[merelydev]

I believe the great problem of our age is deciding who controls technology.

The technologists who create it believe they should control it, the people who use it are starting to believe they should control it and the governments who write the laws believe they should control it. And now the priests believe they should also play role.

So is the next phase of "Democracy" electing who controls technology?

[sealeck]

> The technologists who create it believe they should control it

I think there's an interesting phenomenon where it is _not_ the people who control it, but instead a kind of international finance man cum-captain of industry (perhaps best embodied by Sam Altman) who does not create the technology and yet has ended up wielding the levers.

[SilverElfin]

> a kind of international finance man cum-captain of industry (perhaps best embodied by Sam Altman)

What the hell is a “cum-captain”? Search isn’t helping.

[huhkerrf]

Probably this: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cum

I.e. finance man as well as captain of industry

[whimsicalism]

the correct usage is dashes on both sides of the word, the usage above was extra confusing because it was incorrect

[sealeck]

As in cum-"captain of industry"

[froh]

non native speaker here - I don't get it.

[HappMacDonald]

It's an old English word (predating the sexual connotation):

cum - Used in indicating a thing or person which has two or more roles, functions, or natures, or which has changed from one to another.

Basically nobody uses that language construct anymore until you run headlong into it in a Hackernews comment or something

[whimsicalism]

I use it, but you're supposed to hyphenate on both sides so this usage was incorrect.

[froh]

thank you! this was most helpful to lead me into asking the right question.

https://share.google/aimode/dDekJEZzfKaE6FCvH

[ARandomerDude]

“cum” (rhymes with “broom”, rather than “dumb”) is Latin for “with”.

[anigbrowl]

No it isn't. It's Latin.

[anigbrowl]

'cum' is latin for 'with', and it is commonly hyphenated when inserted in between other words.

It's also a slang word for semen, but that's not relevant here.

[LtWorf]

I suspect they mean "with" but in latin. But I'm not entirely sure.

[hunterpayne]

That's correct

[anjel]

In England, ca. 1500s common law established the legal precedent that if your cattle broke loose of its pen, wandered into your neighbor's field and trampled their garden, you were liable for the damage your cattle caused.

Meanwhile, 500 years later Uber could disrupt the livery industry with VC cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless, and somehow that wasn't Uber's problem.

Now AI (set loose in the wild at the AI industry's strategic choice so as to be irreversible) seems poised to disrupt and render a very significant part of the labor force disrupted on an unprecedented societal scale and it appears to be a foregone conclusion that collateral damages won't be the causal industry's expense. Nevermind that its also poised to easily afford those social costs, and don't even consider that maybe society should be considering this obvious cause and effect. For me at least the feudal suppression of this otherwise obvious and necessary discussion is perhaps more spectacular than the causal technological breakthrough itself.

Now *that's* control.

[pibaker]

> In England, ca. 1500s common law established the legal precedent that if your cattle broke loose of its pen, wandered into your neighbor's field and trampled their garden, you were liable for the damage your cattle caused.

Ok.

> Meanwhile, 500 years later Uber could disrupt the livery industry with VC cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless, and somehow that wasn't Uber's problem.

And how does this paragraph connect to the previous one? The streets of New York isn't taxi drivers' private property. No one trampled their garden any more than me opening a coffee shop tramples the garden of the Starbucks down the street. Should we forbid any new entry into a market just because it upsets the incumbents who invested big money into their business?

[psalaun]

I'm not from the US, but if the NYC taxi system works like french one, entry on the market required buying an existing licence from a retiring driver for the price of a flat. Government should have forbidden Uber from operating in this market without any cost of entry (the cost could've been to end the regulation and pool money to compensate actors that were playing by the rules)

[NitpickLawyer]

I struggle to see how the 3 examples go together. Your exposition implies a connection, but I struggle to see one. The best I could do is that it has to do with rights and responsibilities?

The first example is clear. And it has pretty much carried on, as the "right to property" and "the responsibility to cover damage to other's rights".

The second example, even though you wrote it as Uber vs. the cab driver, is more about Uber vs. the municipality. By the fact that almost all over the world people wanted Uber (or the other brands) over the imposed limitation of their municipalities, shows that the deal was wrong. In places where it was artificially limited, people have showed to prefer the alternatives. It has little to do with Bob the driver, and more to do with Alice the mayor who decided unilaterally that a taxi cab should require a 100k/yr medallion. That's what's changed, and society accepted it.

The third example is weirder still. Again you pose it as AI provider vs. average Joe, but here I struggle to even see what rights / who's rights are being infringed upon. I don't see any. While we generally have a right to work, there is absolutely no right to work in a certain industry, if the industry doesn't have demand. If someone else doesn't need your output, your right to work in that particular field has absolutely no basis in reality.

Unless you want to go back to the places and regimes that decided who works where, modern society has no place for such thinking. A right to work protects you from employers choosing not to hire you because of things that you are (race, age, gender, etc.) It absolutely doesn't protect you at all against "people don't need elevator operators anymore". And I say this as someone who's worked in this industry 20+ years. If tomorrow people don't need software done by hand anymore, tough luck for me. But it's absolutely not the problem of rights. I don't have a right to demand people wanting my services. That's not the social contract at all.

[KPGv2]

> over the imposed limitation of their municipalities

This was really just a few cities in the US. There's no artificial taxi scarcity in Houston or London or Tokyo.

You might reflexively say London has strict regulations, but it regulates safety not imposing an artificial cap. That's a NY/Boston/Chicago/Philly thing.

