deciplex

China's national bourgeoisie has a seat at the table, but there are plenty of recent examples of them being brought to heel by the CPC. So, while they definitely have some capitalist productive relations I'd hardly call them capital-C Capitalist in the "ruled by capitalists" sense of the term.

Compare with the US where the capitalist class not only has a seat at the table: they are the table. And the chairs around the table, the room the table is in, the building the room is in, the property the building is on, the people who go in and out of the building, and the bullets that shoot anyone who tries to enter the building who isn't supposed to. The US is "more capitalist" in all the ways that count - what might be confusing you is that China has more sustainable and powerful relations of production which is why they're overtaking the US. But that doesn't make them capitalist.

> This would effectively set the precedent that the US Congress can choose winners and losers in the market

No it wouldn't, as that precedent is already set. And, not only do they choose winners, but individual members of Congress freely profit off those choices.

Our institutions of government are so far removed from democratic control at this point that the content of this bill hardly even matters in the first place: they'll just break the "law" with impunity anyway, if Congress can't deliver what they want.

The difference with execs saying it is they're in a position to convince themselves they're right and act to make it happen. And it doesn't help that the immediate effect (lower payroll, higher stock prices) will "prove" them right, even as the enshittification of our entire economy accelerates.

> I think grocery shopping will be the last place self-checkout moves in in a big way

Self-checkout is the norm in my area.

> cost cutting

When the savings are not passed on to the customer (and they usually are not, as in this case) it's more accurate and descriptive to call it "profit maximizing."

Like anything else they're fine - the problem is when you drink too many of them.

> Extremely authoritarian / communist take.

that's how you know he's right

Okay well disapproval is still in the low double digits (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1116013/china-trust-in-g...) so are you claiming that China has imprisoned / "disappeared" 15% of its population?

> I don't think we should "lowest common denominator" to oppressive regimes.

Chinese approval of their government is much higher than most Western regimes including the US. I think you are right about how we ought to apply the 1st amendment here, but I don't find that Chinese propaganda is any more insidious or pervasive than American. We just manage it differently: in China the state directly controls the media, while in the US business interests directly control the state and the media.

The point I think he's trying to make is that our economic system, to a greater degree than many of us want to recognize, hands out rewards arbitrarily. Merit alone will not get you there: luck and family connections (which is basically another form of luck) help a great deal more.

I think a reason we find this so disagreeable to think about is that it removes much of the incentive to work hard. If you are not wealthy and you don't work hard, you have a basically 0% chance of achieving wealth. If you do work hard, you have a 5% chance (for example). So, sure, if you want fiscal security then you have to work very hard, but even with hard work success is unlikely, with the factors other than "work hard" largely out of your control.

Then, of course, if you do achieve success it's easy to attribute it solely to your hard work (after all, again, if you hadn't done that, you wouldn't have been successful) - which is supremely annoying to everyone else as it very obviously isn't the case.

I know plenty of people like that and none of them are billionaires. No one's saying you're going to become a billionaire by sitting on your ass and waiting for it to happen (unless you're born into it of course, which many of them are) but the point of survivorship bias is to note that you have to do all those other things and then you have to get lucky. And once you're lucky the tendency is to attribute your oversized success to all the other things, but that simply isn't the case.

It's funny that all the comments pointing this out are getting heavily downvoted here. I thought we were all (or mostly) into Bayesian reasoning here. Perhaps not, or perhaps many of us are really bad at it.

It's pretty obvious to me that not allowing dangerous aircraft in the sky benefits the public safety. I can only guess at what your objections are, because you're being awfully vague, but since I have to guess I guess that you're saying something along the lines of "people will use other forms of transport like driving which is more dangerous than even flying on a 737 MAX." I find this line of reasoning flawed because while you may be on to something in the very short term, in the long term grounding the fleet permanently will increase the incentive for Boeing et al to produce safer aircraft. Thus, grounding the fleet will save lives. So, we should do it.

As to whether this "punishes" Boeing I have to confess that I absolutely, positively, do not give a shit if this counts as "punishment" and quite frankly the entire C-level of the company and any board members / stockholders that had a hand in degrading their QC to this degree, should be held criminally liable and punished as such. So that's where I stand on punitive incentives: they're a good thing.

