Comment by strongpigeon
6 days ago
It is a bit scary how people seem to genuinely be OK with violence (see this reddit thread [0]). Is just me or does it feel like the overall "temperature" has gone up.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1shugf8/firebomb_t...
Well, dropping bombs and threatening to end a civilization certainly made me think the temperature had gone up. I’m not sure I think a single attempted act against some guy is worth being worried by against that backdrop.
I think much the reaction to the Brian Thompson killing also seemed ok with the violence despite it happening before the events you describe, though I guess that could be an outlier.
I think more and more Americans have what C. Wright Mills called the "sociological imagination".
We pour tons of effort into punishing visceral, direct violence like a stabbing or shooting. But if white collar crime is being committed that leads to the death of hundreds of thousands of people, it's rare that anyone sees jail time. Maybe you could argue the decisions of Brian Thompson made only account for maybe 10% of why XYZ died but when you scale that out, you could easily argue this to be a form of white collar mass murder.
I think the younger generations are increasingly aware of this disparity in justice. If you find it hard to understand the celebration of violent vengeance but don't feel the same inability to understand the celebration of Jeffrey Doucet's retribution, then perhaps you are lacking the sociological imagination.
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That's because Brian Thompson was functionally a serial killer.
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And the reason for _that_ is because of the callous way American society accepts the deaths of thousands of people who die due to the Healthcare Industrial complex (of which Brian Thompson was a key member of). Just because those deaths don't happen with guns doesn't make them any less important.
Yeah, only 2 posts in and you're already talking about Putin.
Oh?
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This is exactly the point of part one of Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence, by Geoffrey Canada. Unequal or lack of access to the executive branch of government will create a culture of vigilantism and lends itself to organized crime as a replacement for the policing arm of the state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fist%2C_Stick%2C_Knife%2C_Gun
People become okay with vigilante justice when they see the executive branch as compromised, just look at the insane plot/ending of the film Singham.
Many people see this happening in the US. We should expect to see more vigilante justice and organized crime if we see the executive branch as having a significant principal-agent problem.
Re: Organized crime.
Organized crime is also going to escalate as the economic squeeze continues to hit white collar workers. Pumping out a bunch of computer science graduates and rendering them unemployable isn't going to lead to all of them giving up and working at Walmart. A certain amount are going to figure out that they can make a better living by going black hat. Likewise for all the office managers, etc. who are put out of a job as belts tighten. Threatening the livelihoods of people who were led to expect a certain standard of living and who can organize and exploit systems is exactly how you end up with organized crime. Doubly so when the burden is falling on the young, who have more appetite for risky decisions.
When I say organized crime, I don’t just mean intelligent criminals. I mean a culture of loyalty. For organized crime to function, all of the members need to have a system of justice underpinning their actions in order to keep the organization whole.
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We gave up violence and made the state the authority but thats contingent on the social contract being upheld.
We did this in the late 1800's and early 1900's because the upper classes understood that they needed to be afraid of the masses. Prior to that political violence seems like it was the order of the day. The US has always had a pretty strong aristocracy, but the aristocrats were variously either moral people or they at least had enough of a sense of self-preservation that they wouldn't get too greedy.
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I wonder how much the complete impunity of those involved with Jeffery Epstein has destroyed the faith in the executive branch? People like Leon Black, Les Wexner and a couple of presidents not only escaped justice, but pretty much any scrutiny by any institution, media included. I think it's hard for people to look at that and not think they need to take the law into their own hands.
I’m surely out of the loop here but what crimes are there evidence of Leon Black or Les Wexner having committed?
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> just look at the insane plot/ending of the film Singham.
What does that even mean?
Spoiler alert for the film. The film ends, not with any kind of officially sanctioned justice, but with a completely extrajudicial killing, for which audiences are expected to cheer. This is exactly the point of an untrustworthy executive branch getting us cheering for what is essentially organized crime that favors our side over another.
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Not defending them or even Luigi but I would argue a lot of it is the abysmal labour institutions the USA got (lots of union busting, few modern laws against modern exploitation and classical institutions are undermined politically and legally).
And the growing class divide in the USA I think is the reason why folks are increasingly seeing violence against the upper class is seen as the only option.
Again doesn't mean it makes it right, but it explains why it is almost only an US phenomenon.
> explains why it is almost only an US phenomenon
Genuine question: is it?
Certainly not. Nepal's Gen Z literally overthrew their government due to inequality and corruption.
https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/09/nepal-gen-z-t...
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What do you mean by “or even Luigi”?
Luigi Mangione, the guy who shot an health insurance company CEOs in 2024
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There is a secret level in Super Mario's bros where you play as Luigi and try to fix Healthcare. Has a boss and everything.
