5 ms·

I think this illustrates another pernicious effect of excessive inequality: where does it lure talent? The best and brightest, lured [to] speculation to ads to

I think this illustrates another pernicious effect of excessive inequality: where does it lure talent? The best and brightest, lured [to] speculation to ads to blockchain to AI to... Edit: clearer word choice

saubeidl 8mo ago
Yup, it's the tragedy of the system we have set up. There's a potentially civilization-ending disasters looming over us (the climate crisis, increasing escalation between the major powers, rising risk of insurrection due to mismanagement and inequality) and what are the smartest people of our time doing? Making sure you click that damn ad or create technology that lets you create slop ads more easily.
- kilroy123 8mo ago
  To be fair, I'd rather have smart people pursue AI and LLMs than ad tech.
  - yifanl 8mo ago
    They're one and the same. https://openai.com/index/testing-ads-in-chatgpt/ https://openai.com/index/testing-ads-in-chatgpt/
  - dgb23 8mo ago
    That's mixing up the tool with what it is used for.
  - kakacik 8mo ago
    Ad tech is annoying at worst, it doesn't take literally your job and most of job market with it. Without any seemingly easy way to move to fields which are booming so overall it would stay the same. I hate ads with passion for past 20 years and (very) actively avoid them at all costs, but I'd take those over what world llms seem to be bringing in soon.
  - throwawayqqq11 8mo ago
    Consider LLMs as the recent iteration to monetize free content, like ads do too, and you are not far from seeing the approaching AI-first enshittoscene. No matter the smart engineers altruistic goals, ROI has to be met.
- toomuchtodo 8mo ago
  So, how do you fix it? Can it be fixed?
  - nemomarx 8mo ago
    Right now we allocate capital to those kinds of companies. We're on a page for that and all. If you allocated capital to other stuff, the jobs go there with it?
  - losteric 8mo ago
    Money follows ROI. Making those speculative or detrimental industries less profitable is the answer. Regulations on micro-targeting, data privacy, algorithm transparency, legal liability for content, etc.. all push back against the externalities of ads/social media. Regulations on energy and land use can make eg data center build outs more expensive, pressuring back against speculative AI trash. Taxing big tech companies, subsidizing manufacturing education, and judicious import tariffs.. would all create incentives for investing money and labor in hard capabilities
  - misterbishop 8mo ago
    we need an opposition party.
  - saubeidl 8mo ago
    If you're asking me? Workers revolution and a complete systems change, towards something that aligns incentives with the good of humanity, not of a money-grubbing few. I have a feeling most folks here will disagree though.
    - dorgo 8mo ago
      >aligns incentives with the good of humanity is this possible?
- pphysch 8mo ago
  Those are two sides of the same coin. The "sky is falling" narratives and invasive advertising are both employed by the same elite to control your behavior through fear and suggestion. Noam Chomsky is one of the loudest doomsayers and "critics" of the system (war, climate, politics) and yet simultaneously was good buddies with post-conviction Epstein. That ought to stimulate a reassessment of what you've believed about how (American) politics and society works.
  - robotpepi 8mo ago
    [flagged]
  - orwin 8mo ago
    That's not surprising. Post 2000 Chomsky is worthless, he couldn't defend his original thesis without ad hominems and used his fame to put pressure on universities (it didn't work every time, but enough), he pushed a decade backward part of the linguistics field (after pushing it up maybe two decade forward, but that's not an excuse). Especially in humanities where you don't have hard data, contradiction is the only way to advance, and he forgot that. He became too full of himself and too confident.
gruez 8mo ago
But are you actually against inequality because not every industry is getting its fair share (whatever that might mean), or simply that you don't like the winners under the current system? In other words if the current bubble are for solar or fusion power, would you be like "darn, the inequality under the capitalist system is luring talent from enterprise SaaS (or whatever) and that makes me sad"?
- giantg2 8mo ago
  "In other words if the current bubble are for solar or fusion power" For that to be true, there would have to be a ridiculous amount of money at a massive scale for those, which would imply that consumers are being gouged for it. That's really true of almost any bubble. This is still a negative situation.
- anonymars 8mo ago
  Maybe either would be an improvement. Like that cartoon, "what if climate change is a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?"
palmotea 8mo ago
> I think this illustrates another pernicious effect of excessive inequality: where does it lure talent? The best and brightest, lured from speculation to ads to blockchain to AI to... Or finance. There was a pretty brutal takedown published recently: The Finance Industry Is a Grift. Let’s Start Treating It That Way. (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/opinion/capitalism-industry-financialization.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/opinion/capitalism-indust...). Basically the finance industry is pivoting away from actually investing in real businesses to more and more elaborate paper pushing schemes (that make them money, but actually weaken the economy): > Unlike Dawes’s Fidelity Fiduciary Bank, a modern investment bank mostly earns its money in a way that not even the bravest lyricist would set to music: providing advisory services, executing complex financial engineering schemes, trading stocks and bonds, managing other people’s money, issuing credit cards and so on. Assets get bought and sold, divided and packaged, and the bank collects fees at each step. > David Solomon, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, could not sing to young Michael about the many productive uses to which he might put the tuppence because Goldman Sachs rarely invests in anything at all. Fostering economic progress appears to be beside the point. > Less than 10 percent of Goldman’s work in 2024, measured by revenue, was helping businesses raise capital. Loans of Goldman’s own funds to operating businesses accounted for less than 2 percent of its assets. At JPMorgan Chase the figures were 4 and 5 percent; at Morgan Stanley, 7 and 2 percent. Even the efforts at helping to raise capital are misleading, because less than a tenth of it goes toward building anything new. The rest funds debt refinancing, balance sheet restructuring and mergers and acquisitions. > These are symptoms of financialization. That’s the term for making financial markets and transactions ends unto themselves, disconnected from — and often at the expense of — the societal benefits that support human flourishing and are capitalism’s proper purpose. Chief among those benefits are good jobs that support families, and products and services that improve people’s lives.
- twoodfin 8mo ago
  Why do you think large companies refinance debt? So they can invest in productive areas of the business. If debt refinancing became illegal or widely impractical due to an interest rate spike, you’d quickly see how much of the productive economy it’s fueling!
giantg2 8mo ago
That's more of a moral question. The best and brightest are the ones running the casino. Why would someone spend 8 years in expensive schools becoming a doctor when they can work as a developer or marketer for an online sports book? Morals on the consumer supply curb demand. Morals on the provider side can help curb innovation and expanse.
- atoav 8mo ago
  Because the former is meaningful and the latter depresses you if you think too much about it, so you found strategies of not thinking about it that ultimately eat away at your soul and anything that makes a life worth living?
  - giantg2 8mo ago
    Yes, but the realization of this comes from experience or age. There are always new hires to fill the positions when the pay is high enough compared to the alternatives.
  - Izikiel43 8mo ago
    Or you make enough money to retire early and get out, maybe pivot careers.
    - autoexec 8mo ago
      You'd still have to live with yourself and what you contributed to. Easy enough for psychopaths, but not so easy for anyone else.

