Well. That article was nothing at all. It's literally just trying to popularize the opinions of some nut. And it's not hiding that fact. There's no research there, it's just repeating his claims. I'm disappointed, Atlantic.

Incidentally, your "PETA kills animals" slogan comes from an organization called "The Center for Consumer Freedom." This is a front for lobbyists founded by Richard Berman. They try to discredit groups like PETA on behalf of their clients, which are companies like Phillip Morris, Tyson Foods, etc.

In 2005 they put up a website called petakillsanimals.com, and a bunch of gullible people on social media fell for it.

The more you know.

They've been trying to get cloud gaming to take off for twenty years, and now that they've had a measure of success (though 4% doesn't seem terribly successful to me) they've decided to kill it.

Good riddance. I will not be sorry to see it go.

There it is. We can't have an AI gap. Some people just have a MAD mentality, no matter the issue. We survived the cold war, so what's the problem with starting another?

Let's just ignore all of the achievements of the non-proliferation treaty. Trump did. And the fact that gun control has worked in every other country. What's the solution to nukes? More nukes. What's the solution to guns? More guns. What's the solution to AI? More AI. All of this makes sense to someone, and in their mind the proof is that not all of us are dead yet.

I think you're mixing terms. Central planning is the soviet model, it's not a feature of socialism. Socialism just means collective ownership of the means of production.

You also seem to be treating democracy like it's a binary. A country is either democratic or it isn't. But I gave two ways above in which capitalism and democracy can coexist, it's just that a decision needs to be made about which should be preeminent.

Based on your binary notion of democracy, you claim that long running democracies are all capitalistic. Setting aside the fact that "long running" means no more than two hundred and fifty years, I would argue that not all of these are as democratic as they claim.

We, right now, have Trump trying to compromise elections in the United States. Let's say that he succeeds and then goes on to a third term as supreme leader. No doubt there would still be elections, and no doubt there would still be claims that the country is democratic. I don't think that those claims would mean very much.

Even without Trump, there's a lot of uncertainty of how democratic the country really is. Before Trump there was already a 94% correlation between campaign spending and election success in the house. 82% in the senate. Almost 50% of the house are millionaires. More than 70% of senators. That should at least give you pause.

I thought I was pretty clear above that "unfettered" meant the limitless accumulation of wealth. And thus the concentration of power. Which is the thing that is antithetical to democracy. And it's something that we see in the United States, and something which has been growing slowly over time.

You seem to lack examples of alternatives. There's a Spanish organization called the Mondragon Corporation which operates on a democratic-socialist model. There are American companies which are employee-owned, like Bob's Red Mill, but like capitalist companies they're organized on a central planning model and I don't know to what extent "employee owned" really reflects influence or if it's just a revenue share. The Mondragon Corporation is a socialist company. If Spain, as a country, wanted to go fully socialist then they could just force other Spanish companies to adopt the Mondragon model. That's all that it would take. This would not imply that Spain would also be a democracy. Even though Spanish companies would be individually democratic in this scenario, that does not necessarily mean the same thing about the country in which they reside. However, since the nation's companies do represent the economy in a practical sense, forcing them to go socialist is all that would be required to make the country socialist.

Would you prefer messiah? There are other options: cult leader, autocrat, dictator... I'd be comfortable with any of these. You pick.

Well... I think the largest actor in the privacy-violating camera space, by far, is Nest. And it's remarkable to me how that's worked out.

They've convinced home owners to build out their network for them, at the home owners' expense, by sharing some of the data that they collect back with the home owners. And in doing so, not only have they built a massive network but they've created an environment where people protesting their surveillance not only need to deal with the company, but the protestors also need to deal with the home owners. Home owners who are financially motivated to defend the system that they have bought in to.

I imagine that it would look like democracy. Unfettered capitalism and democracy are innately incompatible, since democracy is all about diffusing power among the whole population, and capitalism concentrates power into the hands of a few.

This doesn't mean that you can't have capitalism in a democratic system, but it needs to be limited capitalism where no one is allowed to accumulate too much influence (money).

Or, likewise, you can have democracy in a capitalist system, but it is limited democracy. Where people have some ability to self-govern, but only to the degree that they're permitted by the oligarchs.

This last option seems to be the direction in which we're headed. South Korea is mostly already there.

As for your assertion that, "Democratic socialism always ends up quickly abandoning either democracy or socialism." I assume that you're talking about revolutionary governments. The trouble with revolutions, regardless of their stated ideology, is that they very frequently result in dictatorships. That has nothing to do with socialism or capitalism or democracy, and everything to do with revolutionary upheaval.

You're using an example of ethnic nationality to counter my example of civic nationality. Those things are not the same, or similar.

I don't really know anything about Black People United, but as you've described it they are a PAC which aligns themselves with an ethnonationalistic group. If they then went a step further and aligned themselves or that group with a foreign country then it would be a matter of civic nationalism. If they then went further than that, and coordinated with representatives of that foreign country then they could no longer be considered independent. That would then be a comparable example to AIPAC.

