I’m not entirely sure if I’m fully compatible, but hey, I’ve even got some new features now, even though some of the popular old ones have been partially superseded – so maybe there are still some legitimate use cases for “Legacy Me” after all :)

Yeah, if only because Flash—Ahhhaaahhaaa—is the savior of the universe. You know, that Flash—Ahhhaaahhaaa—he’ll save every one of us.

I had a lot of security flaws and vulnerabilities that were patched over time. I can’t understand why people are still running such old versions of me - it’s grossly negligent.

What I meant by that was that many tech companies hire people, who frequently perform these tasks on a project basis for only short periods of time, and pay them a pittance for their work. Their numbers are likely to fluctuate greatly.

I was by no means trying to emphasise the fact that these people mostly live in countries where wages are particularly low and where there are virtually no labor protections; I was simply pointing out that they are usually hired on a short-term basis.

This exploitative practice, as well as other “gig-work” arrangements, is unfortunately quite widespread, especially in the tech industry, and serves to increase corporate profitability. Many tech companies use this approach to reduce the number of permanent employees—a practice that, of course, isn’t unique to the tech industry—but using these practices there are many tech companies that generate astronomical revenues with a comparatively small workforce.

Mechanical Turk

I don’t understand what you’re getting at. Of course tech companies have a lot of employees if you count all the “mechanical turks”. That’s simply misleading.

None of that has much to do with what my original comment was about.

You’re saying that it’s impossible for powerful, completely degenerate people to be capable of playing their power games.

My take on this is that a look at the history books proves you wrong. LinkedIn-style fairy tales about leadership and all that bogus doesn’t change much about that.

Because they have the money to do so. Those who have it simply pay good people. You should know this if you’ve ever dealt with large companies. It doesn’t take good management—just the money to pay the people who do the work. You should also know that giant online corporations like Meta have an incredibly small number of employees compared to industrial companies, and labor is the biggest cost factor in any business.

What do you actually do for a living? You claim to have insights. Where did you get them?

I’d be an idiot to say here what I do for a living, but yes, I regularly deal with CEOs -and it’s precisely this experience that makes it all the more likely to me that a conspiracy like the one mentioned above is underway. While I’m nowhere near that level, I’m still quite familiar with the politics in companies with 500 or more employees. For me, this is all the more reason to entertain such thoughts, because I know of hardly any company where performance or competence is even remotely appreciated. The people I know as “the decision-makers” should actually be the very last ones to make decisions—they’re self-absorbed, unscrupulous people.

This is a conspiracy theory, but is it really so far-fetched to assume that the most powerful 1% of the populations are joining forces worldwide to establish something like a global feudal regime?

It’s entirely feasible, since we’re talking about just a few thousand people here.

In any case, these people have one thing in common: they view democracy as a problem. This applies to Trump just as much as it does to Putin and Jinping. The same goes for their henchmen, such as Merz in Germany, for example.

It’s not that unthinkable when you consider the fundamental idea behind fascism, as shaped by Mussolini in his day: a brotherhood of the elites striving for absolute rule.

It seems to me that this is now the agenda, especially since in the U.S., with the pseudo-intellectual concept of “Dark Enlightenment,” there doesn’t even seem to be any attempt to hide it.

I’m not usually a fan of such ideas, but it does seem very, very suspicious to me, given that the leaders of the world’s most powerful countries are apparently doing everything in their power to undo the civilizational progress of the last hundred years—and are clearly doing so in a fairly well-coordinated manner.

That really sounds like the same owner. I’m always grateful for whatever food she grants me, especially since it’s always excellent, and I wouldn’t dream of not flushing the toilet—that would undoubtedly lead to the consequences stated on the sign; that’s as certain as death and taxes.

There’s a Laotian restaurant right around the corner from me that serves really delicious food. The owner is an elderly lady who’s so amazingly unfriendly that it’s actually funny.