"protest without a disruption is just a parade"
These are message boards. The obvious sentiment, that firebombing attacks are awful (perhaps cut a little bit with "the perpetrator appears to be someone deeply in need of help) is boring. This is an availability bias issue: the only sentiments that actually spool out into threads are edgy. Once you learn to spot these effects, message boards make a lot more sense and are less jarring.
Another good thread to follow is the murdering of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42317604
It's an interesting exercise to compare these threads.
My own position on the matter is the not an edgy one: political violence of any kind, is never justified, but it does signal that something deep in society requires a change.
I'm of the view that it's violence of the non-political kind that is never justified*. Political violence can be legitimized, as an option of last resort. There's plenty of historical examples where groups of people were denied every avenue of redress until they turned violent. As an example, read up on the history of most labour unions.
* one exception being defense of life and limb.
I am european and not american, but since reddit is mostly used by americans I would say that from their prospective political violence is justified and encoded in the constitution. How would you explain the second emendment?
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> political violence of any kind, is never justified,
I'm genuinely curious about how you reconcile this with the world around you.
I completely disagree. Political violence is the universal check on every political system that keeps it from sucking too much.
The optimal amount of crazies getting off the porch at any one time is not zero much like the optimal amount of fraud is not zero.
Besides I think the sentiment would be very different if anyone actually got hurt.
"causing a fire to an exterior gate" doesn't lead me to believe there was any chance of real harm.
And the same applies to HN? Edgy messages make it to the top, and the reader should learn to react accordingly (in what way?)
Mostly just by not being emotionally destabilized by edgy comments, is all.
I think this is a little too optimistic:
- Go onto a Reddit thread about ICE, everyone in the comment threads says they don't like ICE. That's the obvious statement, not edgy.
- Go onto a Reddit thread about Trump, everyone says they don't like Trump. That's the obvious statement, not edgy.
Why would we think the Sam Altman thread is any different? I unfortunately think the Reddit thread might be the real deal, or at least a little more real than you are saying.
I'm not saying that violence is legal -- which is definitely not. But it is part of the "packages" and totally depends on whether the one wants to use. Historically violence has been a very...effective tool.
When people feel that law and order do not protect them, some eventually will go "the extra mile" (somehow managers always like this phrase). It's not something we can prevent. It is human nature. I guess super riches really like AI because this gives them extra protection.
> Historically violence has been a very...effective tool.
What to you mean historically? Violence backs every government decree from speeding tickets to the maximum water flow rate of urinals.
Overwhelming violence is something that people will go to amazing lengths and spend nearly all of their economic surplus to avoid.
Seems like its legal if you can pay for it today.
Of course violence is legal. Laws themselves carry no weight if they aren't backed by a credible threat of violence.
Violence by the state is legal. Violence otherwise tends not to be.
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> it is part of the "packages" and totally depends on whether the one wants to use.
Could you explain what packages are and what depends on (what?)?
> Historically violence has been a very...effective tool.
This is dramatic sci-fi for anarchists of all political stripes.
The critical reality to understand is that violence is the most ineffective tool, causing catastrophic harm for others and outcomes that the perpetrators rarely control or foresee. Revolutions can overthrow status quo power but what follows is rarely what the perpetrators aimed for. The same happens in warfare - the outcome is rarely what anyone envisioned at the start, a fundamental lessons that experts try to teach hot-headed amateurs that think warfare will solve their problems.
It also establishes violence as legitimate - usable by everyone else too, a very bad outcome and the opposite of the rule of law, incompatible with freedom; it elevates violence and destruction over life and liberty. In contrast, the American Revolution was founded on principles of freedom and law (for example, in the Declaration of Independence), did not embrace violence as desireable, and laid it out for example in the Declaration of Independence.
The most successful societies have freedom, the rule of law, and allow violence only as a last necessity to restore freedom and the rule of law.
> The most successful societies have freedom, the rule of law, and allow violence only as a last necessity to restore freedom and the rule of law.
The ugly, uncomfortable part is that when a certain fraction of people decide violence is the answer, a tipping point is reached and that's what happens. Historically, people have reached that point en masse without a great deal of provocation. So for a society to remain successful--or to remain at all--it needs to prevent this tipping point from happening. Force alone can't do that.
A lot of people in the US feel like they've already tried the nice way, and it's failed. Given the increasing wealth disparity between the haves and the have-nots, it's hard to argue otherwise.
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I don't know, but just look at Iran and US. Where is "rule of law"? Who is going to give it magically?
Packages = ways to "adapt" to the challenges of the world.
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> In contrast, the American Revolution was founded on principles of freedom and law [...] did not embrace violence as desireable
That's pretty rich, since the United States only exists thanks to systemic, deliberate violence on a mass scale against the local population.
