pc_edwin

This is business at truest and most raw form. Its easily one of my favourite parts of capitalism where you get as close to nature as you can in a civilised world.

WeWork is walking an extremely tight rope with a very narrow window of time and not a lot of options.

Things could go in many directions (merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, extension) and this is the last time the current management/shareholders will have any kind of say/leverage in what happens.

Do you just expect them to do nothing and wait for inevitable implosion and the subsequent wipe out of shareholders, mass layoffs and probably either the end of the brand or a restructured version that will be a shell of its former self.

Btw speaking of Elon, he was in a very similar spot this time last year. Mass exodus advertisers dropping already bad financials of a cliff with looming interest payments.

> and in the end it's shareholders and tax payers who suffer

This makes it look like a good vs bad situation when in reality its an already bad situation where you multiple stakeholders fighting for who loses the least.

I touched on this in one (or more lol) of my tangents.

Where is this good outcome you speak off? All these western nations are staring down a barrel with the exception of tax/banking havens and nations with a commodity to population asymmetry.

> If minimum gets pegged to inflation, low-income earners will simply take home a bigger portion

The entire economy runs on the margin. Traders get to experience this visually with the orderbook where you have bids/asks and the resulting liquidity/depth.

When you have a minimum wage pegged to an inflation "adjusted" rate, you're opening a Pandora's box of positive feedback loops resulting in the creative destruction of the economy.

This is not just a prediction, its exactly happened to these "20 other countries" including the US (to an extend). These countries use to be industrial powerhouses that accumulated immense wealth during their imperial past, look at them now.

P.S.

Just read your last two paragraphs, don't you see how it reads like a bedtime story?

Energy cannot be created not destroyed. When you dictate every human must have a minimum economic value of X, what do you think happens to the denominator X is measured in?

What do you think happens to an entire subset of low margin businesses that rely on unskilled labour.

What do you think happens to the banks and businesses that invested, loaned or leased land to those low margin businesses.

What do you think happens the streets/towns/cities those businesses to used to exist in?

Moreover, what do you think happens to your country when your adversaries or other countries start eating your lunch.

Again not a guess or prediction, this is whats been happening of more than half a century now and you want to deal with the consequences by doubling down.

TLDR:

It will be exponentially easier to pass (even federally) than any prescriptions I've suggested.

That said, my point was the consequence of such a law would be much worse than doing nothing.

Long Version:

If we did nothing, inflation will effectively bring the current minimum wage down to zero given enough time.

Whereas if we set a federal minimum wage of $25/hr (current inflation adjusted), it will have disastrous downstream consequences.

I've touched on this in my OP. You are dictating by fiat that every human must have a minimum economic value of X.

You'll be de-facto robbing a huge chunk of the population of an honest life with dignity and prohibiting any types/classes of businesses that rely on unskilled/low value labor.

Also if you study history you realise its exactly these types of laws that create black markets and racketeering. Similar to lets say cannabis, you cant just wish the demand away..

It gets even worse, when you do this by industry like the California law. The state basically becomes the kingmaker. Its just a bunch of euphemisms for basically putting their thumb on the scale against large fast food chains.

> attacking me doesn't help your argument

Wasn't my intention, I was trying explain how answering yes or no would be a tacid admission to the claims smuggled in your question. I don't even think its intentional.

> It seems like you want to suggest solutions that are 500,000 times harder

I agree but the alternative is even worse in my opinion. Yes it will work in the short term but check always comes due and it comes with a vengeance when you mess with reality.

This was the main messahe in all my previous posts. Re-organising society in such a way has massive unintended consequences.

Just like the human body, societies are very resilient but at some point it breaks and we are the breaking point. All it will take is a few more straws.

P.S.

> economists consider inflation to be good and healthy

I'm not an expert either but from what I understand, macro-economics is basically astrology for intellectuals but worse. There are different schools (keynesian, austrian, MMT, marxist etc) and the Keynesians won the roll of the dice. IMO very silly.

