rndmize

In focusing on the individual perspective, you could argue that articles like this subtly promote a certain set of views/assumptions - "people get what they deserve", "those that work hard get ahead", "individual charity is better than gov programs", "this is just the way things are".

The societal failure perspective is at odds with these and would like to see things approached from a different set of view/assumptions - "unequal opportunity from birth results in people not getting what they deserve", "success in life is mostly luck", "societal problems should be solved for everyone that has them", "we can make things better".

Reddit actually has a perfect reflection of this - stories that appear on r/UpliftingNews will sometimes also appear on r/ABoringDystopia, with the different perspectives becoming apparent in the discussions.

Good on the article for outlining a lot of the issues with this, though I don't think enough time was spent on the mental aspects. We're adapted to live in a certain environment - a different one with different, more boring light, minimal plants, extreme temperatures, no area to roam, etc., is most likely going to be a miserable experience for all involved.

In casual talks with friends, this is something I've expected would be the competitive edge Tesla has over Waymo and the others; driving millions of "virtual miles" strikes me as far less useful than having a human baseline to compare to along with data capture from a fleet in all manner of real situations/locations.

> When you adjust for inflation, the retail cost of video games has never been cheaper, and it’s been this way for some time. The $60 price point for a standard big-budget release has held steady for nearly 15 years...

I guess the constantly growing addressable market just doesn't matter? The human cost has nothing to do with price points or gamer expectations and everything to do with supply and demand. Lots of people want to make games. Developers/publishers take advantage.

> you’ll get a stark—if unscientific—picture of how each big publisher’s release slate has thinned out in the last five years, relying on recurring cash cows like sports games and annualized franchises and little else. In 2008, those three publishers released 98 games; in 2018 they released just 28, not including expansions.

Yeah, because the big publishers _aren't needed_. The tooling a platform like Steam provides has made it much easier to self-publish, or use a small-time publisher instead - your game doesn't need to be on retail shelves to be successful anymore, there's tons of free marking channels available today, all of which combine to make publishers less necessary.

> The foremost takeaway is that while data centers are growing in number, their energy consumption is starting to plateau out of necessity, as the dramatic increase in cloud computing has actually forced tech companies to become more efficient.

This has literally nothing to do with gaming or its sustainability. As the computing/electronics industry moves in more efficient or green directions, gaming hardware (not even the game industry) will follow.

There's problems with the game industry - gambling mechanics, exploitation of "whales", discovery/marketing/shovelwear, how to handle growing international audiences, and so on, but I don't see any of these mentioned in the article.

Perhaps we should have a look at where he stood on the ACA - I don't suppose he was part of the Republicans that sought to repeal it for years and then didn't actually have any real policy ideas to replace it when they took control in 2016, exemplifying their bad-faith approach to politics?

> He favors repealing the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.[41] In 2017, when House Republican leadership introduced the American Health Care Act (a bill to repeal the ACA), Hurd was faced with a political quandary.[42] Hurd did not say whether he supported or opposed the legislation.[41][43] Ultimately, after the measure was declared dead and withdrawn from a planned vote due to insufficient support, Hurd "released a statement in which he appeared to oppose the overhaul."

Pathetic. The use of the ACA by Republicans for campaigning for nearly a decade and then their utter failure to repeal or replace it once they had full control of the federal government will stain them forever in my eyes (or at a minimum, the ones in federal office at the time).

It would be great to have a government that focused on policy problems and policy solutions, that had reasoned, evidence-based debates on issues. Unfortunately, the Republican party has done more than any other force to destroy that (Office of Technology Assessment, anyone?). The fact that today, in 2019, we have a Republican president who refuses to admit global warming is a thing, is another exemplar of Republican policy and strategy - which is not to debate, but to avoid it; to hide and ignore and defund evidence when inconvenient; to focus on emotions instead of logic and reason.

There's nothing useful to discuss with such people, and for them to complain on such grounds is hypocrisy of the highest order.

Dublin has doubled in population in the last 20 years. That sounds like an area that is pro-growth, where a company could have a useful impact without getting shot down by NIMBYs every step of the way.

I'd dig up stats on the biggest employers in Dublin, but can't seem to find any, so we'll go with Pleasanton as a proxy - Kaiser, Safeway and Oracle. Wew. We got one. Too bad most of tech doesn't even know the East Bay (much less the parts of it past the hills) even exists.

There are options to deal with the housing problems, even staying within the bay. Companies simply aren't pursuing them.

SF is doing it wrong? Fine. No one has to do things like SF. But there's no reason not to try a Finnish policy at a city, county or state level if it'd been demonstrated to work.

One could say the same about college in general.

We're governed by incompetents because we elect incompetents. We elect them because voting has become more of an emotional/cultural decision than a logical one. And this is largely because the big problems everyone could agree on have been solved - we're not under threat of attack from other countries; social security and medicare and other social welfare programs have taken care of much of the visible suffering in society; regulation has taken care of others.

As a result we're left with issues that are harder to pin down and harder to solve (why are medical costs so high? how do we legislate on privacy?) and issues that have been turned into culture war elements by cranking up the emotional component and discarding the evidence and effects (abortion, Brexit, the wall, etc.)

