Nah, they’ll likely have some kind of remote-activated self-destruct feature that fries them to prevent us from using them.

I know what Republicans will do. They will send AI robot armies marching through every city to just start massacring humans.

And the people who want this, want it to be a painful gruesome death.

Yeah. If done correctly, a bullet to the head is quick and painless, as in, you are dead before your body has recognized that you’ve been shot.

But the people who want this want suffering, so likely firing squads will be ordered to hit body parts that will not result in instant, painless death but rather a gruesome and agonizing death from shock and blood loss.

Well, the plan then, if other countries start pulling away from US tech/hegemony as you suggest they will do, and are doing, is to use overwhelming military force with unending waves of AI-powered killer robots capable of combat in land, sea, and air. Use them everywhere, all at once, against everyone in a titanic billionaire temper tantrum the likes of which has never been seen on Earth. Because, if Karp and Thiel and Andreesen and all the other tech oligarchs don’t get their wish, they will absolutely attempt to totally annihilate the planet in a massive temper tantrum.

And the cake will be “free”, as in “each bite adds to your debt and you will serve in our army until it is paid off or you die in the line of duty. In the event you die in the line of duty, your debt will be passed down to your next of kin, who will be forced to pay it until their death.”

Basic necessities contingent upon obedience to the billionaires. Don’t like it? Tough shit. Take what we give you, and keep any complaints locked in that empty, non-rich hat rack you call a head. In fact, we mandate that you smile and thank us as we pass you by on the street, grateful that we have granted you the privilege of another day of living. But be mindful, we can revoke that privilege any time it so pleases us.

Well, in the legal sense, I suppose it has to do with contracts and contract law. Some time ago in the US, it was determined that 18 was the legal age for adulthood because by then a person would be old enough to understand the terms of a contract and hold to those terms. Marriage is a contract. Military service is a contract. Getting a loan/mortgage is a contract.

The markets select for speed, not growth. Long-term gains are nice, but they aren’t realized fast enough to prevent being consumed by the competitors seeking short-term gains. They move like piranhas and strip the slow-movers to the bone before they ever realize their gains.

States are permitted to enter into compacts with each other without Congressional approval. Democrats everywhere are rediscovering federalism and all its wonders. One thing I’d like my state to do is open a public bank, like North Dakota did. They opened it in 1919, and it was one of the few banks that weathered the Great Recession of 2008 without needing a bailout while Wall Street was on fire. A few years prior, North Dakota was facing a $48M budget crisis. The BND kicked in $25M, reducing the need for layoffs and spending cuts. It does everything a private bank does, but its profits go into North Dakota’s general fund, instead of lining the pockets of investors.

Want to know the real kicker? It’s basically a socialist enterprise, in the reddest of red states. Republicans fucking hate the Bank of North Dakota, but it’s proven too successful and too popular to kill. It would be political suicide for them to even try.

To add to this, Web 1.0 was also known as the “read-only” Web. Webpages were managed by their owners and those owners decided what visitors saw. Those visitors also did not have the ability to add their own content to the pages. They might have had the ability to comment, or to make posts on BBS sites, but they couldn’t just submit anything. Then in 2004, it changed. We transitioned to Web 2.0. All the things you mention allowed visitors of webpages to actively submit content to those pages, and soon it became known as the “read-write” Web.

allocating a few days a month to all fit members of a community to do work which no one volunteers to do.

I can agree to that as long as it’s a spelled-out condition of living in that community. As an autistic person myself, I like having expectations and conditions written out clearly and concisely, in mutually agreed-upon language.

Exactly. They just shrug and go, “Oh, well. Can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. Has he considered marrying a white woman? He should head to his local church, I’m sure there’s a nice young thing he can scoop up there.”

Privacy is one of those things I feel that if not everyone can have it, then nobody should. If the billionaires and the government want my secrets, then I want all of theirs.

Yeah, let’s put everyone’s dirty laundry out there for everyone else to see. A system where everyone has everyone else’s leverage? Beautiful. Blackmail stops working because everyone already knows, but on the upside, I also know everyone else’s dirty laundry and corpses are buried.

This, exactly. A nice tidy way of keeping their hands clean. Deport them to a country with prisons where detainee deaths are common, or their government can be subtly coerced into killing the people our government sends there. When people demand answers, our government can just throw up its hands and say, “Well, how were we supposed to know they were doing that?”

Did you know that Northrup Grumman developed the standard USPS mail truck? They also developed the B2 stealth bomber. Northrup never intended for their truck to also be a stealth bomber, but Ted said “I’m about to do what’s called a ‘pro gamer’ move.”

This. The most valuable properties are neighborhoods where nobody lives. Honestly, HOA boards should kick everyone out and gate up the entire neighborhood, only sending in mowing crews to sculpt the yards.

Metaphysics notwithstanding, he’s narcissistic to the point of believing that he’s “one order of magnitude above human”. The rest of us? We’re the first stage on the rocket. He not only wants to live forever, he wants to live above we mere mortals, free of all our petty needs and desires. This world is his playground, his toy; created for him and other billionaires like him. And if he and they can’t have it, then, they’ve ultimately decided nobody can.

What’s worse are the rich, out-of-touch fucks who should know better, are so narcissistic and so afraid of death. What they fear about it, is that the world will continue on without them. They’d rather the world end when they end. As far as they’re concerned:

• The world as we know it did not exist prior to their being born into it.
• The world was made for them and their descendants to enjoy. All others are expendable tokens to spend as they please.
• If they are mortal, then the world should not continue to exist after their deaths.

This. If there’s actually a toilet, then how does it work? I imagine the toilet probably works like the replicators do. You notice how when anyone on board the Enterprise eats, there’s dishes, but no sinks/dishwashers? When they’re finished eating, they literally set the dirty dishes down in the replicator and they’re instantly returned back to energy. I imagine the toilets work under the same principle.