Thread

1. briffle · 1790345941 · focus · HN ↗

   Great to know that everyone's RAM, GPU, and SSD costs have skyrocketed over the last year, so that companies like Oracle can fill giant buildings full of RAM and SSD's (and GPU's) and then not even be able to turn them on..

   1. DarkNova6 · 1790346089 · focus · HN ↗

      That's the decentralized nature of capitalism working as intended. Distributing resources in the most efficient way possible. Thank you invisible hand.

      1. fapjacks · 1790347819 · focus · HN ↗

         [dead]

      2. bunderbunder · 1790349151 · focus · HN ↗

         Ironically, Adam Smith himself spent plenty of time worrying about the risk that allowing wealth to concentrate and an oligarchy to form would undermine the invisible hand. Much of what he was responding to was English society's tendency toward extremely rich people and organizations (e.g., the East India Company) hoarding resources on a mass scale, to the detriment of everyone else. So what's happening with AI right now is very much the antithesis of the free market he envisioned.

         He wrote at lest one very thoughtful essay expanding on his belief that idolizing the wealthy undermines the basic principles of free and civil society. He criticized large accumulations of wealth as "a monopoly against one's countrymen." And something like half of The Wealth of Nations was committed to suggesting government policies to prevent an entrenched uber-wealthy class from forming, precisely so that capitalism could work as intended.

         1. tavavex · 1790364105 · focus · HN ↗

            It's shocking to me that he was aware of it and yet considered it an unrelated defect that can be individually corrected, and not a flaw that blows the entire idea wide open. To me it seems that this outcome was unavoidable and that this is the equilibrium his system will settle into earlier or later. Opposing the concentration of power is harder than making it happen. Even strong regulations only need to spring one leak somewhere for them to get in and get the ball slowly rolling. It's a ratchet. If he knew about this, then his ideology was like boarding an already slowly sinking ship and hoping someone would just keep scooping out the water and throwing it overboard at a sufficient pace forever.

            1. Daishiman · 1790368488 · focus · HN ↗

               > It's shocking to me that he was aware of it and yet considered it an unrelated defect that can be individually corrected, and not a flaw that blows the entire idea wide open.

               Hindsight is 20/20. He was suggesting free markets as the counter to entrenches aristocrats. It took centuries for our modern understanding of monopolies and rentier capitalism to develop.

               1. bunderbunder · 1790376931 · focus · HN ↗

                  He was arguably also right insofar as the slippery slope that he warned about is pretty much exactly the slippery slope that we slid down. And I can’t really blame him for the fact that most Adam Smith fanboys don’t seem to have read the second half of his book.
            2. thrance · 1790410430 · focus · HN ↗

               Spot on, that's the big flaw in liberalism. It's never an issue with the system, only communists reason in systems. No, it's just that the guy in charge is bad, and if we could get someone better there, everything would turn out fine.

               Let's disregard that ever since Reagan, no president was ever able to slow the runaway financialisation of capitalism, or the concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands. Capital has known no major blowbacks in many decades, and it's never been so powerful before.

         2. thrance · 1790410220 · focus · HN ↗

            Adam Smith never believed in an "invisible hand". He uses the concept to disparage the fantasy of "self-regulating" free markets. Even before capitalism did we understand that markets needed rules and regulations, it took centuries of propaganda and of demonizing the opposition as "luddites", then "communists" to convince the majority that we needed to abolish all rules for the economy to flourish.

            A deregulated market is terrible for the environment, the economy and pretty much everyone and everything. It only gives more relative wealth (and power) to the oligarchs, who then lord over us unopposed.

   2. 27183 · 1790348400 · focus · HN ↗

      It works out pretty well for the RAM, GPU, and SSD manufacturers

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