Also, I'm tempted to say that blaming this on boomers is a causation/correlation error - I'd look at the changes in media, starting with the TV debate between Nixon and Kennedy. It feels like since then, policy has mattered less and less, and appeal has mattered more. TV news feels like it has become ever more emotional over time - Fox appeals through fear, MSNBC through anger/frustration, CNN through surprise (breaking news alert!)

For the most current example, we can look at the recent tax cuts, which lowered corporate taxes significantly. We heard no end of promises of reinvestment in the US, higher wages, etc. We got stock buybacks instead. No need to believe all the left economists like Krugman that said this would happen - the ratings agencies predicted it as well [1]. Skyrocketing incomes indeed - for the owner class.

You advise closing the borders, which not only goes against American principles, but would reduce business creation -

> “Immigrants are about twice as likely as natives to start new businesses,” says Arnobio Morelix, an analyst at the Kauffman Foundation, which promotes entrepreneurship. [2]

> 216 companies on the Fortune 500 were founded by immigrants or their children [3]

Frankly, I would expect that one of America's continuing strengths is that the people willing to make the journey here are driven folk, willing to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to start a new life in an unfamiliar place, even if they have to work endlessly when they get here.

And truly, I am confused why zeroing corporate taxes would reduce offshoring. If I can pay someone in a different country 1/10 of what I need to pay here to make my goods, corporate tax rates have no impact that I can see on this calculation, and the offshoring would be done regardless.

Is there a reason we need to reduce social spending? Or reduce taxes, as was demonstrated to have little effect in 2001, and 2009 [4], and 2017 [1]? Perhaps if you clarified what you meant by handouts, we could get to some kind of useful discussion - but then it seems frequent that "handouts" is used for a catch-all with no real meaning, and when it comes to nuts-and-bolts changes to government spending, people that advocate for reductions never seem to actually pull it off - I think we can look at Paul Ryan as the most recent example (tax cuts now, we'll figure out spending cuts later, or maybe never).

[1] https://www.axios.com/trump-tax-cuts-companies-stock-buyback...

[2] https://www.apnews.com/ab44ff583d194070a5eae431231c4450

[3] https://qz.com/1151689/216-companies-on-the-fortune-500-were...

[4] https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/reports/2011...

One would think that, given this article comes to us from the National Review, this would be presented as a positive.

Jokes aside, the city and really the Bay as a whole are unlikely to change much. Prop 13 goes unmentioned in the article, somehow, though it remains a core part of the problem; so does the tendency for tech companies to build their headquarters on the peninsula or the west side of SJ. One would think that with the extraordinary amount of wealth floating around the bay that there would be some effort put into making the place better for everyone, ie. the old "changing the world for the better" idea that presumably drives a lot of startups, but I don't see it.

The standard for tech seems to be avoiding the hard problems of politics and long-term local issues that require campaigns and consensus rather than code and servers. I remember finding it striking a couple years ago to see that on the list of corporate sponsors for https://www.spur.org/, Microsoft was donating more money than Google. Perhaps there's another non-profit dedicated to urban planning in the bay that Google prefers to support, but I haven't heard of it. Apple could have considered building their HQ closer to public transport, but last I checked decided to go with tacking on a set of ugly massive parking structures to set the backdrop for their nice shiny new building.

I'm not really sure what should be done. The transient nature of many people that live in SF/the bay means they're unlikely to have an interest in city/area politics, much less take action on it (if they even can - several of my co-workers are on various kinds of visa). I'd guess that in the coming years tech will wax and wane but never really fade and the wealthy will gradually retreat from the public sphere and areas, surrounded by an ever-increasing array of private software functions that replace public services for those that can pay.

Maybe I had a late start, but as far as I remember the internet has never been like that. So much of the forums and comment sections I used to read were mountains of junk, starting with the way people would write "First!" as a comment on nearly anything. The best didn't rise to the top - things that generated the most interest did, and the two were often completely divergent.

> It seems like we're moving in the opposite direction these days, with the internet as a means to control, oppress, and indoctrinate. Giant tech corps effectively taking over most means of communication and using their powers to openly censor things are part of the problem.

Feels like the reverse to me. Giant tech corps are failing to take measures against actively harmful memetic material - antivax, MLM, conspiracy theories, racism/white supremacy, extremism, etc. because these things drive their primary metric: engagement.

Generally, it feels to me like large tech companies only take action on these issues after significant public outcry or advertiser action. The problem of censorship has little to do with them and everything to do with opposing groups that harass or threaten individuals (Scott's post being a prime example).

This is from an article outlining the GND - https://www.npr.org/2019/02/07/691997301/rep-alexandria-ocas... - with the very first thing listed being expanding electric car manufacturing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/

https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalDiscussion/

CMV and ELI5 also have decent political discussion at times I think; askHistorians often seems to provide insight into current political issues; there's probably more I don't know.

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/0...

> Overall, 41% of people now think it was right for Britain to vote Leave, while 47% believe it was the wrong decision – but this does not necessarily translate into support for stopping the process.

