They spent trillions building a product worth billions. They don’t even get a moat of it either. All their competitors are perpetually 6 months behind, so they have to keep spending billions more just to keep their heads above water.
Their only hope is to trick the government into regulatory capture so they can finally get their moat. They aren’t even profiting from inference though, so they’re going to continue burning runway.
I interned at a private school for a term in university. Students at that school had their parents paying 5x my university tuition while being multiple grade levels behind in reading, writing, math, and science. What was all that money for?
Well at least they got a chance to study abroad in France and have a professional theatre company run their school play.
I don’t think there’s anything inevitable in Earth history, except the Sun going red giant. Just because regular people clawed back some power against the robber barons doesn’t mean it could be done again in our time, with all the differences in technology.
Technology is a force multiplier. Not just for military/violent force, but for speech and the control of information as well. It’s not an anomaly that people keep re-electing the same incumbents over and over again.
The wealthy are leveraging more and more power while also undermining future generations, destroying education and social mobility. We may end up in a situation not too different from North Korea, where the millions starve and a handful live in opulence, enforced by a brutal military police state empowered by weaponry, mass surveillance, and AI.
How are you going to keep a running total? Realistically, how? Much wealth is not publicly known, especially given international holdings. No one knows how much money Putin has, for example.
And then you have the more basic issue that private companies don’t have a known true value. They have a book value for the real property they hold (real estate, buildings, equipment, inventory, furniture, vehicles, etc) but many companies have a potential value far in excess of that due to technology. That value can’t really be calculated until the business goes public or is sold.
So what you end up with is people will just give their friends and family shares in their private company, valued at a very low number, then later when they go public they can all go up to $999m before selling out.
The thing to realize about billionaires is that they have so much money they can hire an entire accounting department to circumvent basically any simple tax law you come up with.
Except land value taxes. Land can’t be moved and the land value is assessed based on the neighbourhood, not on any information the owner might hold secret, so there’s no way to avoid land value taxes if you want to own land.
This is a really great interview where Cory goes over a lot of his thoughts on AI. He’s very clear on the reasons to doubt that AI companies will ever be profitable, and how they’re using a smokescreen to hide how much runway they’re burning.
Yeah so then they have 100 friends and family, with 999 million each.
These sorts of proposals are just laughable to anyone with common sense. It’s like putting a 1 foot tall fence around your lawn and thinking it’ll stop people from walking on your grass.
It’s because I realize what community I’m in that the comic makes so little sense, unless you’re intending it as some kind of troll against the people here.
The guy yelling all that stuff about the evils of Nintendo is the butt of the joke in this comic format. He sounds completely shrill and unhinged next to the chill people who just want to relax and play some games. If it’s intended as a critique of capitalism, this one’s an own-goal.
If you want to defeat Nintendo, don’t take away people’s video games or try to convert them into some kind of virtuous, ex-gamer celibates. You’ll have much better success by teaching people how to pirate games so they can have fun without paying money to the big corpo.
Also check for brain-eating amoebas. Wouldn’t be surprised if his skull was just a big fluid filled sac with a tiny amount of brain matter squished to the sides.
Not to mention that the Inland Taipan is native to Australia. Those snakes can’t be all that common in Florida, unless there’s a feral population I’m not aware of. The fact that there’s any supply of antivenin in the US at all seems really lucky!
If you’d like more wholesomeness and spiders, check out Travis McEnery’s The Spiders in Your House series. He goes really in depth on tons of spider science, all about common (and uncommon) house spider species! Both wholesome and informative stuff!
Accountability and blame aren’t the same thing. Learn the difference.
Nope! Liberate yourself!
Seriously, take accountability for your own government.
And of course the last episode gets removed from YouTube for ToS violation (excessive violence).
Here’s the best part:
They spent trillions building a product worth billions. They don’t even get a moat of it either. All their competitors are perpetually 6 months behind, so they have to keep spending billions more just to keep their heads above water.
Their only hope is to trick the government into regulatory capture so they can finally get their moat. They aren’t even profiting from inference though, so they’re going to continue burning runway.
I interned at a private school for a term in university. Students at that school had their parents paying 5x my university tuition while being multiple grade levels behind in reading, writing, math, and science. What was all that money for?
Well at least they got a chance to study abroad in France and have a professional theatre company run their school play.
Slop grenades! It’s the digital equivalent of throwing jars of piss at each other!
Wow your buddy has an oddly symmetrical face!
I don’t think there’s anything inevitable in Earth history, except the Sun going red giant. Just because regular people clawed back some power against the robber barons doesn’t mean it could be done again in our time, with all the differences in technology.
Technology is a force multiplier. Not just for military/violent force, but for speech and the control of information as well. It’s not an anomaly that people keep re-electing the same incumbents over and over again.
The wealthy are leveraging more and more power while also undermining future generations, destroying education and social mobility. We may end up in a situation not too different from North Korea, where the millions starve and a handful live in opulence, enforced by a brutal military police state empowered by weaponry, mass surveillance, and AI.
How are you going to keep a running total? Realistically, how? Much wealth is not publicly known, especially given international holdings. No one knows how much money Putin has, for example.
And then you have the more basic issue that private companies don’t have a known true value. They have a book value for the real property they hold (real estate, buildings, equipment, inventory, furniture, vehicles, etc) but many companies have a potential value far in excess of that due to technology. That value can’t really be calculated until the business goes public or is sold.
So what you end up with is people will just give their friends and family shares in their private company, valued at a very low number, then later when they go public they can all go up to $999m before selling out.
The thing to realize about billionaires is that they have so much money they can hire an entire accounting department to circumvent basically any simple tax law you come up with.
Except land value taxes. Land can’t be moved and the land value is assessed based on the neighbourhood, not on any information the owner might hold secret, so there’s no way to avoid land value taxes if you want to own land.
This is a really great interview where Cory goes over a lot of his thoughts on AI. He’s very clear on the reasons to doubt that AI companies will ever be profitable, and how they’re using a smokescreen to hide how much runway they’re burning.
Yeah so then they have 100 friends and family, with 999 million each.
These sorts of proposals are just laughable to anyone with common sense. It’s like putting a 1 foot tall fence around your lawn and thinking it’ll stop people from walking on your grass.
Fraughtdog too! That thing hanging on for dear life!
Or just overcast!
It’s because I realize what community I’m in that the comic makes so little sense, unless you’re intending it as some kind of troll against the people here.
The guy yelling all that stuff about the evils of Nintendo is the butt of the joke in this comic format. He sounds completely shrill and unhinged next to the chill people who just want to relax and play some games. If it’s intended as a critique of capitalism, this one’s an own-goal.
If you want to defeat Nintendo, don’t take away people’s video games or try to convert them into some kind of virtuous, ex-gamer celibates. You’ll have much better success by teaching people how to pirate games so they can have fun without paying money to the big corpo.
This doesn’t make any sense. What is your point here?
Also check for brain-eating amoebas. Wouldn’t be surprised if his skull was just a big fluid filled sac with a tiny amount of brain matter squished to the sides.
This is fantasy working as (Tolkien) intended.
Don’t mistake our kindness for weakness!
Not to mention that the Inland Taipan is native to Australia. Those snakes can’t be all that common in Florida, unless there’s a feral population I’m not aware of. The fact that there’s any supply of antivenin in the US at all seems really lucky!
If you’d like more wholesomeness and spiders, check out Travis McEnery’s The Spiders in Your House series. He goes really in depth on tons of spider science, all about common (and uncommon) house spider species! Both wholesome and informative stuff!