> Democracy is about (in theory at least) giving each person a meaningful say in their own governance, which in turn implies not allowing any single person to become too powerful.
this is "direct democracy" and it's not even close to exist in USA... even with that a society can allow powerful people to exist if they don't create any law forbidding that
Democracy includes a broader array of governmental organization than just pure direct democracy. If you do believe that individuals should have some ability dictate the terms of their own social organization, then you believe in some amount of democratic principles.
Economic power eventually manifests in the political realm. The wealthy effectively get more votes, which means that society moves away from being democratic. Thus substantial wealth inequality is incompatible with democracy in the long run. We have been witnessing that corruption for a while now.
> You seem like a good and principled person, and you have a record of giving things up for what you believe.
i mean, 3 months ago i started to use AI for a project i'm working for around 6 years, full-time but calling a billionaire good and principled is a stretch and when you consider what made him rich, you sound like a 3 year-old kid trying persuade a mom or a dad to get lollipops when your are diabetic
LLMs it's already a economical treat for various fields/people, which not only funnels powers to the elite even more, it does through by violating copyright... everyone who uses this technology is dirt (that includes me and my little dreams of hopefully creating a company which employs minorities on the tech field) but the amount of greed from people who own these servers/GPUs is beyond this world - the world isn't GPLv3 licensed yet, an ethical society wouldn't find excuses to provide and sell LLMs to the masses
there are some papers about communal gardens heated by data centers... since they don't produce as much there, hope it also paves the way for developing indoor agriculture
For those regions green house and barn heating is a major cost (to the point that Norway for example subsidizes barn heating for dairy farmers), while pretty much all the energy consumed by a datacenter goes straight to heat without any meaningful work (in thermodynamic sense) done, so it sounds like a good match.
the expectation combined with more studios doing stuff, the fact that video-games don't have 100 years (so it's a maturing art form, somehow) and also investment money... i believe there's much more chances of quality declining on companies by the hook of investors or at least less innovation (which seems to drive a bunch of 'unicorns' on this field)? graphics kinda topped by now, there's no more magic on realism/fancy graphics! maybe at some point role-play/storytelling will get more complex/infinite with AI but it's not clear how or if it'll, as we have player driven multi-player video-games for quite a while, like Albion or some much older: https://www.havenandhearth.com/portal/ ... maybe man vs. the machine in a sensible way and not those engines stomping pro-players on Dota
with good strumming and fretting technique, you can play any of the 10 most used chord progressions in a nylon guitar and impress A LOT of people
most popular songs on charts today aren't on the edge of what's new... music theory is a rule set and to break the rules you need to know them. there's a big difference in an illiterate and a jazz musician improvising something for 10 min., as well a music from the scratch by someone who understand orchestration and your unknown local rock artist
maybe a society which has laws and regulations voted by citizens (anarchy for example) commercial products shouldn't profit over 700% or some absurdity which caps the 5000 usd number... it's not like velocity sensible keys are expensive or overly complex to produce
micro-tonal instruments are prevalent in various cultures which weren't flooded by Europe and then North America by hundreds, if not thousands of years ago. it's pretty easy to find examples on countries inside Africa and Asia
Where are you getting your numbers - profit over 700%?
If so I want in!
Unless you know how many units they sell per month, and what are their expenses exactly, and how many people are employed, and amortized cap ex and R&D cost, you're just making shit up on the spot.
Lets say this thing moves two units per month, and each brings $4000 in pure profit (costs per unit $1000). If company has one employee. Now you've made $96000/yr.
Which is way less than a single competent engineer or entrepreneur in US is worth. Ie. they are losing money.
This is fundamental quality of very low-volume, very niche products. They are almost never priced anywhere near their bill-of-materials cost.
> micro-tonal instruments are prevalent in various cultures which weren't flooded by Europe and then North America by hundreds, if not thousands of years ago. it's pretty easy to find examples on countries inside Africa and Asia
> maybe a society which has laws and regulations voted by citizens (anarchy for example) commercial products shouldn't profit over 700% or some absurdity which caps the 5000 usd number
No problemo. The consequence of that law is you'll simply not get those products on the market because there's not enough profit to justify someone spending the time to make them.
See also: Rent control, minimum wage, price control (e.g. maximum price of gasoline during a shortage).
> it's not like velocity sensible keys are expensive or overly complex to produce
Oh, my sweet summer child; music instrument keys are mechanically not the same thing as a computer keyboard. There are moving parts involved that need to handle routine forces that easily break a normal computer keyboard. 𝆑𝆑𝆑 calls for your whole arm and torso.
I have an FP-10 keyboard 3 feet from me that requires that to generate a midi message with a velocity of 255 at the lowest sensitivity setting, and not much less than that at the middle-low setting. If I hit my computer keyboard as hard as I played it an hour ago, keycaps would have gone flying.
isn't the main point of Fairphone to not use conflict minerals?
by using FOSS only myself and hating monopolies like Apple etc., i still pretty much convinced that being "green" or "ethical" is more about participating/volunteering/doing-something towards a better world than off-loading your duty to other companies... one could easily make a point that Apple products despite locked down, are still green (Apple has a bunch of zero-emission and whatever policies) and much more if one uses their devices for a long while. i had a 2° hand iPhone SE 1° gen. till 2021? if stuff breaks despite your not being able to fix it's not like you can't hop into a specialized shop to change batteries or even pay the expensive service Apple offers... sure that allows exploitation and it's always nice to get rid of it, that's why somehow these emerging companies are important and/or policies like the right of repair will make them obsolete
I have been wondering and I first got a Fairphone 3+ because I thought, among others, it was "greener".
Then I realised that:
- Fairphone 3 was already "slow" when it was released in 2019
- Fairphone 3+ was pretty much exactly the same hardware, but I bought it 2.5 years later
- My Fairphone 3+ was annoyingly slow from the moment I bought it (I was using it less than a normal phone because of that, and I just completely gave up on using the camera and asked other people to take photos instead).
- My Fairphone 3+ became painfully after 1.5 - 2 years.
I did not change phone because the hardware was not running anymore. I changed because I just couldn't use the few apps I needed because they were unusable (lagging and crashing). I don't mean games: banking apps, weather forecasts, public transports. Pretty much only Signal/WhatsApp were fine (slow, but fine).
So I painfully kept my Fairphone 3+ for a little more than 4 years.
Then I realised that people who buy an iPhone routinely keep it 6-8 years, without it being painful at all. Is it "greener" if I buy one iPhone/Pixel, or 2 Fairphones? I'm not so sure anymore. What I know is that the iPhone/Pixel are not painful to use.
I think your story also points to the idea that business ethics or other tertiary benefits will only sell a product to a limited extent. They help, but the product being fit for its core purpose is still most important.
this is "direct democracy" and it's not even close to exist in USA... even with that a society can allow powerful people to exist if they don't create any law forbidding that
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