The entire premise is wrong. Both inflation and deflation are good or bad depending on the context. Its was never meant to wielded handful of people selected by a guy who won a popularity contest.

Idk if you've seen the world of warcraft movie (Warcraft), there is a type of magic in the movie called fell. Its offers a lot power at great cost. Thats artificial inflation/deflation (easing/tightening).

In the movie, you see the villain (Gul'dan) wielding fell by extracting the life force of people, thats exactly what happens when Jeremy (Fed chair) increases/decreases the rates or when a trillion dollars gets printed.

Because you're jesus smuggling extremely flawed assumptions through your question.

e.g. If you don't kill every 3rd cute puppy born, all the pandas in the world will face gruesome deaths. Do you want all the pandas in the world to die gruesomely @grecy?

If "being paid less tomorrow" is caused by inflation, wouldn't it make more sense to tackle the root causes of inflation?

Because its really odd that the only feasible solution you guys have on the table is to double down on Byzantine regulations and Federal Soylent™.

Idk maybe we should instead:

- Get rid of minimum wage

- Get rid of excessive OSHA, SEC, FDA, EPA, FTC rules etc

- Maybe we don't an extra 80,000 IRS agents.

- Since its not the cold war anymore, maybe we don't 18 different intelligence agencies

- Maybe we should replace all welfare and entitlements with an "essentials" program where "if your poor, you failed but we help you not starve or die of a treatable illness, however it comes with strings attached".

- Maybe we should look into how the military is extremely corrupt and inefficient. Why is the F-35 built so many different states, how did we run out munitions so quickly, why will it take that long to replenish it?

Minimum wage is a small part of a larger set of collectivist policies that the west has been sleep walking into since WWII.

TLDR: All of those 21 countries are US protectorates or vassal states. Most of them are European countries that are slowly dying. Some are resource rich, some are tax havens, some are leeching of the goodwill/work of their ancestors.. None are making anything.

Long Version:

- Germany: US protectorate w/ 35K troops. Its truly a testament to the industriousness and ingenuity of these people that they still manage to make all those cars & heavy machinery despite the collectivism.

- Nordic Countries: Total population just over half the population of California with massive oil reserves and a lot of fish. a.k.a EAE with snow

- France/Spain/Portugal: Former empires, like an old person in pain waiting to die. They leech on the good will and work of their ancestors as their nations slowly die off.

- Switzerland, Luxembourg, Ireland etc: Tax/Banking Havens with niche talent.

- Rest Of EU: Dying countries propped up Germany & France or the equivalent of Europes China (Bulgaria/Ukraine/Poland).

- Canada/UK - US vassal states. Also happened to be the former world empire, same story as France/Spain/Portugal but to an even greater degree.

- Australia - Half of Californias population but has an entire continents worth of RAW minerals and commodities to export. Btw thats its, they don't make anything either.

Basically all innovation and production happens in the US or Asia. EU and the rest of the west are slowly dying protectorates/vassal states of the US (hence Pax Americana)

Conclusion:

Anyways most of thats irrelevant, the important part is the fact that they are all dying. They are all propped up by the euro-dollar system. ECB has no ammunition left. Spain, Italy, France are all looking down an imminent pension crises.

The UK is in slightly better shape but thats not saying much, they are looking down an impending sovereign debt crises but as a vassal state, they might get bailed out by the US.

In real terms, they use American medicine, American macbooks, American iphones, American search engines, American Social media, American steaming providers, American content, Asian washing machine, Asian microwave oven, American fast food, American candy, American Ice cream, American soda, American/Asian lightbulbs, Asian trains, Asian TVs, Asian cups etc etc

They don't make anything, they just exist on "good will" gained because of their ancestors and i mean in the literal sense. They exist on the bretton-woods system, all these currencies are artificially propped up. This system is just about to collapse btw lol.

