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I read that temporary striking workers were considered a lost job and accounted for 30,000 of the jobs. Plus another 27,000 in health care from the loss of business due to the strike. And the federal government shed 10,000 jobs. That accounts for nearly half the job losses.

Should military contractors put conditions on the use of their weapons? Here's our tank, but you can't invade Iran with it? We think your invasion of Venezuela is illegal, we're activating the kill switch on your jets. That's a real dangerous proposition.

They can, but the government can always just not buy their stuff.

That's not what the government is doing here.


If the T&C is agreed to up front, why shouldn't they be able to? If their client or potential client doesn't like the T&C, they can find another vendor.

Every time I read one of these doom and gloom pieces on AI/robotics, I think they are only describing the transition. After that, I think society will align with Musk's vision of AI/robotics freeing humans from work and scarcity. Then, humans will be able to focus on exploring the universe, scientific discovery, and artistic expression.

I'm kind of tired of the assumption that a post-scarcity world will without a doubt look like Famous Science Fiction Television Show "Star Trek".

> freeing humans from work and scarcity

How will that be possible if all wealth is held by a small group of ultra-rich individuals? Or do you think they will all simultaneously opt to distribute their wealth to everyone in some form of UBI?


He said humans. He didn't say all of them, or specify which ones, but I think we can guess.

All it takes is one ultra-rich individual to say, "I'm having my bots build a bot-building factory and giving them to everyone who wants a bot. For free (after all, bots are doing all the work!) Or a hundred bots, who cares. They're free, bots are doing all the work anyway."

Those will be the only humans left.

I'm not an economist but you're just echoing a trivially shallow meme.

Research:

  - Where does most money come from?
  - What are these gazillion AI agents creating if no-one has any money to buy anything? 
  - What is this "wealth" of this small group of ultra-rich individuals? Who is buying the shares of their companies to make them wealthy? Who is buying their products? 
The economy must be self balancing. There is no other way. If demand collapses, no-one gets rich.

This is the dumb meme. Those who own the automation don't have any non-moral non-ethical reason to feed and house the masses. Money is a proxy for power.

It's like you didn't even read my post.

You said no one gets rich. I disagree with the end result, a few do get quite rich.

Is that Musk's vision? Because he just elected the guy that is gutting all of the safety nets that would enable the second part.

He also elected the guy who did a 180 on AI regulations and stopped FAA harassment of SpaceX.

“Harassment” = following rules and laws?

For the 180 on AI regulations you are going to have to explain that to me because as far as I can see there wasn’t any regulation under Biden of AI


This will never happen. I think you need to re-read Orwell's 1984 and understand the Nature of Power. Our current Technologies have made it orders of magnitude easier to gain/amass/seize/monopolize and hold "absolute power".

As Lord Acton said - “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.”

O'Brien from 1984;

'Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?'


Loved it! It was an effective blend of different tech origin stories. Lee Pace was also excellent in "Foundation".


I had food delivered the other day and the suggested tip included tax and the delivery fee in it's calculation.


Rancho Palos Verdes is a small established hillside community with equestrian 1 - 5 acre lots. The absurdity of adding 650 homes to this area is astounding. Right next door is Hawthorne which has plenty of space for such housing. Activists like this person, lobbying a city they have no relation to, to enforce an overreaching state law, are part of what is making people and companies leave California.


Can you clarify why it is absurd to add density to an area with huge 5 acre lots?


OP said "established hillside community with equestrian 1 - 5 acre lots".

It is reasonably likely that people who lived there chose the location because they wanted to have horses, otherwise why buy there?

When dense apartments get built next door, soon enough the city prohibits horses because the thinking goes that horses don't belong in a dense population area.

I'm not familiar with the area OP mentions, but exact same thing happened around here. Some 30 years ago most houses had horses, then a lot of smaller building came around and they prohibited horses.

Doesn't impact me personally but I'm sad for the long time residents who specifically moved here to have horses. Not fair to them. Some have moved of course, but moving isn't always easy if you have job and kids in school in town.


A community of 5-acre equestrian lots is pastoral. Dumping a 650 housing project in the middle of that would destroy its character.


If the neighbors of these lots care to maintain their vacancy, they ought to do so the more naturally legal way: by collectively buying and owning those lots.


Horses aren't native, maybe they destroyed the character first.


Or why cities should be able to ignore state laws, for that matter.


Which is likely why they are doing it. The City of Huntington Beach had a similar problem: there was simply no room to build additional housing. They sued the state and lost. The law is overreaching, but it's the law.


> Right next door is Hawthorne

30 minutes drive in no traffic, crossing half a dozen cities and the 405. There's reasons to inveigh against the YIMBYs (why are they celebrating densifying a coastal area that's actively falling into the pacific[1], nevermind it's inherent beauty) but let's not deny geography.

Also RPV doesn't have 1-5 acre lots, it just costs ~$4m for an house on a normal lot, rising to ~$20m as you get to the coast. You might be thin thinking of Rolling Hills, to the extent you're thinking of anything on the peninsula at all?

[1]: https://www.rpvca.gov/719/Landslide-Management-Program


How is that absurd? If I own land and want to build 650 new homes, what exactly is the argument for stopping me, besides "I don't like it"?


If you don't want people developing their 5 acre lots, you should buy all of the 5 acre lots. Problem solved.


> The absurdity of adding 650 homes to this area is astounding

Let the free market decide whether it wants the homes or not.


I think insane real estate prices are more of a motivation to leave California than local political drama.


Hawthorne is easily 20 miles and 30+ minutes away from RPV, not exactly next door

(I am biased as someone who thinks public parks should allow nonresidents to visit and is pissed at how Portuguese Bend has been managed


So leave?

NIMBYs thinking they have some social right to land, a shared resource. Land value belongs to society silly.


On Zillow, you can claim ownership of a property. I'm not sure what notices they give, but I would definitely do that.


Yes, Paris is an international capital and centrally located for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Many tech companies have sales offices there.


America is going in the opposite direction with instant food delivery. Your $11 meal is delivered to your house within 30 minutes. But, there's a service fee of $5, a delivery fee of $6, and a 20% gratuity.


There’s something very weird in the US, it’s like we intentionally set things up to accelerate convergence to obviously dumb local optima and then don’t explore any options to get over those barriers.


I think we just lack the ability for self-critique as a country. If you try, you get a bunch of loud morons yelling at you for being un-American or some other nonsense.


(And it's cold.)


Kohler makes a touchless faucet. You wave your hand under the faucet and it turns on and off. I've had one for years, and it's great in the kitchen. Most commercial lavatories have the same technology.


I’ve got a friend with one of these. He has not been super happy with it. He mentioned installing the foot pedal next time instead.


I got it and absolutely love it. Takes a bit of getting used to of course, but after being in my kitchen I expect all taps to work like this.

The biggest downside is that visitors will be confused why the water doesn’t run (the physical tap is always left open but there is a “virtual” tap controlled by the sensor is not.


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