consonants

Imma gonna make a software analogy.

Society is like a framework you build upon, without the scaffolding there to hold you up and none of what you accomplished would be possible. None. In turn, it is our responsibility to manage the upkeep of society.

I grew up on open source software. I started using Debian when I was still in grade school. Without it, many of us wouldn't be doing what we are now.

In advocating that volunteering charity as a solution to society's ills, you need to consider the cases that charity simply can't or won't make a meaningful impact on. You also have to factor in the marketability, trends, and prejudice that will invariably select equally worthy social causes over another. We've seen how without a proper safety net, the public at large will let the sick and poor rot, then charities and business went on just as usual and profits and donations were better than ever. Yet we still denied the mentally ill the healthcare they needed to take care of themselves. We vilified and locked up the poor and minorities.

Business as usual hasn't addressed what didn't directly benefit business (why would it?). Think of the cases that open source software tackled as a community that lead a richer software environment. We were no longer at the whim of the walled-garden software giants. We saw how without proper disruption in business as usual we were screwed.

Remember, we are lucky and privileged to be in a position where we can almost assuredly find (self)employment on our own terms and be guaranteed high salaries. That can change, and you can bet that employers will jump at any opportunity to bring costs down so in the long run our position will be whittled to maximize profit. The next generation of programmers will experience lower entry level pay + benefits and that trend will follow them throughout their life. They will never see the level of privilege we experience now. This is the trend almost every middle class profession has seen in the last 30 years.

We can effectively be exiled from the walled-garden, and every paycheck you employer hands you is another reason to find a way to replace you. The vast majority people are experiencing this.

We created an environment where there is no alternative to the pittance the wealth giants feel like granting us. It gave us a shitty software environment and locked down hardware, and it never addressed the scope of the problems government, welfare and public works solves.

>And why do I owe it to society as a whole and not some particular individuals?

When you pay for your meal at a restaurant, are you only paying the specific people who prepared and handled your food? Again, specific individuals didn't accomplish anything in a vacuum. You are a by product of society as a whole just as your meal was the product of the restaurant as a whole.

>If you feel your wages are too low, negotiate for higher ones. If that doesn't work, accept it or quit.

Labor rights in this country are so laughable that this isn't a realistic an option. Any attempt towards that end such as simply unionizing has been eroded away by the law written to favor the owners of capital.

Enterprise software is about long-term maintainability, compatibility, and comprehensive support for all included components. Pulling packages from npm and the like unfortunately will not satisfy those prerequisites.

Tell me more about how the non-aggression principle absolves you of any social responsibility. You didn't earn your money in a vacuum outside of society, you earned it with the implicit knowledge that you will be taxed while reaping the real benefits those tax dollars and the rest of society provided you.

It's an unfortunate opinion to hold, as anyone who opposes is violent and abusive thug in your worldview. It's incredibly childish mental gymnastics that people who feel that they owe nothing to society adopt to justify their greed while they take, take, take the fruits of our society.

Machines are predictable and trustworthy; humans are shifty, fickle, and expect things like 'rights' and 'livable wages'.

First they came for the computer janitors, and I did not speak for I was not a computer janitor.

It's clear that you have a very limited view of humanity. Go out and meet some people, and learn their motivations and what drives them.

>Being a single mom in Western nations is mostly a business model anyway

Can you expound on this?

Tell me again how taxation is theft.

If you think the majority of people would just lay their lives to waste because they don't need to doing the bidding of others just to survive, then you are wrong. 99% of able-bodied and able-minded adults would not succumb to idlery.

Applying for SSI/SSID is an incredibly dehumanizing process. It takes over a year if you are lucky. You will be denied for any reason they can possibly find. It is guaranteed you will be denied for your first application. You have to prove you are disabled to them (disgusting really). You must have documentation. It goes on and on, but they honestly hope most applicators either die in the interim or just give up on 'improving themselves'.

Really, if there is a miniscule amount of people who will abuse the system it does not at all outweigh the good it provides. If your qualm is with said abusers, profile, detect, and prosecute them. Society is not going to collapse.

Okay, that puts this into perspective:

>> This has nothing to do with socialism.

>Redistribution of wealth is a core concept of socialism, and that's what this program effectively achieves. The resources come from heavier taxation from the federal government on the bigger economic centers of Brazil. So I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.

You two are arguing around two definitions of socialism, the OP is using the standard definition and you are using your own heuristic.

>I believe that a state that taxes and redistributes wealth is enforcing some level of common ownership, so acting under socialist principles.

This doesn't follow. If they were abolishing property rights, then yes you might have a point, but this is nothing new. It doesn't erode away any of the problematic power relations in a pre-socialist economy.

It's like equating the following:

>There are many ways to spend tax money that aren't directly related to welfare: military, infra-strucure for the private sector (docks, airports), industry, research...

with fascism.

It bears a resemblance but upon closer inspection is absolutely nothing of the sort.

I'm also curious as to why you don't classify the above corporate welfare as socialism as well.

Genuinely curious, at what point does taxation become socialism?

I'm the conceited attitude that implies that poverty exists as a function of population and not, you know, because of a class of wealth hoarders.

>But many have chosen it, often in part due to (alcohol) addiction.