As I'm writing this from the UK I'm not sure I see the "worked out pretty well", especially considering the bakery below me who had to let go off my cousin and the town centre which looks nothing like my youth when it was filled with big stores.

Btw, we British at least try to maintain the appearance of sensibility & wisdom so there is a quasi attempt to address my concerns from the OP with a different minimum wage for those under 18 and a government push for apprenticeships/trades.

That said, it still temporary band aids that doesn't do much of anything. Its also worth noting, the highest minimum wage here is just about $15 and thats in London.

Honestly your respectful tone is refreshing. Based on my past experience with HN, I was bracing for a complete evisceration lol.

The issue I have is you're painting a distorted picture of reality that reads like a badly written fairytail with evil fatcats and poor Victim™ workers.

In reality, middle class America's purchasing power wasn't destroyed by the lack of a decent minimum wage or the greed of your local barbers, it was destroyed by inflation sponsored and accelerated by the one and only: Uncle Sam

Starting with the FDR era socialists policies that set the stage, we built an economy with embedded growth obligations (social security etc) addicted to credit and growth, like a junkie desperate for the next fix.

This credit-based system, with roots in Marxism, Keynesianism, and MMT, has become too big to fail. So we keep it afloat by handouts (methadone) and bailouts (sugar daddy), in a vicious cycle of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

The issue is we are not all Peter or Paul. There is this phenomenon called the Cantillon effect where those closest to the money printer get richer, while the rest of us foot the bill

This perpetuates a cycle where the middle class gets stripped of its purchasing power while simultaneously tangible goods like houses and commodities become even further out reach as those closest to the money printer and smart third parties race into real things.

This is where things go from ugly to end of Pax Americana. Instead of addressing the root issues, you and your kin want double down. More intervention (Federal Soylent™), more byzantine regulations and straight out persecution of the merchant class.

It sounds like hyperbole, I wish it was hyperbole but its not. "Eat the rich" isn't a parody, its the rallying cry of the ruling party. They are just about to ritualistically sacrifice the auto industry to moloch.

We live in the most prosperous nation in history. Poor people today live in luxury compared to most people just a century ago. However, things are taking a bad turn thanks to collectivism. That said, we are talking about a very small subset of the population.

Even among that cohort, its mostly crippling financial education/management problems. You have illegal aliens coming here with no wealth and no access to welfare who manage to not only survive but also send money back to their families.

we should strive to continually improve our bargain with nature but the ideas you and your kin share will bring about the end of modern civilisation as we know it.

> training the american workforce which is done with taxes

Thats the entire point/undertone of my post. We have replaced crucially important aspects of society like integrating kids (Rites of Passage), apprenticeships, taking care of the elderly with federal soylent.

> 16 years old a person in the United States is better educated and trained in all sorts of skills

You cannot replace hard work, communication, conflicts, expectations, real time problem solving, handling pressure, social minutia etc with algebra and slicing a frog apart.

> claim that such a person has "low economic output"

I've never said that. My point was about people who got dealt a bad hand in life. Whether if its IQ, disability, upbringing etc. Society used to have a place for these people now its Federal Soylent™

Lets put this in software terms:

Lets say I have a software development agency focusing on scaling sophisticated platforms.

There are plenty of rote repetitive stuff thats not critical in nature. So it would make sense to hire a guy/gal who just got out a bootcamp. They basically get paid to learn & polish their resume while you get low value stuff done with the added benefit of potential valuable team member in the making.

Now imagine if California passed a law saying all software development jobs must be payed $50/hr.

Mind you this was already a barely an acceptable trade for agency with a lot going on these employees sticking with the agency after they gained some experience.

One of my fantasies is becoming elected president and creating a constitutional amendment against minimum wage.

It is truly one of the most egregious and inhuman concoctions of modern collectivism.

No government or king should have that kind of power over its people. You are dictating by fiat that there not be any jobs below a certain price/threshold.

You are de-facto sentencing all the people below a certain IQ, skill, competence, age, experience etc to be permanently subjugated to government handouts or destitution.

