191–200 of 288 posts
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I feel like anyone making this argument hasn't studied how those regulations happened. They ALL happened AFTER people got hurt. That's how we do things here. We always have. It's kind of messed up, but the alternative is a bunch of rules on things that wouldn't be a real problem.
The latter is called the EU.
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In a parallel universe tobacco is critical to the national security interest of the state. I feel you and other commenters in this thread are ignoring the fact that the outcome of the next war will likely be decided on the cyber front.
I don’t think humanity will survive the next war.
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Maybe it should be. The system here in the US has produced some great innovations at the cost of great misery among the non-wealthy. At a time when technology promises an easier life, it only seems to benefit the wealthy, while trying to discard everyone else. The light at the end of the tunnel is a 1%-er about to laughingly crush you beneath their wheels.
I don’t know about that. The poor from just about every other country in the world seem desperate to live in America. While American capitalism has many faults, oppressing the bottom quintile is not one of them. The US median income is consistently top ten globally.
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You aren't missing anything. This is oligarchic capture of the government.
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"A business oligarch is generally a business magnate who controls sufficient resources to influence national politics."
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Sure, the USA is in the top five in terms of median income. They are also tied for first for having the highest cost of living. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cost-of-l...
> They are also tied for first for having the highest cost of living. Who cares? Absolute savings rate and net worth are what matter. Any European will gladly live in America for US$1 million/year income even if the cost of living is US$300k/year.
OK, now tell me how the savings and net worth look like for your average American. I'll give you a bit of a spoiler: it's not good.
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The patent system. I know someone will respond detailing why the patent system is pro-business, but it is objectively government regulation that puts restrictions on new technology, so it's proof that regulation of that sort is at least an American tradition if not fully an "American value".
Patents and trademarks are the only ways to create legal monopolies. They are/were intended to reward innovation but despite good intentions are abused.
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> Companies like . . . Anduril are being gifted contracts all over the place - that’s money we taxpayers are losing. Can you point to a concrete example of this?
It's hard to say what they're actually qualified to do but they went from receiving 1 or 2 contracts per year in the early 2020s for a few 10s of millions and I think one larger $200M one to this since Trump was reelected; $200M - https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/1527a7adaff14a5280fc7... $140M - https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/c0203e75ec2949e78966f... $31M - https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/8b0b944…
The Marine Corps I-CsUAS award is explicitly described as an IDIQ with a maximum dollar value of $642M over 10 years -- though it could be much less -- and reporting indicates it was competitively procured with 10 offerors. It wasn't "gifted"/"no-bid"
Also: $642M spread over 10 years is roughly $64M/year at the ceiling, and ceilings are often not fully used. That scale is not remotely unusual for a program-of-record counter-UAS capability if the government believes the threat is persistent. (Which it does.)
The rest are similarly mundane and justifiable.
Here's what would be weird: Repeated sole-source awards where a competitive approach is feasible, implausible technical scope relative to deliverables, unjustified pricing, or political intervention affecting downselects. I don't see any of that here. (But, okay, let's not talk about Palantir, lol.)
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> This does nothing to protect working US citizens from AI alien (agents) coming to take their jobs and displace their incomes. Where did you get the idea that banning new technology that could eliminate jobs is even remotely an American value? Going back to the Industrial Revolution the United States has been 100% gas pedal all the time on innovation and disruption, which has in turn created millions of jobs that di…
> Going back to the Industrial Revolution the United States has been 100% gas pedal all the time on innovation and disruption, which has in turn created millions of jobs that didn't exist before and led to the US running the world's largest economy. Where did you get the idea that this was the cause that created millions of jobs and lead to the US running the world's largest economy, and not say - the knock-on effect…
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Wealth inequality is worse now than the era of robber barons & gilded age.
Who cares? If higher wealth inequality produces a higher standard of living for the majority (note, median not mean), I’m all for it. Policy should not be driven by envy.
It is easy for me to take this perspective too because I never had much student debt or children.
The median though is getting crushed if they went to college and are paying for daycare.
If you are getting crushed for going to school and having children that is a pretty clear breakdown of the social contract.
The consequences are obvious. People are going to vote in socialist policies and the whole engine is going to get thrown in reverse.
The "let them eat cake" strategy is never the smart strategy.
It is not obvious at all our system is even compatible with the internet. If the starting conditions are 1999, it would seem like the system is imploding. It is easy to pretend like everything is working out economically when we borrowed 30 trillion dollars during that time from the future.
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> This does nothing to protect working US citizens from AI alien (agents) coming to take their jobs and displace their incomes. Where did you get the idea that banning new technology that could eliminate jobs is even remotely an American value? Going back to the Industrial Revolution the United States has been 100% gas pedal all the time on innovation and disruption, which has in turn created millions of jobs that di…
The patent system. I know someone will respond detailing why the patent system is pro-business, but it is objectively government regulation that puts restrictions on new technology, so it's proof that regulation of that sort is at least an American tradition if not fully an "American value".