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Comment by kristopolous | Hacker News Reader

Next time someone tells you this is the party of free market and small government, I guess you just laugh now?

I've been laughing when people tell me that for my entire adult life. It remains a pretty funny bit of dark humor, though.

Growing up rural, the grift has been obvious my whole ĺife

The authority under which this was done has been operative and actively used for several decades. It isn't a partisan issue, it is a policy of American governance. Anyone that has worked on frontier "dual use" technologies will be familiar with the legal regime.

The only thing that changed is people are writing articles about it in the news media.

The only correct reply.

If by correct you mean, inconsistent with the American tradition of the rule of law and commitment to equal protection of the law, and the emergence of an authoritarian kleptocracy that picks winners and losers. Then yes. Correct.

Which has been obvious trend the last few decades and is now being done openly and shamelessly like a tinpot dicator. Largely through a new populist protectionism ideology that is popular on social media. Which makes it much more public and well documented.

Usually companies do this stuff quietly with lots of small new rules via Congress creating barriers to entry or through national security angles like the Chips act which funneled money and tax breaks to huge weathy companies, or Boeing, or the car industry, etc.

Anthropic and OpenAI went hard in the paint pushing for AI safety and it backfired into hurting their companies rather than protecting their interests.

Stop with the false equivalence.

I’ve been critical of crony capitalism consistently on HN for a decade now. Many people just haven’t been paying attention because nobody cares to follow this stuff unless there’s a useful political angle.

If I bring a house cat to a party and you bring a tiger we could both be accused of bringing a pet to the party without asking. But only one of the pets will crush your throat and then eat your face.

I would love to see any examples of democrats being crony capitalist of the same degree as the current administration. They are selling pardons, hosting crypto dinners where the seating arrangement is based on how many coins you bought, seizing the equity of private companies like intel and the revenue of corporations in exchange for lifting export restrictions like to nvidia, holding up M&A transactions for rivals and approving transactions for allies, ignoring laws passed by congress (like the ban on TikTok) to let allies buy the assets.

I am not a favor of state capture by the capitalist class. But democrats are house cats.

>I would love to see any examples of democrats being crony capitalist of the same degree

No you wouldn't. You've established a subjective measure to the discussion by which you can refuse to acknowledge any example provided.

How about Biden leaving a bunch of equipment in Afghanistan so his weapons manufacturing buddies could get new manufacturing contracts?

How about Biden using the EPA to shut down eco friendly products in favor of his buddies' company's spill remediation that doesn't work nearly as well?

Oh well, those individually aren't "to the same degree" even if there are many more of them that cumulatively add up to a greater degree.

There are countless examples of this, as lots of others have pointed out to you across this thread. You're just choosing to walk them all back into a corner of "but it's not as bad because <insert additional criterion>."

Your opinion as given is entirely based around Trump, not government.

It's simple fanaticism. You've chosen a football team. Nothing will convince you that their quarterback sucks because he was just having a bad day every game of the season.

You can quickly stop doing this. Go research the counterpoints and see if you aren't being selective. It will require some honesty with yourself to do so. Most people find that very difficult.

Jumping in to reflexively defend the admin again, I see.

Is there any policy from this admin you don't support?

I am making an observation of fact. My feeds are full of ignorant hot takes that clearly demonstrate people have no clue about current law or how the government actually works. Your response is a perfect demonstration of this. This is neither unique to the current administration nor supporters of a particular party.

I don’t support the admin but if you are unwilling to engage with reality then that is on you.

Make a case then based on Prior examples and why they are of the same nature and degree.

We are talking about the government giving exclusive access the the most transformative technology in human history to a select group of companies with no formal policy as to how you gain access, lose access, what you are expected to do with that access or commitment to transparency around any of this.

But it was applied using principles of the rule of law with clear regulatory frameworks. This is not that

I’ve dealt with these regulations across several administrations. Nothing about this is novel, it is just receiving more attention than usual. Anyone could have started caring about this decades ago. You are making an argument from unfamiliarity with the regulations as practiced.

If it takes Trump to force people to educate themselves on how the US government actually works then I guess that is at least one good thing to come out of this.

I am aware that the government has always been involved in these types of issues. Even a season finale of silicon valley shows pied piper being required to navigate government oversight when it became successful and implied it was a badge of honor / success.

But you have to admit this policy seems ad hoc and creates the impression of opening a wide door for corruption.

It isn’t ad hoc, it happens all the time in frontier tech, this particular instance just gained public notoriety. Historically, the government has preferred to keep this reality out of the public consciousness. This time they are either unavoidable or they expect some leverage by making it public.

This was absolutely predictable, and many people made that prediction. The patterns of what tech they apply export controls to is actually pretty legible. People have long tried to ride the gray area so that their tech is not subject to export controls. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. This was never not going to be subject to it.

