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The ultra wealthy will out compete you for the resources you need if we don’t start taxing them has been a discussion from the left for quite some time. It seem

The ultra wealthy will out compete you for the resources you need if we don’t start taxing them has been a discussion from the left for quite some time. It seems to keep coming true in new and disastrous ways, we are going to see more and more extreme concentrations of capital and power distort things and pretty soon it won’t just be middle and poor people who cannot afford anything, the whole value chain is being redesigned around things billionaires want and what could be better for them than agents who replace all the white collar workers. You might think you’re safe from this, I don’t. It’s worth remembering that during the industrial revolution in Britain, the fastest growing country the world had ever seen, most people were in abject poverty. This tech revolution might end up being worse.

efields 3mo ago
Yup. This is a policy problem.
throwaway323929 3mo ago
Instead of just rejecting the future like a Roman fatalist because you've decided that it's just going to be someone else controlling you, maybe a better plan is to adopt emerging technology when it comes into play (like for example when the Internet came into play) and use it to start your own company, or make yourself more productive, or disrupt an industry that desperately needs it. I shouldn't have to explain the benefits of productivity improvements and computer technology to people on Hacker News, but the place for some reason has been hijacked by neo luddites from Reddit that apparently have nothing better to do than troll about AI on a web site that is literally dedicated to an industry they don't like. Sam Altman literally used to run Y Combinator. Why not use that energy you're wasting to adopt emerging technology instead of bashing it? There are places that recognized manufacturing was going to go away, transitioned a service economy, and did well economically, and places that ignored reality and are now in disrepair. Now's a great time to decide if you want to be Seattle or Cleveland. Don't fight the future. And don't think it's a billionaires fault when certain places are more successful then others because they didn't ban AI and datacenters while other places squandered the opportunity because they didn't confront the pitchfork mob driven into a frenzy by yellow journalism.
- andy_ppp 3mo ago
  I love AI and have built many projects with PyTorch and use LLMs daily for all my work and am building a startup in my spare time here: https://veloa.com/ https://veloa.com/ Being concerned about how AI will concentrate power doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s extremely useful.
- pixl97 3mo ago
  "All everybody has to do is work and there will be no unemployment" --throwaway323929 Wow, you just solved economics! Your argument is so incredibly reductive as to be nonsensical. The understanding of the allocation of capital is seemingly below grade school level. Even moreso, your understanding of the business cycle and how it interacts with governments and banks seems to be even more immature. "manufacturing" didn't "go away", it moved to China so investors could capitalize on lax environmental laws and cheap labor. This engineered trade off of wealth had devastating results to massive parts of the US. On top of that, not every city can become Seattle. There isn't enough 'service economy' to go around and do that, especially as technology tends to concentrate wealth.
  - selimthegrim 3mo ago
    This has strong shades of BoJack Horseman's "We solved America's gun problem by giving everyone guns"
  - throwaway323929 2mo ago
    Why don't you try doing some work that's actually useful for someone else, instead of just endlessly, ceaselessly posting junk on a web site you don't even like? Are you surprised that nobody wants to pay you to do this? Provide something of value to others and you will be rewarded for that. I'm sorry you don't live in an alternative universe where you can just post low value opinions on HN all day and get rewarded handsomely for that, but I don't think you should be surprised why you can't figure out how to make a successful life while you do it in the present one. And I don't feel like working more to subsidize you to do that via handouts, and almost nobody else does either. Good luck.
- watwut 3mo ago
tharmas 3mo ago
I would argue that it is rent-seeking and asset accumulation that is a big problem. If the wealthy elite invested in production rather than consuming assets that would improve things. I don't share his politics but someone like Elon Musk at least invests in production whereas Blackrock is heavily into asset accumulation. However, part of the problem of why the wealthy elite don't invest in production is because of the Petro-dollar. When the USA moved to the Petro-dollar that is when the economy started to go K-shaped. The British Empire had the same problem. The Chinese absolutely do NOT want to become the World's reserve currency as they know the same fate will befall them. Perhaps the USA should have listened to Keynes with his Bancor currency after all.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  They are neither investing in production nor consuming assets really. Any billionaire's yacht is an insignificant fraction of the world's resources. What matters is capital misallocation - they are investing in things that aren't productive that they think are productive and because they have too much money to invest, a too great share of society's resources are going towards those unproductive investments and productive activities are seeing shortages (e.g. the RAM crisis in PC and console gaming).
