Pete Prodoehl 🍕Oct 20

I took my daughter to buy a car today. The dealership could not run credit report due to AWS outage. She called the bank, they could not approve a large transaction because of the AWS outage. We went to the DMV, they were able to get her a replacement car title, but also mentioned some systems were down. Back to the dealership where they could not do the credit application to buy the car.

In a completely unrelated note, I think I have some ideas for disrupting Capitalism...

Show threadPendell 🔜 TFFOct 21
@rasterweb @bontchev Capitalism is so great and efficient to consolidate the entire internet to rely on one company's servers.
Show threadVessOnSecurityOct 21
@pendell @rasterweb The problem here is not capitalism per se but the concentration of sources of products/services in a single producer (monopoly) or a small set of producers (oligopoly). The solution is not the scrapping of capitalism that the lefties dream about but better antitrust laws.
Show threadPendell 🔜 TFFOct 21

@bontchev @rasterweb Capitalism as a system always incentivizes consolidation of wealth and resources to the top. It is the ultimate zero sum game.

For instance at this point you're not really going to get good antitrust passed because the wealthy realized long ago that they could prevent that by simply buying out all the politicians. Nobody's going to stop them, and that's by design.

Show threadVessOnSecurityOct 21
@pendell @rasterweb There are already plenty of antitrust laws that are dealing with the negative effects monopolism had in the "wild years". They just need to be improved, so that the free market capitalism is indeed a FREE MARKET capitalism. It brings way too many benefits to allow ourselves to destroy it - be it by socialism or by monopolism.
Show threadPendell 🔜 TFFOct 21
@bontchev @rasterweb The free market is what leads to monopolies. The government has to step in and break them up. But those antitrust laws are no longer being enforced, because ever since the Citizens United decision, corporations have been directly influencing policy and our leaders. And that decision was made in the interest of "freedom" but you cannot be truly free under the thumb of billionaires.
Show threadVessOnSecurityOct 21
@pendell @rasterweb Yes, it does - which is why antitrust laws are needed. Yes, the current situation is not ideal and needs fixing - but the fix is *not* to dismantle the whole system of capitalism that has brought such great benefits.
Show threadPendell 🔜 TFFOct 21
@bontchev @rasterweb Well, dismantling might not be the best move, but we can certainly take steps to transition our economy slowly towards a social democracy that benefits everyone. A good first step would be to reverse Citizens United (oops, good luck with the current SCOTUS) and taxing billionaires fairly (oops, good luck with a billionaire in the highest office in the land)
Show threadVessOnSecurityOct 22

@pendell @rasterweb The best solution is to enforce FREE MARKET capitalism. I agree that Citizens United ought to be reversed. Billionaires are indeed taxed unfairly - they pay the majority of tax in the USA. Taxes should be flat and equal for everyone.

BTW, the recent outage-caused problems were not so much Amazon's fault (it's not a monopoly; it handles about 30% of the cloud services) as the fault of the companies using it (relying on US-EAST-1 exclusively).

Show threadPendell 🔜 TFFOct 26
@bontchev @rasterweb "Taxes should be flat and equal for everyone" no. We need a progressive tax system like the one we used to have that allowed us to take on some of the biggest and most beneficial infrastructural and social projects our country has ever had, which have all since stagnated due to rising debt and lack of funds since we STOPPED taxing billionaires properly. Billionaires SHOULD pay the majority of the tax in the USA - after all, they steal more than anyone.
Show threadPendell 🔜 TFF
@bontchev @rasterweb As for companies relying on Amazon, it's almost like an incentive structure was allowed to grow that positioned AWS as a universally cheaper option to self-hosting, and in corporate America's endless pursuit of infinite profits over all else, a frankly terrifying amount of essential services rely on AWS running with 100% uptime and reliability. Capitalists will always prioritize short term profits over long term stability.
Oct 26 at 9:07pmMoshidon