This isn’t a pure export control restriction. It is granting access to “trusted partners” with no criteria of how a firm or person earns that designation. It is also unclear why these models in particular were subject to a restriction or at least evaluation.

I am simply arguing that there is a more effective approach to creating a regulatory framework here. It doesn’t have to take that much effort. But this random announcement with no prior or current guidelines seems ad hoc to me.

Also known as, the tu quoque fallacy. Just because politicians in both parties have been doing this for decades doesn't mean that this administration is not especially hypocritical for doing it after whinging so much about free speech and free markets.

Well, there are the political ideals expressed or embraced by the populace, and then there are politicians. AFAICT political parties at the national level and state level in the US is pure theater.

the question isn’t about size, it’s about who the government works for. Small government can promote private interests by not entering certain societal spaces, leaving them for profit making — education, healthcare, housing etc. But large government can also promote private interests, by directing tax dollars to corporations (and still not entering certain societal spaces).

It’s not about size, it’s about where it chooses to operate

Also free speech/the first amendment and various other rights people are supposed to have but don't in practice.

Fourth Amendment, through corporate data purchase or exfiltration.

Now?

That's always been a relative, rather than absolute statement.

Genuine question: if Democrats take power, do you expect them to be more interventionist or less interventionist with respect to AI? Bernie's jockeying leads me to suspect "more", but I could very well be wrong.

(FWIW I personally think modern AI falls in the small realm of potentially dangerous technologies that merit careful, ideally bipartisan, government oversight)

I think they’d try to get something through Congress to regulate the industry in a rules-based way.

The current admin flies by the seat of their pants and at least creates the perception of political decision making.

> the perception of political decision making

The what? More like "the whims of an eighty year old in cognitive decline and those wishing to curry or keep his favor" - quite an expansive definition of "political decision making".

Don't forget the blatant grift and corruption.

> More like "the whims of an eighty year old in cognitive decline..."

The previous administration was totally not exactly what's described here...

It wasn’t. Biden largely didn’t do much. The trump administration does illegal things that get struck down in courts on a daily basis. We’re all very desensitized to it.

But yes, Biden was old and cognitively not well. But his “whims” didn’t exist much, and they were always fairly reasonable. Trump is the most unreasonable president, most likely in US history. I would even categorize Andrew Jackson as more restrained.

The courts struck down many Biden policies as well. People just give those a pass because "SCOTUS is rigged" or something...

The only big one I remember is the college loan forgiveness thing.

> https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-dealt-bide...

That would be your politics coloring your memory.

Actually I probably just wasn't paying that much attention.

Ah, so those weren’t mostly 6-3 decisions along partisan lines?

Obamacare, but for AI, where every American has to now pay a penalty to not use AI or something like that?

That was the last major thing the Democrats did, and healthcare has gotten substantially worse...but at least it's well regulated now.

The IRA and the CHIPS Act were the "last major thing" the Dems did, and both were far better policy for tech than anything out of this current administration.

That’d land better as a political hit if only it made any sense at all. Truly a low effort attempt.

> I think they’d try to get something through Congress to regulate the industry in a rules-based way.

Is that a joke? We're back in a spat with Iran because Obama refused to engage with Congress, as required by our constitution, to enter the USA in any binding deal.

Any AI actions from the next admin is going to be executive yolos.

What rules, though?

Bernie and AOC (which aren't DNC mainstream, but prominent) had just pushed for a moratorium on "AI data centers" with a definition that includes "that are used for the development or operation of AI models at scale" (trivially sidesteppable by "we build this GPU farm to sell to whoever bids for compute" - which is actually true), plus a bunch of fancy extras bundled in like "The government must review and approve AI products before they are released to ensure that AI products are safe and effective.", while lacking actual definition of "AI" (given that we had "AI" systems since '50s).

Here's the full text: https://www.sanders.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/AI-Data-Ce...

Yeah, the bill has a cause - it recognizes some pain points. But then it haphazardly tries to address symptoms instead of underlying issues (environmental regulations, utility pricing, land use, job security), while pushing vaguely defined regulations that allow arbitrary application. As if misdirected measures and poorly defined laws aren't already a giant issue.

The whole point of Congress is to get a bunch of people with different ideas and hash them out. Ideas like this are an input, not an output, of Congress.

That’s how it should be. I’m not sure that’s how it works in practice. Certainly not today, when everything seems to be slogan/agenda-driven.

Congress did regulate weapons access when they passed the AECA almost 50 years ago. The rules have been refined via ITAR over time. This isn't arbitrary.

We don’t have to guess. Democrats had a pragmatic policy under Biden — which was rescinded by Trump when he took office.

https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/statement...

> Democrats had a pragmatic policy under Biden

How well does it stand up to Mythos?

