The EU can legislate to protect their people from FAANG because these companies do not have Carnegie level monopolistic influence like in the USA. I'm not sure of imperialism, but in congress, the more well-funded candidate wins over 90% of the time. Lobbying is also a legalized system of first world bribery, people talk about "taking the money out of politics", but it has always been this way. Money is a portable form of power, and it is fuel to political machines.
In fact, the Invesco QQQ Trust Series I fund, which tracks the top 100 nonfinancial public domestic and international corporations in the NASDAQ, is heavily dominated by tech. Of the top 10 holdings, 9/10 are tech companies, with the remainder being Costco. In the information economy, these companies have taken the place of the steel, oil, and railroad giants of the 20th century. Instead of Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt, we have had Jobs, Page, Zuckerberg, and others. Of course this is a rotating cast, but the idea is the same.
So yes, accessing interconnectivity via the internet is more important to Europeans than the corrupted legislation of the US, but it's not like they don't have their own problems. Especially in regards to energy and the current conflict in Eastern Europe. The petrodollar is what props up the US economy, if Western Europe buys energy in anything other than US dollars, then our government cannot continue vigorously printing money without Weimar levels of inflation. That is really where imperialism comes into play, it props up the economy of Western Europe.
I agree that the ideas of exploration, self-education, and the drive of the individual is important to the Western and especially American tradition of technological innovation. In terms of individual empowerment, we also have the ability to delete social media accounts, to boycott companies like Amazon, and to use alternative search engines. In many cases, it is not a preference but a necessity to use an engine besides Google to sift through SEO optimized content and find the information I'm looking for.
This is in response to you and this article, because the narrative of Western decline is peddled so enthusiastically that it brings itself under scrutiny. If it was such a self-evident truth, then why does it have to be constantly pushed on us via mass media, via Wall Street billionaires, via foreign propagandists? Because it is a lie, it is a lie that serves the international ruling class, a global alliance of ultra wealthy oligarchs that are betting against their own people.
Yes, this has little to do with open source, but honestly this article has little to do with open source. It attempts to paint a historical narrative, which is the bread and butter of historically effective propaganda. To touch on this topic as this article has, open source and Linux in particular is great for circumventing tech monopolies like Microsoft and gaining full control and privacy over a machine that you own outright.
Similarly, boycotting tech giants, Amazon included, improves individual quality of life as well as living conditions for the entire nation. That is individual empowerment, speaking truth to power and making conscience decisions with your attention and consumption. Unless another Teddy Roosevelt comes along to bust up our tech monopolies and reign in the political influence of extreme wealth, this is really our only recourse to turn the tides and bring back real innovation.
That is what we need, real innovation, not frantic bids to explore and capture "data as oil" drilling sites. Innovation triumphs over brute force and human subjugation every time. That's what we need not just to protect our livelihoods, but to push the progress of humanity forward. Hewlett Packard, the birthplace of Silicon Valley, was not built on brainstorming ways to addict people to content aggregators and harvest their data.
It was bold ideas, real intellectual labor and not just psychological exploitation. Above all, technological innovation that contributed to the overall lives of mankind as a whole. It wasn't about exploiting, controlling, taking, but exploring, building, and contributing. That's the core idea of open source, passion and freedom. This is really at the core of the hacker ethos, freedom for the sake of freedom and innovation for the sake of wonder. The end result is a more free and open society. At the intersection of capital, the end result is an economy based on improvement and not exploitation. One is sustainable, the other is not.
It is really a revelation that love is what makes life meaningful?
There is a sweet naivete to a study like this, it invites compassion.
Analyzing happiness with this cold academic rigor is just absurd, it is like a depressed species of alien studying our planet to figure out why people have happy lives. "Is it genes?" the cold, analytical mind ponders. It is kind of funny, yet it is tragic, and so it invites a response.
Yes, love makes life worth living. Not just relationships, but love, in its many varied forms. If you are reading this, I love you. To Ivy League scientists and their objects of study, I love you as well. You see, God is love, this is a simple truth found in scripture. Surround yourself in love at all times, and you will lead a life that is satisfying and resplendent in joy.
There is not a chemical solution to a spiritual problem.
New concepts are exciting, but the Indigenous Mexican use of psilocin in treatment of things such as depression, addiction, and other ailments of the soul are fundamentally integrated into their Christian beliefs and practices.
If the tech bros of San Francisco are seeking a cure to their existential despair, they should turn to San Francisco the man, the legend whose works were rooted in his unwavering faith to Jesus Christ. Undoubtedly the inspiration to the city's famous love for Bohemian living.
If the proliferation of psychedelic drugs from Haight-Ashbury was the answer to the ills of our nation and the ills of the heart then it would have worked already. Instead of trying more and more drugs, why not try something that really works? Before the 1960s, San Francisco in its free-spirited glory was closer to the light of God. It's not too late to turn things around.
Evolutionary biology is sincerely beautiful, the biological history of our species is a meta-history to human history.
