hckrnws

In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.

This HST quote seems severely outdated by now. They have already been caught, committed all the sins of stupidity and some more. All of it to the clapping mob of people who yearn for some kind of social revenge.

And it’s happening everywhere these last years.

Who could possibly know we have so many wife beaters?

Modern spin: In a closed society where everybody is guilty, the only crime is not being in power.

the only crime is being poor.

HST = Hunter S. Thompson, an American writer and journalist.

I assumed that was the ethos of High Speed Trading.

Well, the wives.

But women are generally ignored in our society.

I've said it a million times, but I'll repeat it.

There are a lot of conspiracy nuts like Alex Jones, and the amusing thing to me is that there is a conspiracy of elites who are exerting large amounts of unelected control of the government, and who are actively working to keep you down to enrich themselves, and it's not even a secret.

We call these people "billionaires", and at this point they don't even bother hiding it. Trump had a streamlined bribery system with his stupid cryptocurrency and being in charge of a publicly traded company while in office, Musk bought his way in so he could be in charge of a new department and start defunding any organization that has ever tried to investigate him, and there are hundreds of examples.

Instead morons like Alex Jones will go on the radio and blame lizards or something, and then his listeners will take that and then start blaming Jews or Mexicans, while cheering on the actual conspiracy that's making their lives terrible.

The only war is class war, but those at the top spend a lot of money creating new culture wars instead to keep us busy.

"With, without, And who'll deny it's what the fighting's all about?"

[dead]

[flagged]

After 1000M died due to capitalism, people are still sure it was accurate and we just haven't done that correctly.

I see Reddit is leaking again.

[flagged]

It is probably true, but it is also a useless statistic, let me explain.

8 billion people, avg lifespan 70 years, 115 million people die each year, percentage in capitalist economic zones... No clue, does china count? but probably 80 to 90% so about 10 years for capitalism to cause a billion deaths.

Not to mention trafficking and raping children

I still fail to see if that is their side hobby or the entire point for them.

To get into power, you need to be supposed by others (the vast majority of the time).

For those doing the supporting, they often want to be assured that they’ll not be hurt or retaliated against by those they put ‘above’ them.

So, leverage, and what is the best kind of leverage? the most despicable thing one can think of.

I have long thought that the greatest harm conspiracy theories do is to distract attention from actual problems, and to discredit attempts to draw attention to them by labelling them all as conspiracy theories.

Other things are used too. A lot of the attention given to culture wars issues distracts attention from other issues. Its not just the right either. It allows people to pose as left wing while actually not being left wing on economic and business issues which are the traditional definition (the labour party in the UK - to be fair the left within it does seem to the reviving now).

With the Epstein affair, the shock people feel about sex crimes is being used focus just on those to avoid investigating the corruption in the US and other countries . The UK's two high profile arrests, of former Prince Andrew, and the far more important Peter Mandelson (former cabinet minister, for EU Commissioner, very close to multiple Prime Ministers) have been for passing on sensitive information but this is almost certainly a tiny fraction of what was going on.

Jones in a shill, plain and simple. A puppet of said and unsaid billi/trillionaires.

Discredit By Association is written all over his yelling face.

Some people just don’t want to hear it no matter what. Not because they are unusually stupid or inherently evil but because they feel severely hurt by the societal changes and left out. Anything that gives a hint of hope of reverting things to be the way they were is justified and no price is too high.

They can steal as long as they are our thieves.

To get through to these people you have to validate their deep fears. Not just say - shut up, you are stupid, vote for me.

> To get through to these people you have to validate their deep fears. Not just say - shut up, you are stupid, vote for me.

Everyone says this kind of stuff, but honestly I don't think I agree. Everyone says that you have to be nice to these people to attract them, but that doesn't seem to have been the case for people like Trump or any of the other demagogues that have popped up in the last decade or so.

These people are decidedly huge assholes. Trump is the most easily offended person I have ever seen, and whenever anyone ever goes against him he will go on his stupid Twitter clone and give a diatribe about how they're not true Americans and they're radical left and they're traitors and a bunch of other bullshit.

People like John McCain and Mitt Romney tried to meet people where they are and negotiate, and both of them failed to win the presidency. Trump went on stage, rambled a bunch of incoherent nonsense about how Mexico not sending their best or trying to brag about having a giant cock and he's been elected twice now.

I'm not convinced that being polite to these conservatives is actually the right path forward. I tried being polite to my grandmother when we would discuss these things and instead of reflecting on her believes she's fully fallen down the QAnon rabbit hole and has actively said to me that my wife should be deported.

One fictional character that I think is helpful to bring is Luke Skywalker. It’s not about politeness, but about genuinely knowing why people behave the way they are and then offering them alternative other than QAnon.

Listening to QAnon is a desperate attempt to understand the world after every other mainstream figure of authority failed that person.

What I am talking about is not politeness. Politeness is tone management. The McCain/Romney approach. I respect my opponent, let's find common ground, here's my reasonable plan. That is only decorum. But Trump did validate. That's precisely why he won. He just validated the ugliest parts. When he said the system is rigged, that the elites despise you, that your way of life is under siege, millions of people heard the first person in power say what they felt. The content was often vile, the solutions were fraudulent, but the emotional recognition was real. He didn't win by being polite. He won by being the first one to say your rage makes sense.

The mistake is thinking validation means being nice. It doesn't. It means demonstrating that you understand what someone is actually experiencing before you ask them to go somewhere with you. Trump does this instinctively, he just leads people somewhere destructive.

I agree with what you’re saying while also thinking you’re underestimating the appeal of the destruction he’s leading them to.

It’s easier to tempt someone into getting a pizza with you than starting a diet, because pizza is more fun than diets. All that to say: the same mechanisms by which the alt-right is tempting people with cruelty aren’t going to be as effective when employed towards pro-social activity.

I don't think I disagree much with what you said, but frankly I think that is a task for other people.

I am exceedingly impatient with this kind of stuff, from people that I think should know better. I try to avoid these arguments now entirely and live in my happy progressive NYC bubble.

No doubt that diplomacy with this stuff is necessary but I don't think that that's something anyone should want me specifically for.

I think what you’ve said is thoughtful and honest and I disagree with the downvotes.

I’m one of the politically homeless, and not even a resident of the USA, so I suppose I have an easy out.

Life can be very hard, and I don’t fault anyone for prioritizing their life over a political situation that is so very hard to affect. I do appreciate those that dedicate themselves though, the ones that seem to be helping and not hurting, anyway.

I don’t think I was downvoted, at least I not as of the time of this writing, though I don’t generally care if I am. I already have a ton of HN karma and I also don’t want to have my name attached to an opinion I will not defend I don’t see the point of unpaid social media if not to have a place to express honest opinions.

It’s not like I am apolitical; I donate money to causes I support, and I am generally willing to argue my beliefs if it’s something I believe it. I have my opinions, many of them very strong.

I am just saying that I am not an ambassador. I don’t really have a strong desire to “convert” people, and I don’t think I am the right person for that particular job. There’s value in it and I am ok with people doing it. Just not me.

It cuts deep when it becomes so personal. What the heck do you say to grandma when that happens? I can’t imagine what I would do.

In the end I think to preserve democracy one has to become involved. Standing on the sideline at this point doesn’t cut it.

At least in my case, I have just cut off contact with her.

My parents are pretty decent people so I still talk to them a lot, but I can't deal with my grandmother anymore. If she thinks my wife (who was evidently on a Green Card at the time she said that) doesn't deserve to be here, she's allowed to think that, but she's not entitled to me being nice to her. I weighed my options and it came down these three choices: a) swallow my pride and roll my eyes and let her continue to be a racist sack of shit towards my wife, b) push back on the stuff and constantly argue, greatly upsetting my mother, or c) cut off contact to avoid this.

For someone like me option A really isn't a viable option, and and of the remaining two C seemed like the best.

