"Voting with your Wallet" - the American way.
The problem is you can’t really limit money without limiting speech. Perhaps it’s still in the public interest to do so, but the constitution doesn’t allow it.
The AI industry is pouring millions into US elections
61–70 of 87 posts
Re: The AI industry is pouring millions into US elections
#62Re: The AI industry is pouring millions into US elections
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
The flaw in this reasoning is that corporations are not merely associations of people; they are a special kind of association of people, which can be regulated specially. Hence, I think, why some have stripped away this motivated language and reduced it to the more honest and obviously absurd "corporations are people too."
>The flaw in this reasoning is that corporations are not merely associations of people; they are a special kind of association of people, which can be regulated specially. You realize republicans can make the same argument to bash unions?
They already have. Unions generally can't donate to political campaigns, and can't do things like strike in solidarity with other unions which would be pretty clearly be speech if we're counting corporate donations to political campaigns as speech.
Re: The AI industry is pouring millions into US elections
#64Millions? Makes me think of https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-in...
Comparing almonds to elections might be my new favorite way of saying "comparing apples to oranges".
A decade or so ago I participated in a (data-centric) hackathon having to do with water shortages in California. The acknowledged problem was data, or lack thereof. Most of the groups whistled past the graveyard and presented woulda-coulda "if we had the data / we can get the data by" proposals / findings.
We kept looking for the pony for most of the day. We found some pony exhaust, but we didn't find the pony. The rest of the group presented a plan for future research. I chose to give the minority report: based on the information we were able to obtain, California could solve its water shortage if every household ate 16 less almonds a day; an almond taking roughly one gallon of water to produce.
A couple years later the almond industry ran some ads that the "gallon of water" meme was somehow wrong, because other useful products were produced from almond trees besides almonds... so they said. Of course, it could have been a coincidence.
One of my team members (from Montana) shared a quote from Samuel Clemens: "whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting over". That hasn't changed with data centers.
Re: The AI industry is pouring millions into US elections
#65Probably a sign that it is past time to tightly regulate all AI-aligned companies and their products to set up guard rails to prevent this level of corruption. I am a person who lives in a state where it is totally legal for lobbyists to walk the floor of the state legislature handing out envelopes of cash to any representative who will line up behind their proposed legislation. Bribery buys state laws here and it bu…
And who will do the regulating? The same politicians taking these bribes?
Re: The AI industry is pouring millions into US elections
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The flaw in this reasoning is that corporations are not merely associations of people; they are a special kind of association of people, which can be regulated specially. You realize republicans can make the same argument to bash unions?
They already have. Unions generally can't donate to political campaigns, and can't do things like strike in solidarity with other unions which would be pretty clearly be speech if we're counting corporate donations to political campaigns as speech.
> Unions generally can't donate to political campaigns
???
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/carpenters-joiners-union/su...
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/service-employees-internati...
>and can't do things like strike in solidarity with other unions which would be pretty clearly be speech if we're counting corporate donations to political campaigns as speech.
Seems like a stretch to lump industrial action with political donations.
Re: The AI industry is pouring millions into US elections
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
They already have. Unions generally can't donate to political campaigns, and can't do things like strike in solidarity with other unions which would be pretty clearly be speech if we're counting corporate donations to political campaigns as speech.
> Unions generally can't donate to political campaigns ??? https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/carpenters-joiners-union/su... https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/service-employees-internati... >and can't do things like strike in solidarity with other unions which would be pretty clearly be speech if we're counting corporate donations to political campaigns as speech. Seems like a stretch to lump industrial action with poli…
> ???
It's complex, but those are not donations to a candidate, even more so than the normal PAC and Super PAC song and dance. You have to give up your non profit status to donate more directly to a candidates campaign.
> Seems like a stretch to lump industrial action with political donations.
Seems like a stretch to say that political donations are speech and should be protected, but literal picketing isn't.
Re: The AI industry is pouring millions into US elections
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gerrymandering only affects House and the House is overwhelmingly looking like a Democrat victory. Senate is statewide so it's innately immune to Gerrymandering. Like.... Do you even know what that word means?
Democrats aren't winning the Senate. They are not lock ins for the House either. I dont know what is so difficult about this for you.
Are you proposing a different solution? Or are you content to be a cynic that does nothing?
Re: The AI industry is pouring millions into US elections
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regulation is not possible with today's politics. But it can become possible as soon as January 2027 politics, which is largely determined by the 2026 November election.
For decades people have proclaimed that we can fix things in the next election...but that has never happened in all of my existence and do not expected to happen in my life time. It's pure carrot chasing
But we were fixing things under Biden. The frozen potato cartel was defeated in court and Google was defeated in court as an illegal monopoly.
Then the Trump Administration came in (likely after donations from Google, and other tech bros) and suddenly that Google case was dropped.
Regulating against awful behaviors was happening under Biden, and no longer is happening under Trump. It's about as simple as night and day if you are paying attention.
What changes now is that historically, tech firms were largely apolitical. Today they are hard right support, so Democrats weren't used to memes or lack of free viral marketing (etc etc.)
Today, Democrats are finally waking up to the fact that they are being suppressed by both national media and tech media (Twitter and Facebook) and have begun gaining alternative means of getting their messaging out.
Things have gotten worse, but that causes the strategies to shift and the overall political fight to grow stronger.
Re: The AI industry is pouring millions into US elections
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gerrymandering only affects House and the House is overwhelmingly looking like a Democrat victory. Senate is statewide so it's innately immune to Gerrymandering. Like.... Do you even know what that word means?
Democrats aren't winning the Senate. They are not lock ins for the House either. I dont know what is so difficult about this for you.
Democrats have a disadvantage in this years Senate race yes. But polls have become so anti Trump these days that today, Senate races are looking 50/50 odds. Which is a huge benefit to Democrats when this years Senate race should be a Republican blowout (a lot of Texas, Georgia, Alaska kinda states up for Senate this year so Republicans should be winning. The fact that it's 50/50 in these states is down right crazy and shows how crap the Republican support is right now).
The House is a hilarious mix of terrible Gerrymandering (ex: Florida assuming that Latinos will vote Republican) or defeated Gerrymandering (Texas gerrymandering effect being defeated in court).
All in all, it's a hilarious self own where Republicans couldn't even be trusted to Gerrymander correctly and may have made the House a worse situation for themselves. So if anything, the Gerrymandering is seemingly leading to Democrat advantage because of how incompetent Republicans have been.
So as I said before: we are looking at House blowout for Democrats and even a surprise 50/50 odds for Senate. That is a huge change of that happens.
Your invocation of corruption/Gerrymandering doesn't mean anything if you actually look at what has happened. It only matters if Republicans Gerrymandered correctly.