On 2/21/2022 7:00 PM, Joel wrote:
> Bill <nonegiven@att.net> wrote:
>> On 2/21/2022 3:10 PM, Joel wrote:
>>> rabidR04CH <rabid@ro4.ch> wrote:
>>>> On 2022-02-21 14:07, Bill wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> I may be biased. I think that corporations are amoral entities with too
>>>>> many privileges.  Someone needs to go to jail when they commit an
>>>>> offense. You speak as though they are a "necessity". But I don't wish to > divert the thread.
>>>>
>>>> If they were removed from the equation, I don't believe that many of the
>>>> sites we use today would be available to us. If they were, they'd
>>>> probably not be as functional as they are. Our connections would also be
>>>> more expensive and I wouldn't be surprised if there were data caps as well.
>>>
>>> Yeah, whining about big tech and corporations is silly. It's just the
>>> way the world operates, I say embrace it.
>>
>> Who is whining? You say "embrace it". Embrace societal values? No thank
>> you very much! I don't cuss, drink or gamble.
>
>
> I'm saying that big business is a natural development of modern
> society. All this aggression toward corporations is silly, to me.

If you look around the world, you can see that the freedoms that big
business has varies from place to place. It is perhaps "most free" in
the USA. For instance, notice the absence of a national health care
system. A national health care system might not be perfect system, but I
think it would benefit society better than what we have now, where
people with serious illnesses often become victims.

Intuit (maker of TurboTax) spends millions every year lobbying congress
to not develop its own online tax preparation system. There's a concrete
example where big business is not trying to help you. Probably most of
the money spent on lobbying is not being spent to help to better the
lives of the taxpayers...lol There are laws on the books that keep
automobile manufacturers from selling vehicles directly to customers.
What really gets me going is the likes of ConAgra which is allowed to
sell "food" which makes people sick. Our FDA is bought and paid for by
the corporations lobbyists. If you wish to choose to not be bothered by
any of these sorts of things, that's your choice.

"Bill" <nonegiven@att.net> wrote

| > I'm saying that big business is a natural development of modern
| > society. All this aggression toward corporations is silly, to me.
| | If you look around the world, you can see that the freedoms that big
| business has varies from place to place. It is perhaps "most free" in
| the USA. For instance, notice the absence of a national health care
| system. A national health care system might not be perfect system, but I
| think it would benefit society better than what we have now, where
| people with serious illnesses often become victims.
|

He's too young to remember when we had a middle class.
Scary, huh? Apparently he doesn't even clearly remember the
Internet of the 90s, when anyone could have a website and it
was a communal effort, not a chainstore mall. Though there
are still vestiges of that time, like Craigslist and Wikipedia. The
real Internet still exists, out in back of the mall.

When I started paying taxes in the 70s, the highest
bracket was something like 90%. That had been enacted
specifically to prevent another perversion of Democracy;
to prevent the possibility of more Rockefellers, Gettys and
Fords. But it didn't last. We have Gates, Jobs, Bezos, Musk,
Zuck, Schmidt...

It's been going downhill for 25 years while "experts" celebrate
every salespitch tech puts out. Yesterday I saw an ad for a
new show documenting Kalanis, who founded Uber. Greed,
selfishness, lawbreaking, exploitation... great drama. But 10
years ago he was being celebrated as a visionary. My own
neice first showed me Uber. She honestly believed it was
a socialist breakthrough, when it was just a union-busting
scam. A whole generation was duped into thinking they could
create a socialist golden age if they'd just click the right
buttons and swipe their cellphones the right way.

In an earlier time people would have been ashamed
to call themselves "consumers". Phrases like "I owe my soul to
the company store" recalled an earlier, ugly time when money
was power and most people were exploited.

Since Reagan, we've redeveloped
a plutocracy, with a Congress largely composed of people who
are there for kickbacks. And apparently the Gen-Xers think that's
just how human society works. I expect it's worse with the
still younger generations, who've been raised on cellphones and
Ritalin. There's no Woody Guthrie coming out of that crowd.
Only token-issue wokists complaining that they don't feel "safe".

On 2022-02-21 21:46, Bill wrote:
> On 2/21/2022 7:00 PM, Joel wrote:
>> Bill <nonegiven@att.net> wrote:
>>> On 2/21/2022 3:10 PM, Joel wrote:
>>>> rabidR04CH <rabid@ro4.ch> wrote:
>>>>> On 2022-02-21 14:07, Bill wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I may be biased. I think that corporations are amoral entities
>>>>>> with too
>>>>>> many privileges.  Someone needs to go to jail when they commit an
>>>>>> offense. You speak as though they are a "necessity". But I don't
>>>>>> wish to  > divert the thread.
>>>>>
>>>>> If they were removed from the equation, I don't believe that many
>>>>> of the
>>>>> sites we use today would be available to us. If they were, they'd
>>>>> probably not be as functional as they are. Our connections would
>>>>> also be
>>>>> more expensive and I wouldn't be surprised if there were data caps
>>>>> as well.
>>>>
>>>> Yeah, whining about big tech and corporations is silly.  It's just the
>>>> way the world operates, I say embrace it.
>>>
>>> Who is whining? You say "embrace it". Embrace societal values? No thank
>>> you very much! I don't cuss, drink or gamble.
>>
>>
>> I'm saying that big business is a natural development of modern
>> society.  All this aggression toward corporations is silly, to me.
>
> If you look around the world, you can see that the freedoms that big
> business has varies from place to place. It is perhaps "most free" in
> the USA. For instance, notice the absence of a national health care
> system. A national health care system might not be perfect system, but I
> think it would benefit society better than what we have now, where
> people with serious illnesses often become victims.
>
> Intuit (maker of TurboTax) spends millions every year lobbying congress
> to not develop its own online tax preparation system. There's a concrete
> example where big business is not trying to help you.  Probably most of
> the money spent on lobbying is not being spent to help to better the
> lives of the taxpayers...lol   There are laws on the books that keep
> automobile manufacturers from selling vehicles directly to customers.
> What really gets me going is the likes of ConAgra which is allowed to
> sell "food" which makes people sick.  Our FDA is bought and paid for by
> the corporations lobbyists.  If you wish to choose to not be bothered by
> any of these sorts of things, that's your choice.

