Powerful people don't think this way. They think they can leverage the authoritarian regime to their own advantage. They're biased to ignore risks and seek out opportunities. That's what got them to their position of success!
This myth that capitalist perpetuate that the rich are not the government is the best lie out there.
The rich are the government. They are the national interests, countries' industries' is their property.
Look at how Bill Gates relationship with government changes by the year and by the subject for a great example.
The government is the ORGANIZED rich. It's not "everything Bill says goes".
You and me tho, the rest of us millions? We trust strangers that market themselves well, vote and then, just hope they do good by us.
Some are, many/most aren't.
For some rich guys whole point of being rich is to be maximally independent.
Some billionaires are all kinds of weird flavor of Anarcho Capitalist (completely anti government), libertarian (small government), objectivist (suspicious of government and against overbearing regulations and mob control).
Not all, but many. I think there is an important distinction between independent minded successful people and crapitalists, the ones who collude with the government and enforce their fortunes via regulatory capture.
Not every rich person is obsessed with controlling the world and other people.
Many just want to live their own lives, and want as little as possible interaction with the government.
I'm talking about the super rich.
Thr super rich have to be the government to be super rich and the little capitalists just ride the wakes made by the big guys.
These ideologies you mention are just political stances made by the rich in order to promote their measures amongst the poor.
Objectivism was made by Ayn Rand and it was promoted so much because it defended capitalism. They disseminate these ideas in order to promote their stances.
Libertarianism and ancapism are inconsistent because it pretends that large capitalists wouldnt immediately organize themselves into another large state power. A state is necessary to not have all out war between the powerful.
Ask any political science major and they dont take these ideas at face value because these ideologies cant exist as such.
They are more like life style politics than real political frameworks.
I suspect the reason they are even espoused is because they represent an immediate weakening of government regulation that can increase profits. The capitalists want people to think it can exist so they can have more power.
But a true libertarian or ancap reality is a pipe dream. Its true purpose is to create less oversight and thus more profits. Your average Joe, like you or me, has about 0 benefit from this.
Can we have an “AI” post a reminder of this every time someone mentions secret world governments?
Do you really think you control the government? That it is democratic?
But it's not new to me, I've seen hundreds of comments just like it.
It just stood out to me because it doesn't appeal to any facts, or anything you would expect in this commentariat - just a bunch of pretty low resolution, low-brow opinions.
It was an intentionally bananas statement. As I clearly stated.
Therefore, corporations should have exactly 0 influence in governments, and billionaires should have the same influence as any citizen: one vote, and whatever influence they can peddle from a soapbox in a park.
This is obviously impossible because billionaires can buy TV spots. This is why governments under capitalism almost inevitably become extensions of corporations, which is what the OP comment means. In a system where capital = power, then, accumulation of capital means accumulation of power. You accumulate power, you use it to allow you to accumulate more power, you use it to allow you to accumulate more power... and so on.
I'm skeptical there's any solution to this within capitalism - I don't think highly socialized capitalism will work long term since the profit generating algorithms (corporations) will play within the rules to accumulate just enough of an edge to wedge their foot into government enough to get a smidge of influence, which they will leverage to weaken restrictions on corporations, which will allow them to get more influence, which will lead to them weakening restrictions further, and so on.
So long as capital can be converted into any power at all, I think the system will inevitably trend towards late stage capitalism / corpotocracy / plutocracy.
Do you believe billionaires should have more say in government policy than you do? Why? Why wouldn't a billionaire use more say to help themselves even more at your expense? They clearly love hoarding wealth and power, so, would it not be fair to say they'd like to do more of that?
Consider this: the current administration has received gifts from private corporations in return for more lenient tariffs. Or consider the amount of law projects passed through congress directly from large corporations with their logo still on the paper. And this is just the blatant tip of the iceberg the current administration is brazen enough to show publicly.
> absolutely baffling to you and which probably makes a hundred obvious counter-arguments pop up in your head.
I can probably find a hundred obvious examples of conflict of interests, quid-pro-quos, or otherwise pro-corporation anti-consumer for any administration in history. But in the end, the proof is in the pudding. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, while the government is issuing gold cards with the president's face on them for multi-millionaires to bring their business.
I'd be glad to hear a few of those hundred obvious counter-arguments.
>Consider this: the current administration has received gifts from private corporations in return for more lenient tariffs
Who better understands where capital restrictions should be applied: this current administration (aka. Trump) or the businesses that grew large enough to buy a seat at the table or can afford to steer policy via "gifts"?
>Or consider the amount of law projects passed through congress directly from large corporations with their logo still on the paper.
Is a person sitting in congress fully cognizant of what is happening in all facets of the economy and have an understanding of what needs to be implemented today to pave the way for the next 10 years and beyond? Why would we not seek input from the industries requiring regulation?