Uber won because:

1. on-demand app

2. VCs subsidized rides to destroy taxi companies by driving the customer cost to well below provider cost.

[steveBK123]

> 2. VCs subsidized rides to destroy taxi companies by driving the customer cost to well below provider cost.

Not sure about other regions but in NYC this is 100% the case. Ubers used to be nicer cleaner newer cars, better drivers.. for less than a taxi. Now they are about 4x what they cost in the 2010s, with cars about as dirty as a taxi and equally surly drivers.

[anjel]

1st example was the progenitor of what eveolved into strict liability. (If you make money putting stuff into the stream of commerce, you're liable for unintended and evenunforseeable downstream damages. 2nd example is an illustration of that longheld legal precedent's being curiously ignored (nevermind the cost savings was a bum rush and livery costs are now higher than before the innovative advent) 3rd is a call to at least litigate who bears the downstream effects. Or perhaps we should just cancel public health measures and employ pestilence to solve the problem *organically.*

[ahepp]

> If you make money putting stuff into the stream of commerce, you're liable for unintended and evenunforseeable downstream damages

So if you’re a business offering poor quality services, and I come along and start offering higher quality services, I owe you damages for the impact I have on your business?

[wahern]

Morally, maybe? It's what people tend to implicitly assume when a large chain displaces local mom & pops. You can argue it's for the greater good in the long-term, but that doesn't settle the question of the immediate injuries. Is it the fault of the stock boy who lost his job that he worked for a less efficient employer? Maybe?

The whole encyclical's argument is that morality requires an accounting and response to the pain inflicted upon each individual, and human morality is a distinct set of rules and norms than economic, physical, or even civil laws. I think it also follows that it's not just, e.g., Walmart or OpenAI who bares some responsibility for ameliorating temporary suffering. And to the extent people use the encyclical as fodder in the usual anti-corporate rhetoric, then that's unfortunate.

And this is coming from the Catholic church. It turns alot of people off who in isolated contexts often perceive hypocrisy, but in its charity it has always considered the personal responsibility of those receiving it. It understands the struggles and inherent tensions that comes from trying to square individualized justice & mercy, selflessness, and the "greater good".

[s1artibartfast]

you gravely understand #1 if you apply it in a blanket manner. You are not liable for all damages and consequences, only a vary narrow subclass.

[NitpickLawyer]

> you're liable for unintended and evenunforseeable downstream damages.

so the people vs. otis, the people vs. IBM608, and so on? Has it ever worked?

[kelnos]

No, the 2nd example has nothing to do with that. You're drawing a false equivalence.

[ses1984]

People especially wanted uber because uber charged below market rates by subsidizing rides with vc money.

[NitpickLawyer]

Maybe. But the fact that they're still in business shows that different people value different things. Be it rating schemes, payment alternatives, choosing their music, choosing their cars, one click hailing and so on. The people have spoken, the social contract has changed.

[KPGv2]

that's just goalpost shifting

The argument was "governments restricted taxi availability so Uber won" and now you've mott-and-bailied yourself down to "people want to pick music they listen to on the ride"

[basisword]

>> But the fact that they're still in business shows that different people value different things.

No it doesn't. It shows they could undercut the market, monopolise it, and then charge more once they'd killed the competition.

[solenoid0937]

Except NYC taxis and the taxi cartel is still trash compared to Ubers, despite Uber being out of its subsidization era.

[arjie]

Amusing. By yoking taxicab drivers to the other two, the argument attempts to make them seem like victims. However, most people’s direct experience with taxicab drivers and the resulting improvement under Uber directly contradicts that sentiment. This probably has the opposite effect and makes it seem like the AI companies aren’t so bad if they’re akin to the guys who freed us from cabs.

[kergonath]

> However, most people’s direct experience with taxicab drivers and the resulting improvement under Uber directly contradicts that sentiment

You can be both a victim and a bully, it's not mutually exclusive. A scam artist can get mugged or burglarised, and so on. In general, in civilised countries, being a horrible person does not prevent someone from being recognised as a victim.

[solenoid0937]

You're not a victim if you chose a bad business model that someone else disrupted.

[KPGv2]

I always feel like this take is exclusively made by New Yorkers. I never had a problem with taxies in Texas. I had to schedule a pickup time, yes, but they always showed up, the taxis were clean, they were fast, they were helpful, and they were kind. Like that whole "medallion" thing and taxi driver retirement livelihoods being destroyed because their medallion became worthless. Gotta be like five cities that use the system. Nowhere else does.

Uber/Taxi discussion is so transparently centered around New York City, it makes all discussions irrelevant to most of the US.

In fact, I still use a taxi to go to the airport with my family instead of taking an Uber. Uber is for being mid-run in city limits trails and running out of energy in the heat and the water fountains have stopped working due to low water pressure. Uber gets me to safety, and I tip big because I just sweated all over their car.

[huhkerrf]

I've taken plenty of taxis in both NYC and Texas, and pre-Uber they were terrible in both. Calling a taxi in Austin meant a 50% chance that it would get there on time, or you'd wait 30 minutes. Calling back didn't help, you would just get the dispatcher saying, "Well, I guess it's not coming then, huh?"

[madars]

Similar experiences in Boston area. Hailing a taxi at a taxi stand (e.g., at Prudential or Logan) - good experience to this day. Calling dispatcher - half of the time they don't show up (esp. so for scheduled airport rides) or show up late or arrive in a smoke-filled car. Hackney carriage medallions might have been bad investments for some cabbies, but Uber/Lyft are simply a much better service for the customer. Uber/Lyft takeover had little to do with price (though, yes, they were cheaper) and everything to do with reliability and overall quality of service.