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The American revolution literally engaged in systemic attacks against British property.
The critical reality to understand is that people have always used violence. If they don't believe that they live in a successful society, or if they believe that the success of the society is not distributed fairly (or in a way that benefits them), violence starts looking attractive.
Enlightenment and industrialization created societies that were fairer, wealthier, and more free than anything before. They also created ideologies such as communism and nationalism that killed hundreds of millions. If your ideas are good and successful in the long term but create poverty, suffering, and feelings of unfairness in time scales people care about, there will be violence.
Compromises are the key tool in preventing violence. Unfortunately, the word itself carries negative connotations in too many languages, making effective compromises less likely.
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To play the advocatus diaboli: Violence is always condemned the most if it happens to a member of high society directly. The members many people on this very website picture themselves to be in the future. But if you structually starve half a continent to save a few cents on the dime or fire 30.000 workers that isn't only okay, it deserves a bonus.
If you call one violence but the other is okay because there are some layers of misdirection in between you may have to reconsider your ethics.
It's due to the widening inequality. Nick Hanauer has been talking about this for over ten years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2gO4DKVpa8
I don’t think it’s surprising - some people already consider the actions of AI execs and tech companies to be synonymous to violence. Like, comparing something like this to destroying the livelihoods of millions of people, a lot of people would consider the latter far worse.
Temperature is certainly going up, but it definitely hasn’t reached historic levels yet lol.
Structural violence is the term most commonly used for this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_violence
The Ministry of The Future (Kim Stanley Robinson) lays this scenario out clearly -- people will resort to violence to try to stop what they consider to be the destruction of their lives or society.
I do not think that marketing products and services that do useful work is “violence.”
Illegally mass surveying Americans, and mass murdering people in other countries is "useful work"?
Because Anthropic just lost their US government contract (AND got slapped with a completely false order that prevents them from working with any government agency) because they wouldn't do the above ... and then OpenAI slid right in and said "yeah, we can do that".
What you think does not matter. You need to actually convince the downtrodden, otherwise these attacks will keep happening, and they will get worse.
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Useful work like selecting an all girls school in Iran for triple taps?
Useful work like generating mountains of deepfake misinformation?
Silent corruption at the top causes rot at the bottom. Obvious corruption at the top causes desperation at the bottom.
After watching children literally be liquified in Gaza for two years, violence directed at Sam Altman doesn’t even move the needle. Our entire human rights framework what obliterated by Israel (with the blessing and support of the US and Europe).
What do you mean by violence? Do you consider someone building a monster of a server farm near your home and messing up with your drinking water, electricity and life in general violence? Why violence is only immediate physical one that counts?
All of that has presumably gone through the proper public approval process. Just because you might think the process is flawed, does not justify retaliatory violence in a civilized society
there's no due process in the US, the state is completly corrupt and captured
> retaliatory violence in a civilized society
Are you joking? What civilized society? A society that let people who can't afford insulin die? Let kids starve if they are from poor neighbourhoods? What civilized society are you talking about? The one bombing countries left and right and financing a genocide? What civilization is that? A society where people with full time jobs live paycheck to paycheck with no savings? A society where millions cannot afford shelter and where homelessness is a crime? What civilization is that? When is it OK for you to revolt?
It used to be a little less violent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEMbp6Epfz8
People are okay with violence when democratic means (if first past the post even counts) do not solve their problems.
People being okay with violence when they lose the democratic vote is a problem. The system isn't perfect, but again, if you're resorting to violence instead of campaigning for change, society either has to crush you, or we're all going to anarchy
This is an incredibly privileged take. Also incredibly wrong.
We've been trying peaceful and democratic means for the better part of a century. It hasn't worked and is met with increasing levels of violence from the government. Right now, today the US government is abducting and murdering innocent citizens in broad daylight. No amount of lobbying is going to stop that.
The explicit and overt goal of this administration is to seize power and do away with democracy. No conceivable democratic process can stop that. Peaceful protest doesn't work, the government kills people when they try.
Every means of peaceful protest is met with extreme violence and suppression. And the violence keeps escalating.
People are resorting to violence because violence against the people is escalating. If you can't see that, then you're the problem. If you think violence is inexcusable, then you must also think that peaceful protesters deserve to get executed in the street.
We are already in anarchy. Laws don't matter, only the whims of our dear leader. Private citizens can be plucked off the street or outright murdered with zero consequence or accountability. Dear leader can declare nuclear war without congressional oversight.
If you think violence is inexcusable, you should really read the goddamn declaration of independence. It is a fundamental human right to remove tyranny by whatever means possible. Just because you, personally don't feel threatened by the us government does not mean that innocent people aren't dying. How many citizens do you think a government should be allowed to execute for no reason? How many nukes should one be allowed to launch without cause?
