grafmax

"Our" adversaries, huh? There are more people in our country than pedophile billionaires, but it's this group starting the wars, murdering civilians, and producing generations of "adversaries".

I work on 1M LOC 15 yr old repo. Like you it's across the full stack. Bugs in certain pieces of complex business logic would have catastrophic consequences for my employer. Basically I peel poorly-specific work items off my queue into its own worktree and session at high reasoning/effort and provide a well-specified prompt.

These things eat into my supervision budget:

* LLM loses the plot and I have to nudge (like you) * Thinking hard to better specify prompts (like you) * Reviewing all changes (I do not vibe code except for spikes or other low-risk areas) * Manual thing I have to do (for things I have not yet automated with a agent-authored scripts) * Meetings * etc

So, yes, my supervision budget is a bottleneck. I can only run 5-8 agents at a time because I have only so much time in the day.

Compare that vs a single agent at high reasoning/effort: I am sitting waiting for it to think. Waiting for it to find the code area I'm talking about takes time. Compiling, running tests, fixing compile errors. A million other things.

Any time I find myself sitting and waiting, this is a signal to me to switch to a different session.

A person has a supervision budget. They can supervise one agent in a hands-on way or many mostly-hands-off agents. Even though theres some thrashing assistants still get farther as a team than a single micromanaged agent. At least that’s my experience.

Capital is a commodity, just like a business' product. It does not produce value. Labor does. This is a central point of LTV!

We witnessed the same thing with looms and other automation in the Industrial Revolution. Capital that helps you produce more. But owners faced with increased competition under commoditized production see their profit margins fall. Thus they will turn to squeezing workers - the source of value - for profit in the newly commoditized landscape - exactly what happened during the Industrial Revolution. It was only when workers got their act together and organized that this decline was stopped and reversed.

Prices should be transparent, yes. But supply and demand isnt going to take down an oligopoly.

Even if it is worthless, it will still be used for these things - because of the sense of confidence it instills in the kinds of people undertaking these sorts of activities.

Many things are missing from this picture. It uses mean not median income, which would do a better job of telling how widespread the increase is. It uses a basic inflation adjustment which doesn’t differentiate between luxury goods and services vs basic necessities. In other words it’s hard to tell to what degree this rise has benefited people in general.

American tech companies have already built an apparatus of mass surveillance that works hand in glove with our government to violate our constitutional rights on a regular basis.

But it turns out that an economy based on rent extraction and enshittification can’t in the long run compete with one based on a real economy of industry, agriculture, and public services.

We should have privacy laws including mandated user control of user data. In my view, scaremongering around China just demonstates how uncompetitive the US is, in the long run. We should set our sights higher than merely begging to trade one form of technofeudalism for another.

The question isn’t the jobs created but how have workers benefited from increased productivity? They haven’t materially since late 1970s. That’s when the American labor movement began its decline. Innovation isn’t what helps workers. The gains from innovation have to be wrenched from the hands of the ruling class through organized resistance.

Right we had a functioning labor movement to thank for productivity gains being distributed to the working class. When that got undermined beginning late seventies early 80s with offshoring we see wealth just flowing to the top without significantly benefiting the working class.

Venezuela participates in a small portion of the illegal drug trade. US government officials have stated that they want Venezuela’s oil reserves. This is a transparent excuse for an oil grab.

So-called property rights are a legal construction that protects the wealth of the wealthy from the working class utilizing the justice system to maintain the domination of the wealthy over the working class, classifying expropriations of their wealth as theft. Capitalist states have always been subordinate to the wealthy, and the justice system is one branch of that apparatus.

> once you are in a contract you need to fulfill them, however you can make any contract you like and are free to terminate them at any time (with a notice period).

This is a bankrupt notion of freedom that ignores the power differences between the parties in the contract. Those with less money have fewer choices available to them and are thus less free. That’s why relationships of exploitation continue to exist such as between the Amazon worker who pisses into a bottle to boost their metrics while Bezos retains the freedom to sit on his billions and pay politicians to do his bidding. These relationships wouldn’t exist if the parties were on equal footing.

> It is true, that some people are born rich, and most don't, but this is unfair not unfree.

Wealth differences are power differences. The power differences give rise to exploitative relationships. Wealth differences aren’t a fact of nature. They are a result of how we as humans have organized our societies. We have made this and we can unmake it. Sucking our thumbs and saying “that’s just the way things are” is part of the ideological apparatus that maintains the power of the capitalist class over the working class.

Wealth differences are power differences and as such impinge on freedom since those with less wealth have their choices subtracted in relationships of capitalist exploitation.

That’s an argument made about training the initial model. But the comment stated that DeepSeek stole its research from the US which is a much stronger allegation without any evidence to it.

No you need a state to enforce the property rights of capitalists over workers.

Nor are people all “free” under capitalism - for example the ability to start a business is predicated on assets to fund the business. Capitalist freedoms is freedom for the rich.

And the supposed freedoms of a worker to enter into a contract are a choice between lesser evils - limited choices given their precarious position relative to employers. Jeff Bezos vs an Amazon warehouse worker - it’s not a contract between equals. You seem intent on denying the real power difference between employers and employees as supposedly free arrangements.

As for worker rights they have been fought for by the labor despite the vicious resistance of the capitalist class. Since the 1980s those rights have deteriorated as wealth has continued to consolidate. It’s a trend that’s likely to continue as the richest pollute our globe, promote austerity, extract rent from the working class, undermine democracies, and instigate war.

