grafmax

Where is the jail time Sam Altman faces for unleashing AI worms across the internet? Nowhere. Billionaires don't face jail time.

Megacorps have endless budgets for this sort of thing. The deck is heavily stacked. What's to gain by pretending it ain't so?

Just that they are primarily rent-seeking operations. They are based on access to what someone owns, rather than producing something. You own the utility, you charge access to it. You own the mine, therefore can profit primarily through ownership. You have assets and charge interest for access to them, adding countless surcharges in the process (finance). Tech is primarily based on network effects creating lock-in; tech firms are started by VCs building businesses at a loss leader then dialing up enshittification to profit. Healthcare is expensive because we have entrenched interests that don't want single payer - yet everyone needs it and prices can be hiked up, gouging consumers who are at a disadvantage. Without health insurance, the insane costs are boundless; insurance companies leverage their privileged regulatory positions as gatekeepers to a basic need to gouge consumers.

It's not that they don't produce anything of value, just that these industries in particular are primarily extractive and rent-seeking; companies are able to use their "moats" to resist competitive down pressures.

The problem with Georgism is that it is short-sighted. There is no economic cost to taxing rent extraction; billionaires fund Georgist narratives because it distracts from their own rent extraction.

> Every industry you named above absolutely responds to price signals.

As does land, what's your point?

Real estate is 13.7% GDP, finance and insurance 8.7%, healthcare 7.5%, info/tech 5.7%, utilities and mining 3% - rentier capitalism is roughly 40% of the US economy.

George held land value as the only worthwhile rentierism to tax. The problem is bigger than just land value or platforms.

There is a reason billionaires astroturf [1] support for these half-measures. The "moats" they own (the monopolies and oliogopolies) are where they derive their wealth. tax

[1] https://coefficientgiving.org/research/announcing-our-new-12...

So, free if you're a VC?

Funny how China leads in most tech areas now.

Turns out letting monopoly capital control your government policy leads to short term gains at the expense of long term viability. Maybe the VCs can make some money off government surveillance and defense contracts before being completely eclipsed?

https://www.aspi.org.au/news/aspis-critical-technology-track...

US corporations have always had these kinds of relationships with foreign governments. If a given government won't accept bribes the CIA will work to overthrow them, financing and puppeting "democratic" groups to that end.

The fact is this political system of ours is heavily balanced in favor of those with the endless budgets and resources to spend engaging in "democratic" avenues of influence.

I hope one day they learn to inhabit their position more confidently instead of merely aping their competitors.

Paving the way for further stripping the populace of their rights.

The regulatory capture begins.

It's always going to be too hard as long as companies aren't held accountable.

Those Russian propagandists. Lucky the US doesn't engage in propaganda.

People are too afraid to challenge their billionaire bosses, so they go after immigrants, because immigrants seem like easy targets. It's basic human cowardice underneath.

Seems like regulation will just be an excuse for them just to end up policing themselves and get the regulatory capture they've been begging for. Have they faced any consequences for the AI worms they've released? It's not like there are no laws around that already. The problem isn't lack of laws; the government works for the plutocrats, not for us.

Yes, the right generalization of Georgism is the taxation of economic rent in its various forms - something which George himself opposed.

Not quite. FedNow is public payment infrastructure for institutions. Apple Pay is consumer-facing.

Another argument for turning finance into a public utility. Instead we have different factions of rentier capital competing for who gets to parasitize us.

Nothing can stand in the way of America's forever wars, genocide, and automated killing, including performative objections by a prominent tech company.

I suppose we're supposed to be satisfied that the letter of the law supports this steamroller? Because that's what matters?

The legal apparatus is one of the tools the death machine uses to get what it wants.

Mental health plus ad profiles, what could go wrong? I can't help but wonder about the moral fiber of the mental health professionals they say they consulted for this.

For some reason, people think that it's money that's motivating the billionaires' performances. Imagine.

Let's pretend US sanctions have had nothing to do with N Korean prosperity.

Cooperative deescalation is the right direction.

I wish. The government, regardless of party, wants AI for mass surveillance and perpetual war. It is paid off and lobbied and effectively another arm of the billionaires. Holding big companies responsible for their actions won't happen as long as big companies control the political apparatus. Like, when have we ever seen big companies receive more than a slap on the wrist? They are basically free to do anything, hack, murder, crash the economy, perpetuate genocide.

That's why something is a crime if you or I were to do it but not a crime when these companies do so.

But never fear, they will constantly tell us how what they're doing is for the sake of democracy or safety or ethics or whatever the doublethink of the day is.

That would be nice, but let's get real, with billions of dollars at your disposal you can more or less get away with whatever you want.

But I like to pretend the US is fighting for human rights.

Immigrants are a timeless scapegoat for the problems faced by the working class.

IMO US vs Chinese data vacuuming is a false choice. One of the main benefits of these open weights models is that you can get the privacy and cost savings by hosting your own model in cloud infrastructure.

Open weights models are only 4.5 months behind closed weight ones.

The fact that US considers propping its flagship technology by blacklisting competitors demonstrates how small the US competitive advantage really is.

The poor capitalists with all the money and power, making the decisions at the highest levels, guiding society's direction... can you imagine they might be responsible for the shittier and shittier turns our world is taking?

Class is the shape of power and exploitation under capitalism. Some own, others work to enrich those that own. That's all class is. Being frank about the real power differences in our society and our world isn't an ism.

Georgia acceding to NATO was viewed no differently than Ukraine by Russia and Russia clearly stated that this would cause a war, which it did. It's strange to me that you think that the US had nothing to do with expanding NATO to these countries despite Russia's threats of war if this happened. What do you think the US' role was?

Regarding Asia, look at US' vying to have unfettered access for its Air Force over the Strait of Malacca, despite popular disfavor by Indonesians, after a $15 billion energy deal with their government. The US having command over the South Korean military - in what world is that in South Korea's interest? Vietnam's new dependence on US LNG as a result of the attack on Iran. Look at the disputes in the South China Sea despite the disputants having China as their biggest trading partner, and the disputes rising exactly at the time of the US' pivot to Asia. Same pattern with Taiwan - a plan that has been in place for decades but which has become a political token coinciding with the pivot to Asia.

Japan and Korea vs China sounds absurd doesn't it? Why would they pick a fight with their biggest trading partner, who also appears much stronger than them militarily? Surely it's not in their interest right? Yet that's exactly what we've been seeing (belligerence from Japan's PM over Taiwan is a case in point). Does rising belligerence against a key trading partner/US geopolitical rival sound familiar?

Meanwhile Russia can't defeat Ukraine but Europe is convinced it has to arm itself and join the proxy war. This aligns with the 2026 National Defense Strategy - feeding proxies into wars against US rivals, what the US euphemistically refers to as "'burden sharing".

It also harms US' Asian allies, which makes them more dependent on US energy, increasing US leverage to push them toward proxy war with China. Very similar to the situation in Europe!