Let's try something a little simpler. I don't like to throw around accusations of treachery, but the mere existence of the notion of treachery should be sufficient to put to bed your claim that supporting a foreign country is a right. This should clearly preclude not just a right to commit traitorous actions, but given the flexible nature of international relations and the inflexible nature of rights, this should preclude a right to non-traitorous such actions as well. That is not among your rights, and it doesn't make any sense that it would be. What would be the corresponding obligation, and how could that be reconciled with a "government of the people?"

Your insults are tiresome. They imply an arrogant person, mired in righteousness.

The title of that magazine is "PC Magazine: The Independent Guide to IBM Personal Computers." They do have an issue published in 1984 though, titled "The IBM Compatible Universe."

Just to throw in my few cents on the original topic: I think the grandparent is right. As consoles become more and more similar to PCs, opportunities to cut costs diminish. This was one of the problems with the Xbox 1 (not the Xbone): it was almost entirely off-the-shelf PC parts, and so cost cutting was a very expensive affair for Microsoft.

The Democrats send plenty of spam. It's likely that this accusation is just false on all counts.

The only solution is to clean the FTC of corrupt partisan hacks. There's really no other option, since this guy is just going to keep making accusations until Gmail only allows Republican emails.

Yes, ha ha. Very good.

All right, a little exercise: Instead of doing quippy little line-by-line responses that don't form cohesive arguments and don't actually get us anywhere, let's try something else.

If we break this down, there are basically two elements that we are talking about. First, you are making much ado about the distinction between working for and working on behalf. I pointed out that this is the same distinction made by the Citizen's United decision to rationalize the existence of super PACs. Super PACs are exempt from campaign finance laws, provided that they act independently (i.e.: working on behalf). They can do whatever they want with an unlimited amount of money, as long as they don't coordinate with the beneficiaries of their efforts. Because as long as they don't coordinate, they're just independent people exercising their speech.

In reality, this "no coordination" rule is violated all the time (i.e.: working for) without repercussions. But even super PACs don't coordinate with the same flagrant disregard as AIPAC does. Of course AIPAC is not a super PAC, and so is not bound by that rule, even though it acts just like a super PAC. And so this is not a violation of the law, but it certainly is a violation of the principle of independence that you are so intent on selling.

Your counter argument to this first element has been... uh. I'm not sure. I don't get the impression that you understood what I was getting at there. Hence my reiteration of the argument.

The second element was about rights. I responded to the other person about that here.

Then there were some other bits that don't make sense, along with a bunch of insults. I'm willing to chalk this up to miscommunication.

Well yes it's true that the word "support" is doing too much here, but there's an important distinction: we're not talking about supporting specific foreign interests. No one is suggesting that you can't agree with the Israeli government when it comes to any individual point of policy. Instead we're talking about wholesale alignment with a foreign power.

I can't think of any examples of that which would be permissible, and it certainly doesn't seem like anyone should have that right. I can think of plenty of negative examples though, how about the Russia-aligned Ukrainians living in Donbas? They're sometimes referred to as "Russians" living in Ukraine, because of their Russian ethnicity, but they are Ukrainian citizens living within the borders of their own sovereign country. Independent from Russia. Did they have a right to ask Russia to invade? Do they still have that right, even now?

Those same Ukrainian citizens, aligned with a foreign power, elected a Russia aligned president who, after his ousting, asked Russia to send Russian troops into Crimea. This ultimately turned into an invasion of Crimea. Was this okay? It doesn't seem okay.

Okay... I think you may you may be too invested in this, you're just making broad declarations instead of cogent arguments.

I don't know the whole story of the origins of the Committee of Unamerican Activities, but the biggest problem with that group was that they were persecuting an ideology. It's true that a lot of American communists at that time aligned themselves with the Soviet Union, but the committee was really about stamping out challenges to capitalism and the ruling class. It was not really about suppressing foreign influence (even though it was often framed that way).

Insofar as Americans have a "right" to agree with whatever, that right is to an opinion that they form of their own accord. If Americans believe that war with Iran is preferable to a peace deal, and the Israeli government also happens to believe that, then fine. But that's not what's going on here. AIPAC is explicitly aligned with a foreign power.

Why would material support be the deciding factor on whether a foreign power is exerting undue influence? Are you saying, for example, that all of Russia's election interference is A-OK because they're not literally bribing people?

You are also either wholly endorsing the Citizens United decision, and the resulting super PACs, or you're missing the point there. I'm not sure which, but your uncompromising defense of lobbying seems to suggest that you like it.

I think you've gone overboard here. Yes, the distinction between working for and working on behalf does matter a bit in the technical sense (though this is the same excuse that's used to justify super PACs...), but it's not such a big difference and the line is blurred here anyway.

For example, AIPAC spent $40 million to oppose the nuclear deal with Iran in 2015. That's explicitly pushing Israeli policy goals. Or maybe I should say Netanyahu's policy goals, he thanked AIPAC explicitly for their help when he gave a speech at the AIPAC Policy Conference. It's hard to argue that these are just independent Americans acting independently. Even super PACs are seldom that blatant about their coordination.

Also, you said something above that was a little thought provoking. "Americans have the right to support Israel." ... Do they? I don't see why Americans would have the right to support a foreign country. I guess this depends heavily on how you're using the word "support," but ultimately Americans are expected to have allegiance to one country only. As you point out, someone who has allegiance to another country can't be trusted to vote.