Even last year I would’ve said “hold ya horses, pardner” but these days I think you’re onto something. The way big tech keeps on screwing everybody while other parts of the economy actively sink is concerning.
This is the “planned economy” also known as a dreaded “communism”(1950-1989). We all know how it works. Some unqualified persons make choices on how to use the nations resources and all the sudden food and energy stop showing up.
my country went through it - i don’t remember energy shortages but the food shortages were real. That systemic mismanagement over decades with fudged performance figures up and down piled up so high it’s a miracle things weren’t worse. Took a solid decade just to clean this mess
Many such cases!! It’s pretty well studied ant this point. We designed the world economy around food security for the last 80 years. It was a tragically flawed system and was slowly perverted, but the rapid destruction of these supply chains is certainly not going to end well for some.
I’d argue the problem with the system is the people we keep electing to run it. Governing a growing population of 340 million people is going to require a big system.
For whatever reason people vote for promises not track records. And even when the right people get in - the real problem has everything is that representation gets diluted with each successive government layer.
The higher it goes, the less it represents actual communities and regions. Even when the adequate people get all the way into parliament - you still have 80% of the cronies neutering their efforts and screwing everyone over. Not to mention those who just get corrupted by this kind of environment and opt into dirty dealings.
For example, you can elect fairly competent local representatives who would do their job like clockwork - but just one level above to the region level - and you get bunch of homies pushing their agendas instead of the region’s (which actively stifles local economy) and then the parliament is literally a menagerie of said characters at highest level mostly pushing their oligarch benefactor’s interest and cementing them in legislation (which actively stifles the economy state-wide). and then you get shit like labor codex being slanted towards employers to a ridiculous degree, you get tax legislation that doesn’t even make any sense, the whole business-related set of laws is downright hostile to new and small businesses in favor of big established companies and so on and so on.
I mean, we used to have some great institutions like the consumer protection bureau, the FCC, EPA…. There used to be a lot of large top end federal institutions that were very responsive to local communities. In fact, they were the only ones that could manage the local communities during the Jim Crow era. So I don’t know if trump has proved anything it’s that there is some need to wrangle power away from states who would poison and oppress their people. Gerrymandering away and otherwise eroding voting power at the federal level is a huge deal. Disparity of civic education outcomes nationally are a huge deal. People have been getting dumber and dumber for the last 40 years. It didn’t all happen overnight.
education is critical in this whole thing and it is telling that it is consistently under attack. when people get smartened up about something - shit gets done.
I would argue that every federal institution that Elon Musk went after in the spring…. Was a good organization and use of federal force and manpower. Like easy example right there, we need a strong federal government to keep up with the insane amount of power we have given billionaires. And other nations who would seek our spot on the world stage
What Musk did is something akin to patching the holes in the bomber plane that came back from the mission instead of strengthening the parts that didn’t got hit during said mission. Dude completely missed the point of his own agenda.
Even last year I would’ve said “hold ya horses, pardner” but these days I think you’re onto something. The way big tech keeps on screwing everybody while other parts of the economy actively sink is concerning.
This is the “planned economy” also known as a dreaded “communism”(1950-1989). We all know how it works. Some unqualified persons make choices on how to use the nations resources and all the sudden food and energy stop showing up.
my country went through it - i don’t remember energy shortages but the food shortages were real. That systemic mismanagement over decades with fudged performance figures up and down piled up so high it’s a miracle things weren’t worse. Took a solid decade just to clean this mess
Many such cases!! It’s pretty well studied ant this point. We designed the world economy around food security for the last 80 years. It was a tragically flawed system and was slowly perverted, but the rapid destruction of these supply chains is certainly not going to end well for some.
there is also an issue with the scope of the whole system. it is way too big and too tangled to function smoothly.
I’d argue the problem with the system is the people we keep electing to run it. Governing a growing population of 340 million people is going to require a big system.
For whatever reason people vote for promises not track records. And even when the right people get in - the real problem has everything is that representation gets diluted with each successive government layer.
The higher it goes, the less it represents actual communities and regions. Even when the adequate people get all the way into parliament - you still have 80% of the cronies neutering their efforts and screwing everyone over. Not to mention those who just get corrupted by this kind of environment and opt into dirty dealings.
For example, you can elect fairly competent local representatives who would do their job like clockwork - but just one level above to the region level - and you get bunch of homies pushing their agendas instead of the region’s (which actively stifles local economy) and then the parliament is literally a menagerie of said characters at highest level mostly pushing their oligarch benefactor’s interest and cementing them in legislation (which actively stifles the economy state-wide). and then you get shit like labor codex being slanted towards employers to a ridiculous degree, you get tax legislation that doesn’t even make any sense, the whole business-related set of laws is downright hostile to new and small businesses in favor of big established companies and so on and so on.
I mean, we used to have some great institutions like the consumer protection bureau, the FCC, EPA…. There used to be a lot of large top end federal institutions that were very responsive to local communities. In fact, they were the only ones that could manage the local communities during the Jim Crow era. So I don’t know if trump has proved anything it’s that there is some need to wrangle power away from states who would poison and oppress their people. Gerrymandering away and otherwise eroding voting power at the federal level is a huge deal. Disparity of civic education outcomes nationally are a huge deal. People have been getting dumber and dumber for the last 40 years. It didn’t all happen overnight.
education is critical in this whole thing and it is telling that it is consistently under attack. when people get smartened up about something - shit gets done.
I would argue that every federal institution that Elon Musk went after in the spring…. Was a good organization and use of federal force and manpower. Like easy example right there, we need a strong federal government to keep up with the insane amount of power we have given billionaires. And other nations who would seek our spot on the world stage
What Musk did is something akin to patching the holes in the bomber plane that came back from the mission instead of strengthening the parts that didn’t got hit during said mission. Dude completely missed the point of his own agenda.