[kelnos]

SF resident here; taxis were always terrible here too. Calling dispatch was hit-or-miss whether or not they'd even answer you. If they did, they'd always say "20 minutes", regardless of where you were and what time of day it was. A decent chunk of the time the taxi would never show up, and if they did, it wouldn't be 20 minutes. And, unlike Manhattan, good luck trying to hail one on 95% of SF's streets.

[bittercynic]

I've only used cabs a few times, but it seemed to be the operators were both. They were squeezed deep into the economic margins, and they were also often terrible to their passengers.

Same for Uber/Lyft, but they really tried to earn a good review while still providing a pretty unpleasant experience.

[Aurornis]

> Meanwhile, 500 years later Uber could disrupt the livery industry with VC cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless, and somehow that wasn't Uber's problem.

It’s weird to see the completely broken NY taxi cab medallion system brought up as a good thing.

Most taxi drivers didn’t own a medallion. They had to rent one from one of the operations that had bought them up. It was a government granted monopoly in the control of companies that charged the drivers for the right to be able to work.

The price was high partially because the supply was artificially limited, which made getting a cab bad for people of the city.

People like to criticize Uber but let’s not glorify the past system. It sucked. The Uber model that let anyone work without having to surrender their pay to some company hoarding the tokens was great for drivers and for people of the city.

[addaon]

The whole point of the medallion system was to artificially limit supply — not with the purpose of driving up cost (although, yes, that was a secondary effect), but with the purpose of making the city more pleasant. There’s a trade off in the number of taxis — if you want a taxi, more is better; if you want to walk, drive, take a bus, bike, or basically do anything but take a taxi… fewer is better. This was a conscious choice and a control that made the city more pleasant, that we’ve lost.

[hunterpayne]

That a driver (who already owned a car) had to pay 2x the price of an average house (which is already overpriced) to do the job isn't a secondary effect. Its a primary effect and drives up price and down the driver's pay. That that happened is a 10000ft giant red sign pointing out that it didn't work. That you can't understand that means that you fundamentally don't understand good public policy in any way. Anytime a policy creates such an outcome, that system needs to be scraped and a new one needs to be created because its rotten to the core.

[saimiam]

What would this new system look like that doesn’t involve the trade offs between having cabs on demand if you need them and having a walkable city if you don’t that the person you replied to spoke about?

Uber and friends have indeed democratised giving rides to people - though where I am, a few rich people have bought numerous cars and have daily wagers driving them finding fares via Uber - but at the cost of far more cabs on the road.

Others, notably motorbikes and scooter ride aggregators have emerged to replicate Uber. These motorbike cabs are even harder to regulate than cabs.

Uber, imo, has broken the equilibrium that existed before.

[kelnos]

You make the medallions non-transferrable/rentable, and use a lottery system to grant them.

Uber has absolutely increased traffic levels in the places where they operate. I don't personally think it's to a level that is actually a problem, but I also avoid driving myself around in cities whenever I can, so I may not be the best at observing this.

[Aurornis]

> if you want a taxi, more is better; if you want to walk, drive, take a bus, bike, or basically do anything but take a taxi… fewer is better.

You used driving as an example. I don't see how it's better for the city if we encourage more people to own and park cars because taking taxis is too hard.

The nice thing about Uber is that it lets those cars used for personal driving double as taxis when demand is high. Instead of having your own car and parking it, you can have someone else use their car to drive you.

I think some people have become so desperate to make Uber evil that we're intentionally ignoring what's gained.

Finally, regulating taxi medallions is an awful way to address traffic. If traffic is the problem, you regulate vehicles and traffic. Creating a system where you have to buy something approaching the price of a house just to do a job with a low hourly rate because the city wants to regulate traffic is beyond broken.

[maxerickson]

Say you own a well and sell the clean water.

I learn that boiling the stream water makes it safe and tell people about it.

What do I owe you?

Uber and AI are certainly more complicated than that, but you are pretty close to arguing that the constructed rights of some people inhibit the rights of other people.

[esafak]

How does that analogy apply to AI, where a handful of companies are attempting to replace the entire white collar market with computers? It fits neither qualitatively, nor quantitatively.

[maxerickson]

If somebody thinks the computer can make a better PowerPoint, what business is it of yours to stop them from using the computer to make a PowerPoint?

There's a big political problem to solve, but it's how to give most people decent material standards of living if computers are doing all the work, not how to freeze things in place so that people can keep doing tasks that (assuming success) the computer is better at.

[esafak]

Again, this analogy makes no sense. People use PowerPoint, they don't get replaced by it.

The goal of AI companies is to replace workers entirely; that is the only way their valuations make sense, and OpenAI's charter says this explicitly.

[maxerickson]

The displacement will rather obviously be task by task, not job by job.

Okay, edits it is. The displacement will rather obviously be incremental and be task by task, not job by job.

[inglor_cz]

"cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless"

Doesn't it strike you that if licenses for a banal service like taxi are that expensive, that this likely indicates political corruption?

Good riddance to this sort of rent-seeking. I wonder if the NYC taxi service was provided by the mob.

In Central Europe, I don't have to wonder. Prior to Uber, the local taxi services were operated by the mob, and the taxi drivers basically robbed naive tourists through exorbitant, illegal prices. Stories of rape or abuse of intoxicated women abound. Some of the drivers were so sketchy and creepy that people refused to board their cars. Scammy Prague taxi service was legendary, but by far the worst sort of tracksuit-and-gun wearing mobsters behind the wheel I ever encountered was in late 1990s Bratislava.