Sometimes I wish I didn't have principles; that grandmother is ridiculously rich, and I likely could have wormed my way into the inheritance pretty easily. If anyone doubts that I believe in my principles just remember I turned down being a potential millionaire because I refused to yield on what I think is right.

My step-mother (who didn't come into my life until around the time I got married. She is actually a pretty nice person overall, she is just... shall we say, opinionated, and could be somewhat racist once the conversation turned to politics. I always stopped participating in the conversation when she made racist statements, but she never fully seemed to take the hint.

Then we had a child. Once our kid was old enough to start understanding what people were saying, I put my foot down at one point when we came to visit. To paraphrase: I said, look, you're free to think whatever you want about whoever you want but the racist shit has to end when my daughter is around. Otherwise we need to head back home.

After that, it never happened again and we still keep in touch with her to this day. Some people just need to be told exactly where the boundaries are and then they respect them. (But of course not all will.)

And she'll continue to think the way she did before. But at least she shuts up so you've achieved that much. Beware of what happens when you leave your kid with her if you are not around, better yet, don't.

To whoever downvoted this: you're an ass for downvoting this without at least explaining why you disagree. It's perfectly valid to give up on people, there is only so much time and energy to go around. You could lean into the negativity or you could choose to spend your time and energy on other people instead.

From the Epstein files we know that these billionaires are exactly behind these conspiracy guys like Qanon. It is called controlled opposition.

Be the change, my man. Try to make a podcast. I think it will eventually make sense why nobody who is a threat and also famous.

> Be the change, my man. Try to make a podcast.

This might be the funniest thing I’ve read today.

I don't think the world needs another geeky guy making a podcast about his unearned political opinions.

I have all the equipment necessary for a podcast (a decent Shure microphone and Zoom sound interface), but my political opinions don't usually stray too far from typical American progressive stuff and there's already a million podcasts for those kinds of viewpoints from people more educated on these subjects than I am.

When I have a perspective that I do think is unique I'll write something on my blog but generally I've stayed away from any kind of partisan politics on there because I don't see the point in regurgitating the same stuff everyone else is.

Not a week goes by without me thinking "what would HST have made of THIS fresh bullshit, if he were alive today"

The only human to authorize a nuclear attack…

Hunter Thompson?

Not saying he wouldn't have banged on the button, for all he was worth, but no one in their right (or even severely sick) mind would ever let him near it.

Looks like he's referring to Harry S. Truman.

Probably doesn't know who Thompson was.

I'll never forget Thompson speaking at my school as the war in Vietnam was drawing to a close.

He did not mince words.

PS: If openly bribing a crony gov to cancel your competitor is now the de-facto standard of making business in the US, I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment. When the rule of law degrades into pay-to-play politics, the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent.

It's bizarre seeing the outright bribery.

A lot of things that people call "bribery" is really just ensuring that your preferred candidate gets in office. You couldn't give money directly to the candidate for personal use. Donations went to the campaign of the guy who already agreed with you. The FEC used to take a dim view of outright pay-for-service, even dressed up.

This is new. And now people need to decide how they feel about that. They get one chance to say "no, that's not how we do things." Even if the administration suffers a blow this November, if they hear that this is mostly acceptable to their base, it will be what every politician does from here on.

>A lot of things that people call "bribery" is really just ensuring that your preferred candidate gets in office.

Having a preferred candidate you give money to is already bribery - whatever the law says. You fund your favorite pony to get the power. They then scratch your back or lend a sympathetic ear.

Simply spending money to get someone you like elected isn’t bribery.

To the degree great inequality leads to this being decisive in elections, it is a corrupting influence, but the term for it is still not “bribery”.

But when a presidential candidate tells oil companies they should donate because he is going to help them, that’s solid bribery.

When companies pay to “settle” ridiculous accusations, or “donate” to a president’s causes, while their mergers or other business legal issues depend on an openly pay-for-play president’s goodwill, that’s solid bribery.

The country’s policies, discipline, reputation and competence (economic, diplomatic and political) are being sold off for a tiny fraction of what their future adjusted value is worth.

In actual functioning democracies political donations are capped severely.

Say, a single donor can contribute a maximum of €6,000 per parliament candidate per election.

Yes, that's a real limit.

We used to have laws like that, but apparently our supreme court believes that bribing politicians is political speech, and curtailing that speech is unconstitutional, so...

It's so broken.

Are you aware that the Citizens United case was actually about a movie? It wasn't about handing someone a stack of cash. When I see perspectives like yours, I wonder what you would say is the right way to handle the question of whether someone can make a movie that portrays a candidate in a positive or negative light. It seems to be pretty clearly a matter of free speech (first amendment), so unless there's some other provision of the constitution that would override that, I don't see how it could be forbidden.

To the extent that a pretty big chunk of donations are used to fund very short movies (we call them ads) for or against candidates, I'm not sure how that can be distinguished. I could see how one would distinguish get-out-the-vote or other similar non-speech type activities, but those on the Left seem to not oppose such expenditures.

Before CU, "issue ads" were constrained not to mention a candidate. They could talk about the issues, and strongly hint at which candidate did what they wanted, but it couldn't instruct you on who to vote for.

Now all that's required is a thin fig leaf that you're not actually directly coordinating with the actual campaign. And even that much is never enforced. It almost completely undoes campaign limits.

That’s a profoundly incorrect misunderstanding of the Citizens United decision, which was to remove restrictions on political spending by corporations.

In other words, by your distinction, the decision was about stacks of cash, not movies.

A case regarding a movie was indeed brought to the court. The court decided to make a far more expansive decision. The movie became a footnote, and has effectively no meaningful relationship to the court’s final decision or its impact.

As for getting lost in a discussion about the difference between an ad and a movie, that’s really going down a rabbit hole of deliberately missing the point completely. Some word play is just too divorced from reality to engage with. There are many very short movies, and any rational person would be able to distinguish them from ads to a high degree of accuracy.

The conversation included money-corrupted political speech vs. bribery.

The Citizen's United case being relevant to the former.

Citizens United assured that will never happen in the US, and everything critics said about it 16 years ago has come into fruition and more.

Roberts will certainly go down as the most consequential Chief Justice in several generations… the havoc he’s wrought is just remarkable.

Except for clusters of highly correlated private interest groups. PACs. Which completely circumvent that.

Ideally they "shouldn't". But in practice they do.

Because the Supreme Court determined that money is free speech, its use in elections cannot be limited in general.

And where coordination between purportedly independent groups isn't supposed to happen, there is a strong "don't ask, don't tell" code, and a mountain of lawyers ready to scream "political oppression!" on the dime of the rich.

> Simply spending money to get someone you like elected isn’t bribery.

Alright then what should it be called, because it's also not democracy.

I agree, but coding that up in law turns out to be tricky. Americans are reluctant to pass laws about how you can spend your money, especially if that money is being spent to express your opinion.

We used to have some limits on it, but now it's trivial to bypass those limits because the Supreme Court decided that the First Amendment isn't limited (except for all of those other limits.)

IANAL, IIRC: SCOTUS has very narrowly defined bribery as explicit quid pro quo. And sometimes not even then.

You recall correctly.

And they did so, so they could take bribes with no consequences as long as they take them the right way.

Trevor Noah pretty much nailed this in the first Trump admin:

https://x.com/thedailyshow/status/1177221786720559105

https://xcancel.com/thedailyshow/status/1177221786720559105

In what sense is this new, other than a different side cares about the optics?

OP explained it clearly: “you couldn’t $1, now you can”. It would be helpful if you explained which part did you not understand. Alternatively, that barking sound I hear might be a sea lion.

> If openly bribing a crony gov to cancel your competitor is now the de-facto standard of making business in the US

It very clearly is, the present AI instance is far from the only recent case.

> I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment.

They evaluate the propensity and ability to profitably engage in open corruption the same as they evaluate other capacities of the company. “Secure” isn't a binary category, and the risk here is much like any other risk.

> When the rule of law degrades into pay-to-play politics, the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent.

