These two gentlemen have been making the rounds on late night and political shows. They seem nice enough and I appreciate their efforts. However, I haven't heard them suggest a single functional/practical change to move toward "abundance".
We have to overturn Citizens United and get unlimited corporate money out of politics. This is far and away the most important barrier to having a government that works for people.
Overturning Citizens United would do very little for housing in the US, because the housing crisis is the result of every major US city simultaneously but individually punching themselves in the face with zoning and regulations. The only way out of that is to motivate people to act at the local level.
100% agree. The only way to enact any meaningful change is to put the power back in the hands of the people, especially given the US's insane, borderline anti-democratic, 2 party political system. Both sides are effectively completely captured by the wealthy elites and entirely beholden to their corporate / wealthy donors, lobbyists and PACs.
Its why neither the Democrats nor Republicans really ever make any significant, meaningful changes that would materially improve the lives of working class people in big ways.
Neither party really represents the working class, and they'll never do anything to restrict the power or reduce the wealth of the rich folks they actually work for, so until corporate (Wealthy elite) money is purged from politics, it's just going to be more of the same for the foreseeable future.
Yes. If you stop producing steel (which we kinda did), and just buy it from China instead, you haven't "eliminated emissions". You've merely moved them to a country which is currently not subject to the environmental limits. We are on the same planet - in the long run it doesn't matter where you burn coal.
It shouldn't really need to be mentioned at this point, but sales taxes are extremely regressive. The burden is shouldered by people with lower incomes.
It should be obvious by now that the whole game is to shift cost and risk to the bottom 90% while shifting profit and wealth even further to loyalists among the top 0.1%.
Viewed through this lens, the whole program is remarkably internally consistent. Tariffs on imports, cuts to corporate taxes, capital gains taxes and estate taxes, indiscriminate across-the-board reductions of 50% or more to regulatory agencies, etc.
Aren’t tariffs just corporate taxes which are paid by big corps who import stuff built overseas?
At least when you incentivize stuff to get built here the money goes to union workers or at least stays within the US.
Also the regulatory cuts are sorely needed at this point. It took longer to get regulatory approval for the Starship rocket than it did to actually build the rocket (the biggest and most complicated rocket ever built).
> Aren’t tariffs just corporate taxes which are paid by big corps who import stuff built overseas?
No, they're not "just" that. Those costs get passed onto the consumer in the form of higher prices. Corporations aren't going to eat the cost out of the goodness of their hearts.
> At least when you incentivize stuff to get built here the money goes to union workers or at least stays within the US.
If a widget from China costs $100 because of tariffs, then American companies who make the same widget have no reason to undercut that since they know consumers have no other options -- effectively raising the price floor.
There are also issues with the "union workers get the money" because we're effectively stiffing the rest of the U.S. population in order to prop up a specific segment of the economy.
> Those costs get passed onto the consumer in the form of higher prices
Not necessarily. The burden of a tax depends on supply and demand price elasticity. If demand is relatively price inelastic, then consumers pay the tax. If it is relatively price elastic, then companies pay via lower profits or reduce supply.
>Those costs get passed onto the consumer in the form of higher prices.
ALL taxes are like this, you are just arguing against corporate taxes at this point.
By your logic we should just make the corporate tax rate 0% so that we can lower the cost of goods even more.
It’s mind boggling because the same people who lambasted Trump for lowering the corporate tax rate in his first term are now lambasting him for wanting to raise tariffs in his second. But these two actions effectively do the opposite of each other, so if you don’t like one you should be happy about the other.
But somehow people are upset about both.
Tariffs are a tax which have the benefit of basically targeting rich mega corps and incentivizing people to build locally and pay their citizens better wages.
The current system makes it financially infeasible to make most things in our own country because companies are forced to compete with foreign slave labor.
Also think of the carbon impact of shipping everything you buy across the entire world just so that you can take advantage of slave labor on the other side of the planet.
> It’s mind boggling because the same people who lambasted Trump for lowering the corporate tax rate
I never lambasted Trump for this and I don't think corporate taxes are particularly effective. I'd rather see something more on the "backend" of earning money like payroll or incomes taxes rather than corporate taxes. They seem like a huge drain for little gain. Especially since rates vary across countries so a corporation could move and game tax structures internationally.
All your arguments about carbon impacts, making things in the U.S. are fine but the whole Trump campaign was railing on how bad inflation has gotten but tariffs would have the worst inflationary impact on everyone. That and Republicans typically don't care about workers' rights or environmental impact so that seems a bit disingenuous to bring up.
