This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I'd rather have clean air and water. If ai is harming the environment and the health of the people around it, then it's cheaper on the government to get rid of AI than deal with the health issues. It's not that hard.
Part of Universal Healthcare is making sure corporations are not poisoning the people.
It doesn't have wealth. It has debt.
Exactly ; it's not possible to seize wealth that doesn't exist. A money bubble is not wealth.
Yeah. Thats the thing about all the investment. I don't want my 401K or any of anyone's retirement invested in AI either but that's been happening since the beginning by proxy.
So now the government wants to let them gamble with my taxes too and everyone should know the plan is to leave regular people holding the bag and paying off the debt. Debt larger than most countries GDP. The rich gambled. Let them lose.
But Bernie's been advocating for this, guys! You know, Bernie! He's surely not another octogenarian career politician with a limited understanding of the tech sector!
Did you read the proposal?
I listened to a pretty comprehensive interview Bernie had regarding his proposal a few weeks ago. My big takeaway was that he fundamentally misunderstands the technology as it currently exists, and while he's skeptical of the motives of these tech CEOs, he's completely bought in on their nonsense claims of fully automating the workforce.
AKA an octogenarian suggesting legislation on a technology he doesn't understand. This is a thing that has bitten Americans in the ass countless times in the last four decades.
I wanted to make sure I wasn't talking to someone who just went off the base headlines without actually looking into the proposal first.
I don't agree with Bernie Sanders' plan. It was obvious to me when I read the first article that he doesn't understand the technology, but the more important thing is that he doesn't seem to have followed the money. The way stocks and services are being traded to inflate some companies while keeping other failing companies solvent is the whole reason this is a bubble. What the proposal doesn't seem to account for (that I've read) is that if this tech doesn't become profitable in a mainstream way the tax payers (who are already very likely to lose savings, retirement investments, and jobs) will still be on the hook for the debt and will actually see no benefit from the short term pump of the stock in these companies.
I voted for Bernie in the primary. I think he and a lot of other politicians are too old for the roles they currently hold. But if I'm honest I don't think this is just about old people not understanding tech. At least, it's not exclusively old people. There are so many people my age and younger who don't understand this tech or the economics and business practices behind it, and they are more than willing to trust it blindly.
if this doesn't become profitable in a mainstream way
This is exactly what I meant by Bernie being caught up in tech CEO bluster. He can't imagine that this shit doesn't change the world in monumental and lucrative ways. He's talked about how the tech people he's spoken to don't like his proposal because they don't want to share the profits, but I haven't seen any CEO make public comments one way or the other. With everyone involved knowing it's a bubble, I'm sure they secretly love to insure their investments with public money. They just can't say it out loud or the bubble might pop early.
And, yes, people of every age are tech illiterate. But overwhelmingly the elderly are the people crafting legislation about tech. Old age is heavily associated with cognitive decline, which makes it harder to understand, examine, and interrogate unfamiliar ideas, such as "AI" or "Whatever the Fuck Private Equity is Doing Right Now." Bernie's a smart guy, and it seems like he's still sharper than a lot of his contemporaries, but you can't fight nature. I'd rather see him cosponsor legislation with a younger senator and mentor the next generation of congress, instead of hanging on to the bitter end and giving us half-baked policy like this.
Yes. Agreed. But it's the Business aspect of this and his inability to understand that that I question. We have seen this before with government bailouts.
It seems like the idea is that if every American owns a piece of the pie so to speak, then we actually get something from bailing these companies out or rather insuring them with our tax dollars.
But what he can't seem to see is that this is exactly what businesses would want if they know they exist in a bubble.
We accuse a lot of politicians of being on the take, or invested in businesses that are a conflict of interest, and I think that assumptions clouds our ability to really honestly look at their poor understanding of business and economics.
I have to assume he thinks that these companies will pay us back for the bailout. That's pretty much what happened (supposedly) with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Even though they didn't receive a loan and there wasn't really any language in the agreement that legally bound them to pay back the bailout. But really what happened is the government just took over these companies (via conservatorship), and so even though the bailout has been ended, we haven't really gotten our money back, the damage goes very far beyond the monetary bailout, and the housing market is worse than ever. The loan market is worse than ever.
So what I'm saying is, the terrible business acumen/literacy of politicians combined with the vast majority of them using elected office to further enrich themselves is often overshadowed by how tech literate they are and one of those things is far more dangerous in the long term. Because most young people might be tech literate to some degree but they aren't business savvy by and large so electing younger officials doesn't solve this problem.
Bernie doesn't have to be tech literate. But he should at the very least have the pattern recognition to put two and two together and see that this isn't the first time.
On the stock thing, maybe wait until after the AI bubble bursts and half them go bankrupt.
Fuck this.
Fuck. This.
The last thing I want is forcing my money into an OpenAI/Anthropic investment at the peak of their bubble. Don’t listen to any of this, its all part of the con, to keep their scheme going and leave the public holding the bag.
Yep. We'd just be solidifying the base of this whole pyramid scheme with our tax dollars.
And when the bubble pops, the handful of people at the top will have fucked off their trillions, and the rest of us will deal with the consequences.
