You blame Disney for our terrible copyright laws, yet Disney didn’t pass or sign that law, they merely lobbied for it. The problem isn’t Disney, the problem is Congress.

I think one thing we need to get out of the way is that the political system and the economic system are intertwined. There is no way to have a democratic capitalist society without having one influence the other.

If we go back to Adam Smith- he’s seen as the father of economics. But he didn’t consider himself an economist. He considered a moral philosopher and a political economist. The political system and the economic system are one and the same.

You believe these large corporations gaining too much influence is because of poor maintenance. Because of a corrupt government. You believe it’s because we’re not enforcing our anti-trust laws and so on.

I disagree and say this was always inevitable. It is impossible to keep your garden free of weeds starting from a free market economy. Again- wealth snowballs and wealth buys influence.

It’s a simple cause and effect. As long as the profit incentive is the main motivator in our political economy, the political system will be shaped by those with the most money. And they have the incentive to remove those free-market systems in order to maximize their own profit.

It’s a deterministic cycle. Free market capitalism -> late stage capitalism -> fascism

To me, apathy and amorality when the consequences are harm towards others is evil. It’s sort of like if a driver was in a rush and ran over a protestor on his way to work.

Sure, he did not wish any harm on the protestor. He just simply needed to get past them and chose the most effective and efficient path.

It’s an amoral act but the act (and the driver) is still evil. Evil is not just a mustache twirling genocidal dictator or sadistic serial killers… In fact, the amoral does infinitely more harm than the malicious. The Nazis did not come to power because of malice. They did not kill millions of Jews because of malice. They got there through apathy and amorality.

They didn’t want to kill the Jews at first- they wanted to deport them. But once they got them in the camps… it was impractical to supply enough logistical power to actually move them all. So while they figure out a plan, let’s have them do slave labor.

And then after a while, since we can’t move them, we may as well just kill them. It’s the most effective path to where we want to be. The driver driving over the protestor.

If this isn’t “evil”, what is?

Healthy competition tends to make “evil” actions unprofitable

Competition helps. I agree that this negative aspect of capitalism is exponentially magnified when monopolies form.

The thing is, in capitalist the wealth tends to snowball. Wealth is power and wealth buys influence. Look at how Disney singlehandedly changed copyright law when Mickey Mouse was about to enter public domain. Once you reach a certain size, you can modify the rules of the game. So it creates a self-perpetuating cycle.

This position we are in is the natural consequence of free market capitalism. I agree that free market is better. But this is the grown up version of free market. There was never going to be any other scenario but the one we are in.

We’ve neglected the garden for decades and allowed some truly nasty weeds in, but that doesn’t make the weeds “evil,” that means we were poor gardeners.

We can debate on the ontology of the world evil. It really is an interesting debate. But for all practical purposes, if the weeds are killing the crops that feed your family… what is the difference? Whether they want to kill you indirectly through starvation or don’t want to kill you- you’re dead either way.

What difference does this make? Some lower level employee will see this, roll his eyes, and then continue on with his day.

Beyond this, do you think Apple can actually take any other position than aligning with fascism? That was always going to happen. They literally can’t help but align with fascism- this is the culmination of late stage capitalism.

It’s like politely asking a dog not to salivate when it sees a steak in front of it.

You’re not gonna get anywhere and you’re just wasting time.

Also on a side note- you should switch to Linux because you should take charge of your own hardware and learn how it works before it’s taken away from you. You should do it for open source and for freedom. Not threaten to do something because a company is doing company things.

Corporations, at their core, are profit-generating engines—nothing more, nothing less. The corporate board’s one legal imperative is to ensure the shareholders see a return on their investment, by any means necessary. Morality? A marketing gimmick when convenient- not an operating principle.

All companies are evil. Google is not any more or less evil than any other company. The difference is they have a significant power base and therefore have a lot to gain or lose in the transition to fascism. They understand that Trump is spiteful and willing to bend and even break the law to punish those who defy him. They also understand he rewards those who bend the knee. Therefore, the most profitable path of action is bending the knee.