>The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer
Yet this is a golden age by every measure. Zoom out on your timescale and there has never been a more prosperous and peaceful time to be alive. Quality of life has tremendously improved and the possibility of striking out on your own and making it big has never been more attainable. Yes, there will always be people sitting at the top with massive power and wealth, but the average person isn't doing too bad.
Should be applied for what purpose? What's the purpose of the government and what's the purpose of a corporation? When the latter is strongly influencing the former, why is it difficult to entertain the idea that their purpose and interests align?
> Why would we not seek input from the industries requiring regulation?
There's a difference between seeking and weighing input, and simply passing along legislature proposals without even looking at it. This is a strawman.
> Yet this is a golden age by every measure.
This isn't guaranteed to improve or even remain forever. And it really depends where you look. Plenty of war, misery and suffering to go around. And even in safe countries the lack of education, healthcare, financial stability is causing enough stress that people start favoring authoritarian options. That's not a great sign for the future. Just because most of us are doing better than our ancestors, doesn't mean we're going in the right direction or that we're doing the best we can. No progress is achieved by being content with the status quo, and the present is pretty miserable for a lot of people. Should we wait until a terrible war wipes out half the planet before we consider maybe changing things?
But I think that's beside the point. The argument being discussed is whether corporate entities parabolically "are" the government.
But a country needs material resources to exist, right? Some of these are food, shelter, energy, health, entertainment and security.
These are all private enterprises in a capitalist state. For example, the energy sector is a group of capitalist enterprises. The energy sector is also at the same time something the population needs.
Therefore it is also crucial to the nation, its a national security.
They country would go to war in order to secure resources for the energy industry because it is a part of national security.
Another: walmart is americas veins and its a group of peoples property. Walmart is national security.
The fact that some of these are publicly traded does not change their relationship to ownership.
The theory of markets is that anyone can compete. That keeps people from abusing customers because they would go to someone else. Except that then powerful interests capture the system to have rules inhibiting rather than facilitating competition, and the market consolidates and that stops working.
The theory of the government is that everyone gets a vote. That keeps people from abusing citizens because they would vote the bums out. Except that then powerful interests capture the system to have rules that create a two party system so people have fewer choices, centralize rule-making power in the areas that were supposed to have local control so people can't vote with their feet and then that stops working.
It's not fundamentally different problems, it's the same one. Consolidation of power, also known as centralization. People find ways to corrupt the system to take away your alternatives.
One of the ways they've found is to put half the people on Team Government and the other half on Team Markets and get them to fight each other when they should both instead be working together to fight the autocrats and create systems more resistant to them.
This shouldn’t be surprising. Political competitive advantage is even taught in business schools, as Michael E. Porter explains in Competitive Strategy.
The only way to counter it is through competition: support companies that offer substitute services and stop playing into Google’s and Apple’s hands by calling for more regulations.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/30/how-google-and-amazon-bankro...
[2] https://www.iccr.org/resolutions/lobbying-expenditures-discl...
I think the UK is ultimately going to roll back this law. I don’t think this means that iCloud E2E is hostile to Apple or its users. I think Apple is going to win.
The war isn’t won by telling people to use GPG https://moxie.org/2015/02/24/gpg-and-me.html
Tangent, a friend and I started using Delta Chat with a chatmail relay and it's incredibly friendly to get started, and hides the fact GPG tech is being used from the user; one can export a bundle of the key data as needed and easily copy the key profile to a second device over local wifi (I was impressed at how smooth it was).
Not that I've kept track, but Delta Chat's UX is probably the first easy, no-nonsense implementation of using GPG tech as a foundation but keeping it away from the user experience I've encountered (and liked). It has it's pain points but I mean it just works and my buddy and I chat all day over it using a public relay.
Would you mind explaining? I don't see how that's evidence.
I can't say the same for the smaller services.
I don't have any grandmothers still alive but would certainly suggest iCloud for all family members.
(But, FWIW, I copy down everything from iCloud annually and store on a portable 1TB drive to have my own cloud-backup.)
Yeah, back then Apples iCloud might have been the best suggestion.
If you are trying to extrapolate from the past - which is a good thing in general - do not go back ONLY 14 years from now, but try a bigger time span, too.
I was born in Germany. When I extrapolate from the past on ANYTHING, I at least always start in the year 1933.
No, not a good idea if you expect that within your lifespan some entity might be able to be forced to tell a regime where you are hiding right now.
Taking control of your own data is shitloads of work, I and understand people do not have time it, and have other priorities.
I am just making my point here on how to better extrapolate and project from the past towards the future.
That's not a physical law, but just the result of the current technological landscape.
As failure modes go, not great, but I'd say strictly less bad for the average user than losing photos you didn't plan to delete
Those corporations are part of the problem, not the solution.
