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https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/02/01/the-u-s-mili...
There have been some salient events that may have altered that perspective in the intervening 18 months.
I just checked and there's still an old .gif image in the center of one of the websites with an upraised red fist.
A lot of those folks are security researchers, CISOs, network engineers, and software devs now.
I get the sense that because people can think of a few examples of mercenary security people or a few white supremacist groups that "hack" that this is somehow a refutation. It's not. You know about these people because 1) they usually are mean and suck and 2) they are outliers.
As you say: the phreaking / hacking / hobbist subcultures have always been collectivist by nature and the product of those subcultures will always chafe at the profit motive.
Ask them to swap their standard of living with that of someone living without the influence of empire and you'll get nothing but hard stares.
(based on FY 2025 budget proposal )
category, billions, % of federal spending
Social Security 1,543 21.2%
Medicare 936 12.9%
Medicaid 589 8.1%
Food Stamps (SNAP) 94 1.3%
WIC 8 0.1%
Section 8 33 0.5%
Defense 900 12.4%
Other Entitlement Programs 1,168 16.1%
Other Agencies (Non-Defense Discretionary) 1,029 14.2%
Based on their omission I assume you're computing these numbers with them split out but it hardly seems fair to say you're spending "900" on defense when the total cost of paying that "900" is going to be much more since you had to borrow.
It's like saying a house only costs 1M when you end up paying over 1M in interest as well as the principal for 2M.
Net_Interest $965 billion, 13.3%
1. African Americans were not Americans, or
2. African Americans, the victims of slavery, somehow benefited from it?
I would disagree with both of those assertions.
Further, consider that a vast majority (90%+) did not own slaves. Were non-slave-owners beneficiaries of slavery? What about poor, unskilled whites, who had their own wages effectively suppressed due to the negligible labor costs of slavery - were they really net beneficiaries of slavery? They certainly were not the main victims, but that doesn't automatically make them beneficiaries, either. Slavery was overwhelmingly a horrific practice by wealthy elites for wealthy elites, not by all white people for all white people.
I was never talking about right or wrong, I was talking about whether people are willing to sacrifice their standard of living substantially just to be "right" about something.