Stop using things made mega corporations. It’s probably include many of the companies you’re currently working for.

Note I said that it was simple, not easy.

But the reversal of consunerism has to be important enough to you to overcome the pleasurable sensation you get from using these products.

It is another push the blame on the individual thing like carbon footprint or identity theft.

1b. Some are of course. Many are legitimately scraping by, but many others are scraping by because they're in a lifestyle prison of their own making, and could easily have complete financial security by consuming less. For them it's an excuse, not an explanation.

2. A lifestyle that has you "making it to the end of the day" is an unhealthy lifestyle, and, yes, you've got to do work on yourself --- take charge of your free time, leave the bad job, leave the bad relationship, strike out alone, etc --- before you can work on making the world better. So there are some dependencies before you're gonna do anything important, but that doesn't mean you can't be on the path.

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity.

Political representation was an idea from back in the days when one had to travel to have a discussion. The traveling was rather complicated too.

For a while now we can have a discussion globally with millions simultaneously.

This produces way to many opinions that are way to fuzzy to compile into a single plan so we end up with representation again.

I think it is worthy to have your mind blown by what these large language models can do in this context.

Our representation atm is unable to read our opinions, there is just to much opinion, it is clueless about what we think or want.

But the puzzle is kinda solved now isn't it?

You don't need a brain implant or even a vote if everyone's influence is limited to such extend that they cant look beyond their self interest - voting is not required.

Direct democracy might be to much of a leap but we may take note of what people think and what ideas and proposals are out there.

You have ideas, you could write them down properly with sources and everything. Who is going to read it? What if you have 20 ideas? What would be the point in doing that? If it is pointless you should stop having ideas. There are countless fun, useful and interesting things to do that all have a point.

Say we all start writing down our poorly thought out ideas. Share our collective political ignorance with the void. If that could be aggregated and combined into something perhaps agreeable or just refutable, then we could at least debunk it and at best consider it.

Everyone can come up with a list of pro's and cons for any topic but if many do we can have the full list and may address the [perceived] misconceptions.

Not use LLM as a middle man (that would put it in charge) but as an aggregator. To construct the questions and answers for a poll for example.

If it works it will become worth having ideas, perhaps even good ideas, perhaps the feedback loop has to run for a while for the good ideas to happen.

Anything is better than pretending to know what the public wants while the public doesn't bother to want anything.

There is also the way we blame the representative for doing the wrong thing. They cant take positions on anything without offending some of their voters. We pretend everything is their idea.

I might be hallucinating, either way it is quite an enjoyable thought.

Of course I know no one will go along with anything until civilization implodes again.

A good slogan I’ve heard repeated in more activist circles: “If not us, then who? If not now, then when?”

:הוּא הָיָה אוֹמֵר, אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי. וּכְשֶׁאֲנִי לְעַצְמִי, מָה אֲנִי. וְאִם לֹא עַכְשָׁיו, אֵימָתָי

He [also] used to say: If I am not for myself, who is for me? But if I am for my own self [only], what am I? And if not now, when?

https://www.sefaria.org/Pirkei_Avot.1.14?lang=bi&lookup=%3A&...

Money insulates you from the worst effects of regressive policy, and warps your incentives toward assholeness.

Education isn't producing many savvy, media literate critical thinkers. My class rocked a D average in Civics, and it was pretty basic stuff. We didn't have any media study. We never looked at how ads work, or where money really comes from, or where it's concentrated.

'STEM' and 'politically savvy' almost seem poles apart; no offense y'all. I don't agree that things ought to be this way, but can you deny it?

Anyway, I suspect media literate critical thinkers without much money do exist on HN - but they're elusive.

If you want useful political discourse, try Scandinavia. Might learn Norwegian myself.

See "How Civil Wars Start" by Barbara F. Walter.

> You find professionals like lawyers leading revolutionary movements, not farm hands

Yes, but also students (who have the time and education, but not money nor power).

They are also indicative of two other key predictive factors: elite over production and a demographic youth bulge.

Their lack of success is perhaps the power issue. If they waited a few years to become army officers, administrators, judiciary and such they could be much more successful than doing another sit-in!

The two notable rebellions in the US were by land / slave owners. Students are limited to basically SDS / The Weather Underground that didn't go very far.

I rephrased (1b) a bit to make that more clear.

I don't have to like it but it seems that is what the answer would look like.

In a way people are allowed to just barely sustain themselves because they are so annoying when they cant.

