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Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

blog.johnluttig.com

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Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#151

Post by dmbche »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #130
bluefirebrand wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think its as simple as calling them immoral. Rather the immorality comes on them being poorly regulated I think if behavior needs to be regulated by government in order to be moral, then it's immoral behavior by default The regulation doesn't make it moral, the regulation only limits the damage by limiting how immoral you're allowed to be

The regulation is what makes it worth while for people to invent/write. Patents/copyrights have been a net benefit for society with a smaller negative downside.

Can you point to something that quantifies the positives vs the negatives?

I have a hard time arguing that it's a net positive.

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#152

Post by BeFlatXIII »

blitzar wrote: post #57
hlynurd wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really struggling with seeing how this is immoral.

10 years ago, Apple was the largest company in the world by market capitalization, its market cap was around $479.069 billion. How have we gotten to a point in just a decade where multiple companies are dropping annual numbers that are in the realm of "the market cap of the worlds biggest companies" on these things? Have we solved all (any of) the other problems out there already?

That was before pandemic inflation and rampant money printing to bolster the fake numbers.

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#153

Post by dmbche »

renewiltord wrote: post #137
hlynurd wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really struggling with seeing how this is immoral.

In general, modern English uses “this is immoral” to mean “I don’t like this”. It’s a language quirk. It’s good that you’re asking the whys to get somewhere but I might as well just get to it. “Immoral”, “should not exist”, “late-stage capitalism” are tribal affiliation chants intended to mark one’s identity. E.g. I go to the Emirates and sing “We’re Arrrrrsenal! We’re by far the greatest time the world has ever seen…

Fairly cynicial aren't we?

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#154

Post by TFYS »

BurningFrog wrote: post #143
TFYS wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth is power. Power decides what we use our collective time and resources on. The more concentrated power is, the less we use that time and resources on things that improves the life of the average person, and more on things that matter to the few with wealth.

By far the biggest concentration of power is the US federal government. Any power centers outside that decentralizes power.

Sure, but in its current form that power can be bought and therefore mostly serves the interests of capital. That should be obvious at this point.

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#155

Post by harimau777 »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #82
amelius wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned this in elementary school. When 10 kids join forces to bully one kid, that is immoral. Same with companies and VC money trying to corner a market.

Isn’t that the point of having a government with laws and regulation… to allow the majority to bully specific undesirable minority groups into submission? For some things it’s even a worldwide consensus, e.g. any groups with a desire to acquire large amounts of plutonium (who don’t belong to a preapproved list). There’s even a strong consistent push to make it ever more inescapable, comprehensive, resistant to any po…

Most people want to live in a society that maximizes positive freedom, or some balance of freedom and prosperity. In those societies, it is considered legitimate for the government to use force to stop people whose actions prevent members of society from having positive freedom/prosperity.

Of course that is a very simplified description. In practice, most societies promote a balance between positive and negative freedom, recognize some limits on the government's ability to use force, recognize some degree to which people can choose to act in ways that don't promote positive freedom/prosperity, etc.

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#156

Post by MichaelZuo »

amelius wrote: post #114
MichaelZuo wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this relate to the prior comment?

It relates to it because you chose an example specific to US government which we all know is not a good example.

How do you know it’s not applicable elsewhere?

e.g. Plenty of countries have huge bills that no one fully reads and huge numbers of regulations.

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#157

Post by marcosdumay »

bix6 wrote: post #11

“The AI capital influx means that mega-projects no longer seem outlandishly expensive. This is good for the world!” Is it? This whole piece just reads of mega funds and giga corps throwing ridiculous cash for pay to win. Nothing new there. We can’t train more people? I didn’t know Universities were suddenly producing waaaay less talent and that intelligence fell off a cliff. Things have gone parabolic! It’s giga mega…

> This is just M2 expansion and wealth concentration.

I just want to point that there's no scientific law that says those two must move together.

A government very often needs to print money, and it's important to keep in mind that there's no physical requirement that this money immediately must go to rich people. A government can decide to send it to poor people exactly just as easily as to rich. All the laws forbidding that are of the legal kind.

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#158

Post by TeMPOraL »

thedevilslawyer wrote: post #142
TeMPOraL wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the problem, we also need to ban society - cause one can be more prosperous than other, and it disadvantages those born into the latter.

That's like your problem man. I'm not against society.

Only against nuance and consistency of beliefs.

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#159

Post by 8note »

harimau777 wrote: post #7
ythiscoyness wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the 10x engineer meme doesn’t go far enough – there are clearly people that are 1,000x the baseline impact. Plenty out there who want authors like this believing it enough to write it

Obviously the specifics are going to depend on exactly how a team pegs story points, but if an average engineer delivers 10 story points during a two week sprint, then that would mean that a 1000x engineer would deliver 10000 story points, correct? I don't see how someone can actually believe that.

i dont think its that far off.

suppose every team needs to do a similar 10 story points of maintenance, like a java major version update from 5 to 21.

if youve got 100 teams, thats about 1000 story points, and if an engineer automated that change, theyve still done 1000 story points overall, even if what they implemented was only 10 story points itself

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#160

Post by TeMPOraL »

thedevilslawyer wrote: post #133
hellojesus wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Copyright is bad like inheritance is bad. How is inheritance bad? Imo, estate taxes are more immoral. Why should the state be allowed a cut of my private assets? Gift taxes are also immoral. Why should I have to pay taxes for giving away assets?

Why should we accept assets can be owned? Your life is a meaningless speck of time in eternity.

I suppose because we're wired this way. Can't think of any group or society that didn't have some notion of private property that wasn't just a huge (and brief) humanitarian tragedy.
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