In 1999 I dropped out of university to join an internet startup. Like Musk I had grown up on a diet of techno-optimistic golden age SciFi ( I have grown up since), and while I had already accepted that I would not become an astronaut, this seemed a way to take part in an exciting future. Otoh I had grown up in very modest circumstances, amongst people who seriously believed that the way to wealth was hard and meaningful work, so my new environment was a bit alien to me. What puzzled me was that nobody seemed to have either a business plan, or indeed an idea that businesses are supposed to make money, and that the product was glorified ads which should not be worth a lot; rather the idea was "we are having a party, and we even pay our friends to join the party". I was told that I suffered from "old thinking" and I guess that was true, and still is. I am not sure if this was international the case, but when things eventually collapsed it was, here in Germany, not so much a market breakdown as a redistribution scheme. Lots of only recently privatized infrastructure (most notably Telekom, previously advertised as "Die Volksaktie", "the people's stock") profited first from the influx of money from small investors, and then the sudden concentration of stocks when the small investors had to divest from stocks in favour of food and rent and stuff. For me, that remained the lesson of what "economic bubble" means, big stakeholders taking temporary losses if that means they can disenfranchise the majority in the long term. I see nothing right now that would convince me I am wrong. There still seems a party going on, but a lot less people are getting invites.
To Paul not Eike: Do make your own cat food sourced from chicken thighs. It’s the most nutritious and it’s cheaper than inferior factory-made cat food. And it’s fun knowing what you are doing for your fur baby. I know I have 7 of them. Bye it’s time to grind the chicken.
Given by the, ehm, conciseness of your reply I don't think you have gotten around to reading Cervantes yet (or anything, really). You really should try - if you broadened your vocabulary, you might actually be able to express what offends you. It would help the conversation along.
Don’t pay any attention to whomever or whatever produces those one-word responses (another ploy is to repeat what you posted). They or it are here for trolling purposes only, it appears.
the money laundering crypto bros who run the government now have been angling for a government bailout - sorry, i mean a "strategic bitcoin reserve" or a "digital assets stockpile* - for years now. https://cryptadamus.substack.com/p/of-tech-bros-and-trumpers
What are you going to do about it? DOGE is now in charge with the keys to the US Treasury and the details about to be loaded onto the Dark Web if anyone tries to stop them.
The correct question is what are WE going to do about it.
This battle will 100% be fought in our court systems. It will be slow and painful. We will tie them up and slow them down, the same way Trump avoided all prosecution. Crooked POLS do NOT own our courts.
AI, the type that, we, consumers, are exposed to, isn't quite ready for prime time. I had my little test with it on LinkedIn via their Premium trial period. I wrote about my experience recently. I know we've been treated to all kinds of articles about how great it is at medical diagnoses in certain cases, but I don't think I'd want my life to depend entirely on it. Do I think it will never be dependable? No. It's just not there and it can't get there until a lot about how we think about the way businesses should run changes in some very fundamental ways.
Artificial intelligence is really still machine learning. That machine learning is happening under very flawed ethical conditions. The biggest one, one that I've been writing about for years, is the notion that corporations' only duty is to their shareholders. Yes, you guessed it, the ethical plague we have been suffering thanks in large part to Milton Friedman's 1962 book, Capitalism and Freedom^. We are now seeing its effect on hyper-steroids, with the complete takeover of the oligarchy.
For as long as AI is used to, primarily, increase profit, rather than improve our collective lot, we will continue to see a worsening of our collective condition, rather than a general improvement and the kind of societal renaissance Paul describes here.
Anything that doesn't have at least some component of doing good turns out to be inherently bad. There are many examples I can think of that we all experience. Social media is one such example, with Facebook and X on one side and, for now, Bluesky on the other. Bad, bad, and pretty good.
Maybe, after this terrible stage of the American Experiment is over, however it ends, when we start over (and we will), those who plan our reconstruction will remember that a society that doesn't provide their young with a well-rounded education steeped in social ethics and a long historical memory, that society is doomed to fail by virtue of becoming hostage to those who operate out of evil intent. One can only hope...