Democracy has been eschewed by our government. Democratic means don't work and haven't for quite some time. Laws no longer apply to the government. If you want to argue that violence is still inexcusable, you're actually arguing for complete and unquestioned obedience to a fascist government. That's not an exaggeration of any kind, this is what's actually happening in the US right now. Democracy is over, we've been an anarchist state for a few years now.
It's a shame there isn't a good alternative.
people are never OK with violence against human beings.
This has to be one of the most naive comments I've read on this site.
Theres example after example of people in history being totally fine with violence against human beings.
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Have you met people?
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Yet we live in a very violent world, some people are definitely ok with it.
Or I missed a hint and you’re dehumanizing them?
Unfortunately some people are.
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Are you kidding? Read the news. Many Americans are totally fine with dropping bombs on other countries (which, you know, kill human beings) if they feel that their cause is "just". They're also OK with violence against human beings in their own country if those people happen to not have the proper documentation, or they're protesting against violence.
It is scary. You know what’s also scary? Being told a robot is going to take your job and healthcare away.
There’s a lot of scary shit going on.
Also scary: Seeing a comment this ostensibly un-controversial in grey.
There's nothing "un-controversial" about trying to mitigate a firebombing attack with a broad critique of capitalism. It's an edgy take, just own it.
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I agree it is scary, but why would a robot take healthcare away? Wouldn't that be the contrary?
The quickest way to rile up an existing mob is to make them fear their livelihood is being reduced or removed. The _robot_ is not taking away healthcare, but the effect of the robot existing hit directly at the livelihood of the masses.
In the US, health insurance is largely tied to employment. Health insurance, in a personal economic sense, reduces to being able to pay for healthcare. This policy is largely a left-over of World War II era employment policies. No one is taking healthcare _away_ from anyone (strictly speaking), but the ability to be able to _pay_ for healthcare is reduced to zero when employment ceases. Accessing the safety net is a separate skillset. This skill set becomes more difficult to achieve because the political class does not want to provide healthcare for everyone, only the worthy (their loyal voters).
I grew up in and am still a member of the precariat. I am educated and doing well, but I wear a well-polished pair of golden handcuffs due to how my ability to afford healthcare for myself, and my family, is tied to employment. Politically, I _do not_ like being tied to my employer by such a chain, but my arguments to change the system have been met with quite firm push-back.
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There are stories about insurance companies using AI when determining if a claim should be let through or denied.
https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/healthcare/2026/03/...
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Because healthcare in the US is tied to employment. For most people here, losing a job means losing access to healthcare (partially or totally).
Well in the US you get healthcare from a job (either directly in the form of insurance or indirectly in the form the money to pay for healthcare). If the robot takes your job, it takes your healthcare too.
You know this, stop pretending otherwise.
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Because the robot would take their job and having a job is a precondition to healthcare (may vary by country)?
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because in America, if they don't have a job (because a robot replaced them), they can't get healthcare
1. Americans need a job to get healthcare
2. Robots take away jobs from Americans and the proceeds to go the owner (investor) class
3. Americans no longer have healthcare
Understand?
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the narrative im hearing is AI breakthroughs will drive the cost of healthcare to zero (i.e. Alphafold etc)
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People thought grand theft auto would do it, but in the end it was twitter and facebook.
GINI index in SF is pretty close to Brazil.
As income/wealth inequality grows expect class violence to grow until there is a revolution. We let rich people get too rich and this is the consequence.
Sam has so far lost say $100B so far, and he is compensated by already being a billionaire. You can see how this might lead to disillusionment with the system.
It's gotten to the point that I walked in to some water cooler banter at work the other day, where they were discussing their favorite means of public execution.
It's not that people are accepting of violence. That doesn't just happen. Societies don't suddenly turn violent against the state. This only happens when the state has failed and become violent towards the people. If you're surprised by the rising level of violence toward the state, you haven't been paying attention to the rising violence towards the people.
The US was quite literally founded on the idea that it is an inarguable, fundamental human right to overthrow a tyrannical government. The nice and polite mechanisms for doing this have all been broken, removed, violently suppressed, or outright ignored. When there are no peaceful options left, humans will always revolt with as much violence as is necessary. History shows us this over and over. Violently oppressed societies don't tend to stay that way for long, and they certainly don't become hardline pacifists. They always eventually fight back, or they die.
The rising level of violence from the people at large is a proportional reaction to the increasing level of violence against the people. The level of tyranny has recently upgraded itself from merely an existential threat to the USA as a society, but also an existential threat to the entire damn planet. Of course the people are going to get violent. They feel there's no other choice, because all peaceful options have been exhausted and met with extreme violence.
