Miguel Duarte
Paul KrugmanThis is not the dystopia we were expecting https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/19/opinion/columnists/elon-musk-twitter-oligarchs.html
Graham@pkrugman sick article Krugmeister
GreengordonThe reason: capitalism selects sociopaths to the top.
Steve Popovich@greengordon @pkrugman is that what it says? I got stopped at the paywall.
BierFrau♀️♀️@sspopovich @greengordon @pkrugman
Here you are, friend https://archive.vn/NYRuy
@TheBierFrau @sspopovich @pkrugman
Awesome, thank you! I never read the NYT because it’s always paywalled and on the whole, it’s very biased if not outright crappy at times. (Remember the recent article where the author wasn’t sure of Musk’s political leaning? This was after he told everyone to vote Republican.)
In this case, Prof Krugman gets it half right:
“ the lesson I took from my moment of pettiness was that privilege corrupts, that it very easily breeds a sense of entitlement.”
He misses that privilege and power ATTRACT corrupt people - sociopaths. Decent people are not necessarily corrupted by money and power. Musk was never a decent person, and never will be.
Luke Chadwick@pkrugman some brutal headlines op/eds today. One might say that it's unwise to make enemies of journalists.
So much of Musks successes can be tracked back to media support. I suspect he's lost that.
Fabian Transchel
grofdsnodotsam@ftranschel @vertis @pkrugman sounds a bit like a justice fantasy, predicated on worthiness. Sure he's not worthy, but he wasn't before either. It's just been made more foolishly obvious, but it changes nothing.
Would love to be wrong and witness consequence. Wouldn't hold my breath.
Keith 🇺🇸🇪🇺🇮🇪🇺🇦
Tim Palmer
daniel s.@pkrugman it's a good article but I hate that you embrace the term "twitter refugee" because switching websites doesn't even remotely compare to the hell a refugee endures
@selfagency @pkrugman that's a good comment but I wish you wouldn't refer to "hell" in your post which is a Christian concept that excludes members of other religions
@[email protected] my father was born in a displaced persons camp in 1945 and his parents saw their entire families slaughtered. they would have fucking loved if all that anyone wanted of them was to switch websites. so please, shut up.
@selfagency if you're gonna police language, you're gonna get a bunch assholes telling you to piss off. This conversation already reached the logical endgame-- insults.
People are going to keep using language in ways you don't like, thicken your skin or stay off social media.
@graham congrats on being my first server-wide block dickhead.
SamuelJohnson@selfagency @graham As a bystander to this discussion I have great sympathy for the sensitivity of child of actual refugees to casual use of the word. However, the manner in which this was expressed and subsequent discourse was sufficiently odious that I have muted the offender.
Mirishuli@selfagency @graham @samueljohnson Well said. I do,not want my timeline to turn back into the toxic bird site feed. I will block everyone and anyone who brings the conversation down like this. There is simply no need to speak to one another in this way. Two to block now.
@selfagency @pkrugman There are thousands of people using the term Twitter Refugee every day. It sucks that you have good reason to feel triggered but your personal crusade won't change anything in how people use this term.
@ttlawrie one tweet = "personal crusade"
jesus christ you fucking clowns are fragile
Kayo@selfagency @ttlawrie Actually you’re the fragile one attacking everyone trying to have a civil discourse with you. Words are borrowed every day and juxtaposed with other words, that doesn’t diminish the importance or cruelty of that word. People just seem to look for something to offend them.
@selfagency @ttlawrie I agree with you on that point. Sometimes let’s just take a breath and chill for our own mental health.
@selfagency @ttlawrie Absolutely right. Sadly that’s the world we live in now. Have you seen legions of people, mostly poor who fastidiously defends inhuman billionaires?
@selfagency Actually I was responding to you telling the first responder to shut the fuck up. However , I take your point. On reflection "upset" would gave been a better choice of word over "triggered". It may take a bit of time for me to come down from Twitter
@ttlawrie i'm pre-loaded against reply guys who tell minorities they're unjustly policing the rich and powerful
@selfagency fair enough but we don't attack millionaires just because they are millionaires. They need to be caught doing something wrong first. Like it or not Twitter Refugee is firmly in the lexicon at this point
@ttlawrie uuuuuuh yeah sorry my dude i'm an anticapitalist and um there are lots of shitty phrases in the lexicon i don't have to tolerate the use of
JeanJaures@pkrugman Good column. Musk unintentionally is doing some good by destroying the myth of the techno-genius CEO. He’s just a bozo who got lucky, and his luck is running out.