You are eliminating the concept of teenage labor and apprenticeships (almost) entirely. Why would I hire an inexperienced guy for a job if I have to pay him the same as a normal guy.

Same goes for kids, why would I hire kids? This is used to be a crucial pillar of society. Not because the evil capitalist bakery could exploit kids or because they kids need the money. Its a crucial integration point.

The idea that you completely shield kids from society until after college is a crime against humanity.

Do you have any idea how important it is to be given responsibility, work hard and enjoy the fruits of your own labour at a very young age. Even I can't fully grasp the consequences of depriving this from our kids.

This is just the beginning what about low iq people? I mean people that have IQs so low that they can't even pass the military test. Something like 5% of the population falls in this category. Should the be deprived of what ever dignity they have left and live the remainder of the lives as a federal benefactor. Same goes for a huge chunk of disabled people..

There are so many other examples I haven't even though of yet and thats exactly the problem with you collectivists. You guys think you have it all figured out and you can easily restructure the millennia old experiment of civilisation itself from the top down.

Cutting expenses doesn't really put in perspective. Head count was cut by over 80%. Everything was switched to austerity mode.

These are not minimum wage workers, these are thousands of people who on average got payed more than the president.

Beyond that, we also have twitter blue. I'm guessing they have crossed one million by now. Thats bordering $100m ARR.

Then there is the advertising revenue, Twitter made $5 billion in revenue with a total loss of 220m. Even if advertising was cut by half, thats still $2.5B in income.

Honestly I'm surprised they are not profitable now, let alone next year.

Thats a start but if they were really going for it, it would look more like a multi-billion dollar investment with M&A, head hunting, training infra, partnerships etc

Atm its looks more like getting they lay of the land, which IMO is the smart move.

I'd be surprised if they didn't. Heck I'm a little surprised that its taking them this long. I'm guessing all those severance checks must have hurt.

Either way, a part of me really wishes Elon didn't the take company private. It would've been pretty cool to own a little piece of the rocket ship.

For those of you who are not convinced, lets put it this way:

We all stuck with Twitter for the better part of a decade under sub optimal management. A lot of you stuck with or are coming back to X despite being against the new values of the company & and its owner.

All is to say, the network effects are unfathomably strong. All they have to do is sprinkle in some monetisation via empowering the top 5% that actually creates stuff.

Easiest bet of the decade. I wouldn't be surprised if X becomes a 500b company by the end of the decade.

The interesting thing is they have the bankroll to actually make this work and it actually makes a lot of sense.

I remember watching a Google I/O presentation back in 2016 when voice assistants were trending. There was all sorts of ideas like APIs to access google assistant, voice/chat being the new interface etc.

The future presented there made so much intuitive sense to me and now the tech has finally caught up. The current static state off affairs has clearly outlived its usefulness.

Its not all sunshine and roses, Apple is an order of magnitude better position to take this leap then OpenAI. I know this may be a little out there but I think Apple made the right move by not jumping the gun with LLMs, IMO it makes more to let the dust settle and either partner with one of the winners or pick up the open standard (Llama 5?)

> Those numbers 100% prove you wrong.

Not it doesn't. Its mostly tax/banking havens and oil/gas rich countries. The only exception to the rule is US lol.

> Your adoration of billionaires and your materialistic values cloud your judgement.

You just called the richest, most entrepreneurial and ingenuitive man of our generation a hack. Mind you, this is the same guy your kin worshipped like 2 seconds ago.

The guy continually made bold bets, got ridiculed by everyone and was proven right. The Twitter saga being the latest example, the platform was meant implode any minute now like a year ago.

You may disagree with my claims but at the very least I try to present an objective view of the world grounded in experience and facts.

> Can you not see that its not an even playing field?

The playing field is as even and fair as its ever been. This is not an opinion, its a fact and the difference is uncanny. Does this mean why shouldn't strive to make it even more fair, no go on ahead, all the power to you.