> actually prove the aircraft is safe to fly

And, importantly, the process of providing that proof must be open to the notion that it is not safe to fly. It is possible (and IMO very likely) that this aircraft is fundamentally unsound, by design, and that no amount of tweaks and fixes can change that. They made a dangerous aircraft, bullshitted their way through the approval process for commercial travel, and now must pay the price.

> I genuinely wonder if you realize the consequences of this drastic a decision.

Well, among other things, an increase in the general public safety vis-à-vis commercial air travel. Plus, I suppose, some kind of material incentive for Boeing and other airliners to take quality control seriously.

Seems like a win.

is that an earnest question or are you just trying to draw attention to the fact that that's not how any of this works?

in case of the former: that's not how any of this works

A contemporary issue in the US was the anaerobic lagoon in Washington DC which almost certainly led to the death of one President, William Henry Harrison, and likely two (the other being Zachary Taylor).

Personally I trust China with it more than I trust SV and their handlers in the CIA. But that's just me.

You linked me to a website for a US organization that apparently encourages the extremely wealthy to create more tax shelters for themselves, and followed that up by pointing out that the US accounts for 28% of the world's billionaires while making up 4% of its population.

I'm not sure what point you were trying to make. I don't think we have a monopoly on greedy businesspeople or politicians either, but I do think that as the epicenter of global capitalism, we dominate the market. You can't hope to solve problems if you won't allow yourself to accurately define them.

Providing lower-cost ways of providing health care is directly contrary to the interests of anyone with political or economic power in our country: the hospitals and pharmaceutical companies that directly benefit from high prices, the politicians who receive bribes in exchange for passing laws that keeps prices high (or just failing to pass laws that would lower prices), and the typical employer who can use the increasing importance of health insurance and the threat of medical bankruptcy as leverage against his employees when negotiating work conditions and pay.

Our health care system is, like basically any other institution of note in the US, first and foremost a means to effect the transfer of wealth to our economic and political elites from the rest of us. We need to first come to recognize that our system is currently working as intended before we can think clearly on what to do about it and take effective action.

Not really. The notion that all human interaction is transactional and adversarial is relatively new, and the idea that this is actually good and should be encouraged is even newer. It only seems like an iron law of human nature because individualistic thinking is so prevalent in the West and especially the US and the UK, while models of human behavior that even remotely orient around collective goals, behavior, and action, are discouraged and often regarded as something like extremism.

The hardness of the problem is borne of powerful actors making it such: there is nothing inherently difficult about it.

if they can't do business at that scale in a way that is acceptable to most people they do business with, then why should they be allowed to do business at that scale at all?

or maybe banks, and more specifically people who work at banks, should not be incentivized to screw their clients at every opportunity. which is to say, we should not have a legal, fiscal, and political regime which encourages or excuses this behavior. and, as people, we should not tolerate or accept it

you are, on the one hand, calling for "community" to provide for assistance and compassion and to respect basic human dignity. then, on the other, you accept and normalize this notion that all human interaction is explicitly transactional, and even adversarial. these are orthogonal goals.

thank you

I got banned from Twitter ages ago and never bothered to create another account. I used to not have trouble reading threads like this but among other things with "X" the UI has become absolutely impossible to use lately. I'm not even sure if I'm allowed to read the rest of this thread on Twitter itself but, if I am, how to do it is not at all obvious.

I'd gladly pay ~$100 or so not to be treated like a criminal by Google Ads support, but when I'm already (or was) paying ~$2000/month I'd expect someone to at least hear me out when I suggest their algo might be fucked up. Alas, they won't let me pay for support in the first place.

Google's customer service is famously awful.

It's extremely risky, and while it's relatively easy to calculate the gains realized, it's almost impossible to calculate the cost.

> 4. Unclear definition of install was used. What they eventually settled on: once per unique end user per distribution platform (e.g. app store), was pretty much what Unity was going for anyway, but the initial announcement royally messed up here.

That was not a miscommunication though: it was brought up directly to Unity and the initial response was that it would be per install, per device.

That's not even a rumor: he is on the board, and he did push for this.

Us lawmakers are effectively the employees of the people profiting from skirting these health issues.