Corporations give private citizens power they should not have over their neighbors in a democracy.
HR can filter at mass, keeping people from work they enjoy. Advertising has social agency warping effects. And at scale we spend our time prioritizing paid speech. Policing valid speech at scale is how authoritarian states work.
“This is how you view the problem, how you design the solution, and how you speak to people. Or you don’t get to have shelter & eat.”
Sir, yes sir.
“Profits (or some other ideological target) must go up this quarter!”
Sir, yes sir.
Not allowed to truly question what happens if AI that can schedule hair appointments isn’t developed. Computing/engineering effort we know is destined for the bin as hardware changes. Seems economical.
That’s hardly a behavioral model for a free society.
Nah sorry. We have friendly oligarchs, and looking at Google’s shifting culture and the Amazon warehouse situation that’s been going on for years... very superficially friendly.
Political power is emotional. It fades generationally as people retire, or we could term limit officials.
A big enough pile of dollars means you can generate more faster than you can spend what you need to in order to stay on top.
Ownership is the root of political theory in America. And a smaller and smaller group really own anything.
And the powers that be know that: they’ve read it in academia’s papers and philosophers notes. If the public took ownership of the manner of production (IMO themselves not factories) and stayed home for a week, politics would be shifting real fast.
We keep looking at history to learn about us. Is it any shock we keep developing top down authoritarian structures when we’re casually fetishizing their previous existence? What was becomes hard to look beyond when continually referencing the material. Wonder what humanity could look like if future people read about past people living differently.