This should not surprise anybody. You substitute Google for any large corporation and they would have done the same thing. Don’t believe me? Google around (while you still can freely search for information) for the Coca-Cola saga in Colombia, where union leaders were getting forcibly suicided by narco-paramilitary death squads hired by Coca-Cola.

You know- the commercials that make you feel all warm and fuzzy around Christmas time with the polar bears and Santa Claus? Yeah, they’ll murder you if you threaten their bottom line. It’s just what they do.

There’s a simple math equation:

Let

P = Probability of getting caught,

F = Expected fine or penalty,

R = Potential revenue or profit,

Constants

α = The weight assigned to the probability of getting caught ( P ). If this constant is high, the corporation is more cautious… if it’s low, the corporation is willing to make more risks. In Colombia, this is much lower than in the US.

β = The weight assigned to the probable size of the penalty ( F ). A high β means there’s a serious potential danger. However, if β is low (like when Ford decided the cost of simply paying lawsuits from deaths due to known car malfunctions was probably lower than the price of recalls) then they’ll be more likely to push forward

γ = The weight assigned to the impact on their bottom line ( R ). For example, if Boeing thinks they will lose a lot of money from whistleblowers, they will find a way to suicide them. If the impact is small, then it’s not worth the potential risks.

C = ( αP ⋅ βF ) − γR

Let’s give an imaginary example. Let’s say a corporation is considering dumping toxic waste illegally into a river, potentially giving thousands of people cancer. Let’s say they’re gonna save $10M a year from doing this.

R = 10,000,000

The probability of getting caught is 10%

P = 0.10

The expected fine is $5M

F = 5,00,000

Let’s try out some constants

α = 1.5 ⇒ they’re somewhat cautious about getting caught

β = 1.2 ⇒ they’re moderately concerned about the penalty

γ = 2.0 ⇒ they’re really motivated by profit (maybe their profits went down 10% last year, a big no-no)

Plug in the values

C = (1.5 · 0.10 · 1.2 · 5,000,000) - (2.0 · 10,000,000)

C = (900,000) - (20,000,000)

C = -19,100,000

C is less than 0? Dump that toxic waste, baby. It’s the logical position if you’re trying to maximize profit. Sometimes you will get caught, but imagine you did this in a simulation 1,000 times. Most of the times, you will be more profitable because of it and therefore you dump the waste.

It’s like a poker player. If you get AA, you raise pre-flop. Sometimes you will lose on the flop to some dunce who goes in with 2-7… but in the long term, most of the time, you will win. Therefore it’s the right move.

This is what companies do. People need to realize and internalize this. They are profit generating engines. Nothing more, nothing less. They are not your friends. They don’t care about the environment. They don’t care about the future of the world or anything. Literally nothing at all.

They are a math formula and if destroying everything you love happens to be the most profitable move most of the time, they will do it without second guessing. Because they aren’t people. They are a machine.

The machine can’t help but consume its own critique, and every time it does, it exposes its own absurdity.

I appreciate your second response here, it seems less hostile.

My counterpoint would be that capitalism is an Ouroboros. It’s forever devouring its own tail- consuming its own critique and spitting it back out as commodity. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Every once in a while there is some sort of social movement (punks, hippies, hip hop, gays, etc) and it has a real chance to threaten the system.

Punk becomes a fashion statement, hip-hop a soundtrack for commercials and corporate events, gay pride becomes a marketing gimmick. It’s incorporated, stripped of any revolutionary potential and repackaged as an ideological product for you to consume.

This is the perverse genius of capitalism. It doesn’t survive in spite of crisis. It needs the crisis to survive. The absurdity becomes palpable, like you mentioned, but it doesn’t matter. The system flaunts this absurdity, knowing full well that we have no way out.

It is a trap- a Möbius strip of ideology.