* My Notes on Paul Krugman's 'Capitalism, Socialism, and Unfreedom'
Amen. It's all about education. Education, in its highest form, enlightens generations of people, and creates hope for the future. Prosperity and happiness for all, one can dream, not just for a few. And then the lack of education makes people susceptible to those with evil intent. Not shocking at all that these people want to get rid of the Department of Education.
The comments that I've read by people who have used it, such as attorneys, just describe to me how useless white collar labor will become. If there is no need to hire a jr associate who learns on the job by writing/researching/doing (unless jr associate is jr of the law firm partner in real life) then there will be no reason for job creation/workforce development. The NYT article about the founding CEO of Klarna using AI as a workforce replacement is the future writing on the wall.
I'm not sure why increasing profit and increasing our collective wealth are mutually exclusive in your mind (provided the corporations aren't breaking the law which is a different problem.) As Krugman pointed out technological developments increase overall productivity and that makes us all better off.
Personally I've occasionally used LLMs both at work and with my side projects and it absolutely has made me more productive. The other month I realized I had targeted the wrong API with a program I wrote and was able to throw it at an LLM to rewrite it for the correct one. I had to make some minor corrections of course but the whole episode was over in minutes. That probably would have meant a day of work otherwise.
The applications it works well in the most are those that are employed by people who are very proficient in performing text based searches using exact search terms. Lawyers are definitely in this category.
It’s amazing how all the rich people get bailed out, while the middle class loses everything. Musk would be broke without Obama’s EV subsidies, and now he just bought an election on the cheap.
The bankers leave our economy in ruin, they get bailed out, and if they lost their jobs, they still walked away with golden parachutes for destroying the economy. And then, these masters of the universe have the nerve to ask for more tax cuts to themselves, while people are losing homes, and businesses.
Additionally, Trump destroys a $42 billion a year agricultural export industry to China, they get a bailout (unforced error), while the rich complain about taxes and are in the process of dismantling our administrative state, and our soft power, USAID program, which accounts for almost 40% of all global food and help assistance.
Something’s seriously wrong with this picture. Good times!…:)
When Krugman talks about dreary hotel rooms, I am reminded of the 30% or more of my work-life that I spent staying at various hotels across the country. It gave me an opportunity to see from a computer programmer's perspective what was important to Life Insurance companies and banks and to understand how they make their money.
Having been in IT since the mid-1970's the biggest period of activity and change was in the 1990's. And this was totally due to Y2K. The 1980's and early 1990's saw a major uptick In regulations within the Financial services industry. DEFRA, TEFRA, TAMRA, Universal Life Model Regulations, HIPAA, etc. But then it all pretty much ground to a halt because every single company was preparing their (mostly) legacy systems for Y2K.
Y2K changes were basically 1/3 analysis, 1/3 modifications and 1/3 testing and implementation. Tens of thousands of off-shore programmers were imported from India, Russia, the Philippines, etc. And they came her on the cheap. The Indian consulting firms were paying programmers in Indian between $6,000 and $12,000 a year in 1990 while US companies were paying 5 -10 times as much for American programmers with experience.
When the Y2K mods wound down, there was a glut of programmers. Companies thought of programmers as widgets and laid off most of the American programmers. I know, I saw it first hand. And Congress was complicit. The H-1B program capped minimum salaries at $60K which translated into static salaries of $60K. To maximize profits the Indian consulting firms brought entire families here and then changed them travel and living expenses getting around the $60k minimum.
Dozens of American programmers either took large pay cuts or quit when they couldn't find work.
The Federal government and the state insurance departments curtailed most new regulations, which also reduced the need for computer professionals. And the server based technologies started replacing or augmenting the computer assets within companies.
I could write a book about the myriad disruptions in our economy, but this is a start.
Damn are you ever singing my song. I too have been replaced by dirt cheap "offshore" labor. I actually got my start in programming right at the peak of tackling the Y2K time bomb. Having had a firsthand look at it, I get thoroughly disgusted when climate deniers point to Y2K as perfect example of alarmist much ado about nothing.
In fact, Y2K was a perfect example of how answering that alarm >prevents< disaster. Why can't people get that? We've been in the middle of the biggest mass extinction event for the last quarter century now - losing over one thousand species per year - and the Big Pollution (AKA Big Oil/Coal) industry (and Faux News) is still screaming "alarmism!", and idiots are buying into it.