It's a crime that a person with a disease can be literally left in the gutter by society and then be told they chose to be there.

>I've given a bag of food to homeless panhandlers who gave me a dark look because they wanted actual money. Why?

There are many necessities a person will need that aren't just food and require money.

If you talk with people who work with the homeless the first thing they'll tell you is that there is, surprise surprise, not enough personal supplies (toiletries, clothing) nor food nor shelter to adequately address those who need their care. If no one is being turned down, it is because they are at maximum capacity.

I love threads like this because it brings people like you out of the woodwork. It's like gazing into the abyss.

An appeal to nature (an untenable one at that) and a lack of understanding of scope on how natural selection works is just the beginning.

>If we artificially remove any appearance of shortage, of a need to struggle, we remove the incentive to work.So we need to imitate nature at least in some respects. But that goal cannot be achieved if we "improve the circumstances" of everyone in need.

Approaching this from a different perspective, it removes the need to do the bidding of others for sustenance. People don't, in general, want to fall to idlery. It opens an opportunity for organizations not solely fueled by the profit motive. The thing about society is that it doesn't necessarily have to model a romanticized return to natural order, especially when we have the ability to overcome obstacles like 'worrying about where next meal will come from' or 'having no clean water'. I will argue that today, we have the ability to eradicate the circumstances in which poverty develops either through minimum income initiatives or a more drastic change to how society is structured.

>In short, if we try to fix the problem of poverty, we will make everyone poor. That's history's lesson.

I'd absolutely love for you to provide some examples from history. I have one for you as well, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome

It's telling that you feel you can deem some people as being beyond help from a position of absolute rationality as if being an observer grants you a minutiae of perspective into their situation.

Stupid? Effectively intercepting telecommunications from not only within and with the consent of the 'big players' networks, but also assuring they achieve total surveillance through compromising undersea cables is quite the feat. Storing data until they have the machine power to break encryption strikes me as clever and prudent, not stupid.

Stupid is disparaging an entity that has engineered around entire industry and international infrastructure to accomplish their goals.

But yea, botnet sounds like its right on the money. When does the NSA's Utah data center go online?

This is easily the most insightful post in this thread, it is unfortunate that anyone downvoted you.

You are mistaken.

This is the landing page for the leak: http://wikileaks.org/the-gifiles.html

Linkbaiting is on the submitter. Wikileaks has done no disservice here.

Counterpoint: capitalists and the growth of inequality. I find it hard to believe that a group of people who act in complete self interest can or should efficiently and effectively distribute vital resources. See: oil, diamonds, and commodities in general.

Can you provide evidence that a centralized economy is inefficient?

The labor system is not at all comparable to socialism. Try feudalism.

Not at all. Incan society had a caste system, nobles, royalty, etc. Nobles owned estates and laborers. Workers did not own the means of production.

Sounds like feudalism to me. Your friend seems to have a tenuous grasp on what Marxism is, but still uses it as a pejorative; which is unfortunate.

>There was no market because that culture was run by theocratic totalitarian blood thirsty central planners

This implies that markets would have arisen in Incan society but were suppressed. Is there evidence of markets organically manifesting in Incan society?

That doesn't prevent the 99% of Tor users accessing hidden services exposing the location of the service to whoever is operating the majority of honeypot nodes.

It also doesn't prevent owners of relay nodes from construing the origin of traffic. It may not be as accurate assuming the user routes their traffic through uncompromised entry/exit nodes, but given the resources certain agencies have they can cross reference ISP etc traffic logs to determine the identity of tor users.

That's a red herring.

It's the network that is compromised. If you operate enough exit and relay nodes, you can be pretty damn well sure of where the traffic originated.

Anonymity hinges on the nodes, if an entity controls most of the nodes then the network is pretty much an effective honeypot.

Given that the FBI has been incredibly vocal about their efforts to take down Tor, and the fact that it is synonymous with illegal activity (drugs and child porn); operating enough nodes to investigate and bust criminals seems right up their alley.

>My favorite part is his earnest naivety in somehow thinking he wasn't the mark

My favorite part is his earnest naivety in somehow thinking he wasn't the mark and in believing that Paypal would ever side on his behalf.

This just further confirms my suspicions that you have to be retarded to get involved with bitcoin. No group of people is so easily and quickly persuaded into losing their money, and so readily eager to repeat said behavior over and over again, than bitcoiners.

It's not a completely logic-motivated decision, but that does not make it any less valid. Having your sense of privacy and safety breached is incredibly disturbing on an emotional level. I've been robbed, you end up feeling rightly violated at a very base level and left with a general disgust for everything and anyone involved.

>Your premise that if people's needs are met they will do nothing I feel is plain wrong - people will be bored then, and there are other societal pressures that can drive people to do, to improve themselves, to be productive.

My point wasn't that if people's needs were met, they would do nothing- my point is was that with needs met people wouldn't be forced to choose to either starve or spend the majority of their waking hours working for someone else. And if the profit motive was not the main force driving productivity society, more time and energy can be dedicated to personal pursuits or actual work that 'changes the world' for the better.

Perhaps your addiction is influencing your perception of your coding performance. The best way to test this is to find an impartial third party to compare your caffeine-code to code you wrote before you started drinking coffee (as in, not the code on day you DIDN'T drink coffee).