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Comment It's a gamble (Score 1) 54

if they win they become God-Kings who's slightest whim is made real to the limits of human civilization.

If they lose they just go to their graves insanely wealthy.

There is a *very* small chance they get thrown out of a window or poisoned by a Stalin or a Mao, but it's very, very unlikely. They have their own private armies to protect them.

Comment I'm not saying we *wouldn't* try (Score 1) 54

I'm saying that those people aren't going down without a fight, and they'll kill a lot of the people who try to kill them.

When the violence starts we all get dragged into it. Nobody gets to sit back and watch the 'parasites' get taken out to their amusement. It doesn't work like that.

Although about 30-40% of the country seems to think it does.

Comment 70% of middle class jobs (Score 3, Insightful) 54

Since 1980 were taken by automation not outsourcing. Google it.

The Trump administration is heavily pushing even more automation.

His commerce Secretary has already admitted that even if tariffs magically brought the factories back the jobs wouldn't come with them because they would be automated.

We are going to have to do something about this. In the very near future, in the life of most of the people reading this, about a quarter of the population is going to be rendered completely useless. We will not have any useful work they are capable of doing.

We are not going to give them money to sit around playing Xbox and getting drunk on Friday night. Nobody is going to tolerate going to work for 40 to 60 hours a week when somebody else doesn't have to. It won't feel Fair and it will make people very angry.

At the same time we are talking about 30 to 40 million people we just have no use for. It's too many to stick in work camps or to kill.

We are going to have a huge conflict between the people who still need to do work and the people who there is no useful work to do. And there is no magical super job that's going to come along and employ them. Read the history on the two industrial revolutions, we had massive amounts of technological unemployment during both of them that your high school history books glossed over. We had 25% unemployment in the lead up to world war II.

I don't know what the solution is. I think what's going to happen is we're going to have another world war and it's going to go nuclear possibly ending the species. But if there's a third option we better figure it out and fast.

The billionaires have decided we're going to have feudalism and are working on dismantling capitalism so that they know longer depend on consumers and employees for their wealth and prestige and power. They are creating a world where they do not need you to buy their products. So they already have a solution to the problem it's just their solution doesn't include you.

Comment Re:no one cares. (Score 1) 50

That's a fair point, but it misses that they are still going to harvest and sell your data even if you are a paying Youtube customer.

Which is one of the reasons I would be in favor of legislation requiring companies to pick a revenue stream and stick with it. Charge customers for the service OR give it away and sell the data OR run ads. No more combinations. No more running ads on paid services, no more harvesting data and running ads, no selling data for paid subscribers.

Comment Re:English (Score 1) 83

I doubt Chinese will ever see much use outside of China. 5% of the world will never be able to speak or understand it. It's a tonal analytic language, so the tone deaf cannot hear the difference in sounds. And that's without considering that it has a ridiculous written language non-natives have a terrible time with.

Japanese, on the other hand, is an atonal synthetic language, which makes it much easier for the rest of the world to understand. It also sounds nice, while Mandarin sounds frikking disgusting. It's loaded with nauseating sounds. As in the sounds you make when about to throw up. Tonal languages are loaded with gross sounds, and I hate them. Norwegian is just as bad with those swallowed g's. Yuck!

There are a number of Japanese bands that sing entirely in English. I don't know if that would mean games in English would go over well or not. Probably bears no relation.

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