Yes, an alarm is going off. It's not politics! It means the house is on fire!
Krugman (I think it was him) wrote about this over 10 years ago. If your job is at a keyboard, it can be done anywhere in the world that has internet connectivity. These jobs will inevitably migrate to low wage countries. This accounts for much of India's economic growth! The only secure jobs (for now) are those that must be done "hands on": plumbers, carpenters, mechanics... But Beware of robots....
Yes. They're already working on those - and not just for the trades. They want to replace doctors and nurses and medical technicians of every kind too.
My spouse experienced the exact same scenario. One minute he's on the phone 24/7. The next? Given 90 days to find another job in the company.... He had to train his replacement who would fall asleep during her training session. He quit. Funny... his next job was as a consultant. Pay was lovely.
A lot of what is going on in Washington and the disruption of government departments and mass layoffs/firings, immigrant deportations, tariffs, and so forth are just distractions and bones being thrown to the MAGA faithful.
Donald and Musk and company have their eyes set on hard cash which they hope to get from the feds. It might be through the use of crypto, sovereign investments funds, or other means, but when the dust settles expect them to emerge much richer.
They have their EYES on much much more....Panama, Greenland, Canada, Mexico and Gaza this week....and the World will just roll over ??? Houston, WE HAVE A PROBLEM....AND the ONLY solution is that the 3.5 million American People DO NOT LET HIM STEAL THIER COUNTRY FIRST = all freedoms gone !!!!! NO DISRESPECT but truthfully....they will make Nazi Germany look like kindergarten. Period , full stop
Do you think Musk was paid in cash or crypto by the Pentagon and USAID for the thousands of $1500 a pop Starlink terminals (was a bulk purchase at a high price) and the hundreds of millions in annual fees for Ukraine and South Africa's internet connections?
I tend to be an AI skeptic with my long 48 year IT experience. The overall effect is going to be less than people realize. Current neural net based AI systems are very complex search engines which as I have learned need human guidance at the end to work well. The hype around these systems which have been touted as achieving general AI where the systems are actually sentient is very misleading. Unfrotunately, the general public buys this hype and believes this is part of why the AI driven tech stock rise is higher than it should be.
Exactly! This stuff is so oversold/overblown. They're trying to convince us that it's already sentient. I keep repeating this mantra: The "A" in "AI" stands for "artificial" and it means exactly that. It does not have, nor will it ever have, human judgement.
It’s easy to bamboozle them because most people have no understanding of tech. They use it (and not necessarily well) but that’s about it. I believe one of the reasons HRC’s “private server” issue was such a “scandal” is because people thought it sounded bad without actually knowing what a server is or what it does. I am certainly no expert in all things tech but it never surprises me how little so many people know.
So, in manufacturing parlance, the west German Mercedes Benz auto manufacturing worker sees that EVs only require a third of the working parts of an ICE auto, therefore only a third of the ICE manufacturing work force going forward just as his union contract expires the same year as Mercedes Benz will quit manufacturing ICE autos: 2030, and he's going to be roughly a decade from retirement age.
Elon won't need any bailout. He's going to force government payments to go through X and cream off a transaction fee from every Social Security, Medicare, and other government payment.
As for the rest? I think what kind of bailout they get will depend on how the other techbros flatter Trump and Musk
I give pause to teach an important point that is germaine to current events now; George Orwell famously wrote in his book "1984"; "War is Peace". The obvious meaning is explained in histories of kings and queens who created external enemies to fight wars against to avoid being done in by their own restless people. We are living Orwellian troubles now and what appears to be soon to be.
Previous US gov't apparatus may have been more subtle in their labeling (with glaring exceptions such as renaming the War Department). The bulk of Prezz #47's opening salvos of executive orders are full-blown doublespeak.
Good morning. It's a tool to avoid accountability. What if the words of A.I. kills? Who gets prosecuted? No one right? Right. That might have been a founding principle. First came smart weapons, followed by robots, and now autonomous intelligence like Elon Musks cars that drive themselves and aren't nearly as adaptive as a human. To use a pun, it may be about "Liability" and how to get away with crimes that will undo A.I. and it's backers. How do you prosecute a computer that is made to be autonomous with no one that can be said was behind the computers words?
