unity1001

> But what I’m saying is that there are so many factors that all contribute to the problem

This kind of overcomplicating the problem makes finding the solution more difficult. Regardless of many smaller factions converging in different major groups in the US, the general, society-wide dynamics follow a given pattern. This pattern is exactly the same with the religious sects or far-right nationalist cliques taking over societies that suffer from extreme inequality and strong influence of religion.

In fact, I would suggest to simplyf the picture even further:

The mid 19th century dynamics in which the anti-intellectual, religious lot that populated the middle parts of the country, the east coast, 'old money' type aristocrats dominated the eastern part, and the nascent Californian West that wasnt able to put itself to somewhere in that spectrum, still are the major factions that collide with each other in the US.

Birchers started the movement to roll back the scientific, enlightenment ideals and left wing egalitarianism that got strengthened due to the scientific revolution and the popular movements succeeding in pushing left wing social and economic policies after World War II. It grew into Reaganites. Then when it was losing steam, its spearhead morphed into Tea Partiers and then Trumpers.

> what creators can do on twitch comes down to what the advertisers are willing to put up with

Eh. Then those advertisers will have to create the content from now on...

> Are there any DAOs that do something that's NOT entirely about crypto things?

That will be difficult until crypto is improved to have the user friendliness to allow non-crypto-savvy people to use crypto services. Even the very act of 'getting a wallet' is a high bar to entry for the majority of the population, leaving aside 'connecting it to something' then using the still-complex crypto features like DAOs.

> But I could just as easily say that a rise in unfettered capitalism led to a loss of public good research combined with regulatory captur

These are the very lot who pushed all the deregulations and created the movement to go back to 19th century capitalism by dismantling what little social democracy the US had. So if you approach it from that angle, they again come up as the source of the problem. Of course, the mechanics of the phenomenon are self-reinforcing: This religious lot deregulating capitalism causes more poverty, and poverty pushes more people to the arms of religious sects like them for support and aid.

> Its just SV and its very... Clintonesque(?) brand of doublespeak

Wow now. That's an interesting and a very good way to describe the problem that plagues SV in general...

Thinking that one single person could end an entire religious movement with 'arguments' is totally naive. Neither thinking that Reagan wasnt on board with them for speaking up against certain personas. Birchers were behind most of the administration and the circles that got that administration elected then, and they are still the spearhead of the more extreme American conservatives today. One can argue that the group is not as clear cut as it was because they meshed with a lot of other groups like the Evangelists. But the origin of what is the American reactionary movement is those Birchers.

Unfortunately it is not a story. The group started with people who convened in small bible study groups who met in each others' homes and churches. These people thought that 'America' was lost, and it should be 'taken back'. They organized and slowly grew like a sect, eventually gaining great political and economic power with those who converted to their cause and especially through the business they exclusively did among their own lot.

Its not a unique story. It follows the typical religious sect proliferation mechanics that are seen in any other country.

> it’s probably unrealistic to pin it all on just that phenomenon

This phenomenon is the head that decides the direction of the broader American conservative spearhead groups from Reaganites to later 'Tea Party' types. They are pretty much meshed with the Evangelists now though, hard to tell them apart.

> What precisely caused the observed reversal of the long-term trend around 1980 remains perhaps even more difficult to pinpoint

Not at all.

https://newrepublic.com/article/161603/john-birch-society-qa...

John Birch society that was founded in 1950s to bring back mid 1800s American anti-intellectualism and religious fundamentalism grew until 1980 and eventually put Reaganites into power. Then this setup exported it to everywhere else it could export itself. Even recently, Trump was openly saying that the US was going to support right-wing movements in Europe a short time before he left the White House.

Its the old, religious anti-intellectual fundamentalists that dominated the middle America in 1800s who came back and never left.

> Profit motive above all else is fundamentally incompatible with the social engine that powers the open source community.

Its not. Freemium format works splendidly in various ecosystems, one of the biggest being WordPress. It enabled WP ecosystem to fund itself without VC or investor money and grow. Real indie growth. So its possible.

Without the funding from its own userbase to sustain itself, Open Source projects just flop eventually. Few remain if they are way too big or if they can get corporate sponsors. Thats not being 'free'. Real freedom is in Open Source being funded by its users without the unreliable mechanism of donations.

