Musk is the best possible evidence of this - an incredibly stupid, fragile edgelord born to other peoples’ wealth, lucked his way into more on the backs of others’ work. Now, everything he touches loses billions.
Until they use their multiple monopolies to further cripple the experience for competitors, entrenching their dominance, and allowing them to force their proprietary standards on the internet, killing any remaining pretence of Internet freedom.
Beyond transferring bookmarks and extensions (neither of which tend to be an issue), and the different icon, what would the average user hang their allegiance off?
The prompts to use Edge are the same whether you’re using Chrome or Firefox.
In spite of Google’s share, the fact that you still need to go download a browser means it isn’t over. The barrier for entry is no higher for Firefox vs Chrome, and to the average user, they’re not differentiated - you could change the icon and they’d be none the wiser.
Google using their functional monopoly on search and streaming to entrench their functional monopoly on the browser in a way that’ll give them meaningful control of the way the Internet operates isn’t something we should just roll over on.
This is now a balancing act to see how much they can cripple the internet for their own benefit without affecting market share enough that it hurts long-term profitability.
If you’ve paid any attention whatsoever to the Netanyahu government, all of this was predictable to the point of inevitability. Spew far-right nonsense and genocidal rhetoric, maintain an open-air concentration camp as you consistently chip away at the Palestinian population and land, back Hamas over the relatively secular, moderate PLO, let encourage them kill your own population and wait for a pretext to stomp on the accelerator toward genocide.
Opposition to a genocide has no inherent tie to race or religion - to call that opposition antisemitic is to make that genocide an inherent trait of semitism - that’s antisemitic. Similarly, what would we call funding a group that will kill as many Israelis as it can over more peaceful opposition? Antisemitic.
I didn’t mention prescriptivism, I only mentioned descripticism
My mistake - I’m muddling my prescriptivism / descriptivism terminology (I’ll edit the terms in the post)
The usefulness of words comes from their understanding, not their use. If you use 100% valid dictionary words but not how people commonly understand them, then you’re failing to communicate.
It doesn’t make me any less correct or them any less wrong though.
In this case, you have a definition of communism contrary to how people understand it, so you should either clarify your definition of it, or not be so attached to the word that you insist on using it.
I’ve given a key reason why they’re wrong (lack of worker enfranchisement), and pointed to the dictionary for my definition - any credible one will do, if in doubt, use the OED.
You’re not seeing your hypocrisy here though - you’re not talking about definitions - you’re talking about labels. People calling China communist isn’t a definition that I can measure other countries against - it’s a label entirely devoid of meaning. That’s meaningless, that’s a failure to provide a definition, and that would make me straight while secretly getting railed by those hundreds of dudes - even when 100% of the people saying I’m straight (making it true to what you call a descriptivist) would say that behaviour makes me gay (an actual descriptivist definition).
What are the characteristics people are pointing to when they say China, the USSR and DPRK are communist?This is what a descriptivist definition is.
You’re talking about the application of labels, not shaping a definition. What’s the linguistically prescriptive definition of communism that’s descriptive of these regimes?
If most people think I’m straight, but I’m enjoying getting railed by 10 dudes 10 times per day, I’m not straight - they’re wrong. If everyone agrees that getting railed by 10 dudes 10 times per day is straight, that’s prescriptivism descriptivism.
Descriptivism is when you’re wrong. 50% of the participants in this conversation say so, therefore it’s true.
Similarly, if the majority of people take the word “Juden” to mean subhuman monsters of a specific ethnoreligious group that are a threat to society that should be rounded up and genocided. Why are they wrong from the perspective of linguistic prescriptivism?
What’s the linguistic prescriptivist definition of communism? None of what you’ve said has anything to do with definitions - only assigning now meaningless labels.
Are you going to apply this principle consistently and tell me the DPRK is democratic? I ask because that would be a deeply stupid claim to make, but we’d hate for you to be inconsistent.
Tankies are cringe - but in spite of what they’ll tell you, they’re not communists… Just look at how enfranchised workers are/were in the USSR, China and, the DPRK.
Edit: The red fascists are clearly getting upset trying to square their authoritarian single-party states with their LARPing about the proliteriat. American diabolism isn’t a political or economic system, you dopey fucks.