That is the expected result of increasing perceived risk. yes, probably one of those “slowly and then all at once” things.

> When the rule of law degrades into pay-to-play politics, the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent.

No, it's not inevitable. What you've described is the way a lot of authoritarian states work, such as China. China attracts plenty of capital and external talent, including people from other countries such as Taiwan and the United States. You have be all-in on the CCP's rules, though.

Vietnam operates in a similar way. Untold billions of FDI in the past 20 years from Japan, the U.S. and China. Talk with top executives there, and you'll frequently find close connections or family ties with leaders in Hanoi.

china attract zero capital in the sense being discussed here, which would be VC. it attract lots of capex expenses like factories.

This has already happened, its a key reason why the dollar is down 15% since the new admin took power.

>I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment.

Investors just care for the returns. As long as they can identify and bet on the side doing the bribing, they're fine...

> I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment

I the problem is that from the companies’s side you just have a whole country to exploit, so I’m fairly certain the investments still work.

The logical conclusion to your analysis is that Musks companies must be a great investment. Musk already owns most of the government after all. And the US is still among the largest economies in the world.

That means bribing the government is a very secure and profitable investment to invest in.

The rational investors have been moving their money outside the US for approximately 15 months. Compare the chart of VEA to VTI.

> I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment.

It’s the best investment - just bribe your way to contracts

Well you think corruption is bad for the rich investors? I hope I can find that kind of optimism and live in a more corrupt world.

Tldr; Rich people can bribe more, hence Rich people can be more rich+er..

I think a lot of poor tech multi-millionaires hate this in US but all rich billionaires must be loving it...

the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent

To where?

Anywhere offering opportunity.

I'm in Europe, I'd like to see it come here. The news I see suggests China's ahead of us in this race, but I don't know if that's for all talent, or if it was just an artefact of a lot of Chinese people in the US on work visas returning home.

Or indeed whether the news about China doing well here was real or hallucinated by an LLM.

Don't get too complacent, the far right is on the rise in EU, and corruption follows.

corruption follows :') ... corruption is already there. just the color of the banner is changing. dont be naive.

EU isn't perfect, even the best nations within it are not perfect (though still better than the US is or was), but only the worst two EU nations seem to be politically corrupt to the point of "danger" levels.

There's plenty of room to fall if people are complacent.

General corruption: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index

As a person from a country constantly near the top of that list, I have been saying this for more than two decades: holding the #1 spot in CPI tells nothing how well things are going for a country; it merely highlights how bad things are even for the runner-up.

If engineers in the US (i.e. me) want to find work in Europe, what can we do? I know that’s a googleable question but honestly I can’t help but think that there cannot be any European country that would want me and my family.

Immigration is hard.

It is hard.

I moved to Germany in 2018, and only just this month reached B1 level in the language; and that was a pre-Brexit move so I don't need to care about visa.

The EU has a "blue card" scheme modeled on US green card: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Card_(European_Union)

If language is your biggest barrier, pick a country whose language you already speak. As this clearly includes English, Ireland if you want specifically EU, and UK if you just want the continent (mainly London, but I spent a long time in Cambridge tech sector).

Germany may still be an option even without being a native speaker (depending on your skills), but with all the difficulty everyone has today with AI messing with job hunting, get the contract before considering a move.

Generally immigrating to Europe is fairly easy if you have an employment offer. And the rest of the family would apply as family members of a resident. With a work offer, there's typically no language requirements (apart from what the work requires).

Without a job offer, yeah not gonna happen easily unless you e.g. show an ancestral connection to the specific country.

The UK has two schemes for skilled worker visas. It depends on the exact occupation and salary offered so you need to get a job.

Not that hard if you are in young to middle years and have any job experience. I asked Perplexity "If an American citizen, a trained engineer with some experience, desired to work abroad in the EU or an English-first nation, what are some good websites to check?"

I suggest you do the same -- the reply lists a dozen promising sites.

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/if-an-american-citizen-a-tr...

I am not convinced. Lots of people in Europe were connected to Epstein's network and engaged in corrupt practices - it is allegations of these that lead to the two high profile arrests in the UK. Norway has just charged a former Prime Minster (also a former Secretary General of the Council of Europe) with corruption.

The US is probably more corrupt that the most developed European countries, but they have also been becoming more corrupt.

wow. you're comparing EU: crimes happened, were exposed, people suffered consequences, with USA: no criminal suffered anything, president joining on a genocide for real state deals bribe, etc.

kinda a stretch, don't you think?

Europe is nice this time of year

https://totalrealreturns.com/n/VTI,VXUS?start=2025-01-20

Bit melodramatic. The US still has the most talent, most capital, and best property protections of anywhere in the world. Name a country that (1) doesn't have any quid-pro-quo system with the govt, and (2) has pro-growth pro-capitalist policies.

I wonder if maybe those two things have a causal relationship

>I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment.

2025 was also the first year that the majority of stocks were traded off-market (i.e. hedgie darkpools, no public price discovery).

----

Hope ya'll bought your gold before Monday.

#RemindMe2days [gold@5290USD, this post]

Trades in dark pools still get published to the consolidated tape; they're still part of price discovery. What's "dark" about them is that you don't see the order book, but people break up large orders into smaller orders to disguise their order size in lit markets too.

>2025 was also the first year that the majority of stocks were traded off-market (i.e. hedgie darkpools, no public price discovery).

Do you have any sources for that?

It sounds quite plausible.

Almost all equity ETFs do their balancing against dark pools or directly with market makers to avoid arbitrage and to ensure enough liquidity.

Since index ETFs have more AUM than the underlying instruments (the “ETF tail wagging the dog”), this sounds like a natural evolution.

There is nothing nefarious about this, it’s just how the markets work.

25M isn’t even that much money. Not only are they whores, they’re cheap whores.

It's more than that, supposedly Sama donated another 25mil through a PAC.

I'm sure the Crypto AI Czar (David Sacks) being a major Anthropic hater didn't hurt either

Or that Kushner put a billion in OpenAI recently

EDIT: wow they got in at a huge discount too and OpenAI bought stake in Thrive...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/thrive-capital-bought-shares-in...

https://openai.com/index/thrive-holdings/

POTUS pretty much told you this is what you are getting. His great admiration for Andrew Jackson pretty much says it all. Jackson was the poster child for bullshit populism, patronage and corruption.

It’s a lot of money for a “what have you done for me lately?” scenario

Like, this is opex

It's more about loyalty than about any particular dollar amount. It's a tribute moreso than a bribe.

Quite tangential, but this reminded me of a line from Human Target:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6tqvzt?start=872&mute=fal...

"I'm sorry, you... You think I'm a prostitute?"

looks at offered cash

"A $40 prostitute?"

Cheap or not doesn’t matter.

Sir Winston Churchill supposedly asked Lady Astor whether she would sleep with him for five million pounds. She said she supposed she would. Then he asked whether she would sleep with him for only five pounds. She answered,"What do you think I am?" His response was, "We've already established that; we're merely haggling over price."- Marcus Felson, Crime and Everyday Life, Second Edition, 1998

I think it does matter and this quote is always flaunted like it's some deep insight but it intentionally ignored nuance. An amount you can comfortably retire on is way different than $5.

We love to pretend humans have unflinching morals but they don't

On the other hand, immoral people would try to convince you that anybody would kill their own mother for the right price.

Sleeping with someone ≠ committing murder.

Yes, I guess that's a projection of how their own minds work.

Eh, billions…. (/s)

Nancy Astor already had access to more than enough money to keep herself in unimaginable luxury for the rest of her life. She was substantially more wealthy than Churchill (by a factor of many thousands).

The nuance you're looking for didn't exist.

I believe the problem is making sex about morality.

No kink-shaming.

> I think it does matter and this quote is always flaunted like it's some deep insight but it intentionally ignored nuance

There are people that wouldn't do it no matter the amount. Not for billions. Not for a trillion. And that's why no matter how rich the other party, there are people to whom they simply aren't rich enough.