Hoon McMunch@pkrugman This is the exact dystopia all leftists predicted
Henry Farrell@pkrugman I'd hold out Ridley Scott's Blade Runner as an alternative egoist corporate overlord future. And on PKD, only quasi-relevant but similar accident of phrasing - "this is not the dystopia we were promised" https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/henry-farrell-philip-k-dick-and-fake-humans/
@henryfarrell @pkrugman
Really excellent piece.
What if the anti-real world of MAGA, anti-vaxx, big lie etc can’t be “cured”, but can only be mitigated and lived with? I share Dick’s fascination with the lines of reality and not. Hopefully I can avoid his fate. I’m a shitty writer, so I have that going for me.
squirrel_j@pkrugman
Expecting 1984, got Animal Farm.
Expecting 1984, got Animal Farm.
Busted FlushElon buying Twitter, and giving himself a platform from which to pontificate is a real life John Galt soliloquy played out in slow cringe-inducing motion.
And it illustrates the flaw in Ayn Rand's thinking. In real life, the wealthy industrialists aren't noble super men. Narcissism with a taste for authoritarianism seems to be their common coin.
2xfo@BustedFlush @pkrugman
Feeling justified as a narcissist and an authoritarian is pretty easy when you are always right and everyone else is just in your way /s (do we do sarcasm tags here? I'm.)
Feeling justified as a narcissist and an authoritarian is pretty easy when you are always right and everyone else is just in your way /s (do we do sarcasm tags here? I'm.)
woollylogic@BustedFlush @pkrugman There are certainly plenty of examples of that, but there also exist billionaires with significant public profiles whose philanthropy supports democratic goals.
🦫💧🐸 🌻🌹@pkrugman which begs the question why does the media keep promoting these false narratives and false prophets? Oh yeah its ALWAYS about the $$$.
Torstein Helleve
JW prince of CPH@pkrugman Speak for yourself. I think a lot of us saw this coming a long way off.
Robert Thau@pkrugman Funny thing -- there are destructive petulant tycoons in at least one early Cyberpunk dystopia -- L. Bob Rife in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. (And they're a staple of pop culture as Bond villains.)
Tom Wild@pkrugman But perhaps it's the one we deserve.
Raven Onthill@pkrugman …but we should have been. Such people are common in the history of aristocracy and monarchy. I snark about aristocratic personality disorder, and really it isn’t a personality disorder, but it’s a real problem. We only thought we ended aristocracy with the Revolution. What would it take to truly end aristocracy?
Graydon@ravenonthill @pkrugman Income and asset caps.
Aristocracy is a formalized rationalization (well, one of a bunch of a range of rationalizations) for the legitimacy of guaranteeing wealth and the generational transfer of wealth.
If nobody can get rich, no aristocrats.
Don't do it slowly with the tax system; that's been tried and failed.
min(median income, mean income) x 10 = max annual income.
THIS YEAR'S max annual income x50 (you worked from 20 to 70 at max, somehow...) is the asset cap.
@ravenonthill @pkrugman And you do this all at once and as fast as you can, and you ideally do it while extirpating limited liability from everything and certainly the limited liability corporation.
LLCs fatally distort prices -- it's free if the people you're exploiting/poisoning/murdering lack the political power to stop you! -- they permit the CEO to be supreme sole autocrat of a domain.
That's the big emotional need people have that makes them want to be an aristo, and we should kill it.
A.M. PinelliPretty disappointing, to be honest. I expected to be ruled by pseudo-autocratic oligarchs that valued hoarding wealth over human life… but I at least expected them to be competent.
Kshanti@pkrugman any chance you can post the article from elsewhere that doesn’t have a paywall?
Stephen Ist@pkrugman “And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.” — William Gibson, Count Zero
Why the NYT and other publishers tie themselves to oligarchs' platforms I do not understand.
@pkrugman It's ironic that Musk exploited the reputation of Nikola Tesla as a disruptive and misunderstood genius on the way to becoming a modern day Edison, Tesla's competitor and (supposed) rival.
Lazy Circles Esq@pkrugman Love the shade at then with your Mastodon link.
miriammeister@pkrugman Please also join Post.
climate voter/radical oldie@pkrugman But what should we do about this? We need to bring these people down.
TQdemocrat@pkrugman Outstanding commentary. So glad to find you here.
Krena@pkrugman - but is it the dystopia we deserve?
teno@pkrugman nice Mastodon tip at the end ;)
Free of paywall: https://archive.ph/NYRuy
Falconeer@pkrugman I have hypothesis that there are two kinds of companies:
* Those that make products
* Those that make money
Microsoft makes products; they've been improving Visual Studio for decades.
Meta makes money; they'll sell you whatever they can shove out the door.
Which type does better I suspect depends on the primary culture the company does business in.
I'm sure I'm sure I'm not the first to come up with the idea. Any thoughts?
northcoreya@pkrugman I’m on Mastodon now because of your article ☑️