MAGA is bad enough. Imagine if the current batch of US progressives, who have 0 idea how any of this works, wins the presidency and gets to decide who gets to use it.
The pyramids took 20k+ people to build, which inevitably requires division of labor/specialization. Some chunk of that population had to mine the copper, which was probably an absolutely terrible job with ancient technology.
Serfs were essentially slaves who had effectively 0 ownership over their output, so I'd strongly disagree with that sentiment.
I think the best argument for a time when there was almost 0 alienation of labor was when we were all hunter gatherers. Where every activity was closely connected to something necessary for survival.
As soon as we built larger societies, greater division of labor became necessary to efficiently support the society. And thus alienation of labor became much more pronounced.
What he got wrong was that this alienation results from capitalism.
It actually results from civilization. The people who built the pyramids across every continent, for example, performed assembly line-like work. Any large-scale project requires it. And large-scale projects are fundamentally necessary for most societies.
Every biological being works to survive. Being good at survival is what builds self esteem.
The "problem" with many modern jobs is that they're divorced from the fundamental goal, which is one of: 1) Kill/acquire food, 2) Build shelter, or 3) Kill enemies/competitors/predators
The benefit of modern jobs is that they are much more peaceful ways for society to operate, freeing up time for humans to pursue art and other forms of expression.
- Boosting existing small businesses and enabling the creation of new small businesses by making previously expensive resources like market research, accounting/legal advice, etc. available for $20/month.
If Anthropic can allow millions of people from all around the world to access these benefits, why shouldn't it be worth a trillion dollars?
Wealth in the modern world is not a zero sum game. Wealth is created, not allocated. The fact that Anthropic is worth a trillion does not prevent you from making money.
1. We stopped allowing housing to be built, skyrocketing the cost of existing housing.
2. Our healthcare system remains a Frankenstein of a half-government sanctioned oligopoly, half-capitalist nightmare. Driving up the cost of healthcare.
3. Our governments are at best incompetent, at worst corrupt. SF spends $100k/person per year on homelessness. NY spends $80k. Where is all that money going?? Would be better to give that money directly to the homeless.
Power structures still exist for sure. But objectively, there are tens of thousands currently making a living from YouTube who would've never been able to become entertainers if Hollywood was the only game in town.
The barriers to entry for entertainers have never been so low.
It's undeniable that technology over the past decades has increased democratization in something every step of the way.
YouTube destroyed Hollywood's monopolization of entertainment. Anyone with a smartphone now has a shot at becoming a full-time creator. Prior to this, it was gate kept by Hollywood execs.
Smartphones destroyed Microsoft's monopolization of apps.
Not a leap to believe this will happen to some extent with AI (and it's already happening to some degree).
Ah ok sorry missed that you were talking globally instead of just US.
In the US, our problems stem from a lack of "capitalism," or healthy markets, or whatever anyone wants to label it. Bottom line, it's very much a supply side problem.
In housing, for example, NIMBY laws have for decades restricted all kinds of new housing being built. In capitalism, developers would be allowed to build. So we've very much had the opposite of capitalism.
Cities that are waking up to this and allowing new houses to be built are seeing rents fall across the board.
Respectfully disagree. Food, clothing, fuel, electricity are too expensive, but they are comparatively much less of an issue compared to rent and healthcare costs.
Rent and healthcare are the 1A and 1B issues of our time.
As far as healthcare goes, the entire system is a mess. We already tried the Affordable Care Act to get more people covered, which only skyrocketed costs. The only way out is to increase the competition in the market, AKA supply side. Bernie Sanders is only familiar with demand-side solutions, which do not work. Sanders himself seems completely oblivious to the housing crisis in his own state of Vermont, which is being mitigated everywhere else through supply-side solutions.
The cost of living crisis is almost singularly caused by poor governance, not feudal tech lords.
NIMBYism prevents new houses from being built, driving up the cost of housing.
Healthcare is for-profit, yet not allowed to operate like a true competitive market, with heavy regulations restricting providers to a few that the government favors. Thus it's essentially an oligopoly, driving costs sky high.
Note that this is CNBC and they're writing from a stock market line-go-up POV.
For everyone else, this is good news.
From the article:
"Huang was validating what the rest of the market has been witnessing. An independent developer, rather than a giant, richly valued lab like OpenAI or Anthropic, came up with the next big thing in AI and, in doing so, exposed a potential major flaw in the investment thesis behind the large language models: They may be getting commoditized."
MAGA is bad enough. Imagine if the current batch of US progressives, who have 0 idea how any of this works, wins the presidency and gets to decide who gets to use it.