Yup. I hate to burst the bubble, but I spend my time saving the marks of con artists.
We don't have to wait for Skynet. RFK Jr. is going to kill most of us and Elon will make sure the rest of us starve to death. Say hello to techno-feudalism.
I figured 'DOGE' (even when it was just a 'coin') was a nod to Venetian mercantilism. Surprised to still not notice any such references in even the 'nerdier' commentary spaces
Didn't mean to pretend to broad media awareness; never have followed NYT regulars. Good to know it was obvious to someone with a platform. There were a lot of doges as long as they had a naval empire...
My learning of economics was limited to the basic class of macro economics (my major was international history/relations.
But with easy money flushing all over the world, since before Covid-19 but especially after it, isn’t it natural for people to misperceive that they have easy money (even if that easy moneys are very unevenly distributed in fact)?
As a Japanese, I can’t help thinking of the early 1990s shut down of the easy money by Japanese Minister of Finance, and the flush of Japan’s bubble economy.
I wonder if the MoF could make a soft landing. It might not be possible then: after all Washington was pressing Tokyo heavily to stop Japanese economy juggernaut those days (And it did sink the Japan juggernaut completely, not without negative effect on the US economy.) But I always wonder if that was possible: thought that in 2007-8, think that these days.
Thought bubble: But I thought Trump was "populist" and had the best interests of the middle class at heart. I also thought Democrats were just as bad as the Republicans, and that it was therefore pointless to vote. I might need to rethink this.
Being old enough to remember Black Monday, dot comm, Asia, Lehman and GFC - yes this has all the makings of another crash. The kind that most mainstream economists totally fail to see coming.
I remember that Quest ad too, I think the point was to sell fibre optic connections to the home. Of course a lot of homes in America still don't have this (I have had it in the UK for a good part of 10 years). Also there's so much fragmentation in the streaming services market and so much fragmentation in the underlying ownership of license rights that we still can't get every film/ tv show ever made.
One other factor that may be exacerbating an AI bubble - the rise of passive/index investing. Apparently 50% of the ownership of publicly traded equities in America is now with index funds. Those funds create a re-inforcing loop for stocks with upward momentum as the more money entering those stocks, the greater their weight in the index and the more the fund needs to buy to stay aligned.
I wonder if copyright should expire after a much shorter period of time. Say 20 years, then pretty much everything older could be available on free platforms. I am increasingly skeptical about the merits of investing in index trackers for the reason you state.
In 1999 I dropped out of university to join an internet startup. Like Musk I had grown up on a diet of techno-optimistic golden age SciFi ( I have grown up since), and while I had already accepted that I would not become an astronaut, this seemed a way to take part in an exciting future. Otoh I had grown up in very modest circumstances, amongst people who seriously believed that the way to wealth was hard and meaningful work, so my new environment was a bit alien to me. What puzzled me was that nobody seemed to have either a business plan, or indeed an idea that businesses are supposed to make money, and that the product was glorified ads which should not be worth a lot; rather the idea was "we are having a party, and we even pay our friends to join the party". I was told that I suffered from "old thinking" and I guess that was true, and still is. I am not sure if this was international the case, but when things eventually collapsed it was, here in Germany, not so much a market breakdown as a redistribution scheme. Lots of only recently privatized infrastructure (most notably Telekom, previously advertised as "Die Volksaktie", "the people's stock") profited first from the influx of money from small investors, and then the sudden concentration of stocks when the small investors had to divest from stocks in favour of food and rent and stuff. For me, that remained the lesson of what "economic bubble" means, big stakeholders taking temporary losses if that means they can disenfranchise the majority in the long term. I see nothing right now that would convince me I am wrong. There still seems a party going on, but a lot less people are getting invites.
To Paul not Eike: Do make your own cat food sourced from chicken thighs. It’s the most nutritious and it’s cheaper than inferior factory-made cat food. And it’s fun knowing what you are doing for your fur baby. I know I have 7 of them. Bye it’s time to grind the chicken.
gibberish
Given by the, ehm, conciseness of your reply I don't think you have gotten around to reading Cervantes yet (or anything, really). You really should try - if you broadened your vocabulary, you might actually be able to express what offends you. It would help the conversation along.
