Looks great! I wonder if this could be used to create some kind of podcast-based sponsorblock equivalent? I know there are issues with podcast- (providers) inserting sponsor reads and ads at random / unknown times, so, not sure how it could be done reliably.

Collateral for loan is realised gain. Nice. I always wondered what a good mechanism against that kind of tax cheating would be.

Racist, misogynist, xenophobic, bigoted, made-up story about a company hiring women+minorities into dedicated departments which then don’t do any work

They must have a lot of departments full of white, straight men to compensate, otherwise the company would surely go under. /s

edit: before anyone thinks I actually meant this seriously…I was reacting to a ridiculously bigoted comment by some troll (I know…I shouldn’t have reacted) claiming their company had entire departments full of women+minorities not doing any work. The comment no longer exists of course. I

What are those books?

Yup, this aligns closely with my own impression of what needs doing. I’d only add to this that people need to be aware how billionaire wealth works. Nearly nobody receives just a billion in their bank account every year. Billionaires’ wealth is stored in investments (normally a company they’ve founded, or bought, owning loads of shares, which then blow up to create unbelievable wealth). But this isn’t liquid, accessible money. Billionaires use this wealth to borrow against, which banks happily do, knowing that it’s safe to do so, considering the billionaire’s leverage. This is one mechanism by which billionaires avoid paying taxes, for example. Here, things become tricky: How do you take this power away from the billionaire? How do you tax share ownership? There are some approaches, but I’m not sure any of them have ever been tried. If you just force the billionaire to sell 90% of their shares above 1,000,000,000 in value, the share price will plummet immediately. That doesn’t really work. You could prohibit borrowing against value held in shares, but you’d somehow need to limit this to ultra-rich people. Or you somehow devalue shares held beyond 1,000,000,000, so that this isn’t actually wealth the billionaire can use (to buy elections, or media companies). But then what’s the point of having 299 billion worth of shares just sitting there doing nothing (in Elon’s case, for example). It’s a surprisingly difficult problem to solve. You could split the shares across many people. So any shares above 1,000,000,000 in value have to be divided evenly across the workforce of your company or something.

This is all theoretical though, because most billionaires would happily murder every last human being with their bare hands before giving up 0.0000000000001% of their wealth.

While I wholeheartedly agree, we need to “solve the concentration of power in the hands of the few problem”. Even if you simply said all the stocks and shares of current billionaires can’t have money lent against them (or however you want to address this without taking half the economy with it), there will just be a new class of psychopathic narcissists to take the place of the current ones. I feel without some kind of set of laws which enforces continuous dilution of power by somehow spreading it across more people and randomising who is allowed to influence what (which can only really be done with computers or AI) these cycles will repeat themselves ad infinitum.

This is utterly fascinating. Thank you for providing this link. Funnily enough, my thoughts immediately went to “is Milgram any better?”. Seems like he might be, somewhat. The question for me then becomes:

• can people be trusted with authority, on a general level? Are there studies to prove / disprove the adage that power corrupts / that people with personality disorders such as psychopathy or narcissism seek out (or thrive in, or are promoted to) positions of power?

Thank you again, I shall revise my opinion from now on and seek out more studies on the matter.

What I find interesting is that reigning in abuse at the behest of bosses / management / leadership would solve a gigantic number of problems in today’s society. ‘Nobody wants to work anymore’ is actually ‘nobody wants to be treated like shit by power-hungry psychopaths’. BUT, it is so difficult / impossible to change the intrinsic human assholification of anyone with power (see Stanford prison experiment), that companies will try anything else.

Haha, well, I’ve had many people tell me that I might be and I’ve had my own suspicions for a while. I am terrible in social situations (actually really good at them, on the surface. Good at pretending, but I hate it), I hate crowds, noise, flashing lights etc. But honestly, at this point I’m not sure what difference a diagnosis would make.