Plus, there doesn't seem to be a solid foundation on why we want to bring back manufacturing to the U.S. since we generally want to strive for making more high tech stuff, no? If we suddenly start making lower-level widgets, where are we going to find enough workers to do that without a big influx of immigrants? Immigrants already work the jobs that Americans don't like farm hands.
>Plus, there doesn't seem to be a solid foundation on why we want to bring back manufacturing to the U.S.
Because the US used to have tons of good paying jobs for normal people who didn't need to get a 4 year degree. Everything used to be made here and we had a booming economy which had opportunities for people from all walks of life, including people who can't or don't want to get a 4 year degree.
>Republicans typically don't care about workers' rights or environmental impact
I think this is definitely not as true as many people think, the right has become a big tent at the moment and there are a lot of people in it who do care about these things. Workers rights do align with bringing jobs back to the US, look at how unions voted in the recent election, they superficially supported the left but most of their members voted for the right.
>where are we going to find enough workers to do that without a big influx of immigrants?
Wages go up, more people are able to live a middle class life, people have children.
Also, most of these jobs are becoming automated, your example of farm hands is a good one actually because a ton of farm work is now being done by robots. It won't be very much longer until almost every ag job is being done by robots. So bringing manufacturing back to the US means that the money stays here, people get better wages, and we have a way lower carbon footprint.
And yes, fewer people are employed because of robots but also SOME will still be employed.
We have been hollowing out the middle class by shipping many good jobs building stuff so that the top 1% can take advantage of slave labor on the other side of the planet. It was not a great idea.
Look at how much of a boon it has been for China, they have used the base of manufacturing jobs to bootstrap their entire economy in record time. Now they have so much manufacturing expertise they are able to do things we physically cannot, but we used to be able to build everything.
> Because the US used to have tons of good paying jobs for normal people who didn't need to get a 4 year degree. Everything used to be made here and we had a booming economy which had opportunities for people from all walks of life, including people who can't or don't want to get a 4 year degree.
That time is gone for good. Automation and outsourcing is coming eventually for the Chinese manufacturing sector as well. Being a planned economy, the government is slowing it down however they can.
Manufacturing might come back to the US but it will not be restoring that big pile of good paying jobs for people with no degree.
The American consumers do have other options — other American companies. Who are all held to a higher standard than foreign companies due to sharing a regulatory environment.
So the price may go up, but it will eventually tend toward the natural floor, even if higher than before, taking into account the externalities that were ignored with foreign widgets such as poor working conditions and environmental disregard that happens in certain other countries.
> American companies will never go below whatever the Chinese widget costs
Why not? If there are 3 American companies with similar costs, would all of them just say “well, the price is the price?” Or would there eventually be one who realizes they can take more market share from the Chinese companies by undercutting them?
It was probably incorrect to say never, and there is another reply to me mentioning price elasticity which applies here for sure.
> eventually be one who realizes they can take more market share from the Chinese
Yes, on a longer timeline that is possible but in the short to medium term, it doesn't seem realistic for domestic producers to undercut and make profit. Initially you're building factories, refining processes, training workers, etc. which requires capital and investment.
Yeah, that's fair. I guess I'm ok with raised prices in the short-term if it brings more stability and better working conditions + environmental management in the long-term.
I feel like it’s out of step to think those promoting tariffs are the same as those who want environmental management and/or that Americans when they have even less money to spend because of higher prices will care to either.
Yeah probably not the environmental management, but likely they are in favor of the other point I made earlier about leveling the playing field by ensuring American companies are competing with others who value similar working conditions and standards to the US, rather than giving an advantage to countries who exploit their workers even more than the US.
Though, I can’t speak for them, and my opinions on reducing the outsourcing to countries who largely disregard the environment and human rights, are my opinions regardless of their motivations
> At least when you incentivize stuff to get built here the money goes to union workers or at least stays within the US.
We could frame this another way - if every state in the US enacted tariffs on every other state, would we all be collectively richer or poorer?
Maybe some states could set up their own cottage automotive industry, but overall there is going to be more deadweight loss to the economy than revenue made by the tariffs.
It depends… do the states share a common set of laws and values? Do the benefits of one state profiting transfer in part to other states? Is there a course for grievances to be settled across state lines with reciprocal legal coverage guaranteed? Are living and working standards reasonably similar, allowing companies to fairly compete across state lines?
Those statements are generally not true across countries, but generally are true across states within a country. Things like working standards across countries mean that another country can employ slaves and have uncompetitive costs due to free labor, causing an unfair environment for those same companies forming in countries without slave labor. That is much less likely within the same country.
