WatDabney

Israel is a rogue state.

Ah... sorry. I didn't even notice which community this was in.

That seems a really narrow basis on which to judge it.

Much more broadly, the wealthy and empowered few view the rest of us as essentially livestock insofar as they see us solely as resources to be exploited for profit and only supplied with the bare minimum necessary for the survival of the hardiest and most profitable members of the herd.

"Do you feel any guilt or remorse for the livestock you consume? Have you ever thought about how those animals become the food you eat? ...Your reaction isn't very rational. If you don't like the things you saw just now, I'm afraid you're missing the big picture. Humans chose livestock to be food. In exchange, they're fed, allowed to reproduce and protected from predators all their lives. Cows, pigs, and chickens have a much higher rate of survival in captivity, more than they would in the wild. So you see, the relationship is mutually beneficial for both parties." — Kyubey, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica

I think most people would tell you that we wouldn't accept that.

I also think that many, and maybe even most, would accept it.

And I think, looking around the US and much of the rest of the world, if we merely substitute "wealthy and empowered people" for "aliens," most already have accepted it.

There should just be one standard Supreme Court ruling headline studiously repeated over and over:

"U.S. Supreme Court says Trump can do whatever the fuck it is that he wants now."

Yes, but generally not really harshly. I just assume they don't know any better or don't have the determination to live up to their ideals.

Unless of course they genuinely are awful people, but in that event, there are signs far more relevant than merely not sharing my boycotts.

This is why Israel has systematically destroyed hospitals and blocked aid - this was their goal from the start.

They intend to kill millions, and that was always their intent. But they know that even their legions of grotesquely corrupt and morally bankrupt defenders worldwide wouldn't be enough to protect them from the wholly justified backlash if they did it through mass executions, so they've very deliberstely arranged things so that starvation and disease will do it for them.

We are witnessing, and western governments are at least tolerating and all too often openly supporting, pure, unadulterated evil.

Yes.

Data hoarders are going to really come into their own after the corporations start trying to paywall information - pretty much no matter what it is, there's somebody out there who has it squirreled away on a drive.

On the first point, I'm not sure. I definitely agree that left to their own devices the AIbros would just keep expanding and battling each other and chasing ever more pie in the sky. But I don't think they'll be left to themselves. I think the MBAs will move in and take over, and it'll shift to standard corporate tactics of buyouts and mergers and bankruptcies and liquidations, and inevitable consolidation.

On the second, I agree. I think the web is actually going to effectively split into a commercial system of monolithic corporations and subscriptions and fixed hardware and a much less formal true web of small servers and self hosting and ad hoc networks.

Amusingly enough, The Economist illustrates what I believe to be the new business model that's already waiting in the wings for the internet.

With admittedly no direct evidence to support it, my theory at the moment is that the "AI" players plan to consolidate and to continue to expand their reach and continue to gain users who rely on the "AI" for information rather than following links to the originals, then, once the "AI"s have killed enough clicks to collapse the ad model and drive the websites out of business (and give them the opportunity to buy up the remains of the businesses, and more importantly, their databases), they'll put all of the information of which they're now in sole possession behind paywalls.

Broadly, the goal is to apply the most lucrative if least popular business model to information ,- to monopolize ownership of it in order to sit back and collect money as rent-seeking parasites.

Imagine that...

Of course, if the Dem establishment really wanted to analyze where they went wrong, all they'd have to do is talk to, and much more importantly listen to, voters.

But then they'd run the risk of having to face up to the fact that they're the problem.

The web was here before greedy sacks of shit monetized everything and it'll still be here after they go broke.