Don’t pay any attention to whomever or whatever produces those one-word responses (another ploy is to repeat what you posted). They or it are here for trolling purposes only, it appears.
the money laundering crypto bros who run the government now have been angling for a government bailout - sorry, i mean a "strategic bitcoin reserve" or a "digital assets stockpile* - for years now. https://cryptadamus.substack.com/p/of-tech-bros-and-trumpers
different issue altogether but yeah thats a straight up scandal if there ever was one.
The answer to a crypto bailout is an easy NO! Next will be asked to bail out gamblers losing their rent money on sports betting apps.
Except the Republicans in control will say - sure! We will take money from starving children and reallocate to bail out our money launderers.
What are you going to do about it? DOGE is now in charge with the keys to the US Treasury and the details about to be loaded onto the Dark Web if anyone tries to stop them.
The correct question is what are WE going to do about it.
This battle will 100% be fought in our court systems. It will be slow and painful. We will tie them up and slow them down, the same way Trump avoided all prosecution. Crooked POLS do NOT own our courts.
One thing I am doing is divesting of everything Musk. And I am demaning the mutual fund folks do the same. The companies include
Meta
Tesla, Inc.
SpaceX
X Corp. (formerly known as X, Inc.)
The Boring Company
xAI
Neuralink
OpenAI
Anyone still driving a Tesla needs to put an apology in their rear window and offer to sell.
Welcome to the club. It was clear he was a dickhead a long long time ago, what surprises me is how long it took for so many people to notice.
Dorothy....I don't think we're in Kansas ANYMORE !
Thus proving that they >know< it's a scam.
You pretend to know more than you do. Why?
AI, the type that, we, consumers, are exposed to, isn't quite ready for prime time. I had my little test with it on LinkedIn via their Premium trial period. I wrote about my experience recently. I know we've been treated to all kinds of articles about how great it is at medical diagnoses in certain cases, but I don't think I'd want my life to depend entirely on it. Do I think it will never be dependable? No. It's just not there and it can't get there until a lot about how we think about the way businesses should run changes in some very fundamental ways.
Artificial intelligence is really still machine learning. That machine learning is happening under very flawed ethical conditions. The biggest one, one that I've been writing about for years, is the notion that corporations' only duty is to their shareholders. Yes, you guessed it, the ethical plague we have been suffering thanks in large part to Milton Friedman's 1962 book, Capitalism and Freedom^. We are now seeing its effect on hyper-steroids, with the complete takeover of the oligarchy.
For as long as AI is used to, primarily, increase profit, rather than improve our collective lot, we will continue to see a worsening of our collective condition, rather than a general improvement and the kind of societal renaissance Paul describes here.
Anything that doesn't have at least some component of doing good turns out to be inherently bad. There are many examples I can think of that we all experience. Social media is one such example, with Facebook and X on one side and, for now, Bluesky on the other. Bad, bad, and pretty good.
Maybe, after this terrible stage of the American Experiment is over, however it ends, when we start over (and we will), those who plan our reconstruction will remember that a society that doesn't provide their young with a well-rounded education steeped in social ethics and a long historical memory, that society is doomed to fail by virtue of becoming hostage to those who operate out of evil intent. One can only hope...
* My Notes on Paul Krugman's 'Capitalism, Socialism, and Unfreedom'
https://rimaregasblog42.substack.com/p/my-notes-on-paul-krugmans-capitalism-socialism-and-unfreedom-democraticsocialism?r=bfvi
** David Hogg appears to be the target of centrist Democrats? https://rimaregasblog42.substack.com/p/david-hogg-is-a-target-of-centrist?r=bfvi
Things Trump Did Day 16
https://rimaregasblog42.substack.com/p/things-trump-did-day-16-blog42?r=bfvi
My substack https://rimaregasblog42.substack.com/
Amen. It's all about education. Education, in its highest form, enlightens generations of people, and creates hope for the future. Prosperity and happiness for all, one can dream, not just for a few. And then the lack of education makes people susceptible to those with evil intent. Not shocking at all that these people want to get rid of the Department of Education.