A national health care system is definitely beneficial as a bare minimum
that people can count on and where the services are "free" through
taxes. However, it only works if there is also a private alternative
people can use if ever their needs are urgent or if they are willing to
pay more. Where the alternative is absent, the system is also more or
less worthless like here in Quebec. People who desperately need surgery
are made to wait years to get it, and wait to have even longer now
because of the Kung Flu. Additionally, the quality of service depends on
the availability of beds so once there is even a danger of them becoming
filled because some "experts" overestimated how dangerous a variant is
going to be, your surgery will wait even longer and there is literally
nothing you can do to remedy that.

--
rabidR04CH
MSI GT72 2QD on Linux Mint 20.3
"But Peter and the apostles answered, 'We must obey God rather than
men.'" - Acts 5:29
For fans of message boards, I invite you:
https://retalk.com/invite/rabidR04CH

On 2022-02-21 22:02, Joel wrote:
> Bill <nonegiven@att.net> wrote:
>
>>>>> Yeah, whining about big tech and corporations is silly. It's just the
>>>>> way the world operates, I say embrace it.
>>>>
>>>> Who is whining? You say "embrace it". Embrace societal values? No thank
>>>> you very much! I don't cuss, drink or gamble.
>>>
>>> I'm saying that big business is a natural development of modern
>>> society. All this aggression toward corporations is silly, to me.
>>
>> If you look around the world, you can see that the freedoms that big
>> business has varies from place to place. It is perhaps "most free" in
>> the USA. For instance, notice the absence of a national health care
>> system. A national health care system might not be perfect system, but I
>> think it would benefit society better than what we have now, where
>> people with serious illnesses often become victims.
>>
>> Intuit (maker of TurboTax) spends millions every year lobbying congress
>> to not develop its own online tax preparation system. There's a concrete
>> example where big business is not trying to help you. Probably most of
>> the money spent on lobbying is not being spent to help to better the
>> lives of the taxpayers...lol There are laws on the books that keep
>> automobile manufacturers from selling vehicles directly to customers.
>> What really gets me going is the likes of ConAgra which is allowed to
>> sell "food" which makes people sick. Our FDA is bought and paid for by
>> the corporations lobbyists. If you wish to choose to not be bothered by
>> any of these sorts of things, that's your choice.
>
>
> I'm for single-payer health care, and basic income.

Unrealistic because you'll quickly run out of money. Like here in
Canada, the fact that services are "free" will result in people going to
the hospital for non-problems and quickly depleting the coffers.

> I'm also for
> merging the House and Senate into a single body,

The Senate is supposed to keep the House in check when they are clearly
being biased and passing legislation which isn't even compatible or
simply goes against the Constitution. As we've seen over the last few
years, the Democrats have no interest in respecting the Constitution or
existing laws in their efforts to secure authoritarianism.

> and DC statehood,

The Democrats only want the DC to be considered a state because it is
guaranteed to go in their political direction It wasn't meant to become
a state:

"he District of Columbia was created in 1801 as the federal district of
the United States, with territory previously held by the states of
Maryland and Virginia ceded to the federal government of the United
States for the purpose of creating its federal district, which would
encompass the new national capital."

If anything, the territory should simply be returned to both Maryland
and Virginia.

> and
> a nationally administered, popular vote election for president.

Not intelligent because it would simply mean that the mob would get to
decide who leads the country. Do not underestimate how high the
percentage of stupid people in America is.

> But I
> can't just wave my hand and enact all that. I can appreciate the
> America that is, for what it is, despite its faults.

None of them are faults. If anything, the American political system is
as perfect as it gets and is much better than the "first-past-the-post"
parliamentary system used in current and former British territories.

--
rabidR04CH
MSI GT72 2QD on Linux Mint 20.3
"But Peter and the apostles answered, 'We must obey God rather than
men.'" - Acts 5:29
For fans of message boards, I invite you:
https://retalk.com/invite/rabidR04CH

Bill <nonegiven@att.net> wrote:

>Intuit (maker of TurboTax) spends millions every year lobbying congress
>to not develop its own online tax preparation system

Yeah, that's a pet peeve of mine. Your employer, your bank, your
mortgage lender, your investment accounts, etc, all send reports to
the IRS. So it would be perfectly feasible for the IRS to create a
system that would allow you to login, and show you a filled-in tax
form, and allow you to edit it in various ways. But providers like
Intuit, H&R Block, and others would have their businesses impaced. So
taxpayers have to go through endless grief to make big businesses
happy.

> There are laws on the books that keep
>automobile manufacturers from selling vehicles directly to customers.

Yeah, which is exactly how Tesla does business. I know there have been
lawsuits about that, I don't know what the status of the dispute is.

--
Tim Slattery
tim <at> risingdove <dot> com

On 2/21/2022 9:02 PM, Joel wrote:
> Bill <nonegiven@att.net> wrote:
>
>>>>> Yeah, whining about big tech and corporations is silly. It's just the
>>>>> way the world operates, I say embrace it.
>>>>
>>>> Who is whining? You say "embrace it". Embrace societal values? No thank
>>>> you very much! I don't cuss, drink or gamble.
>>>
>>> I'm saying that big business is a natural development of modern
>>> society. All this aggression toward corporations is silly, to me.
>>
>> If you look around the world, you can see that the freedoms that big
>> business has varies from place to place. It is perhaps "most free" in
>> the USA. For instance, notice the absence of a national health care
>> system. A national health care system might not be perfect system, but I
>> think it would benefit society better than what we have now, where
>> people with serious illnesses often become victims.
>>
>> Intuit (maker of TurboTax) spends millions every year lobbying congress
>> to not develop its own online tax preparation system. There's a concrete
>> example where big business is not trying to help you. Probably most of
>> the money spent on lobbying is not being spent to help to better the
>> lives of the taxpayers...lol There are laws on the books that keep
>> automobile manufacturers from selling vehicles directly to customers.
>> What really gets me going is the likes of ConAgra which is allowed to
>> sell "food" which makes people sick. Our FDA is bought and paid for by
>> the corporations lobbyists. If you wish to choose to not be bothered by
>> any of these sorts of things, that's your choice.
>
>
> I'm for single-payer health care, and basic income. I'm also for
> merging the House and Senate into a single body, and DC statehood, and
> a nationally administered, popular vote election for president. But I
> can't just wave my hand and enact all that. I can appreciate the
> America that is, for what it is, despite its faults.
>

Can I get a puppy?

rabidR04CH <rabid@ro4.ch> wrote:

>The Senate is supposed to keep the House in check when they are clearly
>being biased and passing legislation which isn't even compatible or
>simply goes against the Constitution. As we've seen over the last few
>years, the Democrats have no interest in respecting the Constitution or
>existing laws in their efforts to secure authoritarianism.