This ugly rotten web was swept clean by Uber, where people have a reputation to maintain. Thanks god. My wife is no longer afraid to take a cab at night. Hooray.

[kergonath]

> Doesn't it strike you that if licenses for a banal service like taxi are that expensive, that this likely indicates political corruption?

Not necessarily. It indicates a profession that can be very easily abused to harm the general public and that requires some level of trust.

[inglor_cz]

Not necessarily, but it surely reeks of corruption and requires extra scrutiny.

Most professions can be abused to harm people and require some level of trust. Imagine that a developer's medailon cost 300 k.

[kergonath]

I think FAANG developers would be better equipped than taxi driver to manage this. And besides, I don't think I am really against some kind of professional certification like actual engineers do. Right now SWE do not manage any of the downsides of what they inflict upon the world, and it's a damn shame. That said, having a limited number like taxi medallions in some cities would be stupid, even though I can see how it might make sense in a city.

I agree with you that it requires scrutiny and the process must be open and fair, like most things in a working democracy. I also think that it is not out of line to have mechanisms to ensure whoever is in a situation to kill, mug, kidnap or ransom you has no interest in doing so.

[inglor_cz]

"I also think that it is not out of line to have mechanisms to ensure whoever is in a situation to kill, mug, kidnap or ransom you has no interest in doing so."

The problem in practice seems that those mechanisms get hijacked by the very people whom they should prevent from being in that service.

IDK about NYC, but here in Central Europe, taxi services regulated by municipal governments were consistently treating their customers worse than Uber/Bolt. Outright murders were rare, but sexual harassment, fraud, verbal abuse, even "minor" things like the cars smelling of tobacco smoke were worse. Occassionally, there were cars set on fire or brandishing of weapons when those drivers got into conflicts. That's not ancient history and people still remember.

That happens when guys with deep pockets capture the regulatory services and make them into their own cash cow, using force of law to prevent any competition from emerging.

If you had a ballot about canceling Uber and going back to the old model here, that would lose by something like 15:85. The improvement in service and safety is just staggering.

[froh]

I love the animal-owner analogy of owning something and being responsible for what it does when set loose. the concept is the same in todays Germany. you own a pet, and if it's friendly it's all nifty but if it creates my damage, the owner is liable. not the person who guided it at the time. no. the owner. "Halterhaftung"

is it ok if I skip the Uber part? I think that leads as try s evidenced by the other reactions.

the "who is liable for the damage an ai creates, in the hands of an incompetent or even malignant guide?" question is fantastic. and who "owns" an ai?

[Joker_vD]

Welcome to the New (fifth, I believe) Industrial Revolution! It will not quite as brutal as the first and the second ones were, but it still won't be gentle.

[solenoid0937]

> 500 years later Uber could disrupt the livery industry with VC cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless, and somehow that wasn't Uber's problem.

Why is this Uber's problem? Do you realize how ridiculously dumb, inefficient, and corrupt a 6 figure taxi license is? It is not Uber's job to compensate for that ridiculousness.

They provided a better and more cash efficient solution for passengers. That is enough.

If you required every technological venture to cover the cost for every person it "disrupts," you would halt progress entirely.

[andrepd]

> They provided a better and more cash efficient solution for passengers. That is enough.

They burned half a billion dollars a month of VC money at their peak to undercut taxis across the world; in quainter times this used to be called "dumping", now it's just the standard way of doing business. All the while basically flaunting the law with their whole "we're just a platform connecting people who happen to drive a car with people who happen to want to go some place, it's totally not a taxi guys". No regulations, no expensive licenses or professional certifications, no need even for a minimum wage or basic social security or insurance or any kind of protection. Amazing!

Essentially the same in spirit as Airbnb, only this latter had far more destructive consequences than screwing over taxi drivers.

[solenoid0937]

Most businesses require sunk costs or debts, and it's also often what is required for new ideas take place in an established market. Whether they burn VC money or the bank's money to gain a foothold, is immaterial.

Uber did a great thing here and made a product that people like more, for less money. More drivers, way more global availability, more customers, and better cars, all while being cheaper. That is a quintessential success story.

If people liked taxis more, they'd use them. But taxis are still shit and the only reason we use them is because of the taxi cartel bullying weak city governments into restricting Ubers.

[jeremyjh]

Uber sold dollars for $0.75 until their competition was destroyed, and then they raised their prices.

[kelnos]

And yet somehow Uber and Lyft (and Waymo) in San Francisco are still usually cheaper (inflation-adjusted) than what taxis used to cost 15 years ago here.

I agree that dumping is generally bad, and perhaps laws against it should have been enforced against Uber. But the taxi system deserved to be destroyed. They sucked, and there was really no political/business way out of that system other than someone violating regulations on "what is a taxi" until it stuck. I'm not a "means justify the ends" guy in general, but in this case I think it worked out how it should have.

[meowkit]

I see this line of thinking a lot but lets look at it a different way.

Changing peoples behaviors >cost money<. Using your number here, taxis had a 25% value prop. That was just the cost of getting people to change.

I don’t care for Uber, but many many many businesses give people initial discounts and then full price later

The whole argument is moot though given self driving cars are going to wipe out the industry.

[KPGv2]

"B-but my philosophical argument was aesthetically pleasing," he shouted over the sound of eight billion people starving to death.

Setting aside your implicit assumption that what nigh-unregulated AI is set to do to humanity is "progress," having a sound argument is pretty pointless if it leads to tremendous human suffering.

