jimkleiber

Fair point. I also think the same group you're talking about is probably not thinking about going back home with just government benefits to sustain them. They probably are more focused on working in countries with higher wages and building big homes back home. I think it tends to be more wage driven than government benefit driven, but I could be wrong.

Why "correctly"? Who says that a country or a group of humans or even an individual human is beyond saving?

Yes, pouring money may not be a very efficient solution and graft can certainly happen. For me it's a combination of how much graft do we allow if we take the long perspective and see it shrinking over time (maybe we dont allow any, cold turkey)? And what are ways we can help change the environments that may not be directly tied to money? From my perspective, we often need (and graft) money the most when we don't trust ourselves and others to help us. So are there ways we can help build deeper relationships so money is not the only focus or way people think they can get help?

Perhaps. I think it's more about the passport ranking so one can travel and also the salary bump. But even if more of the other government services, try living in a country where if you get into a serious car accident you have to pay cash at the ER before they treat you. Scrambling to find multiple thousands of dollars in cash at 3am sometimes. (This happened to my friend in Kenya)

Im not sure if I can blame people for wanting to have more financial or medical security.

Like Waymo meets Zipcar?

It might be. It also lets my loyalty go slowly by slowly. Monopolies work until they collapse.

If you can't tell, it frustrates me so much. I wonder how the internal culture of Uber changed when it went from almost zero interest rates to now trying to make lots of profit.

My friend said he realized Uber can just rely on a steady stream of people either growing up or getting laid off and trying to make a quick buck, so they can treat their drivers poorly as well.

I'm not sure what's happening, just know support may be a lot simpler and cheaper to address than nothing, or at least in the medium to long term, but maybe not?

Because I think we've been generous because we recognize the benefits that come to us for being so generous. Proper generosity recognizes that the other's well-being relates to our well-being.

For example, giving funding to USAID to try to stop the spread of Ebola helps people in DRC, Uganda, and other countries directly affected, but can also help the US not have Ebola spread here.

Helping Mexico improve their economy can help people in Mexico not immigrate to the US.

I believe our generosity also benefits us much more than we can see when our perspective collapses and we see life from fewer and fewer dimensions. And I think we can collapse into the "us vs them" mindset that so many others have collapsed into or we can go the other direction and realize it's "us with them" and then we look at generosity differently.

I wish they would spend some of that on the help/support function within their apps. Whenever I have a problem on Uber, it feels like a never-ending maze to figure out how to get any support, and I consider myself versed in navigating unseemly UI, I can only imagine how much it might frustrate people who struggle navigating apps.

Any idea why their help function seems to impenetrable and if AI might help with it?

I think the biggest question the US needs to ask itself is do we want to be normal like most countries or better?

> Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi have adopted a three-tiered duty structure for imports from outside the East Africa Customs Union under the terms of the Protocol on the Establishment of the East Africa Customs Union, which became fully operational in January 2010. Most finished products are subject to a 25% duty, while intermediate products face a 10% levy. Raw materials (excluding foodstuffs) and capital goods may still enter duty free. Imported goods are charged a value added tax (VAT) of 18% and a 15% withholding tax, which is not reclaimable. Combined, these taxes effectively charge a 33% tax on all foreign goods and services. Imports are also charged a 1.5% infrastructure tax to finance railway infrastructure development. [0]

"Effectively charge a 33% tax on all foreign goods and services." Not just Macbooks. I don't know if this is the final definitive tally of the tariffs but I believe almost everything has a high tariff, so people effectively pay 33% more for the same goods plus shipping. Fair, can't really get rid of shipping, but a 33% or even a 15% penalty on tools means people get worse tools. Computers, mobile phones, cars, motorcycle helmets, medicines (if imported perhaps?), hammers, fans, showers, whatever tool you might use that is a finished good coming from another country, you pay 15-33% or whatever more, so you get a lower quality product for the money you have. I just would prefer my people get the best deal on the best tools (that we as a country don't think we need to make for security reasons) so people can improve faster. Less smog, better roads, fewer things that break...would be quite nice at all levels.

[0]: www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/uganda-import-tariffs

I wish governments would realize that the more barriers and friction they put between their citizens and good tools, the worse their economy will probably be.

You wrote 7 paragraphs originally. What specifically do you want me to address?

It seems that you may not want to actually have a discussion, rather just reinforce the idea that we're either screwed by employers or screwed by helplessness.

Fair, my one example on layoffs may not land with you.

But do you want us to just sink into the helplessness of us all being screwed or do you want to try to find solutions that might allow us to feel some sense of agency and hope?

Fair, I never said there wasn't risk involved with ownership. I even made sure to qualify when I said that people who own don't do labor, because often there is labor involved in ownership.

So I don't think it's a free lunch, it's more risk-for-lunch than labor-for-lunch. Maybe you could argue laborers are still risking their body or something, but I think the point might stand.