Limited (liability) corporations are a moral disaster, with no democratic or moral accountability.

Beyond a certain size they can start to pull the strings of democracy in very unhealthy and distorting ways - including "sponsorship" of lawmakers, policy lobbying, and campaigns of outright disinformation at all levels of media.

If I shoot someone in the face I will go to prison and may well face the death penalty.

If a corporation causes mass misery - death, disability, decades of lost life, economic decay, the corruption and subversion of democracy - it will very likely get off with no sanctions at all. If there are fines, they'll be token. Only the most egregious cases get more severe fines - uncomfortable, but not usually life-changing.

Criminal charges are only likely if there's fraud that directly affects shareholders.

It's almost as if the lives of ordinary people are complete disposable.

Aside from prison and fines, there should be a corporate death penalty.

If corporations are people, they should be held accountable in the same ways people are.

Large LLCs seem to be responsible for a significant amount of worker exploitation, deliberate poisoning of consumers, and environmental pollution in general. From an economic perspective they are of course successful, because they provide great shareholder value. It's a classic "privatize the profits, socialize the losses" scenario: once you get caught doing something really bad, you just go bankrupt and let the government pay for the fallout! There is literally no reason not to - at worst your shares lose their value and you've been able to extract a healthy amount of dividend from the company.

Historically many companies have been able to provide great innovations under private ownership, and I see no reason to believe that the concept of an LLC is in any way a prerequisite for improving our standards of living. They have only been around for a relatively short amount of time (especially the kind where nobody is responsible) and we've been doing quite well before that.

So tell me, what is this magical benefit for society we can only achieve via LLCs which outweighs all the damage they are doing? How did Big Tobacco improve our standards of living in such a way that they should be absolved of all responsibility for knowingly poisoning their customers?

Says who? The shareholders?

https://amp.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10...

Maybe in the short term, but they're shaping up to be a bit of a problem in the long run. The humans of this planet don't want to destroy it in exchange for a quick buck, but it's looking like they're not in charge anymore.

If we don't find new ways to leash our monsters they're going to continue killing us.

The reality is, most people are very focused on their own problems. Complaining is free, but doing something about it is not.

That isn't supported by the facts:

> Approximately 240 million people were eligible to vote in the 2020 presidential election and roughly 66.1% of them submitted ballots, totaling about 158 million.

In any case, it's true that the US has lower levels of voter turnout than other Western democracies, but it's unclear how to partition the reasons (less engagement/less caring? less notion of civil duty? less ability to get to the polls, including unfriendly work laws and voter suppression?)

The bottom line is that "most" eligible voters in the US DO care about something... but I'd suggest that the problem is that people care way too much about specific things that don't matter very much. If all the calories go into the hot button issues, then everything else is starved of oxygen. Our problem is perhaps one of too much emotional engagement.

That’s better than I thought.

And yeah, the deliberate voter suppression in the US isn't going to help either. A lot less people are going to stand in line for multiple hours, compared to the "five-minute stop on my drive to work" stuff Europe is used to - not to mention the whole hassle with voter registration and voter roll purging.

The laws and regulations already in place are there for a reason. Not something that could be easily changed with a new administration.

The system is made by generations to persist, whatever happens.

Voters don't care because news orgs don't care (in a meaningful way). Lobbyists writing law isn't as sexy to editors as sportsball, celebs or missing pretty white girls.

I think that could explain why David Petraeus is a valued commentator after the sort of espionage that sends people to jail.

I don't think it explains why journalists quote serially-lying IC agency dirs verbatim, as if they were a trustworthy source. I don't think that's corporate micromanaging. I think it's industry incompetence.

It's as if they're unable to suss out the core duty implied by their extra 1A protections - to hold the powerful accountable.

It's no better at the local level. Reporters consistently parrot LEO spokesbot claims without even doing a 15 second Google search that would disprove cop nonsense. I don't think the local desk is being strongarmed by overlords. I think they're being inept.

That said, in the case of Sinclair media - you'd be right. That local news is directly shaped thru corporate overlording. But there, corporate is dictating the story and providing the reporter scripting. That's a different animal than what I'm referring to.

This is just one example of many (I've seen others in John Oliver's Last Week Tonight):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnIQalprvR8

In 1983, 90% of US media was controlled by fifty companies; today, 90% is controlled by just 5 companies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross-ownership_in_the_U...

IIRC there is government legislation that effectively mandates that tobacco companies add polonium to tobacco. Something to do with the fertilizer sticking to the trichromes on the leaves.