"No" is the most powerful word in the dictionary. And when some people say no, they really mean no. And no amount of money can change that.

And most filthy, corrupt, bribed politicians and corrupt public servants out there know that fully well: they feel filthy and miserable because they know there are people out there with moral and ethics.

Additionally, there are people who honestly really don't give a fuck about money (it's not my case): so they'll say no not because of particularly high moral or high ethics, they'll say no just because they enjoy their simple life.

Honestly it's a sign of low moral and low ethics to believe that anyone can be bought out and that it's just about the amount.

> most filthy, corrupt, bribed politicians and corrupt public servants... feel filthy and miserable.

Citation most definitely needed.

I agree with your ultimate point that some people can't be bought, and I aspire to be one of them - though I don't think anyone actually knows until they face a temptation with a life-changing upside - but spare me the "evil-doers are always punished, even if it's in ways we cannot see" rhetoric. Sociopaths, at least, are just fine (in fact show happier than the average person on standard "life satisfaction" metrics), and I'll put it to you that there are a lot of ways that both you and I don't perfectly live up to our highest ideals (do you own anything that's plausibly been manufactured by slave labor? Have you bothered to check? Or, if not that one, have you sold everything you own and given it to the poor?) and we both feel pretty good about ourselves, am I right?

I'm sorry. I really didn't mean to come at you that hard, but I'm going to leave it stand - it's not truly personal - because I think moral fables (ie, "do the right thing and you'll be happy") aren't true, and thus are counter-productive. Acting morally is hard, and often (usually?) comes at a personal cost. It's more honest to tell people that.

“We” also love to pretend that every, (or even most), humans who could break laws, or common moral boundaries in order to cash out actually do that.

I think that’s a fallacy, too.

Agreed; an equally flawed assertion.

In my view we have some unflinching morals, some more flexible ones, and some you don't adhere to at all, and which is which tends to differ between people.

I personally don't believe in non-religious ontological good because of this aspect of human nature.

I imagine the number of people who would do it if they theoretically knew they had no chance of getting caught is different than the number of people who actually do it. I don't disagree with your conclusion about how many people do, but knowing how many people would lie, cheat, steal, or murder their way to wealth but don't due to sufficient deterrent is useful knowledge in how to structure a society.

To be clear, I'm not making any claims about whether this is a large proportion or not, because I have absolutely no idea (and I have doubts this would even be possible to calculate with even a remote degree of confidence purely via philosophical discussion). If anything, some sort of study that provides evidence that this number is lower than expected would be a strong argument against typical "tough on crime" policies that are often popular with people who express concern about human nature in this regard.

Not really. They get 25m here, 25m there, a little off the top over there, a crypto pump and dump once in a while, and they end up with billions.

While the specifics may differ, this is neither their first time doing a deal like this nor will it be their last.

That's something that has bothered me about this entire administration, particularly the bizarre and disturbing involvement of the Diablo-cheating billionaire.

Everyone knew that a lot of politicians have been for sale, but I didn't realize how cheaply they were for sale. Musk able to buy his way into being in charge of an idiotic department with basically no regulation while still being allowed to CEO like five companies, and he did it for like $100 million. That's a lot of money, more than I'll ever be worth, but it's way less than I would think it would cost to buy the presidency, in charge of billions (and maybe trillions?) of dollars of sales and contracting.

the US is like a new born deer against battalion of ninjas when it comes to corruption.

Decades of believing we are blessed with some sort of perpetual exceptionalism has made the American people not only susceptible to corruption but actively unknowingly promote it. Propaganda has convinced them to invite it into their house and let it know where all your money is and your bank account information.

We're still here mostly because these are the dollar store fascists. If they were really competent this would be the fourth reich already by now and all brown people would have been exterminated in concentration camps.

Have you ever considered that they’re not fascists at all, don’t have the goals that you’re claiming they have, and don’t hold any of the views you claim they have?

There is no need for such derogatory language, sex workers would be deeply offended that you compared them to the Trump apparatus.

I can't understand why denigrating someone as a prostitute or w**e is not called out as inappropriate if not fully misogynist. Its history is deeply, inescapably misogynist, it's anti-sex worker as you say, and it's just tacky. Corruption of morals for money doesn't need to be feminized to make an argument.

In this context they're not the whores, they're the johns. Trump / the PAC would be the whores, but what else is new?

It's a loss-leader. Once the patronage system has solidly taken hold, then they raise the prices. Our only consolation is that the fascist-supporting techbros are going to be victims of their own enshittification dynamic - they think they're paying customers, but they're actually the product. The autocracy will continue to increase its meddling to maintain its own political legitimacy. Moldbug's enlightened benevolent monarch who needn't care about politics is a pipe dream.

A whore doesn't have to charge any given john very much when they can service a large number of them.

> 25M isn’t even that much money. Not only are they whores, they’re cheap whores.

I don't know, Anthropic is providing 10K open source developers with $200 subscriptions to their bot, for up to 6 months. 200 * 10000 * 6 = $12 Million total. That's even cheaper, I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from all this.

This has to be one of the worst whataboutism I've seen. No one is objecting to this corruption because it was cheap. Just expressing incredulity

To summarize all nepotism indicators posted here by various people:

- The Kushner family has invested in OpenAI.

- OpenAI uses Oracle cloud. Ellison is close to Trump.

- Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan (the “spy sheikh") has invested $500 million in World Liberty and is also invested in OpenAI.

- Altman is a protege of Thiel, whose Palantir integrates the external AI at the Pentagon.

- The scam occurs right before the Iran war starts. The Groq sale scam (where Trump Jr.'s 1789 Capital bought shares just months before the sale) occurred right before Christmas. So both were timed to be overshadowed by larger events or holidays.

Don't overlook the media consolidation under Bari Weiss.

Sweet, excellent idea for the government to tie itself to a bubble.

If it doesn't pop while Trump's in office, his successor will inherit this mess, bubble will pop, and that person will have to deal with managing the fallout.

The time to lock-in gainful employment is now (if you can).

A bubble is just a great opportunity to pass more money to yourself and your friends.

And then hoover up assets after the bubble pops.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

And JD Vance is Thiel's boy.

The oligarchic system is not only poisonous to economic growth but also incredibly hard to dislodge. Most of you are American and likely thinking that this is an aberration that will be rectified come next election cycle but I believe you are going to get disappointed. People who scaled the government buildings in a coup attempt are not going to give up power willingly. And now they have coerced your oligarchs to come to their side and those who fail the loyalty test like Amodei are getting punished. You are not approaching Russia style kleptocracy. You're already there.

[flagged]

This is one of the few interpretations that make sense of this timeline at this time. I'd be cautious since it's still speculation. But discovery is going to be interesting.

This interpretation is kinda obvious to anyone who has seen similar schemes in other countries. It‘s done almost by the book, except there‘s no criminal case against Anthropic management or shareholders, because USA is not yet there.

> It’s one thing for the government to reject Anthropic’s terms—and entirely another to banish them permanently and, absurdly and punitively declare them a supply chain risk. Worse, they did it in favor of someone else who took pretty similar terms and happened to have given more campaign contributions.

It's just a variation on Snowball being chased off Animal Farm.

This is only a surprise to HN, because all the other threads about the corrupt US regime have been flagged before. I guess now is a good time as any to start paying attention. Who would've thought that attention is all you need?

I like to think that you wrote this whole comment to sneak the paper title instead of it being an apt pun/nod.

I think you’re making a major unspoken assumption which is that all of the downvotes / flags are from real users. HN has no form of identity verification and is functionally equivalent to 4chan. Theres no telling how many bot farms exist on here with the sole purpose of manipulating discourse to be favorable to the current US administration and also Israel.

[flagged]

When you say "HN", do you mean you? Who else was surprised? The place is full of people constantly commenting about how bad the US is, how corrupt the government is, how terrible CEOs (particularly Altman) are, late stage capitalism, etc., etc.

