Sure, but the longer the game goes, the more likely capital concentration will lead to what we have now.

Nobody said feudalism is better, in fact my post was saying the opposite and using that to make the point that we can still improve things.

Capitalism is the current system we’re living in that is creating the rich and poor as they exist today. That isn’t to say there isn’t inequality in other systems, but it’s possible to adopt a different system that is less open to abuse, just like how we moved on from feudalism. Why continue playing a game with fundamentally broken rules?

Off-hand, I can see the affordability crisis and over-reliance on debt to finance people’s lives, while at the same time threatening labor with outsourcing, AI, whatever to replace them and their ability to make a living leads to tremendous amounts of stress. A constant high level of stress is devastating for mental health. These all work together to squeeze people at both ends, maximizing money made off people just living and then offering paid services to promise relief (even though the situation the capitalist class has created is the problem itself).

Monetizing everything is inherent in capitalism, though. It’s why the auto companies bought up streetcar lines and tore them out to make people more dependent on cars. Capitalism is not responsible for all mental health problems, but there is a clear incentive to promote it so that the capitalist class can sell services, and it wouldn’t be out of the question to over-diagnose or even help create the conditions to gain more customers.

You think it’s not manipulated because institutions set up financial instruments that people can throw money into? Seeing as you felt the need to reply to the same message three times in rapid succession, I can see you’re very confident that bitcoin is not manipulated. Have fun with your totally-not-manipulated bitcoin propped up by printing.

https://quantpedia.com/a-very-influential-paper-about-tether-bitcoin-relationship-manipulation/

Cryptocurrency is also prone to manipulation and it doesn’t have to be through the protocol. Did you think the increase in value of bitcoin to over $100k per coin was organic?

We’ve been subsidizing and supporting domestic EV manufacturing for longer than China has and yet US manufacturers dragged their feet in favor of higher profit margins. Of the electric vehicles they have managed to come out with, they’ve tended to price them higher even after the tax credit in order to maintain that high profit margin. The American manufacturers don’t care unless they feel threatened. That’s why it took Japanese competition in the 80s to make them get their act together.

In April 2023, the Joe Biden administration set a target to ensure 56% of all new cars sold in the U.S. by 2032 would be electric.

and we would’ve been able to easily achieve that if he didn’t also slap 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs.

It certainly saves time because of course plagiarism saves time. Does it mean people are doing their job better or more productively? Depends on how carefully they review that AI output, but I have a feeling that people aren’t always so vigilant. That’s where the technical debt creeps in.

This “moral code” would only be a suggestion rather than a hard constraint, given how this current iteration of AI works.

The next step after all AI company logos looking like an anus.

Even if they have at it for only a few minutes? That’s stolen valor.

I think it’s because they think they’ll win more money. I’d be happy having fun while getting money at the same time.

Not from AI, except for nvidia who sells the tools for others to lose money on AI.

You may not like it, but this is what 10x productivity looks like.

It’s faster to go from the 50th floor of a building to the bottom by jumping out the window than it would be taking the elevator, but that just makes a mess of things. Similarly, you seem to be going faster with AI, and in some respects you are, but there’s also the matter of technical debt, which is the messy aspect that someone has to deal with later.

I have used AI to quickly write up small functions here or there, but even then I’ve had to go in and clean up the code because even in small tasks it can be messy. The mess scales with the size of the problem, even if you do split it up among more agents (in fact it can be worse if you use too many agents).

Especially when people claim 10x productivity gains (a suspiciously oft-repeated claim, by the way), alarm bells ring in my mind, because I’ve seen the garbage that AI generates, and no one is actually reading that garbage carefully and cleaning it up while maintaining 10x productivity.

Reminds me of when the stupid “Web 3.0” made up by blockchain freaks was supposed to be the future. Not every technology will be as widespread as the internet. The internet facilitates communication across the entire world and offers many advantages over phone, mail, and other forms of communication.

The use cases and advantages are clear, even if there was an overly eager hype cycle in the 90s. AI might have some uses, but a clear advantage has not actually been established yet, nor have the legal challenges been ironed out. Remember that the current iteration of AI would not have been possible without breaking tons of IP law, slurping up as much data as possible.

Not just 20 extra people. I’m seeing a funny trend in my company where managers decide to get into vibe coding and they get super excited at getting something somewhat functional running, so now they’ve been presenting “their work” and expecting developers to merge their heaping trash in. That’ll require quite a few more people.