It really makes me wonder why someone with that much wealth needs to go around making life worse for other people. At this point, it feels like a sickness.
It's interesting that the constitution prevents America from having a king, or at least it used to, but maybe the founders didn't think about other kinds of kings.
Because we're in a place, or we're getting to a place, where that's exactly what we have.
I think what a lot of people don’t realize is that the nuisance that a middle class person might feel from an urban tent city or a rat infestation is quite similar to the nuisance that an extremely wealthy person would feel from the entire middle class.
> the constitution prevents America from having a king
This is only true until SCOTUS invents a new interpretation of the constitution that not only allows for a king, but asserts it must have a king (provided they are republican). I mean, who is going to stop them from doing that? Really though, who?
Vampires have to do with blood only tangentially. It is vital energy in a broad sense that they're after, and stomping on people's freedom and privacy is but another way to suck it out.
The constitution just enabled “many kings” through commerce rather than answering to a single king. Now the many kings take turns rotating into the leadership roles as they own the representation (the other thing the constitution enables) and snack on other kings.
And when one of the favorite many kings fail they have the representatives say “this king is too big to fail, don’t let the small kings eat him, prop him up with money from the masses”.
"Concentration of power on the scale of today's mega-companies is bad" is an idea that would've resonated with the founders of the US. But it wasn't the immediate issue they were fighting, so it's not what got written down.
The greatest trick of the elites has been convincing people that the Constitution is a holy religious artifact at this point instead of a document that will still need major patches as the world changes around it.
Or maybe it's encouraging holy wars over the words of the Constitution while simply ignoring it - and especially the overall suspicion of power - whenever convenient. And thus we get a world where criticism of agents of the government is treason instead of patriotic oversight; where the police don't police their own but close ranks against external complaints.
The constitution was written by the wealthy elites of society, for the wealthy elites of society to be free of the tyranny of a monarchy. It was not created to grant equal rights to all people. I.E., see the 3/5ths personhood of enslaved people.
That's a misunderstanding of the intention of that provision. Back in the day slave owners had as many "votes" as they had slaves (the slaves themselves didn't vote), under the assumption they "cared for" those slaves and were representing them. This gave them immense political power.
To curb the power of slave owners the anti-slavery States managed to approve, against slave owners' interests, the rule their slaves didn't count as full votes. This way slave owners had less total votes, strengthening the abolitionist camp.
I did not missunderstand anything. I said the constitution was not created to grant equal rights to all people. I think your elaboration illustrates that clearly.
- School attendance and parent pickup coordination. With a combination of face recognition, transit-station like gates, and license plate readers, parent pickup of kids is enforced.[1] Because they're watching.
- Campus-wide monitoring.[2] "Detects abnormal behavior ... such as people gathering"
- Detect climbing on fence [3]
Those are just samples. They offer everything from parking lot gates to millimeter microwave weapon detection. And with the newer control systems, it's all integrated into one comprehensive Big Brother system.
How about we monitor all internal business communications of publicly traded companies and audit for business irregularities there? It is estimated that white collar crime causes far more economic damage than any other type.
New York City has had it's real-time mass surveillance Domain Awareness System in place for years (courtesy of MSFT)... and the crime still happens. What exactly would you expect this to accomplish that's worth the sacrifice to privacy?
These old people will torch the world before passing away. Decades away their goal horizon was maybe 10-15 years, now they are moving faster as their time is more limited with goal horizon rather 3-5 years.
Well at least he said police will be on their best behavior too, but yeah unequivocally, fuck no and fuck this.
I don't trust any government to utilize power like that and I certainly don't trust any singularly powerful person to define "best behavior". I can't even trust my elected representatives to act in my best interest.
Even if you have a "good" government, those do not last and AI surveillance serves only to entrench existing power at the expense of freedoms of the general populace at best.
I want this level of surveillance on our "leaders" and the mega-corporations' "leaders" as they've repeatedly proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the vast majority of them simply cannot be trusted without extreme oversight. It's like babysitting the absolute brattiest of children (trapped in adult bodies with adult jobs and responsibilities). You gotta watch 'em like a hawk or they will attempt to pull the wool over your eyes to their own gain (and your detriment) at first available opportunity.
Ellison is involved in the TikTok deal through Oracle which is supposed to host the US version of that abomination of a platform so there is some relevance to his stance on these issues.