You're 180 degress out of phase, it's the Republicans that flout the
constitution at every opportunity. The way Senators are apportioned is
grossly non-democratic (Wyoming has one senator for avery 250,000
people, and California has one senator for every 16,000,000 people.
What sense does that make?), and the Republicans make use of that to
frustrate the desires of the majority.

>> and DC statehood,
>
>The Democrats only want the DC to be considered a state because it is
>guaranteed to go in their political direction It wasn't meant to become
>a state:

The Democrats want DC to be a state because the about 750,000 citizens
of DC have NO voting representation in congress. The district is
governed by congress, which is comprised of people from everywhere in
the country EXCEPT the district. Is that democracy? And can you really
justify small-population states like Wyoming, Alaska, the Dakotas,
etc, having two senators while the citizens of the district - who pay
all federal taxes, and are subject to all federal laws - have NO
representation there? This is democracy? Taxation without
representation! But the Republicans love it!

>"he District of Columbia was created in 1801 as the federal district of
>the United States, with territory previously held by the states of
>Maryland and Virginia ceded to the federal government of the United
>States for the purpose of creating its federal district, which would
>encompass the new national capital."

It was created in the Constition. It's actual location wasn't
determined until later. By 1801 the White House was done and John and
Abigail Adams moved in. There was nobody at the Constitutional
Convention to represent those who would eventually live in the
district, so their needs were not taken into consideration, That kind
of thing is why there is a mechanism to amend the constitution.

>If anything, the territory should simply be returned to both Maryland
>and Virginia.

Virginia's part was returned to it in the late 1840's. Slave dealers
in Alexandria (a very large business) saw the possibility that slavery
would be ended in the District, and wanted out before that happened.
The slave trade in the District was outlawed as part of the Compromise
of 1850, slavery was not outlawed until after the Southern states
seceded.
>
>> and
>> a nationally administered, popular vote election for president.
>
>Not intelligent because it would simply mean that the mob would get to
>decide who leads the country. Do not underestimate how high the
>percentage of stupid people in America is.

Again, democracy. The Republicans preferminority rule.

--
Tim Slattery
tim <at> risingdove <dot> com

On Mon, 21 Feb 2022 21:46:01 -0500, Bill <nonegiven@att.net> wrote:

>On 2/21/2022 7:00 PM, Joel wrote:
>> Bill <nonegiven@att.net> wrote:
>>> On 2/21/2022 3:10 PM, Joel wrote:
>>>> rabidR04CH <rabid@ro4.ch> wrote:
>>>>> On 2022-02-21 14:07, Bill wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I may be biased. I think that corporations are amoral entities with too
>>>>>> many privileges.  Someone needs to go to jail when they commit an
>>>>>> offense. You speak as though they are a "necessity". But I don't wish to > divert the thread.
>>>>>
>>>>> If they were removed from the equation, I don't believe that many of the
>>>>> sites we use today would be available to us. If they were, they'd
>>>>> probably not be as functional as they are. Our connections would also be
>>>>> more expensive and I wouldn't be surprised if there were data caps as well.
>>>>
>>>> Yeah, whining about big tech and corporations is silly. It's just the
>>>> way the world operates, I say embrace it.
>>>
>>> Who is whining? You say "embrace it". Embrace societal values? No thank
>>> you very much! I don't cuss, drink or gamble.

I cuss and I drink (but not too much), but I don't gamble.

I've had only one lottery ticket in my life; it was gift from the
mother of a student of mine. I won! But only $5.

>> I'm saying that big business is a natural development of modern
>> society. All this aggression toward corporations is silly, to me.

I agree.

>If you look around the world, you can see that the freedoms that big
>business has varies from place to place. It is perhaps "most free" in
>the USA. For instance, notice the absence of a national health care
>system. A national health care system might not be perfect system, but I
>think it would benefit society better than what we have now, where
>people with serious illnesses often become victims.

I agree.

>
>Intuit (maker of TurboTax) spends millions every year lobbying congress
>to not develop its own online tax preparation system. There's a concrete
>example where big business is not trying to help you. Probably most of
>the money spent on lobbying is not being spent to help to better the
>lives of the taxpayers...lol There are laws on the books that keep
>automobile manufacturers from selling vehicles directly to customers.
>What really gets me going is the likes of ConAgra which is allowed to
>sell "food" which makes people sick. Our FDA is bought and paid for by
>the corporations lobbyists. If you wish to choose to not be bothered by
>any of these sorts of things, that's your choice.

I agree with all that too. To try to be more clear, I'm not against
the existence of big corporations, but I *am* against some of the
things they do.

On 2022-02-22 10:48, Tim Slattery wrote:

< something off-topic >

--
rabidR04CH
MSI GT72 2QD on Linux Mint 20.3
"But Peter and the apostles answered, 'We must obey God rather than
men.'" - Acts 5:29
For fans of message boards, I invite you:
https://retalk.com/invite/rabidR04CH