No please don't. We will get 0% of the profits and 100% of the debt/consequences slowly paid out to mystery accounts with taxes that could have been spent on proper heathcare 100 times over.
tax the tokens
Look if we start taking money back from obvious scams that are ripping us off, where do we stop? Vulture Capitalist firms? BlackRock? All landlords?
Hey now, don't threaten me with a good time!
That's the neat part, we don't!
Vulture Capitalist firms? BlackRock? All landlords?
Go on...
ISPs, Pharmaceuticals, hospitals, railways...
Like that money is actually going to end up in the pockets of average Americans.
One aspect of capitalism that many people don't get is that capital is only capital and not just money, because you can force people to work for you, that's why UBI or paying people based on stock values will never be enough to get your average person out of wage slavery.
that’s why UBI ... will never be enough to get your average person out of wage slavery.
Care to elaborate on that one?
It's fundamental to capitalism
Capital is "Wealth, money, or assets used to start a business, produce goods, or invest for future growth"
Even if you don't fully agree with the labor theory of value if you accept that it's partially accurate, then it's fundamental to capitalism to have a captive workforce that have to work to survive, because that's how you turn your money into more money: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value
That's why the development of modern capitalism was contingent on enclosing the commons and taking away people's ability to survive without working in factories for capitalists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure#Parliamentary_inclosure_acts
And also why the myth of the tragedy of the commons was invented by a literal lord: https://inthesetimes.com/article/commons-practices-capitalism-enclosure-peasants-indigenous-collective-ownership
If you really want to get into the details Marx lays it out pretty well in Capital vol.1 (even if it's not written in a particularly concise way and quite Eurocentric, I think this aspect is pretty well sourced and does explain how capitalism came to be in Europe pretty well).
So under a capitalist system, where capitalists & the state need your labor in order to enrich themselves, no alternative to labor is ever going to remove the requirement for people to work in order to access what they need to survive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_mode_of_production#Distinguishing_characteristics
So, you're saying that the fundamental reason why people will always work is because a few rich bastards want it that way?
Sounds like a problem that has been solved many times in the past, never permanently so far but it never hurts to try again.
I was only saying that under capitalism, the system requires people be separated from the resources we need to survive and forced to work, so we should at a minimum replace that with something better.
But i do agree that as long as some people control access to what we need to survive, those people they will use that control to extract value from the rest of us
I think it's only been solved a few times in the past, and usually that happens capitalists & authoritarian "communists" did a lot of work to prevent it spreading.
I say: UBI is how you break that separation of the people from the resources they need to survive.
I say: UBI is something better. It is an automatic social safety net. It gives every citizen "credibility" that they can make some regular payments reliably.
I say: even $600 per month UBI would give everyone the ability to tell an overbearing boss "no, I'm not doing that."
I say: UBI + flat tax is a fair, progressive tax system which "caps out" at a rate that's fair (equal) for everyone and doesn't tax the poor, it's a negative tax on the poor.
I say: UBI is affordable. At a rate of $600 per month UBI, a US flat tax of roughly 33% would be revenue neutral, providing the $2.5T per year necessary to fund UBI and another $2.5T for incentive programs that used to be called "incentive tax breaks." This would be a modest tax break for the top earners who currently pay 37% on every dollar they earn above their current income. It would represent a tax increase on the wealthy, but they would never be paying more than the 33% flat rate that everyone in the country would pay on every dollar earned.
I say: UBI is overdue. There are 134 government domestic aid programs in the US, each one more byzantinely administered than the next. Most of those could be eliminated, replaced by UBI. Break out my tiniest violin for the bureaucrats who won't be "needs testing program applicants" anymore, they'll get UBI like the rest of us.
I say: only a tiny fraction of the US population would be opposed to UBI if they understood the impact it would truly have on their daily lives. Nobody would need to beg on street corners. Nobody would need to steal to eat. People would still do it, but people doing that with UBI could be short-tracked to the counselling they need to get their lives straightened out so they aren't desparate anymore. Who wants to live in a country with a bunch of desperate people?
When Big Oil came to fuck Alaska they did this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund it ain't much, but it's better than 0.
That was done by the State of Alaska, not the Federal government.
I imagine that even if something like this was established, I imagine that a huge chunk of each dollar would disappear into the bureaucracy.
Also, given the financial issues, it may not be the cash cow everyone thinks.
even if something like this was established, I imagine that a huge chunk of each dollar would disappear into the bureaucracy.
As it does in Alaska, though some views of the situation say that that's reducing taxes while simultaneously providing valuable services...
Also, given the financial issues, it may not be the cash cow everyone thinks.
Personally, I don't mind Bernie's plan: annex 51% of the company stock by imminent domain or whatever you want to call it, if it implodes there's no real loss, but if it's profitable then the business wizards of our government can tap the excess wealth to return to the people who provided the training for the models the buisness is based on. UBI is the politically flashy way to return the profits, but reducing taxes can have a similar effect for taxpayers - but my question is: which taxpayers need the breaks?
Transferring half of Grok to a public wealth fund will just create a government-powered incentive to keep developing Grok until it's actually profitable for Elon Musk.
Make them pay proper taxes and force this race to burn money (to "win" at AI and take it all, supposedly) at everyone else's expense into the league of millions, not billions.
Add to social security so we can retire earlier than 120.