> Only half? That's so civilised. Inter tribal wars ended with all the men dead or in slavery

Well yes, that's true. But one could consider the central Italian unification wars as even nastier affairs. However yes, its not like Romans were not as brutal in other periods as they were in social wars...

Those rebellions in those provinces start after Romans export half of the population as slaves and send the rest to work in the local mines. There's the catch.

Actually, its worse - even if you were a saintly society neighboring Rome or within the reach of Rome, Rome would invent a 'reason' to invade you if you had something they wanted or they lacked enough slaves. Like how the Syracuse invasion was done on literally manufactured consent by disguised legionnaires committing acts of atrocities against the Romans. All the wars of Rome from Early Republic and on were done on such manufactured consent and false flags.

At the end of the Republic period, everything changes - they stop needing to manufacture 'reasons' for invasions. By this time, the empire is already nascent as a social and political format and the slave-reliant economy is already dominant so there is no need to manufacture consent for the need for acquiring slaves.

> I see this in a lot of historical Wikipedia articles now. I'm not sure what to think of it. It feels like a modern tag added to articles that feels somewhat out of place. > My understanding that at the time, and most of history war, what we think of as war crimes were a standard practice of war.

Nah. They werent - Romans were famous for being particularly brutal even in their time. Which was one of the reasons for their easier conquest against weaker targets. Much better to become a Roman province or client state than get yourself conquered a few years later, half of your population enslaved and exported and the other half sent to work in the local mines.

Solely what Julius Caesar did in Gaul would give shivers to even his contemporaries. That's why he so slyly wrote the history of his own Gallic conquest himself - to shape the narrative.

There were other societies in history that employed brutal 'conqueror's rights' formats, like Assyrians, and after Assyrians this became kind of standard practice in Near East. But even Assyrians were not as brutal as Romans, who even discarded their unwanted babies into a trash pile outside their cities.

> It seems strange to me to tag the end of an article about a large scale war and saying "hey this one group committed war crimes" and just leave it at that if you're not talking about specific events.

For any other society or period, you might need to do that. But the atrocious behavior in Roman practices was so widespread that there would be no end to it if you started detailing the acts individually. Granted, what you described is something that is obvious to students of history, but its not so obvious to the general public.

> No, that is wrong. At least in Finland

And in Spain and France, its the other way. With the new Euparl draft law soon going to make it mandatory.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/02/eu-platform-worker-directi...

Larger voting blocs want it. Finland has a small presence in Euparl. So even if it is not the mandatory law yet, what they said is true - Europe has been incrementally classifying gig workers as employees and it is soon about to make it mandatory.

> US has been arming Taiwan since its inception. How is now different?

After Nixon and the relations being restored in between China and the US, a detente was reached on this. The US avoided arming Taiwan in a way that it could be a threat to China, and China did not press the issue. The US broke that detente.

> Taiwan is rich enough that can build own weapons

No non-superpower country is capable of building their own weapons that could allow them to stand against a superpower.

> In particular, Taiwan could make nuclear weapons

Having a few missiles that can mount nuclear warheads and travel a thousand km is not having 'nuclear weapons'. Every major superpower has the air defense systems that can shoot down such missiles from up to 500-600 km and dozens of kilometers altitude. You must have a legion of such missiles with multiple warheads to be able to saturate the defenses.

> But couldn’t defeat the US Navy beyond range of aircraft and missiles.

That's decade old thinking. China has hypersonic anti ship missiles that can reach over 1k km now, and a lot of submarines. Gone are the days of the aircraft carrier...

> True, but it's entirely possible that such a use case will never materialize

Hard disagree. DAOs already exist, for example, and they are widely used even if the phenomenon is unknown to who doesnt have an interest in it or who is not technical enough. They are still way too technical for the average user, and even solely this use case could easily explode the moment everything is simplified and presented to the users with an intuitive and easy to use interface by a new service.