On 2/22/2022 8:21 AM, Mayayana wrote:
> "Bill" <nonegiven@att.net> wrote
>
> | > I'm saying that big business is a natural development of modern
> | > society. All this aggression toward corporations is silly, to me.
> |
> | If you look around the world, you can see that the freedoms that big
> | business has varies from place to place. It is perhaps "most free" in
> | the USA. For instance, notice the absence of a national health care
> | system. A national health care system might not be perfect system, but I
> | think it would benefit society better than what we have now, where
> | people with serious illnesses often become victims.
> |
>
> He's too young to remember when we had a middle class.
> Scary, huh? Apparently he doesn't even clearly remember the
> Internet of the 90s, when anyone could have a website and it
> was a communal effort, not a chainstore mall. Though there
> are still vestiges of that time, like Craigslist and Wikipedia. The
> real Internet still exists, out in back of the mall.
>
> When I started paying taxes in the 70s, the highest
> bracket was something like 90%. That had been enacted
> specifically to prevent another perversion of Democracy;
> to prevent the possibility of more Rockefellers, Gettys and
> Fords. But it didn't last. We have Gates, Jobs, Bezos, Musk,
> Zuck, Schmidt...
>
> It's been going downhill for 25 years while "experts" celebrate
> every salespitch tech puts out. Yesterday I saw an ad for a
> new show documenting Kalanis, who founded Uber. Greed,
> selfishness, lawbreaking, exploitation... great drama. But 10
> years ago he was being celebrated as a visionary. My own
> neice first showed me Uber. She honestly believed it was
> a socialist breakthrough, when it was just a union-busting
> scam. A whole generation was duped into thinking they could
> create a socialist golden age if they'd just click the right
> buttons and swipe their cellphones the right way.
>
> In an earlier time people would have been ashamed
> to call themselves "consumers". Phrases like "I owe my soul to
> the company store" recalled an earlier, ugly time when money
> was power and most people were exploited.
>
> Since Reagan, we've redeveloped
> a plutocracy, with a Congress largely composed of people who
> are there for kickbacks. And apparently the Gen-Xers think that's
> just how human society works. I expect it's worse with the
> still younger generations, who've been raised on cellphones and
> Ritalin. There's no Woody Guthrie coming out of that crowd.
> Only token-issue wokists complaining that they don't feel "safe".
>
>

You have perhaps a more knowledgeable viewpoint and expressed it better
than I could have, but can tell we're on the same side. Thank you for
your post! I found it quite interesting and informative. I have been
around during the same time period, but you "took better notes" than I
did! : )

On Tue, 22 Feb 2022 10:48:02 -0500, Tim Slattery <tim@risingdove.com>
wrote:

>rabidR04CH <rabid@ro4.ch> wrote:
>
>
>>The Senate is supposed to keep the House in check when they are clearly
>>being biased and passing legislation which isn't even compatible or
>>simply goes against the Constitution. As we've seen over the last few
>>years, the Democrats have no interest in respecting the Constitution or
>>existing laws in their efforts to secure authoritarianism.
>
>You're 180 degress out of phase, it's the Republicans that flout the
>constitution at every opportunity. The way Senators are apportioned is
>grossly non-democratic (Wyoming has one senator for avery 250,000
>people, and California has one senator for every 16,000,000 people.
>What sense does that make?),

It made sense when the constitution was first written, but that was a
long time ago, and no longer makes any sense.

>and the Republicans make use of that to
>frustrate the desires of the majority.

Yes.

>>> and DC statehood,
>>
>>The Democrats only want the DC to be considered a state because it is
>>guaranteed to go in their political direction It wasn't meant to become
>>a state:
>
>The Democrats want DC to be a state because the about 750,000 citizens
>of DC have NO voting representation in congress. The district is
>governed by congress, which is comprised of people from everywhere in
>the country EXCEPT the district. Is that democracy? And can you really
>justify small-population states like Wyoming, Alaska, the Dakotas,
>etc, having two senators while the citizens of the district - who pay
>all federal taxes, and are subject to all federal laws - have NO
>representation there? This is democracy? Taxation without
>representation! But the Republicans love it!
>
>>"he District of Columbia was created in 1801 as the federal district of
>>the United States, with territory previously held by the states of
>>Maryland and Virginia ceded to the federal government of the United
>>States for the purpose of creating its federal district, which would
>>encompass the new national capital."
>
>It was created in the Constition. It's actual location wasn't
>determined until later. By 1801 the White House was done and John and
>Abigail Adams moved in. There was nobody at the Constitutional
>Convention to represent those who would eventually live in the
>district, so their needs were not taken into consideration, That kind
>of thing is why there is a mechanism to amend the constitution.
>
>>If anything, the territory should simply be returned to both Maryland
>>and Virginia.
>
>Virginia's part was returned to it in the late 1840's. Slave dealers
>in Alexandria (a very large business) saw the possibility that slavery
>would be ended in the District, and wanted out before that happened.
>The slave trade in the District was outlawed as part of the Compromise
>of 1850, slavery was not outlawed until after the Southern states
>seceded.
>>
>>> and
>>> a nationally administered, popular vote election for president.
>>
>>Not intelligent because it would simply mean that the mob would get to
>>decide who leads the country. Do not underestimate how high the
>>percentage of stupid people in America is.
>
>Again, democracy. The Republicans preferminority rule.

"Joel" <joelcrump@gmail.com> wrote

| > He's too young to remember when we had a middle class.
| >Scary, huh? Apparently he doesn't even clearly remember the
| >Internet of the 90s, when anyone could have a website and it
| >was a communal effort, not a chainstore mall. Though there
| >are still vestiges of that time, like Craigslist and Wikipedia. The
| >real Internet still exists, out in back of the mall.
| |
| Who are you kidding? My 45th birthday is a week from today.

So you were born in 1977. You were 3 when Reagan was elected.
He deregulated public service requirements for TV. So you've
probably never seen real news, because now it's ratings-driven.
You would have been in grade school at
the height of the yuppie craze, as people became obsessed
with money and began investing in IRAs because companies
were no longer providing pensions. That change meant that
much of America now has their retirement money invested in
stocks and thus has a vested interest in unlimited corporate
growth. People want to save the planet but they also want
Apple and Exxon to grow forever.

Society in America has changed vastly, especially since
the 80s. I grew up in a world where almost everyone was
middle class. Our family doctor had a boat, but he still lived
nearby. Your boss would have made maybe 50% -200% more
than you, not 450 times more. My father raised 6 kids and
bought a house, on a modest income. As a young hippie in
the 70s I was able to work half the year picking fruit or
washing dishes, and travel the rest of the time. Today I'm
semi-retired with my own business and couldn't afford a
market-rate 1-bedroom apt. That's all changed due to a
wave of plutocracy. A handful of billionaires now control most
of the wealth. Why? Deregulation and tax policy favoring
wealth. I pay 30%+ federal tax for working, while Warren
Buffet, Gates and Rocketman Bezos pay more like 15-18% --
before deductions, and only on the money they haven't
offshored.

Given all that, it's hard to see how you could call the current
situation "good enough". Maybe you've never had to work
and your parents bought you a house?

| I used
| the Internet in the '90s.