On a grander scale, the biological history of life itself weaves the career of the human race into a context of profound interconnectivity.
It's natural to contemplate your origins, the place and culture you come from, your ancestors and the history of your family. It's even more profound to contemplate your biological origins, your ancestry into species unrecognizable from your own.
It really is a humbling experience to trace a path thousands and even millions of years into the past. The end result is an increased appreciation for the beauty of nature and for the inseparable unity of the human race.
I'm not much for eating oysters, but these are the kind of leaders we really need. People with the will and means to inspire real, practical hope in our future.
These are the "first movers" who really matter, those with the vision and confidence to make positive changes in their community and surroundings. People with the hope and confidence to give us hope and confidence in our future.
So while I may not be much of an oyster eater, I commend Mr. Malinowski and his successful efforts to restore the waters of our precious land. From the harbors of New York City to every corner of this Earth, our land is worth saving. Our future is worth protecting and our people deserve hope.
People are realizing that social media is draining, predatory, and entirely superfluous.
Of course there are employees here of social media corporations who would want to stem the tide of this mass exodus, but it's useless. Social media corporations have overstepped their boundaries and become a net negative on human society.
Deleting your social media accounts results in an immediate improvement of quality of life and mental wellbeing. These sites are intentionally designed with predatory psychological mechanisms, they are designed by hackers like ourselves, but the hackers who see "social engineering" as a perfectly ethical practice and not simply psychological manipulation.
These services are designed to be addictive, full stop. Addiction is not healthy, and neither is social media. Maybe this will bring SV back to its roots, real technological progress for the nation and not desperate bids for data mining based on cheap psychological tricks.
People are growing sickened of the endless scrolls of psychological disturbing viral content combined with the false positivity of human interest stories. It is deepening social divisions, racial conflicts, political partisanship, and general misery. We don't need social media, what we need is real social connections in an increasingly isolated society, and social media stands in the way of this.
The Americas are just as old, it is just that people in their arrogance have chosen to overlook the works and achievements of Mesoamerican civilization.
History did not begin with the arrival of the Europeans, that is just when colonization began. The long history of these continents is treated as some sort of lost and mysterious thing of times past, yet the people from those civilizations are still here today.
Cage and Glass both understood this and named a number of their works aptly.
Because you have to start somewhere, if these technologists took these armchair physicist internet comments to heart, then what progress would they make?
Having worked for defense technology contractors in the area, these people want ideas. They want brand-new, sci-fi level ideas. These militaries and defense companies will literally hire sci-fi writers for inspiration.
It's not like SV where the primary focus is profit. It's less limited than that, these researches are on the cutting edge, it's where we received the internet itself. Remember, researchers in this league led the use and development of radio in its early stages for military reasons.
The truth is, in order to attract defense funds, you have to oversell an idea way, way down the line. Imaginative people with bold ideas of the future. It's beyond market trends, publicly-funded technological development is pure and machine-like. Blows any selfish, boyhood fantasies of the world's richest men out of the water.
It wasn't just his thrift, it was his very standard knowledge of financial markets.
I agree that the economic gap has widened and that our most famous and moneyed capitalists of today "borrowed" large sums from their business owning parents.
However, Read was an outlier in many ways. His discipline likely stems from his military service, and without a basic value investing understanding of markets he would not have amassed his fortune.
He may have been humble, but he was anything but the average guy. What's most impressive is not the building of his fortune but his giving in death.
In a way he embodied both the old American work ethic and the American promise of economic opportunity.
You don't need substantial material wealth to have complete agency, but you will if you choose to enjoy the fruits of the modern world and raise a family.
Most are fine with sacrificing agency in order to provide for their families and their needs in a modern society, and honestly that is a noble sacrifice.
Just as in ancient times, the agency of material wealth requires the exploitation of toil.
The problem here in this discussion is looking at yourselves and your corporations as solutions to the world's problems.
Same goes with the recent ESG investment trend. A corporation exists to make a profit, period. Suggesting otherwise is just emotional manipulation, albeit very profitable manipulation.
The corporation causes all these problems, and it does it for profit. The phrase "business ethics" makes zero sense, but it serves a PR purpose. Even the term "national defense" in this magazine is doublespeak for imperialism, looting and pillaging other nations for profit.
I have no interest in the neoliberal fantasy world of corporations solving our problems, because I am a pragmatist. Yet people continue to send billions into ESG companies to ease their guilt, while these companies actually profit from and exacerbate the very issues they promise to solve.
I certainly don't support the labor practices of Walmart, but I think you are the one with the serious image problem. You think you really exist in a different "stratum" when you still have to buy your own groceries?
You aren't elitist, you aren't even close to "elite." You're just an asshole.
Here's a fun fact, Whole Foods exploited slave labor to supply their tilapia. Here's another fun fact, if you need to work then you are working class.
Making death threats on people's families for writing articles online.
Taking it to the next level by trying to destroy someone's marriage.
Just disgusting, and under the blessing of the top brass as well.
Whatever the judge decides, will avoid giving money to eBay.