Posted by albelfio 1 day ago
Sorry, what? Is this just a scam?
But let’s be clear: the risks are the same if you are wiring money through Western Union or wiring through any other bank. Once you wire the money you do not have the same protections as other payment mechanisms. And if you don’t get the product as described, you are likely out your money. This is compared to other forms of payment like credit cards where you are protected. With a credit card you can issue a charge back to the seller and get your money back in the case of fraud. With a wire transfer you cannot.
Theres a lot there that makes sense & I think needs to be considered. But a lot just seems to be out of the blue, included without connection, in my view. Feels like maybe are in-grouo messages, that I don't understand. How this is headered as against democracy is unclear to me, and revolting. I both think we must grapple with the world as it is, and this post is in that area, strongly, but to let fear be the dominant ruling emotion is one of the main definitions of conservativism, and it's use here to scare us sounds bad.
Did he take down the video because of embarrassment or did he fear negative impact on his sales?
And his politics are a derivative of Great Man Theory, and his positions on things like democracy follow from that. This idea, and those espoused by some of the VC/tech elite like Peter Theil are that singular hardworking genius individuals can change the world on their own, and everyone who not in this top 0.1% are borderline NPCs.
They do this both because of their genius/hardwork, and also because they are willing to break the rules that are set forth by this bottom 99.9%.
I'm starting to call this ideology Authoritarian techno-Libertarianism. Its a delibriately oxymoronic name that I use, because these "Great Men" are definitely trying to change the world. IE, they are trying to impose their goals and values on the world without getting the buyin of other people.
Thats the "authoritarian" part. And then the "libertarian" part is that they are going about this imposition of their will on the world by doing it all themselves, through their own hard work.
Think "Person invents a world changing technology, that some people thing is bad, and just releases it open source for anyone to use". AI models are a great example, in fact. Once that technology is out there the genie cannot be put back into the bottle and a ton of people are going to lose their jobs, ect.
A distain for democracy follows directly from things like this. You dont wait for people to vote to allow you to change the world by inventing something new. You just do and watch the results.
I think all these wildly successful neo-feudalists get increasingly emboldened the more they get away with bigger and bigger social infractions.
It's also clear that they haven't experienced existed an environment with extreme inequality - it's not safe for anyone there! They think the NPC plebs will continue to follow "the rules" ad perpetuam without considering that it is a direct result of the stability they are actively undermining. They clearly don't read enough history.
Since when did our perception of tiny blow out of size in tech? Is it the influence of "hello world" eletron apps consuming 100mb of mem while idle setting the new standard? Anyway being an AI bro seems like an expensive hobby...