I perform well in areas I have interests in. Thus, by coincidence, I can appear capable in those areas. I’m also shockingly stupid in other areas. I’ve noticed a few things about how I learn: it has to be practical. Nothing theoretical will stick, unless put into practice. Thus, school was hell. I am also a devilish combination of a very slow learner who thinks differently about things. When a teacher taught things to the class, everyone got it immediately and I always somehow managed to come up with my own, weird, wrong interpretation of things. Once I have finally learned something, I am very accurate and precise, which is fairly useful in the fields I’ve worked in. I also have a flexible mind, which is great. I can usually reason outside of the confines most people think within. Which, see school, can be a blessing or a curse.

I’ve met truly intelligent people. Like, real freaks of nature types. PhDs in aerospace engineering, that sort of thing. Their universal intelligence is something else. It has shown and demonstrated to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are levels of comprehension, both in the uptake and subsequent processing of almost any information, that I will never reach.

But don’t for a minute think that these were happy people.

Beautifully written and entirely spot on. The question is whether we will do anything about it. We probably have 10-30 years before this elite will entrench themselves forever with some kind of robot police that truly can’t be overthrown. (And it’s not like anyone is rising up now, even though the power is clearly with the workers)

And then this elite will Habsburg-jaw themselves into oblivion and all that remains of humanity are machines built in the name of shareholder profits. What a sad way for things to end.

This might be the first time I’ve heard someone else describe this phenomenon. It’s gotten much worse in the last 5 years, to the point where I barely game. I still want to though. Very odd.

How is your German? In Berlin you’ll be fine with English. In the other big cities, you’ll already notice less proficiency. You’ll be fine, but you’ll notice it from time to time and English speaking jobs will be few and far between. Rural areas are hopeless lol

German here. Lived in Hamburg and Munich for about half my life each. They call Bavaria the Texas of Germany, but that’s just in relation to the rest of Germany politically. German conservatism is nothing like American conservatism, thank God. Right-wing disinformation cancer is spreading in Germany, like it is anywhere else (AFD in the east). Any LGBTQ folks don’t need to worry in any big cities. I’d recommend Munich over Berlin, but that’s personal preference (Berlin is like Germany’s London, loud, dirty, exciting, more crime than any other part of Germany, which is still less than most places in the US). Like, you won’t ‘feel’ the difference between Hamburg and Munich politically. In Berlin you might find a few more people openly displaying their left or right leaning tendencies. It’s also much cheaper than Munich, not sure if that matters.

Capitalism requires coercion to function. Capitalists openly admit this by being staunchly against removing ‘incentives’ (read the coercion) to work. The ‘incentive’ is goddamn starvation and being exposed to the raw elements with no shelter. And apparently, if this was a basic human right provided to everyone, we’d all stop working over night and become lazy. It’s just such an ass-backwards way to look at the world. People are not inherently lazy. But they need to be forced to work shitty jobs under unacceptable conditions. That’s the crux of the matter. The ultra-rich require wage slaves. Not free-thinking, educated people who go after their own interests and are productive in their own ways. I’m interested to see how the system will hold up when all the shitty jobs have been automated away. My guess is that the rich will flee to some kind of Elysium type paradise, while robot police keeps the masses in check and ‘poor’ people, aka 99% of humanity goes extinct.

This feels closest to the response I would have written. I would perhaps add, that one of the consequences of this system is, that money insulates you from having to improve. Someone like Trump will never go to a therapist to fix whatever mental illness made him turn into who he is, precisely because he doesn’t need to. Money can prop up the most evil, stupid, useless people for generations and generations. If they had to live examined lives, they’d stop being evil. The only ways to fix this, that I can see, are all utopian sounding, but shouldn’t be. Wage ratios for example. As CEO you simply shouldn’t be able to hold more shares or earn more income than, say, 10x that of the lowest paid worker in your organisation. And that needs to include subsidiaries and 3rd parties. This system would have to be implemented globally. Never going to happen though. We can fight a pointless global war on drugs, but we definitely won’t reduce CEO income.

This is crazy stuff. I wish there was a documentary made about these people, who seemingly lack any sense of self preservation :D

Another lurker here. Been well over a decade and this is the first time I feel like contributing again. Really hope the fediverse catches on this time.