That's the consensus I see on the street: all nonviolent options have been met with ever-increasingly extreme violence. When all peaceful options are removed, you pick the only one left.
In a historic lens, it's all very unsurprising. This is how revolutions happen. This is what humans have always done when met with tyranny and violent oppression. It's only surprising if you willfully ignore and excuse the tyranny and violence against the people.
Altman keeps on telling people he’s going to take away their jobs. He says that because it gets cred in tech circles, but in America this is an existential threat, not much different from telling someone “I’m going to break your kneecaps”. Of course some subset of people are going to respond with violence.
The sheer tone-deafness of AI marketing is going to come back to bite us very hard. This is probably just the beginning.
Yep. Just wait until a large group of people (talking millions of people at once) lose their jobs. They will want someone to blame.
And I have no sympathy because this joker has been pushing people to the edge with his hyping.
Yeah part of me thinks the reason we know all their claims are bullshit is because you’d have to be pretty dense to think that you could promise eliminate >50% of jobs in many high value sectors within 12-18 months and _not_ expect to create more than a few people who’d have nothing to lose…
Flip it round: if you have $999,999,999 then would it not be rational to expect random violence against oneself? I’m not saying it’s justifiable, just that it is prudent to expect to be targeted by crazies.
Flip it again: as a crazy, isn’t it reasonable to enact violence against Johnny Nine Nines? If he’s so innocent, how come his house is behind two security fences?
To be a little more reductive: my house is made of gold bricks so I hired an extra-legal anti-marauder militia, but now the marauders see me as a fair fight because I chose extra-legal militia instead of cops and judges… game on and QED.
Around 2014, a new political candidate entered the scene. Commenters and the news media at the time widely reported something remarkable and new about this candidate: he readily endorsed political violence and showed a continual pattern of escalation, never taking an off-ramp to lower the temperature in domestic politics. Over the years research has shown that the rhetoric of this candidate has materially contributed to political violence in the US. [0]
This candidate was later elected to office and in the time since has shown a continual pattern of endorsing violence. He has endorsed violent actions, told reactionary extremist groups to "stand back and stand by", defended state violence against protestors and immigrants, pardoned thousands of people who were convicted of political violence and an attempted insurrection, and recently started a war before threatening to destroy an entire civilization.
Yes. Yes the "temperature" has gone up. People have been talking about this WIDELY, for years now.
[0] https://www.jstor.org/stable/26940036?seq=1
The wild part about that is that the r/ChatGPT sub.
Which is very AI forward.
Scary but also entirely predictable and expected.
- High wealth inequality
- Perceived inability (or reduced ability) to get ahead and have your voice heard
- Government seen as more corrupt and benefiting the elite. Different set of rules for them vs for everyone else
- Highly polarized population at odds with each other
He switched to supporting Trump after Trump repeatedly joked about someone breaking into a San Fransisco home to attack the owners with a hammer.
So the temperature has been high for a while and he's on board with it.
Didn't that already happen with Pelosi?
> Nancy Pelosi’s primary residence is located in San Francisco, California,
I simply make the observation that the 40-hour workweek took a bunch of violence to enable. As have other forms of progress that we take for granted. Luigi Mangione is a hero to many. It's not bad that the most powerful need to consider negative outcomes in their lives. Decry violence as one, sure, but if there are none other, psychopaths have no check on them. It'd be good if maybe there were others available, eh?
Ineffectual molotov cocktails are just a cry for help.
People are routinely killed for far less all over the world, including America. It's a fact of life.
Obviously people aren't going to be happy about debt fueled spending inflating prices and crashing the economy again (for the 4th time in most young people's lives).
Yes, the temperature has gone up. And we all know exactly who sits at the top of it all.
It's bad but this is what happens when people think they're not being heard and respected. I expect a lot more of this in the future.
The top comment there mentions the French Revolution.
You think people will put up with wildly accelerating inequality forever?
It’s going to explode, the only question is when.
> You think people will put up with wildly accelerating inequality forever?
No. Nor do I think they should. But UBI, higher income tax at the top and a wealth tax for the ultra rich sound like a much better plan to me than to blow a bunch of things up.
Yes, and it's not too late! Plus, sama is one of the only ultra rich I've heard talk about policies that could actually help society cope with reduced aggregate labor demand.
But when I look at how the US handled previous rounds of globalization and automation, I have very sober expectations for our ability to pursue the "happy path." Still, one has to try.
Without question they’re better than blowing stuff up.
Do you think the ruling elite will allow it?
Someone should tell the people assisting in the accelerating inequality that, because unfortunately our system is massively biased in their favor when it comes to enacting any of those things. Except the last, which some will, understandably, see as their only recourse.