> UK is not Europe which is doing great.

The entire union is propped up by Germany (& France). The ECB has no ammunition left. Italy & Spain are about to have a pensions nuclear explosion. France temporarily delayed it at a great cost. Its really not looking good for Europe.

> Billionaires found slaves in Asia

How can you not see the childishness of your worldview? Its reads like a badly written bedtime story. Big bad fat cat monsters vs honest bartender lady who was destined for more!

I urge you, try to get a better picture of the world. I suggest you look into:

- Pareto principle & distribution

- Cantillon effect

- Any Steve Jobs or Elon Musk biography

- History from Mesopotamia to now, the more detailed the better.

- Read up on communism/socialism/capitlaism, use neutral* sources if you must but actually dive in.

At the very least, you'll be able to make better arguments for your cause.

> Conclusion

I hope one day you will realise that the difference between a guy who spars with his buddies vs Khabib Nurmagomedov isn't linear.

There are people in all walks of life (not just business) where the difference between the average vs the great is truly mind boggling. Its a kind of feeling you get where you go "oh there a levels to this shut!"!.

A world that doesn't reward these freaks of nature justly, deserves to burn to the ground. People like Bob Iger or Satya Nadella can retire multiple times over, instead the choose to work 70 hour weeks and its not rote repetitive stuff either, its 4d chess stuff with constant context switching.

I can really keep going here but its just so baffling to me that there people like you in this world (especially HN). I said it before, I don't think its IQ, if you here it means you atleast smart enough. There is something deeply rotten about a society that cannot recognise greatness.

Hahaha nice one.

Funnily enough, it is scalably confirmable. You can feed all my HN comments before chatGPT into well.. chatGPT and ask it whether I'm british based on the writing.

I bet we are just a version or two away from being able fine tune it down to region based on writing. There are so many little things based on whether your from Scotland, Wales or London. Especially London!

The funny thing is I live in Europe (UK) too and I can tell you most of these countries are like an old person in pain waiting to die. The entire continent just leeches of the good will and work done by their ancestors like a bunch of trust fund kids (lol).

We don't make anything. You basically work most of the year for the government (50%+ tax + VAT (20%) + forced pension contributions & the sweet sweet 10% inflation) to be forced into sub par services.

> Universal Healthcare

The NHS sucks. Nurses hate it. Doctors hate it. Patients despise it. Its the second biggest line item in our budget, we cant afford it. The cautionary tale for Americans is despite this no political will dare speak against it, its political suicide. NHS has become healthcare, healthcare=NHS.

The conservative party will just use Labours crazy budget proposal from last election cycle and the labour party will come up with an even crazier budget proposal.

Btw this is not an outsider view, my entire family (except me) works for the NHS. My doctor friend described his career as basically indentured servitude. My mum use to tell me to lie to my GPs and pretend like I'm dying or I wont get treated.

> Education

Education is the same, high school was basically forced day care where they turn you into obedient little government slaves. Btw forced is not an exaggeration, parents will go to jail if they take kids out of high school (public indoctrination camps).

> Productivity

I have no idea who comes up with the productivity in numbers but I refuse to 1984 this, we don't make anything in Europe anymore. Even the cars have semiconductors and parts from Asia.

As I look around I'm using an american macbook, asian mouse, american airpods, asian monitor, asian tv, american nicotine pouch, american iphone, asian coffee cup, asian notebook, american coffee, asian water filter, asian glasses, asian office chair, asian wallet, asian clothes, asian washing machine & drier, asian fridge, asian microwave oven etc.

All the people I grew up with works in the services industry. Nobody makes stuff here.

P.S.

I worked as a bartender before and I've done worse (temperature controlled warehouses). Any man (or lady) making an honest living is honourable and respectable.

That said, the type of people who worked in these places are like chimps compared to these people I've "name dropped". Its really hard to get this point across (esp to someone like you), the difference isn't linear. These peoples speak almost different languages.

