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C A P I T A L I S M As long as profit is the goal, human well-being (and those great ideas to boost it) will always be compromised for profit.

It was capitalism the whole time?

I have what I think is a pretty good answer but it requires listening to the remnants of a Calvinist belief system or, if you're not religious, a Monty Python level faith in the absurdity of humanity.

As the creator of Claude Code put it himself: "Someone has to prompt the Claudes"

Implementation can be easy, but the hard part is prying loose those who most benefit financially from the status quo.

Because giving an angry person the data that proves the thing they're angry about could be fixed if they change their world view (even slightly) often just makes the angry person dig in their heels.

It is, in part, a cost issue. Going single-payer would deprive many insurance company executives of their blood money. Much of what the US spends on healthcare doesn't go to the people who wear gloves and touch patients. Insurance companies take their share before any healthcare is paid.

the people in charge of these systems don't want them to be good or to work correctly, they just want them to make them more money because they're addicted to seeing a line go up, and that almost always means making the systems suck on purpose, or at least not caring if the system is good or not.

Because some people make a LOT of money keeping things exactly as they are

Because special interests do well when the world sucks.

Hm. Maybe more ai generated images will fix the world.

cpusa.org

I literally am always talking about your ideas and encouraging others with things I've learned from your channel Alec. You are literally making a difference just by being that cool guy who can buy two of things and explain them to people like me who care. Don't be so hard on yourself!

There's a saying, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. Except you can't lead a horse anywhere. The horse thinks that they are smarter than you. What makes you an expert in water locating? The horse won't go anywhere until its thirst is satiated.

Every problem is easy to solve. They only become complicated when you add unnecessary caveats. Do we have enough food for everyone to have enough? We do. Can everyone have enough and also preserve record profits for food manufacturers? Well that's harder.

It’s as if we’re time travelers, the future is here today. These problems are already solved. I feel like a lot of the resistance is because the solutions upset the structures of power see for example the oil lobby:

Greed. Modern neo liberalism is the Paper Clip Problem applied IRL, but with virtual money instead of paper clips.

Some people exist to act as blockers. We keep giving them a lot of say in how things improve.

It genuinely is just capitalism Things can only be implemented if they can generate enough profit to sustain themselves If we want a society built on the grounds of efficiency and humanity, we have to create a new system that isn't enslaved to the profit incentive

I suppose there is an alternative: power. There are some firms that have power over their customers because their customers have no alternatives. I think Google will be successful in pushing unpopular changes to Android, for example.

It’s a misalignment of goals. This is a common thing that really smart new grads that haven’t worked in the world encounter - solutions are blocked because the goals of all the individuals aren’t the same. In the case of AI, their goal isnt a better system it’s lower cost until it hurts revenue

The purpose of a system is what it does. I can't say that internalizing that made me less angry, but it did make me less frustrated.

Even the best tool can't stop someone from using it as a hammer when it shouldn't be.

"stakeholders who refuse to hold stakes" is gonna be in my regular rotation now. Thanks!

well, did you implement them?

I think humanity works best when we assume that nobody else will implement the ideas that we individually can implement... so we do it ourselves. As a species we are not particularly good at being wise.

Even Smith, the great promotor of what became capitalism, said regulation was required to keep it fair and honest else it'd eat itself. And he was from the 18th century!

The most frustrating thing about how broken things feel is that so much of it is broken by deliberate choice.

Humanity is about as incremental as dynamite, mostly because of a subset of people (you know the ones) who take any problem that can't be solved by one action, say it's impossible, then sell you mitigation instead of solutions. Or worse, they profit DIRECTLY FROM the problem and actively stoke it.

If unchecked capitalism can't even remotely keep to the promises of its evangelists, even being extremely hostile to that competition, preferring the obscurity of complexity to hide evils, why leave it unchecked?

Easy answer Mr. TC, it’s because the uber wealthy suck.

Because the people with the most power are on whole the most vile and evil creatures on the planet.

The World Sucks because someone want its to be that way. Humanity living in survival mode since the flood. People are too busy to survive, we do not have time to evolve beyond 3D mind. The World Sucks because humans are primitive creatures. We are devolving race and the evidences are everywhere.

What's something you would like/expect to see?

A framing of the problem I have see a few times, and that resonates with me, is that "we have a world run by folks who don't actually like other people". The people with the power may be smart (debatable), but it is clear their purposes have nothing to do with helping anyone but themselves.

Monopolies disincentivize nice things and useful new tool use. Why innovate or make things nice if you already have the market captured?

The vast majority of people hates change. We tend to stick to what we are used to than aim for a potentially better option that’s out of our box or too long term. Visionaries are rare. And visionaries blessed with the correct environment to thrive are even more rare.

Most of the world problems could be solved with all the money that Microsoft Google and meta have poured into AI over the last two years. World hunger, child poverty and eradicating polio certainly, climate change about 60 to 70%.

I have a kinda good related news this. My company has the most powerful tools in the media landscape and is purposefully working with content creators to have more leverage on what they are worth. So companies like YouTube can’t only set the standard on what there content is worth

I think the problem is there *are* smart people using the tools with purpose, but their purpose isn't to make things better for everyone. It's to make themselves rich(er).

Hearing a voice of reason in the current world is like the momentary reprieve of breaching the surface and taking a fresh breath as you're drowning. I'm very glad you're around and making your voice heard.

The strip mining of society.

you.. you might need to run for local office... I know, I know, you probably physically recoiled from that statement. but the desire to fix all these problems is something that's missing in our current environment

It's "hard" because the powers make it hard. There's no profit to be made from efficiency.

Their goal is not to fix problems, never was. Cause solved problems remove dependencies and thus sources of income and control. Their goal is to reach 'too big to fail' with any new product they have, so they can lean back, reap, without putting in effort to an quality or work.

I feel this too! You'd think all the experience, economy of scale and usage statistics would allow companies to make really great products, but somehow many kinda aren't?

It was never hard. The problem is that many issues would not be fixed because they were not profitable. Quality has little market share. It's called "worse is better" (some people know this as "New Jersey style", not sure why).

I think the problem are commitees and other institutions forming opinions based on those data.

Willful ignorance my friend, willful ignorance. There is a significant portion of the human race that is actively fighting against reality every day. It is bizarre to me, but that is what makes human progress so slow and painful.

Started making a tool to get your Ameren hourly electric usage for the past year, and hourly prices for their real time pricing for those days, to see how a home battery might impact your bill. Then combine weather and gas usage to estimate your cost to run a heat pump instead of your furnace.

Money. And I suppose power as well. It's always those two things. Oh... and stubborn ignorance? I was gonna include that but I chose not to because I didn't think it would fit in this category. I still don't and I will defend my choice because it's more important to appear wise.

Forcing competition in markets and not allowing mega-corp to buy out any potential competitors is what actually breeds innovation, progress, and wealth generation The biggest lie told was that those things are products of unbridled Capitalism, and not actually the rules you need to apply to markets

because people suck

Implementing improvements that would enrich the lives of everyone isn't particularly complicated or difficult, it simply costs money.

That requires regulation which requires people actually vote and not let the corrupt take office. 🤷‍♀️

You're talking about companies.They'll always use new capabilities to make more money, rarely to improve things. It's double edged though; if a company ever does do that customers do not respect it and will primarily care about short term costs. A lot of things aren't hard, just resource intensive