Comment There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Market (Score 0) 183
In this case, that's all I need to say.
In this case, that's all I need to say.
Now if there was an easy way to get it out of all these stars....
I don't construct paranoid futures. I describe what is happening *now*.
Forget the happy horseshit about super-safe robot cars. We don't have those, and they won't work when we do. This is about the ability to track all the vehicles in the world, either by private entities who will backdoor the info to government and political groups, or straight-up security force tracking. Not just here, but all over the world. We are building turnkey police state infrastructure. If you can't grasp this, you might want to contemplate how privileged you are not to ever feel endangered by cops or polical opponents like Scientology or the Moonies. Do not give the monkeys the key to the banana plantation. Once you are in a worldwide prison, there is no escape.
"Trains". Those are called trains.
You can't turn it off even now. The GPS tracking is built into the circuitry and there is no way to diable it. And no, tapping the "please don't track me" option won't work. Its lying.
It's an API for a future tyranny that we will be helpless against. Tomorrow is not today. Those in charge will not be the pussycats we have now; such power will attrack tyrants and secret governments. No, guarantees them.
Do not give the monkeys the key to the banana plantation.
After 2015 or so, Federal law will require integrated tracking devices and radio network integration into all cars. They tried passing that law last year, and backed down - but they will slip it back in when no one is looking. I imagine motorcycles, Elios, and anything that moves will be included, excepting bicycles... and don't bet they won't get around to bikes.
As I said a decade ago here: open-air prison. The point to power is power. No reason is necessary; people who want power over other people will grab it when they can, and universal tracking is the ultimate in power. No rebellion is possible in a goldfish bowl.
If you enable perfect surveillance, then the result - "police without blindfolds", as well as employers, potential employers, competitors, secret national police, secret and not-secret corporate police (ever wonder about how Apple's security forces seem to have worldwide power and mobility?), marketers, your neighbors, your family, friends, enemies, and Scientology's and Moonies' covert operations getting their "blindfolds" removed - will be a world where everyone is a criminal, and the only recourse you have is that no one cares enough about you to look to see what you've been up to. A world of sheep, a pack of fat domesticated farm animals watching videos. (Better not be unlicensed video, criminal!) If you've not committed a crime, you've been in a coma. And they'll just add new laws if they really want to get someone. But bet your ass the Bushes and Cheneys of the world will be utterly off the police and media radar. Rich people don't commit crimes, statistics show. Only troublemakers and poor people. And oh, yes, Ferguson. Imagine how future Fergusons will play out with perfect surveillance. Notice how the cops in Ferguson don't have video cameras on their vehicles, and how they trash cameras pointed at them? That's the future, kid. Blindfolds on US; never, ever on the cops.
As I've blathered on for years, business doesn't make fortunes by manufacturing product, but by manufacturing scarcity. Lumber. Water (soon!). Bandwidth.
And people: Businesses make monopolies, not governments. Businesses want to control supply, create scarcity and drive up prices and buy up their competitors so they can drive up prices again. There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Market. The oil cartels control oil supply, Diamond controls comic book distribution, etc. Choke points *they* create by ruthlessly destroying their competition. Government can't mandate competition in the sense you can't pass a law to make sharks stop eating tuna. They persist in eating the damned tuna; it's their nature. Sometimes, as in the last 30 right-wing years, the tuna *is* the government.
Monopoly exists 'cause lack of regulation, not 'cause of it.
In cabling the US, the US businesses refused to provide service unless they had local monopoly, so the cities divvied up their territories and the cable companies rolled out. That was a business-demanded requirement, not a government-demanded one. They would not provide unless they were exclusive. The only alternative was municipal cable, which happened, but is mostly sued or otherwise driven out of business. Right now a federal law, paid for by the big cable companies, is about to make muni rollout *illegal*. You may blame government, but the businesses are buying that law.
The subject line says it all.
No. No. No.
We are not a loved organization, but we are a respected one. -- John Fisher