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Lillia Gajewski's avatar

It occurs to me as I read your (wonderful) essay that the one step the Founders missed was putting in safeguards against centralization of businesses. They figured it out when it came to government, giving power to the states, but when it came to businesses, they missed the boat. You can't blame them. Other than the East India Company, they had nothing that compared to a Walmart or an "Alphabet" or an AWS. But those companies pose the most danger to people being able to effectively rule themselves simply by their capture of government regulators.

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NotFromTexas's avatar

"They figured it out when it came to government, giving power to the states, but when it came to businesses, they missed the boat."

Boy, did they ever! While they possessed extraordinary foresight in so many other respects, this clearly didn't occur to them.

Yours is an excellent observation!

Hoping there is more to come...from some others!

Folks are reading, but few comment! :(

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Pi Guy's avatar

Last week was half camping-vacay, half "wholly jeebus - how did all this work pile up?!" and you published a bunch. I'm gonna have to go back and read them.

Please accept this as the compliment it's intended to be: You don't write Lavatory Reading material.

Dag, I love you guys.

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NotFromTexas's avatar

Compliment received!!

Thank you!!

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Pi Guy's avatar

"3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet"

First, my second chance to use this in two days:

#MakeFootnotesGreatAgain

Then, that the Wikipedia entry for _Internet_ is super well sourced. At first I thought, "How can you capture that topic with so little content. But then it's, dare I say, well foot-noted. *nods* Just following a handful of those cites would probably gobble up the entire afternoon of an IT-adjacent guy like me.

Which is really about footnotes. *ponders*

#MakeFootnotesGreatAgain

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Pi Guy's avatar

Somtething something all you have is a hammer...

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Pi Guy's avatar

"The internet itself would never have come into existence were it not initially funded by the federal government as part of the DoD's ARPA project."

"I am ARPAcus!"

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NotFromTexas's avatar

*I* am ARPAcus!

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Pi Guy's avatar

Inspired

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Lillia Gajewski's avatar

"These lieutenants and staff sergeants were children of Baby Boomers who had been raised with a decidedly leftist worldview. These were kids of privilege, having attended Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Brown; they earned MBAs – frequently without being required to gain any experience in the real world. All the while, their leftist political indoctrination was being reinforced by professors and mentors."

So I have a question, and I'm asking because I'm trying to figure it out myself, do these captains of industry--the CEOs of the "woke" organizations--actually believe in DIE and other "leftie" dogma, or are their motives more cynical? Meaning were they actually indoctrinated, or did they just learn that the way to please all these professors and mentors was to regurgitate "woke" talking points?

The answer has implications for how we get out of this.

And I meant to thank you for mentioning my substack. Thank you for the vote of confidence.

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NotFromTexas's avatar

But, of course!!

My belief is that they are true believers - they were the first generation to come up through the education system fully indoctrinated.

If they ARE questioning, then they also know to keep silent for fear of what happens if they put 2 and 2 together.

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Lillia Gajewski's avatar

Well, that doesn't bode well for getting out of this. Hmm.

I appreciate the answer.

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NotFromTexas's avatar

I agree, but look at the CEO of Target – when the effect of the backlash of negative publicity was pointed out to him, he doubled down.

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Lillia Gajewski's avatar

As did the CEO of Anheuser-Busch. It's like they think they can bully their way out of it.

I suppose our only hope is financial Darwinism.

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Pi Guy's avatar

See also Anthropogenic Global Climate Warming Cooling Change of Catastrophic Proportions by <insert Date = Today() + Number Just Kinda Far Out But Not Enough to Relax on Things>

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Pi Guy's avatar

"My belief is that they are true believers"

I always keep wishing that this wasn't the case, that some portion of my youngerish, educated, _very intelligent_ coworkers but, if they don't really believe it, they sure sell it as though they do.

Because, as you note, "they were the first generation to come up through the education system fully indoctrinated."

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Pi Guy's avatar

"The answer has implications for how we get out of this."

Boy, does it ever.

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