>If it's not publicly traded, it's super secure from any public accountability.
Under the existing legal and regulatory model, yes.
But what abusing that model long-term will eventually result in government-level change that effectively bans the existence of such exploits, wide-spread vigilantism, and/or some sort of collapse.
> But what abusing that model long-term will eventually result in government-level change that effectively bans the existence of such exploits
After a couple of generations watching my government become increasingly captured by the lobbyists funding elections - I'm fairly skeptical that your optimistic assertion will come to pass.
Doubly so now that capture is rapidly accelerating into a hostile, fascist takeover.
> what abusing that model long-term will eventually result in government-level change that effectively bans the existence of such exploits, wide-spread vigilantism, and/or some sort of collapse
The endpoint of vigilantism and collapse is more economic opacity. Not less.
My personal view is companies with more than any of 1,000 employees, $10mm revenue or a $100mm valuation should have to file a simple annual disclosure showing the cap table ad balance sheet, a simple P/L, list of >5% beneficial owners and their auditor. But the path to that is through legislation in a complex, stable society.
The current pattern of resource allocation is a necessary requirement for the existence of the billionaire-class, who put significant effort into making sure it continues.
I listened to an interview with Summers in the run-up to the 2007-8 financial crisis, and what he was doing was obvious to any grade school student who has ever witnessed someone else sucking up to an authority figure.
>This person would not have been caught if it wasn't for this polygraphs screening.
The organization whose crimes she exposed claims she would not have been caught if its wasn't for the polygraph screening. Corrupt law enforcement types love things like polygraph tests because they give them a ready avenue for parallel construction.
That was my own interpretation... but admittedly maybe too strong of a statement. Maybe she would have be caught. That said, the psychological setup in those periodic interviews with a "maybe lie detecting machine" create opportunity to find real issues.
In terms of the details here, the leak wasn't to expose the crimes, it was to resist political pressure [my speculation anyways]. The crimes were being investigated anyways and the video was available internally fairly broadly (and I think maybe externally as well). There was a political storm as a result of the investigation and the arrests made. Apparently leaking the video is was not illegal (though that's subject to some interpretations) because the role of the chief prosecutor is independent but this became more complicated when it required lying to the supreme court to cover the leak.
But yeah, it's possible the Shin Bet already had an idea but just used the polygraph as an excuse/opportunity. While it's understandable in the political climate why the chief prosecutor would leak the video it's also unethical and poor judgement for someone in her role to do so, and then to cover it up. The role of the Shin Bet is to find people in sensitive roles who are secretly doing things they should not be doing (typically spies but more generally people betraying the trust put in them). For those not following, the plot got thicker because she proceeded to throw her iPhone in the Mediterranean and it was found by a swimmer some days later. She also tried to harm herself. It's pretty crazy stuff. Now there are arguments about who should oversee the investigation with the supreme court set to decide today. It's a pretty small/tight legal community and everyone knows everyone, especially at the top. The legal system has been in a battle with the government for some while with the justice minister refusing to accept the last appointment of the chief justice of the supreme court.
Anyways, the polygraph angle is interesting. That this machine survives as a practice in many places tells us something about its usefulness (or at least people's belief in its usefulness).
About a decade ago, "magic wand" bomb detectors and similar products were pretty big among security services in places like Iraq. [1] Their various supposed methods of operation were transparent BS, in ways that make the EM drive proponents look rigorous.
What always struck me about reporting on them was how there was a great deal of coverage about how fraudulent they were, but seeming puzzlement on why security services would keep buying such obvious BS. What seemed clear to me, was that the BS was the point. Similar to polygraphs and drug-sniffing dogs, the purpose of the tool is to give the investigator a seemingly-objective excuse to follow their intuition (or engage in arbitrary targeting and abuse; take your pick).
I was once in an airport in some third world country and one of those dogs was pointed at my luggage. I was really worried their operator would give them some secret signal to find "drugs" in my luggage. Nothing happened but I can imagine that's a thing.
Those wands were completely fake. Dogs do have a keen sense of smell and can be trained to sniff certain substances.
The polygraph I think is more in the disputed category. It actually measures some physiological signals which in theory could correlate to stress.
That said I don't disagree. These tools can be abused. At the end of the day you need various checks and balances in all these systems (e.g. FBI's internal investigation or whatever body is involved in the security clearances in the US in this example). Applying psychological pressure in various ways is a legitimate tool in these domains.