You would have been 23 in 2000. You may have used the
Internet of the 90s but apparently you missed the spirit of it.
It was a bit like the idea of the Whole Earth Catalog and co-ops.
Sharing for the public good. I started a website myself, with
the free space my ISP provided. I posted things I thought
might be helpful. That was the spirit of it. Everyone offered for
free whatever they had/knew that others might use.

It all changed dramatically when Google
started with targetted ads. They then started skewing their
ratings to pages that change often and that have the most
incoming links. They skewed it to corporate sites.

My favorite example: I had an unusual eye disorder that came
back a couple of times. The first time I researched it, I found
webpages posted by people who had had the same disorder and
provided information. The next time it happened, the top link
was an eye clinic in Florida. The "long tail of the Internet" was
effectively invisible. Those sites don't pay Google, so Google
stopped listing them. The "don't be evil" gang discovered
vast wealth and their idealism went out the window. The
Internet, and computing, could be so much more than a flim flam
shopping mall run by greedy, unsocialized, billionaire nerds who
can't even grasp the damage they're doing.

On 2/22/2022 12:20 PM, Mayayana wrote:
> "Joel" <joelcrump@gmail.com> wrote

> Given all that, it's hard to see how you could call the current
> situation "good enough". Maybe you've never had to work
> and your parents bought you a house?
>
> | I used
> | the Internet in the '90s.
>
> You would have been 23 in 2000. You may have used the
> Internet of the 90s but apparently you missed the spirit of it.
> It was a bit like the idea of the Whole Earth Catalog and co-ops.
> Sharing for the public good. I started a website myself, with
> the free space my ISP provided. I posted things I thought
> might be helpful. That was the spirit of it. Everyone offered for
> free whatever they had/knew that others might use.

Usenet has always been, and continues to be, my favorite part of the
Internet. Although I understand it's "not what is used to be", much
of it still possesses that spirit--as virtually everyone here probably
already knows <duh on me if this is redundant>.

>
> It all changed dramatically when Google
> started with targetted ads. They then started skewing their
> ratings to pages that change often and that have the most
> incoming links. They skewed it to corporate sites.
>
> My favorite example: I had an unusual eye disorder that came
> back a couple of times. The first time I researched it, I found
> webpages posted by people who had had the same disorder and
> provided information. The next time it happened, the top link
> was an eye clinic in Florida. The "long tail of the Internet" was
> effectively invisible. Those sites don't pay Google, so Google
> stopped listing them. The "don't be evil" gang discovered
> vast wealth and their idealism went out the window. The
> Internet, and computing, could be so much more than a flim flam
> shopping mall run by greedy, unsocialized, billionaire nerds who
> can't even grasp the damage they're doing.
>
>

On 2/22/2022 12:44 PM, Joel wrote:
> "Mayayana" <mayayana@invalid.nospam> wrote:
>
>> | > He's too young to remember when we had a middle class.
>> | >Scary, huh? Apparently he doesn't even clearly remember the
>> | >Internet of the 90s, when anyone could have a website and it
>> | >was a communal effort, not a chainstore mall. Though there
>> | >are still vestiges of that time, like Craigslist and Wikipedia. The
>> | >real Internet still exists, out in back of the mall.
>> |
>> | Who are you kidding? My 45th birthday is a week from today.
>>
>> So you were born in 1977. You were 3 when Reagan was elected.
>> He deregulated public service requirements for TV. So you've
>> probably never seen real news, because now it's ratings-driven.
>> You would have been in grade school at
>> the height of the yuppie craze, as people became obsessed
>> with money and began investing in IRAs because companies
>> were no longer providing pensions. That change meant that
>> much of America now has their retirement money invested in
>> stocks and thus has a vested interest in unlimited corporate
>> growth. People want to save the planet but they also want
>> Apple and Exxon to grow forever.
>>
>> Society in America has changed vastly, especially since
>> the 80s. I grew up in a world where almost everyone was
>> middle class. Our family doctor had a boat, but he still lived
>> nearby. Your boss would have made maybe 50% -200% more
>> than you, not 450 times more. My father raised 6 kids and
>> bought a house, on a modest income. As a young hippie in
>> the 70s I was able to work half the year picking fruit or
>> washing dishes, and travel the rest of the time. Today I'm
>> semi-retired with my own business and couldn't afford a
>> market-rate 1-bedroom apt. That's all changed due to a
>> wave of plutocracy. A handful of billionaires now control most
>> of the wealth. Why? Deregulation and tax policy favoring
>> wealth. I pay 30%+ federal tax for working, while Warren
>> Buffet, Gates and Rocketman Bezos pay more like 15-18% --
>> before deductions, and only on the money they haven't
>> offshored.
>>
>> Given all that, it's hard to see how you could call the current
>> situation "good enough". Maybe you've never had to work
>> and your parents bought you a house?
>
>
> I didn't call the current situation "good enough". I am a
> progressive, but I'm also a realist. The country has a lot of people
> who believe in deregulation and the corporate economy. And, really,
> they're not entirely wrong, because it keeps the U.S. atop the
> economic ladder of the global economy. Rush Limbaugh said a lot of
> stupid things, to be sure, but he wasn't entirely wrong about the kind
> of economic system the U.S. has - it's an unfair system, it's a broken
> system, but it does sustain itself more than one would predict,
> because it has the ability to self-correct and carry on.
>
>
>> | I used
>> | the Internet in the '90s.
>>
>> You would have been 23 in 2000. You may have used the
>> Internet of the 90s but apparently you missed the spirit of it.
>> It was a bit like the idea of the Whole Earth Catalog and co-ops.
>> Sharing for the public good. I started a website myself, with
>> the free space my ISP provided. I posted things I thought
>> might be helpful. That was the spirit of it. Everyone offered for
>> free whatever they had/knew that others might use.
>>
>> It all changed dramatically when Google
>> started with targetted ads. They then started skewing their
>> ratings to pages that change often and that have the most
>> incoming links. They skewed it to corporate sites.
>>
>> My favorite example: I had an unusual eye disorder that came
>> back a couple of times. The first time I researched it, I found
>> webpages posted by people who had had the same disorder and
>> provided information. The next time it happened, the top link
>> was an eye clinic in Florida. The "long tail of the Internet" was
>> effectively invisible. Those sites don't pay Google, so Google
>> stopped listing them. The "don't be evil" gang discovered
>> vast wealth and their idealism went out the window. The
>> Internet, and computing, could be so much more than a flim flam
>> shopping mall run by greedy, unsocialized, billionaire nerds who
>> can't even grasp the damage they're doing.
>
>
> I can see what you're saying, but it's missing the point, in my view.
> The Internet's infancy has passed. Win11 is actually a sign of that,
> Microsoft has thrown down the gauntlet with the lawlessness of the
> online world, as it developed. And I think it's time for that. We're
> entering a new era, where technology is so integral to our lives that
> we sacrifice some of the old school freedoms, to violate copyright
> law, and embrace a more secure, more mutually beneficial Internet.
> It's no longer the wild west.
>

How ironic. Russia has been working on a mutually beneficial
arrangement with Ukraine during the last couple of weeks too!
What a coincidence.

