The question isn’t the jobs created but how have workers benefited from increased productivity? They haven’t materially since late 1970s. That’s when the American labor movement began its decline. Innovation isn’t what helps workers. The gains from innovation have to be wrenched from the hands of the ruling class through organized resistance.
Right we had a functioning labor movement to thank for productivity gains being distributed to the working class. When that got undermined beginning late seventies early 80s with offshoring we see wealth just flowing to the top without significantly benefiting the working class.
Venezuela participates in a small portion of the illegal drug trade. US government officials have stated that they want Venezuela’s oil reserves. This is a transparent excuse for an oil grab.
So? And what about my point that fishermen don't move at 100 knots in speedboats filled with plastic wrapped packages they start dumping as soon as they're spotted?
How does Venezuela have so much oil and yet their population suffers tremendously?
Let me guess that is also somehow the fault of USA/capitalism/colonialism?
That’s an argument made about training the initial model. But the comment stated that DeepSeek stole its research from the US which is a much stronger allegation without any evidence to it.
For starters ChatGPT was pretty much trained on "stolen" data. However I actually do support it. I think both cases - ChatGPT preying on world wide data and Deepseek using such data by partially "borrowing" it from ChatGPT are fair game.
That's a fair point. I suspect that to one outside the field, their touting major breakthroughs while trying to conceal that their first model was a distillation may cause a sense of skepticism as to the quality of their research. From what I've gathered, their research actually has added meaningfully to understandings of optimal model scaling and faster training.
Here's an umbrella doc from the USTR, and the good stuff:
China used foreign ownership restrictions, such as joint venture (JV) requirements and foreign equity limitations, and various administrative review and licensing processes, to require or pressure technology transfer from U.S. companies.
2. China’s regime of technology regulations forced U.S. companies seeking to license technologies to Chinese entities to do so on non-market-based terms that favor Chinese recipients.
3. China directed and unfairly facilitated the systematic investment in, and acquisition of, U.S. companies and assets by Chinese companies to obtain cutting-edge technologies and IP and generate the transfer of technology to Chinese companies.
4. China conducted and supported unauthorized intrusions into, and theft from, the computer networks of U.S. companies to access their IP, including trade secrets, and confidential business information.
As mentioned - no one has claimed that DeepSeek in its entirety was stolen from the U.S.
It is almost a certainty based on decades of historical precedent of systematic theft that techniques, research, and other IP was also systematically stolen for this critical technology.
Don't close your eyes when the evidence, both rigorously proven and common sense, is staring you in the face.
Money is power. Markets produce wealth inequality. The richest use their money to buy influence and write the rules. Fundamentally a “regulated market” is an unstable system that eats itself, a fiction.
No system consisting of humans is ever stable. We can dampen various events, but building a stable system is impossible. Too many things change constantly around us.
Not even old ossified feudal systems were stable. Either the Mongols came, or Black Death, or some smart-ass with his moveable type, and nothing was like before.
Markets are nothing more than the aggregate expression of what people do, need, desire. It's an expression of a free society. No market means a Stalinist society.
> Markets produce wealth inequality.
That always reminds of Margaret Thatcher's famous words in Parliament: "They'd rather the poor be poorer provided that the rich were less rich."
> They'd rather the poor be poorer provided that the rich were less rich.
That is an absolutely reasonable stance? Wealth isn't absolute, it's relative. If the rich are less rich, more resources are available for everyone else.
Richness is about available resources. The poor being poorer means that they have even less resources, so it precludes that there would be "more resources available for everyone else". What you propose is the rich getting less rich and the poor getting less poor.
Markets are the expression of an unfree society because they concentrate power in the hands of the few. Those with more money benefit by exploiting those with less - exploiting workers on the one hand and consumers on the other (through rent extraction). Stalinism is one form of planned economy but in your view the choices are Stalinism vs unregulated markets as if no other options exist. Absurd.
After decades of neoliberalism (thanks to politicians like Thatcher) we can see what a failure it has been. Wealth inequality is growing, climate change is getting worse, far right movements are spreading, governments are run by oligarchs, industry has declined, the working class is squeezed, labor movements have been crushed, housing shortages.. it’s an ideology of class war by the rich against the working class.
> Stalinism is one form of planned economy but in your view the choices are Stalinism vs unregulated markets as if no other options exist.
You've shifted from "market" to "unregulated market". Your point is against markets in general and you haven't explained what's your understanding of "market" is (it seems at the very least unclear to you).
Trying to abolish "the market" can only lead to Stalinism, or whwtever you can to call it, because, again, since a market is the expression of people's actions, needs, and desires abolishing it has to mean abolishing individuals' freedoms. This is not absurd or "ideological propaganda", this is factual (and common sense, really) and proven again and again through the 20th century.
Markets are a place where buyers and sellers come together and exchange money for goods and services.
