The Rich and Powerful Who Abuse the System: the contempt topic

[Conflicting Thought]

We have pirvatized water in chile, its not good, transnational companies own our water, they do with it what they want, they used it the way they see fit, so mostly to do buisness, they dont care about the people, they care about profit, so they act acording to that, we have a long lasting drought but you wouldnt now it  they way the use it, but we, the people are constantly under threat of water shortages.

 

 water is a human right, business dont give a fuck about our rights, so they shouldnt have that power, they dont care about people so why would we give them the power to do  whatever they want with a key resourse wich we need to fucking live. 

[Spockydog]

4 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

That’s true, I just see UK water used a lot to ‘prove’ that it must be a bad idea when the stats don’t really support that.

‘Saving money’ isn’t a good general goal for governments either. I think privatisation should be considered very carefully in all instances, but for me it’s more complicated than a blanket ‘bad or ‘good’. 

I mean, it's almost as if Thames Water didn't narrowly avoid collapse because they'd been borrowing billions in order to pay shareholder dividends, whilst presiding over a crumbling infrastructure and failing to build the essential new reservoirs that we will need in order to safeguard the most precious resource we have.

Or is this some kind of Mandela-effect? Have I always lived in a world where foreign-owned water companies are kind, benevolent custodians of our water, beaches and rivers? What the fuck is happening? Maybe that was the Marvel Multiverse? I dunno. It's difficult to keep track of this bullshit. Fucking Doctor Strange.

 

Edited September 21, 2023 by Spockydog

[Zorral]

For people who want to expand their thinking about capitalism, or even, maybe learn what it was, vs. what it is now, there is this series:

https://www.vox.com/2023/9/15/23873898/today-explained-capitalism-economics-books-to-read

Keep in mind when reading and / or listening, this is put together by the most mild of mild critics/bothsidesism sorts of NPR.

Much more scathing reading lists of accounts, histories and criticisms have been put together by others.  But this is right ther.

[Spockydog]

32 minutes ago, Zorral said:

For people who want to expand their thinking about capitalism, or even, maybe learn what it was, vs. what it is now, there is this series:

https://www.vox.com/2023/9/15/23873898/today-explained-capitalism-economics-books-to-read

Keep in mind when reading and / or listening, this is put together by the most mild of mild critics/bothsidesism sorts of NPR.

Much more scathing reading lists of accounts, histories and criticisms have been put together by others.  But this is right ther.

If you could recommend something on Responsible, Ethical, Social, whateveryouwanttocallit, Capitalism, I've been trying to find a decent book for ages. It's so hard to get honest recs on google these days (fucking Bezos). I've tried a couple of titles, but they've been nothing but absurd unreadable dross.

Any recs or writers would be appreciated.

ETA: Oooh, like the look of Less is More by Jason Hickel. Right up my de-growth-boner alleyway.

If we do this right, we are going to be freakin' ubiquitous. We'll go public then imma make so much money I'll buy back all my shares and then the market can go screw itself.

Naive? Maybe. But this whole thing started for me because the world seemed to think you couldn't possibly combine two incredibly popular plant-growing methods.

Well, the world was wrong.

 

Edited September 24, 2023 by Spockydog

[Zorral]

Well, she says doubtfully, considering the topic.

This might be the best I can do off the top of my head.  Doubtfully.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Social_Capitalism_in_Theory_and_Practice/J2dXDKe0ZQUC?hl=en

I have great difficulty putting social good and capitalism next to each other, because, ultimately, history shows us that the capitalism part always wins.  Like there were intelligent, moral and socially conscious factory owners in the 19th C, who really did have the welfare of their workers at heart.  But it never lasted, often not even during the lifetime of the owners, and never after their deaths.  And now everything is owned by vast multinational multicorps -- the owners, such as they are, i.e. shareholders, never even see a laborer, certainly not the kids laboring in the lithium mines of Africa, for instance.

There was one good capitalism accomplished, though ultimately again, at great cost to the environment, and ultimately becoming another weight of exploitation and oppression -- the freeing of women from the millennia of spinning every waking second they weren't performing other essential tasks, to make thread, that could be woven into cloth, to clothe the world.  Though, in many parts of Africa, this wasn't necessary because the climate made wearing clothes created out of the bark of certain trees -- warmth wasn't the prime necessity for clothes as in Europe.  It was a complicated process, but men and women could work at it together.  Making such 'fabrics' never demanded what making wool thread did.

