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I would challenge that a little bit -- I think it is a good thing, given that they have open-sourced the results of the project. It seems to me to be far bette
by mlsu 2y ago
I would challenge that a little bit -- I think it is a good thing, given that they have open-sourced the results of the project.
It seems to me to be far better than a company which simply gives 0.1% of US GDP back to shareholders in the form of dividends or stock buybacks, which is a very common occurrence given the size of companies nowadays. Or worse, a company which spends 0.1% of US GDP manufacturing things that are wholly useless or even actively damaging to consumers, the environment, etc.
- klyrs 2y ago> or even actively damaging to consumers, the environment, etc. Jury's still out on this one
- WalterBright 2y agoThe shareholders normally just reinvest the dividends. That isn't bad for the economy. > manufacturing things that are wholly useless Companies manufacture things that people want to buy. Presumably those people find the things useful. Companies that manufacture things people don't want go out of business.
- gdsimoes 2y ago> Companies that manufacture things people don't want go out of business. Do they, though? When was the last a time a really big company went bankrupt?
- toomuchtodo 2y ago2008. Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy_in_the_United_State...
- dchftcs 2y agoThey manufactured things people wanted, but shouldn't have wanted...
- bobthepanda 2y agoGM and Chrysler also went bankrupt the year after. Silicon Valley Bank was actually the third largest bankruptcy in US history, which is news to me. And apparently Signature Bank was fourth. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1096794/largest-bankruptcies-usa-by-assets/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1096794/largest-bankrupt...
- toomuchtodo 2y agoMF Global in 2011 as well, but not terribly big comparatively speaking.
- qeternity 2y agoThe point is not that lots of companies run around making things people don't want and go bankrupt. The point is that's what would happen, and because of that, companies focus on making things people actually do want. Look at what happened the Facebook stock over the last few years as they rebranded to Meta and started spending wildly. The market whipped them into shape, and rewarded them handsomely.
- eru 2y agoThough Facebook/Meta is actually a bit of a weak example, because it is very much controlled by its founder, who can outvote any public shareholder. So any compliance with the 'wishes of market' was somewhat voluntary.
- massysett 2y agoGeneral Motors, 2009
- kristofferR 2y agoI'm pretty sure he meant chapter 7 (business death), that's the colloquial use of "went out of business".
- massysett 2y agoVery well, Sears Roebuck is an even better example then even if it did not file for bankruptcy because it went from cornerstone of US culture to practically "went out of business."
- kortilla 2y agoSilicon Valley Bank Revlon Avaya Talen Hertz
- slater 2y agoEnron, 2007
- jpollock 2y agoNorthern Telecom - 2013 Alcatel-Lucent - 2016 (Bell Labs/AT&T Technologies/Western Electric)
- vel0city 2y agoAlcatel-Lucent didn't go bankrupt and out of business. They were acquired by Nokia and have had chunks spun off and sold to other companies. Nortel is a good example though. That was a big one.
- agent281 2y agoSilicon Valley Bank and First Republic went bankrupt last year. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_United_States_banking_crisis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_United_States_banking_c...
- WalterBright 2y agoGM, Brooks Brothers, Washington Mutual, JC Penney, Hertz, Blockbuster, Sears, WeWork, Kodak, ...
- eru 2y ago> It seems to me to be far better than a company which simply gives 0.1% of US GDP back to shareholders in the form of dividends or stock buybacks, which is a very common occurrence given the size of companies nowadays. The whole point of investing in companies is for those companies to eventually give the shareholders more resources back than they put in. [0] Those shareholders can then consume those resources, or invest them in something else; like eg startups that pursue new technologies. Returning capital to shareholders is exactly how investing works and how it has to work. Otherwise it would be charity, which is also fine, but it's something different. Are you also against companies paying back debt, instead of endlessly rolling over one loan into another loan and paying interest only with money from new loans? (If not, how is that different?) [0] On average, and in expectation. Investing in risky endeavours means that sometimes they fail, and you get less or no money back.
- mlsu 2y agoNo, I don't have a problem in general with returning capital to shareholders. I'm not making an anti-capitalist argument here. I'm saying. For humanity, net good. Facebook could do a stock buyback with all of that H100 money. It's a significant amount of money. As a human, complete non facebook shareholder except in ETFs, I would rather they buy H100's and train huge neural nets and then release them for free. Maybe I've bought the kool-aid but I think I believe that Zuckerberg genuinely wants to move humanity forward with this one (of course, it's also a business move). A lesser chairman of the board would have not spent huge capex on GPUs, and instead simply issued a fat dividend or what have you to shareholders who eventually would buy a newer nicer house in Marin or whatever. And indeed, it's only Zuck's unique position with preferential shares that allows him to do this; at a different company, he'd have been shot down and dividends it would be. On the whole, which is better? What moves the needle in terms of bringing humanity forward? And this is kind of true of companies in general. "Returning money to shareholders" is not created equal, even though it's all money in the end. Sports betting companies are also returning basis points of GDP to shareholders. Is that a worthwhile thing to do? Net good? (Please, dear reader, do not make the argument that sports betting is actually a good thing because hey we all make free market choices.)
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- jazzyjackson 2y agothey've open sourced a babble-bot that allows any individual to sockpuppet infinite identities, I have a hard time seeing how the impact will be positive
- ornornor 2y ago> things that are wholly useless or even actively damaging to consumers, the environment, etc. Oh you mean like Facebook, Instagram, and friends?