Markets exploit. Example: the labor market; individuals are forced among unfavorable options to work for the enrichment of business owners otherwise they will end up on the street. Business owners themselves do not face this choice; they have their capital to fall back on. Another example is the housing market where the wealthy have bid up housing as a financial asset, so the working class pays a larger and larger share of income to banks and rentiers, a cash flow from workers to the wealthy. Now people are making ‘choices’ here so supposedly that means markets are expression of free desires. But when one’s choices are constrained due to the power differential between the haves and have nots, the choices are not a free choice. To have actual agency you have to have power, but the power is in the hands of the ownership class.
Maybe you think markets are a necessary evil. But they are not some bastion of freedom like you suppose. That is absurd. We should look at markets for what they are not to candy coat them.
> Markets are the expression of an unfree society because they concentrate power in the hands of the few.
The idea of markets is that both sides are unable to influence the price. What you describe is a problem, but it isn't a healthy/free/working market anymore. I agree that the current economy is suboptimal, but the problem isn't capitalism and and free markets. It's rather a lack of the latter.
I guess see a “free market” as a contradiction, a utopia that even if it existed for a moment would promptly undo itself. As for capitalism - capture of the state by monied interests has always been a central feature.
A totally free market is of course utopia, but a lot of markets actually come close. Think your local butchers, bakeries and mechanics. All business with less than 10 employees and the boss is actually working. There are not that much markets that are actually problematic, but of course we talk about them a lot. Most local markets are actually fine, it's the big multinational corporations that are the problem.
> As for capitalism - capture of the state by monied interests has always been a central feature.
Capitalism is about the concept of private ownership and an economy primarily controlled by the decisions of private business oriented societies. Capture of the state isn't necessary, but common and normal up to a point.
Capitalism is a system where workers create value through their work and are compensated with a portion of that value in the forms of wages. The business owner, the capitalist, is able to extract a portion of that for themselves because they own the business. The state maintains this exploitation of workers’ productivity through so-called property rights - the “rights” of the business owner over the worker. Without the state, this system falls apart.
What separates capitalism from earlier forms, e.g. guilds in the middle ages is that every person can decide to make their own business at any time. Nobody is predestined to a specific profession or estate. That not everyone has its one business is because not everyone wants to do that managing work, some people want to do productive work and a lot of projects are larger than a single person could do.
That work can be exchanged for money predates (the current form of) capitalism and depends fundamentally only on the concept of money alone. I fail to see how that is exploitation per se. You choose to trade something you have for something you want. That's freedom. Taking that away means slavery or starving people.
> The state maintains this exploitation of workers’ productivity through so-called property rights - the “rights” of the business owner over the worker.
What are you talking about? What "rights" of a business owner? The only thing they make are voluntary contracts. You are doing the same when you buy groceries, you are trading money you have for the work of others. What you describe is (wage) slavery, which we claim to have abolished.
Yes they are property rights, but show me the person who doesn't have property. I bet even the homeless person doesn't want it to be legal that the few processions he has can be taken away by anybody, because they just want it.
In civilized countries employees also have more rights than employers e.g. for notice periods, precisely because the working market is often in a state where the employee has less negotiation power. The contract drafter is also the disfavoured party in court.
No you need a state to enforce the property rights of capitalists over workers.
Nor are people all “free” under capitalism - for example the ability to start a business is predicated on assets to fund the business. Capitalist freedoms is freedom for the rich.
And the supposed freedoms of a worker to enter into a contract are a choice between lesser evils - limited choices given their precarious position relative to employers. Jeff Bezos vs an Amazon warehouse worker - it’s not a contract between equals. You seem intent on denying the real power difference between employers and employees as supposedly free arrangements.
As for worker rights they have been fought for by the labor despite the vicious resistance of the capitalist class. Since the 1980s those rights have deteriorated as wealth has continued to consolidate. It’s a trend that’s likely to continue as the richest pollute our globe, promote austerity, extract rent from the working class, undermine democracies, and instigate war.
> No you need a state to enforce the property rights of capitalists over workers.
Can you please define what you mean with "property rights of capitalists"? I don't think we are thinking of the same. When I think of property rights, I think of the concept of exclusive ownership of a thing, which is maintained by declaring theft to be illegal. That is a right, that everyone has including the homeless person living next to the train station.
> Nor are people all “free” under capitalism - for example the ability to start a business is predicated on assets to fund the business. Capitalist freedoms is freedom for the rich.
You can start selling parsley growing in your living room tomorrow, from seeds you found in the local park. However we didn't just started being settled yesterday, so you do need to compete with all the other people already doing things. That you need resources to live, that you don't just have, is not something, that was invented by the "evil capitalists", that is something, that is just human nature (actually not specific to humans). It is true, that some people are born rich, and most don't, but this is unfair not unfree.
> And the supposed freedoms of a worker to enter into a contract are a choice between lesser evils - limited choices given their precarious position relative to employers. Jeff Bezos vs an Amazon warehouse worker - it’s not a contract between equals.