A lot also depends on the infrastructure improving - IPFS is great, for example. But its not as fast as a server, forcing you to store very little data using it. For the moment, any use case that will involve IPFS must fit into those narrow confines. Actually, same goes for most of crypto - Ethereum is a framework that you can literally, actually program on. But you wont be compiling any complex modern app code and serving it from there. One reason why the use cases still revolve around financial things, NFTs and other things that are built on the ledger functionality.

> but it won't be one resembling what anyone thinks

That's entirely possible.

> and won't be sexy.

And that totally depends. Anything that gets mass adoption ends up 'sexy'...

> China is concerned about currency markets so that is why they have to invade Taiwan?

China has to invade Taiwan only if the US starts arming Taiwan to use it as a pawn against China like how the US openly declared that it intends doing. China will not make the mistake of waiting 8 years like Russia.

> China is strong enough that they don't have to listen.

Any sane observer of geopolitics who doesnt have a 6-figure paycheck that depends depend on saying what his employers want said, would say that China has been silent for way too long and the US would immediately start a war if anyone did so much as to threaten doing what the US has been doing to other countries. Then again, China has only recently reached the military power that could fight the US on even grounds without having to resort to a nuclear war.

> the crypto tech cycle was one of the stupidest things

Same was said for the user-generated content that lived in the community forums on the fringes of the web back in 2000s. Big sites and 6-figure columnists even suggested that these were 'littering' the Internet.

15 years later, content is user-generated, and now there is even something that is called the 'creator economy'. And even those 6-figure, out-of-touch elite columnists who derided it are jumping on the bandwagon.

...

Crypto is a technology. It does things. We observe that it is able to do things and it works. Its just missing a widescale use-case. The moment someone finds that use-case, it will explode like how the actual web exploded back then. Solely the DAO concept is revolutionary by itself, enabling large-scale, democratic economic organization for the masses, which was not possible or difficult and totally non-transparent before. That a few people here and there used it for dumb reasons or failed in accomplishing various objectives like buying the constitution etc does not change what potential DAOs provide.

Of course, there is also the problem of crypto space and all the features and applications within them being WAY too out of the average user's league in terms of user friendliness. Just like how it required knowing what a 'forum' was, knowing how to 'register', and then even knowing the right people who could refer you to the forum so that the administration would approve your membership back in early 2000s.

> I hope China recognizes that challenging the West politically and economically is much better option

The Taiwan War is being pushed precisely because China has been doing exactly that and the US wants China to stop and do what Japan did in 1985 by signing the Plaza Accords. China will never do that. Hence, the war...

> You seem to be assuming that there are no assets available to match to the depositors above the $250,000 per account

I dont assume that. Since the bonds they have lost their value, there aren't enough assets to match the deposits. The size of the haircut was dependent on what the market would decide to offer when those were sold. The bailout prevented that from being needed.

> The legal framework doesn't prohibit additional amounts over $250,000 from being made available to the depositors

Legalese doesnt change the nature of the event. The law allowing arbitrary application of the limits means that there is no limit, or worse, the limit depends on who is being bailed out. And that's exactly the message that was sent: If you are big enough or you can pressure the government to bail you out, just screw around with other people's money and gamble. If you win, you will win big. If you lose, the losses will be socialized.

SVB didnt lobby to relax the laws against unpaid overtime, faulty advertising etc. Not any banal evil like that. SVB lobbied against laws that protected both the bank and its depositors from the very thing that happened. And succeeded to get an exemption for itself.

> The depositors “took risks” by literally keeping their cash in a bank? This is ridiculous

Its not ridiculous. Its how the free market works. Its a choice. There were other banks that were compliant with the regulation that !protects! the bank and its depositors. This bank wasn't one of them. People put their money in this bank anyway. It makes little difference if many startups were forced by their VCs to put their money in that bank - they chose to go with those VCs.

> What was the safe, responsible thing to do? Put it in one of the “too big to fail” banks instead, given that those are guaranteed to be bailed out should they encounter difficulties?

The first thing to do was to put their money in banks that have not lobbied for exemption from the regulations that protect the bank and its depositors' money from exactly what is happening right now.

The second thing would be to put it in multiple banks that are not exempt from that regulation to spread around the risk.

The third thing would be to spread the risk around many investment tools and banks.

It turns out that there ARE startups that did precisely that, and they were not affected by the SVB thing in the slightest manner.

