The most bizarre aspect of it is that the very same people that lament that fact, are also the ones who support all its causes and throw the most violent tantrums to scuttle improving the situation. We have tried it their way for decade after decade after decade, and the astronomical cost has only led to barely measurable improvements at wild cost/benefit ratios, while being unsustainable on their own essentially everywhere those measures are not artificially scaffolded and have heavy layers of spin and blatant propaganda lies applied to it.
Maybe the worst part of it is that those very people don't even understand that they are doing any of that because they have been manipulated and lied to about both the causes and solutions as they have ever increasingly been drawn into a cult in which up is down, left is right, and only the con job leaders benefit from it. When you have fixed, preconceived notions about outcomes, don't be surprised that you cannot achieve them with the existing variables. You end up having to bend and manipulate and rig and patch things ever increasingly and more bizarrely in order to maintain the desired end state or outcome that the system becomes ever more unstable and fragile. See the mid aughts housing fraud, aka, housing bubble for reference. The conclusion was that house prices can only go up, so everything was subsequently rigged through self-perpetuating incentives to support that fixed assumed outcome. Precisely what keeps us repeatedly doing the things that have no effect on the desired outcome. But at least it supports a huge non-profit industry complex that perpetuates itself under the guise of "helping" .... itself to your money.
It's quite frustrating that in spite of the truth and solution being right before our eyes, because truth and reality is too inconvenient and difficult and uncomfortable because it does not fit with preconceived conclusions and assumptions, we simply want to ignore reality and substituted our own. And so goes the perpetual poverty "problem" that we are seeking "solutions" for. Organizations can't even move away from Microsoft products simply because they get money from the Gates foundation ... and we want to solve poverty? It's a bad joke.
As someone has said, our "help" and development money is taking money from poor American children, in order to give it to rich Africans ... who then scurry it away into offshore bank accounts.
I think that mentality may change as people start coming to the realization that it will soon no longer be necessary or even possible to "scale up quick and capture market share" based on a theory of disruption. The gold rush of the internet will soon come to a halt, especially as people start realizing that you no longer need to sell a pound of flesh and the rights to your first and second born child to VC in order to build great, quality companies.
Depending on who wins out this general election, we will possibly see a rather ironic shift that will not only undermine the hegemony of Silicon Valley, but will also make staffing startups with low cost talent from all over the globe far more feasible. I've been telling Silicon Valley for a while now, be careful what you wish for, because it's easy to lose sight of the real world from within a rose colored bubble.
I have a feeling that as/if globalism were to expand and consolidate power and control, it also broadens, dilutes, and devalues "labor" on a global scale as you start feeling the effects of globalism that clothing makers, furniture makers, auto makers, etc. have all felt before you. The only thing that is keeping the tech industry enslaved to Silicon Valley, is the dependence on their VC masters, as you so well described. Once that is no longer a benefit or necessary or an advantage, what keeps people in Silicon Valley?
What a travesty of both justice, democracy, and government.
Too big to jail, I guess. Ignorance is an excuse when you have a president running interference for you to undermine democracy, even if you knowingly and intentionally weakened and exposed the whole country and then lied about it and played it off.
But let's make a crooked, incompetent, and dangerous person our leader.
Honestly, the 2016 presidential election really does feel like the 1996 Simpsons Halloween special. (only without bothering with the meat-suit disguises)
It's a two party system; you have to vote for one of the green tentacled monsters.
That's a rather imbalanced perspective. China has grown not through organic development and innovation, but through global, state sponsored, commercial espionage; and in a country where the state is inextricably linked to even the "private" corporations.
I'm no fan of Apple's ways sometimes, but it's like comparing a borderline unscrupulous business to an organized crime outfit.
It would not surprise me one bit if this whole "patent violation" is nothing but a sham to fool people like you into believing there's some legitimacy behind efforts to sabotage Apple taking over the market from Chinese firms / state control.
Considering that the definition of "hate speech" has already morphed into anyone addressing race, sex, gender, national origin, religion, etc. it seems we have already arrived at such a vile place you described. It absolutely boggles the mind to realize that we are living in a world that is imploding on itself through self-immolation and self-doubt and self-destruction.
I guess the cry-bully crowd will be happy once the west and the civilization and peace and prosperity it has brought to the world and provided them is left in a crumpled heap an we are all so fortunate as the rest of the noble savage world that does not indulge in the "privilege" of freedom, liberties, free speech, individual rights, self-determination, competition, etc.