Put simply: people _have_ been fighting for those things and the wealthy have fought tooth and nail against it. I don’t at all understand why anyone can be surprised when all other avenues are closed, people resort to violence. It’s literally how this country was founded.
The average person can make one of those things happen, and not the others. Yes, the alternative is obviously better, but once violence becomes the only course of action with reasonable chance at good results, violence is what you will get. Just watch, this is going to escalate. A lot.
Maybe Altman and the other oligarchs should donate money towards candidates who are actually pushing for higher taxes, UBI, and universal healthcare then. So far they've all been throwing most of their money and influence behind violent, hateful, assholes who repeatedly cut their taxes and start wars.
The replies to your comment help make your point. These people genuinely think violence is fine, inevitable and justified.
Crazy people have existed since the dawn of time: I see nothing at all new here about a crazy person doing something crazy.
Crazy people used to gun down schoolchildren who could be conveniently ignored. You can be sure that the ownership class won't just be sending thoughts and prayers here.
People are apathetic at this point. When a large amount of americans can barely afford to live while threatened with replacement while the economy booms on the backs of their claimed obsolescence, they don't care that a billionaire could've gotten hurt, especially when that billionaire is working against their interests.
I mean, it's also scary because I don't think it works. People should demand a new deal and lobby for that. Throwing molotovs doesn't help with that.
What happens when lobbying for a new deal fails? Do the people just shrug and accept the fate their feudal lords have determined for them?
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>I mean, it's also scary because I don't think it works. People should demand a new deal and lobby for that.
The data has conclusively proven that moneyed interests prevail over the interests of the people. Every single time.
It clearly did open a discourse on HN at least :)
Oh yeah!, I forgot that staying silent and complying quietly is way better!! In 1700s they should have used that instead of guillotines.
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People don’t lobby, corporations do.
> People should demand a new deal and lobby for that.
Lol, really? You think there is any chance of that happening in this current political climate? Any whisper at all of rights for workers is immediately shot down as Godless Communist rhetoric.
Then get to work
I don't condone it, but I understand the anger.
The billionaire class has enabled armed masked police in our streets, endless layoffs, basically don't pay taxes at any reasonable percentage, and basically have rigged politics with Citizens United.
Given that, I can see how people are resorting to 18th century French tactics.
The top 1% of income earners pay 40% of all the federal taxes collected. The top 25% pay 89% of taxes.
Net of transfers, 60% of households receive more from government transfers than they pay in taxes.
The idea that rich people don't pay taxes is just not correct. The entire system is basically rich people subsidizing everybody else through byzantine distributional systems.
The top 1% also owns something like 70% of all the wealth, IIRC. The should be paying MORE than 40% of all the taxes.
GINI is still going up. That means we are getting less equal over time. The entire system is subsidized by the rich because nobody else has any money! By definition rich people have to pay.
If we have a pool of $100 and I take $99 and you get $1, and then I get taxed $5 and you get taxed $0, I still have almost everything. Is this.. unfair to me?
It's in fact the opposite of what you said: everyone else is subsidizing the rich, who have gamed the system to live extravagant lifestyles. Eventually this will lead to a revolution and all us rich people will be beheaded. It's the normal outcome of this sort of thing.
There is no ability to accumulate and hold wealth without a stable society. That means broad rights, democracy and limits to inequality.
Stop acting as if taxation if theft, it’s the fee that allows everything else to function.
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I'm not talking about the top 1%. I'm talking about the top 0.01%.
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What is happening is that they are becomming richer and lower ranks are becomming poorer. Simply, they are so much richer that the little fraction they pay on taxes looks big.
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Billionaires aren’t becoming billionaires from income. It’s increased stock valuations that create that level of wealth.
I constantly see posts focused on high earners already paying tons of tax. They do, but this should reinforce the point that the ultra wealthy should be paying more tax. People aren’t saying the guy on £500k should pay more, they’re saying the guy with £100m in assets should be.
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IRS files have entered the chat: https://projects.propublica.org/americas-highest-incomes-and...
Eta: these data are from 2018 before the BBB
Your way of life is dependent on slave labor and military conquest.
Your only noticing the "temperature" going up now is just a sign of how privileged you have been to be able to ignore war and conflict that's existed around the globe since your birth.
The temperature has not gone up. You can't ignore the flames anymore.
it's a bit scary how a lot of people are completely fine with an insanely wrong status quo of a fully corrupt and anti democratic government and of ppl like Altman allying with them.
I don't condone violence, but it's hardly surprising that people would resort to or support it in this case, considering that by stepping in where Anthropic refused to help the US military, sama essentially agreed that OpenAI will serve as the IT Department for Trump's secret police. Either that, or he's willing for OpenAI to endure a similar punishment when he refuses the inevitable demand to assist with domestic mass surveillance.
