ScratchPad: 2024-05-21 Tu: Not "Bipartisanship", but Rather a Collapse of Republican Obstructionist Discipline; OpenAI's Girlfriend in Canada; & MOAR...
ScratchPad: 2024-05-21 Tu: Not "Bipartisanship", but Rather a Collapse of Republican Obstructionist Discipline; OpenAI's Girlfriend in Canada; & MOAR...
Re: "It is not a new bipartisan majority, but rather a collapse of Republican obstructionist Senate party discipline."
Back in the Clinton/Shrub era , I coined what I called the Lieberman Law: With a few Republicans and all but a few Democrats, you can do a lot of good. With a few Democrats and all but a few Republicans, you can do a lot of evil.
OpenAI really have acted like entitled brats. And also in other actions. Altman seems to be running with other egomaniac tech titans of the Thiel persuasion. Didn't he recently want to raise $$$$$$$tn to build a vastly bigger version of GPT? Does he need computronium? Does he need to capture all speech via surrepticious surveillance devices (like keeping your phone recording your speech all the time)? The Saudis, amongst many, would love an AI driven panopticon. Big Brother is definitely watching you in this scenario.
Why have Democrats joined the panic over TikTok? Isn't this almost "Reds under the bed" mentality? Even business-friendly Republicans should be more careful about this.
I get the impression that it's a easy vote for Democrats to look tough on China and please the tech sector. China hasn't done itself any favors with its import-export policies, and the mature American tech sector doesn't like TikTok because it hasn't enshitificated yet.
Enshittification is not about the advertising-supported Web. Duckduckgo isn't particularly enshittified, although it is ad-supported. Enshittification results from a mixture of monopoly power and the MBA-Silicon Valley mentality of squeezing every possible nickel out of a customer.
Or to reference Google's adaptation of the Hippocratic Oath "First do no evil," as some point some bean counter redefined evil to include leaving money on the table.
What the hell does 'neoliberal' mean? I think it means that from the late 1970's to the 2010's, the global north government policy favored less progressive taxes, less regulation, and reduced safety nets. This was implemented across many parties and nations, I presume reflecting the wider acceptance of the teachings of the Chicago School of economics. But it is an incremental idea, not a revolutionary one.
It is unsatisfying to blame Neoliberal, because I can't name a competing government economic framework. What was the pre-1970's? What do we call the current period? Oligarchical grifting vs paleoliberal?
There was the New Deal from the 1930s through the 1960s. The fact that you aren't familiar with it is a result of a deliberate campaign. Neoliberalism was the end product of the "Austrian" economists funded by the National Association of Manufacturers in the 1930s to push back against the New Deal.
The New Deal built a social safety net and tried to minimize the risks faced by individuals. It supported the labor movement and high taxes on high incomes. The neoliberals have long been against the social safety net arguing that poorer individuals are better able to handle risk than wealthy organizations. They wanted low taxes and more and more and more ...
You'll notice that the US growth rate has been much lower under neoliberalism than under the New Deal.
Re: "It is not a new bipartisan majority, but rather a collapse of Republican obstructionist Senate party discipline."
Back in the Clinton/Shrub era , I coined what I called the Lieberman Law: With a few Republicans and all but a few Democrats, you can do a lot of good. With a few Democrats and all but a few Republicans, you can do a lot of evil.
OpenAI really have acted like entitled brats. And also in other actions. Altman seems to be running with other egomaniac tech titans of the Thiel persuasion. Didn't he recently want to raise $$$$$$$tn to build a vastly bigger version of GPT? Does he need computronium? Does he need to capture all speech via surrepticious surveillance devices (like keeping your phone recording your speech all the time)? The Saudis, amongst many, would love an AI driven panopticon. Big Brother is definitely watching you in this scenario.
2024 TikTok Divestiture: 48-0, 32-19
Why have Democrats joined the panic over TikTok? Isn't this almost "Reds under the bed" mentality? Even business-friendly Republicans should be more careful about this.
I get the impression that it's a easy vote for Democrats to look tough on China and please the tech sector. China hasn't done itself any favors with its import-export policies, and the mature American tech sector doesn't like TikTok because it hasn't enshitificated yet.
Enshittification is not about the advertising-supported Web. Duckduckgo isn't particularly enshittified, although it is ad-supported. Enshittification results from a mixture of monopoly power and the MBA-Silicon Valley mentality of squeezing every possible nickel out of a customer.
Or to reference Google's adaptation of the Hippocratic Oath "First do no evil," as some point some bean counter redefined evil to include leaving money on the table.
Thanks to Alex Tolley https://braddelong.substack.com/p/scratchpad-2024-05-20-mo-and-udm14/comment/56945304, I found the bean counters at https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/
Adding a few primers on the topic (for the benefit of anyone wandering through).
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/
https://www.ft.com/content/6fb1602d-a08b-4a8c-bac0-047b7d64aba5
https://doctorow.medium.com/my-mcluhan-lecture-on-enshittification-ea343342b9bc
Ed Zitron's blog details the specifics of enshittification of big tech companies nicely.
https://www.wheresyoured.at/
What the hell does 'neoliberal' mean? I think it means that from the late 1970's to the 2010's, the global north government policy favored less progressive taxes, less regulation, and reduced safety nets. This was implemented across many parties and nations, I presume reflecting the wider acceptance of the teachings of the Chicago School of economics. But it is an incremental idea, not a revolutionary one.
It is unsatisfying to blame Neoliberal, because I can't name a competing government economic framework. What was the pre-1970's? What do we call the current period? Oligarchical grifting vs paleoliberal?
There was the New Deal from the 1930s through the 1960s. The fact that you aren't familiar with it is a result of a deliberate campaign. Neoliberalism was the end product of the "Austrian" economists funded by the National Association of Manufacturers in the 1930s to push back against the New Deal.
The New Deal built a social safety net and tried to minimize the risks faced by individuals. It supported the labor movement and high taxes on high incomes. The neoliberals have long been against the social safety net arguing that poorer individuals are better able to handle risk than wealthy organizations. They wanted low taxes and more and more and more ...
You'll notice that the US growth rate has been much lower under neoliberalism than under the New Deal.