Hard to imagine it would be worse than Republicans, who don’t have any policy except for the whims of a man child.

Marc Andreesen has first-hand knowledge that absolutely refutes what you are saying.

The Democratic party is more anti-ai than the Republican party and unfortunately both of them are increasingly responding to astroturfed populism.

Do you think Bernie Sanders in AOC are pro-ai? Are you kidding me? Have you seen what they say and the legislation they propose?

Yes, but they’re proposing legislation. Trump is legislating from the White House, through a series of bribes and corrupt conduct.

Not even on the same playing field. They just can’t be compared, they’re incomparable.

Less. They'd use congress and the courts.

Having an a collective economy governed by the “free market” is like having a pile of stones governed by gravity. There exists a primary directive force, but if you want to construct a cathedral or a bomb shelter, you need to impose some constraints, lest you revert to the angle of repose.

This is a very bad analogy. Markets behave like an imperfect optimisation algorithm, and you can prove that, under some conditions which are most often met, they give people what they want. In fact, you can almost always expect governments to be less effective and less rational than markets in allocating resources to satisfy the desires of people, even when democratic. You can prove it either by using the same logic that tells you when markets fail (externalities, information asymmetry), or empirically by looking at what was basically the most perfect A/B test we had on society over the 20th century. Although it was a comparison between mixed economies and fully centralised ones, there is no reason to expect the optimum mix of centralisation/distribution to be closer to the worst-performing one (the fully centralised one).

You can't prove your free-market theory because it's not falsifiable.

This is why arguments about this go in circles. You either argue from a pure theoretic POV back and forth, or you go off data - at which point, bringing up every failure of free markets (like, obviously, US healthcare) is dismissed as "not really a free market"

Even the theoreticians on the free-market side are far less solid than.. all the other sides (behavioural economics, information asymmetry.. even Marx) but I regard it as deeply unpragmatic when there's so much data out there indicating what actually happens in the real world when you go one way or the other.

> You can't prove your free-market theory because it's not falsifiable.

You can prove the logic part starting from the assumptions. It's also falsifiable. I just mentioned it was literally the most controlled test on human society you could make. We tested by splitting societies at the level of the entire planet, states and cities.

US healthcare is mostly not a free market; by free market, at minimum, I mean that the quantities and prices (ideally even the quality) are not set. The US healthcare system has a fixed number of practitioners who can get a license every year. This is as far as a market can be from being free (together with the case of having price controls). In fact, free market theory predicts that when you restrict quantity, you get higher prices for the same quality. It literally predicts the US situation.

It's funny you mention Marx, given I regard most of his claims as either unfalsifiable or easily proven false.

at which point, bringing up every failure of free markets (like, obviously, US healthcare) is dismissed as "not really a free market"

I mean, it's not. In a free market you'd have a choice of insurance providers rather than having to take whatever plan your employer offers, and you'd have some idea of what the hospital is going to charge you beforehand rather than receiving random bills for weeks.

Just to be clear, my definition of free-market is just that there is no centralised authority that can use force to set prices/quantities/quality/type of services offered. Of course, the fact that the employer has to offer health insurance in some cases is part of it not being a free market. But there are more fundamental things that make the US healthcare very far from being a free market. The first one is that the supply of doctors is capped in quantity, not just in quality.

Isn't that sitch just because employers get volume discounts?

isn't that the most free market thing ever?

> A/B test we had on society over the 20th century.

Well, by your own logic, there's a new a/b test running right now. Its results aren't exactly going your way.

Not sure what you are referring to. Can you elaborate?

Yes. But that was the “big government democrat” argument that republicans said was evil and un American.

Ever since I've been conscious (the 80s), it's been the party of fear, violence and greed. They've consistently nominated actual clowns for positions of power. B-movie actor Ronald Reagan... Dan Quayle... Sarah Palin... the current, truly stunning iteration of absolute moral and intellectual bankruptcy TWICE after he killed hundreds of thousands of people due to COVID/vaccine skepticism and staged a violent attack on the capitol after losing a democratic election.

Free market? Small government? Big police state, trillions in defense contractor grift, unsustainable tax breaks to the wealthiest leading to massive spending deficits... all while doing everything to erode access to education, healthcare and basic services.

It is just utterly baffling to me. I'm... well along the spectrum... so people not responding correctly to obvious information is just something I've gotten used to but just... wow.

edit: typo

> It is just utterly baffling to me. I'm... well along the spectrum... so people not responding correctly to obvious information is just something I've gotten used to but just... wow.

People get quite a kick out of seeing people they don't like get hurt. They can stay entertained by that for a long time until it bites them.

Only now is it finally biting with the collapse of the rural medical clinics, the war induced spike in the price of gasoline, etc.

