believe it’s intentional without evidence in that direction, but this is conceivably the kind of obsc
39.
by alphonsegaston 9y ago
I suppose its possible to argue that they are by virtue of the superiority of their UI design and a more robust app ecosystem. In my own experience, I find myself far more impulsive about phone use on an iPhone than when I was using android
40.
by alphonsegaston 9y ago
How could you have been quoting Simone de Beauvoir and then positing that her supposition is a "mistake" made by Feminists? Seems paradoxical on its face?
41.
by alphonsegaston 9y ago
> 1. Admit the mistake in the feminist theory ( One is not born but becomes a woman). Feminists never made this mistake. It's literally the premise of one of the canonical Feminist texts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wik
42.
by alphonsegaston 9y ago
I was referring to the parent’s example and most of Europe adheres to an only moderated form of this ideology anyway. Germany especially.
43.
by alphonsegaston 9y ago
Because the dominant ideology in America (grotesquely) equates Capitalism with justice. The poor and the weak must suffer and die to prove the rightness of Capitalism’s ordering principles. And to stand as an object lesson to anyone who mig
44.
It’s Basically Just Immoral to Be Rich(currentaffairs.org)
6 points by alphonsegaston 9y ago|5 comments
45.
by alphonsegaston 9y ago
You obviously know nothing about Japanese history, because otherwise you’d be aware of Burakumin and the caste system in Japan more broadly. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burakumin Caste-based discrimination was an i
46.
by alphonsegaston 9y ago
Japan may have political “stability,” but it by no means has a low rate of corruption. Aside from the constant back room dealing where politicians hand out government contracts to their friends and supporters, Abe Shinzo’s party also has lo
47.
by alphonsegaston 9y ago
Facebook’s business model is essentially surveillance. Same with Google, who was also involved with illegal, wide-scale wage fixing. Amazon is notorious for labor abuses, and Microsoft’s history on all these fronts is storied. And they all
48.
by alphonsegaston 9y ago
I think it’s more accurate to say that the valley has done an incredible job of dressing up the tactics of organized crime under some weird, half-intelligible fetishism of “disruption.” Most of the things Uber and their ilk do are indisting
49.
by alphonsegaston 9y ago
You’re right - war and oppression are tools used by Capitalists to secure and grow their wealth. Japan, South Korea, and side swathes of Europe are wealthy because of their positions as client states in the American Capitalist Imperium.
50.
by alphonsegaston 9y ago
The proliferation of firearms is a factor, but the main driver is income inequality and racism. You can go to a wealthy white neighborhood in a hard-right place like Texas and there will be plenty of guns. But the cops won’t feel the need t
51.
When Affordable Housing Meets Free-Market Fantasy(dissentmagazine.org)
2 points by alphonsegaston 9y ago|0 comments
52.
by alphonsegaston 9y ago
This is the kind of mythical chauvinism that some Japanese people like to espouse, but it’s by no means true. Fluency is entirely possible as people like Seidensticker, Keene, and many others have proved.
53.
by alphonsegaston 9y ago
Well, that’s the point of schemes like UBI. Pay people off to avoid any sort of fundamental change in ownership or control.
54.
by alphonsegaston 9y ago
It’s fundamentally Capitalist because its intent is to prevent workers from abandoning the authoritarian hierarchy of modern day corporate structures (which have served many quite poorly) and moving towards worker ownership through unions o
55.
by alphonsegaston 9y ago
Than any one person through the lens of an authoritarian hierarchy that’s structured to reinforce the necessity of top-down rule. In reality, all the laborers at Microsoft built it into what it is today. And it (like most companies) are at
56.
by alphonsegaston 9y ago
I think it’s unlikely that Future Zuckerberg is going to behave with anywhere near the benevolence of post-Microsoft Bill Gates. How he tried to pull one over on the public with his “foundation” already demonstrated that quite clearly.
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by alphonsegaston 9y ago
It’s amazing the degree to which “our business model is treating people like garbage by way of tech” has become a justification in and of itself.
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by alphonsegaston 9y ago
The success of privatization is dependent on companies operating within a cultural baseline of decency and accountability. No such culture exists in the US.
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by alphonsegaston 9y ago
It's also literally an Onion article: https://www.theonion.com/new-e-toilet-to-revolutionize-onlin...
60.
by alphonsegaston 9y ago
I don’t have a Facebook account, but I also don’t believe that simply boycotting them is where action against them should end. We need stronger, ethics-based privacy laws that greatly check their psychological manipulation and mass surveill

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