They've been around forever, even before Trump's first administration. But a broken clock is right twice a day.

Those people also get down voted to oblivion. Their text is gray. I can't read it unless I click the timestamp.

Clearly, HN doesn't want us to listen to them.

Yes, sometimes they can be combative and inflammatory. But even the ones that are otherwise reasonable get down voted because how dare we insult capitalism and billionaires?

In reality nothing you said is happening on HN. It’s the pro-US and pro-Trump comments that are downvoted and flagged to oblivion.

> They've been around forever

That is "HN". HN is the people who read and post here.

> Those people also get down voted to oblivion. Their text is gray. I can't read it unless I click the timestamp.

I'm sure some are but quite a few are not because I have been able to see them quite a lot without clicking.

> Yes, sometimes they can be combative and inflammatory. But even the ones that are otherwise reasonable get down voted because how dare we insult capitalism and billionaires?

I must say that I have never seen that happen, but I don't tend to trawl through a lot of hidden comments. There certainly seem to be some favored billionaires who might upset people to criticize here. Trump is obviously not among them.

I’m one of those criticasters and I’m getting downvoted constantly. I don’t care about the downvotes. I do care about western countries slipping into fascism just because people are so proud to admit they voted for a stupid clown.

I'm more upset about the large group of people in the startup industry, possibly even a majority, who would be totally happy about countries slipping into fascism if they made a little more money along the way.

Who cares about ethics and morality? Those aren't profitable!

Yes, but it's not just personal moral failings, the system itself is corrupt. Rich people aren't supposed to be constantly living on the precipice and forced to double down on evil to keep their wealth. It shouldn't be all-or nothing. This is the result of our debt-based system. This is deeply abnormal. Rich people should be comfortable in every way and should have the surplus to take a moral stance without risking to lose everything. You can see this play out very clearly with OpenAI. Sam has enemies. He may have done some things that he fears would catch up with him if he loses power. It's always like this with the most powerful people; they usually end up making Faustian bargains which put them into extreme all-or-nothing situations and they take the entire world for a ride with them.

That's not to say anyone should be excused but the system's fragility compounds the problem.

Rich people aren't supposed to be constantly living on the precipice and forced to double down on evil to keep their wealth.

That does resonate to some extent, when I see people of actual merit (or at least, people who have done things with actual merit) like Jeff Bezos and Jensen Huang, lining up to suck meritless people like Trump off.

The problem is, once the rich people have secured their fortunes through self-abasement, they never seem to use those fortunes to redress the humiliation they've suffered. That makes your argument a hard sell. Would Bezos and Musk and Cook and Huang and Dell and Altman and Soon-Shiong and Zuckerberg and Mickey Mouse -- all the figures from the famous Ann Telnaes cartoon and more -- still be as supportive of Trump if they didn't have to be?

We have no evidence to the contrary.

There are a lot of comments criticizing who do not get downvoted constantly. I know because I have read them.

You may criticize and you may get downvoted, but it may not be the case that you are being downvoted just because you criticize, and it is certainly not the case that all criticism gets downvoted.

I think a lot of voters didn't know what they were getting the country into, or just were too ignorant or misinformed to notice, in voting for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party. There are actual fascists too, of course. I'm just disappointed that they won; the damage has already been immeasurable, and to some extent irreversible, and we're not even halfway into the term.

> I think a lot of voters didn't know what they were getting the country into

You were not around for the 2017-2021 preview? Thisis the second term! Everybody cpuld see exactly what the country would be getting into!

The first term was just him being an idiot. He's stupid.

The second term is Elon dismantling the entire intelligence system, infiltrating every government agency and compromising every datacenter, piping all the data into a centralized database for stalking and mass deportation, etc.

While it was absolutely clear that Trump's bad news, I don't think anybody quite predicted the absolute fascism that would spring up, and just how quickly it would overwhelmingly FUCK everything.

His first term was relatively harmless but I guess it really rallied the goons, who proceeded to have four entire years to prepare the next dark ages.

> I don't think anybody quite predicted the absolute fascism that would spring up

There were plenty of people, we just didn't believe them.

This is too naive. A lot of voters were eager and happy to vote for hurting other people on the premise that it was somehow going to turn into personal benefit. They are only now upset because it turns out they're being hurt too.

An dpeople have short memories when it comes to this stuff. If the USA somehow manages to survive this and Trump and his allies are peacefully voted out and removed from power, I'd bet $250 that a lot of 2024 Trump voters would still happily vote for a platform consisting mostly of Trump's 2024 platform and Project 2025 plans. They're not learning the lesson that the core policy approach is designed to facilitate our decline into corporate feudalism; they're just learning the lesson that Trump himself and a few other specific individuals are bad, for them, personally. Trump Regret is not going to be enough to save us.

> This is too naive. A lot of voters were eager and happy to vote for hurting other people on the premise that it was somehow going to turn into personal benefit. They are only now upset because it turns out they're being hurt too.

That is literally exactly what Leopards Eating People's Faces Party means.

> "'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party."

Right, but my point is that the people who vote for leopards eating faces in the first place aren't thinking critically about the leopard ended up eating their face. Conservatives are angry at Trump specifically, and they are completely missing the big picture that the entire movement of conservatism is controlled by powerful interests in service of furthering along the corporate feudalism project. They are voting emotionally with a narrow focus on whatever issues are right in front of them, unaware how extensively their attention and focus is manipulated by propaganda and the media, both mainstream and alternative. That is why people keep voting for the leopards eating faces over and over.

I think a lot of people are trying to excuse their responsibility by blaming the people who voted for Trump.

Like, it's just weird and creepy to see closeted fascists wearing Democrat skins who will try and convince you they still hate Trump.

Still fascist though, huh

Why are you lying? I can see that your comments are not flagged, and your karma is high.

In reality there is massive brigading against pro Trump and pro US commentary and total tolerance for anti-Trump and anti-US diatribes.

You know those people have existed since practically forever, right? You learn to tune it out and then you never notice if they start being less wrong.

I don't want to spoil Marty Supreme (2025), but there's a provocative line delivered by Kevin O’Leary (yes, the Shark Tank guy):

"I was born in 1601. I’m a vampire. I’ve been around forever."

> You know those people have existed since practically forever, right?

Yes.

> You learn to tune it out and then you never notice if they start being less wrong.

Speak for yourself. I have not tuned them out, I notice them a lot.

It's the surface details problem: people post nice sounding things on the internet but don't think about them and do the nostradamus thing of predicting everything because caused by everything.

If you predict a corrupt cartel in "the US" will do a thing, then on a long enough timescale you'll eventually be right in general but wrong about every significant detail.

(also the people with this opinion don't seem to do anything with it - it doesn't appear to motivate them to vote, organize, think critically or come up with compromises - they simply turn out to belittle people on the internet while actually acting to normalize new excesses).

Just cancelled my chatgpt subscription.

That's a wrong move I guess (you willingly take pain but no one else suffers). The right one would be to get an Anthropic subscription. And an even better one would be to donate to the Democrats.

I already have an Anthropic sub.

There is not a single Democrat candidate I agree with or would gladly donate to. That party is almost as much of a joke as the Republicans are, and they all fuck kids anyways.

Besides, that money would only end up being spent on an absentee, self-obsessed, do-nothing Governor who wants to play more corrupt politics like his Aunt. Scam artists across the board.

An even better one would be to run for office on the platform of not being a piece of shit like everyone else. Democrats aren't good.

Ah yes the paragons of virtue who dont also insidiously continue dismantling the country in their own way lol.

Did everyone forget Anthropic is already partnered with Palantir?

It's interesting this thread is all about how the deal is basically the same therefore corruption. And the other thread is all about how it's subtly different therefore OpenAI has no model red lines.

I'd love to hear if Anthropic actually would accept this deal, if offered.

It’s corruption and a different deal.

OAI and USG have publicly stated deal is materially different. On what basis does anyone think the deal is the same?