Yes, people like Jeff Bezos are an issue, and Amazon is famous for being a shitty company. However most employers are not Jeff Bezos and most employees don't work for Amazon. You could also start working at the carpenter next door and if you are very good, you will inherit the company. They are looking for people like crazy, prizes for them are high and a lot of craftsmen need to close their business, not because of less demand, but because they are old and their is no one to inherit them to. Working at a carpenter requires you to have finished school, which is payed for by the state and actually mandatory.
> You seem intent on denying the real power difference between employers and employees as supposedly free arrangements.
> In civilized countries employees also have more rights than employers e.g. for notice periods, precisely because the working market is often in a state where the employee has less negotiation power. The contract drafter is also the disfavoured party in court.
Yes, once you are in a contract you need to fulfill them, however you can make any contract you like and are free to terminate them at any time (with a notice period).
> As for worker rights they have been fought for by the labor despite the vicious resistance of the capitalist class.
That highly depends on the country. Often also rulers have seen that peace in their society makes for a stronger society and employers that employees that don't need to think about feeding their children produce better work and providing benefits to their employees improves there competitiveness in the workers market. Traditionally states also didn't liked persons becoming richer than them, as this might pose a threat, people like Jeff Bezos are very much a new phenomena.
So-called property rights are a legal construction that protects the wealth of the wealthy from the working class utilizing the justice system to maintain the domination of the wealthy over the working class, classifying expropriations of their wealth as theft. Capitalist states have always been subordinate to the wealthy, and the justice system is one branch of that apparatus.
> once you are in a contract you need to fulfill them, however you can make any contract you like and are free to terminate them at any time (with a notice period).
This is a bankrupt notion of freedom that ignores the power differences between the parties in the contract. Those with less money have fewer choices available to them and are thus less free. That’s why relationships of exploitation continue to exist such as between the Amazon worker who pisses into a bottle to boost their metrics while Bezos retains the freedom to sit on his billions and pay politicians to do his bidding. These relationships wouldn’t exist if the parties were on equal footing.
> It is true, that some people are born rich, and most don't, but this is unfair not unfree.
Wealth differences are power differences. The power differences give rise to exploitative relationships. Wealth differences aren’t a fact of nature. They are a result of how we as humans have organized our societies. We have made this and we can unmake it. Sucking our thumbs and saying “that’s just the way things are” is part of the ideological apparatus that maintains the power of the capitalist class over the working class.
Wealth differences are power differences and as such impinge on freedom since those with less wealth have their choices subtracted in relationships of capitalist exploitation.
Equality =/= Freedom. It is perfectly possible to have high inequality but individual agency when operating in a positive sum game.
If you want to critique unequal distribution of power, that has always been the case with any society. You cannot coordinate thousands without some form of delegation. But problems borne of the market are always much easier to resolve than problems borne if the political. Therefore it is better to contain an unavoidable problem in a manageable domain that let it establish itself in a more concrete way.
The actual failures of the Western economies lie in naive assumptions about dealing with mercantalist countries and NIMBYism, but given this forum is against the solutions to both it is more politically acceptable to blame everything on "neoliberalism".
Inequality has always existed to some degree, sure, but that’s a shallow platitude. Markets have give us levels not seen since the Pharaohs. No the existence of any inequality doesn’t justify the insane levels we see today.
And blaming NIMBYism not Thatcher’s ideology for UK’s stagnation is pretty funny. Like that has had more influence.
> The actual failures of the Western economies lie in naive assumptions about dealing with mercantalist countries and NIMBYism, but given this forum is against the solutions to both it is more politically acceptable to blame everything on "neoliberalism".
And turning themself more into mercantalist countries, which is meant by 'blame everything on "neoliberalism"'.
Your voice being heard is one thing. What we have here is the consequence of huge wealth disparities. Those with the money can influence the “democratic” process in outsized ways. That is the opposite of democratic.
No, their voice should have exactly the same value as everyone else's.
no less, no more.
Unless we are done with pretending that there are no power disparities.
And one of few ways to do so is to either:
- completely ban lobbying, any form of privilege/monetary exchange is considered a bribery. Introduce a public open dialogue when working on a new legislation. Rich can still make their own campaigns for specific issues - just targeting voters, not politicians directly.
- introduce system of checks and balances where any form of lobbying must be publicly visible and attached to image of politician, so voter can easily make informed decision. Including something correlated with amount of money donated, counting shell organizations in it too.
good luck - no politician will vote to cut their own paycheck.
No, my point is the root cause is wealth inequality, which is fundamentally undemocratic, and a different issue than free speech. The solution is wealth expropriation, not censorship.
Wealth inequality is not inherently undemocratic, WTF. There's way more poor people than rich people, meaning poor people have more votes and say in democracy. Lobbying is undemocratic since it bypasses democracy.
Trying to get millions to agree on things is hard, that’s why they focus on bs.
They have us fighting a culture war so we won’t fight a class war. That’s why controlling media and other propaganda is so important
Yeah it does seem there’s some confusion. Here is the similar proposal referencing Israel from earlier this year (perhaps a source of some of the confusion):
Tried and true Silicon Valley strategy: burn VC money to build a moat, wait until switching costs are high enough, and then enshittify the product to extract rent.
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