Markets are a place where buyers and sellers come together and exchange money for goods and services.

Markets exploit. Example: the labor market; individuals are forced among unfavorable options to work for the enrichment of business owners otherwise they will end up on the street. Business owners themselves do not face this choice; they have their capital to fall back on. Another example is the housing market where the wealthy have bid up housing as a financial asset, so the working class pays a larger and larger share of income to banks and rentiers, a cash flow from workers to the wealthy. Now people are making ‘choices’ here so supposedly that means markets are expression of free desires. But when one’s choices are constrained due to the power differential between the haves and have nots, the choices are not a free choice. To have actual agency you have to have power, but the power is in the hands of the ownership class.

Maybe you think markets are a necessary evil. But they are not some bastion of freedom like you suppose. That is absurd. We should look at markets for what they are not to candy coat them.

Capitalism is a system where workers create value through their work and are compensated with a portion of that value in the forms of wages. The business owner, the capitalist, is able to extract a portion of that for themselves because they own the business. The state maintains this exploitation of workers’ productivity through so-called property rights - the “rights” of the business owner over the worker. Without the state, this system falls apart.

I guess see a “free market” as a contradiction, a utopia that even if it existed for a moment would promptly undo itself. As for capitalism - capture of the state by monied interests has always been a central feature.

Inequality has always existed to some degree, sure, but that’s a shallow platitude. Markets have give us levels not seen since the Pharaohs. No the existence of any inequality doesn’t justify the insane levels we see today.

And blaming NIMBYism not Thatcher’s ideology for UK’s stagnation is pretty funny. Like that has had more influence.

Markets are the expression of an unfree society because they concentrate power in the hands of the few. Those with more money benefit by exploiting those with less - exploiting workers on the one hand and consumers on the other (through rent extraction). Stalinism is one form of planned economy but in your view the choices are Stalinism vs unregulated markets as if no other options exist. Absurd.

After decades of neoliberalism (thanks to politicians like Thatcher) we can see what a failure it has been. Wealth inequality is growing, climate change is getting worse, far right movements are spreading, governments are run by oligarchs, industry has declined, the working class is squeezed, labor movements have been crushed, housing shortages.. it’s an ideology of class war by the rich against the working class.

No, my point is the root cause is wealth inequality, which is fundamentally undemocratic, and a different issue than free speech. The solution is wealth expropriation, not censorship.

Money is power. Markets produce wealth inequality. The richest use their money to buy influence and write the rules. Fundamentally a “regulated market” is an unstable system that eats itself, a fiction.

Your voice being heard is one thing. What we have here is the consequence of huge wealth disparities. Those with the money can influence the “democratic” process in outsized ways. That is the opposite of democratic.

Yeah it does seem there’s some confusion. Here is the similar proposal referencing Israel from earlier this year (perhaps a source of some of the confusion):

https://collaborate.unpri.org/group/35681/home

It’s more akin to an arms manufacturer knowingly supplying a genocidal regime.

As for targeting Palantir instead, boycott, divestment, and sanctions is most effective when it targets all the complicit players.

Where moral superiority means condemning genocide.

Tried and true Silicon Valley strategy: burn VC money to build a moat, wait until switching costs are high enough, and then enshittify the product to extract rent.

Dont forget to call it progress.

I didn’t say it’s a small forum but a small financial contribution - to one book. This is the totality of actual evidence you have of Mearsheimer, Chomsky, and Sachs being Russian propagandists. Your argument is paper-thin.

Criticizing American foreign policy doesn’t make someone a Russian propagandist.

> They are Russian propaganda, Mearsheimer most notably. His books are financed by the Russian government.

The closest thing I could find about this was that in one of his books he acknowledges partial financing of this one book from a small prize from a Russian internet forum. That’s all I could find. Chomsky and Sachs supposedly fall under this umbrella too, according to you. Presumably criticizing American foreign policy is equivalent to Russian propaganda in your view.

Nor are any of the conspiracy theories you attribute to them something I could find evidence of.

My point there in my comment about these three holding these views was that this isn’t simply Russian fake news. It’s held by some reputable scholars as well. Your response is to claim these scholars too are Russian propagandists, bolstering your case with outright fabrications.

The US leadership openly refers to Ukraine as a proxy war. I do think it’s worth listening to critics of US foreign policy in that context, and not limiting our information diet to European politicians.

First off, what I stated is a view held by reputable scholars such as Noam Chomsky, Jeffrey Sachs, and John Mearsheimer, not just a view you (also) can find in Russian propaganda.

Second my point is understanding the Russian POV, regardless of the correctness of that POV.

Third, your comment is off base historically. The timeline is:

2007 Putin’s Munich speech warning against NATO expansion to Eastern Europe.

Feb 2008 US ambassador warning that NATO expansion to Ukraine was a red line for Russia.

April 2008 Bucharest summit Ukraine and Georgia were not given MAPs due to France and Germany objections but were promised NATO accession over their objections.

August 2008 invasion of Georgia.

Nov 2013-Feb 2014 Euromaidan protests overthrowing Russia-sympathetic Yanukovych

2014 invasion of Crimea

Feb 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

Besides this Putin has argued for the invasion of Ukraine as restoration of historical Russia as part of his nationalist ideology. And other examples of NATO expansion such as Baltics, Poland and Finland have not led to Russian attacks.

Overall the concerns many European leaders have about Russia need to be tempered by a better understanding of Russia’s actual perspective (as I said not the same as advocating for that perspective).

Friend, I think you may have gotten your links mixed up.