"Maybe, after this terrible stage of the American Experiment is over, however it ends, when we start over (and we will)..."
Assuming the oligarchs don't succeed at driving us to extinction first.
The comments that I've read by people who have used it, such as attorneys, just describe to me how useless white collar labor will become. If there is no need to hire a jr associate who learns on the job by writing/researching/doing (unless jr associate is jr of the law firm partner in real life) then there will be no reason for job creation/workforce development. The NYT article about the founding CEO of Klarna using AI as a workforce replacement is the future writing on the wall.
I'm not sure why increasing profit and increasing our collective wealth are mutually exclusive in your mind (provided the corporations aren't breaking the law which is a different problem.) As Krugman pointed out technological developments increase overall productivity and that makes us all better off.
Personally I've occasionally used LLMs both at work and with my side projects and it absolutely has made me more productive. The other month I realized I had targeted the wrong API with a program I wrote and was able to throw it at an LLM to rewrite it for the correct one. I had to make some minor corrections of course but the whole episode was over in minutes. That probably would have meant a day of work otherwise.
The applications it works well in the most are those that are employed by people who are very proficient in performing text based searches using exact search terms. Lawyers are definitely in this category.
As I wrote... I wasn't saying it doesn't work at all.
hear hear ....and oh no .... karma
Thanks.
It’s amazing how all the rich people get bailed out, while the middle class loses everything. Musk would be broke without Obama’s EV subsidies, and now he just bought an election on the cheap.
The bankers leave our economy in ruin, they get bailed out, and if they lost their jobs, they still walked away with golden parachutes for destroying the economy. And then, these masters of the universe have the nerve to ask for more tax cuts to themselves, while people are losing homes, and businesses.
Additionally, Trump destroys a $42 billion a year agricultural export industry to China, they get a bailout (unforced error), while the rich complain about taxes and are in the process of dismantling our administrative state, and our soft power, USAID program, which accounts for almost 40% of all global food and help assistance.
Something’s seriously wrong with this picture. Good times!…:)
When Krugman talks about dreary hotel rooms, I am reminded of the 30% or more of my work-life that I spent staying at various hotels across the country. It gave me an opportunity to see from a computer programmer's perspective what was important to Life Insurance companies and banks and to understand how they make their money.
Having been in IT since the mid-1970's the biggest period of activity and change was in the 1990's. And this was totally due to Y2K. The 1980's and early 1990's saw a major uptick In regulations within the Financial services industry. DEFRA, TEFRA, TAMRA, Universal Life Model Regulations, HIPAA, etc. But then it all pretty much ground to a halt because every single company was preparing their (mostly) legacy systems for Y2K.
Y2K changes were basically 1/3 analysis, 1/3 modifications and 1/3 testing and implementation. Tens of thousands of off-shore programmers were imported from India, Russia, the Philippines, etc. And they came her on the cheap. The Indian consulting firms were paying programmers in Indian between $6,000 and $12,000 a year in 1990 while US companies were paying 5 -10 times as much for American programmers with experience.
When the Y2K mods wound down, there was a glut of programmers. Companies thought of programmers as widgets and laid off most of the American programmers. I know, I saw it first hand. And Congress was complicit. The H-1B program capped minimum salaries at $60K which translated into static salaries of $60K. To maximize profits the Indian consulting firms brought entire families here and then changed them travel and living expenses getting around the $60k minimum.
Dozens of American programmers either took large pay cuts or quit when they couldn't find work.
The Federal government and the state insurance departments curtailed most new regulations, which also reduced the need for computer professionals. And the server based technologies started replacing or augmenting the computer assets within companies.
I could write a book about the myriad disruptions in our economy, but this is a start.
Damn are you ever singing my song. I too have been replaced by dirt cheap "offshore" labor. I actually got my start in programming right at the peak of tackling the Y2K time bomb. Having had a firsthand look at it, I get thoroughly disgusted when climate deniers point to Y2K as perfect example of alarmist much ado about nothing.
In fact, Y2K was a perfect example of how answering that alarm >prevents< disaster. Why can't people get that? We've been in the middle of the biggest mass extinction event for the last quarter century now - losing over one thousand species per year - and the Big Pollution (AKA Big Oil/Coal) industry (and Faux News) is still screaming "alarmism!", and idiots are buying into it.
