Earlier quoted context omitted.
More regulation. Specifically requiring worker-owned means of production: re-organize the AI model companies as mutuals and mandate (by law) that their only customers can be individual-contributor-level workers or worker unions. Ditto with robotics.
Yes, because communism has always worked out so well in the past.
AI Fortunes Are Reviving an Old Debate About Private Power
21–30 of 44 posts
Re: AI Fortunes Are Reviving an Old Debate About Private Power
#22Higher corporate taxes and local control please, thanks.
Isn’t this basically the situation in Europe? It seems like that just supercharges brain drain by incentivizing all the smartest and richest people to just move away to a place with lower taxes and less bureaucracy.
if the trend remains without the USD being the reserve currency then maybe? Id lean as a first guess that easy access to lots of free money is the bigger driver
Re: AI Fortunes Are Reviving an Old Debate About Private Power
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
More regulation. Specifically requiring worker-owned means of production: re-organize the AI model companies as mutuals and mandate (by law) that their only customers can be individual-contributor-level workers or worker unions. Ditto with robotics.
> worker-owned means of production Sounds great! If I'm a worker who owns the means of production and I want to sell that stake to someone else, am I allowed to do so? If not, do I actually "own" anything?
And before any "uuuuh this can't work uuuh people want to get rich uuuh", you are literally talking about the community that has made open source software, the most commie thing imaginable on earth.
Re: AI Fortunes Are Reviving an Old Debate About Private Power
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
More regulation. Specifically requiring worker-owned means of production: re-organize the AI model companies as mutuals and mandate (by law) that their only customers can be individual-contributor-level workers or worker unions. Ditto with robotics.
>worker-owned means of production On a similar note I keep thinking that having your "content" used as training material for a model ought to entitle you to a proportional stake.
The funny thing about all of this is that it's basically taking revenue from the major media companies to the benefit of OpenAI's customers more than OpenAI itself, which is exactly the redistribution of wealth people seem to be demanding, but that's not how it gets characterized because the media companies are the ones characterizing it.
And there is some case to be made that disincentivizing human content creation is bad, but what that case really looks like is the argument against having the AI users free ride on an investment made by Sony or Comcast. Then what their proposals end up looking like is a tax paid by everyone where the money goes to those huge corporations. And of all the things we shouldn't do about this, that's the thing we shouldn't do the most.
Re: AI Fortunes Are Reviving an Old Debate About Private Power
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Capitalism is failing us right now. Why are you looking in the past?
I would look to the past, but only as far back as free market capitalism, to replace the crony capitalism that we have right now in the US. Both have their issues, but nothing compared to communism. There's still time to correct course without that nonsense being involved.
Watch out, you're almost sounding like the "not real communism" boys.
>Both have their issues, but nothing compared to communism.
Some would say leaving a few million people die of thirst and hunger every year because it's "not profitable to fix it", or having a population of dozens of millions in your own country suffering of mental health problems, inability to get basic healthcare or even living conditions for the past 50 years might be a sign that your favorite system is fundamentally immoral, but hey.
Re: AI Fortunes Are Reviving an Old Debate About Private Power
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Capitalism is failing us right now. Why are you looking in the past?
You should move to Venezuela or Cuba. Then see how it's "failing".
cuba has a longer life expectancy than the US despite all of that btw
Re: AI Fortunes Are Reviving an Old Debate About Private Power
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there some way to disabuse people of the notion that higher taxes would help here? Taxes don't really affect entity size. In significant ways they do the opposite, because business expenses are deductions, so using profits for expansion becomes more favored over paying them out as dividends the more you increase the tax rate. What you need here is antitrust enforcement and lower barriers to entry so that there are…
> Taxes don't really affect entity size. A progressive tax would, no? You could explicitly tax larger entities more.
How many entities is "Google"? Is it one or is Search one company and Android another and YouTube another and so on? If they need to get the size of each unit below some threshold they can just file more LLCs.
Just use the size of the parent company, you say? Okay, which is the parent company, Google or Vanguard? If it's Vanguard then every public company exceeds the largest size threshold. If it isn't, they can use something which is formally an investment fund as the parent company and get as big as they want.
And even if you could do it, you would then create a perverse incentive for the government, because then breaking up those large companies into smaller ones would reduce tax revenue. When you should just break them up to begin with and actually solve the problem.
Re: AI Fortunes Are Reviving an Old Debate About Private Power
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, because communism has always worked out so well in the past.
it seems to be working quite well in the present, if you look at china
Re: AI Fortunes Are Reviving an Old Debate About Private Power
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
>worker-owned means of production On a similar note I keep thinking that having your "content" used as training material for a model ought to entitle you to a proportional stake.
Do the math on that one. There are 8 billion people. OpenAI revenue -- not profit -- is ~$25B, which is ~$3/year. That's if they have zero expenses for engineers or land or equipment or electricity, which isn't the case now and never will be. Their current profit is a number of substantial magnitude with a minus sign in front of it. The funny thing about all of this is that it's basically taking revenue from the majo…
Re: AI Fortunes Are Reviving an Old Debate About Private Power
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
More regulation. Specifically requiring worker-owned means of production: re-organize the AI model companies as mutuals and mandate (by law) that their only customers can be individual-contributor-level workers or worker unions. Ditto with robotics.
You realize that the folks with these fortunes are the workers who built the companies, right? If there's one place that's "worked-owned" it's a startup. And the VCs who also ended up with stocks did quite a bit of work along the way-- as well as investing capital. We're not talking about widows with a pension who are just interested in dividends. This isn't some utility.