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And forty years ago, I was using a tool called Brief, which was a product from UnderWare. I was also using a librarian named Marian.

The real sin was forgetting "the market" was only ever a model, not reality. We literally confused the map with the territory. Now that underlying reality is changing, and our mistake is thinking the model, i.e. the market, remains unchanged.

I really think this is disingenuous thinking. change over time is the original sin. The "market" is very much a real thing. It's the global fabric of everything in the entire world. It is definitely not a model.

Also let's not forget the original sin of communism - which is that everyone is a slave.

Everyone is a slave because you don't own your own labor. It is owned by the government. By definition the people are slaves in communism.


> The "market" is very much a real thing.

As real as any other legislation and as vulnerable to gaming, ignorance and malice.

> change over time is the original sin

Again, if change is a sin, so is evolution. The logical conclusion of your contention is going back to the trees and further to pre-life universe. And even that changes too much to qualify it as pure.


> Again, if change is a sin, so is evolution

No. That's putting words in my mouth, I was agreeing to Paul in him saying that Capitalism's weakest point is that it can't account for the future. You're probably trying to be a wordsmith to win an argument, but your post is entirely meaningless.


It can but it makes mistakes.

In the US we have that whole ‘circular economy’ with NVIDIA, OpenAI, etc.

The the EU you have to convince some niggardly German bankers to make a loan that will certainly be repaid. So of course they will be left out of the AI future.

Here when Solyndra failed many politicians acted like it was a crime, in China they have had many solar ventures fail but others succeeded and thanks to that they won. On the other hand they’ve built whole cities nobody wants to live in.

In America nobody wants to be DJI, rather they want to cherry pick profitable opportunities. The truth in the low altitude sky over Ukraine is that DJI beats Lockheed Martin, so the F-35 vs DJI is like horses va tanks. You gotta do the mass market things if you want to defend the high end, see The Innovators Dilemma


> Capitalism's weakest point is that it can't account for the future.

That's different from "change as the original sin" and I'd address it differently, but first allow me to remove the poetry from your statement because it doesn't really contribute to clarity.

Basically you're saying "Capitalism allows unpredictable changes that can break things" as opposed to "Another system (e.g. socialism) plans the future and allows only planned changes".

Both of these may be true for some ideal models but aren't true in reality.

Macro changes under real capitalism can and are entirely predictable although you may not know how to predict them - that's a different issue. They can also be tightly controlled by methods different from socialism.

On the other hand, socialism allows only planned changes... until it doesn't, because of unintended consequences. However, I don't claim that the failure of the USSR's socialist model wasn't foreseen or planned at some level of their leadership, which brings the conversation into the realm of fundamental politics where real capitalism and socialism have a lot more in common than is assumed by their usual treatment as opposites.

> but your post is entirely meaningless

To you. Let's steer clear of wild generalizations, the devil is still in the details. I'd appreciate if you use a clear language instead of me trying to guess the details necessary for a meaningful conversation.


I wouldn't say that Democratic Socialism as practiced today plans the future and allows only planned changes. It does appear (I'm an American so my view on this matter could definitely be skewed) to be more risk averse - though I think that's an unintended consequence and not a feature.

Since my original assertion was that markets aren't actually real, it makes sense that fundamental politics plays a far greater role than many people suspect. I would say that Americans should be learning this lesson at this very moment.


I wish articles such as this made it clearer that "early human" is not homo sapiens sapiens, i.e. modern humans. The most fascinating fact is modern humans have always had fire - because early humans discovered it and passed that knowledge down to us!

And the countries they once hated they now love because Trump told them to.

"Our Constitution did not authorize permanent foreign entanglements." Worried about the Constitution, are we? Well, it doesn’t authorize standing armies either - yet here we are.

It also required a well-regulated militia to handle all those guns. That's how it was going to do without that standing army.

The Constitution doesn’t require a well-regulated militia - it simply says the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The militia is mentioned as a reason, not a condition.

The militia is mentioned first, but I’m not an English major who is able to parse old sentences. The militia is “necessary” so they need to know where the, erm, candidates are located and what they pack.

