Amazon's "retail sector loses money, and that loss is made up by the tens of billions of gravy coming in from AWS and Advertising…[W]hy is it legal for Amazon to be the prime competitor of the economy’s whole retail sector while not having to make a profit?" @timbray https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2023/02/03/Amazon-Q4-2022
the public square lacks sybil resistance.
technocracy as an arrangement fails the test of technocratic excellence.
(with a wink to @stephenjudkins )
@stephenjudkins it's just not the right word to use for a government with state capacity. "technocracy" includes that suffix -ocracy, meaning rule or control. democratic management of a capable government isn't and shouldn't be described as technocracy. obviously words are whatever people mean, but technocracy as a noun is not widely used to mean that.
(as a modifier, "technocratic"/"technocratically" ARE widely used to refer to the defensibility-as-effective of a policy though. go figure!)
@stephenjudkins (technocracy-as-a-noun is pretty much precisely what populisms are a reaction to, usurpation of that -ocracy, exclusion of members of the public from full participation in governance, on the basis of purported expertise of a class that becomes first-among-equals.)
the way to fight a vicious populism is with a virtuous one. when technocracy tries, it's like water on an electrical fire.
@ctrl the purchasing power of the unit in question, of course.
what if water companies were “committed to pricing that reflects the value that water provides”, and were allowed to charge it?
patents confer rights to patentholders that we-the-people decide, balancing a putative incentive to innovate against the costs imposed by the monopolist. we’ve got the balance very badly wrong. especially in pharma.
Apple Mail. Gotta love the shade.
(It's a legit receipt from Apple, "Digitally Certified" even. Learn more!)
A screenshot of Apple Mail noting "Mail thinks this message is Junk Mail" when it is a genuine message from Apple, also recognized by Apple Mail as "Digitally Certified".
@wim i do think it matters that there’s no algo maximizing inevitability tabloidish engagement.
it’s just not like this here.
current trending topics on Twitter include “Kompromat”, “Cher”, and “Nazism”.
they are really fucking with my lost utopia. https://union.place/@BlogWood/109786383465421561
@mmasnick @lauren @jimcarroll i’ve gotten this quite a bit, but it’s because i’ve (1) been sloppy with my tabs, so i’m hitting fosstodon with multiple web clients at once or (2) i’ve run movetodon, which ends up querying and following a lot.
@krille @carlschwan This is pretty great!
we were so young and now we are so old and nothing even happened but time.
from https://aeon.co/essays/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-is-a-false-and-dangerous-myth ht @matthewskelton @otfrom
In 1987, when the South African conservationist Garth Owen-Smith attended a conference on community-based conservation in Zimbabwe, a comment by Harry Chabwela, the director of Zambia's national parks, left a lasting impression. 'At this conference we have talked a lot about giving local people this and giving them that, but what has been forgotten is that they also want power,' Chabwela said. "They want a say over the resources that affect their lives. That is more important than money.'
@lauren some wonder whether there is a heaven, but you’ll find elvis in japan too.