> Let’s not pretend that literally keeping cash in a savings account is irresponsible risk taking.

It is unless it is a state run bank, period. This is the free market, and if the organization that you are putting your money into is a private organization, you are simply taking a risk. If that does not sound good, then it means that all the rhetoric about free market vs government should be revised.

> Having your bank account randomly disappear isn't one of the risks that anyone should have to take.

Then you put your funds in less risky banks who did not lobby to get an exemption from the regulations that protect against precisely this kind of thing. Even, spread it around safer banks.

Putting all of one's money in a bank because they have better returns or other investment opportunities is business. Not something that someone can be safe at the public's expense.

The public, because the public will pay for this one way or the other - if this is paid from the insurance that insures all banks like how the statement says, then it will cause all the banks who pay into this insurance pool to reflect it on their customers with fees. So every single person with a bank account in the US will pay. Its still public money, but it doesnt come directly from the US govt.'s pocked, so its 'okay'.

It is a bailout - the 2008 bailouts were done to save the deposits and investments inside the banks, not 'the shareholders' as so many seem to try to use as an escape argument. Its because if the banks' hollowed assets were not 'made whole', the depositors would not have their money anymore.

Precisely the case with SVB as of this very moment - a sunken bank that does not have enough assets to cover its deposits is being bailed out by the state.

By the state and taxpayer money, make no mistake - even if the funds will not directly come from the US govt., the fees that they will impose on the banks by using the nation-wide bank insurance fund will eventually get imposed on everyone with a bank account in the US by those very banks in turn. So again, the public will pay.

Actually, its beyond using taxpayer money - if you are a taxpayer and your children have bank accounts too, they will also pay the fee instead of just you paying a tax.

Bank bailouts in 2008 were not made to bail out 'the shareholders'. They were made to bail out the sunken assets inside the banks so that those banks could continue operating, including still 'having' the depositors' deposits. Because if the bailout was not made, all of those deposits would go away due to there not being assets enough to cover the deposits.

That's what a bailout is. And this is precisely that.

> “Privatize the profits”? What are you talking about? The owners of SVB are wiped out

The depositors took risks by lending their money to such a risky bank for better returns in lieu of the risk. It doesnt matter whether SVB gave 0% interest. It provided other amenities, services and opportunities instead - things which other banks could not take the risk to do. Now these banks who played by the rules and the rest of the people and businesses who played it safe, will have to foot the bill for the risk that those depositors took. This literally says "If you are big enough you can take any risk to win big and have the public pay for it if you screw it up". That's something not afforded to a small business owner. So people who say that there is one rule for the ultra rich and another rule for the majority, they are right.

Additionally removing the burden of the deposits from SVB will allow it to recover some of its lost asset value. The state took over its liabilities now.

> Why do you think that? There is no axiom of "capitalist philosophy" that says "when one party screws up all parties must maximally feel the pain".

That was a capitalist business in which the depositors were LENDERS of that business with the understanding that the business would use their money for profit making activities and give them an interest rate and other returns in the process. Along with whatever investment scheme the bank was providing for its clients.

Those depositors could have chosen any bank in the US, and most of them have the power to choose any bank in the planet. But they chose SVB for what it provided. It was a business decision. They chose the highest yields by choosing this risky bank.

And now that the risk taking caused a crash and burn, the rest of the public who did not take those risks cannot pay for the sunken bank or its mega depositors. They all took risks, its their burden to bear. Profits cannot be privatized and risk socialized instead.

> There is a framework for unwinding these sorts of things. Depositor agreements as well as the relevant regulations and laws regarding business agreements and contracts are all part of the "capitalist philosophy".

Precisely. And the limit is $250,000. The government is responsible with bailing out that amount by law. Not the rest. Doing otherwise not only bails out risk taking depositors who took a risk while keeping all the profits - it also reduces SVB's liabilities and risk and props up its value. Its an indirect bank bailout too.

Laws and regulations that protect the players in an economy come from socialism. Not capitalism. In capitalism, 'buyer beware' is the rule and those who take risk and screw it up are left to sink with their bad choice. You live in a social democracy created by imposing socialist practices on capitalism.