Local, doesn't need encryption since there's no middle in E2E that you need protection against, and simple.
Grandma can setup ~/.zshrc `alias bak=cd ~/phonephotos && adb pull ...` to make it even simpler.
You think the OS vendor is unable to snoop on data written to 3rd party clouds from their devices?
Did they even really try?
As far as iCloud "alternatives" go... Android doesn't offer ANY legitimate syncing infrastructure to compete with iCloud, open or not.
If you have to install it, though, developers can't count on it being available to all or even most users.
Those are two different markets
The point is to sync application data between native apps running on different (and even different kinds of) devices. PIM-style data (calendar, contacts, notes, bookmarks, and so forth) probably comes first for most people. Apple has also added useful stuff like Wi-Fi passwords and E-mail account configurations.
And then developers can create their own entries in the iCloud data store for their own apps. This is hugely useful.
I'm not aware of any similar facility that comes with Android, but I'd be happy to hear about it if there is.
Regardless, though, if it's not built into the OS, developers can't rely on it being present on a majority of users' phones.
I'm sure someone in a board meeting saw something about GrapheneOS and LineageOS and Cyanogen and feels like if they de-open Android, some (or most) of those users will move to vanilla Android, and that will lead to profits.
I'm not saying that they're right about this; I think ultimately very few (if any) people actually know how to run businesses and it's all about giving an appearance of maximizing profitability, and as long as it leads to a potential short term stock boost then these executives get their huge bonuses and they can just blame the next guy when things break.
This isn't really theoretical; look at how Jack Welch took one of the most respected companies in the world, more or less integrated ponzinomics to temporarily bump the stock prices, and 20+ years later GE is kind of a joke and isn't even on the S&P500 anymore.
Posting this from my lineage phone.
The phone was the end of open computing, the tech companies obtained an iron grip on the platform, this time with fully accepted total monitoring and data collection down to everything you say, hear, everywhere you go, and with smartwatch biosensors, everything you feel. The only thing left is to get smart glasses and they will know everything you see. Smell they can probably interpolate.
It happened over a decade ago, and that might as well be 100 years ago in modern attention spans. All the governments have to do is pay the companies money, or simply force-legislate, or threaten under the table for all that info, and for permanent forever access to active tracking and monitoring.
AI provides all the analysis they need to watch the firehose. It's all there.
At this point it doesn't matter if an alternative comes. It'll be such the minority, that the social graph will fill all the holes. And they can simply track your IMEI regardless from the towers, listen in with other nearby microphones/phones. There is no escape.
All that remains is for the key to be turned for worse-than-1984 authoritarianism. It's right there, ready for the AI-empowered 50% of consumption controlled, 90% of stocks owned oligarchy to use.
Surveillance on the internet is challenging to avoid, but internet surveillance and tracking doesn't extend to (outside-of-browser) local compute.
That said, there might be stuff that's actually using open source Android for profit. For example, the Nook Glowlight Plus, which runs a modded version of Android, doesn't appear to have any direct or even indirect references to Android anywhere (and I had to contribute a bit to the discourse to even get the rooting to work [1]). I have no ideas about the inner dealings of Barnes and Noble, but it wouldn't surprise me if they're running a completely forked version of FOSS Android and aren't paying a dime to Google for it.
I suspect these are the things that Google is trying to crack down on.
[1] https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=360563&pa...
Why does Apple need to do extra work and increase support? The average user really doesn't care and choices just make it more complicated.
> The UK probably wouldn't have thought of the idea of
The UK has lost the plot long ago. It's been drama after drama.
The gatekeepers.
Apple created a product, not just the iPhone but a whole ecosystem that’s supposed to help the user feel secure. There’s isn’t the only product out there and as long as they’re not preventing new competitors, everyone needs to back off.
Everyone who is not a public service is just "making a product", but when your product is actually half of all endpoints for digital services and communication and you insist on not handing control to the users, then you effectively control half the infrastructure.
Oh well that’s not new. Apple has operated in China, Saudi Arabia, and Russia.
So the idea that they would be hesitant to dip their feet into complying with less savory governments is… laughable.
The current political landscape really isn’t new whatsoever. It might even be less authoritarianism overall than when Apple started in the 80’s.
Tech bros helped Israel genocide Gaza. Tech bros are pro-authoritarianism.
If Apple had supported open iCloud alternatives for backup and other services from day one, it woudn't even be a discussion now. The UK probably wouldn't have thought of the idea of mandating against E2E encryption because it would be self evident it would actually just churn people to alternatives where they have less leverage and visibility. But Apple couldn't resist bricking up the walled garden and now it's hostile to both them and their users, and to be honest, everyone on the planet since it is obvious that once this happens in the UK it will be silly for every government everywhere not to follow suit.