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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • If wielding power in our “democracy” is so complicated that we must exclude non-experts isn’t that an indictment of our democracy? What is it about the legislative and executive process that people are ignorant of?

    While I am skeptical of the celebrity as politician trend which has been prominent over the last few decades; especially on the right. I don’t think lack of experience is the problem with the trend.

    Put aside what you think about Trump’s political project for a moment. He was effective at giving conservatives what they wanted. Tax cuts and Supreme Court seats. Despite having zero legislative and executive experience. You could say the same thing about Reagan and perhaps Schwarzenegger.

    I agree, expecting a strongman to come in and save us from all our political issues is problematic. We shouldn’t recreate feudalism. We need to learn to organize ourselves into a base of democratic power that we can wield towards our broad economic interests.

    But at the same time our media apparatus runs on spectacle, it takes someone with the charisma of John Stewart to be taken seriously by mainstream power brokers. Perhaps he could breakthrough the spectacle and kickstart a new progressive era that could enable those democratic ends.

    Because the alternative to charisma for gaining political legitimacy is going through the political system. And the longer you’re in that system the more time that system has to influence you towards ends that want to stop progress. Just look at Jamal Bowman and John Fetterman.


  • The reason why subsidies in the US lead to corruption and subsidies in China lead to innovation has nothing to do with how long the industries have been subsidized.

    The US subsidizes industries to bailout corporate executives that made bad decisions.

    China subsidizes workers who innovate towards ends that we know we need to be working towards as a species. Such as building electric vehicles to address climate change.

    Even if the economy worked how you’re suggesting addressing climate change would be a worthy investment. It’s an end that has been obvious that we should be investing in for decades. The US refuses to do it because it would take power out of the hands of the corporate executives who they are busy bailing out.

    Well, where do you think the money for subsidies comes from? Taxes.

    This is logically incoherent. Money doesn’t exist in nature my dude.

    Take out a physical dollar and look at it… what does it say on it? If you do this you will find it says it’s a note from the federal reserve.

    Every US dollar in existence was originally spent into the economy by the federal reserve which is managed by the US government. That is a matter of fact. To suggest money comes from taxes is incoherent. Taxes are how the government destroys money not how it creates money.

    Now maybe to control inflation we should take money out of the economy through taxes. Especially in places where money is being mismanaged… if we do, the aforementioned corporate executives seem to be at the top of the list of places where large amounts of money is being mismanaged. Given that in the context of the automotive industry China is managing their wealth better than the US.


  • Yeah, I’m not sure I agree that YouTube wants their platform to shrink. Even if you don’t watch ads you are still giving them your data which they can monetize.

    Personally I would be willing to pay for YouTube premium but not under the current terms. 1. If I’m paying for the service they should no longer collect and sell my data. 2. Allow me to have a YouTube-only account not connected to other Google services and 3. The current pricing is a bit high.

    They can offer these terms or I’ll continue to use them logged out with Adblock. Or they can continue to enshitify and eventually their platform will start to shrink which will make the data they sell to advertisers less valuable.



  • I don’t remember them saying that specifically. But we did spend a lot of time on supply and demand curves which heavily implies that.

    To be fair to my econ101 class for a moment when I took that class it was during the Obama years and that was a bit before progressivism made the come back it has now. A lot of people were still Fukuyamaists.

    I think economics is a pretty complicated subject that is deeply intersecting with ideology. It maybe impossible fully to disentangle how the economy works with how it should work. To expect kids just out of high school to critically examine all the nuances of a field beyond the assumptions they grew up with, while simultaneously learning the basics of that field is a pretty tall order. And if the experts at the time are moving away from that way of thinking anyway, why bother?

    Of course in retrospect they probably should have bothered. But that’s just how the flow of history has to work I guess.

    Edit: There’s some nuance and detail I could probably add to that conclusion. But I’m running out of steam for tonight.





  • When Plato asserted that man was a featherless biped, Diogenes stood, brandished the bald chicken and shouted, “Behold—a man!” Plato, perhaps missing the point of Diogenes’ criticism, then continued to amend his definition to “featherless biped with flat, broad nails.

    It has been known for millennia that men are featherless chickens. Get with the program people.


  • Who cares about running things on Windows 95, or 98, or ME for that matter? Well… ME. Obviously I’m not regularly using any of them today, but some of my most formative memories were made in this clunky boxy world. I didn’t really grow up with a lot of games or game consoles, but we had a computer and with the kind of patience you only have as a kid, I figured out things to be excited about. Just like watching movies and YouTubers would inspire me to want to make my own videos, I would use computers and be completely in awe of how people could come together to make an operating system. Little things would fascinate me like how did they use dots on a screen to make something look like it was 3D? It inspired me to try writing my own code and making my own icons. I would spend hours trying to make stuff even close to what I was seeing. We talk a lot about preservation nowadays, video games, and software in general, is in a uniquely tough situation because more than any other artform it’s tied to the medium it was released on. And more often than not, it’s just not financially viable to change that. Imagine if the only way to watch an old movie on a new TV was for the crew to go back and re-film half of it in 4K. I mean that didn’t stop George Lucas from trying, but you get my point. Sure, an operating system is more of a tool than a work of art, more of a butter churn than a Michelangelo, but that being said, it’s also something that was designed to connect with people. To make this cold metal machine feel like it was actually friendly and approachable. And it connected with me and helped inspired me to make things. It’s a big reason why I do what I do today. Preservation isn’t just about being able to use something. It’s not just about just having a virtual machine or an old computer lying around. It’s about keeping it alive in the modern world.

    —MattKC (in the above video)