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Comment by kadushka | Hacker News Reader

If you live in US, taxes you pay directly fund DoD. So if you sponsor their activities, why can't Anthropic do business with them? Which other company would you rather get their (your) money?

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Yes of course on some level, people who pay taxes to violent imperial actors are doing a disservice to humanity, and are in some sort of moral quandary.

We all wish that everyone who has ever lived in such a situation has had the bravery to resist. Right?

But I don't think that makes forbearance of such resistance equivalent to taking money from that same actor in exchange for expanding its capability. Those are related but distinct types of transaction.

This might makes sense if you believe US is an evil empire, DoD is doing bad things, and AI will help DoD do even worse things. But it's not so black and white, is it?

Paying taxes is not voluntary, unlike business deals.

Living in US is voluntary.

For large swaths of the population it is not. Moving is expensive, for one. Obtaining a citizenship elsewhere is non-trivial (and often also expensive). There are non-monetary costs as well, like having to leave your friends and extended family behind.

Taxes don't directly pay for military spending. If tax revenue, for whatever reason, dropped off a cliff, they'd continue giving money to the DoD, and just increase debt / money printing to cover the difference.

If there's not enough money from taxes, they will borrow/print more to cover total deficit (not specific to DoD). Otherwise, tax money will go directly to DoD.

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