Thread

1. delis-thumbs-7e · 1790681167 · focus · HN ↗

   In an old Simpsons episode Lisa gets to visit the Teachers room, where all the staff are making fun of the children. Groundskeeper Willie is pantomiming Milhouse “Oh I am Milhouse, I tell all my secrets to Willie since I have no friends!” and the teachers laugh. Later something embarrassing happens to Milhouse and he immediately runs away crying “I have to tell this to Willie!”.

   We have all become Milhouse now.

   1. Avicebron · 1790682164 · focus · HN ↗

      Inequality has eroded trust in society in ~50 years, a lot of the old models (heh) of how we see the world aren't relevant. It's hard to exist when everything around us is adversarial.

      1. gmd63 · 1790691167 · focus · HN ↗

         It's not inequality. It's who we've chosen to reward. Adversarial people have eaten a lot of the world and that's because we let them.

         People love inequality when it's a celebrity they adore living large. Someone who hasn't scammed them and has demonstrably improved their life and the lives of others in a tangible way. The deeper the con, like Trump and Elon, the more damage to trust.

         1. sssilver · 1790697665 · focus · HN ↗

            Isn't it more like "it's who capitalism rewards"?

            All we've chosen is free markets.

            1. gmd63 · 1790698771 · focus · HN ↗

               Capitalism is fine so long as capital is allocated on merit. It isn't, because we don't have capitalism, we have corporate socialism.

               1. sssilver · 1790699070 · focus · HN ↗

                  I guess I don't understand the term "corporate socialism". What does it mean, and how did it create the world of NVIDIA and AMD, Google and Microsoft, Anthropic and OpenAI?

                  Weren't Mr. Huang, his cofounders, and his peers, rewarded based on merit? Where did socialism step in?

                  1. gmd63 · 1790701753 · focus · HN ↗

                     Whether they were rewarded by actual merit isn't yet known. Their recent wealth is present-dated imaginary future gains paid by speculators. If by "merit", you mean the ability to perform skillfully to serve the whims of people with a lot of money, then yes.

                     Who is spending the kind of money that makes regular NVIDIA employees millionaires? You have to consider how those people attained it. And at the scale of NVIDIA's growing value downstream of a rapid investment in AI infrastructure, you can trace a good amount of it to Elon Musk, who has interfered illegally in an election to purchase favor with a party that ended several serious investigations into his companies. Now, the government is using Elon's AI which trails in several benchmarks. Elon's storied history of gaming systems to keep his companies alive only begins there.

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