[estearum]

Vendors choose what capabilities they create and sell literally all day every day.

[fc417fc802]

A more charitable interpretation might be that a guild would not be expected to passively allow such a situation to continue to exist. I think you'd expect a guild to directly contract for the desired tools or failing that to move into production themselves.

[estearum]

Sure! And Anthropic isn't preventing other people from making offensive cyber models.

"The guild" is absolutely free to go seek other vendors if Anthropic declines to sell to them.

[lazide]

I take it you didn’t see the announcement where Anthropic is trying to get all new development banned, so they are ‘sole source’? [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/06/04/worlds-most-...]

[estearum]

Regulatory capture: A vendor using regulation to prevent potential competitors from producing or selling competitive goods or services

What we're discussing in this thread: A customer compelling a vendor to produce and sell a specific good or service

Do you think these are similar?

The fact that Anthropic is doing one thing (regulatory capture) is entirely irrelevant as to whether they're allowed to engage in a completely different thing (declining to sell their services/products to specific people).

[ambicapter]

You should read that sentence as

> Additionally, even if there is a guild - no guild ever let a vendor pick and choose what [the guild's] capabilities were, that would be insanely dumb.

[estearum]

But that's not true. Again: Vendors absolutely pick and choose what their customers' capabilities are. Regardless of whether "the guild allows them to." Guilds can't force people to make or sell tools against their will – obviously.

The analog you're trying to describe doesn't exist, which is Anthropic saying nobody else can make and sell an offensive model to "the guild."

[lazide]

Guilds often very much did assert what people could and could not build - historically.

Against their will.

Historically that is a major reason why guilds existed, actually.

It’s an extremely modern invention that corps have these type of power over their customers.

[estearum]

You've lost the thread.

Here's your original claim: "no guild ever let a vendor pick and choose what their capabilities were"

A carpenter's guild can prevent other people from doing carpentry. That is not what's being discussed here.

A carpenter's guild cannot force a horseshoe maker to begin making hammers. That is what's being discussed.

Your initial claim was analogous to "never before has a horseshoe maker been able to decline making hammers when the carpenter's guild needed hammers"

Obviously they have and any other state of affairs would be flatly insane.

[lazide]

That is not my example at all, if we’re talking coding agents eh?

[estearum]

Your claim was that guilds have never allowed vendors to tell them what they're allowed to do.

That would imply that guilds have always had the ability to force vendors to create and sell the tools the guilds wanted.

That would imply that carpenters' guilds could force horseshoe manufacturers to make hammers.

That is obviously not true, therefore your original claim is false.

It's not true for carpenters and hammers nor for cybersecurity researchers and LLMs.