17th December 2021, 6:32 AM
(This post was last modified: 17th December 2021, 6:34 AM by Dark Jaguar.)
ABF, it makes perfect sense and is fully in line with how businesses have been operating since Reaganomics.
This is a natural progression, and once you realize that this is exactly the world that rich capitalists have built for us and told us was good and free then nothing about this will surprise you. You have the republicans, who want to regress into a sort of thuggish aristocracy, and then you have liberals, who want more freedom and voting rights BUT are too comfortable with our current economic reality and thus don't even want to give us the most basic sort of government oversight, like Nancy Pelosi straight up refusing to even consider restricting congress and the senate from owning stocks, because "freedom". The government's corrupt, but I've already mentioned that.
Instead let's focus on this. We have this problem in our society with "Great Man Theory". We idolize these "great men", male industrialists that are the true movers and shakers, and we know that because they're in charge of giant corporations. There's this idea of them being these Bruce Wayne/Tony Starks of the world, inventing everything by the sweat of their own brow. Any sort of restraint on their behavior is a shackle holding back the Great Works that will propel us right into space. So, no one bats an eye when Amazon (who has demonstrated that they'll keep people working right through a tornado and that they will take ANY steps possible to prevent unionization) comes along and says hey we're here to make true AI. No one is even a little bit worried that this or that giant corporation is going on and on about colonizing space, (space being that place outside even the physical reach of all terrestrial government).
In THAT environment, and knowing as many people even here have said over the years that companies don't love you, they don't even like you, they just want to make all the money forever at any cost, well NFTs make perfect sense. They're a pyramid scheme that isn't illegal (yet), and so long as it's still legal and so long as no one understands it enough to complain, they will pursue it.
Also, customers aren't their customers any more. Stock holders are. Once someone is openly traded, every decision they make must satisfy them, and the ONLY thing that satisfies isn't just sustainable profits (a sensible goal) but MORE profits than last quarter, forever, like cancer. That is the singular thing that could possibly explain Activision-Blizzard firing a record number of employees in the MOST profitable year of the company's operation. That is the only thing that explains why so very many of us, before the NFT age has even gotten underway, are LOUDLY decrying NFTs as something literally NO gamer actually wants in their games, and yet in spite of that wall of resentment, they refuse to change course at all.
It all makes perfect sense. You want to know how people like me and Sterling and so on have been able to so very accurately predict what new awful thing these companies are going to do? We ask one question. "Will this, in the immediate future, stand to grow their profits over last quarter?" If the answer is yes, they are going to do it. That's all there is to it. Any naïve sentiments about "customer good will" are secondary to that. That only counts if it affects the answer to the first question, period.
This is a natural progression, and once you realize that this is exactly the world that rich capitalists have built for us and told us was good and free then nothing about this will surprise you. You have the republicans, who want to regress into a sort of thuggish aristocracy, and then you have liberals, who want more freedom and voting rights BUT are too comfortable with our current economic reality and thus don't even want to give us the most basic sort of government oversight, like Nancy Pelosi straight up refusing to even consider restricting congress and the senate from owning stocks, because "freedom". The government's corrupt, but I've already mentioned that.
Instead let's focus on this. We have this problem in our society with "Great Man Theory". We idolize these "great men", male industrialists that are the true movers and shakers, and we know that because they're in charge of giant corporations. There's this idea of them being these Bruce Wayne/Tony Starks of the world, inventing everything by the sweat of their own brow. Any sort of restraint on their behavior is a shackle holding back the Great Works that will propel us right into space. So, no one bats an eye when Amazon (who has demonstrated that they'll keep people working right through a tornado and that they will take ANY steps possible to prevent unionization) comes along and says hey we're here to make true AI. No one is even a little bit worried that this or that giant corporation is going on and on about colonizing space, (space being that place outside even the physical reach of all terrestrial government).
In THAT environment, and knowing as many people even here have said over the years that companies don't love you, they don't even like you, they just want to make all the money forever at any cost, well NFTs make perfect sense. They're a pyramid scheme that isn't illegal (yet), and so long as it's still legal and so long as no one understands it enough to complain, they will pursue it.
Also, customers aren't their customers any more. Stock holders are. Once someone is openly traded, every decision they make must satisfy them, and the ONLY thing that satisfies isn't just sustainable profits (a sensible goal) but MORE profits than last quarter, forever, like cancer. That is the singular thing that could possibly explain Activision-Blizzard firing a record number of employees in the MOST profitable year of the company's operation. That is the only thing that explains why so very many of us, before the NFT age has even gotten underway, are LOUDLY decrying NFTs as something literally NO gamer actually wants in their games, and yet in spite of that wall of resentment, they refuse to change course at all.
It all makes perfect sense. You want to know how people like me and Sterling and so on have been able to so very accurately predict what new awful thing these companies are going to do? We ask one question. "Will this, in the immediate future, stand to grow their profits over last quarter?" If the answer is yes, they are going to do it. That's all there is to it. Any naïve sentiments about "customer good will" are secondary to that. That only counts if it affects the answer to the first question, period.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)