In the men’s restroom, there’s a sign hanging above the urinals that reads: “Flush, or else ✂️”

Is there anything in the UK after Brexit that is similar to the GDPR? While it does little to protect EU citizens from the influence of corrupt politicians, it is at least a law on the books that stands in the way of the neo-fascists’ diabolical schemes. Is there anything comparable in the UK?

Yes, because of his financial success, he considers himself a genius—which he very obviously never was. This is a common trait among billionaires. Many of them are psychopaths who have amassed their wealth through utter unscrupulousness, irresponsibility in the form of an absurd willingness to take risks, and sheer luck.

In the case of Musk, Thiel, and various others, that stroke of luck was PayPal. That company was so successful that it made all of its investors immeasurably rich—it was more a matter of chance that PayPal succeeded, and everything that followed really wasn’t all that difficult because that kind of money cannot lose anymore no matter how ridiculous stupid someone might be.

That’s precisely the problem: We only hear about the people who bet everything on one card and won—they’re portrayed as geniuses, which they never were. We never hear anything about all those who failed miserably—and that’s the vast majority.

Billionaires aren’t geniuses or even above-average in intelligence. Their financial success has, in the rarest of cases, anything to do with intelligence.

I’m pretty sure it’s because he can’t stand losing. The man clearly suffers from a narcissistic personality disorder.

The best response to this would be to ignore everything she says. This person is even less significant than her husband. Her relevance stems simply from the attention she receives, as is the case with all MAGA cultists. The solution to this problem has been known since the early days of the internet: Don’t feed the trolls.

If everyone adhered to this very simple rule, the current U.S. regime wouldn’t even exist, because they very obviously have no competence whatsoever, except for stirring up random shit online. Don’t give these people a platform—it’s their basis of power. If you ignore them, there’s no problem.

The bullshit these people spread is the only thing that distracts from the misdeeds of their backers - the billionaires. As long as their reach is amplified, there’s no solution, because people let themselves be distracted by it.

So please: Just don’t play along—instead, focus on what really matters, even if it may seem boring.

What’s needed here is one more panel after the first one in which an Israeli politician or one of their paid representatives abroad portrays the statement from the first panel as anti-Semitic - because that, in fact, greatly fuels the insidious, real anti-Semitism.

I’m afraid you’re taking this too far. Capitalism is, first and foremost, a mode of economic organization in which:

• businesses and most means of production are privately owned;
• prices are largely shaped by supply and demand;
• pople and organizations buy and sell goods and services;
• businesses generally seek profit and compete with one another; and
• investment and economic decisions are made to a significant extent through decentralized markets.

This describes an economic system, although it is not completely value-neutral: it presupposes legal and political institutions such as private property, enforceable contracts, and market exchange. The ideology associated with capitalism depends partly on how the system is interpreted and organized. This helps explain why Germany and the United States can both be described as capitalist countries while having different economic institutions, political traditions, and social models.

Socialism can likewise take different forms and be connected to different ideologies. In Marxist theory, communism is generally understood as a later stage or goal of socialism. In political practice, however, the terms have been used in various ways. Not all socialist movements or countries are communist, while states governed by communist parties—such as China—can make extensive use of markets, private enterprise, profit, and other mechanisms commonly associated with capitalism.

In short, I think it is too simplistic to treat capitalism and socialism as completely separate and internally uniform systems. They are often used as political slogans rather than as precise descriptions. Many real-world economies combine market mechanisms with public ownership, regulation, social insurance, and collective provision. Whether such a combination produces the best results—and what “the best” should mean—is itself a normative and politically contested question. Still, maintaining an open-minded attitude seems important if we want to assess useful elements of different approaches rather than ruling them out in advance.

It is true that, in their purest forms, the two approaches are mutually exclusive, since socialism is essentially based on public ownership, while capitalism, in its most extreme form, is based exclusively on private ownership.

However, it is entirely possible to implement elements of socialism within a capitalist market economy, whereby key parts of socially important institutions remain under state control while others are organized privately.

