We have to remember that for the vast majority of human history, keeping people alive and healthy was not a concern. Most medical interventions discovered during post-Industrial Revolutions did not require special technology.
It is only when human labor was needed at a large scale when we started caring about people living long healthy lives.
The classic example is airline deregulation which happened under Carter. The real cost of flights is way, way down since then. But this doesn't stop people from complaining about how "flying is a worse experience now" and wishing for a return to inane regulations.
I want more expensive flights because the rabble shouldn’t be flying. Flying is a worse experience now and cheap flights like spirit is how you get the Burger King crown guy being a common occurrence on flights.
Were you alive in the 80s? Flying really was better back then. The food was edible. The seats weren't optimized for torture.
"Inane regulations", however misguided, generally exist to prevent the Torment Nexus. PE devolves companies into the Torment Nexus to create more profit.
I'm aware that flying was more enjoyable pre reform. And we could make it that enjoyable today by inflating the prices by 50-100%. The food would be better, the seats would be bigger, and planes would be emptier.
But the downside is that flying would be for rich people, just like it was pre-reforms. The poors would have to take trains or drive. Is that a good trade-off?
And to top it off, if you want to pay for a premium flying experience today, you can! For similar prices (to pre-reform flights, in real terms) you can book a "luxury flight".
Summary of the old regime: Mergers that lead to 5+% market share were blocked.
Then the "consumer harm in terms of prices" was adopted. Which swung the pendulum the other way. That is the fundamental economic policy now. Which has lead to abhorrent results.
> The US economy generally did very well with those standards
Spurious correlation. Few experts (economists) think old regulations caused economic growth.
If we really want to recreate post-war growth, we should destroy half our infastructure and fight a world war. Then, in the years following the end of that war, we can experience catch-up growth.
I find the discussion around tariffs in the US pretty weird. The people making the case for them right now sound like complete idiots at points and downright dishonest at other points, and the people making the case against them sound weirdly racist and classist.
It is partly because of polarization, but mostly because the US economic and policy discourse is centered around nebulous "Consume Harm", as measured in price.
The "for" camp claims:
1. Tariffs will bring manufacturing home overnight,
2. Everything import should be taxed,
3. And tariffs are being paid by the foreign exporter, so American consumers will be shielded from price increases.
All of these claims are lies. American business' biggest input cost is labor. By a long margin. Tariffs need to be much higher for manufacturing to be a feasible investment in most industries. Which means more pain for the consumer.
The 'against' camps argument all hinge on the fact these are filthy jobs for filthy foreigners and poors. There is no need for them in the US. Even if they are not focusing on that issue, they are talking about how taxing imports cause "Consumer harm" and therefore it is bad.
That is the crux of this post as well. The tariffs did cause price increases for consumer.
But if the goal is to increase manufacturing base in the US, then this harm would be irrelevant in the long term.
This obsession with "Consumer Harm" has poisoned all trade and economic policy in the US. It is the reason Anti-trust is toothless in the US, why every industry is an oligopoly, and why the rust belt exists.
Of course, protectionism is not the only ingredient needed to promote any given industry. China, Vietnam, Korea and India did it via robust industrial policy. Some might say US did so as well, during World War 2. But that is cOmMuNiSm now.
I was one of the people just absolutely in misery when the GLM-5.1 model dropped. It wasn't quantized, I don't think, but it had some very gnarly issues where it would hit a context size, then seemingly try to quantize, and fall apart. It was unusable. It went from being an excellent model all the way to 200k, to being only 60k before it couldn't write in sentances and definitely couldn't tool call, to being 100k, to 120k. It was terrible, and I was so sad they had made my subscription so much worse, it felt like. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47677853
But very shortly after this submission/release of 5.1, after a mass pouring out of sadnesses, they fixed it. Things have been back to absolutely amazing. I joined right before 4.7, and 4.7 was incredible. 5.0 was fantastic. 5.1 has been a dream. GPT still catches a lot of stuff and is smarter, but man, GLM-5.1 is so capable, and it's frankly often a better writer, often better understands and captures purpose and notion, where-as GPT often feels dry and focused on narrow technicals. I really appreciate GLM-5.1.
And I'm really glad Z.ai fixed the absurd damage they had in their systems. I do suspect they were trying to dynamically quantize as the context window grew, or some such trickery. It was not working at all, but somehow it tooks months to fix.
There are similar unfounded complaints about US companies. It's just what happens with a product that doesn't work 100% of the time even under ideal conditions. Some people are bound to get unlucky but blame it on deliberate action rather than random chance.
This is funny because it is an unfounded claim replying to the request for proof.
I can show you my git tree where GLM4.5 deleted my whole test suite and my session docs where it invented new github cli commands. Are you willing to show us where you saw me taking money from any US tech company?
It is only when human labor was needed at a large scale when we started caring about people living long healthy lives.
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