On 2022-02-22 12:20, Mayayana wrote:
> "Joel" <joelcrump@gmail.com> wrote
>
> | > He's too young to remember when we had a middle class.
> | >Scary, huh? Apparently he doesn't even clearly remember the
> | >Internet of the 90s, when anyone could have a website and it
> | >was a communal effort, not a chainstore mall. Though there
> | >are still vestiges of that time, like Craigslist and Wikipedia. The
> | >real Internet still exists, out in back of the mall.
> |
> |
> | Who are you kidding? My 45th birthday is a week from today.
>
> So you were born in 1977. You were 3 when Reagan was elected.
> He deregulated public service requirements for TV. So you've
> probably never seen real news, because now it's ratings-driven.
> You would have been in grade school at
> the height of the yuppie craze, as people became obsessed
> with money and began investing in IRAs because companies
> were no longer providing pensions. That change meant that
> much of America now has their retirement money invested in
> stocks and thus has a vested interest in unlimited corporate
> growth. People want to save the planet but they also want
> Apple and Exxon to grow forever.

And they expect this growth to be done in such a way that it doesn't
affect the planet. For instance, they believe that Apple's decision to
no longer bundle a charger and headphones with each iPhone purchase will
counter the fact that they encourage people to buy a new iPhone annually.

> Society in America has changed vastly, especially since
> the 80s. I grew up in a world where almost everyone was
> middle class. Our family doctor had a boat, but he still lived
> nearby. Your boss would have made maybe 50% -200% more
> than you, not 450 times more. My father raised 6 kids and
> bought a house, on a modest income. As a young hippie in
> the 70s I was able to work half the year picking fruit or
> washing dishes, and travel the rest of the time. Today I'm
> semi-retired with my own business and couldn't afford a
> market-rate 1-bedroom apt. That's all changed due to a
> wave of plutocracy. A handful of billionaires now control most
> of the wealth. Why? Deregulation and tax policy favoring
> wealth. I pay 30%+ federal tax for working, while Warren
> Buffet, Gates and Rocketman Bezos pay more like 15-18% --
> before deductions, and only on the money they haven't
> offshored.
>
> Given all that, it's hard to see how you could call the current
> situation "good enough". Maybe you've never had to work
> and your parents bought you a house?

Of course, the world should have expected things to change somewhat,
especially once the American dollar was moved away from the gold
standard. Its value dropped considerably for a variety of reasons but
people would be stupid to think that much of it could have been avoided
and that the reality we now live could have been any different.

> | I used
> | the Internet in the '90s.
>
> You would have been 23 in 2000. You may have used the
> Internet of the 90s but apparently you missed the spirit of it.
> It was a bit like the idea of the Whole Earth Catalog and co-ops.
> Sharing for the public good. I started a website myself, with
> the free space my ISP provided. I posted things I thought
> might be helpful. That was the spirit of it. Everyone offered for
> free whatever they had/knew that others might use.
>
> It all changed dramatically when Google
> started with targetted ads. They then started skewing their
> ratings to pages that change often and that have the most
> incoming links. They skewed it to corporate sites.
>
> My favorite example: I had an unusual eye disorder that came
> back a couple of times. The first time I researched it, I found
> webpages posted by people who had had the same disorder and
> provided information. The next time it happened, the top link
> was an eye clinic in Florida. The "long tail of the Internet" was
> effectively invisible. Those sites don't pay Google, so Google
> stopped listing them. The "don't be evil" gang discovered
> vast wealth and their idealism went out the window. The
> Internet, and computing, could be so much more than a flim flam
> shopping mall run by greedy, unsocialized, billionaire nerds who
> can't even grasp the damage they're doing.

Never trust a company which tells you to trust them.

--
rabidR04CH
MSI GT72 2QD on Linux Mint 20.3
"But Peter and the apostles answered, 'We must obey God rather than
men.'" - Acts 5:29
For fans of message boards, I invite you:
https://retalk.com/invite/rabidR04CH

On 2022-02-22 14:48, rabidR04CH wrote:
> On 2022-02-21 21:46, Bill wrote:
>> On 2/21/2022 7:00 PM, Joel wrote:
>>> Bill <nonegiven@att.net> wrote:
>>>> On 2/21/2022 3:10 PM, Joel wrote:
>>>>> rabidR04CH <rabid@ro4.ch> wrote:
>>>>>> On 2022-02-21 14:07, Bill wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I may be biased. I think that corporations are amoral
>>>>>>> entities with too many privileges. Someone needs to go
>>>>>>> to jail when they commit an offense. You speak as though
>>>>>>> they are a "necessity". But I don't wish to > divert the
>>>>>>> thread.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If they were removed from the equation, I don't believe
>>>>>> that many of the sites we use today would be available to
>>>>>> us. If they were, they'd probably not be as functional as
>>>>>> they are. Our connections would also be more expensive and
>>>>>> I wouldn't be surprised if there were data caps as well.
>>>>>
>>>>> Yeah, whining about big tech and corporations is silly.  It's just the
>>>>> way the world operates, I say embrace it.
>>>>
>>>> Who is whining? You say "embrace it". Embrace societal values? No thank
>>>> you very much! I don't cuss, drink or gamble.
>>>
>>>
>>> I'm saying that big business is a natural development of modern
>>> society.  All this aggression toward corporations is silly, to me.
>>
>> If you look around the world, you can see that the freedoms that big
>> business has varies from place to place. It is perhaps "most free" in
>> the USA. For instance, notice the absence of a national health care
>> system. A national health care system might not be perfect system, but
>> I think it would benefit society better than what we have now, where
>> people with serious illnesses often become victims.
>>
>> Intuit (maker of TurboTax) spends millions every year lobbying
>> congress to not develop its own online tax preparation system. There's
>> a concrete example where big business is not trying to help you.
>> Probably most of the money spent on lobbying is not being spent to
>> help to better the lives of the taxpayers...lol   There are laws on
>> the books that keep automobile manufacturers from selling vehicles
>> directly to customers.
>> What really gets me going is the likes of ConAgra which is allowed to
>> sell "food" which makes people sick.  Our FDA is bought and paid for by
>> the corporations lobbyists.  If you wish to choose to not be bothered
>> by any of these sorts of things, that's your choice.
>
> A national health care system is definitely beneficial as a bare minimum
> that people can count on and where the services are "free" through
> taxes. However, it only works if there is also a private alternative
> people can use if ever their needs are urgent or if they are willing to
> pay more. Where the alternative is absent, the system is also more or
> less worthless like here in Quebec. People who desperately need surgery
> are made to wait years to get it, and wait to have even longer now
> because of the Kung Flu. Additionally, the quality of service depends on
> the availability of beds so once there is even a danger of them becoming
> filled because some "experts" overestimated how dangerous a variant is
> going to be, your surgery will wait even longer and there is literally
> nothing you can do to remedy that.

