| First, let's agree we will never invoke Godwin's Law. I think we need to establish atleast some common ground at this point. Here are my proposals: - At the end of the day, a business is an activity that allows a person(s) helping another person(s). Even in a strictly amoral environment, voluntary trade is a positive-sum game where both A and B gain positive utility: A provides a positive utility to B by giving up something A had but B didnt (B has more than before) and B compensates A for it by giving up something B had but A didnt (A has more than before). - Due to the profit incentive, there will be scammers, grifters and similar people who are not interested in the "helping" part but rather the "profit" part - A more powerful person can dominate a weaker person - Societies, of which organizations/companies are part have hierarchies of people - A person "higher" up the hierarchy has control and influence over a person lower down that hierarchy - A significant motivating factor for a person starting a business is independence (be at or towards the top of their local hierarchy) and ownership (be at the root of their local hierarchy) - The person paying the money out of free will has control and influence over the person accepting the money out of free will in exchange for the help - Regulation is the forced injection of a very large organization asserting themselves into the premier position of the hierarchy (For example: If regulation bans a specific chemical solvent, the supply chain must either shut down, find an alternative, or go "to the black market"/"go underground" where the regulatory authority cannot inject themselves) - Regulation is hard to change and it's entirely a legal construct - Regulation is rarely deprecated (For example: there are regulations in place that were written for an era where people would start their cars by hand although its been decades since anyone has actually done that) - Normal people don't understand legal constructs any better than they can understand multivariate calculus or multithreaded, concurrent code - Competition is great for customers. Anything that increase competition should be encouraged. - We must treat customers as adults who are not challenged nor disabled. To keep our discussion manageable, we will ignore those scenarios where customers are not adults or otherwise challenged and disabled - There are economies in scale but barring regulation or hostile takeovers, scale can only be achieved by willing, cooperating parties (For example: Say there are 3 phone companies in the US: A, T and V. If either one of them wanted to have majority stake in the "one" merged company, short of the other two conceding willingly, that "one" merged company will never exist) - Inefficiencies can hide better at larger companies - Larger companies are risk averse although surprisingly they are in the best position to absorb risks - aka Innovator's Dilemma (For example: Google invented transformers but management decided against it because they were afraid of hallucinations affecting search result quality. 3 engineers at OpenAI read the transformer paper and the rest is history. Google is still playing catch up!) - A significant motivating factor for a person starting a business is independence and ownership that allows them permissionless innovation - Innovation is an overall gain for humanity which is why society rewards innovation and penalizes rent seeking. - People can use knowledge to do both evil and good - Humanity optimizes for the good of people over time If you disagree with any of the above, let me know which, ideally with supporting arguments. Now back to our discussion: > I say that 'Big HVAC' will in the future outcompete all the small shops; that it hasn't happened yet says nothing It seems like you prefer rejecting evidence that doesn't support your hypothesis. My recommendation is you do the exact opposite. I'm engaging with you precisely because your take is absolutely counter to mine and I a know for a fact, because I have done this before, that my understanding will be much improved at the end of our conversation. It will provide me even more clarity than I have. > Yes, regulation can heighten the barrier of entry (but also lower, although less common) and why do you think it's less common for regulation to reduce the barrier of entry? > You're naming companies in industries that have become even more consolidated than when those companies were the behemoths So your argument is: - Sears: Retail is now even more consolidated - Blockbuster: Entertainment is now even more consolidated - IBM: Software or Hardware is now even more consolidated > They are behaving rationally and in their self-interest You're conflating the rationality and self-interest of an entrepreneur with that of an employee. Moral and company alignment aside, a researcher in LLMs might not care much whether they go work for Google or OpenAI or Anthropic. They might not even care whether they go work for Alibaba or Bytedance. OTOH, sama is definitely not going to work for Google or Anthropic and it's absolutely in his rational self-interest to behave that way. There are even more inconsistencies in your writeup but I think this is a good checkpoint for me to allow you to reflect. I also suggest we continue this over email (details in profile). Thank You for continuing to engage, I appreciate your POV. |