It certainly sounds like "We managed to run our EM drive hardware in space, and our instruments say it did something" (as did EM drive proponent's, in error). Because if it really was even something like "we successfully produced thrust from ambient ions/earth's magnetic field/etc" then it would be much bigger news.
And when one of the parties is a group of men with guns who abuse their neighbors in order to produce the something they're selling to the other party, it becomes exploitation in a quick hurry.
'Wail to god' (the second piece of artwork at that link) strongly resembles a brighter, faster, and more detailed version of what I see whenever I close my eyes but still try to pay attention to what I'm "seeing".
(Normally, I "tune out" my visual field when I close my eyes. And for reference, my mind's eye is weak, but I do not think I have complete aphantasia.)
You can, but only if you avoid actually trying to reason about this and taking all available evidence into account.
If you do, best case, the world might be a beautiful place for you specifically. But thinking about it makes you realize just how rare it is and just how lucky you are. And just how fucked it is for most everybody else.
And if you keep thinking, then you realize that any luck can run out and you can join said everybody else in an instant.
That's trivially false. Ancient people were always working, and we can see this in people who maintain primative lifestyles.
Take bread.
You start the oven at 4am. By 5am it is hot enough for your meats. By 7am extinguish, by 8am start your bread and go until 6-7pm. Now you get to start your dough for tomorrow, typically working until 11pm.
Historically bakers were known to sleep in flour hoppers as they were spared some of the heat of the ovens.
Ancient people _always_ worked. There was no leisure weekends, no afternoons off.
To me it sounds like you already partially contradicted yourself. Bakers sleeping while at work? That would never fly today even if you had literally nothing to do except wait for bread to rise.
Their hours away from home may be similar in many cases, but that doesn't mean they had as high of a workload or had to work as fast as the modern equivalent. Most of them were working for themselves, and set their own pace and rules. And working for yourself is a HUGE perk and often many people's dream scenario. Want to drink beer all day while you chop wood? Sure. Want to sing baudy ballads while you patch your roof? Go ahead. Hurt your wrist while pulling weeds or managing your copice? Go take an immediate break or maybe just come back the next day. And because 90% of the population did that, those expectations carried over into many other jobs because anyone could walk away and find some farm they could work on instead if they really wanted.
> To me it sounds like you already partially contradicted yourself. Bakers sleeping while at work? That would never fly today even if you had literally nothing to do except wait for bread to rise.
You're telling me, in a SF-based startup community, nobody has ever slept over-night at the office?
Someone has to do all the unpleasant work. In antiquity, that was generally the slaves. Today, it's everyone who isn't independently wealthy and wants more out of life than living out of a shopping cart.
And Greek festival days involved.. lots of food, baths had to be hot, etc. So someone has to run the event. It wasn't the common people getting a day off.
But 90% of the common people were farmers and were not bakers or bath tenders or vendors or the like so would be enjoying the day off. Although farmers didn't really need dedicated days off because their only schedule conflictions would be the main planting and harvest months, the festivals would just be a good way to bring all the farmers together at similar times to party and spend money or trade.
I don't know if I would go that far without qualifiers. They definitely didn't do the same work load as many modern humans from pretty much all accounts, but that doesn't mean they always did things faster because they didn't need to.
Just for a modern example like painting a room, if im working as a painter as a job, paint is flying off my roller as fast as it can. But if im painting a room for myself, im likely working significantly slower and sedately and not wearing myself out over it. The same for doing other self-sufficient tasks like chopping wood, or washing or mending clothes, maintaining your home and property, or cooking a meal. As a modern job its super fast paced, for someone doing it for themselves without a clock or boss standing over their back they are going to go at a more leisured pace, and likely also enjoying the task far more which could partially count as leisure time. And even if you aren't a farmer and have a boss in those times, if your job was that much harder than a farmer you would likely just leave and find a farm to work on instead.
And of course some tasks are highly seasonal and can't be done at a real leisured pace, certain harvest and planting tasks. Of course those are only for short spurts, and we also have to consider the physical limitations of humans with poorer nutrition who literally could not do the same workload as a modern person. So even the rush at harvest time might be considered a slower pace than many modern jobs. Like a not very healthy by modern standards construction worker today likely has 8 inches height and significantly more muscle mass than the average farmer laborer from 1000 AD, just thanks to the diversity of their diet.
Under the existing legal and regulatory model, yes.
But what abusing that model long-term will eventually result in government-level change that effectively bans the existence of such exploits, wide-spread vigilantism, and/or some sort of collapse.
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