You're just a smidge away from asking why they can't just eat cake...
I think you're extrapolating a lot from my comment... One can reasonably think something has to be done to address the current (and upcoming) economic situation and think that molotov cocktails won't help. Acts like these will likely make things much worse before settling into a new situation that's probably just slightly worse.
Wondering why people might want to resist their lives becoming worse at all just so some assholes can gloat about how much richer they became is literally the same as asking why they can't just eat cake.
Thinking something should be done, means nothing is being done. The poor in france didn't start with bread riots. They begged and pleaded and asked nicely first, and while lots of people thought something should be done to help them, nothing was.
Thank you for getting over the line.
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has the temperature gone up?
no, the mob is forming at the gate, and they are starting to climb
The legal system is owned from top to bottom by the ruling class. You will not be able to use it to loosen their death grip on society. They will not allow it.
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I have some lovely brioche if you'd prefer.
It is the more suitable replacement for bread, after all.
Too bad she never said it, though.
Get ready for more. If the tech bros are right and millions of people loose their jobs and healthcare, we are in for a rough couple of decades. Millions of angry people, with nothing to lose and a bunch of free time, all with one name in their heads, Sam Altman. He better start working on his robot army.
> He better start working on his robot army.
Playing catch up with Elon.
"Violence" does not only include "physical violence". It also includes "structural violence". And precisely, temperature is going up because people is sick of structural violence.
Violence is PG-13, nipples are R.
https://x.com/nxt888/status/2042498481743675804
What do you call denying healthcare?
People are coming to a logical conclusions that:
- Some if not many jobs are at risk.
- AI Psychosis is actively tearing apart families and communities, after social media and opioids have already had a pass.
- Negative social outcomes are in the service of _making money_. Not money to pay taxes to fund a healthy society, but money for the people running these systems.
Humans that lack community, safety, and purpose will embrace more drastic means of exerting control over their lives at the expense of others, no?
It is probably safe to say the temperature has been firmly up for a while. And certain subsets of the population have come to trust their Dear Leader's embrace of violence as a solution, for sure.
Jobs were already lost because of AI capital investments. None of the hyper scalers had the cash flow to support the target investment levels and had to reduce labor.
I think you meant to reply this elsewhere? My comment was in response to the apparent social willingness to accept violence towards oligarchical behavior.
Here's the head of research at OpenAI saying "MORE. Don't stop." to the genocide of Palestinians. He still works there.
https://x.com/QudsNen/status/1806729161840476598
There was a rumor going around Silicon Valley that if ICE came to San Francisco in force that Mark Zuckerberg's house was going to go up in flames in retaliation. You will be surprised to learn that the oligarchs talked to Trump and they did not come.
It’s a distinct minority. They’re convinced they’re the majority because everyone they talk to is in the same bubble, especially online. I saw the same thing with Mangione and Kirk and Pelosi.
Do you spend much time with people not in the tech world? I think you'd be surprised how many people hold similar sentiments, even if not to such an extreme, especially once you talk to people in the real world. I've heard far more support for this sort of thing in real life than I have online due to fear of repercussions.
Hell, even the president regularly calls for and promotes violence, so I don't think it's that much of a minority. The US was founded on it, after all.
> Do you spend much time with people not in the tech world?
Most of it. Across the political spectrum.
> even if not to such an extreme
That’s precisely the point. There is a massive difference between doing or aiding and abetting such behavior, cheering it on, and giving into the impulse of “couldn’t have happened to a worse person” before self correcting. There are a few saints who reject the violence at first glance. But most people are in that self correcting phase, and the correction happens the more they learn about the specifics of the assault.
> even the president regularly calls for and promotes violence
To what numerical end?
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What I think is different today is -- regardless of how many people organically think this way -- social media is normalizing the idea. We're all being exposed to it.
It's only a minority of people who are radicalized, but it's a growing minority. Radical ideas are more accessible than ever for people to latch on to.
Radical views on violence, social relations, science, politics, distrust of institutions, etc are all way more common than they were in the 90s.
> but it's a growing minority
I’d want to see this interrogated with rigor. The alternate hypothesis, and my null, is a relatively fixed fraction of folks is more connected and visible today than before.
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How about the 190 school girls the US murdered in the very first attack against Iran?
Yeah, the number of people connecting a potential war crime in a military operation to Sam Altman’s San Francisco residence with violent intent are slim.
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I think youre misreading it entirely, doesnt surprise me given that you're a VC.
Here's one of the posts on that thread: "I mean one thing is to use AI or even ChatGPT as a product, and another is being aware of how billionaires treat the rest of the people
As for Sam, he also has pretty controversial views for how this whole thing will pan out and how he doesn't give a shit about the consequences it might have for the rest of us. Also more recently, the whole Pentagon contract thing"
People can both use LLMs whilst having a distasteful view of the leaders of the industry.