So it’s not necessarily the same to frame tariffs across states to be similar to tariffs on other countries. There are meaningful differences that make it harder to ensure similar standards across countries, which can make tariffs be meaningful. It helps to account for externalities inherent to lacking the protections mentioned in the first paragraph.
You simply make basic necessities sales tax free. Fresh foods (non-processed), education materials and tuition, medical premiums, and the first $1K of housing per month, and problem solved. It's an easier tax to enforce and requires a smaller surveillance state. Instead of attempting to audit 350 million individuals the revenue dept can just focus on a couple million businesses. Instead of pouring over 15000 pages of write-offs and exemptions, it's a simple % of taxable revenue. The states that run on sales tax alone are more affordable than states that run off income tax. It's a superior tax in every way.
Sales tax is not regressive per se. It's just much less progressive than an income tax. Rich people still pay more overall since they spend more money.
An example of a regressive tax would be something like cigarette taxes - poor people would actually spend a larger share of their income since they are also more likely to smoke.
This is a very unpopular opinion, but I believe ideally taxes in America should be more a lot more "regressive" like they are in Sweden. VATs are economically more efficient than income tax, and harder for corporations to avoid. Taxes are only actually regressive when the tax dollars don't go back into social services for the people, so that's something that would need to be prioritized first. I suspect that a major reason why the American government is so inefficient with spending is because there is no incentive for them to be, as the majority of tax dollars comes from a minority of high income workers.
I would think we also use these models to run simulations. So maybe the AI models can be used to run simulations with different kinds of inputs to see if doing X in one place (like planting a lot of trees in one area) will have an outsized impact rather than doing Y in another place.
AI models rarely have that kind of predictive power because they are noticing patterns not running simulations.
The model may care about trees because mountains above a specific height don’t have trees on them. The old, measures stop being useful once you start optimizing for them, AI edition.
Did not know that stack, thanks.
From my perspective as a data architect, I am really focused on the link between the data sources and the data lake, and the proper integration of heterogenous data into a “single” knowledge graph.
For Palantir, it is not very difficult to learn their way of working [their Pipeline Builder feeds a massive spark cluster, and OntologyManager maintains a sync between Spark and a graph database. Their other productivity tools then rely on either one data lake and/or the other].
I wonder how Glean handles the datalake part of their stack. [scalability, refresh rate, etc]
That's not what they said. "Measured and rational speaking" is usually terrible marketing. It barely works on college-educated adults and certainly doesn't work on the mass market.
The example they gave is Trump in a garbage truck, but that's just one way in which Trump made himself enormously appealing to the non-elite.
Worse, they don't see that a near-majority of the country is actively put off by someone speaking like a rich, educated liberal.
The #1 exercise Democratic politicians should do over the next 4 years is to spend hours and hours and hours actually listening to working-class people in flyover country and trying to really understand them. They just don't get it yet.
Efficient how? Ants are extremely efficient and successful, second only to humans in biomass. Turns out making good global decisions is hard to impossible, so you see decentralized decision making pop up everywhere.
Efficiency, trust and cooperation, what an amazing place it could be.
Finding a hobby that provides a little of that helped me. What I also noticed, having spent far too much time in front of a screen and programming, that I began to think of the world as a giant program that is really really buggy. Trying to fix those bugs got me down ... just gotta live with those bugs.
> began to think of the world as a giant program that is really really buggy
I think this is an excellent way to phrase the experience of "programmer brain" and I will be blatantly ripping it off in the future. It's definitely an occupational hazard, and something we should be wary of, but it's only a small symptom of the larger technologized worldview that permeates Western thought (and via export, a lot of global thought). There are definite upsides to technology and programming, but: "we shape our tools, our tools shape us". I think we technologists think a lot about the former, and rarely about the latter (that's for those squishy humanities types!) -- at our own peril.
Thank you for ripping it off - I call it sharing :)
> at our own peril.
I always like to quote the frog in water. As the water is heated to boiling point, apparently the frog doesn't spring out. That is, in fact, an urban legend - the frog does spring out. However we are the frogs that don't spring out.
It is exceeding difficult to sacrifice yourself for someone you barely know even if you know it is for the betterment of everyone. Ants have 0 problem with this.
You should consider that you might be the one wrong here. What you think is efficient is just an individual perspective.
I’ve come to accept this after years of fighting “the system”.
The system doesn’t care about you or what you want. It is a ruthlessly collective thing and it makes short term mistakes you will pay for but long term builds foundations you benefit from.
Also over and over efficiency in many cases proves to be maladaptive as it kills flexibility.