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    It's very interesting how every comment I've made recently along these lines has been downvoted without any replies. I'd like to know why people think it's incorrect.
  - mlsu 3mo ago
    This is why capital accumulation, of the extreme kind we see today in the USA, is wrong. Not because greed is a sin (although, it is, and most of these guys are going to burn in hell), but because it turns the country into functionally the USSR bureaucracy. We are basically doing central planning in huge swathes of the economy and surprise surprises, it’s not working.
- andy_ppp 3mo ago
  1000% I honestly believe this is why the US is such an economic powerhouse - the rich there deploy capital in a way that assumes optimistic win-win outcomes when they invest in startups! In the UK the investors are trying to get much higher percentages at half the valuation and it’s terrible for everyone even the investors to have people with 25% the upside of US companies.
satvikpendem 3mo ago
Due to said industrial revolution, people's quality of life went up a thousandfold, same as in China and other countries now adopting capitalist principles.
- andy_ppp 3mo ago
  Not true, that was WW2 and high taxation on the rich that created the middle class. The Industrial Revolution was 1750 onwards so maybe you’re okay with it taking nearly 200 years to get a good settlement for working people but I am not! If you look at most of the world, Nigeria or India say you’ll see disgraceful levels of poverty and a small number of people who are ultra wealthy. This is where we are heading in the west if we can’t prevent the rich from inflating and buying all the assets you will own nothing and rent everything from them.
  - satvikpendem 3mo ago
    India and Nigeria made many economic mistakes. My comparison is China and Vietnam who reduced poverty manifold in a single generation.
    - dofm 3mo ago
      So as long as nobody makes major economic mistakes it's fine?
      - satvikpendem 3mo ago
        Yes? Of course making mistakes in any system leads to ruin.
- dofm 3mo ago
  Not at all quickly. People's lives got immediately worse — well within a working lifetime. Life expectancy fell and infant mortality worsened for well over a hundred years. In particular the quality of life for people displaced by the second agricultural revolution degraded radically. It took until the early 1900s for people in cities in the west to be as healthy as a pre-industrial revolution farm worker.
neonstatic 3mo ago
> The ultra wealthy will out compete you for the resources you need if we don’t start taxing them has been a discussion from the left for quite some time. Europe has done this and look how advanced it is! While Americans talk to computers, we have flying cars, colonies on Mars, and even a cure for cancer. We just had the courage to go forward with that one socialist trick and look how it all worked out so wonderfully!
- wonnage 3mo ago
  The top marginal tax rate in the US was 90% for most of the post WWII 20th century and that didn’t seem to hurt anyone. Invented transistors, went to the moon, built interstate highway system, mass construction of nuclear power, and became the world leader in manufacturing Today we have low tax rates and can’t make chips, still working on that moon landing, can’t build high speed rail, can’t build nuclear, and are trying to tariff our way back to a manufacturing sector
  - ds2 3mo ago
    [dead]
- andy_ppp 3mo ago
  They haven’t even come close to taxing billionaires. Europe has loads of problems with bureaucracy and a lack of dynamism, I’m not persuaded a tax on billionaires is actually workable and suspect we will try WW3 instead…
- xg15 3mo ago
  I mean, we do have affordable healthcare and usable trains (in some countries)...
  - neonstatic 3mo ago
    I will never understand this fixation on trains. I will take a plane over a train any time. Not only is it faster and more convenient, it's also much safer. As for healthcare, it depends on the country. I am European and I haven't used public healthcare in my entire adult life because 1) It f***g sucks 2) the waiting lists are so long you might die before you get treated 3) the bedside manner is so awful I'd rather be roasted by a stand up comedian
simianwords 3mo ago
[flagged]
- andy_ppp 3mo ago
  The article opens with a discussion about how AI investments are forcing up the price of computer hardware, so it’s not off topic at all. I don’t believe point 1 at all, or the skill atrophy point of 2. and the billionaires think AI will indeed make them richer otherwise there would be no investment in these companies would there?

