> "Having the wrong power structure is barely scratching the surface of why running a government like a business is an awful idea. Rural mail delivery loses money, so I guess that’s out. A defense department "for profit" would be a decent start to a scary movie, not a way to defend your country. But the biggest reason is that "like a business" simply ignores the fact that there are values other than money: protecting people from harm, enforcing laws, safeguarding our land and resources, and providing a social safety net. None of those are business values."
The end game is dictatorship, which is exactly what they mean when they say government should be run "like a business". Musk is turning the USA into XSA.
>> I’ve been very lucky, by the way. First, I had the fortune to be born into a middle-class family that through the influence of family friends, bought a used home computer in the 1980s and then a PC in the 1990s.
Me too. Only bit-shifted by 10 years (OK, not possible in the binary world so let's settle for 8 years).
But DARPA did have an impact in my case. The communist regime in Romania implemented a DARPA-like system where each and every village center (commune in French organization) was given a commputer. I had intermittent access to that since my gymnasium years, then in my high school years and after the fall and dissolution of the communist regime, I simply requested and was allowed moving said computer to my home on the promise that should anyone request or desire access to it, I will immediately return the computer to school. Never happened.
Several years later standard of living increased enough after the hyperinflation crash when the average salary became $78 (luckily there was two of my parents so we were making $150) that I was able to return the borrowed DARPA computer and buy my own.
From that on it's history. Or future, depending on the vantage point.
Also, have I ever mentioned that I had my IQ taken once in not so ideal conditions (waking up from drunken stupor) and got 125. Adjusted for age and situation, 135, I was let go. Definitely privileged. Genetically.
While I agree with this, I don't feel sorry for the normies.
I don't consider those guys are leaders.
I run an extremely profitable company because most other companies in tech are not run by people who understand technology so it's very easy to make something substantially better than them and get lots of money.
I know a bunch of other people who are looking at this whole vibe coding thing with great interest and raising teams right now to systematically attack these vibe coded apps and either sell them security or make them pay.
As a true old-school hacker, at every point in time, you can figure out what the normies are doing. Both the users and on this side of the table, the people who are building software, they are both normies.
So I think those who really understand software and technology figure out an audience who are interested in high quality software and either give it to them for free or sell them.
Don't get distracted by what the normies are doing. They have always been fools.
Back in the day when I was involved with some of the old Swedish crew we learned really fast that script kiddies are everywhere and the majority are basically unaware.
For example, there are a bunch of people who claim to be on the left but still use Chrome instead of Firefox. They cannot give up their Facebook because it gets them good deals in their local marketplace. These people deserve the world that is coming to them. I gave up on them a long time ago. If you haven't I would love to know why.
> There’s a good chance this page wouldn’t exist had I not read Timothy Snyder’s powerful little book, On Tyranny
This is such a great book. https://timothysnyder.org/on-tyranny