I think they see a clear attack point. Big enough to make it worth trying it. It also helps that these computers are incredibly cheap to build not just because the leftover parts but because it's literally just a phone SOC.

Litigating each individual infringer is impossibly expensive for them. That's why they tried to go through the utility company.

For now what they will probably do is pick off a few people here and there to use as examples and use the full weight of the legal system to ruin their lives. Of course if you know anything about criminal justice harsh punishments are not effective deterrence.

So far the only reliable way to stop piracy has been to make a product that is better and have consumers that can actually afford to consume.

I mean based on the president of the United states? Those are rookie numbers. Come on Google you can do better!

Because he was the poster child for austerity politics and right wing economics in Argentina.

Argentina went a little crazy on the rent control without building public housing. Those two things aren't compatible. If you are going to do rent control you have to back it up with subsidies or direct public housing or you're going to have supplies shortages. Which they did.

On top of that droughts have absolutely wrecked Argentina's economy because it's mostly agrarian. It's a modern agrarian economy mind you but it's still in agrarian economy and basically the entire planet is in some stage of droughts thanks to that which shall not be named least I trigger somebody here.

So this means money was getting tight and it's easy to sell people on austerity politics when that happens. Basically slash government programs and services and promise big tax cuts and the miracle of trickle down economics. It's the same playbook we've been hearing since Reagan / Thatcher. Didn't work then doesn't work now but for some reason voters are always willing to try it again...

And for a brief period Of time it looked good. Cutting the rent control got some people back into the market that had pulled inventory off the market. And it takes a little while for the cuts to government services to show up in the economy meanwhile the tax cuts made everything look good and short-term deregulation brought in some capital investment and a little tiny micro bubble.

It didn't take long though for the bubble to burst and for the shit to hit the fan and when that happened as usual the right wing tried to hold down the power anyway they could. If I remember correctly they first tried to overthrow the courts and when that didn't work I think he was plotting an actual coup.

Oh God is stupid as he is I can't imagine he doesn't know that. If anything it would have been very very carefully explained to him by the other lawyers.

he's just corrupt. The Republican party has put a shitload of corrupt judges on the bench so that they could get them to rule in favor of large businesses and corporations against consumers and employees. Justice beer bro and that one girl that couldn't answer high School civics questions during her Senate hearing are probably the most famous examples but people don't like to think about how staggeringly incompetent they are. Clarence Thomas is another great example, George Bush was angry he was going to have to nominate a black man because he was as you might imagine kind of racist so he picked the most incompetent and corrupt black man he could find and rammed him through the Senate.

You are regulating them. That's why we have Las vegas. Dumbass young men can travel to Las Vegas and lose their short once or twice and then they have that barrier between themselves and their addiction. It also means it's much easier to regulate, serious addicts for example used to be able to contact all the casinos in Vegas and get put on a list and they would not be allowed to gamble anymore.

The problem with gambling is that it is legitimately and clinically addictive. Prostitution is a problem but again it needs regulation.

Basically you don't completely criminalize something because yeah it doesn't go away what you do is heavily heavily and systematically regulate it. You control access to it in a positive way that prevents the worst damage.

Problem you're having is you are stuck in black and white thinking. Everything has to be either on or off, all or nothing. Gray area suck and their unpleasant to think about so I don't blame you but still.

The fact that we invaded Iran because the senile old man didn't understand that they would and could close the strait of Hormuz is huge.

Unless Trump backs down in the next week or so we are going to have massive food shortages. That will drive up the cost of everything everywhere as everyone competes for a shrinking food supply. This is because so much of the fertilizer goes through the straight and we are in the planting season and we need to get going and we can't.

One of the problems with this country is people aren't very bright. They can't extrapolate even simple things. The majority of Americans seem to think at about the level of a 12-year-old. So they can't figure out the difference between news and propaganda and they can't understand that just because they could afford to eat this week doesn't mean they can afford to eat next week.

On top of that you've got a good chunk of people who are over that edge already and when you are struggling for your next meal it's hard to think clearly. So even if you somehow made it over the hump of thinking like a 12-year-old a few years of poverty and the stress that comes with it will knock you right back down.

Which is exactly why the Epstein class keeps so many people in that state. Idle hands are The devil's plaything after all...