> Asked what we should do next, 28% of people want to stop Brexit entirely, while 8% would hold a second referendum to decide matters.

---

> Some suggest Government had hoped the risk of No Deal would force support for the deal on the table. But while No Deal is an unpopular option, it doesn't necessarily seem as intimidating as expected.

> Part of this appears to be a lack of understanding - only 56% of people realize that "No Deal" means exactly that, leaving the European Union without any deal at all. Strangely, 26% think it that it actually includes a deal, to ensure a smooth transition or a formal transition period.

> While 49% say they would be worried by a No Deal Brexit, these are overwhelmingly Remain voters - 38% of the public as a whole, and 70% of Leave voters the idea doesn’t worry them.

> Three quarters (76%) of Leave voters think warnings of No Deal disruption are exaggerated or entirely invented. Put simply, Leave voters did not believe warnings about the damage Brexit could cause in 2016, and don't believe them now.

Consider, for example, nuclear weapons. I think it's generally agreed these days that nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki was unnecessary at best, a war crime at worst - but I don't really see that a better world would have resulted from the USSR or Germany being the first to obtain nukes.

2018 - Subnautica, God of War

2017 - Horizon Zero Dawn, Prey, Sundered

2016 - Hitman 2016, Life is Strange

2015 - MGS 5, Invisible Inc

2014 - The Long Dark, Factorio

I feel like there's quite a bit of variety out there (these days more then ever), and while I've gradually dropped various genres from my list of "things I'm willing to play", there's still enough to keep it as one of my primary sources of entertainment. Roguelikes/roguelites, especially, have done well the past few years (Slay the Spire, Dead Cells, FTL, Risk of Rain, Darkest Dungeon, etc.) and provide high quality, no filler gameplay at low cost, and often in convenient time increments.

> The power of monopolies and indeed of corporations in general is directly tied to the power of the State.

That's a big claim with zero evidence. It would certainly seem that the lack of strong national government and insufficient power at the state level was what lead to powerful corporations/trusts like Standard Oil.

> It's no surprise to those who understand this that, as the federal government has grown in size, strength, and scope, corporations have followed.

My understanding of the Gilded Age was that corporations were only stopped because laws were passed at the federal level after monopolies had already become a problem and caused pushback from voters. eg.

> In 1890, Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act, which made it illegal to monopolize or restrain (or attempt to do so) interstate commerce. On the basis of this Act, the United States filed a suit against five sugar manufacturing companies to keep them from merging after one firm purchased the stock of the other four (E.C. Knight Co. was one of the four firms bought out). The American Sugar Refining Company had gained control over 98 percent of the sugar refining business in the United States in this way and was considered a monopoly. ( http://landmarkcases.org/en/Page/401/How_Interpretation_of_t... )

Further, I don't think there was a notable increase of federal government until the Depression and New Deal era, followed by significant military expansion before, during and after WW2. Arguably there was major growth in the 60s and 70s (HUD, DoT, DoE, DoEd, EPA, etc.) But I feel it's fairly clear that government size and corporate size change largely independently.

> In fact, I'd go so far as to say that consumer-hostile monopolies cannot exist for any substantial amount of time without the backing of the State.

You're moving the goalposts here, changing from discussions of monopolies in general to "consumer-hostile" monopolies. Further, I'd expect you're still wrong even here. Consumers might accept hostile monopoly situations if there's simply no alternative, ie, places where it's not cost effective for a company to build out to a rural location. Even if the service is bad for your power/telecom situation in some rural location, there simply might not be an alternative, aside from not getting that service.

> As far as I can tell, natural monopolies are a myth grown from mistaken economic theory.

I don't really know what to say to this. If you can look at the mechanics of road, power and telecom construction/distribution and say that natural monopolies don't exist, then clearly we must have wildly different understandings of the term.

I feel like this misses the point. I don't expect people to complain much about IP being stolen by competitors - that feels like an security/internal problem.

The issue with China seems to be that they force partnerships with Chinese companies, resulting in western companies having to share their IP, and when that IP is used outside of the constraints of whatever contract was created and the western company complains, the Chinese government colludes with the Chinese company to stymie or exploit the western company as much as can be done without breaking the relationship.

I'm also not going to say whether this is right or wrong - just that the feeling I get from the whole thing (as someone who doesn't follow this stuff that closely) is that the government efforts go beyond what others have done in the past (which I understand to be more subsidizing industries to boot them up).

I've noticed this in my gaming group and in the gaming culture at large. There's been this integration of much more sexual terms in the last three or four years - "raped", "cucked", "my butthole", "gaping", "shoved down the throat", etc. I feel like 10 years ago the words/phrases were less offensive - "destroyed", "wrecked", "owned", "dumpstered", "get shit on", etc.

I'm not really sure why this is, but I'm not a fan of the change. It feels like in the last half a decade stuff that used to be limited to the uglier parts of the web has bled out across a much greater area and become more accepted.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-consumers-arbitration...

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/08/this-burrito-includes...

I didn't realize how many years I'd been looking for a serious, entertaining, well-written leftist perspective on news and the world until I ran across this magazine.