This isn't to say that the Africans who could afford to, didn't glory in obtaining cloth of gold, velvet and silks as soon as such things arrived on the local markets, particularly with the Akan kingdoms and the Ashanti empire, which was the prime gold producer for Europe for centuries.

 

Edited September 24, 2023 by Zorral

[Spockydog]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Well, she says doubtfully, considering the topic.

This might be the best I can do off the top of my head.  Doubtfully.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Social_Capitalism_in_Theory_and_Practice/J2dXDKe0ZQUC?hl=en

I have great difficulty putting social good and capitalism next to each other, because, ultimately, history shows us that the capitalism part always wins.  Like there were intelligent, moral and socially conscious factory owners in the 19th C, who really did have the welfare of their workers at heart.  But it never lasted, often not even during the lifetime of the owners, and never after their deaths.  And now everything is owned by vast multinational multicorps -- the owners, such as they are, i.e. shareholders, never even see a laborer, certainly not the kids laboring in the lithium mines of Africa, for instance.

There was one good capitalism accomplished, though ultimately again, at great cost to the environment, and ultimately becoming another weight of exploitation and oppression -- the freeing of women from the millennia of spinning every waking second they weren't performing other essential tasks, to make thread, that could be woven into cloth, to clothe the world.  Though, in many parts of Africa, this wasn't necessary because the climate made wearing clothes created out of the bark of certain trees -- warmth wasn't the prime necessity for clothes as in Europe.  It was a complicated process, but men and women could work at it together.  Making such 'fabrics' never demanded what making wool thread did.

This isn't to say that the Africans who could afford to, didn't glory in obtaining cloth of gold, velvet and silks as soon as such things arrived on the local markets, particularly with the Akan kingdoms and the Ashanti empire, which was the prime gold producer for Europe for centuries.

 

Thanks, Z. 

 

 

[Rippounet]

@Zorral I thought maybe this thread would be more appropriate to build on your answer.

32 minutes ago, Zorral said:

There are so many books concerning these matters!  So very many.  So very easy to find too -- like about a second's worth of searching.  And that's without going to university library catalogs even!
Totalitarianism and Political Religion: An Intellectual History (2012), A. James Gregor

Seems like a good place to start. However:

Quote

Gregor provides unique insight into the variants of Marxism, Fascism, and National Socialism that dominated our immediate past.

To be candid, I'm looking for a book that would do the same thing on capitalism, and wondering whether anyone has managed to tie this in with anthropology - and/or possibly even with neuroscience (one can dream). On capitalism, I have Walter Benjamin (as a classic), and Eugene McCarraher's recent The Enchantments of Mammon for example. But I'm wondering if anyone has written a book analysing the narratives behind capitalism from an anthropological perspective. Something like Andrew Herman's The better Angels Of Capitalism (which is certainly relevant to this thread) perhaps, but with a broader perspective.
Being French, I keep stumbling on Bourdieu, but I assume there should be something comparable by an English-speaking scholar (?).

[Zorral]

1 minute ago, Rippounet said:

a book that would do the same thing on capitalism, and wondering whether anyone has managed to tie this in with anthropology

You might check on authors and scholars who are women regarding this, which I mentioned in the Literature forum.

This isn't exactly what you are looking for, but it is in the direction.  I've not yet read the book, but I've listened to her being interviewed and read interviews with her --

Cat Bohannon's newly published Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Evolution.

https://magazine.columbia.edu/article/eve-cat-bohannon-review

https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780385350549

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/cat-bohannon/eve-Bohannon/

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/11/books/cat-bohannon-eve.html

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/sep/30/how-women-drove-evolution-cat-bohannon-on-her-radical-new-history-of-humanity

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/75494215

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

Yikes.

 

[Zorral]

The Blue Check means its a fascist, not 'verified'.

A year later, Musk’s X is tilting right. And sinking.
Musk has furthered the company’s rightward turn by displacing the mainstream media from a position of authority on the site: Both X’s software and iconic “blue check” verification system now elevate the tweets of paying subscribers — many of them conservative influencers. .... 

The overall impact of these changes has been to degrade the public’s ability to find authoritative information, according to NewsGuard, a nonpartisan nonprofit that monitors media credibility. That failure has been particularly consequential during the Israel-Gaza war, when Twitter was central to disseminating unproven narratives, such as who blew up a hospital in Gaza.