Reminds me of the paradox of intolerance, where bad faith actors say "it's intolerant to be intolerant of intolerance" (i.e., argue for zero exceptions to a maxim) when it's much more preferable to say "you should be tolerant, except in the case where tolerance leads to tremendous suffering [as in the case of allowing the rise of fascism because you have to be tolerant of it]."

See also libertarianism, where simple rules are preferable to good outcomes.

[solenoid0937]

How dramatic! No one is starving to death. Things will just be rough for a bit. People will get over it, as they always have, and the QoL gains will have been worth the cost many times over, just like they were for literally every Industrial Revolution before us.

[mekael]

Ummm. Plenty of people starved to death as a result of the industrial revolution.

[solenoid0937]

Far fewer than before it. The Industrial Revolution dramatically lowered food scarcity.

[steveBK123]

> The technologists who create it believe they should control it

I think it goes deeper than this when you listen to them talk. They truly think society will be re-ordered by this technology... and they should be in control of that re-ordering rather than democratically elected governments.

[knollimar]

Democratically elected governments can't reorder a cookie right now.

We even had one out tariffs on steel, thinkinf this would be good for jobs here. If there was 0.1 seconds of thought they'd realize any manufacturing job you make from a steel tariff cuts 2 more well paid trade jobs

[steveBK123]

Democracies don’t necessarily pick the best leaders but they give a veto to the people such that the worst leaders don’t last long.

A technocracy can build high speed rail in a decade but it can also institute multi decade one child policy, multi year zero-covid, barricade people into their own homes and ban entire industries at the whim of a single leader. There is less course correction.

[kjkjadksj]

Worst leaders don’t last long? Boy I wish that were true.

[kelnos]

We have to define "long". On the scale we're talking about, 8 years of a bad US president is not long, even though it feels that way right now.

[kelnos]

I would rather society not be reordered at all, if the only parties capable or willing to do a reordering are big tech companies, especially of the kind run by people like Sam Altman.

[wizzwizz4]

I've thought about this for at least 15 seconds, and this remains mysterious to me. Could you explain, please?

[knollimar]

Sorry for being salty, a bit hyperbole perhaps in the 2:1 numbers.

I draft and write some code for construction companies and personally saw layoffs and not taking work due to increased material costs. The structural companies we worked with similarly did a few layoffs. The average pay of these jobs was 60k+.

Manufacturing of steel is very competitive and I haven't seen the American steel drop in price. I can't personally imagine it adding more than a few thousand jobs since it's so competitive (thin margins) and you would have to add a ton of production to add one job.

Meanwhile, the profitability of building a building is a direct feed into whether buildings get built. A building not being built directly led to laying off about 100 field guys for us.

[britzkopf]

What is the alternative to buildings? Outdoor schools, factories and dental offices?

[knollimar]

That sounds like some reductionist hackernews question that tries to hint at some clever insight but I'll assume no snark and answer with as much insight as I can.

You just make less of them. Some buildings are discretionary, like your big apartment buildings you probably want (these were the two that got cancelled).

Person funding can make x profit over building per year. Person loaning loans x for y sum. Building costing more than interest amortized profit means it doesn't get built.

And I just had a doctor's office fitout cancelled mid project (drafted it personally :) ). so apparently those are, too.

Public projects like schools rarely get cancelled. Factories I personally don't draft so I really can't tell you.

Healthcare absolutely has a ton of discretion for their buildouts.

What's the alternative to steel? You just make less if it's not profitable to make.

[kelnos]

The alternative is usually more-crowded schools, fewer factories, and more expensive dental care (due to higher real estate costs). If the people in charge of these decisions can't justify the expense of building more, then the things that would have happened in those buildings just don't happen, and the existing infrastructure has to strain to keep up.

[xp84]

Not GP, but what all economists have been saying is that tariffing industrial raw materials - industrial inputs like steel, aluminum, lumber, is idiotic because the companies that make machines, cars, houses, makes a lot more money per ton of metal that is made than the mining, steel, lumber companies (etc) made making the raw materials. So, that tariff makes a winner of a very few small employers, while massively screwing way more and larger companies who employ orders of magnitude more people here (and those jobs are better jobs too).

And we are very competitive in machines, already set up to win.

It’s also fantasy that even 4 years of tariffs will convince anyone to build brand-new smelting operations, as they’re very large, capital intensive, take a while to build. And again, mostly worse jobs.

[mapontosevenths]

> again, mostly worse jobs.

This is the part everyone seems to forget. Any "new" jobs would be shitty low paying jobs, and it would mostly instead need to be automation.

Tariffs transfer wealth to the 1% and leave shit jobs that pollute the environment, which also happen to raise the cost of all goods, for everyone else.

[dgellow]

> If there was 0.1 seconds of thought they'd realize any manufacturing job you make from a steel tariff cuts 2 more well paid trade jobs

They knew that was the case. They don't care. The maga crowd isn't acting in good faith. Nobody other than the cult members and people who aren't paying attention thought that would actually bring manufacturing back to the US. The point of the tariffs is to devalue USD (something Trump wants to do since circa the 80s) and to strengthen Trump power/influence. He wants everybody in the world to be forced to come and negotiate directly with him so he can see them bend their knees. The whole thing is a power play

[jfengel]

I do think they believed and believe it, though the reasoning is less economic than that. Manufacturing "belongs" in the US due to our inherent superiority, and has gone elsewhere only because of ill-conceived notions of niceness.

By increasing tariffs they will have to pay their proper obeisance for their inferiority, and be inspired to actually work hard like us Americans.