Because Altman says the deal is the same.

No he has clearly said there are differences. He has said that the points around what it may be used for are the same. HOWEVER, he has also stated that the definitions and enforcement are left to US law in the OAI contract. These were left to Anthropic in theirs.

"On the very same day that Altman offered public support to Amodei [CEO of Anthropic], he signed a deal to take away Amodei’s business, with a deal that wasn’t all that different. You can’t get more Altman than that."

He's young, he's got enough time to outdo himself.

> In capitalism, the market decides.

No, capital (i.e. money) decides. It’s called capitalism not marketism. The difference is important because it means that if you’re already rich (or are perceived as such, and thus can get loans, extensions, and the like) you can continue to survive longer than the alternatives.

How disappointing it is to see how easily some leaders in our industry abandon their principles, and how cheaply they sell out their fellow man.

The tech industry was never perfect. It was never a charity. But there was a time, several years ago now, when people were more driven to build things that delighted others.

That was always a lie. Gates became the richest pedo in the world building a monopoly of bad software and destroying other people's businesses. Since then things only got worse.

I just can't take Gary seriously anymore after reading this thread:

https://x.com/alfcnz/status/1991210361769320820

LOL. "I often remind clowns (his word) of my PhD from MIT when I was 23, my tenure at NYU 30 (sic), my six books, publications in Science and Nature, or the machine learning company that I founded and sold to Uber. Sometimes I mention my Senate testimony."

He should get together with Musk and commiserate about how worldly success is no substitute for adoration on Twitter.

That said, I doubt he's wrong about the nature of this debacle. A thousand years from now, the ghosts of Altman and Amodei are still going to wander the earth in search of ways to dunk on each other.

> It’s one thing for the government to reject Anthropic’s terms—and entirely another to banish them permanently and, absurdly and punitively declare them a supply chain risk. Worse, they did it in favor of someone else who took pretty similar terms and happened to have given more campaign contributions.

Marcus is so overrated. He's not even good at straight factual reporting. The terms were not "pretty similar". He missed the whole point of the recent controversy.

> Anthropic deserves a chance at EXACTLY the same terms

No, those terms are bullshit.

> It sure look like the US is transitioning* from the former to the latter.

*has transitioned

This is the guy you want controlling the technology that will determine humanity's future?

> will determine humanity's future

According to him. These are same people that said we'd have self driving cars by 2017. That we'd be able to buy things with BitCoin. But here we are, it's 2026 and all of it has turned out to be a lot less revolutionary and world changing than advertised. We're just barely getting the internet as it was advertised before the dot com bubble, and to be honest, it kinda sucks. AI can do some cool stuff, but I'm very sceptical about all the hype.

Every ‘model provider’ should be labeled a severe supply-chain risk, get real.

How does Brockman sleep at night? These guys used to seem like standup ethical guys. It seems no amount of intellectualism is enough to ward off the poison of wealth.

I've also noticed that he is the CTO of the one of the most important tech companies in the world, and none of his tweets are remotely technically interesting - just banalities.

You would think he might have something interesting technical to say... but no.

> These guys used to seem like standup ethical guys.

You had your answer around the time that he decided to side with Altman when he could have kept his own counsel.

With a bottle of fentonol in his mouth.

(standup that's for sure)

It's the other way around, people who are good people will "drop" from the race way before they get to this stage.

So it's more that only psychopaths will continue to push up the mountain when they already have many hundreds of lifetimes worth of wealth. Imagine being in that situation and still wanting to be involved in backstabbing power games rather than enjoy time with your kids.

Can someone ELI5?

Sam Altman "donated" a bunch of money to US government officials.

US government officials said "we're thinking of ruining Anthropic if they don't play ball".

Sam Altman publicly said "oh no, don't do that, that's terrible, they're right to not play ball".

Sam Altman signed a deal to play ball after he said that, and it turned out he had been working on this deal even before the US government officials said the thing about ruining Anthropic.

Yep. The political donation was the main thing. But let’s not forget AI Czar David Sacks has been crying about Anthropic being woke for a couple years. He has probably been trying to kill every single non right wing AI company. After years of whining about lawfare on the All In podcast, these people are all too happy to engage in the worst kind of lawfare.

There is a cabal of extremists steering technology contracts in this administration and among their donors. The names are familiar - Peter Thiel, Joe Lonsdale, Elon Musk, David Sacks, Palmer Luckey, etc. A future administration will need to purge all their companies from our government and investigate them for corruption and treason.

> A future administration will need to purge all their companies

Good luck, democrats will put some of that easy money on their pockets and look the other way, like they always did.

when market is small its just donations

Honestly, this makes me almost feel better about the whole situation.

I had been finding it super unsettling: Like, why would DoD go nuclear over wanting to build fully autonomous weapons… with Claude?

But no, it’s just run-of-the-mill Trump administration corruption. Phew!

Unfortunately the article is wrong, the OpenAI deal relents on exactly what Anthropic wouldn't. The OpenAI deal is "you can do anything that's 'legal'". This is the same as "zero restrictions", in the real world. Anthropic was offered the same and said "no, these two usecases are not allowed, period".

Haggling with DoD over contract terms and losing out is utterly routine. Ending up labeled a supply chain risk as a result is not.

I cannot take Gary seriously anymore since it's an article about deep learning hitting a wall [1].

[1] - https://nautil.us/deep-learning-is-hitting-a-wall-238440/

What does it matter whether the author can be "taken seriously"? How does his (mistaken?) 2022 assessment of the progress of deep learning have any bearing on his comments on possibly unethical and corrupt business actions of OpenAI's leadership?

I was scratching my head trying to work out the difference between the deal with anthropic, and the deal with openai.

I asked gemini.

The one detail was that the contract enforced the law with anthropic, but with openai it was legal uses.

Sounds like hair splitting, but this article explains the real story.

"In capitalism, the market decides.

In oligarchy, connections and donations decide.

It sure look like the US is transitioning from the former to the latter"

I honestly can't understand how anyone sees things this way. The US isn't transitioning at all. It is and has been a complete oligarchy for at least 70 years.

I've taken to discounting any political talking-head that wont consistently acknowledge and push that axiom as THE fundamental assumption of all political discourse.

A lot of rightfully righteous anger here. I'm amused that this wasn't the response when semiconductors from Taiwan were exempted from tarrifs. There, the bribe was much smaller...

The corruption is never-ending, but I think with this case people were especially struck by some of the details like OpenAI claiming their "red lines" were exactly the same as Anthropic's.

Not even trying to justify the switchover would have raised less eyebrows than giving it a clearly nonsense justification.

ABAB: All Billionaires Are Bad

In capitalism, the market decides.

In oligarchy, connections and donations decide.

It sure look like the US is transitioning from the former to the latter.

As someone from genx I can definitively confirm this is how it always worked. If you're younger do not delude yourselves into thinking this is all somehow new and things were better in the past. They weren't.

> In capitalism, the market decides.

> In oligarchy, connections and donations decide.

> It sure look like the US is transitioning from the former to the latter.

One has to wonder on what planet Gary Marcus has lived so far.

In his defence, previously money won, rather than bribing someone to get a competitor nuked from orbit.

Sure you could smear an opposition company, but just straight bribing the government is new, at this scale

There was a long stretch where money would be more of a deciding factor than who you know, and I think we're crossing the threshold where who you know is becoming all that matters.

> In capitalism, the market decides.

> In oligarchy, connections and donations decide.

> It sure look like the US is transitioning from the former to the latter.

I thought this was already pretty clear - since Elmo bunny hopped on Trump’s rally stage

[dead]

Convincing naive people that you're building AI because you love people is the fastest route to power. You have it backwards. There was never any "arc".

S(c)am Altman has had this messed up story arc the entire time, the problem is most people are unaware. Remember when he declared himself the chairman of Y Combinator, they deleted it from YC's blog / website, he filed as YC's chairman with the SEC for years despite not actually being chairman. This was after he stepped down as CEO. Then there's all the sketchiness surrounding some companies he sold.