saubeidl 8mo ago

Yup, it's the tragedy of the system we have set up. There's a potentially civilization-ending disasters looming over us (the climate crisis, increasing escalation between the major powers, rising risk of insurrection due to mismanagement and inequality) and what are the smartest people of our time doing? Making sure you click that damn ad or create technology that lets you create slop ads more easily.

kilroy123 8mo ago
To be fair, I'd rather have smart people pursue AI and LLMs than ad tech.
- yifanl 8mo ago
  They're one and the same. https://openai.com/index/testing-ads-in-chatgpt/ https://openai.com/index/testing-ads-in-chatgpt/
- dgb23 8mo ago
  That's mixing up the tool with what it is used for.
- kakacik 8mo ago
  Ad tech is annoying at worst, it doesn't take literally your job and most of job market with it. Without any seemingly easy way to move to fields which are booming so overall it would stay the same. I hate ads with passion for past 20 years and (very) actively avoid them at all costs, but I'd take those over what world llms seem to be bringing in soon.
- throwawayqqq11 8mo ago
  Consider LLMs as the recent iteration to monetize free content, like ads do too, and you are not far from seeing the approaching AI-first enshittoscene. No matter the smart engineers altruistic goals, ROI has to be met.
toomuchtodo 8mo ago
So, how do you fix it? Can it be fixed?
- nemomarx 8mo ago
  Right now we allocate capital to those kinds of companies. We're on a page for that and all. If you allocated capital to other stuff, the jobs go there with it?
- losteric 8mo ago
  Money follows ROI. Making those speculative or detrimental industries less profitable is the answer. Regulations on micro-targeting, data privacy, algorithm transparency, legal liability for content, etc.. all push back against the externalities of ads/social media. Regulations on energy and land use can make eg data center build outs more expensive, pressuring back against speculative AI trash. Taxing big tech companies, subsidizing manufacturing education, and judicious import tariffs.. would all create incentives for investing money and labor in hard capabilities
- misterbishop 8mo ago
  we need an opposition party.
- saubeidl 8mo ago
  If you're asking me? Workers revolution and a complete systems change, towards something that aligns incentives with the good of humanity, not of a money-grubbing few. I have a feeling most folks here will disagree though.
  - dorgo 8mo ago
    >aligns incentives with the good of humanity is this possible?
pphysch 8mo ago
Those are two sides of the same coin. The "sky is falling" narratives and invasive advertising are both employed by the same elite to control your behavior through fear and suggestion. Noam Chomsky is one of the loudest doomsayers and "critics" of the system (war, climate, politics) and yet simultaneously was good buddies with post-conviction Epstein. That ought to stimulate a reassessment of what you've believed about how (American) politics and society works.
- robotpepi 8mo ago
  [flagged]
- orwin 8mo ago
  That's not surprising. Post 2000 Chomsky is worthless, he couldn't defend his original thesis without ad hominems and used his fame to put pressure on universities (it didn't work every time, but enough), he pushed a decade backward part of the linguistics field (after pushing it up maybe two decade forward, but that's not an excuse). Especially in humanities where you don't have hard data, contradiction is the only way to advance, and he forgot that. He became too full of himself and too confident.