Perhaps the only positive that might come from this type of thinking is an eventual revolt that will crush characters like ellison and provide strong real laws that protect us from this garbage in the future.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think what needs to be monitored is anonymous communications in social media, gaming chats, and similar locations.
People are committing horrible, unprecedented acts of violence with political undertones. They are being goaded and encouraged by hoards of anonymous entities that may or may not be real humans. The backers may or may not be citizens of the affected locality.
I’m in favor of free speech, but it should not apply to bot armies or subversives.
Ironically, I won’t be surprised if this post is downvoted.
> "Citizens will be on their best behavior because we're watching"
Right now, I'm tentatively less concerned about them watching us. They haven't militarized the state this way yet & we'd need to slide a lot more for the boot stomping the face of mankind to get away with such total cooption of technology against thought-rights. Even if it is merely total corporate (not governmental) coersion/corruption against the population, I'm still not afraid of this bluster & abuse being gestured at the citizenry.
What does scare me is communication moving the other direction, not the bottom being read by the top but from the top being broadcast down. This scares me very very much.
Because Ellison's already control: CBS, Paramount, Tik-Tok
And might control:
WB, Discovery (including HBO, CNN).
Larry's threat against democracy & the sanctity of human thought is serious stuff & perhaps things might escalate to where this becomes a real hazard. But the hazard today is that the Powell Memorandum (1971) is way underway and that the explicit plan all along has been for wealthy interests to use a political party as a vehicle to takeover and control the information that people get, to shape the media digest as the ultra-wealthy please.
The Internet has thrown somewhat of a wrench into this plan. But when more solid targets like Media Matters begin to form, it feels like the lawsuit-o-rama, of for example Musk filing existentially thermonuclear lawsuits in the US, Singapore, and Ireland, in an attempt to brutally over-the-top nuke the site from orbit (for daring to show the world the insane antisemitic and conspiracy nonsense he personally advocated engaged with and promoted, as well as for showing Nazi and very closely related content next to paid advertisements). Not just Felony Contempt of Business Model, Capital Contempt for showing what we did.
(Of course there's like none of the loud free speech advocates around, duly angry about this one.)
I am super afraid of Ellison's relationship with society, of what his incredible force of wealth gets bent to. But right now AI is far down my list, versus what's already here now, what the wealthy do to suppress other views, and when they deny the world their own chance to speak the truth & strive towards a just equitable & good planet. Ellison's media empire will one way or another be a first line player for decades. Overall Ellison's media companies seem not so far so pernicious, but it's so hard to guess whether lack of media coverage for large protests going unreported for example is reasoned choice or whether it is active suppression; it feels like already what doesn't get covered and who doesn't get airtime leaves the cutout shape of a hopeful progressive agenda behind.
Whether you agree with me politically or not, i sure hope we can agree that having very few people in charge of the media is a bad end. And imo it's more than a clear and present danger to our democracy, it's already deeply deeply underway.
If your hatred for this doesn't lead you to commit your skills to building systems of liberation, you're likely part of the tech soldier caste and not yet the liberatory praxis movement.
If you think it was public health you didn't pay attention at the suppression of dissent, how different places that didn't do parts of the insane theater didn't have particular problems, how numbers were inflated or deflated depending on the whims of each government. If you really looked at different places and travelled during, when it was supposed to be "impossible", you got to see reality. If you paid attention at how the TV and important people were essential and politicians didn't abide by the bullshit they were selling.
Come on man, wake the fuck up, at this stage. It was indefensible.
No, I didn't kill grandma. Yes, you got manipulated. Own it.
I mean. There was nothing as stupid as people saying trust the science as a way to sound smart when science is all about the method, questioning and skepticism.
But hey, when you can't argue, label. Specially when you have the government censoring people AND coercing health and science professionals to not go against policy.
It wasn't nice talking. But this is the kind of hypocrisy that you're used to. Go support authoritarianism, or do you not want to protect the children? We need chat control NOW!
There was no substance for me to respond to. Only fantasy strawmen. I mean, what do you expect when you just make up garbage about fictional "they"s? It was clear you weren't interested in having a conversation. And I'm just not wasting time on your fantasies. Sorry buddy.
It's interesting that the constitution prevents America from having a king, or at least it used to, but maybe the founders didn't think about other kinds of kings.
Because we're in a place, or we're getting to a place, where that's exactly what we have.