Guy's the worlds most successful grifter who has world economies by the... anyway...

He’s prime dirtbag material. He and this administration deserve each other.

Sama is the world's second most successful grifter. There's one guy ahead of him.

[dead]

Tool assisted. And I'm not talking about the AI.

It was Greg and Anna Brockman who donated, not Altman. But close enough to the goal post.

In the past I've felt like some of the anti-Altman rhetoric on HN was overkill. It some cases it felt like piling on, and while there was definitely some shady stuff in the past, it seemed like folks were too quick to paste the "evil" banner on anything they disagreed with.

I was wrong, and I no longer think that. I now lump him in with the rest of the narcissistic sociopaths I see with so much power in the country. I'm honestly really curious what past Altman champions like paulg think of him now. I just don't see how this is the slightest bit defensible.

The "We Will Not Be Divided" pledge at https://notdivided.org/ (and discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47188473 ) has 96 OpenAI signatories. Time for these people to show if their signatures actually meant something or were just meaningless theater. It's not like these people would have much of trouble getting jobs given they're AI experts with resumes to back it up. Signing that pledge and then staying at OpenAI after this would just look like rank hypocrisy to me.

I feel the same way about this as I feel about Trump himself. Nobody should be surprised or disappointed, you shouldn't have expected any different.

Well, I'm not surprised, although I think I'm still within my rights to be disappointed. What's unfortunate is I expect some people to be surprised.

[dead]

[dead]

> In capitalism, the market decides.

> In oligarchy, connections and donations decide.

> It sure look like the US is transitioning from the former to the latter.

The US probably always was like that. Now they just don’t bother hiding it.

Such high levels of corruption are not usually called "scam"

The scam part is the fiction perpetrated on the American public that there was a bona fide dispute with Anthropic.

I’ve always heard it called “business as usual”

I still prefer "Scam", "Business as usual" Altman doesnt have the same ring to it...

"Is transitioning to oligarchy"? Really? I don't see how present continuous is justified here.

It has always been an old boys club where connections and hand greasing decided it all. President Trump is the product of this system, not its creator or builder.

> In capitalism, the market decides.

> In oligarchy, connections and donations decide.

> but after Brockman had donated 25M to Trump’s PAC

Sounds like they paid Trump and the government, can it get more capitalistic?

Oligarchy and capitalism don’t contradict each other

Free market capitalism and corporatocracy are two opposite things. (Free markets don't exist without strong institutions and regulation)

I don't know how you can say that. What does "free market capitalism" entail according to you? Wikipedia's definition is just a ruse to be able to claim that free market capitalism is sane, but you can't exclude a governing authority and monopolies at the same time, because the latter always arises. So, in reality, you have to choose, and if you choose absence of authority, corporatocracy is an automatic extension of free market capitalism.

Every unmaintained system degrades. That's next to a tautology. In my opinion, the base problem is modern technology itself that creates the capability for widespread wealth inequality and social fragmentation, without needing real labor or social bonds anymore.

Only in the minds of people who make capitalism a religion. It has always been like this, early capitalism was even worse with dirty money buying every politician they could get their hands on. Just read anything about the US in the end of the 19th century.

They're both capitalism

You are against private property rights? Because abolishing the right to owns things is the only way to prevent any form of capital accumulation.

Of course not, workers' rights to own and democratically control capital is paramount.

Real free market capitalism is a real as working communism and have both the same underlying problem: people.

They lie and cheat to accumulate power

[flagged]

> but after Brockman had donated 25M to Trump’s PAC

> In capitalism, the market decides.

> In oligarchy, connections and donations decide.

Author is confused about what Capitalism is. It worked exactly as expected, Capital used itself to advance it's own needs - maximizing (own) growth.

Capitalism is not about markets, it's about Capital.

There is a reason why lobbying is an accepted practice in one of the most Capitalistic countries in the world, and generally forbidden in Socialist EU.

> generally forbidden in Socialist EU

This is one of those cases where you wish your critics were right. One in 40 people in Brussels is a lobbyist, but apparently it's forbidden.

Very kind of you to only pick one error in the parent post to critique.

I've been working with UK/EU lobbying data in recent months, so that's the one I felt competent to pick on. I thought I'd leave the nature of capitalism to someone else.

Which prominent economist has argued that bribes are an essential part of Capitalism?

Someone came up with the "invisible hand of the free market" theory and become quite famous so I'd say we can add our own crackpot theories on top, apparently they don't have to be very well researched to stick around

Which prominent priest has argued that god doesn't exist?

Can someone explain what the drama is? From what I can tell, OpenAI donated to Trump's campaign then won a contract with his government. Anthropic lost that contract because they had some morality redlines they refused to relax. Where exactly is the badness in there?

Is there evidence the donation cause them to win the contract? Seems like the evidence is that their competitor backed out, no?

I suspect this is a conspiracy theory feeding on people's pre-existing hatreds.

What does this have to do with AI capabilities specifically?

This is literally the politics of running massive business interests, which I understand is relevant for technology and everything…

… but isn’t Gary Marcus’s whole game that AI is not capable and people are wrong/lying about AI tech capabilities?

I feel like this is a handy moment for Gary where he can say he could basically ignore all of his previous claims (because they’re all technically wrong) and shift into “AI is bad for society because it’s more crony capitalism” or something kind of muddy argument.

What's your argument here? He's not allowed to discuss crony capitalism because you imagine that he thinks LLMs suddenly became reliable.

It’s a comment about who Gary Marcus is presenting himself as

My intention is for other people to think what I believe which is Gary Marcus is a hack and has no business being listened to with respect to technical evaluation of AI because he’s not technically competent enough to do. The existence of his polemics waste everybody’s time and generally waste resources like we’re wasting right now.

His entire schtick has been as the debunker in chief of claims of AI capabilities

If you actually look at his polemics they increasingly have nothing to do with his original argument because his original argument not only is flawed but is ignorant of the technical capabilities

What "technical competence" do you need to provide a technical evaluation, o person who is posting a comment to the "here's how I vibe-coded a fantasy football analytics service" forum? You think everyone here has a technically deep background?

Then disassemble the argument the author is making and show people an alternative reality based take if you want to be taken seriously.

Fell For It Again-award

I got baited into clicking another AI post.

It's only a matter of time before an OpenAI killer drone accidentally targets Gary Marcus and Scam Altman says "oopsie".

[dead]

"In capitalism, the market decides.

In oligarchy, connections and donations decide."

Who's gonna tell him there never was a difference?

[dead]

sounds likely and plausible but also like an "unproven conspiracy theory"

which part is unproven enough to not seem like a kleptocracy?

I can't believe I had to scroll this far down to see something slightly critical of this conspiratorial post and collection of HN comments.

Everyone here needs to take a deep breath, step back, and remind yourselves that everything you're claiming is unproven and is a conspiracy theory. The language of the contracts is not publicly available

I'll try not to be too flippant but... he thought the US ever _wasn't_ an oligarchy?

Flippant be hanged! IMO, it all started with W Bush, who put the icing on that cake by invading Iraq based on a televised lie. He was "sneaky" but the current administration doesn't even try to sneak. The mid-terms may be our final chance to save our nation.

> The mid-terms may be our final chance to save our nation.

I don’t understand anyone who believes that. What do you expect to happen during the midterms exactly that would bring the US back on some mythical track of rule of law, with a just and fair government? The corruption runs so deep, the institutions have been gutted, there are no good people in charge left. This ride is going to last a while, and the way out (if there’s one) looks nothing like the way in.

Yeah, that's the thing. Even in the most optimistic of dreams, Democrats won't end up with supermajorities in both the House and Senate. They can pass whatever bills they want, but Trump doesn't have to sign them.

Sure, there will be things that Trump wants to do that he might actually need Congress for, and maybe there's room to make deals to advance some kind of progressive/liberal policies here and there. But I don't think this will slow Trump down too much, honestly.

