• 1 Post
  • 137 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
cake
Cake day: July 31st, 2023

help-circle





  • I wholeheartedly agree that “It’s not politically wise” is often a bullshit excuse.

    However, when you are an openly socialist mayor in the process of overhauling numerous aspects of city laws and regulations, opening a war on additional fronts is risky. The US public is tired of more of the same, but that doesn’t mean we live in a post-Red-Scare society.

    From what I understand, he’s focused on improving conditions in NYC to demonstrate that the policies and theory are effective and accumulate some public wins. If he doesn’t play nice in the meantime, national Democratic leaders might find ways to prevent him from getting many victories in NYC.

    Similarly, going to war with the NYPD would likely lead to them purposely doing a shit job to make him and his policies look bad. Police unions have done it multiple times. Again, he’s looking accumulate good will first so that the public will stay on his side when the NYPD pulls that bullshit.

    Normally, I’m in favor of organized labor… but using that power to protect corruption, racism, and the capital class basically makes them class traitors so get no sympathy from me.




  • The OP said:

    Pretty much every company I’ve been in or know of values a vertical trajectory instead of a horizontal one for its employees i.e becoming a manager nearly always means a faster salary progression than becoming an expert in one or multiple fields.

    Why is expertise valued less?

    I simply explained what someone might have meant regarding seizing the means of production being a potential solution to expertise being valued less than being manager.

    You still need leadership in any system.

    Eve your argument “seize the means of production” only happens with leadership.

    I didn’t say we don’t need leaders. An owner or a manager may be in charge but that doesn’t make them a leader.


  • The structure and values of the underlying society revolve around individuals amassing power and wealth for their own benefit rather than any kind of collective good. Often the boss, the owner, the one in charge leans on their wealth and power. They were born with resources or hoarded them and feel that the most valuable contribution anyone could make is risking their own wealth (investing). As such, they themselves deserve most of the control of the organization (company) and deserve to be rewarded with most of the fruits of their worker’s labor. They control the means of production.

    If you have good social skills and exude confidence - this comforts the boss. Now the boss likes you and you get promoted and more money. If you are capable of doing great work but don’t know how to kiss the boss’s ass or don’t make the boss believe you know what you are doing - you aren’t as obviously valuable to the boss because the boss doesn’t understand all that technical stuff. Toss in some Dunning-Kruger for good measure too.

    Get rid of the boss and decide how to do things democratically among your peers? Now you’ve seized the means of production.


  • Technically, no. However, in today’s society if you aren’t making more profit this quarter (line go up) than last quarter you are seen as failing to meet your fiduciary duty to shareholders. More accurately, if the rate at which your profit is increasing isn’t increasing (line describing line go up) you are likely seen as failing the shareholders.

    It’s no longer acceptable to deliver to your customers, make a steady profit, and be sustainable. Now you must cut every possible corner, deliver as little value and use as little labor as possible, make more profit, and “stay competitive” or your company may as well be failing… in the eyes of investors.

    Unless you claim you are working on a technology like AI that can eventually let the company fire all of its workers and make all the money without having to pay humans for labor… in which case ignorant investors will light money on fire for you until they think someone else is definitely going to do it better or they think you can’t deliver.


  • I think the idea is that it is not something separately securable? I don’t disagree, I’d like to be able to disallow any app not explicitly granted permission to use any method to determine my location. Unfortunately if Google can scan WiFi and figure out your location, anything with access to WiFi can too maybe?

    I don’t know. I love technology but this fucking surveillance state situation is really getting to me. Routers using WiFi signal passing through your body to identify and locate you regardless of whether or not you are carrying any tech and all the other shit I don’t know about… ugh.








  • This is a question that might require a bit of “prior knowledge” in order for an answer to make sense.

    Basically computers keep track of each other with complicated, unique numbers. This isn’t easy for humans to deal with so instead we have websites like netflix.com. DNS is a system that translates “netflix.com” to it’s more complicated unique computer address so that your computer connects to the netflix server when you type in that web address.

    There are a number of servers (DNS Servers) on the Internet with databases that keep track of which website has what computer address. Usually, the company (ISP or Internet Service Provider) that you get Internet from has their own DNS Server and tells your modem to tell your computer or phone to use that server to look things up when you browse the web, but it is possible to use alternative servers.

    Technically, the system is very trust-based - it’s just assumed that they are going to respond accurately and in good faith. It is possible to mess with this but there are other layers of security and authorities your computer should be using to make sure that you are actually visiting the website you think you are visiting. Usually ISPs just use this server to keep track of the websites you visit so they can sell your data to advertisers.