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Comment by xyst | Hacker News Reader

And this gamble is paid for by American taxpayers, increased cost of utilities, and multibillion dollar corporations receiving tax breaks/subsidies from the cities/counties they build in.

This country is so awful. Great if you are rich. Awful if you are not in this top 0.01-1%.

A massive $79T has been transferred from bottom 90% to top 1% since the 1970s. [1]

[1] https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-2.html

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I love how they say with a straight face that when AI takes over they will finally share all the fruits of capital with us.

The French had a tool for this problem.

And look how it has worked out for them.

Not sure what you're implying, but I'd say their society is doing fairly well.

Only because the U.S. and U.K. conspired against them. The French did everything they could to keep the fire burning, by hosting people from various countries to teach them about revolution. Organizing globally against the rich parasites was hard and expensive back then. Now the only hold back, is that the rich parasites own most of the internet.

But WE BUILT IT, and can take back the internet when we finally realize it's not dems vs reps, but rich vs poor. It's always been a class war, they just are much better at keeping us distracted.

I think we need reforms and I’m very much against the accumulation of power that we’ve allowed the billionaire class.

But the French Revolution is nothing to emulate. If you’ve read the history of the French Revolution you know that it quickly moved on from rich parasites to murdering and imprisoning people over minor philosophical differences and real or lack of perceived lack of enthusiasm for continued murder. And it eventually led to global war and attempted global conquest.

My original (admittedly tongue in cheek) comment is less of a value judgement, and more an observation that if the ruling class doesn't effectively walk the tightrope of exploiting while subduing people, then they stand to lose a whole lot.

Good luck using guillotines on an army of militarized drones outnumbering you 10 to 1.

Yes, guns, clubs, fire, and steel weapons. And afterward they had the Reign of Terror, and the rise of the French Emperor Napoleon. It seems like it mostly worked out in the long run, though subsequent World Wars left the French Empire as a weakened shell of itself. In the short term, up until Napoleon was finally taken down by the combined British and Prussian forces at Waterloo, it seemed to have led to all sorts of calamities. How many died? How many did Robespierre manage to get sentenced to death before he met the same fate? Would Napoleon have risen and caused the death of so many?

One thing would-be revolutionaries don't appreciate is that, well, similar to Mr. Putin's experience today, revolutions (and wars) are much easier to start than to control. One day you're chopping off the leader's head, the next day you are pressed into military service and your Constitution is gone. I personally would rather be patient and work on reforming institutions, even if it takes a much longer time. Often times when we get rid of them, it's not that something better fills the void, as anarchists (communists or libertarians alike) like to claim, but instead it's nothing and that capability is gone until some calamity restores the need.

Exactly this. Violent revolutions are very rarely successful in increasing the average welfare and freedom of the populace.

Y'all gotta stop looking at politics this way.

You know why they don't share the fruits of capital with us now? Because Americans hate getting taxed to pay for welfare, and so they've been voting against taxes for 50 years. This whole political landscape changes when people lose their jobs to AI, a thing that everyone thinks should be taxed. In fact, the entire ideological underpinning behind extreme wealth accumulation is gone when AI runs everything.

Works great in other countries with high unemployment. That's exactly what happens! People elect a person who says they are going to change everything to fix it and they never get around to it for some reason :)

Just look at the mess south America is in...

Yes, because current unemployment comes as the result of complex factors that intersect with various groups and ideologies in complex ways. Also, raising employment is a complex task.

When AI takes the jobs, it will be dead simple to the majority of people that the current way of doing things will not work, in the same way it's dead simple to you and me.

Saw a video summarising this on gamersnexus today and it is nauseating - especially Jensen.

To be intellectually honest about it, you have to answer a bunch of questions:

1. Awful compared to what? 2. Was there an equivalent transfer outside America? 3. What is the cause? What ratio rent-seeking/shady activity vs a consequence of natural forces (e.g. technological change)

> A massive $79T has been transferred from bottom 90% to top 1% since the 1970s

This assertion is based on comparing reality with a counterfactual where income distributions remained static from 1975 to the present. Real median personal income roughly doubled over this time period.

The use of the word "transferred" seems a little intellectually dishonest here. The use of the counterfactual seems to suggest that income distribution has no relationship with growth in total income, and total income would have been exactly the same regardless of income distribution. I see no reason to assume that to be the case.

Well you have a data point of one, so I guess we live in the best of all possible outcomes?

I don't understand what you mean by "data point of one"

Do you think I'm talking about my own, personal income?

I'm talking about median personal income in the United States, because the figures I found for household income only go back to 1985

If it’s any consolation, I’m rich yet the country is still shit. (Comparing to Europe as a previous immigrant of Western Europe.

Other than a few parasitic industries it's pretty great. If we can just get some common sense reforms in insurance, healthcare, advertising, and reverse some regulatory capture it would be comparably utopic.

There's some of that but the vast majority is paid with private sector stuff - business profits and investor money.

Not to mention all the land being gobbled up to build these data centers.

Of all the externalities under discussion, I think land use is a very minor one.

Most of this land was low-utility anyway. You should realise it is good for the land owners to convert it to high yield output, which in turn the government can tax and return some of the gains to the people.

What's the alternative ?

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