And in 2028? Who knows what the state of things will be by then. Maybe we'll end up with a non-shit president at the start of 2029, but what kind of executive branch will they be inheriting? It would take an entire presidential term, possibly two, to undo the damage Trump and his shit-heels have done. And even then, it will never be the same, not to mention reputational, economic, and scientific losses that will -- at best -- set us back decades (if not permanently).

Indeed, that's why we have to vote maga out and start over. We can't get lost in what we think will happen, we have to vote and then pay closer attention. We have to vote in people to congress who know exactly what the people demand.

You can vote in whoever you want, they'll take billionaire money the same way. The problem is not voting, it's the system.

No doubt the system is broken. But like all systems, you get what you put into it. Something is always better then nothing, effort is always worthwhile, even if the results turn sideways. Why? Because guilt sucks.

I mean first step of triage is stop the bleeding. Obviously I want more but making this admin a lame duck for the last two years would be a win.

Honestly making them veto a bunch of popular to regular people legislation would probably do wonders for the "they're both the same" crowd.

Well, you could bury your head in the sand, would that make you feel any better? Or one could vote out maga and, over time, start to rebuild. trump's election was helped mostly by two major factions: white women voters and many registered demo voters who stayed home. Thanks to these groups and his base of lunatics, we're in a hellish shit storm.

> The mid-terms may be our final chance to save our nation.

Republicans are on track to win the mid-terms…

S&P500 is all you need

Fed cuts interest rate, jobs go up, 401k go up, RSU go up, credit card points go up, everyone is happy

Colin Powell must be shaking vials of yellow powder in his grave right now.

> In oligarchy, connections and donations decide. It sure look like the US is transitioning from the former to the latter

Transitioning? That happened post WW2. How many more wars in the Middle East do we need to convince people?

Though, I think it’s hard for Marcus’ generation to see this. Odd given Vance’s connections to Thiel et al.

> Transitioning?

To be fair, there has been a notable recent shift in the sense that nobody even tries to hide what is going on anymore.

We've moved beyond manufacturing consent to ass out corruption on full display, "try to stop me."

I wouldn't be surprised if after some time we found out that Amodei signed the same deal as well, and then he will go on a press tour about how he was forced to do it.

ਚੋਰ ਮਚਾਏ ਸ਼ੋਰ

How is elon differnt? Every billionaries is the same . grow up people

Is this a blog post or someone's notes for a blog post?

It's a short and quick blog post. Bloggers used to do that once in a while (before twitter made it the only allowed mode of expression to please the advertisers.)

Other posts from G.Marcus are much longer. Go read them, but be prepared for some "adversarial thinking" if you strongly believe in the scaling hypothesis. Might border on "bubble popping ". You're all for free speech and the free market of idea, so it won't be a problem.

However, he has a low threshold for bullshit. And SamA is probably not getting any higher in his esteem this week.

LOL. Are you mistaking writing critique for some childish form of disagreement on the issues?

I think, in the middle of all the grandiose proponents of "AGI is coming any time soon", "AI is going to cure cancer", "LLMs will fix climate change", "ChatGPT will bring back your estranged lover", etc... Some critique has to be a bit harsh. "The data center has no clothes", in a way ?

I agree that the author gets a bit childish when he goes into name dropping of people who used to disagree with him and don't any more - there's probably some background drama that I'm not particularly interested in.

Still. I believe having both Gary Marcus and Dwarkesh Panel in a timeline, in chronological fashion, whiteout and algo to tell me who's right, is one of the perks of substack.

The docile donkeys that sheepishly use such products don't really care.

And they are the majority. Thats what Sam Altman understands

Seems pretty unimportant and inconsequential though because LLMs don't work anyway because they aren't logic-based symbolic AI, right?

I know you trying to mock Marcus, but the reality is that all the big LLM providers have been shifting to integrating symbolic reasoning into their models for over a year now since they noticed that scale-alone is a dead-end. Also DeepMind's AlphaFold, which won the nobile price, is neuro-symbolic AI - so I think both of those points very much justify Marcus's long criticism of pure subsymbolic LLM "AI" as a path to real causal reasoning.

I think he is right here, but it is interesting to see that Gary Marcus is transitioning to AI too (writing style...)

> But here’s the kicker > Let that sink in

The biggest tell for AI writing is just being AI adjacent. I've started avoiding reading AI articles here because (surprise) they all feel like a chatGPT transcript.

"But I believe in fair play. This wasn’t that."

Anthropic’s Super Bowl ads weren't fair play either.

Why not??

Because the models aren't going to be recommending products in their conversations. The ads will be visually separate from the model's output.

As they first were in Google. Were you around then?

> As they first were in Google.

So because you saw it once in one company, it will happen in every company? By that logic, wont Claude eventually get ads too, even though they are saying that they wont?

Even now, Google ads wrap around the content, they don't mess with the search results.

> Were you around then?

Yes. I was around for AltaVista, WebCrawler, and Lycos too. None of those were LLMs.

I think it is a good bet that Claude will eventually get ads too, if they don't drop the consumer segment. Ads are free money; most don't care.

I think most would care if their AI buddy starts shilling products mid-conversation. People would lose trust, instantly. That's why the Super Bowl ads were unfair. It's not going to happen like that. That would be stupid. Say what you like about Sam Altman but he's not stupid.

This https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027594072811098230 is the simplest and most logical explanation as to what happened. The disagreement was over who would be the arbiter of "lawful usage" of the technology, the US government or Amodei.

No, that’s not accurate at all, and in case you are genuinely confused:

1. Anthropic should be free to sell its services under whatever legal terms and conditions it wants.

2. The Pentagon should be free to buy those services, negotiate for different terms, refuse to buy those services, and terminate contracts subject to any termination clauses.

You may or may not agree with what the Pentagon wants to do, but if things had stayed there, there would be no real issue.

The problem is that the Pentagon is trying to bury Anthropic as a company, calling it a danger to the United States because it exerted its non-controversial right in (1).

Any “explanation” that doesn’t address that is confused itself or trying to confuse the issue.

I leave it to you as to which category the linked source falls under.

1. Agree

2. Agree

> The problem is that the Pentagon is trying to bury Anthropic as a company, calling it a danger to the United States because it exerted its non-controversial right in (1).

My take is that the DoD very much wanted to continue using Claude. However, Amodei refused to budge on relinquishing final say over Claude usage. The DoD took this as a personal offense (how dare this guy, does he know who we are, etc) and lashed out in retaliation. The whole sequence of events makes sense when viewed under this lense.

> Amodei refused to budge on relinquishing final say over Claude usage.

So did Altman. The terms of each company’s agreement with the DoW are roughly the same when they come out of the wash.

“Mr. Altman negotiated with the Department of Defense in a different way from Anthropic, agreeing to the use of OpenAI’s technology for all lawful purposes. Along the way, he also negotiated the right to put safeguards into OpenAI’s technologies that would prevent its systems from being used in ways that it did not want them to be.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/technology/openai-agreeme...

“Roughly the same” != “the same”. Changing one or two words words in a contract can make a huge difference.

That is way too reactive for these people

It is more likely the plan purposely gave Anthropic terms it knew it would not accept to give a certain public perception. OpenAI was always going to be the recipient, but for reasons unknown, they could not make the deal directly, and had to create the perception that they had no choice.

> However, Amodei refused to budge on relinquishing final say over Claude usage.

And that's 100% acceptable and legal. They have the right to do that. And DoW can then turn around and say "no deal". And that's 100% acceptable and legal.

So Hegseth going above and beyond and lashing out on the People's behalf like a butthurt child is unwarranted at best, and should definitely be illegal if it's not already.

I agree, my point is simply that Hegseth lashing out over Amodei's refusal is more plausible than a grand conspiracy to move to OpenAI (while simultaneously locking themselves out from Claude).

I do agree with this.

Do you actually believe things this administration says? Is there some kind of drug that makes this possible?

You actually believe these people when they talk?