Comment by philipallstar
16 hours ago
We didn't. The USSR had 100% employment long ago[0], and all the poverty that goes with it.
This isn't like that, as it isn't funded through taxes. This is private companies experimenting with their money, and risking downstream cost increases that may cause people to go elsewhere, as they do when they try anything new.
This is much better than just funding people regardless of productivity through forced taxes.
[0] https://nintil.com/the-soviet-union-achieving-full-employmen...
Right now there are state govts bending over backwards to provide cheap energy for data centers. The difference is being paid by people who live nearby through increased electricity costs. This is a tax with just extra steps
Shit, the government providing infrastructure in response to public demand? Outrageous use of taxes!
Your sarcastic comment mistakes "public demand" for what is actually private sector demand.
1 reply →
Are you sure this isn't being funded by our taxes? How many data centers are being built in areas where they have been given a huge tax break? How many banks are loaning money for AI infrastructure knowing that they'll be bailed out by taxpayers if they fail?
A tax break isn't funding. Saying we'll take slightly less of your money is not giving money.
Either way, I don't know what this has to do with Amazon getting workers to use AI more, which is what my comment was addressing.
You're forgetting that taxes pay for government services, and those corporations consume government services as well. Give them a big enough tax break and it'll end up at a net negative.
Some of these companies derive their revenue in a way similar to taxes, as you're forced to pay them for services. I don't see why it matters whether it's technically defined as a tax or not, if you still have to pay. Think of the TV license fee in some countries, or rent.
> as it isn't funded through taxes
This is simply not true, especially when you consider the massive amounts of government support so many parts of this "experiment with their own money" is getting. As a Utah resident its extremely evident in how forcefully they're pushing through what will be one of the largest datacenters in the world despite near universal disapproval from the citizens.
Pushing through in what sense? The government is building a data centre near you that Amazon is pushing its people to use?
> We didn't. The USSR had 100% employment long ago[0], and all the poverty that goes with it.
I don't think USSR poverty rates surpassed those of Tsarist Russia that preceded them. To their credit, I think ideologic competition between capitalist and communist blocks was part of what allowed improvement of life conditions of workers in capitalist countries, after WWII. Fear of revolutions avoided one-percenters taking all productivity gains in the period. They had to share some to keep guillotines away. As soon as things went south in the USSR, from the 70s onwards, and capitalism took over the whole world, lacking any sort of viable extant competition, we reverted back to the old norm, the workers were denied their share of the productivity gains since then, and here are us now. A regime premised on free competition was undermined by lack of competition to itself.
No, the ideas of individual liberty, law enforcement, and private property meant that central planners couldn't mess up the US. That's all you need to massively raise standards of living. That and energy from oil.
We have central planners in the US. For instance Jeffrey Bezos, Sam Altman, Elon Musk. They compete with each other for planning power, but they compete by making the best plans for themselves, not for society.
This is correct.
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