[idiotsecant]

You need to be specific with 'they' in this case. Who are the 'they' that you think believed that steel tarrifs would improve domestic manufacturing?

[notahacker]

But would governments defined by a cadre of techno-authoritarians disproportionately close to Mr Tariff do a better job?

[knollimar]

Mr Tariff is probably slightly better to keep those around than not, but ideally I'd rather the government curate experts they employ to advise them.

I guess I kinda walked right into handing technocrats power, but I really just want the government to understand the tech they regulate. We'd rather have populist zingers on TV though.

[notahacker]

Technoauthoritarians writing pretentious manifestos disavowing democracy explicitly don't want the government to understand the tech they regulate though, never mind curating experts, which is why they're so keen on the likes of Mr Tariff.

[basisword]

Unfortunately they're choosing to surround themselves with experts who have a massive financial interest in things going their way.

[pstuart]

Mr. Tariff was trying to replace the income tax with tariffs with a bonus of having personal power over other countries economies by whatever tariff he decree'd. The "more jobs" was a smokescreen, and I'm sure you're aware of that

Trade policy should be as holistic as possible (tariffs, taxes, subsidies, etc), with the goal of aiding a robust domestic economy.

The 70's neoliberalism took Smith's comparative advantage argument and stripped it of context — optimizing for quarterly returns and capital mobility while ignoring the industrial ecosystem those returns depend on. You can't offshore your entire manufacturing base and expect to retain the innovation, workforce capacity, and supply chain resilience that made those profits possible in the first place.

Contrast this with "For years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors and vice versa. The difference did not exist. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country."

That era was not without its issues as well, but there was a sense that "we're all in it together" vs the "greed is good" crowd.

[pstuart]

> I think it goes deeper than this when you listen to them talk.

This needs to be shouted from the rooftops!

All the Web3 edgelords talk about how democracy is inefficient and how their magic blockchains will fix things but don't actually back up their claims with anything.

Sure, it could be applied and might work, but the only thing blockchain brings is a distributed immutable ledger -- but all the trust actions happen outside that ledger. And that's not what slows us down, it's the people, ideas, power and process that makes it inefficient.

Money is a hell of a drug.

[fidotron]

It's legitimately surprising how off the pace HN is when it comes to discussions of this type. You won't get useful thoughts on this around here.

[yonaguska]

be the change you wish to see- share your thoughts.

[fidotron]

That's not really the point: the key question is why HN is so out to lunch on this and closely related areas. It's clearly somewhat structural.

Look at the state of discussion just in this thread. I minimized my contribution for this reason.

[sanderjd]

Where will you?

[booleandilemma]

Please tell us what we should be thinking.

[themafia]

The people should. There cannot be any other correct answer. If the ownership class or the political class _can_ possibly compete for control of it, then they're both too large and too corrupt, and need to be revolted against.

The purpose of our society is for people. It's not a lever for the powerful to centralize control. Those who attempt to do so always have evil as their motive.

[skybrian]

The logic of an arms race is that nobody controls the technology. For a literal example, Ukraine and Russia are locked in a drone arms race. Ukraine needs improve drones as fast as they can. There’s no getting off that train until the war is over.

This is starting to be true for AI and security bugs. Writing secure Internet-facing software will depend on AI security review. Anthropic can hold Mythos back for a while to buy some time, but the competition isn’t going to stop.

It’s also not always true that technologists think they should control AI. Some companies support legislation. But there’s not a lot of progress, so they end up making their own decisions in the meantime.

[HappMacDonald]

They could still form trade organizations to invent ground rules that members of the organization agree to follow, and then lobby for government to formalize those policies into broader laws that others also have to follow.

This strategy would also have the advantage that experts with skin in the game of their field and cutting edge experience get to choose, hone, and debate the policies before testing them so that out-of-touch elected officials don't have to do that step which would be parsecs out of their competence.

Unfortunately that would be a strategy that a real member of the real world might come up with to improve their product, their industry, their ability to create, and their relationship with the consumer. Instead we have nothing but parasites optimizing for gaming the quarterly numbers to pump and dump national institutions and building blackmail profiles against other powerful players to out-extort them while everyone involved tries to maximize how much blood they can suck.

[lebuffon]

My observation after numerous decades is that people who invent technology don't control it because they seldom imagine how the rest of humanity will ultimately use it. I am thinking of printing press versus newspapers with advertising business model. Same for Radio and TV. The techs made it work. The business weenies made the profit. The original "www" followed a similar path. How that plays out with AI is in motion I think.

[pluralmonad]

There is only one moral answer. And it is not any of the ones that boil down to strangers at a distance controlling the tech in your life.

[andrepd]

Yes, politics was always about controlling power, be it military, economic, or other.

[lacunary]

yes it's called "actually having democratic elections"

[merelydev]

What does "democratic elections" even mean in this new world where traditional politicians don't understand these dynamics?

[rebolek]

Then vote for politicians who do.

[xp84]

Few of those are ever running. Mostly we have just two brands of smooth-brains whose only policy aim is “preventing that other group of assholes from gaining any power, because they and their supporters are pure evil!”

[steveBK123]

Each side gets the smooth brains they crave because for ~50% of the population it's become a team sport / religion situation. A majority of people have not thought through 1/10th of the policy positions they automatically support/reject based on the team hat color.

There's a quote I will mangle and I forget the source of that's something like "If you agree with all the positions of your chosen political party, either you have thought through every option and came to the same conclusions on dozens of topics, or you haven't thought through anything".

