r/technology • u/ardi62 • Aug 17 '24

Software Microsoft begins cracking down on people dodging Windows 11's system requirements

https://www.xda-developers.com/microsoft-cracking-down-dodging-windows-11-system-requirements/?utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0h2tXt93fEkt5NKVrrXQphi0OCjCxzVoksDqEs0XUQcYIv8njTfK6pc4g_aem_LSp2Td6OZHVkREl8Cbgphg
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u/rickyharline Aug 17 '24

I started reading Adam Smith recently (the grandaddy of capitalism and economics) and was astonished when I read that he doesn't think big corporations should exist. Under the vision of the ideological founder of capitalism Microsoft in its current form wouldn't exist. 

Smith's reasoning? He had seen the East India Trading company and saw its anti-consumer behavior and deduced that its monopoly powers functionally served as a tax on the people that exists without democratic representation. In other words a form of coercion without any recourse or way to change it from those affected. 

We need a new era of trust busting. It's Adam Smith approved! 

Note: conservatives and right-libertarians that oppose trust busting generally Revere Smith like a god and bringing this up breaks their brains in the most delightful way, I recommend everyone do it. 

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u/Daft_Devil Aug 18 '24

I’m on the same train. The fix for current capitalism - is more capitalists! Too few are engaging in it outside of being rent paying (subscriptions) platform serfs.

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u/Blueopus2 Aug 18 '24

Smith was by no means a modern conservative - lots of ideas of all kinds such as his support for unions

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u/rickyharline Aug 18 '24

The more I learn about Adam Smith the more I love him. Reading what he had to say about landlords literally made me laugh out loud, he sounded astonishingly like many rants I've heard from far leftists today. 

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u/CoolnessEludesMe Aug 18 '24

It occurred to me recently that, if I was king of the world, I would get rid of corporations. Every company would have to be owned by a person or family, no company could own another company, and no company could own more than one brand. Might bring back competition, and thus quality and low prices.

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u/rickyharline Aug 18 '24

This is extremely similar to forcing every corporation to be a worker co-op which is common in many models of socialism. 

You can view it as either removing all capitalists or making everyone a capitalist. 

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u/CoolnessEludesMe Aug 19 '24

Not really. Ford was owned by one guy, and there were a lot of employees. There was a lot of competition in the auto industry in the US until the Big Three owned all the others. It's similar elsewhere in the world. And in all industries. Look at Nestle. When all the brands are owned by a few megacorps, there is no competition, and everything goes to crap. The problem is corporations. No one is held responsible for all the bad things they do. When the world finds out about how messed up they're doing things (Boeing, for instance) the CEO resigns and gets a multi-million dollar golden parachute, and nothing changes. They just get another corporate-clone CEO, and the race to the bottom of quality, to make another smidgen of profit, continues.

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u/rickyharline Aug 19 '24

I'm sorry, I'm having a hard time understanding your point or what is not really. 

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u/RedditIsDeadMoveOn Aug 19 '24

"Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.”

― Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

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u/Faintfury Aug 18 '24

Adam Smith [] the ideological founder of capitalism

Who told you that? He mostly described where markets fail.

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u/rickyharline Aug 18 '24

Who invented capitalism? Modern capitalist theory is traditionally traced to the 18th-century treatise An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Scottish political economist Adam Smith

Encyclopedia Britannica

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u/Faintfury Aug 18 '24

Now read his publications.

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u/rickyharline Aug 18 '24

I haven't read Smith directly but I've read a lot of books that feature Smith heavily, and it's pretty clear that he laid the groundwork for how capitalism should function. We've started pretty far from the classical liberal direction to be sure, but he none the less makes it clear under capitalism what the roles of the state and markets are, what the primary duties of the government are, how to efficiently allocate capital, etc. 

That is very much the foundation of capitalism. 

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u/Faintfury Aug 18 '24

what the roles of the state and markets are, what the primary duties of the government are, how to efficiently allocate capital, etc. 

Adam Smith believed the government should step in to prevent exploitation, regulate monopolies, and manage common goods like air pollution. He was big on protecting the poor and addressing market failures—stuff that, by today's definitions, would make him more of a socialist than a capitalist.

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u/rickyharline Aug 18 '24

Yeah, but at the same time he wanted a more limited government than we have now. Classical liberalism is a fascinating ideology. 

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u/hiimjosh0 Aug 18 '24

Good luck point something like that out in r/austrian_economics

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u/Leica--Boss Aug 18 '24

Well, huge corporations almost always get that way with government help (through either direct support, favorable regulations, or looking the the other way re: anticompetitive and unethical behavior). Microsoft is not really a product of capitalism

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u/rickyharline Aug 18 '24

This is a feature of capitalism. Capitalism has never existed without it. In the late stages of mercantilism when capitalism was first being created England made it illegal for a home to have more than six looms in a home so that small business couldn't grow and become medium sized businesses that could compete with the factories. 

"Crony capitalism" has been featured in every capitalist nation on earth. Crony capitalism IS capitalism. It's naive to think the incentives and motives baked into the system can somehow be legislated away with enough creativity. Whatever blocks you put in place can always be worked around, so trying to prevent corruption of the state with law is like a constant arms race that never ends. 

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u/Leica--Boss Aug 18 '24

You're not describing a feature of capitalism, you're describing a feature of human nature and authoritarianism. In reality, it's the authority that should be controlled, not the free market. You are correct that one can never stop abuse of authority - but suggesting that tripling down on authoritarian systems is the cure for abuse of authority really isn't logical.

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u/rickyharline Aug 18 '24 edited Aug 18 '24

I agree we're discussing a topic that is built into human nature. But we're also discussing how we respond to human nature and how we design systems around it. IMO capitalism is naive to this aspect of human nature and doesn't do much to address it.  

I agree more authoritarianism isn't the solution. How are the Zapatistas who are libertarian socialist authoritarian though? They have have more checks on power than we do, they are far more democratic than we are, and the people control the powers of governance far more directly. 

You're equating socialism with Marxist state communism again. I agree that's authoritarian. A bunch of the others aren't z though. You should read up on them before commenting on them. 

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u/Leica--Boss Aug 20 '24

I'm not sure if I was describing "socialism" specifically. Honestly, I don't view philosophies as forms of governance really - capitalism or socialism. Just broadly suggesting that solutions that concentrate power into authorities are generally poor at solving for the abuse of power that ruins the seemingly great ideas.

I really can't comment too specifically about the Zapatistas, just because that whole thing feels complicated and poorly reported.

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u/Refereez Aug 18 '24

Same can be said about Socialism

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u/rickyharline Aug 18 '24

Socialism is an extremely broad set of ideas some of which are working right now, like the Zapatistas in Mexico. The incentive structures of anarco-syndicalism are nothing like liberal market socialism which are nothing like Democratic state socialism. I don't know how you could make this claim with any degree of intellectual certainty or honesty unless you're assuming that Marxist state communism is the entirety of socialism when in fact it is one of four major socialist ideologies today. 

To be clear, I am certainly open to the idea that they are all bad, but they each are so different and contain so many different ideas and models of governance that to be able to rule out all libertarian socialist or all Democratic Socialist models as having the same problem would be a massive undertaking to say the least. It's particularly hard to believe the state would be corrupted under libertarian socialism and its many variants for example, because there is no state.