One is a physical dependence, the other is a psychological dependence.
80 karma · joined April 17, 2017
[1] Could have come from: Can American Capitalism Survive?, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, maybe Enlightenment Now.
[2] It could very well be luck: https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.07068
Most likely something from The Food Lab when talking about food and science.
I also think there are other intangible benefits to conscripted service aside from exposing people to a wide diversity of their country. We were able to end the Vietnam war because we had a draft. We’ve been at war with terror for 19 years with no end in sight. Too few families are affected now and the nation doesn’t have the will to stop this forever war.
I do generally agree that socializing in the context of killing people is probably not ideal. That said, a very small part of the military actually kills people. The vast majority of the military is either in a support role, or do not find themselves in a situation where they actually need to kill someone. So, I want to discount your first paragraph a bit. That said, I support the idea of a 2 year mandatory service which unlocks benefits like tuition (university, trade, etc). I don’t think that service needs to only be military - I would happily revive the Civilian Conservation Corps, use the Peace Corps, etc to fulfill that service.
I will put forth the argument that profit is not be the sole motive for any organization. That is a relatively new and immature [1] way of thinking about economic activity which ignores the context and environment in which economic activity takes place. Profit above all else should be considered the false narrative that it is [2]. Even if we did consider profit to be a primary motivation for an organization, that ignores that the organization is composed of people who should care about their fellow man and work to reduce the chances and effects of injuries in the people who labor for them. I will go further and propose that putting profit above the long term health of players is short-termism, a disease that affects far too many today. In fact, this disease of thinking is so bad that the executives of some of the largest corporations now need to explicitly tell people to stop thinking like that [3]. Ignoring the dangers of traumatic brain injury could have negative consequences for the long-term profit of the NFL - through lawsuits, negative publicity, and less productivity from the players.
1: See more here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250185983
2: https://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/academics/clarke_business_...
3: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/business/business-roundta...
OP, your insinuation is that PRISM weakened US networks, but that is a misunderstanding of what the program actually did. Wikipedia:
>The actual collection process is done by the Data Intercept Technology Unit (DITU) of the FBI, which on behalf of the NSA sends the selectors to the US Internet service providers, which were previously served with a Section 702 Directive. Under this directive, the provider is legally obliged to hand over (to DITU) all communications to or from the selectors provided by the government.[38] DITU then sends these communications to NSA, where they are stored in various databases, depending on their type.
I personally think it's important to understand what types of surveillance our government is doing and not listen to FUD on what people think they are doing. In this case, there's no weakening of a network. The FBI provides a selector (email) to the service provider, and the provider uses their own systems to retrieve the data and send it back. The "direct line" that many people reference is to the database of selectors, so that FBI can push it directly to the provider.
https://www.huffpost.com/highline/article/capitalist-takeove...
If you look holistically at what happened, you're more likely to find why so much moved to Asia. Geographically speaking there may have been closer low-wage countries, but distance alone does not determine where you can build appropriate facilities.
Geologically, China has access to large ports, allowing large amounts of tonnage to flow in and out. You have a generally easy path from China to California. Eastern Europe is out because you can't easily ship to and from. Similarly, jungles and mountains in Latin/South America and Africa keep large manufacturing bases from being built. Africa lacks sufficient ports - its largest ships 1/10 the tonnage that Shanghai does.
At a local political level, you have governments willing to subsidize manufacturing and tolerate certain working conditions that other governments wouldn't. From an international perspective, you have incentives to bring capitalism to the borders of previous socialist countries as a destabilization measure (large increases in US-China trade in the 80s).
Not to say that Snowden planned to "defect" to Russia. But we're seeing how skillfully the FSB played the Trump campaign. Let's consider the possibility that they played Snowden and Greenwald as well.
Read this article. Seriously. Ignoring any potential "actual" harm his business practices may have inflicted, he is a toxic person who doesn't care what his effects his trolling has in the real world. He's inspiring people to threaten and harass people online. Someone took pizzagate seriously enough to act on it in the real world - how long until someone does the same here and shows up at Lauren's or her parent's house, or actually rapes her?
NSA cannot request GCHQ to (illegally) spy on you. If the NSA acquires legal grounds to surveil you, such as through the FISC, they may. Although, given that a US citizen is much more likely to use US based service providers, they would likely work with the FBI to obtain your communications than go overseas. http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/524001r.pdf
> C1.1.4. DoD intelligence components shall not request any person or entity to undertake any activity forbidden by Executive Order 12333 (reference (a)).
Similarly, GCHQ cannot ask NSA to illegally spy on you. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/section/1
> it shall be the duty of the Secretary of State to secure that no request for assistance in accordance with the agreement is made on behalf of a person in the United Kingdom to the competent authorities of a country or territory outside the United Kingdom except with lawful authority.
And of course you may assume that such agencies violate these governances, but that would show a lack of understanding of the bureaucratic nature of such agencies.