I know this at an intimate level, I grew up near what used to be the poorest area of the UK. Whenever I'm back home from my world, I have to literally change the way I speak when I hang out with my friends there.

Its not just IQ or EQ either btw, its more. Like a lot more. The sheer volume of perspectives and level of competence.. its really hard to put into words.

Also I've never raid Ayn Rand nor am I a libertarian utopian, thats just being an opposite you, different sides of the same coin. Both you guys have massive reality distortions.

"londons_explore" - Ahh the classic British cynicism (Don't ban-ish me señor Dang, I'm British so I can say this).

> Similar possibilities existed in medicine for 50 years

It would've been like building the tower of babel with a bunch of raspbery pi zeros. While theoretically possible, practically impossible and not (just) because of laws, but rather because of structural limitations (vector dbs of the internet solves that)

> Patents and byzantine regulations will stunt its potential

Thats the magic of this technology, its like AWS for highly levered niche intelligence. This arms an entire generation of rebels (entrepreneurs & scientists) to wage a war against big pharma and the FDA.

As an aside, this is why I'm convinced AI & automation will unleash more jobs and productivity like nothing we've seen before. We are at the precipice of a Cambrian explosion! Also why the luddites needs to be shunned.

I just don't understand how they can package all of this for $20/m. Is compute really that cheap at scale?

I also wonder how Apple (& Google) is going be able to provide this for free? I would love to be fly in the meetings they have about this, imagine all the innovators dilemma like discussions they'd be forced to have (we have to do this vs this will eat up our margins).

This might be a little out there but I think Apple is making the correct move in letting the dust settle. Similar to how Zuckerberg burned $20 billion dollars for Apple to come out with Vision Pro, I see something similar playing out with Llama. Although this a low conviction take because software is Facebooks ballgame (hardware not so much).

Its truly an amazing time to be alive. I'm right there with you, super excited about this decade. Especially what we could do in medicine.

P.S.

I think the Elon musk point is a key difference. You guys have a massive reality distortion where you either entirely or mostly discount that value of capital allocator class whether if its human or actual capital.

There seems to be some notion that the Elon, Collison brothers, Toby Lutke, Sam Altman etc are just people who got lucky to win the "owner class" lottery.

In reality these people are barely human, they should be revered and we as a society should aim to be more like them. There is a saying popularised by the founder of this forum that goes something like (really paraphrasing) you wanna start young & naive as a founder since nobody in their right minds would put themselves through this.

Its the equivalent of playing a jailbroken game where you manually set difficulty above hardcore. You need to be top percentile of everything (IQ, EQ, creativity, industriousness etc)just as tablestakes and now you get opportunity to compete against freaks just like you. You can tick all the boxes, sacrifice your life (tunnel vision) to work like a slave and still lose. Even if you win, now you gotta win again and again.

Its really not even close, the asymmetry is insane. Yes there are exceptions (nepo-babies, trust fund kids etc) but usually the former eats these peoples lunches given enough time. Thats why wealth never stays in the same family for more than a few generations.

Btw in your utopia, Bernie Sanders (a hippie that got kicked out of a commune for being a bum) will be valued more than those people I described. Let me repeat you would rather value the former bartender AOC more than people who can retire multiple times over but choose instead to work 70 hour weeks in service of humanity.

The interesting thing about HN is, although they are incredibly smug, arrogant and often incorrect, at least you can sense that you communicating with smart people. I can assure you, you're not one of them and that makes things pretty tricky for me. To make it worse, although you just called me unhinged you didn't get downvoted or flagged but if I follow suit I will get eviscerated (trust me I tried) and partly its because I can be uhh a little colourful especially in questioning peoples mental capacity.

> ...closer to the unhoused than the rich people who own and run things

Somebody will always own and run things (impossible otherwise). Even the marxists understood this, thats why you have the dictatorship of the proletariat. They tell you its only temporary until the perpetual motion machine is finished, meanwhile they will just keep the god emperor seat warm you know.

