Quote from: RobertJasiek on August 14, 2023, 12:46:25NicoB, you do not need a theory of Intel bribing OEMs but too few / bad ports in AMD devices can simply be a case of your "OEMs save the last penny in R&D".
Anti-monopol authorities are not actually blind but under-powered both in the bureacracies and politicians, such as the EU Commission. It takes seconds to become creative with new monopolistic practices but years to proof and punish each. Therefore, related legislation must be harsher, such as "out of business in case of repeated violation".
Not only leftists but also rightists threaten democracies.
Democracy is the power of the majority, violent power over the minority. As history has shown, Hitler came to power in a democracy. And Putin too. At the same time, Western countries agreed that these were democracies.
Democracy is essentially meaningless if there is no civic (in a positive sense - and therefore critically thinking, sane and instantly cutting down on the attempts of bastards to penetrate power, withdrawing them immediately as soon as they violate election promises that educated and critically thinking citizens considered feasible, that is, .e. recalling politicians in a clear and quick procedure, deliberately refusing to fulfill their direct duties to citizens). It is also meaningless (profanity and demagogy) if the elections are not direct and anonymous. They must be direct and non-anonymous - everyone in society must be responsible for the choice made, then the choice will be made much more difficult and tougher in terms of consequences for rogues in power on the part of the population.
Now all over the world, including the USA, instead of a really working power of citizens, there is a puppet props with populists at the head and a population that is not responsible for its choice, until finally the country comes to a complete collapse. Up to this point, everyone pretends that they have nothing to do with it. Only when their personal skin and the right to life are affected do they suddenly begin to remember the responsibility for the once stupid choice made by the populists (and their shadow teams).
Do you think that in Europe and the USA (or the "West" in general) the majority of the population is now very different from authoritarian countries? Not at all. Since 2020, it has clearly shown that it is ready to sacrifice freedom and rights in violation of the Constitutions for the sake of illusory and false security, out of its own stupidity. And what did they end up with?
And Hi-Tech, as the most diversified and most globalized chain of division of labor, is the very first to feel bad trends and changes in the global world order. Hi-tech is like a litmus test, the first to show that everything is bad with societies and economies. And the same "democracy". The whole high-tech problem is a reflection of global problems and imbalances.
If the population were smarter, they would understand this, but alas, the majority wander in intellectual darkness and ignorance all their lives.