So while I enjoyed the performance and I don’t expect anything more from Kendrick (he is under no obligation to be a real revolutionary figure), I also think we shouldn’t delude ourselves into thinking this was anything more than a corporate spectacle meant to sell future Super Bowl tickets by way of exploiting the discontent and dissatisfaction of poor blacks. (and really, it’s two fold. a) you exploit the black culture not only in the positive way that’s black-positive b) you exploit the angry white culture who is threatened by it). You get to double dip.

You’re right to put on the glasses. Just don’t forget they distort as much as they reveal.

Yep. When you think you have been freed from ideology at that moment you are in ideology. Turtles all the way down. I am under no illusion that I am an not an idiot.

I don’t claim to be an activist. I’m interested in the ideological undercurrents

You want revolution without the mess, rebellion without the noise, but that’s not how this works.

This is the very thing I’m claiming about the performance. It’s controlled rebellion. Performative dissent. Dissent and dissatisfaction itself becomes commodified and sold back to you. It allows the viewer to feel like they’re part of something revolutionary without ever threatening the system. Imagine a safety valve, releasing just enough pressure to prevent real change. It’s like a laugh track in a sitcom. It tells you what to feel. You can have the experience of laughing without actually having to laugh.

This type of “socially conscious” art (movies, music, etc) functions in a way lets the consumer feel like they have participated in something emancipatory without actually having to. It’s ideology.

Note at no point did he criticize the status quo. He did not mention president Trump, who was present in the crowd, at all. Kendrick, a legendary socially conscious rapper who is an icon for life- chose not to say anything at all. Why?

Either a) he doesn’t care or b) he understands there is a very small window of acceptable “dissent” he is allowed to express. I think this micro-dose of dissent pacifies and sedates the viewer.

hijacked their platform and made them pay for it

He made them pay? He made them hundreds of millions of dollars. This was the most highly viewed super bowl performance in my adult life.

this isn’t about your approval.

You seem to care more about my approval than I do. What difference does it make if I approve? I liked the performance but I’m discussing the ideological basis for these styles of performative vague dissent.

Me and you both are constantly eating from the trash can of ideology. It’s painful, but it’s worthwhile to put on the glasses so you can at least see what you are eating. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVwKjGbz60k

Kendrick dropping truth bombs on the NFL’s biggest stage

What truth bombs did he drop? Some vaguely rebellious sounding lines? “The revolution will be televised?”

This was milquetoast at best. Actively harmful at worst. I really enjoyed the performance but he is doing exactly what he criticizes the record labels of doing. Taking black culture and commodifying it by turning it into a spectacle.

This was corporate spectacle and nothing more.

“Come, comrades, and claim your Che Guevara t-shirts. Indulge that half-buried discontent with the system by picking up these subversive punk rock accessories. For a fleeting moment, we’ll even add a trans flag poster—yours for nothing but shipping and handling. Put on the revolution you crave.”

if you stick to your workouts and train to failure, your muscles will grow.

however to eliminate fat, you don’t exercise. you eat less. when you are eating below caloric maintenance, your body makes up the difference in fat. you can’t control where the fat comes from. you just have to maintain that for a long time and it’ll go away. everyone stores fat differently. some in legs, some in stomach, etc.

but you cannot exercise away body fat. it’s like 80/20 diet exercise

when the data used to train the AI is copyrighted, how do you make it open source? it’s a valid question.

one thing is the model or the code that trains the AI. the other thing is the data that produces the weights which determines how the model predicts

of course, the obligatory fuck meta and the zuck and all that but there is a legal conundrum here we need to address that don’t fit into our current IP legal framework

my preferred solution is just to eliminate IP entirely

I don’t know man. The entire world for most of human history has gone on just fine without circumcision. I’m eternally grateful I was not born in the US and was brought here as a child so I didn’t get my foreskin cut.

It’s always an interesting conversation with women. Some prefer it, some don’t, most don’t care. But it is a bit exotic in some areas of the country. Not so much in heavily immigrant areas.

For example California and Florida the vast majority of people are not circumcised. In Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, etc and other states in mostly white America it’s close to 90%.