Yes, an alarm is going off. It's not politics! It means the house is on fire!
Krugman (I think it was him) wrote about this over 10 years ago. If your job is at a keyboard, it can be done anywhere in the world that has internet connectivity. These jobs will inevitably migrate to low wage countries. This accounts for much of India's economic growth! The only secure jobs (for now) are those that must be done "hands on": plumbers, carpenters, mechanics... But Beware of robots....
"But Beware of robots...."
Yes. They're already working on those - and not just for the trades. They want to replace doctors and nurses and medical technicians of every kind too.
It is a good start. Keep writing.
My spouse experienced the exact same scenario. One minute he's on the phone 24/7. The next? Given 90 days to find another job in the company.... He had to train his replacement who would fall asleep during her training session. He quit. Funny... his next job was as a consultant. Pay was lovely.
Thanks to the Professor.
A lot of what is going on in Washington and the disruption of government departments and mass layoffs/firings, immigrant deportations, tariffs, and so forth are just distractions and bones being thrown to the MAGA faithful.
Donald and Musk and company have their eyes set on hard cash which they hope to get from the feds. It might be through the use of crypto, sovereign investments funds, or other means, but when the dust settles expect them to emerge much richer.
They have their EYES on much much more....Panama, Greenland, Canada, Mexico and Gaza this week....and the World will just roll over ??? Houston, WE HAVE A PROBLEM....AND the ONLY solution is that the 3.5 million American People DO NOT LET HIM STEAL THIER COUNTRY FIRST = all freedoms gone !!!!! NO DISRESPECT but truthfully....they will make Nazi Germany look like kindergarten. Period , full stop
Do you think Musk was paid in cash or crypto by the Pentagon and USAID for the thousands of $1500 a pop Starlink terminals (was a bulk purchase at a high price) and the hundreds of millions in annual fees for Ukraine and South Africa's internet connections?
All of the above.
I believe the term for this is "kleptocracy".
"Kakistocracy" has had an uptick in searches as well.
No surprise there.
Wow Sarah Jarosz what a great piece thank you!
Another nice article by Krugman - thank you sir.
And that cover is wonderful. I believe the bassist is Jeff Pickens.
I tend to be an AI skeptic with my long 48 year IT experience. The overall effect is going to be less than people realize. Current neural net based AI systems are very complex search engines which as I have learned need human guidance at the end to work well. The hype around these systems which have been touted as achieving general AI where the systems are actually sentient is very misleading. Unfrotunately, the general public buys this hype and believes this is part of why the AI driven tech stock rise is higher than it should be.
Exactly! This stuff is so oversold/overblown. They're trying to convince us that it's already sentient. I keep repeating this mantra: The "A" in "AI" stands for "artificial" and it means exactly that. It does not have, nor will it ever have, human judgement.
It’s easy to bamboozle them because most people have no understanding of tech. They use it (and not necessarily well) but that’s about it. I believe one of the reasons HRC’s “private server” issue was such a “scandal” is because people thought it sounded bad without actually knowing what a server is or what it does. I am certainly no expert in all things tech but it never surprises me how little so many people know.
Sadly, I think you're right. They're just not paying attention.
Awwww
So this means that the Terminator can’t learn to to human after all?
So, in manufacturing parlance, the west German Mercedes Benz auto manufacturing worker sees that EVs only require a third of the working parts of an ICE auto, therefore only a third of the ICE manufacturing work force going forward just as his union contract expires the same year as Mercedes Benz will quit manufacturing ICE autos: 2030, and he's going to be roughly a decade from retirement age.
Elon won't need any bailout. He's going to force government payments to go through X and cream off a transaction fee from every Social Security, Medicare, and other government payment.
As for the rest? I think what kind of bailout they get will depend on how the other techbros flatter Trump and Musk
He's a master scammer.
I give pause to teach an important point that is germaine to current events now; George Orwell famously wrote in his book "1984"; "War is Peace". The obvious meaning is explained in histories of kings and queens who created external enemies to fight wars against to avoid being done in by their own restless people. We are living Orwellian troubles now and what appears to be soon to be.