Especially people in the West laud how great Japan its collectivist society is, how streets are clean, relatively little gets stolen, personal responsibility is still a thing, etc; But they completely skip over the other side of the coin: collectivist societies crush much of the independence out of a person.
So, in this one sense, you can trade independence for social “efficiency”. I imagine it is much the same for humanity. We could become more harmonized, at the cost of becoming more drone-like.
An interesting book that deals with this exact dilemma (among other things) is “A Deepness In the Sky” by Vernor Vinge. Worth a read!
> Not quite as alarming as these people most likely trying to stalk someone without their permission.
It’s so common to want to know where does a incoming call come from that it’s built-in in iOS. It has nothing to do with stalking, just with guessing if who’s calling you is a scammer or a company trying to sell you stuff.
It’s pretty simple to look up the location of a phone number issuance, you can get a map or table that does this. I guess these people want the current physical location of the mobile phone. Either way these are not customers you’d want.
Edit: reading the blog post from the same company listed above, it is indeed people using an external API for what is an incredibly simple country code. It is a shame that programming has come to this and that ChatGPT continues to propagate it. One way they could solve the problem would be to provide sample code that does the same thing using a built in table without using their API service. Sure it’s work but not much will get ppl off your back asap.
I'm willing to bet people asking ChatGPT to help them resolve a phone number to a location are much more likely to be stalkers than people who are trying to identify spam calls.
No patient info is sent. In my colleague's example, you can try out a similar query, "Write an appeal letter to a medical insurance company for a patient who needs a biopsy for a bone lesion given prior unclear diagnosis."
tbh the ChatGPT saga has exposed just how willing people are to send their own/company's/client's/patient's data to a third party without a second thought.
It's trivial to de-identify someone from shockingly limited data. Just by submission to an outside service, they know a date, location, and whatever information was submitted. That's plenty, especially assuming they referenced a procedure or comorbidities.
A date of what? The request to ChatGPT to generate an imaginary appeal?
So you know the individual was rejected prior to that. Probably. Maybe.
And maybe roughly where the individual is located, because ChatGPT sees an IP off of… something.
So somewhere, someone asked ChatGPT about a rejected treatment or procedure appeal.
Now if the doctor provides a poorly written appeal and asks for it to be fixed, that is another case entirely, especially if they left in patient info. But there is a very large gap between these two situations, and the first one isn’t nearly as much as you suggest.
That is an obviously incorrect assumption, it is possible to de-anonomize most data sets about and there is reason to believe this one is no different. Health data by it's nature is very personal and specific.
Doctors publish case studies all the time which contain anonymized data. Presumably those go through reviews to make sure that nothing is being leaked but health data by it's nature is specific but not very personal (at least not identifiable).
Also, depending on what you're using ChatGPT for, this is no worse than Googling something which doctors do a lot as well.
Informed consent isn't a legal requirement. It's down to ethics and occasionally the journal's publishing requirements. So it we bring the analogy back to ChatGPT, using it for queries isn't breaking HIPAA or any laws.
“Write an appeal letter to a medical insurance company for a patient who needs a biopsy for a bone lesion given prior unclear diagnosis.”
Add an arbitrary ip address and timestamp and you are very far away from anything personally identifying. (Where does your computer suggest you are right now?)
Why would a letter to an insurance company on behalf of a patient not include PII? The letter itself is surely mostly PII. And is almost certain to contain privileged information.
Probably not. You fill in the PII afterwards and it’s essentially just metadata. Patient has this condition, needs this test, has had this and that happen” those things aren’t PII. Leave out names, places, ID numbers, etc and you have appropriately deidentified a document.
How do you envision that happening? There’s no big database of people’s medical conditions out there that you can use to lookup their name and address, so it’s kind of like an impossible reverse lookup that would need to be done right? Unless you’re talking about a state level actor or something that is tailing someone’s movements around like Jason Bourne and cross referencing it with medical GPT queries, but in that case you’re gonna be compromised anyway in probably far easier ways.
Probably patients consent to using software to process their data and chatgpt is considered just another software in the stack.
Edit: parent poster said no info is sent.
that's not how it works, PHI and HIPAA usually supersede a lot of these. That's why you hospitals don't just have everyone opt-out data protections if they want services.
They probably consent to software that's been validated and managed by their medical provider. I can tell you for sure that I personally wouldn't consent to a a random script thrown together by an MD with leetcode experience that sends your medical data up to an experimental service.
We have to overturn Citizens United and get unlimited corporate money out of politics. This is far and away the most important barrier to having a government that works for people.