[xp84]

Comment is spot on, though I'd like to point out:

> because for ~50% of the population it's become a team sport / religion situation

It's kinda even worse. We can only have two parties because of FPTP, and turnout is about 60% of voting-eligible population on average. We know from recent popular vote that that 60% is split roughly 50-50.

So 30% of the voting population is Team Blue Hat, and 30% is Team Red Hat.

If you can get 15.1% of the population to vote for an unserious clown, they'll win their respective party's nomination. And in most states, one of the parties is a pretty sure lock in the general.

15% is a pretty low bar. Compare: Up to 30% of people think "chemtrails" are at least a "somewhat" real thing, and 5% of people believe vaccines contain microchips. So the bar for getting a guaranteed win is somewhere between those two wacky and easily disproven beliefs.

https://www.cnn.com/us/chemtrails-conspiracy-theory-explaine...

https://www.rutgers.edu/news/nearly-half-americans-still-uns...

[Joker_vD]

Not a true democracy, then /s

[bparsons]

So is the next phase of "Democracy" electing who controls technology?

Political power has always about who controls economic production, and the tools of economic production.

[NickNaraghi]

Worth checking out the heart of what people were doing with DAOs

[mentalgear]

'who controls technology' should be the result of 'what do [they] want to use it for', e.g the motivation.

It should be put in the hands of the most trustworthy, transparent institution that can validate it works for all of us, not just the few.

I don't think private companies or specific leaders want the best for the common good, so it would make the most sense to give control to a supra-nation entity like the UN - at least that would be the most democratic as we all have the chance to influence it (via voting from national to international level).

[xp84]

I do not feel that I have a voice at the U.N.

But I also feel that it has been a particularly toothless organization. If a member state decides it is in their interest to flout some safeguard they were to mandate, that state will do so, and the U.N. won’t do anything about it unless there’s broad agreement between the US, China, and probably Russia. And the chances are that whoever is in need of enforcement is one of those, or a closely allied country of one.

[jandrewrogers]

> so it would make the most sense to give control to a supra-nation entity like the UN

This is a very naive and idealistic imagining of what international NGOs such as the UN are actually like and how they operate. I can't think of anything worse.

The median country is a corrupt authoritarian state.

[amanaplanacanal]

That's not what the UN is for. The whole purpose of the UN was as a place for nations to talk things out so they didn't go to war with each other. Trying to do other things usually either doesn't work very well, or distracts from what it was built for.

[merelydev]

Would you agree that to some extend, the ability to control technology is an incentive for companies to develop/innovate, and the more control they have the more profitable it is?

[HappMacDonald]

I would not. Especially not in the current climate when virtually every company is dropping all pretense of development and innovation (or creation of any kind) in favor of value extraction and rent-seeking.

We are in this constant cycle of bubbles — the last ones I can recall bursting in 2000 and 2008 — where someone invents some new financial shell game that allows them to trade on some form of non-existent capital and then half the stock market follows along like rats after the piper until it all collapses as soon as enough people realize that everyone else also realizes the Emperor is wearing no clothes. And incidentally no, I have no idea how this particular trainwreck of fairy tail lessons all became pertinent simultaneously, but here we are.

Control over things makes a lousy incentive anyway, since having said control always better empowers the appointed to just cheat the incentive instead.

If the big bad wolf is at your door, "letting him in" isn't a bargaining chip you can trust to incentivize any sort of behavior other than "eating you".

[idle_zealot]

There's nothing really special about technology here. It's just allocation of power, the same problem as ever.

[analog31]

>>> So is the next phase of "Democracy" electing who controls technology?

I hope so. Recent turns of events notwithstanding, I remain optimistic about democracy in the long run. I think it's going to get harder to say with a straight face that the private sector can really manage vital institutions better than government.

Recent reports about commencement speeches at college graduations suggest that within the span of a just a few years, computer programmers no believe that they are riding on the coattails of the technology oligarchs. Besides, nobody wears coats with tails any more.

We we go there in one easy step? I'm not that optimistic.

[navane]

Hasn't big capital always owned technology? I don't understand what is the question here. Is this rethorical?

Silicon valley owns the internet. The robber barons owned the railways. Big oil. Big pharma. The investment company owned the (slave) trading fleets. The lords owned the agriculture. The clergy owned the books. The Kings owned the armies.

Technology accumulates capital, capital accumulates technology.

[wartywhoa23]

In reality it's only one entity, which would rather remain obscured, that owns all of the above while also directing the muppet show where seemingly separate parties try to gain control over technology while squeaking funny voices of dissent.

In Russian, there's a saying: He who feeds a girl is the one to dance her.

In this case, the food is the money printed out of thin air.

[sleight42]

Imagine that. People who are responsible for guiding the morals of much of the world's population see moral implications in AI. How dare these mere "religious leaders" guide their flock.

FFS. Morals come from somewhere. For many, that's religion. Deal with it.

[Borg3]

Normally, its the one who understand technology, can control it. Unfortunately, its not the case anymore. Stuff got unnecessary complex and bloated, hard to grasp it alone. Also, now AI plays the new role too.

Dark times ahead...

[amelius]

The technologists can control it, the moment they can remove that stupid disclaimer saying that AI can make mistakes.

[Chinjut]

What's stupid about the disclaimer?

[amelius]

It basically says "we have no control over it", and "we don't know how it works".

[miyoji]

Both of those things happen to be entirely true, though.

[amelius]

Yes, that doesn't make it less embarrassing.

My point remains: they can control it if they can control it. Because right now they can't even take responsibility for it.

