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Comment by Avicebron | Hacker News Reader

Well if it's any consolation, the profits from the datacenters go to a handful of Americans. People are just as pissed about them here.

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You know those companies are publicly owned and big % of American public owns shares in them? Additionally Google employs some 100k people in US and almost as many in Europe. Those are mostly very good jobs as well.

The whole anti-datacenters sentiments is stupid but "profits go to a handful of Americans" is just pants of fire kind of take.

The actual value goes to the people who are boosting their productivity with AI.

If you are paying $200/mo and getting $10,000 of value from it, then you are capturing 98% of the value.

People seem to inherently understand this, while consciously being unaware of it.

Who captures the productivity gains, the workers or capital?

That depends on if you are self-employed and having Claude do your labor for you, or if you are a corporate prompt-jockey.

I would say they are split. Users clearly capture a ton. Anthropic is IPO'ing although probably at lower than initially hoped for. Big players are making big bets (datacenters, money on training). I would say right now:

-workers (employees) make absolute killing

-users of the product make absolute killing

-capital is making risky bets that may pay-off but for now it's unclear if they will and if so if it's going to be fast enough to be worth it

Mid-terms are almost here and left wing anti-DC propaganda bots are scrambling.

I'm sure you too noticed it too when Yandex datacenters went down so did all the anti-datacenter posts too.

I never understood why a second sad fact would be consolation for a first one.

You need two "womps" from a trombone for it to land.

Agreed. Perhaps the poster was being ironic, but we'll never know unless explicitly told.

You reminded me of something. I heard in the Czech Republic when communism ended, the state owned industries became owned by the public. Every citizen received a share.

I wonder if we're going to need something similar when AI nukes the economy.

It worked that way in Russia too. Some people managed to quickly consolidate those shares by exploiting the economic hardship of the people caused by the fall of the USSR by hoovering up those shares for Kopecks on the Rubel, and that's where the current day oligarchy was formed.

A bottle of vodka for your shares, comrade. Etc...

This makes them sound stupid, but there was a lot of outright theft and threats going around too.

Yes. Did not mean any disrespect. I have a bunch of friends from Russia living now abroad who has been telling stories from those years.

Reminds me of this somewhat related video that describes the process of selling off state industries in East Germany

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cdrSiIoWm7U&pp=ygUMZ2RyIHRyZXV...

Same thing would happen. There'd be signs on every street light pole "Sell your AI shares. CASH PAID TODAY!!"

No. Nothing to do with current criminal oligarchs, that are consolidating businesses by robbing owners of companies by overtaking their business with force and access to state and Putin. Like it was with conflict with division of Wildberies, when owner had to cooperate with Chechen mafia so her ex-husband would not have robbed her of her business.

Hodorkovsky became oligarch, because he represented Western investors in very profitable oil industry, that is basically what Russia was able to offer to the world, as most of factories from Soviet times were not usable in market economy - nobody wanted what they produced. That is the reason why many people were having hardships in 1990ies, because they had no job and no money to exist. Only in times of Putin Russia had influx of foreign money from oil and gas, which was redistributed to other people as well. But everything is fleeting in Russia.

The transition from communism to capitalism was hardly as rosy as people in the West like to think.

Of course, how this unfolded varied. For example, unlike the chaotic Russian privatization that created a class of oligarchs, the transition in places like Poland favored a network of well-placed insiders, a highly structured network of intelligence officers (military, civilian), state managers, and flexible communist party elites, who - by controlling information, intelligence networks, and the liquidation apparatus - effectively laundered their authoritarian political privileges into financial dominance.

It's incredible that none of this stuff was repossessed.

Yes. Should also cover what happened in East Germany when the wall went down. And people are now somehow surprised when everybody's kind of pissed outside of the few big cities.

There was a West Berlin bunch of real estate tycoons that got wind the wall was about to fall and they went across and started buying property left, right and center. They made billions on that, effectively owning the heart of Berlin post unification.

Funny story: I once got arrested at Checkpoint Charlie :)

Here some pics from those empty skyscrapers that are completely missing all the walls and the scaffolding's been gathering rust for years. And all the court cases for the people who bought the "luxury apartments" that never realized.

I'm always surprised that the topography of terror exhibition in Berlin misses this part of the German history. Nazi's and communists are presented, but the robber barons who bought all the real estate don't get a presentation.

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