Anyways, its not only incredibly silly to even aim towards building such structures, its also immoral. These blowups that happen every time your kin try these ideas are not an accident (i mean..), its a direct result of the moral narratives that drive you people.

The guy that fills up grocery store shelves should be worth 300-400 times less than Elon Musk (IMO even less). A society that puts Elon musk in the same realm as that guy (20x-50x), is a deeply immoral society. A society that values AOC (former bartender) and Bernie Sanders (former hippie that never had a real job) higher than Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Jamie Dimond etc deserves to burn to the ground. There is something deeply rotten about such a society, its parasitic.

Btw you could similar claims the other way around, there would something wrong about a society where the middle class is shrinking and you have this uneven duality of peasants vs aristocracy. I may even agree that in many ways we are headed that direction.

The difference is I think the blame for that can be almost entirely put on your kin. I suggest you look into the Cantillon Effect. What we are facing now are the consequences of FDR era (& subsequent) socialist policies. The check always comes due. You cant create something out nothing. For every dollar, somebody is on the liability side. You can let the barbarians invade the country (short term deflationary), you can create neo-colonialism through the IMF & World Bank (Alex Gladstein IMF) (deflationary), you can move factories to poor countries (deflationary) but at some point the chickens will come home to roost. At some point you will have to pay the pied piper.

At some point the nation that has 50-60 hour weeks for their automobile industry will favoured by nature over the nation that forces its automakers to provide 32 hours weeks (4 days). At some point the nation that reveres and empowers their best people will win and latter will be in ruins. Just like how the management & shareholders of Ford deserves to get wiped out for enabling unions, the nation that betrays its competent, conscientious, industrious class deserves to be wiped out.

The rules are flexible but not the consequences. The only reason such ideas are even on the table is because of the bailouts of 2008 and 2020 (consequences).

You do realise this will bankrupt the US right? Not because America can't afford a $200 billion dollar check but because it sets a new precedent just like the previous bailouts did.

America will be de-facto guaranteeing all major public companies (TRILLIONS). This will be like dropping a nuclear bomb on the liability side of the US dollar. There will be a massive flight.

And thats only the beginning of America's worries, this action will open a massive can of worms. You will be essentially giving the management of these companies a blank check. You will be giving all the unions a blank check.

P.S.

Shareholders are rows in a database just like how employees are a line item. In reality both are crucial parts of the equation. You do realise these "public" companies are not owned by "robber barons" (hate this term) anymore. They are usually majority held by institutions (index funds) which are mostly made up of pension funds, 401Ks, sovereign funds, college endowments etc.

If you're gonna counter with "bailouts", all I'll say is who bails out the entity bailing out. If your gonna say tax the rich™, even you steal all the money from all billionaires™ in America, it will just be a rounding error for the liabilities here, then as you start going down the ladder of the rich™ it will be like a snake eating its own tail (Ouroboros).

Btw what you say will play out soon (decade or two around when social security runs out) and I wonder whether if the children of the next empire will be talking about how real communism wasn't tried and it was just because they had bad leaders.

AI and automation will end up creating more and better jobs than the industrial revolution that created these peoples livelihood.

Humanity always strives for more and better. There are entire fields left untouched. We have an entire galaxy to explore.

Dare I say:

"Ownership" was never in the hands of "the people". Property rights are not just something important. It is everything. It is the only important thing. Its the fabric of human civilisation.

Its impossible to have a functioning society with out and I mean that in the literal sense.

Even under your utopia, you will still have property rights, its just dictated by "the proletariat".

What this looks like in real life is, you replace a decentralised ledger of human value with a centralised ledger managed by the AOCs and Bernies of the world.

In other words, you just replaced our current class of elites who (somewhat) earned their station with a new class of elites that just so happened have the gift of gab.

To make it worse, the power of our current elites is scoped and limited whereas this new class of elites will have an order of magnitude more power and there will be no limit.

