> so that automation makes things cost less instead of siphoning the money into the coffers of megacorps
I cannot trust any company with any modicum of success not to immediately exit into the hands of megacorps. I cannot hope that companies have any type of morality/"want to make the world better" anymore.
Oh, yeah, it's a great system if you're someone who has money. Most people don't.
Representatives, on the other hand, can't exist without votes.
Most of the money in politics is spent on convincing voters to vote for a particular rep, that's why money holds sway over politicians. But money in itself isn't actually going to get someone elected.
And isn't it weird how the people who do get elected actually tend to be of at least vaguely similar political leanings to their constituents?
If money was all it took, we'd have no issue electing hard-conservative anti-abortion fundamentalists in, say Chicago, as long as they had policies that their donors found appealing. (Or, conversely, socially progressive, economically regressive 'liberals' in the deep south.)
As it turns out, money in elections can only shift the needle so much, and won't turn black into white.
What it can do is pick a winner out of a lineup of similar candidates, where the margins are close enough that a bigger advertising war chest will move the needle... And even then, all of those campaigns are only possible by ground-canvassing volunteers, who are motivated ideologically, not financially.
If it was that simple then this problem would be solved. Clearly most voters (in your opinion) want a higher minimum wage, UBI, and greater corporate taxation. If elected representatives do what their voters want, why are we discussing this?
> If it was that simple then this problem would be solved.
Only if you see the world in black and white.
My thesis is that money is a corrupting influence in politics, but is not the main driver of it.
Meanwhile, money is the only influence in corporate ownership. Which is, incidentally, why most people with money do everything in their power to try to convince us that the solution to all the problems they cause is to move more power out of democratic institutions, and into corporate ones.
> Clearly most voters (in your opinion) want a higher minimum wage, UBI, and greater corporate taxation.
What on earth made you think this?
I said that the politicians that get elected vaguely, in aggregate, share the views of their constituents, and you're not going to tell me the deep south in aggregate wants any of these things. It does, however, want a lot of people who talk a lot about Jesus in government, and, well, their ballot results definitely deliver them.
If you believe my thesis is wrong, roughly how much money do you think will get someone like AOC elected in a district in rural Oklahoma? Or MTG in NY's 14th district?
That does support both that governments can't be trusted to behave morally and that voting shares is just as good, but your tone suggests that you're disagreeing with the parent. Am I misreading that intent?
Thank you for prompting me to reread the comment tree to untangle the meandering rambles. Hopefully, this will clarify my perspective.
I think there's a chance you misread. Many times, I feel the conversations we have online would be better off held over a few beers and a backyard barbecue.
I feel that any concentrated center of power cannot be trusted to behave ethically. That's a fancy way of saying you can't trust the government or corporation to behave morally/ethically.
I assert that you have more control over government than you do corporations because, as someone said above, you can lobby/campaign/vote and have an impact on local, state, and federal government. As an aside, the further away from local, the less impact you have.
With corporations, you could buy shares, but given that each share is equal to one vote, the more money you have, the more influence you can exert.
I know it's been a fashion since Reagan to distrust government, but decades of neoliberalism have shown that counting on corporations usually makes things worse. Anytime one transfers a communal benefit into the pockets of a few, bad things happen.
I mean, it's the only meaningful way of punishing the company/site. It becomes unusable, people don't contribute anything further because it stops being a hub/valuable site, and eventually their costs outweigh their benefits. That last bit is probably a pipe dream, but saying "Oh well, might as well still enrich them with my knowledge/contributions" doesn't seem like an alternative.
The incentive to contribute is based on the potential return of social currency (prestige, togetherness, etc). If it's evident that you won't generate enough currency to outweigh enriching Reddit, why bother?
Canada has neither, though. My parents and their parents assimilated quickly from Eastern Europe, forgot their language, and then set up a system where they pulled up a ladder behind them for housing, opportunity and stability.
Boy does it feel great to be constantly shamed for being a white male as the source of our country's problems while not being rich enough to influence the political system like billionaire donors. Boy does it feel great that our industries and political system are completely captured, so they can shame us out of one side of their mouths while making sure their donors who are bought into the housing market (and they themselves, who are too) will never have to worry about their house of cards collapsing.
I go to a Dollar Store fairly frequently in my city, and it's just a nightmare due to self-checkout: one physical cashier open with anyone over 50 lining up to use, and another overworked worker dealing with errors in the self-checkout units. Just incredibly amounts of scale errors and other things that require a fingerprint scan by employees to clear.
There is currently no point in self-hosting this cause the data is not being synced to any server, it is stored on your device. I might add self-hosting option in future once syncing will be implemented.
>I sometimes wonder what western historians will think when they study this era 100 years from now?
I sometimes find myself wanting aliens to find us and make contact, just so we can have an outside, hypothetically enlightened source (if we're going by the Star Trek fantasy) to say "You're doing WHAT?!"
My benchmark is how much social capital one stands to lose by admitting to be a member. If you're still admitting to be a Juggalo despite knowing what's associated with it, and how the mainstream is going to treat you, you're fine with those people being "your people" without anyone else.
I feel like the Internet where forums thrived is very different from the present Internet. Forums won't make a comeback because they're much harder to make money or clout from, and the owners get to assume all the risk of hosting content, dealing with deplatforming by payment processors, and trying to find people to advertise.
Regardless of how you feel about them, Kiwifarms is what would happen to any forum that got too successful without the approval of a major player: a constant barrage of being removed from hosting providers, DDOS mitigation platforms and domain registrars.
Forums still exist because they're passion projects to very niche communities with very stubborn people. I treasure those communities but that's kind of incompatible with mainstream Internet and consumption habits.
I cannot trust any company with any modicum of success not to immediately exit into the hands of megacorps. I cannot hope that companies have any type of morality/"want to make the world better" anymore.