The blessings of socialist nirvana will soon be upon us and we will all be equally destitute once everything has been torn down in an infantile fits of social rage and tantrum akin to what led up to the dark ages.
Do you feel better after trying to be passive aggressively insulting? Let me guess, you have no comprehension for the fact that your comment is precisely the kind of infantile tantrum I was referring to; in the absence of argument or fact, you resort to flaccid attempts at insult to make yourself feel better in an attempt at abating the discomfort that comes from the cognitive dissonance of reality penetrating the artificial boundaries of your self-delusion.
Don't worry, I don't expect you to understand that and very much expect the same kind of defensive reaction you just exhibited. Don't worry, you can continue fooling yourself into believing you are correct.
Something that looking at this post reminded me of is how all our digitalization is very much abdicating control of information and even down right ownership.
Does anyone remember the incident where Amazon just decided that they needed to delete books they had sold to Kindle users and just went in and did so off everyone's Kindle?
We have even arrived at the point where people don't even question ownership anymore. You can't give or sell your books, you can't buy second hand books, you can't sell your digital movies, etc. I thought I recalled either a court case or policy effort to make transfer and sharing of materials possible so you could, e.g., lend your friend a movie or book, and so you could sell a digital copy at a discounted rate.
I don't think people quite appreciate the ramifications of this, because sure, now it only extends to digital content, but how soon before other industries get the bright idea that you are only buying the "license" to the disign of their furniture and the design of their car and they are giving you the materials for free to use, you know, like it currently is with digital content, and then they make it illegal to sell your furniture or car or any other object that you are only licensing the deign of.
Because we know that it's not like movies or music has gotten any cheaper with the absence of the roughly 70% of production and distribution costs of physical media that has now all gone to profit.
> Does anyone remember the incident where Amazon just decided that they needed to delete books they had sold to Kindle users and just went in and did so off everyone's Kindle?
Yes. Amusingly, the books in the case I remember were Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm.
I'm not quite sure what to make of a person like that offering a "post trump America starter pack". I for one want to MAGA because I have the dignity not to think that kind of book store is cool, or hip, or awesome or whatever the hippest of the hip bearded man-bun donning hipsters use these days to describe stuff they discover that was never lost or forgotten in the first place.
Interestingly enough, there are quite a few of these weird ass hoarder book stores in the DC area.
That was my thought to recently. If you have robots replacing low wage workers, which most people don't really realize was nothing more than the evolution of slavery, then you have zero incentive to produce in said low wage countries. The next wave of "low cost production" regions will be determined by access to low cost energy and low cost space. In many ways, I suspect that the robot based production could even move towards the north as cooling may play a significant factor. We kind of see some of that already as Google and the likes have been moving their massive server farms into northern regions for cooling purposes.
Another factor in this matter is that the uncomfortable reality is that "we" need to stave off the influx of uneducated and unskilled people. Reality is that people will lose ever more value, especially as, rather oddly, the liberal autonomist types advocate for things the they don't realize will only commodify the vast majority of people.
Maybe the worst part of it is that those very people don't even understand that they are doing any of that because they have been manipulated and lied to about both the causes and solutions as they have ever increasingly been drawn into a cult in which up is down, left is right, and only the con job leaders benefit from it. When you have fixed, preconceived notions about outcomes, don't be surprised that you cannot achieve them with the existing variables. You end up having to bend and manipulate and rig and patch things ever increasingly and more bizarrely in order to maintain the desired end state or outcome that the system becomes ever more unstable and fragile. See the mid aughts housing fraud, aka, housing bubble for reference. The conclusion was that house prices can only go up, so everything was subsequently rigged through self-perpetuating incentives to support that fixed assumed outcome. Precisely what keeps us repeatedly doing the things that have no effect on the desired outcome. But at least it supports a huge non-profit industry complex that perpetuates itself under the guise of "helping" .... itself to your money.
It's quite frustrating that in spite of the truth and solution being right before our eyes, because truth and reality is too inconvenient and difficult and uncomfortable because it does not fit with preconceived conclusions and assumptions, we simply want to ignore reality and substituted our own. And so goes the perpetual poverty "problem" that we are seeking "solutions" for. Organizations can't even move away from Microsoft products simply because they get money from the Gates foundation ... and we want to solve poverty? It's a bad joke.
As someone has said, our "help" and development money is taking money from poor American children, in order to give it to rich Africans ... who then scurry it away into offshore bank accounts.
I know this may make some arteries pop, but the President of Uganda puts it well: http://thehill.com/policy/international/370435-ugandan-presi...