While I agree with much of what you say, there are a lot of urban, educated, socially left, economically right people (including myself) who complicate some of this analysis. Many economically right-wing people believe a free market is the most effective and helpful path to improve the standard of living for the working class and the poor. ("Progressive neoliberal social democracy", one might call it.)
The issues with Republicans right now go far, far, far beyond "they care more about the wealthy than the poor" (though that is definitely one of their core problems). They're basically destroying the rule of law, the country's internal and international reputation and credibility, all of our most important institutions, our ability to discern what is true, our sense of decency, our civil liberties, our basic respect of human rights... The class stuff is secondary or tertiary to the bigger issues, in my opinion.
AI for helping mitigate PTSD, or helping with the investigations?
Because the latter basically entails helping create a surveillance state. Which in theory could be an acceptable trade-off, but it seems disingenuous to say "AI companies have no financial incentives here" when the big issue is that AI companies would actually be helping to establish powerful dragnet surveillance capabilities. There would need to be a strong democratic process around this.
Conspiracist nonsense. Like, this could hypothetically explain a few things for a few industries where both parties somewhat align, but in general this is populist slop.
My main concern is that these companies will sell to almost anyone willing to buy. The technology itself is not inherently evil (I do want spyware on, say, Ghislaine Maxwell's phone, were she to be released), but the fact that almost any despot can purchase it and use it to brutally suppress dissent is horrible.
As for Israel itself, same kind of thing. Spyware on Sinwar's phone: completely justified. Spyware on journalists' phones because they're accurately recording and reporting genocidal actions: dystopian. And they're likely to do both.
Don't get me wrong, I get why they want to and it is probably a justified security concern, but it's also things like that which will probably cause Europe's economy to continue to stagnate while the US's will probably continue to soar even with Trump (and perhaps, later, Vance) completely destroying our international reputation and credibility and our most important political and scientific institutions.
The fact that the US can continue to economically do so well relative to others despite currently being run by some of the stupidest and most abhorrent people possible is... sad.
Europe could be more competitive but then they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Just in the past week they're meddling with the infinite scroll feature and then the unrealized taxes in the Netherlands. Why would a tech company wanna operate in such an environment?
Obviously one cannot simply accept any potential societal trade-off in favor of benefitting the economy, but going too far in the opposite direction eventually manifests as worse living standards for the average person, which is not beneficial to society.
"How does banning unhealthy food make society worse?" "How does banning unhealthy habits make society worse?" "How does banning harmful/hateful speech make society worse?" "How does banning things and, as a result, our economy stagnating, make society worse?"
Pam Bondi suggested that it would be impossible to prosecute the pedophiles, because the economy would collapse. To which many people reacted: then let it collapse. You remind me of Pam Bondi.
> The fact that the US can continue to economically do so well relative to others despite currently being run by some of the stupidest and most abhorrent people possible is... sad.
It's not sad, it's strong evidence (I hesitate to call it proof, but...) that a federated model of governance with limited regulation is the most resilient and successful form of government.
All the EU states need to do is learn that regulation is not the solution to every theoretical problem any bureaucrat can imagine, and they too can experience meaningful economic growth.
I agree that if you want to pursue economic growth laissez-faire is possibly the best course of action, but economic growth isn't the only metric worth pursuing.
I have no idea where you got that idea from. If anything the EU has been focused way too much on the economy, hoping trade and economic growth will solve all problems.
1. Watching the standard of living in the US outpace the EU for decades and comparing their economic systems.
2. Basic common sense tells you that you need resources in order to fund a welfare state, a long list of positive human rights, and all the other things that the EU states want to do. Money buys resources, especially when you don't have direct access to them (which is the case for most EU states).
Probably one of these scissor statements where economic leftists think that obviously the problem is focusing way too much on [X] and the others saying the problem is focusing far too little on [X].
To some extent yes, but the issue the leftists have in this case is that X = money (or the equivalent in resources) which is absolutely required in large quantities to enact their political agenda.
You'd think so, but paying all the people who sit around and think of things to regulate, the people who actually write the regulations, the people who enact the regulations, and the people who enforce the regulations is not a trivial cost, especially at the scale that the EU wants to regulate things.
Also, the actual political agenda is based around a welfare state, which absolutely costs money to maintain.
I like infinite scrolling. Probably most users like it. My country's government banning apps from letting me infinite scroll in them sounds very paternalistic and silly.
I make apps for myself above all else. I always add infinite scrolling support to all my apps. It's just a better and smoother experience than pagination.
Yeah, I have been extremely pro-AI and have been for decades, and I use LLMs daily, but this is not an acceptable use of an LLM. Especially since it's fabricating quotes, so there's the plagiarism issue and then the veracity issue. And it's doing this to report on an incident of someone being bizarrely accosted by LLMs. Just such a ridiculous situation all around.
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