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Comment by fny | Hacker News Reader

They do this in Alaska's fund with great success[0] and Alaska is a deep red state. It's primarily funded by oil and gas revenue and other mineral royalties. Also thats only (at least) 25% of total revenue, the other 75% the state spends directly.

Norway's oil fund is another famous example mentioned in the article.[1]

[0]: https://apfc.org/

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor...

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The oil is on Alaska/Norway's land, so they can choose what they want to do with money from selling that oil including distributing it or purchasing assets. Sanders seem to be proposing to arbitrarily seize half of the companies.

They seized all of humanity's intellectual output first.

Where'd they put it? All my books are still on their shelves.

Is that why digital piracy is illegal?

The oil companies are exploiting a public asset, so it's obvious the public would benefit. Who are the AI companies paying for the training data they're using?

> The oil is on Alaska/Norway's land

These AI companies are on American land.

The funny thing about data is... it can move across borders a lot better than oil deposits...

Data can.

Data centers at scale, less so.

But I suppose that's why Altman and Musk have been cozying up to autocratic Middle Eastern regimes and dreaming about AI in space...

In the case of Alaska, the oil is literally on land owned by the State of Alaska (as in, the titleholder of the land is the state itself), and the rights to oil extraction is leased by the state to oil companies.

By contrast, data centers are generally going to be on land owned by the operator, and corporate offices are either owned by the company or leased to the company by some commercial real estate operator you've probably never heard of. In neither sense are they on land owned by any local, state, or federal government.

The sovereign entity granting said private ownership is the state. It is privately owned only insofar as the state wills it.

> It is privately owned only insofar as the state wills it.

you mean as the people/voters wills it. Private ownership of land is pretty sacred law in the US, I don't see those laws being changed any time soon. Even logical things like the concept of eminent domain is very controversial.

Holy shit a realpolitiker. There is a God called "state" that WILLS the laws. Only by the power of prayer can one communicate with the sovereign, who whimsically discards centuries long legal traditions because a midwit read Schmitt or something.

> Sanders seem to be proposing to arbitrarily seize half of the companies.

I guess it's only ok when the government arbitrarily seizes half my paycheck. If it happens to billionaires it's communism or something.

This isn't about income tax or capital gains tax, it's about the government seizing half of a privately owned company.

In both cases the government takes half of something that belongs to an individual. Does it matter if it's cash or stock?

In fact when my company awards me stock the government takes half anyway!

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