We should ban the selling of products that cannot be used as advertised without a connection to the original vendor.

The Chinese point system is exactly what this reminds me of. It is ironic that unrestrained capitalism actually ends in a variant of communism where it are the corporations, rather than the party, that rule society.

There’s nothing ironic about it, much of cyberpunk is an exploration of the totalitarian nature of hypercorporatism.

It’s also not a variant of communism: first, in the Marxist-Leninist interpretation the purpose of the single party is expression of and progress towards the dictature of the proletariat, the single-party state is not communist (they claim socialism instead) and the ultimate goal is self-abolition (turns out all other issues aside it’s difficult to make such a system abolish itself).

Second, Libertarian Marxist as well as Trotskyists oppose the use of a transitional one-party state and “democratic centralism”.

> It is ironic that unrestrained capitalism actually ends in a variant of communism where it are the corporations, rather than the party, that rule society

Communism is when all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs.

So pure communism precludes corporations that are owned by private individuals.

Perhaps you should explain what is the difference for the 99.99% of people that don't own the big capital.

that's definitely not communism.

Some sort of capitalist-imperialism, maybe, but definitely not communism.

They meant actually-existing communism, not communism-in-theory. (Not that I favor one definition or another, but different people use words in different ways.)

There is no unrestrained capitalism. This is the doing of the managerial class, and they managed to get so much power because of central banks. Especially after 2008 the major central banks have bought assets on the stock market and financed all kinds of projects without a second thought. They print money and make companies like amazon huge. This is 100% government 's doing. Total fake economy. In a free market there is no limited liability, but even if there was companies are subject to profit and loss. The profit and loss mechanism has bren destroyed by goverment, companies now operate based on incentives derived from what's fashionable among the managerial class, not what serves customers and make money.

Also I would not exclude that these companies can be put in their place by using already existing laws. No need for new laws, it's a matter of political will.

>There is no unrestrained capitalism. This is the doing of the managerial class

Who precisely do you think has 90% of the power in 90% of businesses? And before you say 'the shareholders, duh', the venn diagram of the PMC and shareholders of these massive corporations is a circle. The ruling class is the PMC. They run the corporations. How could it be any other way?

The managers have power. They are helped by corporation status (a State creation) and by the fact that when they screw up the central banks print some money and write them a check (of course some schemes are used to hide this process a little bit).

This last bit is the most important. Even if you don't want to blame the managers, profit and loss mechanism is gone, so we are not under capitalism but in a command economy

Capitalism is the system of capital controlling everything and eventually concentrating in hands of the few. Nothing ironic about it, it is after all the goal of capitalism.

Yes. Adam Smith himself stated that capitalism requires sufficient regulation in order to even be able to persist, as insufficiently regulated capitalism will inevitably devolve into monopoly.

> The Chinese point system is exactly what this reminds me of. It is ironic that unrestrained capitalism actually ends in a variant of communism where it are the corporations, rather than the party, that rule society.

That's not what happened in China.

The revolution in China was a _Communist_ one. Maoism is "Communism with Chinese characteristics". That's when 10s of millions of Chinese men, women and children were murdered to further the Communist utopia.

After Mao's death, Deng instituted many reforms and it would be arguable that it was no longer Communist -- but it would be rubbish to call it Capitalism. The government runs _everything_. Where they don't own corporations outright, they install party members to oversee them or own them "individually".

Look at what happened to Jack Ma to see exactly how NOT capitalist the country is.

It may not seem like racism to say "Excuse me, how can I help you" but perhaps the doorbell AI has analysed the way the customer opens his door over a long duration, and noticed subtle differences in how he engages with people of different races. The customer may not even be aware that they are being racist. Perhaps a better response from the corporation would be more educational, to require the customer to complete a free online training courses to raise their state of awareness.

You win today.

Remake goodthink fullwise.

Alternatively the doorbell AI might notice subtle differences in how people of different races, on average, engage him.

That sounds like satire, but many of the under-30 crowd might support it:

¨However, Americans under the age of 30 stand out when it comes to 1984‐ style in‐ home government surveillance cameras. 3 in 10 (29 percent) Americans under 30 favor “the government installing surveillance cameras in every household” in order to “reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity.” Support declines with age, dropping to 20 percent among 30–44 year olds and dropping considerably to 6 percent among those over the age of 45.¨

https://www.cato.org/blog/nearly-third-gen-z-favors-home-gov...

As someone else put it, the younger folks live so much of their lives online where they can contact a corporate nanny to remove speech they dislike and ban users, it makes sense they'd carry those ideas into meatspace and want the same done.

For blacks (of all ages) it's even higher: 33%. For whites it's 9%. So the difference is presumably the greatest between young blacks and old whites, though these numbers aren't given.

> Racism off course is never ok

I think racism is bad, but I don’t think that racists should have their devices bricked.

Should cameras brick themselves if they film a crime? I think it’s a bad situation where consumer devices are making ethical, moral, or legal decisions.

Especially by some kafkaesque corporate no due process system of adjudication where a single accusation with no evidence results in permanent action. And I suspect there’s some stupid KPI about how many racists banned that encourages more dumb actions rather than careful determinations.

> Are we living inside of the movie demolition man now?

It's worse. The germaphobes in Demolition Man seemed tolerant and reasonable compared to today's reality.

https://www.google.com/search?q=police+arrest+park+children+...