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Jeff Bezos’s Master Plan

theatlantic.com

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Re: Jeff Bezos’s Master Plan

#61

Post by pmoriarty »

m0zg wrote: post #56
pmoriarty wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does mass murder help to reduce alienation again? Also, it's widely disputed that the USSR was actually a Marxist society. I've heard it described as "State Capitalism". Regardless, it's pretty clear that the mass murder in places like the USSR, China, and Cambodia was due to small groups of people getting massive amounts of power, abusing that power, and being completely insensitive to the suffering they cause,…

>> How does mass murder help to reduce alienation again? By eliminating the alienated and scaring the rest. >> small groups of people getting massive amounts of power In part, yes. But in part it was because in any revolution not everyone will support your kooky ideas. Those folks will fight you after you succeed. The only known way of pacifying them is by murdering them all. You see this every time. >> you have to u…

>> How does mass murder help to reduce alienation again?

> By eliminating the alienated and scaring the rest.

"They make a desert and call it peace." That's not peace, and what you describe isn't a lack of alienation either. The people who survived and worked in the Soviet Union were mostly just as alienated as in capitalist societies. They just had a different boss. And the people who were murdered were not relieved of alienation but of their lives. A doctor who kills his patient has not cured him.

"I'd argue you're the one who needs to "understand" in this case. I lived the consequences of Marxism for the first 22 years of my life. I want no part of that shit here in the US, no matter how it's sold to me."

You didn't live under Marxism, but under a brutal totalitarian dictatorship, and you are confusing the two. That is not what Marx had in mind, and in fact Marx's own writings were edited and censored by the regime to put them in line with their own ideas.

Where in Marx do you find exhortations to torture and imprison millions of innocent people, create sham trials, make corruption and bribery the norm and use slave labor to achieve your utopia? Nowhere.

This was a creation of power-hungry individuals who will do whatever it takes to get and retain power. Note that after the Soviet Union fell and stopped being Communist (not that it ever was, but it stopped being Communist in name now, and became Capitalist) the abuses did not stop. Arguably, in many ways Russia is worse off now than it was even under Communist rule, as the organization formerly known as the KGB and organized crime now rule the country.

Re: Jeff Bezos’s Master Plan

#62

Post by m0zg »

pmoriarty wrote: post #61
m0zg wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> How does mass murder help to reduce alienation again? By eliminating the alienated and scaring the rest. >> small groups of people getting massive amounts of power In part, yes. But in part it was because in any revolution not everyone will support your kooky ideas. Those folks will fight you after you succeed. The only known way of pacifying them is by murdering them all. You see this every time. >> you have to u…

>> How does mass murder help to reduce alienation again? > By eliminating the alienated and scaring the rest. "They make a desert and call it peace." That's not peace, and what you describe isn't a lack of alienation either. The people who survived and worked in the Soviet Union were mostly just as alienated as in capitalist societies. They just had a different boss. And the people who were murdered were not relieved…

>> Where in Marx do you find exhortations to torture and imprison millions of innocent people,

You can't radically change people's way of life without doing all of these things. So it's implicit. Western liberals especially find this very hard to acknowledge. Lenin had no such misunderstanding: dude was perfectly fine with mass murdering peasants and starving children to death. The ends, in his mind, justified the means.

Marx's writings were also descriptive, not prescriptive. He imagined how things could be if everything went perfectly, rather than gave you a concrete set of steps to get there. The problem is with the latter, not the former. It's a "sperical cow in a vacuum" kind of thinking, very black and white, not in the least suitable for the real world, and at odds with human nature.

Re: Jeff Bezos’s Master Plan

#63

Post by ci5er »

dredmorbius wrote: post #60
ci5er wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon - often picks all the suppliers, and lets the buyer decide which they prefer. Also - they deal in finished (consumer) goods. There is a whole lot of coordination before that stuff gets assembled and ready for Amazon or one or their marketplace suppliers to ship it. Maybe they've integrated the demand chain logistics, but not the integration supply chain. And they don't dictate that consumers get to purchase on…

Amazon b2b: https://www.amazon.com/b2b/info/amazon-business

Neat!

(Although I knew about it and stand by my assertion, because...)

I still can't conceive of using that to build a (say) iPhone.

Re: Jeff Bezos’s Master Plan

#64

Post by pmoriarty »

m0zg wrote: post #62
pmoriarty wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> How does mass murder help to reduce alienation again? > By eliminating the alienated and scaring the rest. "They make a desert and call it peace." That's not peace, and what you describe isn't a lack of alienation either. The people who survived and worked in the Soviet Union were mostly just as alienated as in capitalist societies. They just had a different boss. And the people who were murdered were not relieved…

>> Where in Marx do you find exhortations to torture and imprison millions of innocent people, You can't radically change people's way of life without doing all of these things. So it's implicit. Western liberals especially find this very hard to acknowledge. Lenin had no such misunderstanding: dude was perfectly fine with mass murdering peasants and starving children to death. The ends, in his mind, justified the me…

That Marx did not adequately foresee the future and that his ideology did not prevent its perversion by unscrupulous, power-hungry individuals are both valid critiques and are two of the reasons I don't support Marxism myself.

