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Extinction-Level Capitalism

matthewbutterick.com

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Re: Extinction-Level Capitalism

#31

Post by derektank »

hurtigioll wrote: post #18
TacticalCoder wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... and now on top of all that we have war ... There have been war since way before capitalism was invented. Beside war, humans were doing evil things way before capitalism: south america natives torturing kids to extract as many tears as possible from them before killing them, to please the gods, comes to mind, for example. I'll never understand this fantasy people who hate on capitalism have that the world would…

pure Capitalism is law of the jungle as we will soon find out, when AI will become better at Capitalism than us

Not at all. Capitalism only exists as a product of the state, which acts as a guarantor of individual private property rights. It would not be able to survive without the laws and law enforcement of a sovereign with a monopoly on the use of force.

Re: Extinction-Level Capitalism

#32

Post by dirtikiti »

deaux wrote: post #23
epsteingpt wrote: post #5

Interesting argument, but wrong. It's not obvious that there will be a single AI and that it will by definition concentrate power. At a certain point - intelligence doesn't matter. Unless we're literally headed toward 1984 / matrix at which point it doesn't matter. My guess is the argument for what we're doing is counterintuitively the opposite of what he's making. Unless we go hard at the market - now - an authorita…

So the US will win? Do you realize that the US has a "Secretary of War" who is a literal, unashamed Nazi? Not in the sense of "let's call all racists nazis", but a tattooed, true believer? How could we possibly live in a world where that is not obviously "a government willing to use the technology to fully silence and kill critics"? God, Idiocracy (2006) is nothing compared to World (2026).

A tattooed, true believer nazi has a Jerusalem Cross tattoo?

Weird, thats like the exact opposite of a nazi.

Re: Extinction-Level Capitalism

#33

Post by ozgrakkurt »

thriftwy wrote: post #22
euroderf wrote: post #7

Socialism XOR Dystopia

I glimpsed last years of Soviet Union and it was pretty meh. I remember seeing anything in the street (a payphone or a playground for kids) and assumed it will only degrade because as a general principle, things in the streets are unmaintained. You could say that Soviet Union was bad specimen of socialism because of these stupid Russians? Except, Russia actually got 100% out of socialism with our space exploration, p…

Pretty sure Russia is Russia because Russians are Russians and Russian culture is Russian culture. Not because Russia was communist.

Re: Extinction-Level Capitalism

#34

Post by rglover »

derektank wrote: post #24
himata4113 wrote: post #9

Warning: This is more of a rant because I was waiting for a post like this for awhile that I could build from to express ny own feelings on it. I think capitalism in itself is great, what isn't is the fact that it can build on itself, it can be infinite, there's zero limits to it. Now what I mean by that, once you make 10k, it's easier to get to 100k and even easier to get to 1m and so on, you might think it's harder…

The great equalizer here is death. Nobody can cleanly pass all of their wealth and influence off to their children and while those that inherit large fortunes can maintain and improve upon them (see the Waltons) they’re rarely able to maintain the act for generation after generation. None of the great fortunes of today were built by descendants of the Vanderbilts or the Rockefellers.

I think it's best to plan on giving your kids/grandkids the knowledge and wisdom you gained, but any financial gain is just distributed back to something in the world you enjoy (I love this [1] story and think about it often in respect to how I'd pass on any wealth I acquire).

[1] https://abcnews.com/US/98-year-man-donates-stock-now-worth-m...

Re: Extinction-Level Capitalism

#36

Post by himata4113 »

derektank wrote: post #24
himata4113 wrote: post #9

Warning: This is more of a rant because I was waiting for a post like this for awhile that I could build from to express ny own feelings on it. I think capitalism in itself is great, what isn't is the fact that it can build on itself, it can be infinite, there's zero limits to it. Now what I mean by that, once you make 10k, it's easier to get to 100k and even easier to get to 1m and so on, you might think it's harder…

The great equalizer here is death. Nobody can cleanly pass all of their wealth and influence off to their children and while those that inherit large fortunes can maintain and improve upon them (see the Waltons) they’re rarely able to maintain the act for generation after generation. None of the great fortunes of today were built by descendants of the Vanderbilts or the Rockefellers.

We will see, the big concern here is that lifespans start increasing faster than aging, ex: you're a ~40 year old and estimated lifespan is 80, but by the time you're 60 it's 90, by the time you're 80 it's 100 and at some point it might start increasing faster than the speed you age at. Of course we might be a few generations away from where this is the case, but it's a scary thought.

Another would be the power your family carries, generations might not have survived into the most recent era, but their investments had a large impact on the world we live in today as dilluted as it is. I believe that this will become worse where very few people are able to dictate the direction our world will end up in - a dystopian coorperate nightmare.

Re: Extinction-Level Capitalism

#37

Post by skybrian »

The argument is that labor depending on LLM’s is dangerous but it makes speculative assumptions that the big AI labs will win.

> Consider large law firms, aka Big Law. Currently certain legal-AI star­tups license LLMs from Big AI and repackage them for Big Law at high prices. These star­tups claim to add other special sauce. OK, sure. Where’s the economic equi­lib­rium? If legal-AI star­tups prove that money can be made selling AI to Big Law—won’t Big AI just sell to Big Law directly, and cut out the star­tups? Or if legal-AI star­tups prove that AI can effec­tively provide legal services—won’t legal-AI star­tups just sell to clients directly, and cut out Big Law? Won’t members of Big Law that adopt AI have to lay off a lot of equity part­ners, because adop­tion of AI will shrink profit margins?

…

> Along these lines, I expect that to succeed finan­cially, Big AI will likely need to demolish a signif­i­cant number of existing tech compa­nies and grab their revenue for itself.

Nobody knows how this will play out. Maybe the legal-AI startups win because they know their market better? They can switch to cheaper providers.

Re: Extinction-Level Capitalism

#38

Post by thatoneengineer »

I stopped reading after the first sentence. Calling something "inherently political" is a self-fulfilling prophecy and intentionally so. It consistently turns out to be an attempt to lay the groundwork for expropriation. No one called the Internet "inherently political" until people built stuff there that other people wanted to control.

Re: Extinction-Level Capitalism

#39

Post by actionfromafar »

krona wrote: post #30
deaux wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the US will win? Do you realize that the US has a "Secretary of War" who is a literal, unashamed Nazi? Not in the sense of "let's call all racists nazis", but a tattooed, true believer? How could we possibly live in a world where that is not obviously "a government willing to use the technology to fully silence and kill critics"? God, Idiocracy (2006) is nothing compared to World (2026).

> literal, unashamed Nazi He's a Christian Zionist which is the belief in the fulfilment of old testament biblical prophecy. This seems diametrically opposed to Nazism to me, ideologically. I don't know how you'd square the two.

One of them wants an eschatological, world cleansing war. The other wants to usher in an eschatological, world cleansing war.

Re: Extinction-Level Capitalism

#40

Post by actionfromafar »

derektank wrote: post #31
hurtigioll wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pure Capitalism is law of the jungle as we will soon find out, when AI will become better at Capitalism than us

Not at all. Capitalism only exists as a product of the state, which acts as a guarantor of individual private property rights. It would not be able to survive without the laws and law enforcement of a sovereign with a monopoly on the use of force.

And unchecked Capitalism coopts the state.
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