The task tracking features you actually use, it’s fast, you don’t waste a billion years playing “who knows how to do this and has the permissions hell” that you would with Jira. The integrations work properly.
The layout and UX makes sense, and all the nontechnical people I’ve used it with liked it and had no issues with it.
Yeah so what, if they do, we either didn’t want them, or they _actually won’t_ despite the squealing, or they will go, and if their segment of the market is useful, will get snapped up by new/local versions which do respect local constraints from the get-go.
All of these are better outcomes than not doing anything because “what if”.
All of us? All over the world? Elect not to do something that would make us individually rich and powerful, and instead accept the risk of being left behind if someone else does it?
I don't know, I don't think many nations/organizations would go for that. If we had that level of trust, it feels like there's a lot of other bad stuff that wouldn't be going on right now.
“It’s totally fine guys, if we give billionaires even more money it will totally all work out and be fine! Everything is ok and our benevelont overlords will take earnest care of us, despite literally never having shown the merest inclination to do that ever before”.
You jest, but the wonderful thing is billionaires are mortal.
The known anti-semite and Hitler admirer Henry Ford's chartiable foundation added DEI to its mandate in 2021.
Andrew Carnegie, an infamous monopolist and strike crusher...his charitable foundations helps fund science education to this day, and his university has graduated countless engineers.
The point is... billionaires will die... their capital can continue to work both in the economy and society.
I mean... unless someone figures out immortality. I dread the thought of Jeff Bezos invoking prima noctae
I wonder what opinions a 163-year-old Henry Ford would have about equality, today, especially if he had no threat of death hanging over him. Execution (by proxy, via death) seems a needlessly harsh way to get rid of people's entrenched ideas.
When Jeff Bezos dies, someone is going to inherit his money. There's no particular reason to believe that whoever he chooses as his heir(s) will be less disposed toward funding fascism and destroying the ability of regular people to have a voice in the world.
You invoke Carnegie, but the current generation of robber barons have shown no real propensity toward philanthropy—they donate to charity, to be sure, but in tiny (relative) amounts, and frequently to their own foundations, which make it legally charity, but in practice just another way for them to control their own money.
The proposals that the billionaires of today will give away their money (and thus power) within their lifetimes, or that their heirs will suddenly become champions of labor and the downtrodden, require some fairly significant evidence—from today, not just comparisons to the Gilded Age—before they can be considered credible.
I would argue that Gates, Buffet, Mackenzie, and (yes) Zuckerberg do actually have philanthropic foundations setup that will outlast their mortal lives. Chan-Zuckerberg Institute + Biohub, Gates Foundation, giving pledge... Gates at least was directly inspired by Carnegie's example.
Elon Musk definitely does not fall in that category and instead dumps wealth endlessly into moonshot ventures and into his own political and social power.
There are also efforts by more rightwing billionaires to put their money in education/social engineering type ventures like the right wing leaning libertarian University of Austin.
The real problem was issues like Citizen's United, the rampant insider trading that is going on in Congress, and efforts to destroy the Estate Tax.
The assumption that right wing facist billionaires will automatically spawn political clones just does not hold up if you look into the families of the robber barons though. More often than not, the wealth gets diluted, the children become more liberal, or the following generations simply become feckless and squander the wealth. After 100 years typically the only thing that lasts will be names on buildings.
Again, you're trying to take the Gilded Age as a prime example, when there's already evidence that shows it's not going to be that way.
Gates and Zuckerberg are, to my understanding, giving away only tiny fractions of their wealth to charity. A far cry from Carnegie.
Their foundations remain powerful engines for them, and their heirs, to control the money and how it gets spent.
And the norms have changed since the Gilded Age: at that time, there was still a very strong culture of honor, dignity, and genuine service even among what were then the "nouveau riche" that is utterly absent today. Indeed, one of the primary hallmarks of today's right-wing movement is the aggressive denial that dignity and respect are things that should even exist. (Except, of course, for them.)
For children raised in that kind of environment, the very best we can realistically expect is that they will simply squander the wealth and have little direct impact on the political sphere.
Here's hoping that after 100 years, the only thing that lasts about this crop of robber barons is their names as a cautionary tale in history, about what happens to the wealthy when they forget that they are few, and we are many.
One might think so, but looking at the trajectory of human communities and communication under current technologies, I'm guessing that it will be a niche-enough phenomenon that the surveillance state (or corporation) will easily be able to crush any IRL dissent.
People are already struggling to form offline communities as easily as was done in the past, I can only imagine it will get harder as more AI-powered entertainment seeps into the cracks of the social mind.
By far and away, linear.
The task tracking features you actually use, it’s fast, you don’t waste a billion years playing “who knows how to do this and has the permissions hell” that you would with Jira. The integrations work properly. The layout and UX makes sense, and all the nontechnical people I’ve used it with liked it and had no issues with it.
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