It works if you also prohibit (and enforce the prohibition) the
politicians and the elite to get any other health care when they are ill
>;-p

But this is OT.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

In article <QZ5RJ.48103$4JN7.1384@fx05.iad>, rabidR04CH <rabid@ro4.ch>
wrote:

> > I'm also for
> > merging the House and Senate into a single body,
>
> The Senate is supposed to keep the House in check when they are clearly
> being biased and passing legislation which isn't even compatible or
> simply goes against the Constitution. As we've seen over the last few
> years, the Democrats have no interest in respecting the Constitution or
> existing laws in their efforts to secure authoritarianism.

actually, it's the opposite. republicans are doing everything they
possibly can to keep themselves in power, going so far as to prevent
the 'wrong people' (i.e., democrats) from voting.

and then there's trump and his attempted coup to stay in power.

> > and DC statehood,
>
> The Democrats only want the DC to be considered a state because it is
> guaranteed to go in their political direction It wasn't meant to become
> a state:

no, it's because people who live in dc should have representation.

>
> > and
> > a nationally administered, popular vote election for president.
>
> Not intelligent because it would simply mean that the mob would get to
> decide who leads the country. Do not underestimate how high the
> percentage of stupid people in America is.

it's more representative of what people want.

one option is for the electoral college to have smaller granularity.

>>> I'm also for
>>> merging the House and Senate into a single body,
>>
>> The Senate is supposed to keep the House in
>
> actually, it's the opposite.

Do we really have to ruin these groups with all this?
Obviously, there is going to be people on both sides of most issues,
especially political, whose minds are never going to change.

I love talking about and debating these things.
JUST NOT HERE

What happens is that you end up making enemies, filtering out people who
you would otherwise get along quite amicably with. It is poisoning this
place and please resist the effort to do it.

On 2022-02-22 12:38 p.m., Bill wrote:
> On 2/22/2022 12:20 PM, Mayayana wrote:
>> "Joel" <joelcrump@gmail.com> wrote
>
>>    Given all that, it's hard to see how you could call the current
>> situation "good enough". Maybe you've never had to work
>> and your parents bought you a house?
>>
>> | I used
>> | the Internet in the '90s.
>>
>>    You would have been 23 in 2000. You may have used the
>> Internet of the 90s but apparently you missed the spirit of it.
>> It was a bit like the idea of the Whole Earth Catalog and co-ops.
>> Sharing for the public good. I started a website myself, with
>> the free space my ISP provided. I posted things I thought
>> might be helpful. That was the spirit of it. Everyone offered for
>> free whatever they had/knew that others might use.
>
> Usenet has always been, and continues to be, my favorite part of the
> Internet. Although I understand it's "not what is used to be", much
> of it still possesses that spirit--as virtually everyone here probably
> already knows <duh on me if this is redundant>.

Usenet is my favourite part too. It uses little data, doesn't have any
kind of censorship and the posts are usually quite long so there's a
real conversation going. By contrast, the web forums people go on
generally have posts which are no longer than a sentence or two.
Additionally, their grammar is usually poor.

--
rabidR04CH
Zephyrus G14 GA401QM on Windows 11
For fans of message boards, I invite you:
https://retalk.com/invite/rabidR04CH