NewsGuard found that X was a leading purveyor of misinformation in the first weeks of the conflict. And three-fourths of the most viral posts on the platform advancing misinformation came from “verified” accounts, many of them anonymous, the nonprofit concluded. ....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/10/27/elon-musk-twitter-x-anniversary/

Quote

 

.... Musk has led Twitter in an explicitly political direction. He publicly endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president and hosted the launch of his campaign for the Republican nomination on Twitter Spaces. He reinstated the account of Donald Trump, who had been permanently banned for his tweets about the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

When Musk hired a new CEO, one of her first moves was to court former Fox News host Tucker Carlson to launch his new program on X, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive talks. Carlson and X signed a revenue-sharing deal earlier this month, The Post has learned.

Musk has furthered the company’s rightward turn by displacing the mainstream media from a position of authority on the site: Both X’s software and iconic “blue check” verification system now elevate the tweets of paying subscribers — many of them conservative influencers. People who have worked with Musk and his CEO, Linda Yaccarino, say they intend to turn X into a self-contained forum for creator content where people can watch original shows like Carlson’s. ....

 

The Consequences of Elon Musk’s Ownership of X

Gift link for full article:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/10/27/technology/twitter-x-elon-musk-anniversary.html?unlocked_article_code=1.50w.LdlR.9xkwDI4h3JID&smid=url-share

Quote

 

.... The war between Israel and Hamas — the sort of major news event that once made Twitter an essential source of information and debate — has drowned all social media platforms in false and misleading information, but for Mr. Musk’s platform in particular the war has been seen as a watershed. The conflict has captured in full how much the platform has descended into the kind of site that Mr. Musk had promised advertisers he wanted to avoid on the day he officially took over.

“With disinformation about the Israel-Hamas conflict flourishing so dramatically on X, it feels that it crossed a line for a lot of people where they can see — beyond just the branding change — that the old Twitter is truly gone,” Tim Chambers of Dewey Square Group, a public affairs company that tracks social media, said in an interview. “And the new X is a shadow of that former self.” ....

 

 

Edited October 27, 2023 by Zorral

[Martell Spy]

Opinion: When it comes to remote work, Stephen Schwarzman doesn’t get it

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/27/opinions/stephen-schwarzman-remote-work-alaimo/index.html

Quote

 

Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the private equity firm Blackstone, doesn’t think many of us put in enough work during the pandemic. Speaking on a panel at an investment conference in Saudi Arabia, he claimed that, during the pandemic, remote workers “didn’t work as hard — regardless of what they told you.”

Schwarzman’s contentions aren’t just outrageously offensive and inaccurate. They also promote the billionaire’s economic interests at the expense of those who are up against enormous challenges in life.

 

 

[lacuna]

Apropos of nothing, as an economics dum-dum, I found this informative.

[Zorral]

Libertarianism for us, feudalism for you.

https://crookedtimber.org/2023/11/15/silicon-valleys-worldview-is-not-just-an-ideology-its-a-personality-disorder/

Quote

 

.... Silicon Valley ideology is a master-slave mentality, a hierarchical worldview that we all exist in extractive relation to someone stronger, and exploit and despise anyone weaker. Its only relations to other humans are supplication in one direction and subjugation in the other, hence its poster-boys’ constant yoyoing between grandiosity and victimhood. Tech bros like Thiel, Musk and Andreesen are the fluffers in the global authoritarian circle jerk. Putin is the bro they’d be tickled to receive calls from, making them feel they’re on the geopolitical insider’s inside track. MBS is the bro they envy but tell each other scary stories about. Like most of them, MBS inherited his head start in life. He has all the money, all the power, a nice bit of geo-engineering on the side, and he dismembers uppity journalists without consequence. A mere billionaire like Thiel can only secretively litigate them out of business.

Silicon Valley ideology is organising economic, political and social relations into a zero-sum hierarchical chain in which democratic accountability is irrelevant, where beta politicians suck up to the alpha tech-oligarchs, offering their citizens as tribute.* To wit, the thoroughly interchangeable Matt Hancocks, Rishi Sunaks, Wes Streetings; all selling out UK citizens’ data and life chances for pennies on the pound and a glint of northern California’s reflected glory. (Grant Shapps is unusual in having had the initiative to craft and run his very own internet-based get-rich-quick scheme long before he became a government minister.) Most politicians just beg for scraps from big tech’s table, enacting the same alpha-beta hierarchy of the incels, but in power poses and slightly better suits. (The early, motivating animus of the Tories’ Online Safety Act was envious rage at Nick Clegg’s escape to become a tanned and wealthy Facebook lobbyist.)

