the president unilaterally extorting 10% ownership out of a company isn't going to build the kind of system that competes with anyone. Big business can't really thrive under this kind of thing any more than corner stores can thrive under a protection racket.
Readit Newsmonknomo commented on US Intel stratechery.com/2025/u-s-... · Posted by u/maguay
Yep, and if that really is the case, and if they really do intend on 'preserving knowledge' in their own inner circles and special getaways, then they will be setting themselves up for a dark age. A popular backlash against all elite things will always be bad, but throwing in knowledge, liberty, and freedom into that mix will guarantee something even more terrible.
my thought on that is a lot of these folks are in for a rude awakening if they think their positions will be preserved in a society that transitions to an illiberal autocratic society. I flat do not believe they have what it takes to hang with eg the russian mafia, the saudi royal family.
I'd assume those are just another symptoms of the Thielverse and where would be a better place to have it seeping into the younger, well fed tech scene than hn?
They know that they'll still be able to get around those "Inconveniences" or create their own elite places while the majority of the general public won't and we're not giving a damn about the general public anymore. That's woke and not trendy anymore.
I mean, this is so obviously wrong. People would be ashamed to argue for it back in the days.
a sad day when liberty and freedom are considered woke
I don't think this is a fair comparison. It's easier to move and retrain nowadays; there's also more kinds of jobs. These things will probably become even easier with more automation.
The moving thing is not true; or if it is easy we're at a historic low of people doing easy things (at least in America)[1]. Internationally, it sure looks to me like folks want to tighten borders and reduce international movement [no cite; just vibes].
As for retraining, I am skeptical. I think it, at best, puts an older demographic in competition for entry level jobs, and generally at a disadvantage[2].
[1] https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/geograph... [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/01/the-fa...
Rough numbers look good.
But the hyper specialized geek that has 4 kids and has to pay back a credit for his house (that he bought according to his high salary) will have a hard time doing some gardening, let's say. And there are quite a few of those geeks. I don't know if we'll have enough gardens (owned by non geeks!)
It's like cards are switched: those having the upper socioeconomic class will get thrown to the bottom. And that looks like a generation lost.
building on what you're saying, it isn't as though we are paying physical labor well, and adding more people to the pool isn't going to make the pay better.
About the most optimistic is that demand for goods and services will decrease because something like 80% of consumer spending is coming from folks that earn over $200k, and those are the folks ai is targeting. Who pays for the ai after this is still a mystery to me
This whole ‘what are we going to do’ I think is way out of proportion even if we do end up with agi.
Let’s say whatever the machines do better than humans, gets done by machines. Suddenly the bottleneck is going to shift to those things where humans are better. We’ll do that and the machines will try to replace that labor too. And then again, and again.
Throughout this process society becomes wealthier, TVs get cheaper, we colonize Mars, etc. The force that keeps this going is human insatisfaction: once we get these things we’ll want whatever it is we don’t have.
Maybe that’s the problem we should focus on solving…
you should check out what happened to steelworkers when the mills all moved to cheaper places.
The more software AI can write, the more of a commodity software will become, and the harder the value of software will tank. It's not magic.
Today, a car repairshop might have a need for a custom software that will make their operations 20% more efficient. But they don't have nearly enough money to hire a software engineer to build it for them. With AI, it might be worth it for an engineer to actually do it.
Plenty of little examples like that where people/businesses have custom needs for software but the value isn't high enough.
this seems pretty unlikely to me. I am not sure I have seen any non-digital business desire anything more custom than "a slightly better spreadsheet". Like, sure I can imagine a desire for something along the lines of "jailbroken vw scanner" but I think you are grossly overestimating how much software impacts a regular business's efficiency
We are not there, yet, but if AI could replace a sizable amount of workers, the economic system will be put to a very hard test. Moreover, companies could be less willing to pay for services that their internal AIs can handle or build from scratch.
Instead of needing 1000 engineers to build a new product, you'll need 100 now. Those 900 engineers will be working for 9 new companies that weren't viable before because the cost was too big but is now viable. IE. those 9 new companies could never be profitable if it required 1000 engineers each but can totally sustain itself with 100 engineers each.
if these small companies are all just fronts on the prompts (a "feature" if you will) of the large ai companies, why do the large ai companies not just add that feature and eat the little guy's lunch?
that was because the economy was controlled/corrupt and not allowed to flourish (and create job-creating technologies like the internet and AI).
I'm puzzled how AI is supposed to be a job creating technology. It is supposed to either wholesale replace jobs, or make workers so efficient that fewer of them are required. This is supposed to make digital and intellectually produced goods cheaper (although, given reproduction is free, the goods themselves are already pretty cheap).
To me it looks like we'll see well paying jobs decrease, digital services get cheaper, food+housing stay the same, and presumably as displaced workers do what they need to do physical service jobs will get more crowded and pay worse, so physical services will get cheaper. It is unclear whether there will be a net benefit to society.
Where do the jobs come from?
monknomo commented on How Silicon Valley can prove it is pro-family thenewatlantis.com/public... · Posted by u/jger15
> We need to change the laws to make corporations "family friendly"
If the will was there, we could also simply exert that as a condition on employment. You don't really need laws when you can just do what the law is going to have you do anyway.
The problem is that the will isn't there. Only around half of the population are in what this thread seems to consider a family, so you are fighting against the wants of the other half who find their family-less situation, where they don't have the same "family friendly" concerns to worry about, to be a business advantage. That means it is hard to exert as a condition of employment and for the same reason hard to turn it into law.
I suspect that it would be possible to mobilize the bloc of families as a more unified group than singles, which would influence the policy and law making calculus