[basisword]

And if someone without billions of dollars in backing released a product like that they'd actually be held responsible for the consequences.

[steveBK123]

Sure but theres a level of uncertainty being expressed for a paid service that you don't see elsewhere.

Imagine if every time you booked an uber it was like "your drive may crash the car". Or whenever you ate at a restaurant, the waiter said "there is a chance the chef will poison you". Or your bank statement said something like "these numbers may be wrong".

[cornholio]

> the great problem of our age is deciding who controls technology

Isn't that just an instance of the political problem for all ages: who controls what, who gets to rule and who obeys, the fundamental power struggle apparent in all human history.

Extend the definition of technology to the broadest sense, from the material that allow us control over the physical reality: steam, computing; to the organizational, that enable collective human action: states, factories and assembly lines; and the ideological, that legitimize certain power arrangements: religion, nationalism, democracy, human rights etc.

A feudal lord's power rested on land (material), the manorial system (organizational), and the divine right of kings or religious sanction (ideological). Even if peasant revolts happen from time to time, the arrangement is stable because the peasantry accept it as legitimate and have no economic alternative; so even when revolting they cannot imagine a different political order. Technological (broad) leaps like the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution change the political possibility space so arrangements like feudalism are no longer stable, but others like capitalism, liberal democracy etc. become possible.

Political actors observe these technological shifts and struggle for control, relevance and power. The old elites are contested by the new kids on the block, wielding the new technologies: the aristocrat by the bourgeois, pastoralist tribes by agricultural states, autocrats stuck with traditional propaganda by the kids with smartphones and social media.

The present struggle around AI is therefore to be expected; what's more interesting is the type of political possibility space it opens up: is it one where having the bulk of society educated and productive, capable of running the machines is the key factor pushing the country forward in the international technological competition, like we've see post-war, forcing the national elites to cater to their needs, invest in their populations and broadly share the economic output and the political power? Or is it more likely one where the key competitive factor is the size of your datacenters and automated defense factories, where the bulk of people are irrelevant for the architecture of power?

Because if it's the latter, the entire idea that democracy will somehow manage to survive and influence who gets what becomes problematic. In the new technological-historical space, democracy becomes structurally unfavorable and thus, unlikely to persist long term.

[merelydev]

> Isn't that just an instance of the political problem for all ages: who controls what, who gets to rule and who obeys, the fundamental power struggle apparent in all human history.

Yes. But modern technology, especially software doesn't have the high barrier to entry like being a feudal lord, but successful software can be just as impactful, tie in economies of scale and network effects and it can be even more powerful, which has allowed the producers of such software to wield significant power and as a result bypass democracy. And this ties in with your point:

> The present struggle around AI is therefore to be expected; what's more interesting is the type of political possibility space it opens up: is it one where having the bulk of society educated and productive, capable of running the machines is the key factor pushing the country forward in the international technological competition, like we've see post-war, forcing the national elites to cater to their needs, invest in their populations and broadly share the economic output and the political power? Or is it more likely one where the key competitive factor is the size of your datacenters and automated defense factories, where the bulk of people are irrelevant for the architecture of power?

It remains to be seen if this era of LLMs and datacenters raises or reduces the barrier to entry for software production and in general technological innovation. The marketplace is always hungry for innovation and those that can deliver and control it will be in a position of power.

[matusp]

This is the question that led to the communist movement in the 19th century.

[marcosdumay]

And "the means of production belong to everyone" was the wrong answer. The problem was only solved by a different form of democratization.

[wizzwizz4]

And the Luddite movement, also in the 19th century.

[Joker_vD]

And the peasants' revolt of 1381, with John Ball's memorable "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?"

But it's a perennial question, really, and it won't go away any time soon.

[ricardo81]

I think you're around the mark. Big tech has continuously eroded the idea of privacy and copyright and explains a lot of their market caps.

Mitigating seemingly has devolved to trade wars and protectionism.

The genie is out the bottle with AI though. So perhaps decentralisation of it puts us all on a new level playing field.

[krapp]

What decentralization? AI is more extremely centralized than any other technology.

[ricardo81]

The point being that's the solution. I didn't say it is decentralised.

[krapp]

How is it possible to decentralize a technology that needs data centers the size of Manhattan? It doesn't seem like a reasonable solution.

A better solution would be to just not have AI at all, outside of the few research roles where LLMs actually make sense.

[ricardo81]

Because it has extremely plausible uses beyond the example you gave.

More to the point it's trained on copyrighted material, so why entertain any use at all on that front if anything.

If it's trained on the world's information, give the world the model.

It doesn't need a tech company to pilfer everything and charge X if we're going to ignore the IP.

[mike_hearn]

Not really. Search engines are a tech so centralized only two of them exist in the west, Google and Bing. There are zero open source search engines of any usable quality. Whereas there are lots of models out there, some free to download.

[krapp]

"only two search engines exist in the west" and "only two search engines in the west are of usable quality to me" are contradictory statements.

The models free to download aren't the models used by OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. You aren't going to get all of OpenAI downloaded to your desktop and running fully on just your hardware.

And in each case (search and AI) the potential to decentralize and maintain "usable quality" is limited by these technologies requiring physical infrastructure at a scale that isn't available to the home consumer.

[mike_hearn]

I mean, they are the models used by Google, at least. Gemma is used by Google and you can download it freely, weights and all. OpenAI has released an open weights model although I don't know if they use it themselves.

They aren't as good as the full fat models but they're plenty useful for many real world tasks. Show me the open source web search engine that I can run locally and that's plenty useful for many real world tasks!