efields 3mo ago

Yup. This is a policy problem.

throwaway323929 3mo ago

Instead of just rejecting the future like a Roman fatalist because you've decided that it's just going to be someone else controlling you, maybe a better plan is to adopt emerging technology when it comes into play (like for example when the Internet came into play) and use it to start your own company, or make yourself more productive, or disrupt an industry that desperately needs it. I shouldn't have to explain the benefits of productivity improvements and computer technology to people on Hacker News, but the place for some reason has been hijacked by neo luddites from Reddit that apparently have nothing better to do than troll about AI on a web site that is literally dedicated to an industry they don't like. Sam Altman literally used to run Y Combinator. Why not use that energy you're wasting to adopt emerging technology instead of bashing it? There are places that recognized manufacturing was going to go away, transitioned a service economy, and did well economically, and places that ignored reality and are now in disrepair. Now's a great time to decide if you want to be Seattle or Cleveland. Don't fight the future. And don't think it's a billionaires fault when certain places are more successful then others because they didn't ban AI and datacenters while other places squandered the opportunity because they didn't confront the pitchfork mob driven into a frenzy by yellow journalism.

andy_ppp 3mo ago
I love AI and have built many projects with PyTorch and use LLMs daily for all my work and am building a startup in my spare time here: https://veloa.com/ https://veloa.com/ Being concerned about how AI will concentrate power doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s extremely useful.
pixl97 3mo ago
"All everybody has to do is work and there will be no unemployment" --throwaway323929 Wow, you just solved economics! Your argument is so incredibly reductive as to be nonsensical. The understanding of the allocation of capital is seemingly below grade school level. Even moreso, your understanding of the business cycle and how it interacts with governments and banks seems to be even more immature. "manufacturing" didn't "go away", it moved to China so investors could capitalize on lax environmental laws and cheap labor. This engineered trade off of wealth had devastating results to massive parts of the US. On top of that, not every city can become Seattle. There isn't enough 'service economy' to go around and do that, especially as technology tends to concentrate wealth.
- selimthegrim 3mo ago
  This has strong shades of BoJack Horseman's "We solved America's gun problem by giving everyone guns"
- throwaway323929 2mo ago
  Why don't you try doing some work that's actually useful for someone else, instead of just endlessly, ceaselessly posting junk on a web site you don't even like? Are you surprised that nobody wants to pay you to do this? Provide something of value to others and you will be rewarded for that. I'm sorry you don't live in an alternative universe where you can just post low value opinions on HN all day and get rewarded handsomely for that, but I don't think you should be surprised why you can't figure out how to make a successful life while you do it in the present one. And I don't feel like working more to subsidize you to do that via handouts, and almost nobody else does either. Good luck.
watwut 3mo ago

tharmas 3mo ago

I would argue that it is rent-seeking and asset accumulation that is a big problem. If the wealthy elite invested in production rather than consuming assets that would improve things. I don't share his politics but someone like Elon Musk at least invests in production whereas Blackrock is heavily into asset accumulation. However, part of the problem of why the wealthy elite don't invest in production is because of the Petro-dollar. When the USA moved to the Petro-dollar that is when the economy started to go K-shaped. The British Empire had the same problem. The Chinese absolutely do NOT want to become the World's reserve currency as they know the same fate will befall them. Perhaps the USA should have listened to Keynes with his Bancor currency after all.