It is what the Epstein class is actively trying to do. They may not achieve everything and all of their goals but they will achieve a lot of them and significantly reduce their dependency on your labor and therefore your quality of life.

Not everything has to be black and white 100%. You're thinking is too constrained and limited. Members of the ruling class think generationally not moment-to-moment. They aren't trying to survive until the next year like you and I are so they can think in ways you and I can't

If you talk to an actual farmer you're going to find out that there is literally nothing that robots can't Farm. The problem is cost. But remember when all of human history and civilization exists to glorify and uplift 500 people out of 8 billion money is not an object.

The Earth is a resort for 500 billionaires and we are all just staff. We are about to get replaced.

Did you do it on an app? If so then yeah, you are an innovator disrupting a space and a technology company so it's all good.

But that has nothing to do with the point the op made.

Preventing criminals from destroying private businesses isn't "structuring laws around business longevity". If you want that the complete lack of antitrust law enforcement would be a better example.

Private businesses are part of the overall infrastructure that makes your society work. So yeah when there is a attack on necessary infrastructure you do something about it or your civilization collapses.

I really hope you're at least getting paid to post nonsense like that. It would be sad if you were doing it for free...

If I already own everything and I have a limitless supply of robots to tend to my needs?

Yeah I need some engineers to keep the robots going and some thugs to keep the engineers in line but that's a few thousand people tops. Everybody else can just go live in squalor.

If you've ever seen an Indian reservation before the casinos that's what the Epstein class has in store for you and me.

Basically they are tired of the exact kind of dependency you are describing. And they are taking steps to eliminate that dependency.

There is absolutely no commodity here or anything approaching something regulated by futures trading. This is obviously just gambling.

These gambling businesses are draining about 60 billion a year mostly from Young men. There will be long-term social consequences and if you're not really old and about to die you will experience them. Like it or not you and I all live in the same society.

The message will get refined over time.

When the Republican party in the right wing first started trying to get us to have a freak out over a trans girls they focused on how icky they were and how they were going to rape your daughter in the bathroom.

That didn't really work. Voters demanded that the Republicans stopped going on and on about trans girls and do something about the collapsing economy and out of control inflation. A few of the Republicans that ran on trans panic lost their elections.

The Republican party though refines their message and their tactics. They knew they had something because their focus groups indicated that people didn't really like trans girls...

So they tried something else. In this case two things. First rapid onset gender dysphoria. A bullshit belief that your kid was going to suddenly turn trans because they saw it on TV. Basically the 2020 equivalent of violent video games turning you into a killer.

The second was trans girls in sports. Two trans girls were allowed to compete long before they should have been and they smashed records. That really struck a nerve because it hits on that basic concept of fairness that all animals have. Nobody even remembers that both girls were stripped of their titles and records and adjustments were made. To this day people are still bitterly angry.

Those two worked. They've created a huge moral panic that has swept multiple Republicans into office. Some of the most extremest Republicans you can imagine. Meanwhile gas is up a dollar a gallon and inflation is out of control. But at least nobody is transing your grandkids right?

What's worse is when you point this out it really pisses people off. People don't like being told that they have been made a fool of. It's much much easier to just get angry shout a few things maybe post a few comments and tell yourself that you were right. You were always right.

Meanwhile the price of eggs keeps going up and the price of gas keeps going up and we are about to see food shortages because of the war in Iran

When the work week was established it was a compromise between workers and the ruling class. Even back then there was a push to work fewer hours.

In the old days you worked a farm and you would wake up early in the morning and do your farm work and when the work was done that was it. No more work.

Factories and modern Capital brought a system of endless work. Where you could just work and work and work and work. People who remember the time when you did your work and when you work was done that was it there was no more work remembered that and were kind of pissed that they lost that.

After a hell of a lot of violence there was a compromise of 40 hours. But we seem to have forgotten that 40 hours a week wasn't the goal it was the compromise.

The ruling class though, the Epstein class. Those guys didn't forget. They've been chipping away at the gains made by the labor movement since the 1970s. More importantly they now have a standing army over us in the form of militarized police. The founding father's new damn well did a standing army was bad news. They created a shitload of checks and balances to try to keep that under control and more were added later. And we pissed all that away because of a minor crime wave...

And now we have ice which is something like the third largest military in the world. And they're running around with masks and fully automatic weapons yanking people off the streets and disappearing them for weeks on end. Sometimes forever.