"We are living Orwellian troubles now and what appears to be soon to be."
This is true and has been since at least 1980. The title of this great work was most prescient.
Previous US gov't apparatus may have been more subtle in their labeling (with glaring exceptions such as renaming the War Department). The bulk of Prezz #47's opening salvos of executive orders are full-blown doublespeak.
Good morning. It's a tool to avoid accountability. What if the words of A.I. kills? Who gets prosecuted? No one right? Right. That might have been a founding principle. First came smart weapons, followed by robots, and now autonomous intelligence like Elon Musks cars that drive themselves and aren't nearly as adaptive as a human. To use a pun, it may be about "Liability" and how to get away with crimes that will undo A.I. and it's backers. How do you prosecute a computer that is made to be autonomous with no one that can be said was behind the computers words?
Yup. I hate to burst the bubble, but I spend my time saving the marks of con artists.
It's a no brainer.
Without insurance, would there be a Lone Skum? As long as he's got insurance companies KABAM!boozled he's in the driver's sedan chair.
And lawyers. Don't forget the lawyers. Both the Lone Skum and his insurance companies have armies of lawyers to prevent payouts and accountability.
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the insurance agents". The lawyers? Get in line, pal.
"...autonomous intelligence like Elon Musks cars that drive themselves..."
Yeah, straight into parked emergency vehicles and over children walking their bicycles across the street...
How are things in Oceania these days?
You're already experiencing it for yourself right now.
We don't have to wait for Skynet. RFK Jr. is going to kill most of us and Elon will make sure the rest of us starve to death. Say hello to techno-feudalism.
I figured 'DOGE' (even when it was just a 'coin') was a nod to Venetian mercantilism. Surprised to still not notice any such references in even the 'nerdier' commentary spaces
You didn't see PK's post with the pic of some Venetian historical figure at the top while he was still at NYT?
Didn't mean to pretend to broad media awareness; never have followed NYT regulars. Good to know it was obvious to someone with a platform. There were a lot of doges as long as they had a naval empire...
My learning of economics was limited to the basic class of macro economics (my major was international history/relations.
But with easy money flushing all over the world, since before Covid-19 but especially after it, isn’t it natural for people to misperceive that they have easy money (even if that easy moneys are very unevenly distributed in fact)?
As a Japanese, I can’t help thinking of the early 1990s shut down of the easy money by Japanese Minister of Finance, and the flush of Japan’s bubble economy.
I wonder if the MoF could make a soft landing. It might not be possible then: after all Washington was pressing Tokyo heavily to stop Japanese economy juggernaut those days (And it did sink the Japan juggernaut completely, not without negative effect on the US economy.) But I always wonder if that was possible: thought that in 2007-8, think that these days.
I call it The Great Slosh. Cash tsunamis rolling from shore to shore, getting spent in ways judicious and especially otherwise.
Thought bubble: But I thought Trump was "populist" and had the best interests of the middle class at heart. I also thought Democrats were just as bad as the Republicans, and that it was therefore pointless to vote. I might need to rethink this.
Too late.
Being old enough to remember Black Monday, dot comm, Asia, Lehman and GFC - yes this has all the makings of another crash. The kind that most mainstream economists totally fail to see coming.
And who knew you had such good taste in music!
My entire investment thesis is now that a major crash is coming. It couldn't be more clear. The market has abandoned any presense of rationality.
100% agree with PK here.
I remember that Quest ad too, I think the point was to sell fibre optic connections to the home. Of course a lot of homes in America still don't have this (I have had it in the UK for a good part of 10 years). Also there's so much fragmentation in the streaming services market and so much fragmentation in the underlying ownership of license rights that we still can't get every film/ tv show ever made.
One other factor that may be exacerbating an AI bubble - the rise of passive/index investing. Apparently 50% of the ownership of publicly traded equities in America is now with index funds. Those funds create a re-inforcing loop for stocks with upward momentum as the more money entering those stocks, the greater their weight in the index and the more the fund needs to buy to stay aligned.
I wonder if copyright should expire after a much shorter period of time. Say 20 years, then pretty much everything older could be available on free platforms. I am increasingly skeptical about the merits of investing in index trackers for the reason you state.