That's probably playing a big part in the seeming shift in the electorate in every election.

Republicans trust Americans with guns and not an LLM. That should tell you something.

It tells me that the people who buy Republican politicians make money from selling Americans guns, and somebody with influence thinks they can make money by restricting LLM release.

Free for me, not for thee

Then cry as you look for the free market/small government leaders.

If you laugh you’re a communist and against Christianity and part of a satanic cabal.

these days my actual policy is to find whoever is being slandered as a communist and vote for them.

Not just that, Biden administration started with some AI regulation that the Trump administration nixed, and then outright banning models. Lunacy.

They haven’t claimed to be the free market party since Obama was in office. Trump very much ran an anti free market campaign the first time.

Yes they have.

Not really. They’re all lousy pro tariffs, anti immigration, pro tech regulations, and so on. Paul Ryan is gone.

They still spout off about free markets all the time with no sense of irony.

They'll literally tell you it's not raining while you're standing there getting soaked. [1] Anything the Republicans say is meaningless.

1: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/thomas-jefferson-street/artic...

Literally who? The young MAGA folks in congress like Josh Hawley certainly don’t. I guess Rand Paul is a free market guy, but he’s pretty much the only one. Even Susan Colins is signing onto tariffs and other nonsense.

Anyone that complains about socialism or communism as a criticism of democrats is pretending to be a free market capitalist.

I disagree. They're simply engaging in culture war posturing where socialism is simply a byword for "bad people". They call democrats socialists and argue for nationalizing OpenAI and some steel mills. They aren't for the free market, they're just dumb. Marjorie Taylor Greene typifies this kind of behavior.

If you think that anthropic wasn't pushing aggressive regulatory capture legislation in the Biden administration, why do you think they hired a bunch of people from it?

It's very fashionable to hate on the current administration, despite what the previous administration was doing. That's reality and I'll be punished to hell for saying so.

If you don't want the current administration to be blindly hated, perhaps you should ask the president to stop publishing daily statements about how much he hates various people. You reap what you sow.

It'll never stop amusing me how blind we are to politicians that are "on our side".

Again, you're seeing this as some kind of clever invariant of politics, but it's not. People are blind to politicians on their side because Donald Trump has spent the past 10 years working hard to make sure that everyone in politics is constantly enraged at the other side. You're being "punished to hell", in your words, because you're blaming Trump's passionate embrace of hatred-based politics on his opponents.

> you're seeing this as some kind of clever invariant of politics, but it's not. People are blind to politicians on their side because Donald Trump

Yes, sure, it is I who is blind...

lol. Yes. You couldn’t possibly be blind! You’re a both-sides guy. And, as everyone knows, both-sides guys are rational and grounded in reality.

What Anthropic was pushing for under Biden has very little to do with the values Republicans have been espousing (and failing to live up to) for decades. That's kind of the point op was making. Republicans run on small government but do not deliver it. Democrats do not run on small government. Democrat Presidents campaign on and push for things like the ACA, they don't have fun quips like, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help.”

A clear regulatory framework to operate within allows businesses to operate within it rather than get surprised by the King's whims upending their business on every few Fridays. If you expect regulation will eventually happen, pushing for it to happen on terms you're able to comply with rather than as haphazard surprises is pretty sensible.

Which party is?

The one currently running the show.

Considering there's no such thing as a "free market" I've been laughing for a real long time. Markets require regulation and enforcement to function.

The US government was created to protect the interests of rich, white, male slave owners. And if you look at Louisiana State Penintentiary (often called "Angola"), which is essentialy a Southern plantation with forced labor, you realize not as much has changed as you might otherwise think.

The it did a pretty shit job of it. Within 100 years it was killing hundreds of thousands to fight against that purpose.

The point of slavery was money, and the point of money was power. By the time of the civil war the real power for the ruling class was coming from industrialization.

Lincoln disagrees [1]:

> My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.

While chattel slavery ended when the 13th Amendment was ratified in 1865, slavery continued through debt bondage and convict leasing up until 1941 where FDR suddenly decided to aggressively prosecute the practice for fear of the Japanese using it for propaganda value. I'm referring to Circular 3591 [2]. And while that heavily curtailed abuse (eg by locking people up essentially indefinitely for "vagrancy" or imaged debts), forced prison labor continues to this day, including private companies profiting from prison labor.

Also, while the Confederacy lost the Civil War, the South arguably won. Reconstruction saw severe curtailment of newly-established civil rights for former enslaved people. And after Reconstruction came Jim Crow until the 1960s.

[1]: https://www.loc.gov/collections/abraham-lincoln-papers/artic...

[2]: https://www.endslaverynow.org/blog/articles/state-imposed-fo...

> The South won

It’s hard to take this seriously.

But “The South Will Rise Again” folks will be happy to hear it.

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