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Comment by testfoobar | Hacker News Reader

Populism is effective because the proverbial rising tide is not lifting all boats. AI is currently driving yet another extreme wealth inequality inflection point. Founded just five years ago, Anthropic is going to be a trillion dollar private company maybe this year! This is a staggering outcome and will further divide the gap between the wealthy and everyone else.

So whether populist outrage is expressed through fears of job losses, higher energy prices or concerns over water usage, IMHO, wealth inequality is the cause.

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This is a bit reductionist.

AI is also:

- 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.

- Helping the world progress towards cheaper healthcare: https://www.vox.com/health/487425/open-ai-chatgpt-diagnosis-...

- Allowing lower income communities to access legal advice that would previously have been prohibitively expensive: https://www.probonoinst.org/2026/02/06/ai-and-technology-hel...

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.

The economy is down, and the fad is blame AI so that is what everyone is doing. The last downturn there was a different fad that people blamed it on - but the real root cause was always the economy and not the fad.

It’s understandable that people blame AI for economic issues when so may CEOs are publicly stating that “increased efficiencies due to AI” is the reason for laying off staff.

They blamed the latest fad for layoffs in the last one as well.

Every company and project I know of has a long list of things they want to do that they believe would be good for customers - but they cannot afford the people needed, and the risk is too high to borrow. That is if AI was really increasing efficiency in a good economy they would be keeping everyone and getting more work done with them.

Of course in reality we cannot know if AI has really increased efficiency - we only have short term measures at best which we know from experience are often wrong. (most often because there are many ways you can make a shortcut today that will kill your long term)

> " latest fad for layoffs"

What are you referring to here? The latest fad before AI was crypto, or maybe "the metaverse" and I don't think anyone credited those for layoffs. Before that, the latest large round of layoffs was during what, 2008? And the blame for that was correctly laid on the very real economic collapse occurring.

There have been other downturns that didn't hit tech. Not all fads coincide with a downturn and so not all get blamed on for the layoffs. Sometimes the economy is blamed correctly at well.

> Populism is effective because the proverbial rising tide is not lifting all boats

This is naive and shows lack of understanding of second order effects. Technology has been so far one of the only things to lift all boats. The last 100 years almost eliminated extreme poverty, hunger and improved material life for everyone. How? Technology - agricultural, industrial.

Of course AI is going to be a rising tide but there will be a blip where people can lose jobs.

Wealth inequality is just a proxy issue or jealousy. Industrial revolution also increased inequality (just in narrow terms).

> Of course AI is going to be a rising tide but there will be a blip where people can lose jobs.

Can you provide any evidence for the supposed rising tide? So far I've seen nothing that indicates that anyone besides the people directly invested in AI companies will benefit from it. Even the best case scenario right now - software developers becoming more productive - doesn't actually benefit anyone not invested in AI companies.

People losing their jobs (and in many cases, their livelihoods/lives as a result) are also not the only negative effects.

The irony I think is that whether the tide rises depends on the technology stabilizing to a point where people can be educated on how to competently use it in the workforce. Anyone expecting general returns on AI now is too caught up in the hype to contribute to this occurring—grifters and detractors alike.

Slopulism is effective because people are idiots and happy to eat up lies that align with their priors. Nothing to do with material conditions.

Can I rephrase it slightly?

Humans have some repeatable bugs in our wetware, and it can be predictably exploited in a way that is hard to correct. It isn't "some people" - it's all of us, and the moment we think we're immune is the moment that we are most easily affected.

Yes, even the smartest of us are idiots in some very predictable ways.

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