> Nobody cares, either you bring something to the table someone else can exploit for money, or you lean into “I’m helpless and the government owes it to me to take care of me because I’ve been indoctrinated into learned helplessness.”

You paint the economic model as a false dichotomy, and the main point of my posting was that it is not a false dichotomy. It is not either have a job (and be exploited by someone else) or be helpless and rely on government handouts.

For example, what if people who got laid off from companies were given significant stock in the company, so that they might partake in the potential savings and gains from replacing the workers with AI or other tools?

The whole conversation seemed to be about the economic model, so I'm not sure how it is a distraction, a boogeyman, or inconsequential.

Also plastered on frat and sorority houses all over town :-) (at least at many universities in the US)

Well the essence of capitalism might be that people who own the capital receive money for owning it, not doing any labor on it necessarily.

So when we talk of people doing labor for money, we are assuming they can only own their body and receive money from that?

For so long, people, especially politicians, have said that companies want to create jobs. But I think most companies want to create profit.

And for so long, I've had people tell me to just get a job. But I tell them that I don't want a job: I want money and I want something to do. Those two things don't have to be together.

I think this is the hard part: philosophically so many of us have learned we need jobs and don't realize a job can be decomposed into money and something to do.

So I think we need to start looking more creatively at 1) how people receive money from others and 2) how people give services to others.

Maybe the problem is trying to govern a global space with sub-global governments.

I've often wanted real name policies for writing and anonymity for reading. And I don't think bans are the way to go, I think one should just shift the norms on this so that it becomes easy to verify an identity and therefore easy to see which ones are anonymous. The problem right now is that real identity and anonymous blend together, so anonymous can pretend to be real, which might seem even more so in the age of AI.

I wonder if there are different levels to this: 1) real identity/name 2) humanness 3) completely anonymous.

(definitely open to other suggested levels)

For example, if someone is posting on the internet with a real name, I want them to actually be that person. If they're posting with a username, I mostly just want them to be a human. I don't know how much I'd be open to it being hard to know whether it was a human or bot.

With regards to reading stats, public or private, I'd still like to know whether human vs bot. I think YouTube and Twitter/X and IG and all these platforms have been gamed by lots of bots pretending to be unique humans and those stats get wildly out of touch with how many humans actually interact (which I think matters for true popularity and advertising and basic understanding of social interactions).

I think the challenge is if it's real identity, often it doesn't split between real identity and simple proof of humanity. Maybe it's not that easy from a tech standpoint, and maybe it's because companies would want to track every move and people want privacy, but maybe it'd be easier if more people wanted it.

So I wonder how to balance this.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

That's the phrase i was looking for, thank you.

I might be willing to pay more, maybe a lot more, for a higher subscription than claude max 20x, but the only thing higher is pay per token and i really dont like products that make me have to be that minutely aware of my usage, especially when it has unpredictability to it. I think there's a reason most telecoms went away from per minute or especially per MB charging. Even per GB, as they often now offer X GB, and im ok with that on phone but much less so on computer because of the unpredictability of a software update size.

Kinda like when restaurants make me pay for ketchup or a takeaway box, i get annoyed, just increase the compiled price.

I tried to hack the statusline to show this but when i tried, i don't think the api gave that info. I'd love if they let us have more variables to access in the statusline.

You just gave me the idea to 1) photo a cluttered drawer and have AI identify all the things, 2) it'd be nice if it could take that output and structure it (eg, items A, B, and C are in drawer 1) and 3) maybe even have a cheap cameras in the important places that update periodically. I dunno. Also maybe have it connect to this home memory system, ill check it out more. Thank you both!

I appreciate you saying that, i think sometimes with ai conversations i wade into them without knowing the precise definitions of the terms, I'll try to be more careful next time. Thank you.

I wonder if this is like when a restaurant introduces a new menu to increase prices.

Is Opus 4.7 that significantly different in quality that it should use that much more in tokens?

I like Claude and Anthropic a lot, and hope it's just some weird quirk in their tokenizer or whatnot, just seems like something changed in the last few weeks and may be going in a less-value-for-money direction, with not much being said about it. But again, could just be some technical glitch.

In 2020, I wrote a book and livestreamed the writing of it. Felt more raw and real at the time but I guess is probably more human vs ai these days.

Not sure how to make that a platform, as when i wrote i explicitly put everything directly into a book unedited, whereas for many people, the editing is probably at least half if not more of the time they spend writing.

Or we could just bring back Google Wave :-)

jimkleiber.com/project-35 if you’re curious.

I like the concept. I'd love to see more types of data available, especially maybe race, age, connection to the president or their families, donations that the pardoned/commuted people have given and to whom, and more.

I'd find that fascinating for seeing deeper patterns.

Depends on your crowd. He doesnt often sell them as 10,000 year Long Now projects but that he'll achieve 10,000 year projects in 2 years.

It has me wonder how much he wants those futures or just knows they are very good vehicles for fundraising, because his personal business model seems to be more based on fundraising and stock price than profits.