inigyou 3mo ago
They are neither investing in production nor consuming assets really. Any billionaire's yacht is an insignificant fraction of the world's resources. What matters is capital misallocation - they are investing in things that aren't productive that they think are productive and because they have too much money to invest, a too great share of society's resources are going towards those unproductive investments and productive activities are seeing shortages (e.g. the RAM crisis in PC and console gaming).
- inigyou 3mo ago
  It's very interesting how every comment I've made recently along these lines has been downvoted without any replies. I'd like to know why people think it's incorrect.
- mlsu 3mo ago
  This is why capital accumulation, of the extreme kind we see today in the USA, is wrong. Not because greed is a sin (although, it is, and most of these guys are going to burn in hell), but because it turns the country into functionally the USSR bureaucracy. We are basically doing central planning in huge swathes of the economy and surprise surprises, it’s not working.
andy_ppp 3mo ago
1000% I honestly believe this is why the US is such an economic powerhouse - the rich there deploy capital in a way that assumes optimistic win-win outcomes when they invest in startups! In the UK the investors are trying to get much higher percentages at half the valuation and it’s terrible for everyone even the investors to have people with 25% the upside of US companies.

satvikpendem 3mo ago

Due to said industrial revolution, people's quality of life went up a thousandfold, same as in China and other countries now adopting capitalist principles.

andy_ppp 3mo ago
Not true, that was WW2 and high taxation on the rich that created the middle class. The Industrial Revolution was 1750 onwards so maybe you’re okay with it taking nearly 200 years to get a good settlement for working people but I am not! If you look at most of the world, Nigeria or India say you’ll see disgraceful levels of poverty and a small number of people who are ultra wealthy. This is where we are heading in the west if we can’t prevent the rich from inflating and buying all the assets you will own nothing and rent everything from them.
- satvikpendem 3mo ago
  India and Nigeria made many economic mistakes. My comparison is China and Vietnam who reduced poverty manifold in a single generation.
  - dofm 3mo ago
    So as long as nobody makes major economic mistakes it's fine?
    - satvikpendem 3mo ago
      Yes? Of course making mistakes in any system leads to ruin.
dofm 3mo ago
Not at all quickly. People's lives got immediately worse — well within a working lifetime. Life expectancy fell and infant mortality worsened for well over a hundred years. In particular the quality of life for people displaced by the second agricultural revolution degraded radically. It took until the early 1900s for people in cities in the west to be as healthy as a pre-industrial revolution farm worker.

neonstatic 3mo ago

> The ultra wealthy will out compete you for the resources you need if we don’t start taxing them has been a discussion from the left for quite some time. Europe has done this and look how advanced it is! While Americans talk to computers, we have flying cars, colonies on Mars, and even a cure for cancer. We just had the courage to go forward with that one socialist trick and look how it all worked out so wonderfully!

wonnage 3mo ago
The top marginal tax rate in the US was 90% for most of the post WWII 20th century and that didn’t seem to hurt anyone. Invented transistors, went to the moon, built interstate highway system, mass construction of nuclear power, and became the world leader in manufacturing Today we have low tax rates and can’t make chips, still working on that moon landing, can’t build high speed rail, can’t build nuclear, and are trying to tariff our way back to a manufacturing sector
- ds2 3mo ago
  [dead]
andy_ppp 3mo ago
They haven’t even come close to taxing billionaires. Europe has loads of problems with bureaucracy and a lack of dynamism, I’m not persuaded a tax on billionaires is actually workable and suspect we will try WW3 instead…
xg15 3mo ago
I mean, we do have affordable healthcare and usable trains (in some countries)...
- neonstatic 3mo ago
  I will never understand this fixation on trains. I will take a plane over a train any time. Not only is it faster and more convenient, it's also much safer. As for healthcare, it depends on the country. I am European and I haven't used public healthcare in my entire adult life because 1) It f***g sucks 2) the waiting lists are so long you might die before you get treated 3) the bedside manner is so awful I'd rather be roasted by a stand up comedian

simianwords 3mo ago

[flagged]

andy_ppp 3mo ago
The article opens with a discussion about how AI investments are forcing up the price of computer hardware, so it’s not off topic at all. I don’t believe point 1 at all, or the skill atrophy point of 2. and the billionaires think AI will indeed make them richer otherwise there would be no investment in these companies would there?