That’s looking only at the supply side and ignoring the demand side. Sure, founders might not need laborers - but they still need buyers. If nobody has a job, where does the money come from to buy products and services? Nowhere. The whole system collapses for everyone. Economic collapse leads to monetary collapse, and even your millions won’t save you. You may "own" things, but only as long as you can defend them. See where this goes?

companies routinely demand and supply things of and to each other.

i don't see why the economy necessarily has to "touch a floor" of human desire.

a company could be founded with the goal of, for example, colonizing mars. fulfilling this mandate (this prompt...) would then drive economic impulses such as acquiring materials for constructing rockets.

in parallel that company might satisfy the demands of other companies which need, for example, orbital insertions to fulfill their mandate.

perhaps without a floor of demand driven by darwinian organisms the whole thing fizzles out eventually.

but i also don't see why a darwinian agent can't emerge from the corporate process...

perhaps that comes about very quickly once humans can no longer acquire and exercise purchasing power - a company simply spins up some emulations of humans to create demand in the economy.

yes, this all sounds very "empty" to me, but frankly that's also how i feel about the world as it is.

given how much suffering arises by way of the human driven economy being kept in motion, i think there's even a moral case for allowing the whole thing to fade into an empty mechanical pantomime.

i just sincerely hope the artificial processes that replace us aren't also somehow instantiating suffering...


It's all fun and games until somebody needs to eat

So they aren't happy with what's going on, no? They just don't have the means to do anything meaningful about it until the next election cycle. Hopefully the one thing this administration has done is decreased voter apathy.

So, by "backfire" they mean the US has made it easier for Canadians to boycott travel to the US? Just goes to show how petty and short-sighted this administration is.

I just wanted to virtue signal... now there are consequences, oh dear.

What’s the virtue signal in not wanting to travel to a country that might arbitrarily decide to illegally deport you to a different country other than your home country or detain you indefinitely?

For Canadians it’s even worse

While Venezuela and Colombia only get bombing threats, this US administration was actively advocating to take over the Canada and turn it into the 51st state

They talked about taking over Greenland and Panama and even sent out diplomatic missions to that effect


I see two problems with the AI narrative at this point

1. You can generate whatever you want via a prompt. The biggest problem with this point is it's not true and it's not even how one wants to work with AI: in a collaborative manner. Sure, this might satisfy prosumer needs - and maybe there's a large market for that, but it's not going to satisfy professional needs. Professionals have a lot of expertise and experience they bring to the table and AI can't simply discard that.

2. This really reinforces point (1) - this whole notion that AI can "replace" people. AI by itself is lowering the bar - it's not capable of producing results that are as good as the best of humans can create. What we really want is to raise the bar, and that requires collaboration between experts and AI that goes way beyond today's prompts. The most important point of this is people are still needed to produce the best results. Experienced people.

AI and robotics will end up transforming nearly every job in existence, but that doesn't mean that every job should be eliminated.


Are we just going to continue to ignore that Trump has no legal authority to do this? Such action requires legislation, not executive orders. Executive orders can't preempt state law.

Yeah, I mean, this should be interesting --

https://www.flgov.com/eog/news/press/2025/governor-ron-desan...

"Governor Ron DeSantis Announces Proposal for Citizen Bill of Rights for Artificial Intelligence"


What do you think about the rationale?

Having one national set of AI laws and guidelines rather than a patchwork of AI laws and guidelines is certainly better for the AI companies - but it's up to Congress - which has representation from all the states - to create the legislation to do so.

That tracks. How long do you think we should wait for Congress to do so, considering how long AI has now been "out there"? Another 6 months? 12 months? Indefinitely?

"Congress is being slow; we should just illegally pretend to make a law" is not a _great_ argument, tbh.

How long should we wait before we allow POTUS to act unilaterally in circumvention of the constitution?

Considering we don't have anything like the DSA or CCPA yet, I wouldn't hold my breath

The president has no authority to usurp the responsibility of Congress, regardless of how slow Congress moves. This is why diplomacy and diplomatic skills matter. You can't act like a two-year old and throw tantrums and expect to get things done. Donald Trump has never learned to work within the confines of the law.

He provided no rationale for why this is something that can be done through executive order.

His argument that it's better to have a single national rule has some merit, but that's congress' job, not his.


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