gruez 8mo ago

But are you actually against inequality because not every industry is getting its fair share (whatever that might mean), or simply that you don't like the winners under the current system? In other words if the current bubble are for solar or fusion power, would you be like "darn, the inequality under the capitalist system is luring talent from enterprise SaaS (or whatever) and that makes me sad"?

giantg2 8mo ago
"In other words if the current bubble are for solar or fusion power" For that to be true, there would have to be a ridiculous amount of money at a massive scale for those, which would imply that consumers are being gouged for it. That's really true of almost any bubble. This is still a negative situation.
anonymars 8mo ago
Maybe either would be an improvement. Like that cartoon, "what if climate change is a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?"

palmotea 8mo ago

> I think this illustrates another pernicious effect of excessive inequality: where does it lure talent? The best and brightest, lured from speculation to ads to blockchain to AI to... Or finance. There was a pretty brutal takedown published recently: The Finance Industry Is a Grift. Let’s Start Treating It That Way. (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/opinion/capitalism-industry-financialization.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/opinion/capitalism-indust...). Basically the finance industry is pivoting away from actually investing in real businesses to more and more elaborate paper pushing schemes (that make them money, but actually weaken the economy): > Unlike Dawes’s Fidelity Fiduciary Bank, a modern investment bank mostly earns its money in a way that not even the bravest lyricist would set to music: providing advisory services, executing complex financial engineering schemes, trading stocks and bonds, managing other people’s money, issuing credit cards and so on. Assets get bought and sold, divided and packaged, and the bank collects fees at each step. > David Solomon, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, could not sing to young Michael about the many productive uses to which he might put the tuppence because Goldman Sachs rarely invests in anything at all. Fostering economic progress appears to be beside the point. > Less than 10 percent of Goldman’s work in 2024, measured by revenue, was helping businesses raise capital. Loans of Goldman’s own funds to operating businesses accounted for less than 2 percent of its assets. At JPMorgan Chase the figures were 4 and 5 percent; at Morgan Stanley, 7 and 2 percent. Even the efforts at helping to raise capital are misleading, because less than a tenth of it goes toward building anything new. The rest funds debt refinancing, balance sheet restructuring and mergers and acquisitions. > These are symptoms of financialization. That’s the term for making financial markets and transactions ends unto themselves, disconnected from — and often at the expense of — the societal benefits that support human flourishing and are capitalism’s proper purpose. Chief among those benefits are good jobs that support families, and products and services that improve people’s lives.

twoodfin 8mo ago
Why do you think large companies refinance debt? So they can invest in productive areas of the business. If debt refinancing became illegal or widely impractical due to an interest rate spike, you’d quickly see how much of the productive economy it’s fueling!

giantg2 8mo ago

That's more of a moral question. The best and brightest are the ones running the casino. Why would someone spend 8 years in expensive schools becoming a doctor when they can work as a developer or marketer for an online sports book? Morals on the consumer supply curb demand. Morals on the provider side can help curb innovation and expanse.

atoav 8mo ago
Because the former is meaningful and the latter depresses you if you think too much about it, so you found strategies of not thinking about it that ultimately eat away at your soul and anything that makes a life worth living?
- giantg2 8mo ago
  Yes, but the realization of this comes from experience or age. There are always new hires to fill the positions when the pay is high enough compared to the alternatives.
- Izikiel43 8mo ago
  Or you make enough money to retire early and get out, maybe pivot careers.
  - autoexec 8mo ago
    You'd still have to live with yourself and what you contributed to. Easy enough for psychopaths, but not so easy for anyone else.