Silicon Valley ideology is using private equity to buy a new marketplace, flood it with capital to flush out competitors, and use economic dominance to eviscerate working conditions and the cost of labour before jacking up the prices again, this time with the surplus all going to investors. It’s hyping specific technologies as universal, structural game-changers in accelerating hype cycles designed to fleece their marks quickly enough to drive growth and cash out before most people realise the technology simply doesn’t work as they were told. Bonus points for damaging trusted institutions (crypto) or labour (AI) along the way.

Silicon Valley ideology valorises disruption in the board-room but crushes it in the increasingly digitised and surveilled classroom, and grinds its face into the concrete floor of the Amazon warehouse. Disruption is for CEO’s and funders, not for people who protest pipelines or strike to limit labour exploitation. Disruption is something that is done to us. It is not something open to us to do.

Silicon Valley ideology is robbing states of tax and taking over the wrecked public services that result. (I write this from a country whose public tender for health data was bespoke tailored for Palantir. Soon my most private information will sit on Peter Thiel’s servers and there is nothing I can do to stop it. Meanwhile, I can’t get an appointment to see a GP.)

Silicon Valley ideology blames others for its harms. Its titans built the machines currently dismantling democracies. So, to absolve themselves of responsibility, they’ve come to see democracy itself as flawed and weak. Silicon Valley ideology quietly admits (its) freedom is not compatible with (our) democracy. So it wrecks it, destroying our information systems, gutting our infrastructure and essential services, and gathering digital lynch mobs to hound women and people of colour out of public life. Then, like the violent abuser who stands back, momentarily awed at what he has wrought, it says in a moment of startled vulnerability; ‘Look what you made me do.’ Its tools are beloved of autocrats and authoritarians, and as these tend to be the kind of men it most admires, Silicon Valley ideology has come to more publicly align itself with fascism. It claims the only fix for the violent disorder it foments is more surveillance, more control, at a significant mark-up.

Silicon Valley ideology worships ‘intelligence’, defined narrowly as mathematical and engineering capability, with all its IQ-related ties to racism, misogyny and eugenics. The worship of ‘intelligence’ drives ideologues’ obsession with billionaire fecundity and longevity, white natalism, space colonisation and the alleged existential threat of AI. The dark futures that set human mathematical intelligence against machine intelligence work not only to recast the grubby scrap for economic dominance as an epic battle against species extinction; they expand the horizon of Silicon Valley’s harm from the present, where its built-in biases increase inequality to cause harm and death every day, to the far future, when planetary super-brains might turn people into paper-clips. Their technology reflects this displacement. So, the most important harms are not harms, but risks, and the people best placed to address those are those building the machines that create them.

Silicon Valley ideology is split on this point, however. Its more radical cult, long-termism, centres the omnipotence phantasy of future AI risks, but rather than use these drummed up extinction scenarios to lock in control and economic dominance, the true believers speculate about which AI geniuses to assassinate, to avoid Armageddon. Other devotees fight theological battles similar to the number of angels who could fit on a pin-head, but about just how few survivors will be needed to re-seed humanity, after the nuclear war they believe necessary to forestall artificial generalised intelligence. It’s really something to see Silicon Valley’s more zealous children turn the trolley problem back on the founders.

Silicon Valley ideology says safeguarding intelligence in the future is more important than its systems systematically crushing and killing black and brown people right now. Long-termism grabs attention back from people being harmed, who were beginning to make too much noise. When confronted with his silence about AI and inequality researcher, Timnit Gebru, who was sacked when she criticised the built-in racism and misogyny of Google’s AI systems, British AI star Geoffrey Hinton told Rolling Stone that Gebru’s ideas “aren’t as existentially serious as the idea of these things getting more intelligent than us and taking over.” This tracks with the only critique of technology that Silicon Valley ideology permits – and amply funds via organisations like the Center for Humane Technology – the concern that algorithmic distraction hijacks smart people’s attention and time. Silicon Valley’s extractive systems are only a real problem when they come after what the tech bros most value, their own brain function and autonomy. Racism, for them, is not ‘existential’. Misogyny is a matter of indifference when your goal is to ‘extend the light of consciousness’ across the solar system.

