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Comment It's going to be a miracle (Score 2) 7

If we don't have a 30 style crash. In addition to basically completely deregulating Wall Street and investment in general and all the other structural economic problems we are all just kind of pretending aren't there over and over and over again we are seeing crooks let off the hook by the current administration for no discernible reason except the blisteringly obvious one.

We are basically speedrunning a repeat of the lead up to world war II only this time we have nuclear weapons. But I'm sure it'll be fine right? Right?

Comment Yeah and that's the problem (Score 0) 35

It's the same stupid fucking pattern over and over again where you have wealthy elites who are well respected by the public and have control of the local media so the journalists will not discuss them critically.

There's nothing magic about being Japanese. Corruption and malfeasance are just things that human beings do everywhere.

The only country I have seen that I have the slightest faith in their ability to safely run nuclear reactors as France and that's because when France's ruling class tried to raise the retirement age to 62 there were riots in the streets.

I know those things don't seem connected but they are. It shows that the public there is not likely to let their betters run roughshod over them like America and Japan and frankly 99% of the rest of the world does.

The problem here is that elites can cause enormous disasters by taking huge risks that they are not personally culpable for and then get away with it because we have a different set of rules for them then we do for everybody else.

That is not by any stretch of the imagination in uncommon setup in the world. Frankly France is the odd man out here.

Comment You know you could Google (Score 1) 35

And read up on the history of the Fukushima disaster. You could read up on the long history of engineers warning that a large tsunami was going to cause a meltdown and that it could be easily prevented by reinforcing and building up the wall that protected the area in order to buy time and then having off-site generators that could be brought on to prevent the meltdown from happening.

The problem here isn't capitalism it's fascism. Specifically it's a ruling elite that is completely above the law. As the saying goes fascism requires an in-group that the law protects but does not bind and an outgroup that the law binds and does not protect. Japan has those things.

The engineers were in the out group and the CEOs were in the in group. So the CEOs could ignore the engineers warnings and get away with it but the engineers get blamed for causing a disaster they predicted and warned against.

This is the problem with having a ruling class. They can do bad things to you and get away with it because they are above the law.

Just because you don't like social problems doesn't mean social problems don't exist.

Comment They haven't solved any of the social problems (Score 0) 35

That caused the Fukushima disaster.

They still have a weak regulatory environment for businesses. Remember folks the public blamed the engineers for the disaster not the CEOs who wouldn't listen to the engineers when they were told that the next big tsunami would cause a disaster and that they need it off site generators and to reinforce the storm wall.

The engineers knew that the Fukushima reactor was going to melt down. It wasn't if, it was when.

And I will say it again, the public blamed the engineers. Not the CEOs who ignored the engineers.

That culture has not changed in the slightest. The technical problems with nuclear have been solved but the social problems have not.

And before anyone chimes in it's true that nuclear has a lower death count but try telling that to anyone in the city who lost all of their property when they had to evacuate Fukushima for 10 years. And remember the CEOs responsible all got away with it. Not a single one of them did a single day in jail

Comment Windows 11 is the most user hostile software (Score 1) 72

I have ever seen in my life.

Like llms and AI in general it's not for you. It's designed to benefit Microsoft and specifically a handful of the billionaire shareholders at the expense of literally everyone else that ever comes in contact with it.

I have set up before but I really wish Linux would just pick a distro and a package manager to make the standard.

It's too much for users and managerial types to wrap their heads around. As stupid as it sounds you can't just move icons around and not cause major support headaches. It's why Apple traditionally goes out of its way to keep icons and even windows exactly where the user left them.

Comment Wait so your example is from 24 years ago? (Score 2) 50

Also if you know anything about the history of that case Microsoft was on track to be split up until George Bush Jr got elected and then rather than splitting them up between the office and windows divisions they got... I'm not even going to call it a slap on the wrist. They got rewarded!

In exchange for zero prosecution for their anti-competitive tactics Microsoft had to give tens of millions of dollars worth of software to public schools.

Microsoft had been trying and failing for years to force public schools to switch to Windows and they had been resisting it because Windows is in nightmare to administer. That was a huge boon to Microsoft and it let them push Apple once and for all out of the education market.

So the example you gave is a perfect example of the Republican party not enforcing antitrust law in the slightest. Good job at least you tried.

Comment You aren't seeing the forest for the trees (Score 0) 50

So take all the companies you view as viable competitors to Amazon.

Now ask yourself who owns those companies? Who owns enough stock that they actually have voting rights and who is on the board of directors.

We have a very very thinly veiled illusion of competition. Yeah technically Walmart and Target compete with Amazon. In practice it's the same handful of major shareholders and the same handful of people rotating in and out of the board of directors on all the companies involved.

Truly new companies owned by new people are extremely few and far between and they get bought out or run out of business through anti-competitive tactics long before they have any noticeable effect on prices or consumer choice.

Notice how every company does mass layoffs of the same class of employee at the same time. That is not a coincidence.

It's not even a grand conspiracy. The same board of directors are hiring the same kind of CEOs triggering the same kind of layoffs at the same time for the same reasons.

And again any attempt to create a brand new competitor using all that engineering talent would find itself either bought out if they're very very lucky or more likely run out of business through anti-competitive tactics.

This is just one of many things that make it harder to get a job in America and other right-wing countries. The fact of the matter is we figured out back when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were in charge that right wing economic policies do not work.

But they have truthiness. They feel like they should work so we keep insisting on them.

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