During incognito browser mode. So that's fun. As usual we found out as part of a lawsuit and settlement.

Back in the '80s which kept the economy going and then we followed that with two huge economic bubbles that kept things going. There was also a lot more government assistance back then in a lot of ways that we don't think about. I'm not talking about food stamps I'm talking about heavy duty subsidies like the aforementioned infrastructure spending that made it easier to get jobs.

We were in a much better position to weather 12 years of Republican rule back then. The Republicans have been building up to this for 60 years, ever since Goldwater lost. Trump is the final form of the party. A pedophile pretending to be godly while openly admitting he will burn in hell and still somehow tremendously popular with the party.

It's not just about how terrible Trump is it's about how voters would let somebody like that have that much power. It's a sign that our civilization is near collapse. A fundamental breakdown in the institutions that have been protecting all of us for our entire lives.

It's the opposite. People here have mostly done okay for themselves. Most of us are well over 50 and we got the full benefit of the Great society and the New deal. For example the government paid for 70% of our college tuition.

I don't think anyone here believes that they are going to ever suffer any serious hardship. And that's why we have so many Trump supporters here. They keep quiet because this isn't a safe space and Trump supporters won't talk about it if they're not in a safe space. But I know they are there.

These are the same people that are learning the kind of terms typically associated with libertarians right now.

They always think they will get off scot-free and maybe some of them will. But the point is not all of them will.

To fix the problems Republicans inevitably cause with their trickled down lies and idiot moral panics.

We didn't get that this time. And we've had 60 years of right wingers sabotaging the economy.

The coming crash is going to be brutal and I don't think we can do anything about it.

The only possible fix would be to give the Democrats a super majority in the Senate during the midterm elections so they could completely undo and course correct decades of economic mismanagement and sabotage from Republican rule.

There is no way you can get people to understand that or to prevents distraction from whichever moral panic fits their fancy the most.

By 2028 many of the people here reading this will be homeless. Some of you might at least have a roof over your head if family takes you in. Good luck. It is as has been in America for decades now every man for himself. And we will continue to worship at the altar of I got mine fuck you

AI is some sort of technology, whoever develops this technology better wins something supposedly. Governments have nothing to do with this, technology doesn't belong to the governments.

we are talking about different things. You are talking about class division, all of this, I am talking about a person who does not have to work and yet he does it because he wants to, yes, but personally for him there is nothing to be gained except more headache, it is not about earning more, it is about doing something with yourself.

I am saying that doing something is an important part of living, doing something useful, where you feel useful, this is what this example shows.

Certainly, if you worked as an office cleaner most of your life, probably you will not be missing that work if you were able to get a pension and stop working, but I think you will still be missing the entire aspect of being useful in a wider sense of the word.

I think what makes us people is desire to be useful, doesn't matter how much money you make. I think people who do not have that desire are actually less than developed people.

So the CIA doesn't really work anymore. After 70 years people have gotten wise to their tricks. There were multiple efforts to depose South American heads of state that were less than perfect for the CIA and American interests (and by American interests I mean American corporate interests, not your interests). Those attempts failed.

That's why we're getting ready to go to war with Venezuela so we can take the oil and so Trump can distract from the Epstein files. In the old days we could easily depose a weak dictator like Maduro. The fact that we can't and that we have failed after two or three attempts is a sign of massive changes in foreign policy and what works and what doesn't.

This isn't like when the buggy whip workers could go work for the car companies. There's nothing replacing the jobs being eliminated. Sit down and try to make a list of them. You can't. This is pure automation. It's causing raw technological unemployment.

And we better figure out something because 25% is the magic number.

That's the unemployment rate that preceded both world wars.

While also getting that sweet sweet 30% like Valve does.

I kind of see gaming rapidly becoming unaffordable though. Back in the day it was affordable in America because you would see steep steep discounts on last generation hardware but I'm not really seeing that the same way anymore. I guess games do still get discounted so there is that but when you're looking at having to drop anywhere from $700 to $1,000 for a game console that you're expected to buy again every 5 years that gets tough.

The developers behind the outer worlds complained the sales were well below expectations but the game launched for $80.

We paid more for games back in the day if we bought them at lunch but the economy was a hell of a lot better back then.

They are fascist dictatorships with state-owned capitalist systems. That's kind of the problem. Any attempts to transition to socialism gets sabotaged by a combination of capitalists and violent psychopaths passing themselves off as socialist reformers.

I don't think anyone has actually tried socialism. The problem is the capitalists use violence to prevent a transition to socialism and then the socialists respond in kind and then it becomes a fight to see who's the best at violence.

The problem is people who are good at violence aren't good at running a country. They're just really good at violence.

Furthermore you need a strong command structure to win with violence and that lends itself to right-wing extremism which in turn gets you fascism and a dictatorship.

We watched that play out multiple times. Russia and China the most notable examples where the most violent psychopath ended up in charge.

I think some of the South American nations made a real go at proper socialism but America heavily interfered.

That said I live in the real world and I can't pretend that interference doesn't exist. That's why I'm not a socialist. You can't have that kind of system when you have people with this much money and power in the world. They won't allow it. And they will sabotage any attempt to do it.

You're mixing up hardware and software.

A better analogy is I want my car, the hardware, to work with my phone. I don't want 50 different phone operating systems that my car company has to build interoperability for so that the hardware I bought, a car, has to support 50 different variations on phones.

Competition is good but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. There is value in standardization especially for complex things that require interoperability.

The same people pushing cursive are also pushing privatization and the elimination of higher education for everyone except a handful of the elite.

So right now if you're finding somebody on the left our main concern is to teach critical thinking skills that will create the next generation of voters that don't fall for the usual bullshit. You know what I'm talking about. The southern strategy, woke dei moral panics whatever the hell. The basic tricks that the ruling elite use to kowtow a population.

If we can't pull that off we would at least like to teach the actual history of chattel slavery in America, who Christopher Columbus really was and maybe throwing some stuff about the labor movement. It would also be nice if we could have an economics course in high school that wasn't just capitalist propaganda. I mean when I took mine years and years ago it was literally slotted between health and driver's ed that's how unimportant it was as a learning opportunity. It was literally just nine weeks or so of me being told how great capitalism was and how supply and demand made my life better.

I'm not saying we go full socialist but I would like to teach children about a proper and functional capitalist system, especially things like the need for regulation and antitrust law.

Now if you want to massively increase the funding for public schools that we can have all of the above and your finer points of education sure let's do it. But I have a sneaking suspicion you're not up for that

My point is that a guy with all the money still chooses to do it, shows that people lose themselves when they have nothing to do that involves more than just enjoyment.

Just shows that there is no amount of money that replaces some sort of meaning in one's life. Bezos will treat any business correctly, obviously he will be looking for maximum efficiency, which is not easy to do when you are a billionaire, after all, any issues that can be sold by throwing money at it he can really solve this way, which may be the wrong approach for a new business that needs to become useful by standing on its own 2 legs.

But it is just interesting to observe, a guy with all the money and access, he still wants to spend time working rather than enjoying yet another sunny day on one of his yachts.