The change that will need to take place will not happen until we see a world where company profits are decimated by the fact that no company employs enough humans to continue to drive consumerism. We decided a long time ago, at least here in the United States, that corporations are more important than people. We won't care when people are hurt. We'll care when companies are hurt. And the only hurt those entities understand is loss of profit.

Of course, the usual government reaction to loss of profits is to hand over tax dollars to the corporations to help them tide themselves over until the next wave of consumerism. If we end up in a world where there aren't enough people working to provide the government with income tax on a regular basis, and there aren't enough consumers to provide sales tax or a regular basis, and enough people are rendered homeless to start cutting into property taxes outside the larger corporate entities, then the government will have to come up with a new plan other than, "hand over money we can no longer provide." As much fun as it's been for them to pretend continually creating money from nothing is somehow providing it, that cycle is about to hit an end-point nobody's really ready for.

It's gonna get real interesting as automation continues to impact the workforce. What's really sad is we've seen signs it could happen coming for a while now, and no one with the power to do anything about it, or prepare for it, is willing to do anything more than preach about how glorious the future will be when no one can work a steady job and no one has the money from work to be able to consume as the entire economy requires to keep lubricated and running.

We've spent well over forty years prioritizing greed over all other possible virtues. We're in one of the inflection points at this particular moment. We can either decide that we have some value other than greed, or we can let society steer itself into oblivion through that greed.

Based on the way things are looking? All our big decision makers have decided to just let greed continue to play its game. Human health and life itself doesn't matter in the face of profit potential for the few.

No. This is not a simple either/or despite the framing. It could be that they actually believe what they're putting out there, but that they absolutely *DO NOT*, under any circumstances, want to share the profits they make while decimating the workforce with those who are being affected by the massive job disruptions. And, I'm sorry to have to point this out to anyone supposedly familiar with the situation, but we already have forty plus years of proof that corporations are not well intentioned actors in the public sphere. They have one goal, and one goal only: profit. And they will absolutely behave in completely, belligerently, over-the-top sociopathic ways to achieve that goal. Thinking of them as well-intentioned enough to think the only two possibilities are they either don't believe they'll make money by decimating the workforce, or they'll get onboard with giving away a portion of the money they make decimating the workforce to help those disrupted demonstrates a complete and utter disconnect from reality.

Then again, we are talking about politics, which seems to require a complete and utter disconnect from reality these days.

In the end, there will be no attempt to force the corporations to repay the consumers. We gave up on treating humans as important in the face of corporations at some point in the 1980s. From that point forward, corporations and the ultra-wealthy who found them, have been deemed far more important than consumer class individuals. The government being forced to hand money back to the corporations will most likely be fine and dandy. Anything beyond that? No go. Consumers are fodder, cattle for the collective to harvest. There is no need for concern. The system is working precisely as designed.

Drain the middle class and down. Feed the upper class and the government.

They shouldn't be allowed to play gods, but right now they're not only allowed, they're being encouraged. They've sold themselves to the government movers and shakers as indispensable, and in some cases as the most important, most vital parts of all of society. And this particular manifesto seems to be yet another summation of how technologists must be allowed full reign over every aspect of society, or the society is ultimately a failure. Or at least it appears to be advertising itself as just that, and being that it is a product of Palantir's, I wouldn't doubt that this may actually be truth in advertising, something I didn't know marketing was capable of anymore. Small miracles wrapped in evil dressing I suppose.

I've read through several summaries elsewhere. It's really difficult to see reviews as anything but criticism because every glowing review gives off the ew vibes. Poke around online a bit. As a tech-company product, it seems to be pretty transparent at the roadmap it's attempting to lay out.

From the summaries I've read, it comes across like the billionaire class attempting to justify all atrocities so long as they benefit the billionaire class. There's also some truly classy quotes from it about how any country that's not supplying the billionaire class with additional profit potential is a lost cause and should be annihilated in favor of countries that do provide them with additional profit potential, or at least assimilated.

People spout of about techno-feudalism. This book, at least from the way it's being advertised, seems to be the techno-feudalist manifesto. I feel it may be worth reading from the perspective of understanding the enemy, but man the excerpts make it sound like pure, distilled evil with a touch of window dressing.

"...far more cynical about the voters who decide who should run it."

That is misguided. Voters pull the lever for the wrong people, but there's an enormously corrupt effort to control how that turns out.

And the originator of this thread was an extremely vocal Trump supporter. It's not so popular to claim credit for that these days.

"The USA started out as a federal republic but has since degenerated into a kleprocratic neo-feudalist banana-republic run by a criminal mafia oligarchy"

That the person you responded to FULLY supports, interestingly.

The President can order the murders of all NSA staff, he can bomb NSA resources, and thanks to your party, the President can do this with "absolute immunity". Let's not forget the consequences of the people you support gaining power.

Not that anything you said has merit. The NSA is part of the DoD, is the DoD accountable?

Now robots can exercise for us! FINALLY! Something I'm willing to gladly hand over to our robot overlords!

You mean the guys currently hell-bent on suiciding the entire human race to bring about their beloved Rapture? Those guys?

Save it for when DC goes full clusterfuck like Marvel has and have his ghost play one of the fifty or so Batmans (Batmen?) that show up.

I like the hidden implication that somehow these plugins didn't start as malware.

Yes, but only if they relentlessly flood all available communication channels accessed via screens with messaging about how important it is to stop using screens.