On 2022-02-22 1:08 p.m., Bill wrote:
> On 2/22/2022 12:44 PM, Joel wrote:
>> "Mayayana" <mayayana@invalid.nospam> wrote:
>>
>>> | >  He's too young to remember when we had a middle class.
>>> | >Scary, huh? Apparently he doesn't even clearly remember the
>>> | >Internet of the 90s, when anyone could have a website and it
>>> | >was a communal effort, not a chainstore mall. Though there
>>> | >are still vestiges of that time, like Craigslist and Wikipedia. The
>>> | >real Internet still exists, out in back of the mall.
>>> |
>>> | Who are you kidding?  My 45th birthday is a week from today.
>>>
>>> So you were born in 1977. You were 3 when Reagan was elected.
>>> He deregulated public service requirements for TV. So you've
>>> probably never seen real news, because now it's ratings-driven.
>>>    You would have been in grade school at
>>> the height of the yuppie craze, as people became obsessed
>>> with money and began investing in IRAs because companies
>>> were no longer providing pensions. That change meant that
>>> much of America now has their retirement money invested in
>>> stocks and thus has a vested interest in unlimited corporate
>>> growth. People want to save the planet but they also want
>>> Apple and Exxon to grow forever.
>>>
>>>    Society in America has changed vastly, especially since
>>> the 80s. I grew up in a world where almost everyone was
>>> middle class. Our family doctor had a boat, but he still lived
>>> nearby. Your boss would have made maybe 50% -200% more
>>> than you, not 450 times more. My father raised 6 kids and
>>> bought a house, on a modest income. As a young hippie in
>>> the 70s I was able to work half the year picking fruit or
>>> washing dishes, and travel the rest of the time. Today I'm
>>> semi-retired with my own business and couldn't afford a
>>> market-rate 1-bedroom apt. That's all changed due to a
>>> wave of plutocracy. A handful of billionaires now control most
>>> of the wealth. Why? Deregulation and tax policy favoring
>>> wealth. I pay 30%+ federal tax for working, while Warren
>>> Buffet, Gates and Rocketman Bezos pay more like 15-18% --
>>> before deductions, and only on the money they haven't
>>> offshored.
>>>
>>>   Given all that, it's hard to see how you could call the current
>>> situation "good enough". Maybe you've never had to work
>>> and your parents bought you a house?
>>
>>
>> I didn't call the current situation "good enough".  I am a
>> progressive, but I'm also a realist.  The country has a lot of people
>> who believe in deregulation and the corporate economy.  And, really,
>> they're not entirely wrong, because it keeps the U.S. atop the
>> economic ladder of the global economy.  Rush Limbaugh said a lot of
>> stupid things, to be sure, but he wasn't entirely wrong about the kind
>> of economic system the U.S. has - it's an unfair system, it's a broken
>> system, but it does sustain itself more than one would predict,
>> because it has the ability to self-correct and carry on.
>>
>>
>>> | I used
>>> | the Internet in the '90s.
>>>
>>>   You would have been 23 in 2000. You may have used the
>>> Internet of the 90s but apparently you missed the spirit of it.
>>> It was a bit like the idea of the Whole Earth Catalog and co-ops.
>>> Sharing for the public good. I started a website myself, with
>>> the free space my ISP provided. I posted things I thought
>>> might be helpful. That was the spirit of it. Everyone offered for
>>> free whatever they had/knew that others might use.
>>>
>>>    It all changed dramatically when Google
>>> started with targetted ads. They then started skewing their
>>> ratings to pages that change often and that have the most
>>> incoming links. They skewed it to corporate sites.
>>>
>>>   My favorite example: I had an unusual eye disorder that came
>>> back a couple of times. The first time I researched it, I found
>>> webpages posted by people who had had the same disorder and
>>> provided information. The next time it happened, the top link
>>> was an eye clinic in Florida. The "long tail of the Internet" was
>>> effectively invisible. Those sites don't pay Google, so Google
>>> stopped listing them. The "don't be evil" gang discovered
>>> vast wealth and their idealism went out the window. The
>>> Internet, and computing, could be so much more than a flim flam
>>> shopping mall run by greedy, unsocialized, billionaire nerds who
>>> can't even grasp the damage they're doing.
>>
>>
>> I can see what you're saying, but it's missing the point, in my view.
>> The Internet's infancy has passed.  Win11 is actually a sign of that,
>> Microsoft has thrown down the gauntlet with the lawlessness of the
>> online world, as it developed.  And I think it's time for that.  We're
>> entering a new era, where technology is so integral to our lives that
>> we sacrifice some of the old school freedoms, to violate copyright
>> law, and embrace a more secure, more mutually beneficial Internet.
>> It's no longer the wild west.
>>
>
> How ironic.  Russia has been working on a mutually beneficial
> arrangement with Ukraine during the last couple of weeks too!
> What a coincidence.

But... but... but... the entirely discredited American media assures me
that Russia is about to attack! Any second now too!

Why wouldn't I believe the "journalists" who have lied to us about every
last detail of every current event in the world over the last two decades?

--
rabidR04CH
Zephyrus G14 GA401QM on Windows 11
"But Peter and the apostles answered, 'We must obey God rather than
men.'" - Acts 5:29
For fans of message boards, I invite you:
https://retalk.com/invite/rabidR04CH

On 2022-02-22 3:40 p.m., nospam wrote:

< something off-topic about politics, ignored >

--
rabidR04CH
Zephyrus G14 GA401QM on Windows 11
"But Peter and the apostles answered, 'We must obey God rather than
men.'" - Acts 5:29
For fans of message boards, I invite you:
https://retalk.com/invite/rabidR04CH

On 2022-02-22 3:57 p.m., Joel wrote:

< something political which is likely to just kill the newsgroup, ignored >

--
rabidR04CH
Zephyrus G14 GA401QM on Windows 11
"But Peter and the apostles answered, 'We must obey God rather than
men.'" - Acts 5:29
For fans of message boards, I invite you:
https://retalk.com/invite/rabidR04CH

On 2022-02-22 3:59 p.m., sticks wrote:
>
>>>>   I'm also for
>>>> merging the House and Senate into a single body,
>>>
>>> The Senate is supposed to keep the House in
>>
>> actually, it's the opposite.
>
>
> Do we really have to ruin these groups with all this?
> Obviously, there is going to be people on both sides of most issues,
> especially political, whose minds are never going to change.
>
> I love talking about and debating these things.
> JUST NOT HERE
>
> What happens is that you end up making enemies, filtering out people who
> you would otherwise get along quite amicably with.  It is poisoning this
> place and please resist the effort to do it.

Agreed. I've already seen it kill IRC channels and I'm sorry I even
bothered to talk about it in the first place.

--
rabidR04CH
Zephyrus G14 GA401QM on Windows 11
"But Peter and the apostles answered, 'We must obey God rather than
men.'" - Acts 5:29
For fans of message boards, I invite you:
https://retalk.com/invite/rabidR04CH

"Joel" <joelcrump@gmail.com> wrote

| I can see what you're saying, but it's missing the point, in my view.
| The Internet's infancy has passed. Win11 is actually a sign of that,
| Microsoft has thrown down the gauntlet with the lawlessness of the
| online world, as it developed. And I think it's time for that. We're
| entering a new era, where technology is so integral to our lives that
| we sacrifice some of the old school freedoms, to violate copyright
| law, and embrace a more secure, more mutually beneficial Internet.
| It's no longer the wild west.
|

So you see Microsoft as a father figure and want them
them to control your life. I've never met anyone with that
attitude before. I guess freedom is just too anxiety provoking
for some people.

"Bill" <nonegiven@att.net> wrote

| How ironic. Russia has been working on a mutually beneficial
| arrangement with Ukraine during the last couple of weeks too!
| What a coincidence.
|

Maybe Russia will agree to run our country. It seems
the children of helicopter parents don't want the stress
of managing their own lives.