I heard earlier today that a court has determined that since governments are using all of this data, including license plates, that a FoIA request for all of the license plate data gathered from Flock in a city area for a range of dates was valid.

They want to have a power advantage over their serfs but turning their advantage into a burden changes that dynamic. Something to look into for those so inclined.

We seem to be well past the point of being able to expect them to follow the Law or "do the right thing".

I forget which town but one of them immediately removed all the cameras when somebody did a foi request.

You're not going to find out where the billionaires are going because like Steve Jobs used to do they hide their license plates.

But your shitty little Republican mayor who frequents the local gay bar doesn't have the resources to do that. A

> I see no reason why the government shouldn't be allowed to buy the same data that jim-bob the farmer can purchase.

Jim-bob is likely to face some serious problems if he smashes down your door and drags you away in a pre-dawn raid.

The IRS people get a promotion.

This is why the Constitution places strict limits on the actions of government agents.

(in its original interpretation)

Here I am about to think "damn, people losing their jobs to AI" and then I realize its the "pizza in 4-easy payments" people.

They should probably go all-in on AI as soon as possible. For their investors' sake.

So we have had multiple decades of Court packing so you're headed by the heritage foundation, a right-wing think tank that made that their primary goal.

If you look into Amazon for example and wonder how they got so big you will find that they were just going around buying up all there competitors using investment capital. Most tech companies that's how they got big they just bought up competitors.

Facebook is in a unique situation. Nobody under the age of 18 wants to be on the same social media platform has their parents so every few years a new social media platform develops as a separate platform for the kids.

Every time that happens Facebook just buys that platform.

Tick tock was a problem because they couldn't just buy the platform since it was owned by the Chinese government. So they just pressured the government here to shut it all down and give them control.

Refusing to enforce antitrust law makes your life noticeably worse even if you don't use the services involved.

The problem is it's government regulation and its bureaucrats that enforce the law there.

We have been taught our whole lives that there is nothing worse than the bureaucrat. It doesn't help that as an American most of your interactions with the government are negative. Means testing for assistance programs is brutal and difficult so if you fall on hard times and need help fuck you. Most of us did never do need help still have to go to the DMV sometimes and wait in line frustratingly or we get pulled over by cops and that's our interaction with the government.

It is very easy to translate those frustrated emotions with a sabotaged government into a desired cut regulations that control corporate abuses that hurt you.

And that is way too complicated a concept for probably 80% of the population to understand...

OK, that was pretty funny. +1.

It's not a product in the traditional sense. It's a tool that the upper elite are hoping to use to replace you so that they are no longer dependent on your labor or your consumer dollars.

It always strikes me odd that people ask the question if there are no consumers who will buy their products?

You think somebody with a billion dollars hasn't asked that question?

What if they come up with a different answer than the old one we're told Henry Ford did. (Fun fact Ford paid better not because he wanted consumers but because the work was extremely tough and he had a hard time getting employees)

What if the solution they come up with is to automate everything and anything so that they can limit their dependency to a handful of engineers and a handful of bugs that keep those engineers in line?

What if there's no place for you in tomorrow?

I don't think most people can face that kind of existential dread. It borders on cosmic horror

It's not just greenflation. Companies have realized that they can make more money focusing on the top 10% of consumers and just what the bottom 90 go to hell. If they had the slightest fear of competition then they wouldn't take that risk because a competitor might work their way up in the cheaper markets and then jump into the more profitable ones, but since we don't enforce antitrust law because we're busy freaking out about trans girls playing field hockey in the Midwest you can kiss that goodbye.

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

I do agree that incentives (and dis-incentives) are typically superior to other forms of regulation.

For example, a higher property tax for unoccupied buildings (or a tax break based on occupancy) might help get things moving.

Though, in the case of commercial property, that might not be enough. A root cause is Bank officers handing out loans like candy and basing the value of the collateral property on "anticipated rent". The owners are now afraid lowering the rent will trigger a re-valuation and the bank demanding repayment or starting foreclosure. Meanwhile, those officers know of the situation but don't want to rock the boat until they can get promoted far enough away not to have it come back on them , or better, make it to retirement first.

In truth, forced re-valuation is most likely the only way to break that log-jam at this point. The market isn't going to grow enough to actually make those turkeys rentable at current asking.

For residential, a grace period on some of those rennovations in exchange for actual occupancy may help.

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.