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Comment by hannahstrawbrry | Hacker News Reader

A lot of these types of AI complaints feel like blaming a pothole for cracking your windshield in half even though you've been driving around with it full of chips and micro cracks for years. It's certainly exacerbated the issue to a point where it's impossible to ignore now but the warning signs have been there for years- utilities and municipalities failing to secure power and water resources for future residents, companies engaging in mass layoffs only for the stock prices to climb. AI adoption aggravated the symptoms, the root causes remain the same.

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I think it's more that our governments only leap to patch up some of those chips and cracks when big biz rolls thru, even though "the little guy" has been raising it as an issue for decades.

But then again, democracy absolutely fails in that you have to already be rich to be a politician most of the time and people tend to vote extremely tribally by party rather than on policies (lest they accidentally vote for the wrong party!)

The truth is in many democracies none of the parties are prepared to do what needs to be done most of the time, nor is the average voter prepared to accept any form of compromise or abstain from uninformed, knee-jerk and tribally motivated reactions to proposed policy.

Aka we only have our dumb selves to blame.

> utilities and municipalities failing to secure power

To be fair, it's not as if they didn't often try to build more power.

As it turns out, most people don't like having a massive fuel-burning power plant near their homes. Now they don't even like having solar panel fields near their homes. These people often are the same kind to show up at city hall or public utility board meetings and raise a fuss.

Now, are they doing it and returning to houses that take a crapload (I do believe that is the technical term) of energy to heat and cool because of out-of-date windows, insulation, and HVAC controls? Maybe. Are they sometimes also the same people who hated the idea of phasing out incandescent bulbs? Probably. But either way, that power source ain't getting built.

> and water resources

Kansas City, St. Louis, Omaha, Des Moines, Milwaukee, Chicago, the Twin Cities, Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Columbus all sit on major rivers or massive freshwater lakes and aren't in a desert climate. We could do something with that.

as an Arizonan with a rapidly rising water bill because of Colorado River standoffs that one is personal :)

The NIMBY problem is very real especially for an area filled with resorts and vacation homes, but when you have 20 years to figure it out I think there has to be more than that at play. They're ultimately going to fix the problem with a transmission line anyways.

The difference is whether the government or the people are complaining then, right?

Or do you have something else in mind?

To me it's a classic "commons" problem. All our wealth in the end comes from extracting common resources and "making the best" of it.

Whether "the best" is to sustain population levels or to maximize private capital is a political question.

As of now, demanding things like free access to clean water is considered ideological and misguided by many people, maybe even "extreme".

I don't think it's that clear of a delineation especially in situations like this with utilities and governments wrestling over regulations. I believe that a lot of the folks who have been in the drivers seat and ignored the chips in the windshield that is the fabric of our society are happy to have something to direct blame towards no matter their affiliations or underlying beliefs about how resources ought to be managed, or even their own attitudes about AI usage.

i understand your point, however your "driver's seat" metaphor blurs the accountability of political representation IMO. Are voters in the "driver's seat"? Local governments?

What I see as a valuable point is that federal governments with subsidies that "distort" markets for public goods and externality regulation, worsen the "tragedy of the commons".

Explaining many things to a naive person, or a kid, boils down to this type of issue, you can even extend it to nation states.

Without experience of violence, most people would intuitively understand that a "competition" between governments is problematic.

Same issue, different undertones: tax havens.

It's because the accountability isn't clear cut. Many hands have touched those levers of power over the last 20 years this specific problem has incubated, not all of them governmental.

I see, maybe I am underestimating local factors and individual responsibility here. After all, democracy depends on people to vote, and wealthy people generally are free to move and can more easily buy property, even if unsafe. So the individual financial or survival risk of relying on "society" (for example, insurance, firefighting, infrastructure etc) also anti-proportional to wealth/ a beach house is not the same as a rented flat or hard-earned small apartment in some precarious space.

Still sounds like an instance of redistribution problems to me.

I really disagree with the idea that goverment subsidies are either inherently good or bad overall.

Agricultural subsidies are often poorly distributed and managed from corruption and greed, but agricultural subsidies is also the only alternative to the granary system to prevent famine, and the granary system regularly failed and still resulted in famines. Countries with any decent agricultural subsidies however have essencially eliminated famine, despite the low 1-2% profit margins but 30% variations in yearly yield that farms have to weather.

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