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Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians

theguardian.com

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Re: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians

#51

Post by grafmax »

randomcarbloke wrote: post #45
grafmax wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To say it’s identical is an overstatement, but markets have been part of China’s policy, and part of the policies many other formerly impoverished counties. Without government policy intelligently choosing how to utilize markets (which is what happened in most of these formerly impoverished countries like the “Asian tigers”), markets alone could not have have brought the gains that they did. Markets have many downsid…

no it is an identical plot on the graph, not an overstatement at all. The standard of living for the median worker has improved significantly in forty years let alone two hundred, lifestyle inflation is definitely rapid as you would expect with progress, wage growth has outpaced inflation for everyone but public sector workers. Bad as things may seem now, we are all richer than ever before.

Productivity has grown. But that has more or less stopped going to the median worker since mid-70s (post inflation). This is known as the pay-productivity gap. There has been some increase, but most of the gains have gone to the wealthiest. Our issue today isn’t productivity. It’s redistributing the gains from the wealthy minority who have received the lion’s share to the rest.

And you mention being richer. We also have an unfolding climate crisis, authoritarianism, mass surveillance, and the real possibility of imminent nuclear war (brewing now with China). All these things are the result of a wealthy minority controlling policy for their own interests. And the wealthy minority has gotten there through the same market mechanisms that exploit workers and concentrate wealth. Are we better off when we are much closer to our own self destruction? It’s this wealthy minority that has brought us here. Their relative power continues to grow.

In fact, many of the gains in wealth we have seen are not the result of markets but either savvy government policy or the result of people pushing back on the power of the ruling class. Markets have good and bad sides. It’s best to take off our rose colored glasses and see markets for their good and bad.

Re: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians

#52

Post by ath3nd »

spwa4 wrote: post #15
cyanydeez wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its already you, but capitalism. It'll be this soon enough if republicanism continues.

It's scary how this is actually being called out as a problem of capitalism ... when anyone can look up history and see communists were actually doing this in 1946. Not just phones, they were doing it on the street, going as far as sending out people to listen in on conversations everywhere. Makes sense, I guess: there were barely any phones to tap when communists started doing this. In case you don't know mass phone…

> His whole work, a pamphlet discussing massacring the bourgeoisie

It's not cool to make stuff up just to win an argument. It makes you lose the argument.

> In fact it was a part of Marx's work in much the same way as you are arguing it here: he was falsely accusing capitalist and bourgeoisie of mass surveillance, even while he was trying to do it himself. But yeah, Marx is Marx.

Yeah, Marx was trying to establish a vast spy network of ravens and pigeons, spanning the whole continent on Wakanda. /s

Both mine and your statements are equally true.

> Yes, the need for mass surveillance of the masses is actually in Marx and Engels's work.

Yeah, in the unpublished archives that only you have access to. /s

Re: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians

#53

Post by ath3nd »

skinnymuch wrote: post #39
spwa4 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know as well as I do that when Marx discussed "capitalists" he did not mean the rich. He meant what we now call the middle class. Managers. Engineers. Store owners. (Small) company owners. Factory owners. Smaller landlords. Perhaps upper middle class, but not the real rich, the families. He saw what everyone else in their time (correctly) saw: that larger land owners were mostly outside of cities, and were well o…

You are making so much stuff up. My god it’s insane. Then you act like people haven’t read the super short Manifesto so you can continue your lies

He is trolling to provoke reactions. Mods don't do anything to anyone who spews pro-capitalist and Zionist propaganda, so better not engage.

Re: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians

#54

Post by dragonwriter »

spwa4 wrote: post #36
grafmax wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Violence has been used for good ends such as deposing monarchies and ending slavery. Marx argues that capitalists are akin to the new kings. Witnessing billionaires funding the destruction of democracy, I wouldn’t say he’s wrong. And you refer to Soviet Russia as if that’s supposed to represent socialism and communism. In fact there are many different kinds of socialists and communists, many who support democracy and…

You know as well as I do that when Marx discussed "capitalists" he did not mean the rich. He meant what we now call the middle class. Managers. Engineers. Store owners. (Small) company owners. Factory owners. Smaller landlords. Perhaps upper middle class, but not the real rich, the families. He saw what everyone else in their time (correctly) saw: that larger land owners were mostly outside of cities, and were well o…

> You know as well as I do that when Marx discussed "capitalists" he did not mean the rich.

Technically, not precisely “the rich”, but the people whose main interaction with rhe economy is through ownership of capital to which rented labor of others is applied (specifically, this is the haut bourgeoisie in Marxist theory.)

There is also the middle class (the petite bourgeoisie), those who have a (in broad terms) balance between ownership of capital and application of their own labor, most particulatly applying their own labor to their own capital as independent business operators as a kind of capitalists, but it was the haut bourgeoisie that Marx portrays as the problematic, exploitive, ruling class. The main issue with the petit bourgeoisie is their disinterest in improving the condition of the working class being exploited by the haut bourgeoisie; because they are already out of the state of alienation that comes from separation of labor and control of capital, and at risk of losing that status if they sufficiently rock the boat.

> He meant what we now call the middle class. Managers. Engineers. Store owners. (Small) company owners. Factory owners. Smaller landlords.

Nah, what we now call “the middle class” is mostly the middle income segment of the working class (Marx didn't really have a special term for them, for Lenin a lot of them would be in the proletarian intelligentsia.) But the group you name is a mix of them, the petit bourgeois, and in the case of factory owners the haut bourgeois (kind of weird that you think “factory owners” fits any modern definition of “middle class" that also includes line managers.)

Re: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians

#55

Post by skinnymuch »

ath3nd wrote: post #53
skinnymuch wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are making so much stuff up. My god it’s insane. Then you act like people haven’t read the super short Manifesto so you can continue your lies

He is trolling to provoke reactions. Mods don't do anything to anyone who spews pro-capitalist and Zionist propaganda, so better not engage.

Of course they don’t. If anything someone like me will get scolded for doing a low quality comment attacking him

Have you seen how YC higher ups talk about capitalism, elitism, etc? Culture comes from top down and within Silicon Valley tech elite it is practically a monoculture.

For that specific guy. It’s weird he invoked such a short text that he definitely didn’t read or hasn’t read in a long time. So easy to respond to that. That’s why I responded.

Re: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians

#57

Post by ath3nd »

siltcakes wrote: post #20

Why is this flagged, and why can’t I vouch for it?

> Why is this flagged, and why can’t I vouch for it?

You know why it's flagged. Israel wants to continue doing its highly automated genocide silently without people questioning it an their cloud providers.

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