4 ms·

Agreed. LLMs are the Manhattan Project of the class war. It really looks like they're betting everything that this will "win" it for them

by bre1010 1mo ago

api 1mo ago
[flagged]
- majewsky 1mo ago
  > Understand human nature, incentives, and complex systems like markets and how they produce incentives. We do. "Class war" is just the succinct phrasing for "people who earn money through capital returns have vastly different incentives than people who earn money from their labor, and they also have the means to turn those interests into political leverage".
  - api 1mo ago
    Except that when you comparison shop, you are helping construct those incentives. When you sell your labor you want it to cost as much as possible. When you buy the results of others labor you want them to be as cheap as possible. The system is circles, cycles, loops, two sided trades. It’s not one group of people unilaterally plotting things. When someone does try to do that they usually fail unless their plot happens to align with the current in the river. If you get rid of the investment and capital class you will get a new investment and capital class, probably made up of the leaders of the revolution that overthrew the old one. That’s where our current one came from after all. They are the intellectual and social descendants of the mercantile capitalists who overthrew the feudal order. It’s pretty common for the new boss to end up becoming the old boss because they are also monkeys with the same limbic system. Real change would require changing the system not the people in it, but I see no ideas on how to do this from the typical pop Marxist at least. Maybe there are deeper thinkers out there. Usually it’s “proletarian revolution, magic happens here, utopia.” Instead you get a new capital class whose power is rooted in position in the party, like the CCP, and it behaves just like our capital class. I also suspect really deep change would require genetic modification that alters the structure of the human central nervous system, since a lot of this stuff is just ape behavior writ large. My deeper point is: there’s a lot of discontent out there for legitimate reasons, but I don’t think LARPing communism will help any more than LARPing fascism has. We need new ideas, not 19th century ones that failed. Right now it just feels like the only ideas we have is to LARP the 1930s.
    - svieira 1mo ago
      Some thinkers believe you have to encourage the people in the system and change the system to make it harder to do the wrong thing. Some reading on the topic includes: * The canonical book on the subject - The Servile State by Hilaire Belloc: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64882 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64882 * https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/06/what-is-distributism.html https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/06/what-is-distr... * https://practicaldistributism.com/distributism-basics/ https://practicaldistributism.com/distributism-basics/ And not directly related, but full of mineable thoughts, the papal encyclicals of the last 100 years on economy, including Rerum Novarum (https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/docum...), Quadragesimo Anno (https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19310515_quadragesimo-anno.html https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/docume...), Centesimus Annus (https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_01051991_centesimus-annus.html https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/d...), and the very latest Magnifica Humanitas (https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/docume...)
    - deleted 1mo ago
      [deleted]
    - paulryanrogers 1mo ago
      > If you get rid of the investment and capital class you will get a new investment and capital class, probably made up of the leaders of the revolution that overthrew the old one. How true is this? Certainly trust busters like Teddy had a lot of political power. Though I wouldn't call them a new capital class. > Except that when you comparison shop, you are helping construct those incentives. You're advocating for political consumerism? I suppose it has some use alongside boycotts and the "buy made-in-the-USA" movements of old. Sadly today the label is so watered down I doubt one can reasonably know whether any given purchase has any significant manufacturing or resources from within the USA. Ultimately we have to pull all the levers to enact change. Because the top 1% certainly isn't holding back.
  - imtringued 1mo ago
    So why not just get rid of "earn money through capital returns" by removing the zero lower bound on cash so capital returns can finally be negative???? Of course that would go against the class war idea, then you can't blame others anymore. You'd have to accept how this objective improvement to your life as a labor income dependent person would also crush your own dreams of earning capital returns yourself.
- dimbletimbers 1mo ago
  If it were true
- dimbletimbers 1mo ago
  There doesn’t need to be a conspiracy born in smokey rooms for there to be a malignant culture of greed and moral bankruptcy. And it’s possible for one group or class to consolidate enough power to constitute an unfair advantage. “I’m just doing what the market rewards” and “if I don’t, the next guy will” are the 21st century billionaire’s “I was just following orders.” It creates a race to the bottom.
shimman 1mo ago
The dream of a perpetual labor machine is the end goal of capitalists. It's how you usher in the extermination age. Much easier to do once you declare 20-40% of the population "useless."
- dan_gggggg 1mo ago
  > The dream of a perpetual labor machine is the end goal of capitalists. Frankly, "AGI" just seems like a return to Antebellum slave economics. Free labor is a C-suite's wet dream, and it has been since the 1520s. Yeah "AI" doesn't work but that doesn't matter. Your boss believes that there is a coin-operated robot slave that is smarter than you, never gets tired, and never talks back. Good luck getting that raise now, asshole.
  - seki285 1mo ago
    Why the specific 1520s date?
    - dan_gggggg 1mo ago
      [dead]
    - enoint 1mo ago
      The labor consequences of the Black Death in Europe swung back to capital in the 1520s. The proportion of the population working for wages crossed 50%.