That's different from saying that what Marx envisioned as a utopia (or even the path to get to utopia) was what the Soviet Union became. He did not foresee that nightmare and he did not want that nightmare, and I genuinely believe that most Marxists don't either. They are, if anything, a bit too well meaning and naive, and think that everything will turn out for the best once the proletariat gain control over the means of production.

I'm not sure I agree with you about human nature, but I do think an army of unscrupulous people stand ready and willing to subvert that sort of system and to use true believers to further their own welfare rather than the welfare of society as a whole.

True believers willing to kill others to build their utopia appear all throughout history, not just in ostensibly Marxist or Communist societies, but in the Inquisition, the Crusades, Nazi Germany, and many other horrific places and times, and they never end well (even if you think some ideal ends justify such bloody means).

If a true utopia is ever to arise (if that's even possible), it has to do so and be sustained through non-violent means.

Re: Jeff Bezos’s Master Plan

#65

Post by netjiro »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #18
mothsonasloth wrote: post #8

I am a sci-fi enthusiast like Bezos, however he seems to cherry pick the themes that he likes to apply to himself and Amazon e.g. driving mankind towards the stars and solving energy crises. There are however plenty of dystopian concepts in science fiction which his company seem to be propelling us toward: * Compression of labour wages by replacing/augmenting with robots. * Building an evil mega-corp (think Tyrell, L…

I propose he stop investing in Blue Origin and fund another 100 seasons of the Expanse.

I really hope you're joking. It scares me that distracting entertainment is preferred over advancement in reality. Remembering (true or not?) that we spent more on movies about extinction level impacts than on actual detection and prevention.

That said, I enjoy watching Expanse and look forward to s4 :)

Re: Jeff Bezos’s Master Plan

#66

Post by DuskStar »

K0SM0S wrote: post #31
yters wrote: post #22

Why the space colonization focus of techies? So much of earth vastly underpopulated and much easier to colonize. What if an asteroid strikes earth? What if the space colonies all fail?

The best advocate of that I could find is Isaac Arthur on YouTube[1]. He explains it so well, including why a technology-advanced civilization (not much more than us) would see an asteroid coming straight to earth as a great economic opportunity to mine lots of stuff. Nowhere near a problem. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFipeZtQM5CKUjx6grh54g

> see an asteroid coming straight to earth as a great economic opportunity to mine lots of stuff.

I hope he didn't actually say that, because it would betray a rather fundamental mistake in space travel - that of distance vs delta v.

Re: Jeff Bezos’s Master Plan

#67

Post by PopeDotNinja »

netjiro wrote: post #65
PopeDotNinja wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I propose he stop investing in Blue Origin and fund another 100 seasons of the Expanse.

I really hope you're joking. It scares me that distracting entertainment is preferred over advancement in reality. Remembering (true or not?) that we spent more on movies about extinction level impacts than on actual detection and prevention. That said, I enjoy watching Expanse and look forward to s4 :)

I just really like SpaceX. Blue Origin is taking their sweet time to do anything cool, making me wonder if they'll ever do anything.

Re: Jeff Bezos’s Master Plan

#68

Post by aperrien »

dredmorbius wrote: post #58
aperrien wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just stating you've matured isn't very useful. Matured in favor of, or in opposition to, or in a different path altogether? How do you plan to spread that maturity to others if what you're sharing is not clear? I grew up on the same diet of SF authors, and while I do acknowledge the need for work to be done here on earth, we shouldn't let that need tear down progress towards space. Especially when space expenditures…

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2fiwgs/why_col... https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/wiki/faq

These essays, and the root of all of the, the Charles Stross essay, are quite good! However, they are also 13 and 6 years old, respectively. Have you taken a look around to see if the assumptions behind them still hold? The landscape may have changed since they were written.

The world, and the technology of it is in constant change; I really like your essay examples, in that the goalposts for your viewpoints are set quite thoroughly. If only everyone were so clear in their arguments...

Re: Jeff Bezos’s Master Plan

#69

Post by dredmorbius »

aperrien wrote: post #68
dredmorbius wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2fiwgs/why_col... https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/wiki/faq

These essays, and the root of all of the, the Charles Stross essay, are quite good! However, they are also 13 and 6 years old, respectively. Have you taken a look around to see if the assumptions behind them still hold? The landscape may have changed since they were written. The world, and the technology of it is in constant change; I really like your essay examples, in that the goalposts for your viewpoints are set…

I wrote those. If anything my views, based on evidence and understanding, have strengthened.

Re: Jeff Bezos’s Master Plan

#70

Post by sverige »

gdy wrote: post #54
sverige wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With his Amazon warehouses, for most of his employees he's created the terrible future of poverty and misery that he allegedly dreams of saving humanity from with his space colonies. And his success isn't built on any innovation other than relentlessly keeping as much as he can for himself.

You have no idea of what poverty and misery are.

Having spent a year homeless on the streets and sometimes on friends' couches, I would say 'Fuck you.' But that would be rude.
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