When I get bored with the conversation/tired of arguing I will simply tersely agree with you and then stop responding. I’m too old for this stuff.
Absolutely.
Bad, rushed software that wires together 200 different giant libraries just to use a fraction of them and then run it in a sandboxed container with three daemons it needs for some reason doesn’t mean “8 Gb isn’t enough”, it means write tighter, better software.
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I felt the same way. I was VERY happy with that outcome. I won’t say PayPal earned my LOYALTY with that, because loyalty to ANY company is stupidity, but at the very least they earned my respect for the time being. Of course, I reserve the right to revoke it at any time.
In my experience, their consumer protection is great.
PayPal has been absolutely instrumental for me in issuing refunds with obstinate vendors. Once or twice they’ve issued me a refund after being refused a return/refund when an Aliexpress vendor either sent the wrong item or nothing at all.
I even got them to secure me a refund against the Australian government after they refused to issue a refund after directing me to apply for a tourist visa with the wrong visa process.
All of that is completely true and also irrelevant. The point isn’t the specific details, the point is the idea that “perpetual control” is not the default modus operandi of the structure of our system. As to the specific details of where that line is drawn, that’s something that’s up for debate. All we need as a starting point is to acknowledge that unquestioned, perpetual individual control of an entity that can create and destroy the lives of millions has at least the POTENTIAL to be a dangerous social ill, and the specific details of how we address that can come from there. If you cannot see or acknowledge that at any level, then we’re not even looking at reality from the same perspective, and we’re not starting from the same priors, so there’s no point in discussing it any further - there’s no point of agreement we’ll be able to reach.
Look, this isn’t even the standard operating procedure of society. Corporations are the ONLY situation where we seem to have decided providing the seed of creation equates to perpetual ownership.
ANYTHING else you create comes with a time limit before it takes on a life of its own beyond you.
You wrote a book? Your copyright WILL expire and it WILL be out of your control.
You invented something? That’s great. Eventually your patent expires and it becomes publicly usable.
Hell, the closest equivalent to a company? Is having a BABY. You put in a seed to create something, you do a ton of work to raise it to function. Are you going to suggest that a parent should have perpetual control over their children and the things they produce as well? And it has been established by LEGAL PRECEDENT that a corporation IS a person.
ALL of these things are accepted default procedure in our society. In NO other situation do we consider creation to be equivalent to perpetual ownership of all aspects of a thing. YOU are arguing the exception, not us.
There is a significant difference between “lose control of the company” and “not being the exclusive beneficiary of the success of the company”, and it’s a strawman argument to suggest otherwise.
Even with a 1 billion dollar cap, the vast majority of companies are not worth nearly a billion dollars, and of those that are, you would have to double that before that owner would not have a controlling interest, and while I acknowledge that the owner losing control of the company is not necessarily an intentional result of this kind of rule, by the time a company reaches a value where that would even be a threat, they have such an outsized impact on society through their operation that it is actually irresponsible for any single person or small group of people to have such control. Organizations can grow to have outsized impact on millions of lives, entire communities, or even the direction of history. What is reprehensible isn’t capping their control of such an organization - it’s allowing that control to impact the world with absolutely no check by those its operation affects. I don’t know your country of origin, but if you are American you at least pay lip service to the idea that power derives from the consent of those over whom it is wielded. I would suggest to you the radical interpretation is that that should only apply to government when extremely large companies have much, much more power to impact peoples’ daily lives.
do they start losing control of shares until they’re below that threshold?
Sounds good to me. Dole them out to employees.
I hope for everyone’s sake you’re right, but if that does come to pass it will come as a surprise to me.
I agree with your conclusion, but I don’t agree that it’s feasible. Any tax solutions will involve legislation by a government owned by those same interests. And even if you managed it in major economies, you’d just force the climate issues into places with fewer qualms about their fuel usage. I’d love to see this problem solved, but my faith in our ability to resolve it is far less than yours.
Okay, I can see how you got that from my post. I was a bit hyperbolic in my original post, and I apologize.
I’m not REALLY making a moral equivalence argument or saying anything about comparing the horrors of slavery to work… I’m saying getting rid of slavery was easier to enact because there was an alternative system that happened to be ultimately profitable for the rich at the same time. Yes, wars have been fought to stop abolition, but at the end of the day, after slavery was abolished, the rich found a way to stay rich almost everywhere - abolition came at very little real change to the wealth structure of society. They had a supply of labor to exploit for profit during slavery, and they had one after. The fact is that the moral and financial interests both aligned on making abolition happen - it wasn’t caused by pure strength of willpower. And yes, the system we have now is MUCH MUCH better than true slavery, but it’s still a stretch to use the current system as a beacon of hope.
On climate change the moral and financial interests are NOT aligned in a clear way. There are always still going to be financial incentives to screw the climate for extra money. By comparison, if slavery were somehow legal again TODAY, it’s not clear it would be profitable for anybody to actually do it. That difference will make climate goals harder to enact.
Not to be defeatist, but…
We didn’t abolish slavery… we just replaced it with wage slavery. Sure, the workers are free to leave - and try to survive with no other job opportunities and no money. In fact, for the employers, this is actually preferable to real slavery, because there are lower upfront costs for your slaves, they don’t try to run away or rebel, you don’t have to pay for their healthcare or long term care, and in many places government tax dollars will subsidize their living expenses. Employers have it WAY better with wage slaves than real slaves.
Child labour is still alive and well in many countries, and even there the ball is rolling on rolling THAT back in the US at least.
I admire your positivity, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
we’re all a bunch of baby-eating, baby-fucking Satan worshippers,
God, I hope it’s not the same baby…
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There is no way anybody would shut him down as long as he’s not violating the conditions imposed by the judgement. As long as he is working, every dime he’s making is going to pay his victims. It wouldn’t make ANY sense whatsoever to shut him down.
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Possibly. But it’s also pretty common in many instances of technology adoption that as more users come, the quality gets worse, and while open source doesn’t have to worry about a shareholder-driven profit motive driving it, it’s still easy to wind up with a muddled focus. I wouldn’t expect that Linux and all of the associated software projects that make the functional desktop are going to be an exception overall. If you’re an open source developer working on a project now, basically any user is some form of power user, and it’s easier to find consensus of what to prioritize on a project not only because Linux users tend to be better about understanding how their software works and are actually helpful in further development, they’re also likely to direct development towards features that make software more open, compatible, and useful.
Now fast forward to a future where Linux is the majority desktop OS, those power users are maybe 5% of the software’s user base, and every major project’s forum is inundated with thousands of users screaming about how hard the software is to use and, when bug reports and feature requests are actually coherent, they mostly boil down to demands for simpler, easier to understand UIs. I can easily imagine the noise alone could lead to an exodus of frustrated developers.
Some things are better for NOT trying to be the answer for everyone.
That is true, but until now we’ve mostly been able to enjoy the best of both without compromise or major obstacles, and even AAA games can offer quality, especially considering the value add of the modding community. We got all the benefit of a AAA title with customization and community at a fraction of the price. Sure, indies will still be there and delivering great quality no matter what, but more actively engaged big companies is still a net loss to PC gaming.
I’m scared. As soon as it becomes profitable, companies in the gaming space will be rushing to enshitiffy PC gaming the way they’re doing with consoles. Big, public game companies not paying attention to the PC space is a GOOD thing.
God… if only.