Agreed. LLMs are the Manhattan Project of the class war. It really looks like they're betting everything that this will "win" it for them

by bre1010 1mo ago

Agreed. LLMs are the Manhattan Project of the class war. It really looks like they're betting everything that this will "win" it for them

api 1mo ago

[flagged]

majewsky 1mo ago
> Understand human nature, incentives, and complex systems like markets and how they produce incentives. We do. "Class war" is just the succinct phrasing for "people who earn money through capital returns have vastly different incentives than people who earn money from their labor, and they also have the means to turn those interests into political leverage".
- api 1mo ago
  Except that when you comparison shop, you are helping construct those incentives. When you sell your labor you want it to cost as much as possible. When you buy the results of others labor you want them to be as cheap as possible. The system is circles, cycles, loops, two sided trades. It’s not one group of people unilaterally plotting things. When someone does try to do that they usually fail unless their plot happens to align with the current in the river. If you get rid of the investment and capital class you will get a new investment and capital class, probably made up of the leaders of the revolution that overthrew the old one. That’s where our current one came from after all. They are the intellectual and social descendants of the mercantile capitalists who overthrew the feudal order. It’s pretty common for the new boss to end up becoming the old boss because they are also monkeys with the same limbic system. Real change would require changing the system not the people in it, but I see no ideas on how to do this from the typical pop Marxist at least. Maybe there are deeper thinkers out there. Usually it’s “proletarian revolution, magic happens here, utopia.” Instead you get a new capital class whose power is rooted in position in the party, like the CCP, and it behaves just like our capital class. I also suspect really deep change would require genetic modification that alters the structure of the human central nervous system, since a lot of this stuff is just ape behavior writ large. My deeper point is: there’s a lot of discontent out there for legitimate reasons, but I don’t think LARPing communism will help any more than LARPing fascism has. We need new ideas, not 19th century ones that failed. Right now it just feels like the only ideas we have is to LARP the 1930s.
  - svieira 1mo ago
    Some thinkers believe you have to encourage the people in the system and change the system to make it harder to do the wrong thing. Some reading on the topic includes: * The canonical book on the subject - The Servile State by Hilaire Belloc: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64882 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64882 * https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/06/what-is-distributism.html https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/06/what-is-distr... * https://practicaldistributism.com/distributism-basics/ https://practicaldistributism.com/distributism-basics/ And not directly related, but full of mineable thoughts, the papal encyclicals of the last 100 years on economy, including Rerum Novarum (https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/docum...), Quadragesimo Anno (https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19310515_quadragesimo-anno.html https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/docume...), Centesimus Annus (https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_01051991_centesimus-annus.html https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/d...), and the very latest Magnifica Humanitas (https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/docume...)
  - deleted 1mo ago
    [deleted]
  - paulryanrogers 1mo ago
    > If you get rid of the investment and capital class you will get a new investment and capital class, probably made up of the leaders of the revolution that overthrew the old one. How true is this? Certainly trust busters like Teddy had a lot of political power. Though I wouldn't call them a new capital class. > Except that when you comparison shop, you are helping construct those incentives. You're advocating for political consumerism? I suppose it has some use alongside boycotts and the "buy made-in-the-USA" movements of old. Sadly today the label is so watered down I doubt one can reasonably know whether any given purchase has any significant manufacturing or resources from within the USA. Ultimately we have to pull all the levers to enact change. Because the top 1% certainly isn't holding back.
- imtringued 1mo ago
  So why not just get rid of "earn money through capital returns" by removing the zero lower bound on cash so capital returns can finally be negative???? Of course that would go against the class war idea, then you can't blame others anymore. You'd have to accept how this objective improvement to your life as a labor income dependent person would also crush your own dreams of earning capital returns yourself.
dimbletimbers 1mo ago
If it were true
dimbletimbers 1mo ago
There doesn’t need to be a conspiracy born in smokey rooms for there to be a malignant culture of greed and moral bankruptcy. And it’s possible for one group or class to consolidate enough power to constitute an unfair advantage. “I’m just doing what the market rewards” and “if I don’t, the next guy will” are the 21st century billionaire’s “I was just following orders.” It creates a race to the bottom.

shimman 1mo ago

The dream of a perpetual labor machine is the end goal of capitalists. It's how you usher in the extermination age. Much easier to do once you declare 20-40% of the population "useless."

dan_gggggg 1mo ago
> The dream of a perpetual labor machine is the end goal of capitalists. Frankly, "AGI" just seems like a return to Antebellum slave economics. Free labor is a C-suite's wet dream, and it has been since the 1520s. Yeah "AI" doesn't work but that doesn't matter. Your boss believes that there is a coin-operated robot slave that is smarter than you, never gets tired, and never talks back. Good luck getting that raise now, asshole.
- seki285 1mo ago
  Why the specific 1520s date?
  - dan_gggggg 1mo ago
    [dead]
  - enoint 1mo ago
    The labor consequences of the Black Death in Europe swung back to capital in the 1520s. The proportion of the population working for wages crossed 50%.