One example of such an approach is the social market economy, which plays a role in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

It was developed among others by the economist Alfred Müller-Armack and seeks to “combine the principle of freedom in the market with that of social balance.” This approach, in turn, bears a certain resemblance to ordoliberalism (as advocated by Walter Eucken, among others), which had a formative influence on German-speaking countries in Europe after World War II.

Unfortunately, however, this approach—which I consider sensible—is not immune to U.S.-style neoliberal capitalism (Chicago school of economics and others), which has, regrettably, also taken a firm hold in Germany today and whose effects are, among other things, significantly evident in the fact that the wealthiest segments of the population are becoming ever richer, while social benefits that benefit the general public are being cut back further and further.

In my view, however, this is less a problem with the approach itself and more—as with all theories—due to the fact that any system can be corrupted by unscrupulous people.

Well, that’s what you call propaganda: whitewashing designed to distract from the reality people live in.

Here are a few other examples that are characteristic of U.S. ideology:

• The narrative that the society produced by U.S. capitalism is a meritocracy in which achievement is rewarded (the American Dream)
• The narrative that the immeasurable wealth of private individuals can be justified on the grounds that it benefits society (trickle-down economics)
• The narrative that compassion and empathy are weaknesses that must be eradicated (this idea is propagated, for example, through the emphasis on meritocracy in sports)
• The narrative that socialism is incompatible with capitalism
• The narrative that the free market can regulate society fairly, rather than always leading to monopolies
• The narrative that the U.S. is a model democracy that brings peace and prosperity to the world
• The narrative that the U.S. is a country worth living in—even one that surpasses all others in every way

This list could go on forever. The U.S. is simply what it is: the land of false promises.

Sometimes it might not be such a bad idea to listen to this DJ: I recently went to a class reunion. I felt really guilty for ages because at the graduation ceremony—where the graduates walk onto the stage in pairs—I had, back then, turned down a girl I’d had a one-night stand with a while earlier in a truly awful way.

That was one of my worst moments, I still believe. Back then, I hadn’t even mustered the courage to tell her myself; instead, I sent someone else to do it—and to make matters worse, it was one of her best friends. I blamed myself for that for years and years afterward because it was so utterly pathetic.

So, twenty years later, I finally worked up the courage to bring it up with her when we finally met again and we had talked for some time. We had a great conversation; I apologized, and it turned out that, fortunately, my mistake hadn’t affected her at all: she could barely remember it.

That was a huge relief for me. Not that I thought she wouldn’t get over me or anything, but I would never have forgiven myself if it had affected her in any way. That wasn’t the case at all, which was such a nice thing to hear. We sat together for a long time—and later, we were joined by the other girl, who’s still her friend today and who, back then during that short-lived love triangle, told her what I should have said.

The girl, whom I had so heartlessly rejected at the time—or rather, the vibrant, awesome woman she has become—reminded her friend of that, and we laughed about it. She’s doing great, too, and it’s all water under the bridge—just a fading memory that didn’t hurt any of us, although I was certainly to blame for how things turned out back then. Even though it was school years, and such escapades may lose their significance in adulthood, I’m still glad I dug up this ancient story so that we could finally close this chapter together and be good about all that fuzz I might have caused back when it mattered.

So, to make a long story short: The inner voice certainly spouts a lot of nonsense and exaggerates when it hears only its own echo, but sometimes it can help to take up its stories and share its messages with others. Chances might be, that they have a completely different perspective on things that our inner self might sell to us as an unsolvable problem.

This might be a bad example, since, on the one hand, it might make me seem like somewhat of a womanizer—which I’m not—and, on the other hand, because it presents inexcusable behavior as excusable, which wouldn’t be right, either. But what I’m getting at is that it can’t hurt to question yourself—and that works best when you face things head-on instead of turning them into castles in the air that they may never have been.

This whole situation recently has brought that fact home to me again. Maybe someone even in a completely different situation will get something from it, too. Please be so kind as not to wait decades to try…

Edit: of course, I don’t just mean things you regret because they weren’t right toward others, but also opportunities you might think you missed, self-doubt, and all that—it’s probably not that bad at all, but just the same old tune this DJ keeps playing in your head.