A cautionary tale I remember vividly from a guy I met in Miami: He is from Venuezuala, his dad used have an energy drinks company. They lost it all and know he is a refugee in America. The one thing I remember him telling me is why the people don't rise up against Maduro: You don't bite the hand that feeds you.

Maduro took everything from them but they still support him for the rotten food he gives them from AID. In your utopia, those hands will be AOCs (bartender) and Bernies (Hippie whos never worked a real job).

Don't you see how the structure is fundamentally unstable? Think of it in computer terms, it will be the equivalent of creating a quantum Artificial Super Intelligence that is capable of calculating the actions needed to be taken by hundreds of millions of Americans to create the most perfect outcome.

Now replace quantum ASI with AOC (former bartender) and Bernie Sanders (former & current hippie because he's never had a real job). Even a strongman case like China where there is still quasi private ownership and the central committee selects actual competent people, even there the whole system is full of death star vulnerabilities (ghost cities, population implosion).

As it should. Btw thats the worst of their worries, they will get wiped out in bankruptcy and they should.

The shareholders who didn't fight of unionisation like their lives depended on it deserves to get wiped out.

I'm all for treating workers fairly and with respect but who thought it would be a great idea to give an entity with no skin in the game a massive blank check.

Also btw "die" is a matter of perspective. The shareholders will be wiped out, a huge chunk of the management core will replaced and probably a massive layoffs.

Oh and their pensions wiped out (can't have pensions without a company to pay for them).

FAFO

These companies are gonna die and they will become cautionary tail for the future.

Ford's situation is particularly interesting because until Tesla, they were the only major US automaker to never go bankrupt.

Their taking in massive losses (EV transition) and their balance sheet looks very ugly.

Also as an aside, it will also be a early warning signal for all these companies. It will provide an entire cohort of CEOs with the mandate to invest heavily in automation to bridge the gap.

You how the saying goes, "be careful what you wish for"

I live and breathe that Steve Jobs quote. The difference between that and what you guys have in mind is the difference between Falcon 9 and the vaccine mandates.

You want root access (sudo, rm -rf). You want to re-organise society (bueno) from the top-down (no bueno). You want to steal from Peter and give to David.

This is not ok even if your diagnosis was correct but its not. We are not zooming towards apocalypse nor do we live in a world with never seen levels of suffering, exploitation and destitution.

For the first time in our history we have the leverage to effect change at a planetary scale. You have to realise this is really weird, we were under natures tyranny just like chimpanzees (like yesterday). It will naturally take a second for us to adjust to this new reality as caretakers of the planet.

That said we are already adjusting and most of these predictions/articles are just apocalypse porn. If you take the UNs worse predictions, we are taking about a lot of oceanfront property, a bunch islands and low lying nations going under water over the span of a century from now.

Thats not apocalypse, its a trade off where the alternative is not a green utopia but rather Mad Max (tech isnt ready, infra isn't ready, would have to force people through communism a.k.a root access = Mad Max).

Inequality is a fundamental pillar of life itself. The guy that fills up grocery store shelves should be worth 300-400 times less than Elon Musk (IMO even less). Without win/win games that value the best players, modern civilisation = dead.

A nation (natality) is a people with a shared values within defined borders. By definition, you have to be xenophobic to those who are antithetical to those values and borders. If you are not, then by default they win (at your expense). I gotta be careful here because Señor Dang wont like the "targeted" examples I wanna give (use your imagination).

The is the obvious next step for the industry/technology. I think a better answer is to maximally reduce the potential fallout from a compromised employee.

This is easier said then done and if you go the direction of complicated procedures employees will usually just try to bypass procedures entirely.

However I think there is a middle ground or a sweet spot here. The tech has come a long way in the past decade or so. Its pretty easy to have a set up where almost no employee can deploy to production from their local machine.

Its also the easiest its ever been to have a sandboxed production environment and a near parallel staging environment.