My point is that when someone is currently relying on a state welfare programme to meet their basic needs, it doesn't imply a lack of contribution to society - as is too often the connotation.
860 karma · joined February 13, 2018
But politicians do often try to engineer these splits down racial lines, so it often ends up that way in practice.
For example, racial minorities being scapegoated for inequalities in society, to try to capture the votes of the racial majority.
Dividing people who would otherwise have shared class interests, on issues of race and similar, is a political strategy with a long and sordid history, sadly.
Seems like a very different situation, as Somalia is still recovering from civil war and genocide, and due to this, much of the economic support for its people is being provided by Somali diaspora around the world who send funds back home. Productivity potentially being squandered is the least of their problems really.
I think you're technically correct here, but, it is a feature of capitalism that only a small number of wealthy elites control this technology, especially given the incredibly large costs involved in training and maintaining AI models.
So we're largely at the mercy of these people and the corporations they control on whether they choose to implement it in an illiberal manner. That is, we're essentially relying on our technological overlords being of the 'benevolent dictator' type, regardless of profit incentives presented to them.
Personally, I don't have much hope in this regard, given what we've seen already.
Though sadly, as your comment demonstrates, it's a form of labour that is very often undervalued.
Same applies to the existing owners of Uber and Waymo. If self-driving cars do take over the world, it makes no sense for this technology to be controlled by a handful of wealthy investment corporations, simply because they had the cash available to fund some of it at the start.
This sort of rhetoric needs to stop as well. Public funding of someone's basic needs of food and shelter isn't a lifestyle.
And anyway, a person receiving such funds probably paid for it already in taxes - usually, they're just taking out a bit from what they've already contributed to.
> The great unanswered question faced when exploring cryptodamages is that while we can identify select geographic hotspots of production we currently do not know in the aggregate where the electricity used in cryptocurrency mining is physically produced. This is because we, like Krause and Tolaymat, do not know the physical locations of cryptocurrency miners, whether individuals, groups or aggregates in, say, a region or country. There is considerable evidence of concentration of mining operations in particular locations, typically where reliable electricity is cheaply available, though, precise data are lacking. In the US, perhaps the most well-known concentration is the Mid-Columbia Basin area in central and eastern Washington State, where cheap electricity is produced by hydropower along the Columbia River, however, mining in other US locations also occurs. There is also evidence of large mining camps in China. With time and emergent research there may be improved information about the amounts of electricity devoted to mining cryptocurrencies for particular locations or regions, but it is currently not available.
It would be interesting to see the results of their analysis if recalculated using the more granular CCAF survey data.
Their research indicates that a minority of mining is done using renewable resources:
> The survey findings estimate that on average 39% of proof-of-work mining is powered by renewable energy, primarily hydroelectric energy.
It also specifically addresses this popular claim of mining being powered mostly by renewables:
> China’s oversupply of hydroelectric energy during the rainy season has often been used as evidence in claims that a vast majority of mining is powered by environment-friendly power sources. While it is true that the Chinese government’s strategy to ensure energy self-sufficiency has led to the development of massive hydropower capacity, the same strategy has driven public investments in the construction of large-scale coal mines. Like hydroelectric power plants, these coal power plants often generate surpluses. It should not come as a surprise then that a significant share of hashers in the region equally report using both hydropower and coal energy to power their operations.
This has become almost a religious belief amongst cryptocurrency acolytes, but it's simply not true.
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Edit: please see my comment¹ and piplikoc's comment² below for more detail on this.
This is not true, there are numerous ways to discourage these harmful proof-of-work systems.
This could be done at the mining source, by states taxing this industry extremely heavily or just banning it outright, and at the point of exchange, with states heavily taxing or banning conversion between normal currency to cryptocurrency. A wealth tax (payable in real money) on cryptocurrency holdings would be another option.
If enough economically influential states decided to do this, we should see a massive crash in the price of Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies from this, as people realise it's not worth the hassle of dealing with under these increased regulations.
> It had been initially rejected by all the big publishing houses in the United States, so Nabokov resorted to the pornographic French publisher Olympia Press, only to have it banned in France and also in Argentina, New Zealand, South Africa and Australia. In England, all copies were seized by customs from 1955 until 1959, when it was finally published to huge consternation and controversy.
Elbakyan's project really is a shining beacon of anti-capitalist action, against our broken system where a small number of private companies control access to what should be communal resources, solely to enrich themselves.
This has strong parallels with how the parasitic private sector, in its endless thirst for profit above all else, ruins so many other things that would be better run through public provision: housing, medical care, etc.
Yellow River Kingdom?
Your whole comment is a rant. At least the article you're complaining about had some points to make.
Much of what the author mentions has its roots in behavioural addiction research. In particular, there are many parallels with the gambling industry, and how it profits from maximising user engagement and potential for addiction.
What exactly is your central thesis? It sounds like you're presenting an argument of American exceptionalism, but perhaps I'm misunderstanding your point here.
Are you taking the end of the US civil war as the starting point? If so, then Switzerland has a longer duration of peaceful rule of law.
Agreed - a prominent example of this in the UK in recent years is the sharp rise in volunteer-run food banks. Which was a reaction to the huge cuts to public services, in both funding and availability, driven by our government's toxic right-wing ideology.
It's great that people stepped up to help, but it shouldn't have been necessary, and indeed wouldn't have been if things were being run effectively and for the benefit of all.
A fair point, I did pivot back from answering this regarding exile.
If we consider why a set of international human rights principles were pushed in the first place, it was to act as a preventative measure against totalitarian governments abusing their citizens, and in particular, was a reaction to how the Nazis brutalized and killed millions of people during and prior to WW2.
What it wasn't intended for, is restricting how exactly to transfer power within a state.
Article 9 of the UHDR states that:
> No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
The key qualifying word here is "arbitrary". For ordinary citizens, this is taken to mean that due process and the rule of law must be applied. For a head of state who is ordinarily immune from prosecution (as the Queen and her family are), it can't mean this, because the normal due process doesn't apply to them.
So if Britain did abolish its monarchy, the only interpretation of "arbitrary" that makes sense here is that the monarchy be treated according to the protocols decided for establishing the new republic. And if this statute outlines a process for exile, then so be it.
(Conversely, if it says nothing about exile, but the new government attempts to do so anyway, then this may well be in breach of Article 9.)
> Of course, if the new law target only the former monarchs, and not every similarly wealthy man, then it goes against the other human right of fair justice and æquality before the law.
As noted above, this already doesn't apply to the royal family. They are protected from any legal consequences for their actions that would apply to an ordinary citizen.
Targeting them specifically would simply be redressing this imbalance of justice and power.
Yes but the converse is also true, claiming that something is being done as an unfair punishment, as an argument against it.
In this case, it's also worth noting that most of the monarchy's private assets are vast amounts of property and land, of which they are the landlords. The state seizing and administering this property for the benefit of the country, rather than to perpetually enrich this elite, is a public good.
Rather than taking this to be a punishment on the royals, consider it an anti-punishment on the people afflicted by their predatory rent-seeking behaviour.
Also just to note this wouldn't be done arbitrarily, but within a specific purpose of abolishing the monarchy and removing all vestiges of their power.
> Technically just abolishing the monarchy / taking away their powers would suffice.
It wouldn't suffice, because they still derive a great deal of power from their inherited wealth. What's the point of abolishing the monarchy if we permit them to remain as landlords for huge swathes of the country? Then they're still lording it over people economically, even if no longer doing so constitutionally.
A new Act of Parliament would be needed anyway to establish the United Republic, it could be included in that. Perhaps as a 100% wealth tax on the first X people in line to the throne, or similar.