It’s only when you look straight at Silicon Valley’s leaders you realise its core beliefs aren’t an ideology. They’re a personality disorder. ....

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

Lauren Sánchez Is Looking to the Future

https://www.vogue.com/article/lauren-sanchez-december-2023-interview-profile

In case you aren't familiar with gosspi column coverage of the richest and even more rich, she's Bezo's fiancée.

Edited November 16, 2023 by Zorral

[The Anti-Targ]

This is as good a place as any to drop these truth bombs. If you're progressive in any fashion it's time to wake up to reality that the progressive agenda will not progress without understanding and applying these truths. If you're not progressive you still need to wake up because if you are mostly a tax hawk these principles mean that at whatever level of spending, you're being taxed to much and in the wrong way.

 

 

[kissdbyfire]

14 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

This is as good a place as any to drop these truth bombs. If you're progressive in any fashion it's time to wake up to reality that the progressive agenda will not progress without understanding and applying these truths. If you're regressive you still need to wake up because if you are mostly a tax hawk these principles mean that at whatever level of spending, you're being taxed to much and in the wrong way.

FTFY.

[Zorral]

With all his money, he's suing a small non-profit, when those who deserted his hell swamp due to him being a nazi, and supporting nazis, like Apple and Microsoft who felt they would be hurt by this.

Totally fits the bill for the title of this thread, ya! Plus so typical of craven bullies.

Elon Musk to file ‘thermonuclear lawsuit’ as advertisers desert X
Social media firm boss says he will sue media watchdog that said ads were being placed alongside antisemitic content

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/18/elon-musk-to-file-thermonuclear-lawsuit-as-advertisers-desert-x

 

[JGP]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

With all his money, he's suing a small non-profit, when those who deserted his hell swamp due to him being a nazi, and supporting nazis, like Apple and Microsoft who felt they would be hurt by this.

Totally fits the bill for the title of this thread, ya! Plus so typical of craven bullies.

Elon Musk to file ‘thermonuclear lawsuit’ as advertisers desert X
Social media firm boss says he will sue media watchdog that said ads were being placed alongside antisemitic content

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/18/elon-musk-to-file-thermonuclear-lawsuit-as-advertisers-desert-x

 

Luck with that, nerd lord.  

[The Anti-Targ]

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

Elon Musk to file ‘thermonuclear lawsuit’ as advertisers desert X

Social media firm boss says he will sue media watchdog that said ads were being placed alongside antisemitic content

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/18/elon-musk-to-file-thermonuclear-lawsuit-as-advertisers-desert-x

 

It's either true or it's not true. Anyone got screenshots as proof? Preferably with the antisemitic shite redacted, though for evidentiary purposes during discovery it would need to be un-redacted.

If the media entity lied they should be sued, the harm to X is obvious. Though not moderating antisemetic content (i.e. deleting posts and banning accounts), and worse Musk tagging his agreement for one post, should see advertisers exit in droves regardless of what this media entity published.  If they didn't lie this is just performative BS by Musk and the lawsuit won't get past this PR announcement.

[Zorral]

20 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Anyone got screenshots as proof?

You jest, because if you actually cared you'd have looked, wouldn't you.

Screen shots are rife, which is why the list of the top corps leaving continues to grow (though essentially they are all bad too).  Along with many others.  He put it up on xtter himself, and the screen shots are everywhere.  Which I won't link to xtter because I don't, and didn't long before this.  You must be intentionally being hilarious, right?

 

Edited November 18, 2023 by Zorral

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

You jest, because if you actually cared you'd have looked, wouldn't you.

Screen shots are rife, which is why the list of the top corps leaving continues to grow (though essentially they are all bad too).  Along with many others.  He put it up on xtter himself, and the screen shots are everywhere.  Which I won't link to xtter because I don't, and didn't long before this.  You must be intentionally being hilarious, right?

 

It was a rhetorical.

This is the internet, clearly there were screen shots 2 minutes (or less) after the offending posts appeared with ads alongside them. It's a good thing some people wanting to keep corps accountable are keeping an eye on these things, but man what a shit thing to have to do with even a moment of your life.