> whilst having a distasteful view of the leaders of the industry
I have a tremendously distasteful view of a lot of Silicon Valley leadership. Doesn’t mean I want them to suffer at the hands of vigilante justice.
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Nowadays, it seems common for genocidal regimes to be supported by other countries, so it looks like abhorrent violence is just part of the world order.
The temperature has definitely gone up; one could look at what the current President says and has done for reasons why people might be on edge.
“I’ll tell you something that’s going to get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less,” the president responded. “The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime. They don’t want to see crime.” ... The radicals on the left are the problem. They’re vicious, and they’re horrible,” Trump said. “And they’re politically savvy, although they want men in women’s sports. They want transgender for every one. They want open borders.
“I always say, we have two enemies … We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within, and the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia, and all these countries … We have some very bad people; we have some sick people, radical-left lunatics. And it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by the National Guard—or, if really necessary, by the military.”
He reguarly referred to January 6th insurrectionists as "hostages" and "patriots" then gave them all a pardon. If you breach the capitol and interrupt election processes, injure/kill police officers, and chant "hang Mike Pence" then I guess you're a patriot worthy of a pardon.
I think we're going to see a lot more of it.
The job market's shit, it's nearly impossible for young people to buy houses or pay rent, well paying jobs are disappearing to AI, inflation is sky rocketing and people are getting desperate. But then we're told the economy's doing great and billionaires like Musk and Altman are rolling in money.
Maybe because people got used to violence being used against them?
All this violence against the innocent in various places and levels, and you think it’s weird that people are fine with violence used against a billionaire conman?
I'm not saying throwing a MOlotov cocktail is ok. It's not. I think most people are analyzing the incident as being indicative of the times we're living in, particularly with the warehouse fire.
But where people are "OK with violence" is with state violence.
State violence include police violence (>1000 people are killed every year in the US by police), prison violence, violently rounding up immigrants and putting them in concentration camps, criminalizing homelessness, denying people life-saving medical care, evictions while landlords collude to raise rents, genocide, sending random people to a maximum security prison in a foreign country (ie CECOT), mass shootings, going with a firearm to a protest to instigate an incident and get a legal kill, intentionally creating the opiod crisis and so on.
For a large number of people some or all of these incidents will get a reaction somewhere between "thoughts and prayers" and "no, it's good actually".
Compare the state's reaction to one healthcare CEO being murdered and the perpetrators that are implicated in the Epstein files. Epstein himself was known to authorities since the 1990s and got an absolutely sweetheart deal in 2008.
So I'd say the real problem is what people view as violence and who's allowed to do it, seemingly without oversight or consequences of any kind most or all of the time.
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the more you push, eventually the people will snap.
uh, the president of the united states just threatened to nuke a country.
What kind of weird world are you living under...
AI company marketing is pretty overwhelmingly "we're going to take away your job and leave to you starve on the streets". People concluding that the public face of this is their enemy who must be stopped is just a really unsurprising outcome.
That is what Ilya (and many other employees) (fore)saw.
They did not want a target painted on their backs or being involved with the company responsible for mass job displacement.
Let's hope that SF doesn't turn into a free-for-all after the IPOs, since the silliest thing is for everyone to move to SF and buy up the houses and then the have-not's realise who got rich.
I'd donate that money away or give the employees (who have nothing) a one-time bonus / raise like the five-guys owner [0] to not be a target.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/27/five-guys-ce...
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This is hilarious
thats fair, it's dark but it is kind of funny
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We can’t vote our way towards a better future. The corrupt MAGA and DNC institutions strangle any nascent grassroots movement in the crib. And we cannot make them relinquish their death grip on our country with only bare hands.
Seriously shocked that this is the aspect of this moment in history that you choose to focus on, and not the absurd levels of violence perpetrated by the ruling classes against common people.
There is nothing scary about being genuinely OK with violence.
this guy is a bot
Thank you for considering violence against corporate totalitarianism. Please choose one of the following:
A: Violence now!
B: Maybe later.
Does causing mass poverty count as violence? Because it's kind of like violence.
I don't have a problem with violence, but I do take issue with the mass dismissal and outright hatred for AI by people who don't even understand what it is.
It absolutely has. Both the Left and the Right have seared consciences and take no issue with murder and thuggishness as long as it's "their guy" doing it to "the other guy".
The world was never a wise and virtuous man's paradise, but it has been quickly sliding into ever increasing and monstrous irrationality. Give Plato's "Republic" a read and you might find it concerning how closely we exemplify the last stages of political and social decline.