If the laws said that "Up to $1 billion of each depositor account can be bailed out", yes, it could have been done. But it doesnt say that. And any such bail out of such mega deposits by using public money is a middle finger given to everyone who did not take such risks.

> Linux happened and nobody paid (in the beginning)

Linux happened mostly through the contributions of the paid developers of the Linux foundation. And still the majority of the commits belong to those developers. And it was possible to do so because the foundation received enough support from major donors, most of which were corporations. If you would want to choose an Open Source success story that wasnt backed by corporations, WordPress would be what you are looking for. But even then, the WordPress ecosystem found a way to fund itself directly through its users. Which means that they are also funded. In contrast, a gigantic amount of Open Source projects were abandoned when its contributors were no longer able to maintain them because life responsibilities started raining on them...

Unfortunately any social paradigm, movement or setup must be able to sustain itself economically. The best way to do it is to do it through its users, directly, so that concentrated capital wont be able to take it over.

The public has an interest in enabling high risk ventures, BUT, this must happen through a well designed mechanism that sustains itself. Like how I explained in my comment later: Through the taxes levied for that reason, through insurance fees charged to fund that mechanism and so on.

But none of these apply in this case. High risk decisions were made by all of these actors, including most of the depositors, while privatizing all the profits. The very CEO of the bank is a libertarian and he publicly advocates that government should disappear. All the depositors are either part of the VC crowd, or startups that are practically controlled by those VC crowd. And most of the money (ironically) still belongs to that actual VC crowd indirectly because those VCs control the startups that they gave those funds to.

So basically it was all privatized profits until the risky decisions came home and suddenly a need for socializing the losses came to being, causing even the die hard libertarian CEO of SVB to start publicly demanding that the govt. should bail them out, in a public display of total lack of principles. (then again Ayn Rand did the same).

Yes, the depositors were also risk takers. They took the risk of trusting that high-risk bank that lobbied for watering down regulations for more profit. They took the risk of trusting the VCs who forced them to put their money in that bank. Non startup/VC related clients took the risk of putting their money in that bank for reasons ranging from higher gains to groupthink. Those were decisions taken by them. The public cannot be expected to save them from the consequences of that risk taking without getting back its money's worth. And no - the return cannot be 'a more lively startup ecosystem'. The expected return can only be money. That the public so desperately needs for repairing the society.

The general public doesnt care about the shareholders. For the public, a bailout is a bailout. By lending money to that bank, depositors took a risk and participated in the bank's business. It was NOT a state bank. It did not pay any taxes, fees, or anything else to the public's treasury more than the $250k per account insurance. If it did, you would be right - everything could have been rescued to the order of that insurance. But there is no such insurance over $250k.

> make depositors whole

It seems that the big money people affected by this chose this nonsensical, archaic term to use in place of 'bailout' so that people wont react. It really doesnt work and it looks way, way nonsensical.

> Here, the depositors are being bailed out

There. Now its correct. Rephrasing something does not change its nature.

The 2008 bailouts were done with that excuse too. They were 'too big to fail', and it would 'affect everyone' so that they were bailed out to 'help' the main street.

> It’s absolutely in the interest of the greater economy to have a functioning banking system backing high risk/high reward activities like Silicon Valley.

It is. And its totally against the interest of the greater economy to bail out those who screw it up by taking great risks. Its against the interest of the greater economy to bail out those who didnt take any risk either. Because it socializes the risk while privatizing the reward. That's why people hate bailouts.

All those startups and wealthy entrepreneurs put their money in the wrong bank. The wrong bank was shown as the best bank through a lot of fallacies, ranging from groupthink to obligations pushed on startups by VCs. Nobody came up and tried to raise awareness about how bad this setup was. Those who tried to do it were unheard. Those most affected from this, the rich VCs, all the SV funds, tech ecosystem top dogs, 'thought leaders', investors, are the ones who created this environment and caused this to happen.

Now, when the cows are coming home, asking for a bailout is socializing the risk while privatizing the profits.

The only exception can be made in the case of the state taking a ginormous amount of ownership of everything that it bailed out and not sell its shares out until it milked its money's worth to cover its bailout amount plus an above-market profit rate from that investment...