When people (myself included FWIW) warn about the dangers of American imperialism, it's because:

1. As President Eisenhower said in his farewell address in 1961 [1], every dollar spent on the military-industrial complex is a dollar not spent on schools or houses or hospitals or bridges;

2. Every American company with sufficient size eventually becomes a defense contractor. That's really what's happened with the tech companies. They're moving in lockstep with the administration on both domestic and foreign policy;

3. The so-called "imperial boomerang" [2]. Every tactic, weapon and strategy used against colonial subjects are eventually used against the imperial core eg [3]. Do you think it's an accident that US police forces have become increasingly militarized?

The example I like to give is China's high speed rail. China started building HSR only 20 years ago and now has over 32,000 miles of HSR tracks taking ~4M passengers per day. The estimated cost for the entire network is ~$900B. That's less than the US spends on the military every year.

I really what Steve Jobs would've done were he still alive. Tim Apple has bent the knee and kissed the ring. Would Steve Jobs have done the same? I'm not so sure. He may well have been ousted (again) because of it.

Then again, I think Steve Jobs was the only Silicon Valley billlionaire not in a transhumanist polycule with a more than even chance of being in the files.

[1]: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwigh...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang

[3]: https://www.amnestyusa.org/blog/with-whom-are-many-u-s-polic...

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esafak a day ago | parent | next [-]

Thank you for mentioning the term 'imperial boomerang'. You really saw it in the militarization of the police after the Iraq War. Gone are the donut munchers.

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tw04 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I really what Steve Jobs would've done were he still alive. Tim Apple has bent the knee and kissed the ring. Would Steve Jobs have done the same? I'm not so sure. He may well have been ousted (again) because of it.

Given that Steve Jobs was best friends with Larry Ellison, I’d say he wouldn’t have bent the knee because he would’ve been standing hand in hand with Trump, just like Larry.

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lp4v4n a day ago | parent | prev [-]

>1. As President Eisenhower said in his farewell address in 1961 [1], every dollar spent on the military-industrial complex is a dollar not spent on schools or houses or hospitals or bridges;

This humanist view unfortunately doesn’t hold anymore in the modern world. Boomers will be happy as long as not a single dollar is spent on housing, so that their own homes can appreciate in value. Republicans would rather burn money than spend it on houses, hospitals, or bridges that might benefit immigrants or “other people” more than themselves.

I used an American political party only as a reference, but the same phenomenon can be seen in many countries around the world. Society has become incredibly cynical and has regressed a lot in terms of humanity.

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FpUser a day ago | parent [-]

>"Boomers will be happy as long as not a single dollar is spent on housing"

Not sure what boomers you are talking about. I for one am disgusted at what is happening with the things in general and with the housing in particular. I do not want my house to appreciate Ad infinitum. I do not want to have ever growing class of have-not's so that few jerks can own the governments and half of the world.

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jmyeet a day ago | parent [-]

Just so we're on the same page, the GP was reeferring to "baby boomers", as in people born 1945-1965. Maybe you know that and that's when you were born. I don't know. But "boomer" has taken on a slang meaning the latest few years for someone who's simply not tech-savvy or is otherwise out-of-touch.

Generational politics has definite limits and isn't absolute but it's also true that the Baby Boomer generation as a whole enjoyed the great opportunities and wealth generation opportunities in history. They fled to the suburbs, subsidized by the government every step of the way, and then basically pulled up the ladder behind them. They also refuse to quit.

And then when crime receded (and there are multiple theories for why this happened), they moved back into the city, bought up all the real estate and then blocked building affordable housing there too.

I personally have a theory that the parting gift of the Baby Boomer generation will be to get rid of Social Security and Medicare since they don't need it anymore.

	▲	staticman2 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> I personally have a theory that the parting gift of the Baby Boomer generation will be to get rid of Social Security and Medicare since they don't need it anymore. They do need social security and Medicare. Studies show even with social security and Medicare half or more might struggle in retirement due to insufficient savings.